The Grass Roots

В понедельник 13 июля в хосписе в городе Таварес (США, штат Флорида) скончался Роб Грилл, вокалист легендарной группы 60-х The Grass Roots. Причиной смерти стало осложнение после черепно-мозговой травмы, которая была получена месяц назад. Робу Гриллу было 67 лет.

Активная деятельность The Grass Roots пришлась на вторую половину 60-х. Среди их самых известных песен можно назвать “Let’s Live for Today”, “Midnight Confessions”, “Temptation Eyes” и “Two Divided by Love”.

Как рассказала супруга Роба Грилла Нэнси, перед смертью он слушал одну из этих вещей - “Let’s Live for Today”.

https://www.beatles.ru/news/news.asp?news_id=7200

Rob Grill, singer for 60s rock band The Grass Roots, has died

MOUNT DORA — Rob Grill, lead singer of the 1960s rock band The Grass Roots, famous for such smash hits as "Midnight Confessions" and "Temptation Eyes," died Monday at a hospice facility while listening to one of his favorite songs — "Let's Live for Today." He was 67.

The Mount Dora resident had recently suffered a head injury after falling and was in a coma, according to reports. He also suffered from other health problems, including two recent strokes.

The Grass Roots was a "reliable" musical group that depended on Grill's good looks and pleasing voice to churn hit song after hit song, Jim Carlton, a Mount Dora writer and musician, said Tuesday.

"He had a voice that was very catchy and marketable," Carlton said. "And Rob was a very smart guy. He obviously had this savvy about the music business."

Raised in Hollywood, Calif., Grill joined The Grass Roots as a singer and bass player in the mid-60s. The band had its first top-10 hit in 1967 with "Let's Live for Today" and The Grass Roots became part of the sunny-sounding pop-rock music scene of that time that also included The Mamas & The Papas, The Turtles and The Monkees.

One of The Grass Roots' biggest hits was their 1968 hit "Midnight Confessions" with Grill on co-lead vocals. The song peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The band eventually had 29 best-selling singles, including "Sooner or Later" and "Things I Should Have Said." Thirteen of the songs went gold.

In 1979, Grill released a solo album, "Uprooted."

Grill, an avid fisherman, moved to Lake County in 1985 and said he relished fishing for bass in the area lakes. He discovered Lake when his band made a stop at a Mount Dora restaurant.

"I can fish all day in a bass boat," he told an Orlando Sentinel reporter at the time. "It's so comfortable. Mine even has a stereo."

Grill continued touring with his band in recent years, performing at county fairs, casinos and nightclubs.

In 2007, Grill faced three felony counts of obtaining prescription painkillers illegally. Grill said he needed the medicine to cope with the pain of six hip-replacement surgeries and a degenerative bone disorder called avascular necrosis. In Florida, it's a felony for a patient to obtain the same prescription medicine from different doctors. Grill agreed to enroll in a pre-trial intervention program. When interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel in July 2007, Grill said he was no longer taking prescription medication and was handling the pain with aspirin.

On a music-lover's website, his wife, Nancy Grill, wrote of her husband, "He loved his fans and he loved The Grass Roots! Thank you for all of your prayers, love and support during this time."

Funeral arrangements are being handled by Beyers Funeral Home in Umatilla.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/os-rob-grill-rock-star-dies-20110712,0,4...

Rob Grill, Lead Singer of the Grass Roots, Dies at 67

Rob Grill, the longtime lead singer and a very nearly original member of the Grass Roots, the immensely popular rock group of the 1960s and afterward, died on Monday in Tavares, Fla. He was 67.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-’70s, the Grass Roots were a fixture on the airwaves and a regular presence on “American Bandstand.” They sold tens of millions of records and had more than a dozen Top 40 hits. Among their best known are “Let’s Live for Today,” “Midnight Confessions,” “Temptation Eyes” and “Two Divided by Love.”

The band’s style married elements of folk-rock, soul, blues and R&B. Its songs, whose close-knit harmonies evoked the British pop groups of the period, were bouncy, accessible and eminently danceable, often backed by an upbeat brass section.

“The Grass Roots weren’t the hippest band on the block,” The Boston Globe wrote in 1989. “But they were — and remain — a sure-fire guilty pleasure, a blissful package of pure pop.”

The group’s longest-serving member, Mr. Grill appeared with the Grass Roots for more than four decades: first in the group’s heyday and again as the band has enjoyed a renaissance on the oldies circuit. His voice — high, sweet and supple — was memorably urgent and beseeching in the group’s many songs of love.

He also played bass and wrote some of the group’s songs, though the Grass Roots’ best-known material was written primarily by nonmembers.

The Grass Roots began life as a phantom. In the mid-1960s, two Los Angeles songwriters, Steve Barri and P. F. Sloan, were asked by their label, Dunhill Records, for songs that would capitalize on the growing appetite for folk-rock.

They wrote “Where Were You When I Needed You” and, as the Grass Roots, recorded a demo. When the song had some success on the radio, they cast about for an existing band to become the Grass Roots.

They enlisted a San Francisco group named the Bedouins, who recorded the first Grass Roots album, also titled “Where Were You When I Needed You.”

In 1967, after the Bedouins decamped, Mr. Barri and Mr. Sloan recruited the 13th Floor, a Los Angeles band comprising Creed Bratton, Rick Coonce, Warren Entner and Kenny Fukomoto. (Mr. Bratton, the lead guitarist, later worked as an actor; he is known for playing the eccentric quality assurance director — also named Creed Bratton — on the American sitcom “The Office.”)

Just as the 13th Floor was about to sign on as the Grass Roots, Mr. Fukomoto was drafted, and Mr. Grill was brought in as a replacement. He remained with the group through the late ’70s, when it faded from view, a casualty of changing popular taste.

Mr. Grill managed new incarnations of the band in 1978 and ’79, rejoining it in the early 1980s. He performed with the Grass Roots throughout much of the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s.

Mr. Grill appeared on many of the band’s albums and also recorded a solo album, “Uprooted,” released in 1979.

Robert Frank Grill was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 30, 1943. Intending to become a lawyer, he studied at California State University, Los Angeles, before pursuing a career in music.

Mr. Grill’s first marriage ended in divorce. Besides his wife, the former Nancy Pilski, whom he married in 1986, he is survived by a brother, James. A son from his first marriage, Christian, died of cancer last year.

Mr. Grill lived for years with chronic pain as a result of a degenerative bone disorder known as avascular necrosis and the multiple hip-replacement operations it entailed. In 2007, he was arrested on charges of having obtained the prescription painkiller oxycodone from multiple doctors, in violation of Florida law.

He entered a guilty plea, which was later vacated after he completed a pretrial intervention program, his wife said.

On the whole, however, Mr. Grill’s life — and the lives of his band mates — was so tame that it became, in some quarters, a professional sticking point.

“I asked one of the guys at VH1’s ‘Behind the Music’ why we weren’t on,” Mr. Grill told The Huntsville (Ala.) Times in 2005. “And he said, ‘Were you guys ever into heroin?’ and I said, ‘No.’ He said we just weren’t compelling enough.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/arts/music/rob-grill-lead-singer-of-the-grass-roots-d...

Ал ты ж жалость какая... был у меня этот сингл, "Temptation Eyes" / "Keepin' Me Down", японский, на цветном синиле... я потом долго LP искал, "more Golden Grass" которая... а "Let's Live For Today" недавно группа Tempest перепевала...

Wife of Rob Grill issues statement thanking fans for 'love and support'

Nancy Grill, wife of Grass Roots member Rob Grill, who passed away this week, posted a message in the Grass Roots Yahoo forum Tuesday thanking fans for the messages she received after her husband death on Monday.

"Hi everyone,

I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all the love and support you've given to Rob and I. It is such a difficult time, but knowing how much people loved Rob and The Grass Roots gives me a calm feeling somehow.

I've been busy with phone calls from radio stations, The New York Times, CNN and the Associated Press! They are all compassionate and wanting to know the truth. Rob never thought of himself as a celebrity, (but as one lucky son of a gun who was able to have the same job and still love it for over 45 years.) He loved the songs (thanks Sloan and Barri) and I know he hoped the Grass Roots are able to continue pleasing fans for many more years to come.

People are asking about a memorial service, etc...I'm going to wait until things calm down and people who want to celebrate his life from out of town can plan and buy airline tickets. Airfares now are so expensive at short notice. I will let you know. August, perhaps.

As far as in lieu of flowers...Rob was a foster kid during periods of his life and he wanted to support local foster programs. We also always supported Cornerstone Hospice of Lake County, 2445 Lane Park Road, Tavares, FL 32778. Any contributions to Melanoma/Cancer Society (as that what took Christian's life away too soon as well as many others was important to Rob as well).

Thanks again and much love to you.

More later, Nancy

http://www.examiner.com/vintage-rock-n-roll-in-national/wife-of-rob-grill-issues-statem...

R.I.P.

Хорошая была группа...
Одна из самых любимых вещей:

Покойся с миром...

Старый Рок-н-ролльщик...

2Phelix:

>Хорошая была группа...
>Одна из самых любимых вещей:

Да, отличная!

Хит 1971 года

С удивлением, узнал, что песня "Let's Live For Today" имеет англо-итальянские корни

The song that would become "Let's Live for Today" was originally written by David Shapiro and Ivan Mogul in 1966, with Italian lyrics and the Italian title of "Piangi Con Me" (translated as "Cry with Me"). At the time, Shapiro was a member of the Rokes, an English beat group who had relocated to Italy in 1963 and had signed a recording contract with RCA Italiana the following year. During the mid-1960s, the Rokes became a popular band on the Italian charts, achieving a number of Top 20 hits with Italian-language covers of popular British and American songs. By 1966, however, the band had begun to write their own material, including "Piangi Con Me", which quickly became their biggest hit to date in Italy.

Following its success on the Italian charts, plans were made to release "Piangi Con Me" in the United Kingdom and as a result, the song was translated into English and given the new title of "Passing Thru Grey". However, the song's publisher in Britain, Dick James Music, was unhappy with the lyrics of "Passing Thru Grey" and decided that they should be changed. Michael Julien, a member of the publisher's writing staff, was assigned the task of composing new words for the song and it was his input that transformed it into "Let's Live for Today". Before the Rokes could release the song in the UK, however, another British group named The Living Daylights released a version of it. Ultimately, neither The Living Daylights nor the Rokes would reach the charts with their recording of the song.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Live_for_Today_(song)

Вещь с пластники 1969 года. не сингл, но очень симпатичная.