Song writer
Born: September 18, 1945;
Died: November 15, 2015
PF Sloan, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 70, was the rock legend who most people had never heard of. Even in the business many thought he was just that – a legend, a fictional character created by Jimmy Webb, the songwriter behind Wichita Lineman and Galveston.
"I have been seeking PF Sloan, but no one knows where he has gone," Webb wrote of this elusive visionary in the song that bears his name and has been variously recorded by Jennifer Warnes, Jackson Brown and most recently Rumer.
Webb apparently gave the impression that Sloan was indeed fictitious. But if anyone looked at the songwriter credit in brackets after one of the greatest, angriest pop anthems of the 1960s, Eve of Destruction, they would have seen Sloan's name.
However that gives no clue as to who PF Sloan was, or where he had gone, leaving behind the song that had become a theme song for the Vietnam War and a string of other songs, including Secret Agent Man, which served as the American theme song for the British TV series Danger Man.
Eugene Landy, Brian Wilson's controversial therapist who had aspirations as a songwriter, said he was PF Sloan. And there was a suggestion that PF Sloan was a name owned by Dunhill Records and PF Sloan was anyone they chose.
But the real PF Sloan was born Philip Gary Schlein in New York in 1945 and by the age of 16 he was a professional songwriter at Screen Gems in Los Angeles. At 19 he wrote Eve of Destruction, warning that the world stood on the brink of apocalypse. Recorded by Barry McGuire, with Sloan on guitar, it reached No 1 in the US and No 3 in the UK.
Sloan wrote songs for Jan and Dean, The Turtles and The Fifth Dimension, which is when he met Webb. Herman's Hermits had a UK hit with A Must to Avoid. He also released records himself, including the downbeat Sins of the Family.
He fell out with his record company and felt he was not being taken seriously, except by Bob Dylan, who was a fan, and by right-wingers, who he said wanted to destroy him because of Eve of Destruction. The line "You're old enough to kill, but not for voting," touched a nerve and helped fuel the campaign to lower the voting age to 18.
"The frenzy over the song tore me up and seemed to tear the country apart," he said. "I was an enemy of the people to some and a hero to others." And then in the early 1970s Sloan disappeared.
He struggled with depression and drugs and said he was visited by a holy man in a dream. "My Judaism was not giving me the answers I was looking for so I went to India," he said. He lived in an ashram on a diet of papaya juice. Jimmy Webb was not exaggerating when he wrote "no one knows where he has gone".
Only in recent years did Sloan begin performing again. Last year he appeared at a Rumer concert in London, and he brought out his memoirs and an album called My Beethoven.
Earlier this year he and McGuire were reunited when they sang Eve of Destruction together at a Los Angeles coffee shop. He was not married and had no children.
BRIAN PENDREIGH
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