Electric Prunes Singer James Lowe Unplugs at 82
by John Diliberto 5/31/2025
James Lowe 3/5/1943 – 5/22/2025
James Lowe has had his final dream. The singer for The Electric Prunes unplugs at age 82.
I can’t tell you how important The Electric Prunes were to me, especially for their two hit songs, “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” and “Get Me to the World on Time.” I had both songs as singles and 58 years later, they are always in my head and I still often go to them. In fact, “Get Me to the World on Time” was my number one played song on Spotify in 2024. Keep in mind, I streamed it only 8 times out the 2663 songs I played, but still.
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’m pretty sure I didn’t quite get the drug references in those songs at the time, but they definitely took me on a trip every time. I felt like I was gaining entry into a new world that I wanted to be part of.
Those songs weren’t written by the band, but penned by song writers Jill Jones, Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz. But the Prunes made them their own between James Lowe’s snarling vocals and the effects laden guitar of Ken Williams. He really loved the mix of fuzz-tone and tremolo. The downshift guitar riff leading into the chorus on “Get Me to the World on Time” never fails to kill me. And then there’s the Bo Diddley percussion groove of the bridge ending in a rising oscillator tone. I still remember blasting it on the family console stereo and my father running in screaming “What the hell was that?”
It was a time of non sequitur names like The Chocolate Watchband, Strawberry Alarm Clock and Ultimate Spinach, but the band kind of lived up to their name with a lot of electronic and inventive production from Dave Hassinger. He proved to be a control freak that kind of doomed the band but he had some great production touches that made these songs what they became. He only allowed them two self-written songs on their 1967 eponymous debut, but that changed on the second album, Underground.
On Underground they started moving from a garage band to a psychedelic band and that title references a genre name given to the new rock music of the era. I listened to “underground” radio on WBCN. The songs were much more ambitious and effects ornamented like “Children of the Rain.”
They followed up Underground with a rock liturgy, Mass in F Minor. I remember this seeming so cool at the time. It was written and produced by David Axelrod and was in many ways more psychedelic than anything the band had produced to date. After the opening rendering of Latin lyrics from the catholic mass in tracks like “Kyrie Eleison” “Agnus Dei” and “Gloria”, it veered into some very trippy jams. The only thing was, the band had little to do with it other than Williams’s acid-drenched guitar solos and Lowe’s multi-tracked choral voice, which was a far cry from his rock snarl.
The next album, Release of an Oath, was also written and produced by Axelrod with a group of effectively, scabs, since the band had broken up. Same thing with the final album of the first era, Just Good Old Rock and Roll.
Original members of the band got back together over the years, and in 1999 they began releasing new solidly hard rocking music with psychedelic overtones. I wasn’t even aware of these releases until I started writing this. The Electric Prunes were one of those bands who slipped out of attention but who’s earlier work is firmly locked in mind.
There are some groups and songs that are formative, and for me The Electric Prunes and in particular, “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” and “Get Me to The World on Time” were that for me. I was thrilled and vindicated in my love for them when “Dream” became the opening track of Lenny Kaye’s still brilliant 1972 compilation, Nuggets- Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965 – 1968. “Get Me to The World on Time” was placed in the expanded deluxe CD edition. And I did come to understand the drug references and the inhalation of a joint at the fade out of “Too Much to Dream.” James Lowe has passed at 82, but his influence remains.
For the best history of The Electric Prunes read Richie Unterberger’s Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of ’60s Rock