One person’s view: “Seriously, was there no one at Columbia records telling Gary Puckett to knock it off with all this ‘barely legal’-type shit?” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year
The public’s view: 2.74 / 5.00
The Bad Top Ten Hits radar screen has recently been picking up lots of little blips from Yakima, Washington and the neighboring city of Union Gap. I tried to ignore these signs of trouble, but then I listened to “This Girl Is a Woman Now”. Now I realize that I must finally delve into the controversial oeuvre of the musical Yakiman named Gary Puckett.
Puckett’s best known single, “Young Girl”, describes an adolescent girl who misleads the singer about her age while unsuccessfully attempting to lure him into an illicit tryst. (This is the type of problem that only a rock star could have.) In the follow-up record “Lady Willpower”, the female is the one who is balking as the man begs to be allowed to teach her the facts of life. Thankfully, “Lady Willpower” does not suggest that the woman is underage – only that she is inexperienced and seems to like it that way. I get the impression that she might be a nun.
Both of those songs were written by Puckett’s producer, Jerry Fuller, and both of them did the job they were supposed to do. Puckett realized, however, that Fuller was following a formula and that all of his band’s music was starting to sound the same. He needed a refresh, so he turned to other songwriters for his fourth studio LP. This album was dubbed The New Gary Puckett and the Union Gap Album. It may not have been the most creative album title in history, but it was perhaps the most truthful.
“This Girl Is a Woman Now” was the biggest single from the new LP. Although it doesn’t plumb the depths of degeneracy like, say, Billy J. Kramer’s “Little Children”, it is cringeworthy enough that I would feel uncomfortable analyzing its lyrics in any detail. It also unfairly hurt the reputation of Puckett’s earlier music that had done nothing to merit condemnation. “Young Girl” was not realistic, but it was a perfectly good song that told of a man doing the right thing under difficult circumstances. Likewise, “Lady Willpower” was fairly inoffensive on its own. Who among us hasn’t flirted with a nun at some point? Taken collectively, however, “Young Girl”, “Lady Willpower”, and “This Girl Is a Woman Now” formed a trilogy that seemed to straddle the line between wholesome fun and lechery.
Despite the inferences that might be drawn from these three records, Gary Puckett has apparently led a scandal-free existence. The worst I can find about him is that he would sometimes display a Confederate battle flag on stage. The flag was intended to appease audiences in the South who might otherwise have been upset by the Union Army garb that he and his band were wearing. This utter ambivalence about slavery, and the trivialization of a bloody conflict, jibes with the lack of moral clarity in his music. Exactly how old is the subject of “This Girl Is a Woman Now”? Was the teary-eyed surrender of her innocence ultimately a good decision for her? Don’t ask Gary Puckett those questions, because he’s just the messenger. We shouldn’t expect him to fully comprehend the meanings of songs he didn’t write, just like we shouldn’t expect a guy from Yakima to have a consistent stance on the Civil War. As for my view of “This Girl Is a Woman Now”, I would have preferred to hear Puckett sing another sound-alike Jerry Fuller composition.
My rating: 3 / 10
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