James Lowe (82) – frontman of ’60s psych-rock icons The Electric Prunes – was born March 5, 1943 in San Luis Obispo, California and grew up in West Los Angeles. He spent time as a teenager living in Hawaii and began playing Hawaiian music, before returning to California in 1963. There, he performed in a folk duo.
James Lowe had a boyhood friend whose father had a home recording studio. Lowe was fascinated by the process. He was also fascinated by surfing and guitars, but at 19 he married Pamela a girl he’d met while attending Canoga Park High in 1960 and they started a family and stayed together for life. Lowe worked as a nighttime aerospace X-ray technician at Rocketdyne, a rocket engine production company in Los Angeles, desperate to get out, convinced that music was his only escape route. He hooked up with Tulin and Williams and another young musician in 1965, and seven days a week–after the boys got home from school and before Lowe went to work–they practiced in the Tulin garage, concentrating on original material.
In 1965, he formed a garage rock band called the Sanctions by recruiting Mark Tulin (bass, keyboards), Ken Williams (lead guitar), Michael “Quint” Weakley (drums), and various other short-term members. They changed their name to Jim And The Lords.
Their lucky break came when a girl called Barbara Harris, who was selling some real estate, was walking past the garage where the band were practicing and heard them playing. She went in and said she knew someone in the record business and that she could introduce them to him.
That person was Dave Hassinger! Hassinger was the resident engineer at RCA studios and he had already made a name for himself as the engineer on many of The Rolling Stones sessions in the mid 60s. It was during the Stones’ “Aftermath” recording that Hassinger decided he wanted to record a band in his own right. Hassinger signed the Lords to a management contract and told them they needed a new name. They chose the answer to one of those ‘60s riddles (“What’s purple and goes ‘buzz’?”). Among the songs Hassinger picked was a demo of “Too Much to Dream,” written by a pair of pop songwriters signed to his company. The band imbued it with Lowe’s petulant, dramatic vocal and an unusual feedback-infested, backward-guitar sound.
The Electric Prunes originated from Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley – part of northern Los Angeles. Many early biographies state incorrectly that the Prunes started out in Seattle. According to Preston Ritter, this misconception began when their single ‘I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night’ first broke in Seattle and then Boston. The Electric Prunes’s first live concert to promote the record was in Seattle, where a D.J. started the rumor, which has stuck to this day, that the band were from the Seattle area.
In 1966, they signed to Reprise Records and released their first single, “Ain’t It Hard.” In 1966 they released their single “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night,” a wild-eyed fuzz-rocker that reached #11 on the Hot 100 and was written by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz. It became the band’s first and biggest hit. Its title was a play on the phrase “I had too much to drink last night” and, with its aggressive, distorted, fuzzy sound, the song helped to define the garage-rock and psychedelic movements of the era. The personnel at that time included singer-guitarist Lowe, Williams, Tulin, rhythm guitarist James “Weasel” Spagnola and drummer Preston Ritter. In 1967, the similarly frantic “Get Me To The World On Time” reached #27, and their self-titled debut album found them pushing their sound in different adventurous directions. Their sophomore album Underground came out in the same year, but it didn’t have any hits.
In 1968, the Electric Prunes worked with visionary producer David Axelrod to make Mass In F Minor, an expansive, ambitious concept album that attempted to mix Gregorian chant with rock ‘n’ roll. Although Lowe, Tulin and Williams appeared on all of the tracks, it was finished by studio musicians and a Canadian group, the Collectors, with assistance from engineer Richie Podolor. It wasn’t a hit, but the band’s version of “Kyrie Eleison” appeared in the movie Easy Rider. Later, Mass In F Minor became a cult favorite, and it was sampled by rap producers like Madlib and MF DOOM. There’s also the archival live album, Stockholm ‘67, which showed a much tougher side of the band’s sound and is one of the better quality live recordings to come from that era.
Mass in F Minor scraped into the Billboard album chart at #135, but after a disastrous attempt to perform the new material in concert, the group quickly fell apart. Hassinger, who owned the name Electric Prunes, assembled a new lineup that included none of the original members. James Lowe left the Electric Prunes in 1968.
I quit the band after the Mass (album) and all the promises faded and we were being shoved around like meat. The rest of the band quit a few months later, I think. We had an agreement that Dave Axelrod could use the name to finish things off with Reprise. We knew they (Reprise) had acted in good faith and he maintained they needed to get their money back on the act. I didn’t know about the other albums; but I did get a note from Dave’s wife saying they would be continuing using the name, as agreed. I don’t know if I met those guys. I went down and saw Mark and the guys after I quit when Kenny Loggins joined the band at a presentation at PJ’s.
The two further albums, Release of an Oath in 1968 and Just Good Old Rock and Roll the following year, included no original Electric Prunes members. In 1970, the name Electric Prunes was retired.
In the wake of the band’s dissolution, Lowe went on to a career as a producer/engineer, notably working with Todd Rundgren on the latter’s albums with his band Nazz, and with Halfnelson, which morphed into Sparks, producing their second album, A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing.
” I was interested in engineering and producing. Bands seemed like having to please too many people and incorporate too many personalities into the mix. I much preferred the solo feel of the studio,” said Lowe later.
Lowe left the music business in the mid ’70s and operated a television production company in the 1980s and 90s, until 1999, along with Tulin, Williams and Weakley, when he re-formed the Electric Prunes in order to capitalize on the new interest in Nuggets and ’60s psychedelic and garage music. In 2001 they recorded an acclaimed self released album “Artifact” and 2 years later in 2004 the album California. Afterwards the group toured and recorded new material; Mark Tulin sadly died in 2011. Eventually, Lowe was the only remaining member of the original band involved.
The reformed Prunes tours with bassist Mark Tulin were tremendous shows. They were headlining a tour with a reformed Love, and The Blues Magoos. Sky Saxon was supposed to be on the bill but had passed. The Prunes were an incredible band live.
Jim Lowe died at the age of 82 on May 22, 2025, at a hospital in Santa Barbara, California, from cardiac arrest.
