The song was a collaboration between John Sebastian, The Lovin Spoonful's bassist Steve Boone, and the frontman's brother (and non-group member) Mark Sebastian. Mark was 15 years old when he wrote a poem that John used as the basis for the song - John especially liked the part that went, "But at night there's a different world." "That song that came from an idea my brother Mike had". John Sebastian recalled in June 2014: "He had this great chorus, and the release was so big. I had to create some kind of tension at the front end to make it even bigger. That's where that jagged piano part comes from."
This was recorded over two days: At the first session, they put down the instruments: guitar, bass, autoharp, drums, organ, electric piano and percussion. The second session was for vocals and sound effects. Boone came up with the middle eight, which John thought sounded like the Gershwin composition "An American in Paris," where the orchestra implies the sound of traffic and city noises. This gave him the idea of incorporating car horns and other city ambiance into the track. The band was rather particular about the traffic sounds. Instead of just using what was available on the sound effects records in the studio, they found an old-school radio engineer - a guy who used to create the soundscapes for shows, so if a guy was riding a horse, you'd hear the hooves hitting the ground and the wind whistling by. This guy, whom John Sebastian referred to as a "hilarious old Jewish sound man," came in with a huge library of street sounds, which the band went through for hours. They wanted the scene to build, so it starts softly (the horn at the beginning comes from a Volkswagen Beetle), and grows to a gridlock nightmare. To close the scene, they used a pneumatic hammer pounding away at the pavement.
It is ranked number 401 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The song was a collaboration between John Sebastian, The Lovin Spoonful's bassist Steve Boone, and the frontman's brother (and non-group member) Mark Sebastian. Mark was 15 years old when he wrote a poem that John used as the basis for the song - John especially liked the part that went, "But at night there's a different world." "That song that came from an idea my brother Mike had". John Sebastian recalled in June 2014: "He had this great chorus, and the release was so big. I had to create some kind of tension at the front end to make it even bigger. That's where that jagged piano part comes from."
This was recorded over two days: At the first session, they put down the instruments: guitar, bass, autoharp, drums, organ, electric piano and percussion. The second session was for vocals and sound effects. Boone came up with the middle eight, which John thought sounded like the Gershwin composition "An American in Paris," where the orchestra implies the sound of traffic and city noises. This gave him the idea of incorporating car horns and other city ambiance into the track. The band was rather particular about the traffic sounds. Instead of just using what was available on the sound effects records in the studio, they found an old-school radio engineer - a guy who used to create the soundscapes for shows, so if a guy was riding a horse, you'd hear the hooves hitting the ground and the wind whistling by. This guy, whom John Sebastian referred to as a "hilarious old Jewish sound man," came in with a huge library of street sounds, which the band went through for hours. They wanted the scene to build, so it starts softly (the horn at the beginning comes from a Volkswagen Beetle), and grows to a gridlock nightmare. To close the scene, they used a pneumatic hammer pounding away at the pavement.
It is ranked number 401 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The song was a collaboration between John Sebastian, The Lovin Spoonful's bassist Steve Boone, and the frontman's brother (and non-group member) Mark Sebastian. Mark was 15 years old when he wrote a poem that John used as the basis for the song - John especially liked the part that went, "But at night there's a different world." "That song that came from an idea my brother Mike had". John Sebastian recalled in June 2014: "He had this great chorus, and the release was so big. I had to create some kind of tension at the front end to make it even bigger. That's where that jagged piano part comes from."
This was recorded over two days: At the first session, they put down the instruments: guitar, bass, autoharp, drums, organ, electric piano and percussion. The second session was for vocals and sound effects. Boone came up with the middle eight, which John thought sounded like the Gershwin composition "An American in Paris," where the orchestra implies the sound of traffic and city noises. This gave him the idea of incorporating car horns and other city ambiance into the track. The band was rather particular about the traffic sounds. Instead of just using what was available on the sound effects records in the studio, they found an old-school radio engineer - a guy who used to create the soundscapes for shows, so if a guy was riding a horse, you'd hear the hooves hitting the ground and the wind whistling by. This guy, whom John Sebastian referred to as a "hilarious old Jewish sound man," came in with a huge library of street sounds, which the band went through for hours. They wanted the scene to build, so it starts softly (the horn at the beginning comes from a Volkswagen Beetle), and grows to a gridlock nightmare. To close the scene, they used a pneumatic hammer pounding away at the pavement.
It is ranked number 401 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.