The Aerovons

The Aerovons' story sounds like a fairytale, and in most respects it was a fairytale come true, except for the anticlimactic grim ending. It was probably the dream of millions of teenage American boys to meet the Beatles and record at Abbey Road Studios in the late 1960s. The Aerovons, unlike virtually every other such band, did so. Personnel instability intervened, however, and the group only got to issue a couple of rare singles before splitting up. They did record an entire album of promising material heavily influenced by the late-'60s Beatles, which finally saw release on CD in 2003. The Aerovons were formed in 1966 in St. Louis, and in late 1967guitarist/pianist Tom Hartman recorded a demo of his composition "A World of You" at the instigation of his mother. The demo was heard by a representative of Capitol Records, and though he offered the group a session in Los Angeles, Hartman's mother told him the band wanted to record in London. In early 1968, the still-young Aerovons -- Hartman was 16 -- flew to London to play their demo for EMI. EMI was impressed enough to sign them when Hartman and his mother returned to London in August 1968, and the Aerovons even got another offer at the time with Decca. The whole band came back to London in March 1969 to record. Over the next few months the group cut about an album's worth of material at Abbey Road. Unsurprisingly considering the surroundings, and considering that the Beatles were the group's heroes anyway, the material sounded much like the Beatles did circa 1967-1969, though on the lighter side of what the Beatles themselves came up with. More surprisingly, the album was produced by Hartman himself, who also wrote most of the songs laid down in the studio. Though the sessions were quite well-produced and...