As well as recording their own albums, during the 1970s they appeared on releases by artists including George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, Carly Simon, Martha Reeves and Art Garfunkel.
[1] After being out of print for close to 40 years, their sole Apple album, Brother, containing the Harrison-produced single "Sweet Music", was reissued on RPM Records in June 2012.
[2] With Trees drummer Tim Case, they soon morphed into a new group, Jacobs Creek,[3] which also included Steve Burgh, subsequently a sought-after session musician and producer.
[6] Lead vocals were shared between Derrek, Bruce Foster and Lon; the latter also wrote all the songs and played guitar, saxophone, sitar and harpsichord on the album.
[3] After Jacobs Creek, Lon and Derrek Van Eaton concentrated on songwriting and recorded a series of demos on a pair of standard tape machines at home, in their rented house on North Hermitage Avenue, Trenton.
[3] Led by younger brother Derrek's vocals,[1] the Van Eatons sang and played all the instruments on the recordings, using various surfaces of the house to replicate drum sounds.
[8] Their manager, Robin Garb, then forwarded seven of the songs on to various record company A&R departments,[9] one of which was the New York office of the Beatles' Apple label, run by Allan Steckler.
[1] On 19 September, the Van Eatons and Garb flew to London,[3] where they attended the launch party for the refurbished Apple Studio on Savile Row at the end of the month.
[5] When the brothers first arrived in the UK and were driven to Harrison's home, Friar Park, he was waiting for them on his lawn, playing their song "Sweet Music" on his guitar.
Harrison was preoccupied with his Bangladesh charity project during the second half of 1971 and through much of 1972, and so entrusted the Van Eatons' development to Klaus Voormann, a longstanding associate of the Beatles.
[9] Aside from Mike Hugg on harmonium, Lon and Derrek played all the other instruments on the track,[5] including electric piano, bass guitar and tenor saxophone.
[10] Geoff Emerick, who managed the studio,[22] later wrote of the extended sessions for the Van Eatons' album: "their problem was that they couldn't match the feel of the demonstration tape that had gotten them their record deal in the first place.
[1] "Sweet Music" received highly favourable reviews;[25] Record World magazine said it was "a stirring ballad that will make them immediate chart contenders" and added: "Production by George Harrison couldn't be better.
[10] Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone wrote: "This staggeringly impressive first album by the Van Eaton brothers ... displays more energy, good feeling, and sheer musical talent than any debut rock record I've heard this year.
[33] Reviewing the 2012 Brother reissue, for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger remarks on the similarities of the Van Eatons' sound with that of Badfinger and Paul McCartney, and describes the album as "on the pleasantly innocuous side as a whole".
[38][39] For the next two years, Richard Perry's projects kept the Van Eatons, particularly Lon,[16] working with a number of top recording artists (though distinctly MOR in style compared to Apple's less glitzy roster).
[10] This session work included appearances on four more gold-selling albums of the early-to-mid 1970s, all produced by Perry: Andy Williams' Solitaire, Starr's Goodnight Vienna, Carly Simon's Playing Possum and Art Garfunkel's Breakaway.
[29] Writing in The Rolling Stone Record Guide in 1979, Charley Walters dismissed Who Do You Out Do as "Passable melodic pop, unambitious and un-individual" with "suitably modest" production by Perry and Schnee.
[46] In a 2010 interview, Lon described Imagine a Better World as "a company dedicated to creating conscious change through media" and credited the Beatles' humanitarian message as an inspiration for the concept.