St. John Green was an American psychedelic rock band who released one self-titled LP, produced by Kim Fowley and Michael Lloyd, in 1968.
"[1] In 1967, two students at Pasadena City College, keyboard player Michael 'Papabax' Baxter, and vocalist, Victor 'Vic' Sabino, wanting to create a new entity, began a search for compatible musical comrades.
They found bass player and aspiring poet Ed Bissot through an audition, added guitarist Bill Kirkland, a Pasadena, California native, and drummer Shelly Scott, a resident of the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles, to complete the band line-up.
The band was managed at first by local entrepreneur Harry Snegg, and performed around the Los Angeles area playing songs written either by Bissot, or by Baxter and Sabino together.
Every heroin addict and gun dealer and radical black person from Venice to Malibu and Hollywood would all come to prowl and just worship this guy."
Baxter later said:[3]"[Kim Fowley] laid out to us what was essentially a plan to create and record a "new style of music"—"The Canyon" sound.
"The band was signed by Mike Curb of MGM Records to the company's subsidiary label, Flick Disc, and the album was co-produced by Fowley and by Curb's 19-year-old protégé Michael Lloyd, a founder member of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band who later became the producer of the Osmonds, Shaun Cassidy, and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.
Baxter said: "I always got the impression from Michael Lloyd that... there was a separate agenda that we were not privy to.... Our music was compromised... and our album twisted into a bizarre Kim Fowley project.
"[4] Shortly after the album was released in 1968, Shel Scott and Bill Kirkland both left the band, and were briefly replaced by Bob Desimone (drums) and Brad Delavalley (guitar).
[5] After St. John Green broke up, Baxter and Sabino formed their new band, Jumbo, with Delavalley (later replaced by Jim Pitman of Strawberry Alarm Clock), Richard Pisula (bass), and Neil Olson (drums).
They performed back-up duties for Ode by accompanying vocalist Merry Clayton and John Phillips (of The Mamas and the Papas), two members of Adler's “stable” of artists.