Aiming to create an "electric jug band",[2] they recruited the local rock musicians Steve Boone (bass guitar) and Joe Butler (drums, vocals).

[4][nb 1] Elliot was holding a party that night to watch the English rock band the Beatles make their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

[2][nb 3] Sebastian recalled: "Yanovsky and I were both aware of the fact that this commercial folk music model was about to change again, that the four-man band that actually played their own instruments and wrote their own songs was the thing.

That year, Erik Jacobsen, the former banjo player of the bluegrass band Knob Lick Upper 10,000, moved into the apartment next door,[25] and the two soon bonded over their shared interests of smoking marijuana and listening to eclectic music.

[25][26] Like Sebastian, Jacobsen had been affected by the new sound of the Beatles; he later recalled that while touring in early 1964, he listened to the group for the first time on a jukebox: "I decided, kind of then and there I think, that I was gonna quit the Knob Lick Upper 10,000, and go to New York City, and produced electric folk music.

Skip and Butler changed the band's name to the Sellouts and moved to Greenwich Village, holding a residency at Trude Heller's club as one of the neighborhood's earliest rock groups.

[37] Sebastian's show, made up of a quickly assembled group of Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Buzzy Linhart and Felix Pappalardi, greatly impressed Boone,[37][38] who later remembered it as "one of the most significant nights in my musical life.

[70] The band held a brief residency at Café Bizarre,[71] playing several sets a night for six days a week,[62] leading Sebastian to later reflect, "We learned more at that crappy little club than almost any other gig.

[72] The Spoonful shared their bill at the club with two other electric groups whom Marra booked, Danny Kalb's band the Blues Project and the Modern Folk Quartet,[72][73] the latter of which Sebastian sometimes filled in for on drums.

[95][90] After attending one of the Spoonful's performances at the Night Owl,[97] Phil Spector, a well-known producer, listened to an acetate of "Do You Believe in Magic" and considered signing the band to his label, Philles Records.

[112][114] In October 1965, the Spoonful returned to the West Coast,[121] where their image and sound proved influential in the emerging San Francisco scene,[122][123] particularly in the city's Haight-Ashbury district, a center of the 1960s counterculture.

Though excited at the prospect of being propelled quickly to a national audience, the band were unenthusiastic at the idea of having to change their name to The Monkees and were worried that their ability to create and play their own music would be limited by the venture.

[156] After filming on 29–30 November,[157] the band remained in Los Angeles to do several weeks of a residency at the Trip, a short-lived nightclub on Sunset Boulevard,[156] where Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys saw them perform.

[161][162] Both he and his bandmate Jim McGuinn had been familiar with Sebastian and Yanovsky since their earlier years playing folk with Cass Elliot, and the Spoonful, the Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas remained on close terms in the mid-1960s.

[162][nb 14] Amid their busy TV and live-date schedule, the Spoonful recorded most of their second album Daydream in four days, from December 13 to 16, at Bell Sound Studios in New York City.

[184] Only days before the Spoonful was set to depart to Europe, they were approached to provide a soundtrack for What's Up, Tiger Lily?, the directorial debut of the comedian Woody Allen,[192] who knew the band from his work at clubs in Greenwich Village.

[215][105] Held at the Luggala Estate, a Gothic Revival house in the Wicklow Mountains, the party was attended by many prominent Swinging London figures, including members of the Rolling Stones, Peter Bardens, Anita Pallenberg,[214] Chrissie Shrimpton, John Paul Getty Jr., Rupert Lycett Green[211] and Mike McCartney.

[241][253] On August 13,[254] it overtook the Troggs' "Wild Thing"[255] to become the Spoonful's first and only number one single in the U.S.[256] It held the position for three weeks, becoming what the author Jon Savage terms the "American song of the summer".

[186] Coincident with the single's release, the band reiterated their plans for a second tour of Britain and continental Europe, to be held over two weeks in September and October with the English singer Dusty Springfield.

[272][273] In an article recounting the festival for The New York Times, the critic Robert Shelton suggested that the band's warm reception "reflected the growing acceptance of folk-rock and other amalgamations of contemporary folk songs with electric instruments".

[261] When time allowed them a break from touring, the Spoonful recorded the album across several sessions in New York City at Bell Sound and the 7th Avenue studio, with work also done in Los Angeles.

[276] The single's B-side, "Full Measure", a Boone-Sebastian collaboration, received strong airplay in California and the Southwestern United States, helping it reach number 87 on the Hot 100 chart.

[300][56] When the Spoonful appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in January to promote the release, Yanovsky mugged for the camera, miming the lyrics and bouncing up-and-down with a rubber-toad figurine attached to his guitar.

[319] For the album's next single, "She Is Still a Mystery", Yester arranged an orchestral accompaniment which included strings and woodwinds played by members of the New York Philharmonic, along with horns from Ray Charles' touring band.

[323] After the major commercial disappointments of Everything Playing and "Money" in early 1968, Sebastian advised his bandmates that, following the Spoonful's next three months of scheduled tour dates, he planned to leave the group.

[338] Splitting time between New York City and Los Angeles, his first major project after leaving the band was composing the lyrics and music for the Broadway show Jimmy Shine,[339] which ran from December 1968 to April 1969.

[391] As part of their efforts, the group incorporated a variety of instruments on their recordings,[374] including bass marimba, chimes, Irish harp and Hohner Tubon, as well as resonator, pedal steel and open-tuned twelve-string guitars.

[395] Sebastian recalled that when the two first met, he was shocked by Yanovsky's "all over the place" guitar playing, which he thought drew from the pianist Floyd Cramer and the blues guitarist Elmore James simultaneously.

[3] Yanovsky's playing relied heavily on improvisation,[294] and he often drew from country music, leading the commentator Peter Doggett to describe him as "the missing link between fifties rockabilly and sixties folk-rock".

[401] He favored a Fender Super Reverb as his standard amplifier, which he later said managed to add extra bottom end while also being loud,[400] and which he thought sounded similar to a pedal-steel guitar.