Bob Segarini – "Gotta Have Pop" (1978)

I loved the Beatles up to Sergeant Pepper

Then they ruined pop for what could be forever 

Bob Segarini’s 1978 album, Gotta Have Pop, includes the song “Love Story,” an unabashed tribute to the Beatles, who Segarini believes “changed the universe/with every verse and chorus.”

But in the title track of that album – a three-minute pop song that is an unapologetic paean to the classic three-minute pop songs that dominated AM radio when Segarini was a teenager – he says that the Beatles “ruined pop” by releasing Sgt. Pepper.

In 2016, Segarini explained why he said that:

The lyric is still as valid today as it was when I wrote it . . . and to set the record straight . . . I loved the Beatles, but Sgt. Pepper caused every artist at the time to put the emphasis on the overall sound/theme of their albums and all but ignore AM radio’s beloved three-minute singles. It was a mistake to think that the genre was square or unhip, and, to this day, it still pisses me off.  

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Here are the lyrics to the first verse of “Gotta Have Pop”:

I remember when I was a boy

I could recall every phrase and line

Of every song I ever heard

But now all the words seem to run together

And none of them seem to make too much sense

It’s a synthesized mess

I couldn’t agree more.  As the sixties became the seventies and eighties,  I found it more and more difficult to decipher the lyrics of the songs I listened.

You want to know what’s ironic?  It’s ironic that I couldn’t figure out the lines of “Gotta Have Pop” posted at the beginning of this verse without help.

Physician, heal thyself!

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Bob Segarini was born in 1945 in Stockton, California.

In 1966, he formed a group called Family Tree, which released an album titled Miss Butters in 1968:

Miss Butters (which was inspired by Segarini’s kindergarten teacher) is a concept album that tells the story of a lonely spinster schoolteacher.  AllMusic reviewer Mark Deming said that the album’s songs (all of which were written by Segarini, except for one that was co-written with Harry Nilsson) were “intelligent” and “beautifully crafted”: 

Segarini’s songs evoke their time and place with a more potent and less self-conscious tone, and the tale of the sad life and times of an elderly school teacher [is] poignant and effective without schmaltz.  Suggesting a middle ground between the Kinks’ The Village Green Preservation Society and the best sides of the Left Banke, Miss Butters is a lovely, overlooked triumph of sixties chamber pop.

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In 1969, Segarini formed Roxy (not to be confused with Roxy Music).  After the group released one album, its producer – Gary Usher, who produced albums for the Byrds, wrote songs for the Beach Boys, and was the genius behind the legendary sunshine pop group, Sagittarius – rejiggered the band, which changed its name to the Wackers and released three albums.  (The first was titled Wackering Heights.)

Segarini co-wrote two songs for the soundtrack of the 1971 movie, Vanishing Point – a low-budget rebel-without-a-cause cult classic that I love beyond all reason.  

In 1974, Segarini and a couple of his Wackers bandmates formed the Dudes, which released one album and had almost completed a second when their record company gave them the boot.

Between 1978 and 1981, Segarini released four solo albums, which didn’t make a dent in the U.S. market.  (A couple of them did chart in Canada.)

Bob Segarini in 2015

He then became a DJ in Toronto, where he still lives.

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If you’ve never heard of Bob Segarini or Family Tree, Roxy, the Wackers, or the Dudes, don’t feel bad – you’re not alone.  

“Gotta Have Pop” is the only Segarini song I’ve ever heard.  And if I hadn’t been listening to Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show in 1980, I would never have heard it.

God only knows how that record – which was released in the UK and Canada, but not in the U.S. – ended up in Lorber’s hands. 

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“Gotta Have Pop” is a pop record that celebrates good pop records.  It’s a winner.

Segarini wrote the song for the Dudes.  It was going to be the title track of their second album – but that album was never completed.

Click here to listen to the Dudes’ version of “Gotta Have Pop,” which was recorded in 1974.

Click here to listen to the version of the song from Segarini’s 1978 solo album of the same name, which is the version I heard on “Mystic Eyes.”