San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Rocker played on Brummels’ top hits
“Laugh, Laugh,” the hit single by the Beau Brummels band, begins with a mournful harmonica warble that recurs throughout the brief 1964 ballad.
That harmonica was played by Declan Mulligan, an Irish singer, guitarist, bassist and original member of a band that considered a foundation for what became know as the San Francisco sound in the 1960s.
Mulligan lasted less than a year with the Beau Brummels, but that included a second hit single, “Just a Little,” an album, “Introducing the Beau Brummels,” and TV performances on Dick Clark’s “Where the Action Is,” “Shindig!” and “Hulabaloo.” In the highest form of flattery, Mulligan and his mates were depicted as the Beau Brummelstones in the Flintstones episode “Shinrock a Go-Go.”
The Brummels faded fast but resurfaced in the mid-1970s with Mulligan back in the act. A reunion album, “Beau Brummels,” was released in 1975 with Mulligan playing a larger role on guitar and vocals. Various iterations of the band, with Mulligan out front, were regulars at the Abbey Tavern in San Francisco.
Mulligan died Nov. 2 at his home in Petaluma, said his wife, Tanya Mulligan. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease and had a series of strokes. He was 83.
“People give bands like the
Byrds and the Lovin’ Spoonful credit for adapting the British influence into an American theme,” said Alec Palao, a British reissue producer and archivist living in El Cerrito. “But the Brummels were ahead of all the others. They were the first American band to respond to the British invasion with innovation rather than imitation.”
“Laugh, Laugh” was a top 20 single, and “Just a Little” cracked the top 10. He was a major presence in concert, adding dance licks and stage moves that ramped up the excitement.
“He brought a new enthusiasm that you didn’t normally find in American rock ’n’ roll at that time,” Palao said. But he had ambition to be a lead singer, an avenue that wasn’t open to him in the Brummels, which was led by songwriter Ron Elliott and lead singer Sal Valentino. Mulligan went back to Ireland but returned to front a variety of bands he formed — the Samuele Peeps, Black Velvet Band, Mulligan Stew and the Californians, which toured England and Ireland, according to his wife. “Declan was a good man and more mature than the
rest of us,” said Valentino, who played later with Mulligan at both the Abbey Tavern and Shannon Arms, classic Irish bars on San Francisco’s west side. He was still performing until five years ago, when he suffered a fall and lost the use of his left arm.
All the while he worked full time as a counselor and music teacher for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities at Cedars of Marin, a nonprofit in Ross. Mulligan, known there by the first name John and in the music scene as Dec, started as a driver for the medical department and then moved to the Community Connections Program, which involved taking clients on field trips.
Every week for nearly 20 years, Mulligan took clients to a music studio in Novato where he’d teach them to drum and sing while he played guitar or piano — and led the vocals. Favorites included “Yellow Submarine” and “She Loves You” by the Beatles, and “Edelweiss” from “The Sound of Music.”
“It was just one big glorious event with people singing and banging on drums,” said Susan Francis, a community connections instructor at Cedars. “John just made it so wonderful and entertaining for the clients.”
Around the Cedars campus and among the Ross neighbors, Mulligan was known for his blarney, with a joke and a laugh for everyone. He even wrote songs that he played for the staff. He retired four years ago, and clients still ask about him. So do the neighbors and customers at Comforts, the San Anselmo cafe where he stopped on his way to work for coffee and a half-hour chat.
“Everyone just loved him,” Francis said. “He was a very, very popular guy.”
John Declan Mulligan was born April 8, 1938, in Fethard, Tipperary County, and raised in a house built by his grandfather. Known as “Dec” or “Deco” from childhood, he
attended boarding school at Rockwell and attended University College in Dublin. But most of his time was spent watching American Westerns and riding ponies pretending he was Will Rogers. After his uncle returned from a trip to the U.S. with a guitar, he pretended he was Elvis Presley.
Mulligan first immigrated to Toronto, where he became an insurance agent, the career of his father. He then came to San Francisco to work at the Fireman’s Fund insurance company in Laurel Heights. He gravitated to the Irish dances in the Sunset. At one of these events, he heard Elliott and John Petersen performing. That was the start of the Beau Brummels,
which first went by the name the Irish Californians even though Mulligan was the only Irishman in the band.
The band got its start at the Morocco Room on El Camino Real in San Mateo. A demo started circulating about “a band that was tearing it up on the Peninsula,” and that demo caught the ear of Tom Donahue, the Big Daddy disc jockey on KYA radio. Donahue, who had his own record label, Autumn Records, went down with his producer, Sylvester Stewart, and the band was signed on the spot, Palao said.
Stewart, who went on to adopt the stage name Sly Stone and form his own act Sly and the Family Stone, produced “Laugh, Laugh,” and every track that Mulligan
played on. Donahue used his power in the industry to promote the single nationwide. DJs would intimate that this was a new British band.
“If ‘Laugh, Laugh’ hadn’t been released on some small San Francisco independent label, it would have been a No. 1 record,” said rock ’n’ roll author and former Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin. “Dec’s haunting harmonica part gave the song its key musical hook, floating through the track like a stream.”
In 1965, when the Beau Brummels were at their peak and both “Laugh, Laugh” and “Just a Little” were in heavy radio rotation, 16-year-old Tanya Goodhill was sent to DJ’s nightclub in North Beach to interview the band for the Washington Eagle, the school paper at George Washington High School in the Richmond District, where she was a junior.
Tanya’s mother insisted she come along for the interview. The band was rehearsing, and only Mulligan bothered to come down off the stage and meet them. Goodhill’s mother, Monica, was so charmed that she invited him over for dinner.
Nothing happened for another 25 years, until both she and Mulligan had been married and divorced with five kids from previous relationships. They were married in San Francisco in 1991 and later moved to Petaluma.
“It was a real love story, and it has been like that ever since,” she said.
While working full time at Cedars, Mulligan became a scratch golfer and kept writing music. A single, “Native Son,” co-written by Mulligan and Vince Welnick of the Tubes, was released as a B-side single by the Brummels in 1983.
The band lives on, and an eight-CD remastered box set titled “The Beau Brummels — Turn Around: The Complete Recordings 1964-1970” has been released. It includes songs written and sung by Mulligan that never made it past the demo stage.
“Dec’s importance to the early days of the Beau Brummels is clearly reflected in the recordings that can be heard on this set,” Palao said. “His enthusiasm in the recording studio is there for all to hear.”
A GoFundMe campaign was set up to defray the cost of medical expenses. In addition to his wife of 31 years, Mulligan is survived by a son, Sean Mulligan; stepsons, Sean Winkel of Chico, Jason Winkel of Forest Knolls and Scott Winkel of Raleigh, N.C.; stepdaughter, Ali Galetti of San Anselmo; four grandchildren; and his shih tzu, Ivan.