Strawberry Alarm Clock were one of the most important bands of American psychedelic rock in the 1960s. Their historic debut, “Incense and Peppermints” (1967), stands as one of the finest albums of American psychedelia! And, amazingly enough, not only are they still active, but they are also about to release a brand-new album, “Where’s One”! Recognizing that Strawberry Alarm Clock are a living legend, Myth of Rock wanted to get in touch with the band — and yes, we succeeded in speaking with George Bunnell (bass, rhythm guitars, vocals) and Gene Gunnels (drums, percussion, vocals), members of the lineup that recorded “Incense and Peppermints”. Here you can read everything that was said between us in this incredible, exclusive interview!
by Dimitris Zacharopoulos
You are soon releasing your new album, “Where’s One”! Which are your feelings now about this new release?
George Bunnell: We are very excited about how it’s all coming out. We have been working on this album for quite some time. We actually had some crowd funding to help make it possible and we are extremely grateful for that. There are no words for the generosity extended to us.
We are also very grateful to Big Stir Records for including us in their roster of incredible artists and for providing a pathway to pursue our vision.
I can barely wait for everyone to hear what we’ve been up to.
Gene Gunnels: This album is a long time coming. It re-ignites my passion for drumming and music.
Strawberry Alarm Clock are still alive! What keeps you active and productive in the year 2025?
George: So, FIVE of us played on the very first album, “Incense and Peppermints”. Our sixth member, Howie Anderson has been with us since 1986. This configuration of the band has been together since 2007! Prior to that we had been touring and recording with interim band members. Some of which were original members including Lee Freeman and Ed King. We started doing reunions in 1974 with The California Jam (uncredited), but we recorded the theme song for Don Kirschner’s ABC in Concert series.
The band had all remained friends after initially disbanding, because of managerial issues, so these various regroupings were all with each other’s blessings.
We have also, individually kept active in music. Writing and recording over the years.
Gene: Keeping a young attitude and desire to create and perform music is not only fun, it’s magical.
Why was now the right time to release new music?
George: We released an album in 2012 that was a mix of new and old original songs along with a couple of covers that we were asked to do. After that we decided to do an album that we wanted to. New songs and even two covers that we chose to do. We had a lot of songs that we needed to get out there.
Gene: Over the years our fans have wanted to hear more from the band in the form of new songs. That has been our long-term goal. We have finally taken it off of the back burner and put our creative juices to work.
How would you describe your new album musically? Who composed the new songs and wrote their lyrics? Was there pressure to sound “psychedelic” again, or did you ignore expectations?
George: It’s very much the same method of writing and getting together to work out the arrangements as back in the 60s.
We all wrote the songs on the new album. Three of them were cowritten by me and my longtime songwriting partner and lyricist, David Gluck.
There’s no pressure on us to sound psychedelic. There never was. It’s just the way our songs seem. When Steve Bartek and I wrote “Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow” for the first album, we had no idea what psilocybin was. We were writing about how you would survive in a rain forest, if you were lost and what was a safe mushroom to eat. We are basically the same today. “White Light” is a story of Randy’s dad telling him to follow a white light of creativity.
In “Monsters” David Gluck wrote about his previous girlfriend, but started it off by telling how he felt with his childhood fears. Some of the other songs on the new album have a similar feel to the titles like “Primordial Soup” and “Tahitian Gardens”. Mark’s new song is “Blow Your Mind”. But it’s about his new girlfriend. Howie has three songs on the new album. “The Sky Isn’t Falling”, “Since You Have Gone Away” (about his mother who came to him in a dream after her passing away) and “I’m Not The One” (about his children leaving the nest).
Gene: Our music has become “timeless”. All of the lyrics were written by band members with writing partners. The word “psychedelic” is always in our vocabulary, so it’s not a style that we have to recreate.
What do you hope long-time fans feel, when they hear the new album?
George: That our creative energies are intact. I think they will see/hear that we are being ourselves. Not trying to be otherwise. Just like we always did.
Gene: Long time fans are fans, regardless. I believe our long-time fans as well as our new younger fans will be impressed with the new album “Where’s One”, Due to be released in June, 2026.
How different is making music now compared to the late ’60s?
George: For us it’s largely the same. Same people. Same methods. Same fire. Same personalities. Same sensibilities. Same reckless abandon.
Gene: Making music is the same. Someone comes up with an idea and we all inject our musical personalities. As far as recording goes, it’s very different with the new technology being put forth… In the 60’s we were limited to 4 or 8 tracks of recording. Now, there are hundreds of tracks available. So, there is a lot of freedom to record over dubbed ideas that may or may not be used in the final mixes.
Let’s go now to the past days of the band. “Incense and Peppermints”, your biggest hit, was sung by Greg Munford, not a band member but a teenage friend. Why did you choose him and not a member of the band? Give us all the info about this decision of yours. How strange did it feel to have your biggest hit sung by someone who wasn’t officially in the band?
George: I wasn’t there, but I know the story.
When John Carter came to the session with his lyrics they tried Mark, Lee and Randy first. Each was not right for one reason or another. Greg happened to have been in the studio watching. He had the same manager and producer, so they asked him to give a shot thinking it was just a demo as well as only the B side. After one take the producer, Frank Slay, said perfect, let’s keep and move on.
The band asked him to join, but he declined, because he wanted to pursue his solo career. Randy had sung the duet verse as well as much of the harmonies. So, they decided that he would sing it live and on TV.
Gene: Every singer in the band was able to get a go at it, but didn’t quite make the grade. Then our producer asked the visiting friend, Greg Munford, to give it a try, his voice was perfect for the song. At the time, the band had no clue of what the future held for the song, so the band let it be.
The late ’60s scene was exploding—did it feel exciting or overwhelming to be right in the middle of it?
George: It was a whirlwind moment for us. Everything was moving at warp speed. Huge things were coming our way. One after another. “American Bandstand”, two Beach Boys tours, opening for Jimi Hendrix, Love, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Doors and many others.
Gene: Before the song was finally finished, even before the lyrics were written for the song, I had quit the band due to personal influences from my girlfriend. I also felt at the time that the band didn’t have a lead singer with a “character voice” such as Mick Jaggar, Eric Burton, The Music Machine, etc., so I felt jaded that there would be no future for the band. So, I personally was not in the middle of the success of the band’s touring and such.
Touring with Hendrix, The Who and the Beach Boys sounds unreal today—any memories that still stand out?
George: For me it was the first time we met The Beach Boys. It was a sound check in Washington DC. We walked into the venue and the BBs were on stage and welcomed us into the empty theater. Empty except for Buffalo Springfield sitting in the middle row waving for us to come down and sit beside them. I sat next to Neil Young and my 18-year-old self said “alright, surf music!”. To which he said, “prepare to have your mind blown!” I think I shut up for the rest of the tour. And then, Daryl Dragon counted off the band and string and brass section, 1-2-3…
It was God Only Knows! I had never heard anything so beautiful before. The hair on my arms stood up…and I was wearing a jacket!
I’ll never forget it.
Total respect from that day forward…
“Incense and Peppermints” still sounds magical—how rushed or relaxed were those recording sessions really?
George: It was recorded as an instrumental and B side. So, no pressure at all. It flows so easily and I think it’s a direct result of no pressure. Mark wrote the music with Ed King. They were never given credit. The music was recorded and, in the can, when producer Frank Slay said he thought it should have lyrics. He said that one of the writers in his publishing stable had a title called Incense and Peppermints and that he thought it would be a perfect fit for the music. So, they sent the track to him in Denver, CO. and he proceeded to write the lyrics with a rhyming dictionary.
Gene: The song itself was lots of fun. I played drums, cowbell and cymbal bell. The primary recording, basic tracks, were recorded with Mark Weitz, Ed King and myself. As well as our prior recordings as The Sixpence, we were just a bunch of young guys in our mid to late teens having a blast.
“Tomorrow” showed a more mature side of the band—did you feel you were stepping out of the hit-song shadow?
George: Here’s my take on that; the short answer is that it was released in haste, first, to ride on the coattails of “Incense and Peppermints”, second, to make up for them screwing Mark and Ed out the priors writing credits. Now, keep in mind, the “Incense and Peppermints” album was #11 on Billboard and the single had shot to #1. What should have happened, if they weren’t trying to right their wrong, would have been to release a couple of songs from that album as singles. Namely “Birds in My Tree”, which was released on the flip side of “Tomorrow”. Then they released “Paxton’s Backstreet Carnival” on the flip side of “Sea Shell” from the third album.
As a result, the follow up to the big hit had no album to tie it to, so it stalled at #23 on Billboard and when it’s album, “Wake Up… It’s Tomorrow” finally came out, it didn’t even chart!
Not only that, but Ed was unhappy with his performance on the song, so he went in re-recorded his solo and bass parts. It was a huge improvement that if we had not rushed to release would’ve been the single and I think would have been more successful.
How important was harmony singing to your identity as a band?
George: It was a pretty big deal. Randy was mostly responsible for that. He brought in his voice coach Howard Davis who did the arrangements and guided us through. Nowadays we have Steve Bartek and Howie Anderson taking those reins. We all contribute vocal ideas though. So, there is still an emphasis on harmony.
Gene: Early on, the band was fans of the Beach Boy’s harmonies. Especially Ed King. “Incense and Peppermints” was really the first song to express harmony vocals in the band. It was a very important factor.
Did “Wake Up… It’s Tomorrow” feel like the album, where Strawberry Alarm Clock truly became a band?
George: That’s a good question. The answer is yes. we had just recently reduced our sextet to a quintet. Our goal was to get really good and tight and make a good album. We all felt really good about what we were doing and the new direction we were trying to head in.
How did it come and you appeared in the film “Psych-Out” and the cult film “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”? What did appearing in that films mean to you at the time?
George: Dick Clark loved our band. He had us appear on his “American Bandstand” TV show a few times and he had us play a couple of concerts that he promoted, one in Lafayette, Louisiana, and one in Honolulu, Hawaii, with a slew of big-name bands. Then he came to us and asked, if we would write a theme song for his new motion picture called “Psych-Out”. He had us come to a screening. At the time he was using Simon and Garfunkel’s song “Sound of Silence”. So, Ed King and Lee Freeman without hesitation wrote “The Pretty Song from Psych-Out”.
Clark loved it. He also used “Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow”, “The World’s On Fire” and “Incense and Peppermints” in the film. He had us re-record “Birds In My Tree”, which was his favorite song of ours, but the scene it was for was cut from the movie. He then asked us to appear in the film. We got to meet Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern and Susan Strasberg.
I had left the band before the filming of “Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls”, but I have since been a part of a couple of tribute shows. We played a concert for Roger Ebert in Champaign Illinois called Roger Ebert’s Ninth Annual Overlooked Film Festival in 2007. It was the first actual reunion with all the original band members, including Ed King and Lee Freeman and Paul Marshall, who wrote two of the songs in the movie. We also played a live show inside of Amoeba Records in Hollywood with the cast members from the movie. And lastly, we did a special tribute to Roger Ebert after he had passed away at The Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, Ca.
When did internal tensions start to affect the music itself?
George: About halfway through the recording of our third album, the powers that be our manager, our producer and our record company decided that we should be doing songs from outside songwriters like Carole King and others. They also brought in a string and brass section that played on those songs along with us. It was conducted and arranged by George Tipton. Somewhere around that time, we also realized that our manager Bill Holmes was ripping the band off by booking us on shows that we couldn’t appear at, because we were appearing somewhere else at the same time and he was collecting front money and pocketing it, and then lawsuit started hitting us. So, the band was going to fire him and in the meeting to do so, he announced that he had cancer and only six months to live and begged us not to fire him. Well, Randy Seol and I didn’t believe him but the other band members (Mark, Ed and Lee) felt sorry for him and said “oh we can’t fire him”, so Randy and I up and quit.
They ended up carrying on without us recording the fourth and final album, “Good Morning Starshine”.
When did you realize that later generations were rediscovering your music? How does it feel when you see younger people listen to your songs?
George: So, in the 70s and 80s we were regrouping in various incarnations and the first thing that struck us was fans saying that their older siblings had our records. Then in the 90’s and 10’s it was our parents had your records. Now in 2020’s it’s our grandparents had your records! Yikes!
We love our shows now when we look at the audience and their 18-30. We have always fed off of the energy that comes from our audiences but now more than ever.
Gene: It feels wonderful!
How do you see, as a person and a musician, the age of internet, social media and AI?
George: I see great things and I see not so great things.
The technology of today is remarkable and we have fun with some of it in the studio. But that aspect of it has not changed from the early days because we used to love to experiment in the studio and use the cutting-edge technology that was available to us back then just like we enjoy doing it today. It’s great also to put out new material on the streaming services and have people be able to access our music from all over the globe.
What’s not so great is that people don’t communicate the way they used to especially within a family unit. They are void of healthy conversation and personal interaction. People don’t talk to each other anymore. They sit around with their phones in their hand. Sure, that’s a fun thing to do and gameplay and all that, but I don’t think it’s too healthy.
Gene: I have very mixed feelings. The internet (and texting) has caused society to disconnect in a sense. We seem to want to quickly text someone rather than have a one on one phone conversation, even to say happy birthday. We’ve lost the importance of a phone call.
Is there one song from your past you feel deserves more love?
George: Definitely “The Pretty Song from Psych-Out”. It was released as a flip side to “Sit with the Guru”. I always felt like it was slighted. Another push to try and duplicate “Incense and Peppermints”. That kind of mentality permeates the music business. Here they had a perfect vehicle, the theme song for a motion picture produced by Dick Clark, directed by Richard Rush and starring Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern. A beautiful song and they let it slip through their fingers. Another missed opportunity.
Gene: Yes. “Birds in my Tree” from the first album. It should have been an immediate follow up to “Incense and Peppermints”.
Which is your vision for the band? Your ambitions?
George: I love writing and recording new music. It’s the process that excites me. I do enjoy playing live shows too but that’s a different animal.
I really hope that enough interest in us and our new album is garnered so that we can continue with more new music. I would love it if we were given the opportunity to do a film score with songs. Or the very least get some of our songs placed in films.
Gene: A manager. An agent. To keep doing what we are doing in front of live audiences.
Which are your future plans? A tour maybe?
George: Right now, we have no representation. No manager – no agent.
We have our yearly show at The Whisky A Go Go coming up on February 28, 2026, which has been a tradition.
Our new album “Where’s One?” Is scheduled to be released in June, 2026 so we will be having an album release party, but nothing has been set up yet.
The new album will be released by Big Stir Records on vinyl and CD as well as on all digital platforms.
Thanks, Dimitris, for your great questions and support.
Gene: Another album. Hopefully mini tours.
