“Dawn” (1970) – Lovecraft * Written by Marty Grebb and Ken Wolfson * Produced by Lovecraft * LP: Valley of the Moon * Label: Reprise
After two albums, the psychedelic San Francisco-via-Chicago band H.P. Lovecraft, who had taken more than titular inspiration from the influential horror author, reinvented itself in 1970 as Lovecraft, with a personnel reshuffle bringing in former Buckingham Marty Grebb. Although their Valley of the Moon avoided the aural creepiness of their former incarnation, you could still detect a San Francisco rock hall vibe. The first section of the song “Dawn,” for example, borrows from the spacey, dangling guitar sound of pre-1970 Grateful Dead, with whom they’d shared the bill a time or two. Maybe the Dead’s Bob Weir took some inspiration from this song’s opening section for his distinctive “Playin’ in the Band” intro (introduced in 1971). Listen to the sequence at :43. “Dawn” can also be remembered for chiming in on Vietnam: “why do we fight this war of fools?”