#51 FINAL TOUCH by Love Song (1974)

FINAL TOUCH by Love Song (1974)
Good News Records - GNR-08101

I'm a member of several social media "yard sale" groups. Folks post random items that they have for sale, and you can often get some decent stuff at a really good price. I've been known to sell quite a few items this way myself. Well, one day I noticed a post that featured a painting for sale. This wasn't just any painting. It was a 40" reproduction of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, which offered more than enough significance for me as a Christian to justify the $20 price tag. 

Ah, but there is something else very special about this painting, I explained to my wife, trying to convince her that we should cough up the funds. You see, this painting was also used for the album cover of Final Touch by Love Song. 

"Well, then...we have to have it," my better half responded with just a touch of sarcasm. 

It now hangs over the sofa in the front room of our house.

Question: When you create a debut album that basically defines an entirely new genre of music…when you become the most popular band in said genre because of that album…and when that album allows you to become for Christendom what The Beatles had become for the secular music world…what do you do for an encore?

The answer is Final Touch.

The title was reportedly suggested by Chuck Girard. It seemed to embody the feeling of the group toward this project. Only their second album, it would be their last studio offering of original material as a group. Yes, they would reunite for a live album three years later…and in the 90s they made a nostalgia project of adult contemporary arrangements of their classic songs…but Final Touch would essentially be the swan song for Love Song. It is unbelievable to stop and realize that the incredible influence of this band basically stems from a short span of only three years (’72, ’73 & ’74). They didn’t burn for a very long time, but they burned extremely bright.

Chuck Girard had already experienced music industry success as a member of The Castells and The Hondells in the 1960s. He and bandmates such as Brian Wilson and Glen Campbell had several songs on the mainstream Top 40 charts. But Girard drifted toward full-on hippiedom, searching for “enlightenment” through eastern religions, Beatles songs, vegetarianism and, of course, drugs. He formed a friendship with another musician by the name of Jay Truax. Truax later moved to Salt Lake City and played in a band called Spirit of Creation, but remained friends with Girard.

Tommy Coomes and Fred Field became part of the local music scene in Orange County, California after being discharged from the Army. They, too, soon met Girard and the trio became friends, eventually moving into a house together at Laguna Beach. Meanwhile, Jay quit Spirit of Creation, returned to Southern California and moved in with Tommy, Chuck and Fred. It was Autumn of 1969 and the stage was now set for God to do something really special.

Fred Field

Long story short:

• In another example of God laying groundwork, Girard’s ex-manager sets up a meeting between Girard and a guy named Freddie Piro. Piro would go on to be the head of Good News Records. A friendship developed among Freddie, Chuck, and the others.

• Fred Field accepted Jesus after reading a tract someone had given him, and Jay Truax came to know the Lord through a friend. This resulted in Tommy, Chuck, Jay and Fred getting into complex arguments over Scriptural doctrines they knew nothing about!

• In their search for answers, the foursome wound up at a “little country church” pastored by a man named Chuck Smith. They experienced the presence of God and a love like they’d never known at Calvary Chapel. Girard and Truax accept Jesus as Savior and Lord. Calvary Chapel became a stabilizing factor that nurtured the spiritual lives of all four men.

• It wasn’t long before Chuck Smith discovered the guys’ extraordinary musical abilities. He knew he was on to something special.

• Originally it was just Field, Girard and Truax, as Coomes’ job kept him from being able to perform with the other guys. Eventually, Coomes was asked to play with them on a Saturday night concert being held at the Orange County fairgrounds. It was during the concert, while playing with the group, that Coomes accepted Jesus and became a born-again believer.

• With Tommy Coomes' spiritual rebirth came Love Song's official beginning. "There were now four of us who were ready and willing to play completely for the Lord," Jay Truax recalls. "We decided to form a permanent group, and as a result, Love Song was born." 

L-R: Fred Field, Chuck Girard, Tommy Coomes, Jay Truax

[By the way, a gentleman by the name of Dave Hollandsworth created a website called The Love Song Home Page. Among other things, it contains an extensive, exhaustive review of the history of Love Song. Hollandsworth put the site together with the help of Chuck Girard himself. Do yourself a favor and check it out.]

What happened next was a God Thing. I have a sneaking suspicion that Love Song will come up again a time or two as our countdown progresses, and there will be ample time then to recount the details concerning the band’s earliest days and their debut album.

For this post, we’ll just say that the formation of Love Song was a key element in touching off what came to be known as the Jesus Movement. They helped young people worship God with a new style of Holy Spirit-anointed music, setting “Jesus Music” into motion. Issues of dress, appearance and music style became secondary; following Jesus was all that mattered.

"From the beginning, our idea was to compose and perform music that would be uncompromising in its content, yet contemporary in style," states Chuck Girard. "Because of this attitude, our music was reaching kids where they were, and they were actually feeling the message and experiencing the same kinds of changes we all had gone through.”

Love Song ministers as Chuck Smith (R) looks on.

Music like that of Love Song had always been reserved for pop and rock radio airwaves. In the early 70s it had no place in Christendom. Love Song had no map to read, no pattern to follow. They, along with Larry Norman and a handful of others were blazing a new trail…cutting a new road through the wilderness. But Love Song’s rich tapestry of close harmonies, pulsating rhythms and intricate guitar patterns, all tied together with an undeniable anointing, set them apart.

"Everything that happened in those days was pretty much without planning or guile or the way the industry runs today,” explains Chuck Girard. “We were sort of inventing the rules as we went along. Of course there was a music scene but we weren't really a part of that because our music was so different from what would be considered standard gospel. So we didn't really know, in any way, how to function. There were no trade journals in those days, no radio stations actually playing the music on any regular basis.”

LOVE SONG by Love Song (1972)

Author Mark Allan Powell, in his Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music, writes that the group’s self-titled debut album “remains the best Christian album ever recorded, on a par with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, not only musically but influentially.” He calls it “radically innovative and profound.”

Love Song would be the #1 selling “Gospel” record in America for over a year and sold a then-unheard-of 250,000 copies. But the true impact could not be measured: untold numbers of conversions to Christ and rededications to new faithfulness.

Love Song hit the road, playing their songs and telling their story whenever and wherever they could. The band’s lineup had been a bit of a revolving door over time, with guys like Denny Correll and even Phil Keaggy spending time as members of this legendary group.  When the time rolled around to record another album, the band consisted of Girard, Coomes, Truax, Bob Wall and John Mehler.

Love Song playing Explo '72

If the group’s debut album was a tapestry, Final Touch has been described as more of a patchwork.        

“Final Touch was an album made up mostly of songs that were left over from the first Love Song album, as well as several new songs that were written in the meantime,” Chuck Girard explains. “This isn't to suggest that these songs were inferior. It was just that the first album was so highly conceptualized that many songs didn't fit and were shelved until later. The album wound up being a little more uneven than the first. We recorded this as an album of songs rather than a concept album as the first had been. Yet we did feel strongly about these songs. We had performed many of them countless times in concert and knew the ministry impact that the songs had under the anointing of God. So there was never any intent to create a lesser work, yet we didn't really have the strength of a concept in mind when we first entered the studio.”

“We had all decided that we wanted to move in a little bit different direction in regard to production values,” recalls Girard. “This time we planned to use a string section, horns and outside players when needed, as well as the decision to use fade-outs on a song or two. We did desire to make an album that would not be a carbon copy of the first, no matter how successful the first had been.”

Final Touch was released in the spring of 1974 amid great anticipation. The pre-release sales for Final Touch were far more than any previous “contemporary gospel” album in Word, Inc.'s 23-year history.

The album opens with the toe-tapping country classic Since I Opened Up the Door, a testimony song that flows well musically with Front Seat, Back Seat from the group's first album and Book of Life (which comes up later on this record). Al Perkins' steel guitar gives this track an authentic country sound. Chuck Girard has revealed that he was personally never a big fan of the country-flavored songs, but he acknowledges they were real crowd pleasers in the band's live concerts. 

Joyous Lament gave us the first indication that the production standards on this album were a few notches above the group's self-titled debut. The acoustic piano is quickly joined by a fuzzy guitar that is played with an intensity and a sense of urgency. In fact, the whole song is performed that way. Maybe that’s because it’s a pointed warning to the unsaved, earnestly pleading with unbelievers to stop stumbling 'round, living in a world of their own design, and instead decide to live in Jesus' light. Jesus loves you / If you'll only let Him they sing as the song ends. Along the way there are plenty of do-do-dos and na-na-nas from the harmonizing trio of Girard, Coomes and Truax.

Up next was another bona fide classic: Jesus Puts the Song in Our Hearts.

"This was one of the first Christian songs we wrote after getting saved," recalls Chuck Girard on The Love Song Home Page. "I remember we had just moved out of Laguna Beach and were living in a donated room above a garage in Orange County. The room had nothing in it but four sleeping bags. We even had to go in the house at night to go to the bathroom, yet we were the happiest we'd ever been. One Saturday night Fred [Field] brought out the guitar and began playing the chords. As I began to sing the spontaneous melody and words, the other guys gathered around and the harmonies were born on the spot as we worshipped the Lord with the new song. I remember it was a Saturday night because we sang the song at Calvary Chapel Sunday morning service the next day."

The song poetically likens the Christian life to a melody...music that is heard...and a song to be sung.

Hey, have you lost the feeling

Don't you hear the music anymore

Hey, have you tried to listen

But you thought you'd heard the song before

Hey, you can hear the music

He is singing out to all

Hey, open up your ears now

Jesus means for you to hear the call

Jesus puts the song in our hearts

Jesus sets us free

Jesus puts the song in our hearts

Jesus brings a joyful melody

The group's stunning harmonies bring real warmth to this mellow track. Reviewer Mike Rimmer of Crossrhythms calls it a “gorgeous" song “where the band's intertwining vocals are at their finest.”

Incidentally, the first three songs on the record were all penned by Chuck Girard and Fred Field all the way back in 1970.

Next up, Love Song tries their hand at rock and roll, with memorable results. From the The Love Song Home Page, here's Tommy Coomes' recollection of how The Cossack Song came about: 

"I remember hearing Chuck Smith give an evangelistic message using a text from Ezekiel. The thought that hit me was that I would NOT want to be ignorant and find myself in an Army that's fighting against God. Chuck Smith has always been interested in Bible prophesy, and it was the current thought back in the Cold War days that Magog was represented by Russia - the invading army out of the uttermost parts of the north. I had the idea and the title for the song right away but I couldn't get past the first verse and chorus. A short while later, I was returning from a ministry trip in the desert with my friend Tom Stipe. Tom is a great piano player and a great songwriter - especially good at painting a picture with words. We wrote three more verses by the time we got back to town."

The Cossack Song was about as hard as Love Song ever rocked, and contains some gritty lead guitar solos.

Next up was a ballad, and another classic. My introduction to this song actually came from a live album recorded by The Imperials in 1973, when they linked it with Day by Day from Godspell to form a memorable and (then) timely medley. [The Imperials also recorded Love Song’s Two Hands in 1974 and Chuck Girard’s Sometimes Alleluia in 1976.] Then I was given a now-classic compilation LP titled Love Peace Joy, an effort by Myrrh Records to gain a wider hearing for several of their artists. Love Song had 2 tracks on the album -- the title song from their debut and Think About What Jesus Said from Final Touch. 

"One of the few songs I wrote on guitar," offers Chuck Girard. "Simple chords, heavy message. This became a big altar call song.” 

In fact, it was an especially meaningful “altar call song” for one of the group’s own members several years earlier! Back before Tommy Coomes was an official member of Love Song, he had been asked to play with them at a Saturday concert being held at the Orange County fairgrounds. While performing with the group, Tommy personally experienced the love and power of God.

"I realized during the last song of the evening, Think About What Jesus Said, that I hadn't given myself totally to the Lord,” Coomes recalls. “I hadn't made a full and genuine commitment. During the song, I broke down in tears, took off my guitar and made my decision for Jesus. I decided to quit my job and move back to Orange County so I could play full-time for the Lord."

Think about what Jesus said

Before you let your mind reject Him

Listen to your heart instead

And you will accept Him

Now, the Bible does warn that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9). And we often warn young people today against following their heart and allowing emotions to rule and reign. But Chuck Girard says that on this song he was trying to get across the idea that if we lead with our minds and rely too heavily on logic and reason, we can miss God altogether.

Think About What Jesus Said has been described as simple, unpretentious folk rock.

Rounding out Side One was a little ditty called Short Alleluia. And when I say little ditty…the whole track was 30 seconds long! Written and sung by Tommy Coomes, it sounds like the basis for the kind of worship songs that were sung in church a lot during the Jesus movement. It basically states that Jesus is Lord and His love covers everything, you and me included.

“Somehow we got used to doing this in our concerts and thought it needed to go on an album,” Coomes remembers. “It's just a happy song that says that God is bigger than anything. We often had a way of saying simply what could be said with a thousand words. I guess that's one of the main differences between music and books. The musician only has three to four minutes and fifty words to make his mark. I only used about thirty seconds and twenty nine words on this one.”

Really, it could’ve been left off the record. Maybe they just had a little extra time to fill and wanted to use every precious second.

Final Touch was arranged and produced by the entire group and engineered by Charlie Dryer, Chuck Johnson and Billy Taylor. It was recorded at the storied Mama Jo’s in North Hollywood and mixed by Billy Taylor. Chuck Girard played keyboards, while Tom Coomes and Bob Wall played guitars. Jay Truax played bass and also contributed 12-string guitar and oboe on Living Water, while John Mehler played drums. Chuck, Tommy, Bob and Jay all sang on the record.

The boys got a little help from some of their friends: Al Perkins played steel and slide guitar on a handful of tunes, while Rick Riccio played flute on Living Water. String arrangements were by Jimmy Haskell.

In the album’s liner notes, the band thanks Pastor Chuck Smith “for spiritual encouragement and guidance.” I’ll say.

Thanks is also offered to Freddie Piro “for believing.” By this time Piro, owner of the band’s label, Good News Records, had completed construction of a state-of-the art studio built on the property of his mother, located at Lankershim and Tuxford Streets in North Hollywood, California. The facility was named after Freddie’s mom: Mama Jo’s. The guys in Love Song had actually participated in the construction, hammering nails and hanging sheet rock (among other chores). This personal investment made the making of Final Touch an even sweeter experience. This album would be the first to be recorded at what would become a storied facility.

Rick Griffin, an artist of the time who was very well known for psychedelic posters, Zap Comix, his work for such bands as The Grateful Dead, and his design for the logo of Rolling Stone magazine, had become a born-again Christian in 1970. He was responsible for the iconic album cover illustration for Sail On Sailor by Mustard Seed Faith and created the Sweet Comfort Band logo. It was Jay Truax who suggested commissioning Rick to design the cover for Final Touch. Rick told the band of his idea to use the famous Creation of Adam by Michelangelo. He tweaked the Love Song logo just a bit, and the Final Touch album cover came together. 

Sadly, Rick Griffin died shortly after a motorcycle accident in August of 1991. He was just 47 years old.

Side Two of Final Touch opens with a couple of songs that are just a real pleasure to listen to. Rich, textured layers of sound, the group’s trademark vocal harmonies, and some inspired instrumental performances make Living Water and Sunday Afternoon must-listens.

In his writings for The LoveSong Home Page, Chuck Girard notes that Living Water was the only song Jay Truax ever wrote for the group.

“I would have liked to have seen Jay do more,” laments Chuck. "I don't believe his talent was ever fully tapped, as this song attests.”

Girard describes Living Water as one of the loveliest and most haunting songs on any of the group’s albums, admitting that he was trying to capture a Neil Young harmony feeling that is found in Expecting to Fly by Buffalo Springfield. “The parts on the bridge were so hard to sing that eventually we gave up on doing it as a group, and Jay and I stacked the vocals in many hours of sessions,” Girard reveals. The aforementioned Rick Riccio puts on a clinic on flute. With apologies to the late Pedro Buford of Mustard Seed Faith, the flute was rarely heard in Jesus Music. Riccio makes up for it here.

As with a lot of Love Song’s tunes, this one casts a persuasive and unapologetic evangelistic net:

Have you heard about the living water

From the fountain of the Most High Father

It is from the source of God’s great power

It will make you strong in time of deepest need

Feel it flowing forth from deep, deep within you

God’s eternal spring of clear, refreshing truth

Let it satisfy our deepest inner longing

Come and drink of it and you will find relief

Once you’ve tasted of the living water

You can’t fill your need with any other

Do you want to drink the living water

Come and follow then and bear the cross of love

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Sunday Afternoon was a collaboration between Chuck Girard, Tommy Coomes and Fred Field.  Girard says he was going for a less literal, more poetic feel with the lyrics of this song – a tactic that was not appreciated by Field at the time. But the track got recorded anyway. My only complaint is that it’s too short.

Near the end of the song, there’s a reference to the drug culture from which these guys all escaped. But the lyrical comment here is that God’s love trump’s the artificial high of drugs. The Imperials had already made a similar statement with Jesus Makes Me Higher (penned by Michael Omartian), and Gary S. Paxton would later write Jesus Keeps Taking Me Higher and Higher. In Love Song’s case, it’s not an entire song, just a line in the lyrics of Sunday Afternoon:

Oh, here am I

Splendidly high on Your love

As usual, the soaring vocals are splendid as well.

Things take a decidedly twangy turn on Book of Life. Al Perkins’ steel guitar makes another appearance as the boys sing a full-throated defense of God’s Word. The same year that Petra released Get Back to the Bible, Love Song encourages the listener to use the Bible as a defense against sinful desires and temptations.

“Nothing can do what God's Word can do,” says Tommy Coomes. “It's designed that way. It lives and abides forever. It's the light on our path.”

They also throw a little humor into the mix here; they sing about the Word of God “washing out my brain” and also dedicate an entire verse to packin’ on some spiritual pounds (so to speak)…

I used to worry ’bout my waistline

I found it awful hard to grin

But now my soul delights in feedin’ on the Word

Can’t stuff enough of them spiritual calories in  

Tommy Coomes says this one was another favorite at the group’s live concerts.

Don’t You Know previews Chuck Girard’s solo career; it sounds like it would’ve been right at home on Chuck’s debut solo album, released the very next year (1975). Unlike much early Jesus Music which focused on the simple joy of salvation, this song was a call to discipleship and maturity. Girard pulls no punches as he implores the listener to stop sitting around…start “getting it on”…pass the test and be a man. Lyrically, it almost sounds like something Keith Green could’ve written…

Don’t you know He wants His small ones

To become His big and tall ones

God wants all His children to mature

And start to live the kind of life that gives Him pleasure

He desires to give us blessings without measure

But we’ll never find the fullness of the treasure, no, no, no

‘Less we take our cross and bear it like a man

Well, then.

Remember, this was 1974. Apparently, on the immediate heels of the Jesus Movement there were already believers who were “backsliding” and losing their way, even at this early date. The song Don’t You Know addresses this with the boys asking…

Don’t you know He’s disappointed

When you just become acquainted

Then you turn your back and go your way

It’s delivered in a bouncy, pop vocal style that belies the seriousness of the lyric. But it’s there nonetheless. Chuck Girard has called Don’t You Know “A Beatles-ish exercise, with Beach Boy overtones.”

Final Touch concludes with one for the ages.

Another song that would foreshadow Girard’s solo ministry, Little Pilgrim struck a chord.

“I began to write this song for a dear friend who was the drummer in many of my groups,” recalls Chuck. “We had gone on the hippie path together, but he'd not ended up making a decision to receive Jesus as I had. I thought about how two people can walk the same path and yet wind up with different answers. I was actually lamenting him in the song, but as I got in deeper, I saw the more universal message evolving and it wound up being a very powerful song for altar calls. I always hated the title, and wanted to change it to "Little Children." I still don't know why I didn't. But maybe it was better off being left alone.”

The group’s beautiful vocal blend is front-and-center as they sing…

Oh, don’t you wonder now

What you’re tryin’ to do

Oh, don’t you wonder now

Where that path is takin’ you

Blogger David Lowman would write that Little Pilgrim was Love Song’s finest moment.

By the way, for those who desired to dig into God’s Word for further study on these songs, the band included Scripture references for every song (even Short Alleluia) on the album’s liner sleeve.

“I remember a listening party at Freddie Piro’s house where we all listened to the album together and felt that we had done well.”

Very well, indeed.

By this time a decision had already been reached to disband, with Chuck Girard busy preparing for a solo career, while the rest of the guys joined Wing and a Prayer. [Truax and Mehler later became part of the Richie Furay Band. Tommy Coomes would release a solo project of his own in the early 80s and would go on to serve as an executive for Maranatha Records and head up the Tommy Coomes Band, providing worship music for stadium-sized live Christian events.]  

Happily, they would reunite for a reunion tour in 1977 that was released as a 2-LP live album. And they’ve gotten together sporadically over the years to participate in several different projects:

• They recorded Welcome Back in 1994 [slick, CCM-styled covers of their own songs]

• They were featured on the First Love video documentary in 1997

• They took part in another reunion tour in 2010 with Calvary Chapel founding Pastor Chuck Smith  

• They were featured on CCM United in 2014, a live-stream event commemorating 40 years of CCM history

Bob Wall, longtime guitarist for the group passed from this life suddenly while on a flight to visit his children and grandchildren just prior to Christmas. He died from a heart attack on December 23, 2015. A memorial web page is available for viewing here.

In the early 70s, the men of Love Song just wanted to express a pure love for Jesus the best way they knew how. In so doing, they showed all of us how to communicate the Gospel in a more effective way.

They made us all acutely aware that Jesus puts the song in our hearts.

VIDEO: "Jesus Puts the Song in Our Hearts"