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Rocking you gently

Onetime chart-topper makes a comeback

Name: Andrew Youakim, aka Andy Kim, aka Baron Longfellow

Age: 57 or 64, depending on who you ask

Occupation: Musician/songwriter

Bio: This dreamy Villeray boy can trace his desire to rawk back to when he was attending a local “boys only” parochial school called Holy Family and thinking music just might help deliver him the female attention he so yearned for. Splitting our backwater burgh for New York City in 1968 at the tender age of 16, the maniacally ambitious young ’un almost immediately hooked up with songwriting legend Jeff Barry, and by the end of the year, had scored himself a Top 40 hit, “How Did We Ever Get This Way?,” the first of what would be many hits over the course of his career. “I just knew, deep down in my heart, that I was going to be part of this industry, that I’d be that guy on stage singing songs having all the girls chase him.” Yet after a hugely successful career in the late ’60s and ’70s, one that saw him sell some 30 million records on the strength of hits like “Rock Me Gently,” “Baby, I Love You” and the Archies’ smash “Sugar, Sugar,” which he co-wrote, Señor Kim’s records were eventually relegated to the Where Are They Now file, with our hero universally regarded as an official has-been. Even after changing his stage name to Baron Longfellow in the 1980s and doing okay under that handle, by mid-decade, the former mega-hitmaker found he couldn’t even get himself arrested. Now, after a lengthy stint in relative obscurity which saw him write roughly “a gazillion new songs,” Andy is once again poised for the big time with the release of his spankin’ new record, Happen Again, and an ambitious Canadian tour this summer in support of it. He drives a way-cool 1969 Mercedes 280SL.

Is it safe to assume his early ambition to taste himself a heapin’ helpin’ of teenage beav was realized upon becoming a major pop star? “It’s not something I really talk about but… yes, it was wonderful… great. At the perfect time too, you’re a teenager, you’re somewhere else… yeah, it was really cool.”

Did much of the huge money Andy Kim generated ever filter its way up to him? Yes. “I own all of my publishing.”

Can he recall what he was doing when the immortal words “Sugar, ah, honey, honey, you are my candy girl and you got me wanting you” first popped into his head? “Sure, I was on the phone with Jeff Barry talking about what we could write for something like the Archies and I just started going, ‘Sugar, aw, honey, honey,’ sort of singing it and Jeff went, ‘Whoa, what’s that?’ and I went ‘What’s what?’ and then we agreed that it might be some sort of song. I realize now that it’s all inspiration, you can’t teach someone to write songs. It’s a moment in time where you’re there to grab what the universe is giving you.”

Was his name change to Baron Longfellow a reference to his sizable penis? “You’ll have to ask the girls I knew in the ’60s and ’70s about that.”

Last book read: The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larrson.

Musical preferences: Roy Orbison, Elvis, Beatles.

Words of wisdom: “Listen to your inner voice and no one else.”

Comments: dimwit@hdot.net