Brute Force (musician)
Stephen Friedland (born September 29, 1940), known as Brute Force, is an American singer and songwriter. He wrote and performed with The Tokens in the 1960s and wrote songs for Peggy March, Del Shannon, The Chiffons and The Cyrkle, and others. Early life and influences Stephen Friedland was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was first attracted to performing when he was only eight years old, influenced by his mother, who was an actress in several plays at the Jersey City Jewish Community Center Theater. In the early 1960s he met Billy Gussak and began working together with the veteran studio drummer. One song he worked on with Gussak, "My Teenage Castle" ended up on the B-side of the 1963 Peggy March single, "I Wish I Were a Princess." After achieving success at RCA he began to play guitar and keyboards for the Tokens. During that time he wrote songs for Del Shannon, the Creation, the Cyrkle, and the Chiffons. The Chiffons had a minor hit with "Nobody Knows What's Goin' on in My Mind But Me." In 1967 he left the Tokens and entered the next phase of his musical career. Music career He wrote and recorded the LP I, Brute Force – Confections of Love for Columbia Records in 1967. One song on the album, "No Olympian Height", was covered by Paul Levinson's trio The Other Voices (produced by Ellie Greenwich and Mike Rashkow) and released on Atlantic Records in 1968. He also recorded and released the album Extemporaneous on BT Puppy Records in 1970. Original copies of this album are scarce and it is now a very collectible disc. In July 1968 he and a friend, Ben Schlossberg Jr., participated in an expedition to swim from Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska to Siberia, 50 miles across the Bering Strait. They made it halfway, stopping between Big Diomede and Little Diomede Islands. (Life Magazine, September 1968. The Scene/Wales, Alaska, Cold Swim From Here to Tuesday, by John Frook) In 2010, Bar None Records reissued and released Brute Force's first solo album I, Brute Force – Confections of Love with bonus tracks not contained on the original 1967 vinyl edition. Brute Force's single "The King of Fuh" was also included among songs by James Taylor, Badfinger, Mary Hopkin and others on Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records, released in October 2010. Razor Films/Andrew Fuller producer has been in production of a documentary BRUTE FORCE about Friedland since 2010 (Ben Steinbauer, dir., Winnebago Man) with various screenings in the US and Europe. "The King of Fuh" Brute Force may be best known for a song that barely saw a release. Written by Friedland and produced by The Tokens, "The King of Fuh" is a story about a monarch in the land of Fuh referred repeatedly to as the "Fuh King". John Lennon admired the record; so did George Harrison, who acquired the track and overdubbed eleven strings of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, arranged by John Barham.