Things started to pick up for the band in 1968: early in the year, they headlined the Fillmore West with the Steve Miller Band, performed "You Keep Me Hangin' On" on The Ed Sullivan Show, and released their second album, The Beat Goes On. "You Keep Me Hangin' On" didn't perform as well as hoped, but the band toured extensively behind its covers-heavy, jam-oriented debut album Vanilla Fudge, which gradually expanded their fan base. The band settled on Vanilla Fudge, after a favorite ice cream flavor. Impressed by their heavy, hard-rocking recasting of the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On," Morton offered to record the song as a single the results landed the group a deal with the Atlantic subsidiary Atco, which requested a name change. In early 1967, their manager convinced producer George "Shadow" Morton (who'd handled the girl group the Shangri-Las and had since moved into protest folk) to catch their live act. They got so elaborate that by the end of the year, drummer Brennan was replaced by the more technically skilled Carmine Appice. Inspired by the Vagrants, another band on the club circuit led by future Mountain guitarist Leslie West, the Pigeons began to put more effort into reimagining the arrangements of their cover songs. In early 1966, the group recorded a set of eight demos that were released several years later as While the Whole World Was Eating Vanilla Fudge, credited to Mark Stein & the Pigeons. They built a following by gigging extensively up and down the East Coast, and earned extra money by providing freelance in-concert backing for girl groups. Organist Mark Stein, bassist Tim Bogert, and drummer Joey Brennan soon shortened their name to the Pigeons and added guitarist Vince Martell. Originally, Vanilla Fudge was a blue-eyed soul cover band called the Electric Pigeons, who formed in Long Island, New York, in 1965. While the band did record original material, they were best-known for their loud, heavy, slowed-down arrangements of contemporary pop songs, blowing them up to epic proportions and bathing them in a trippy, distorted haze. Vanilla Fudge was one of the few American links between psychedelia and what soon became heavy metal.
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