The Lime was formed in 1966 by Bill Palmer, Chief Engineer at Akron Recording. I played guitar and provided vocals. My brothers were also in The Lime: Larry played guitar and was lead vocalist and Russ was on bass guitar and provided vocals.
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| The Lime: Larry Sanders (in center). L-R: Dana Leasure, Mickey Pappano, Steven Sanders and Russell Sanders |
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Steven Sanders Recalls The Lime
The Sanders brothers had a band with Freddie Salem called The People when Bill approached us about the idea of The Lime. He also brought along with him two members from another band, who I believe were called The Living End: keyboardist Mickey Pappano and drummer Dana Leasure (from Goodyear Heights). Other members of The Lime (throughout the years) included drummers Joe Vitale, Buddy Bennett and Jon Guttman and Hammond B3 keyboardist David Jackson.
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The Lime was a pop band with emphasis on vocals. Our influences were The Beatles, Bee Gees, Left Banke and Buffalo Springfield, to name a few. We played a lot of high schools and youth centers, swim clubs, Chippewa and Myers Lake parks, auditoriums, ballrooms, TV shows (Cleveland's Upbeat or Big 5
Show). We opened for The Parliaments at The Attic in Salem, Ohio, for The Youngbloods at The Akron Armory, for Gene Pitney and Myers Lake, and for The Cowsills at The Civic Theatre in Akron.
One of main reasons we formed the band was the opportunity to record. Our first 45 record, 'Love A Go Go,' (Note: backed with a cover of The Doors' 'Soul Kitchen') was recorded at Akron Recording, owned by Ernie Malick. It was originally released on our own label, Westwood Records, and later picked up and released by Chess Records out of Chicago. That record went to #1 in Lubbock, Texas and Sharon, Pennsylvania (I remember playing a TV show in Pittsburgh) and was on the charts in Canada. 'Hey Girl' was also recorded during this session.
Our second recording session was done at Cleveland Recording with Kenny Hammond as the engineer. The single 'Beautiful Day' came out of that. Richie Greenbaum (aka Dick Whittington) helped produce that one. We had a string ensemble from the Cleveland Orchestra. It was released on our own label, Interpolation, and later picked up by Paramount's Dot Records (Dot 17298). 'Beautiful Day' had a four-star pick in Cashbox/Record World magazine in '68 predicting our band "was going to go far with this little ditty". (Note: the flipside was a cover of The Dante's 'Satisfied.' The unreleased 'Love Seeds,' 'Questions,' 'Pretty Girl Why' and 'Something On My Mind' were also also recorded during this session).
The last session we did was at Agency Recording in Cleveland with Don White as the engineer. We recorded three milk commercials for Reiter Harter Dairy and did three of our own tunes (Note: Songs recorded were 'She's The Kind Of Girl,' 'My Love Is Gone,' and 'She's Leaving You'). I have the 1" tape from that session; I still have to get the songs to a digital format. Joe Vitale transferred everything else for us a year or so ago.
Larry wrote hundreds of songs. One of them is on the B-side of the Chess release of 'Love A Go Go' called 'Hey Girl.' He went solo and released a single he and Guttman wrote called 'Child of December.' Joe Vitale played on that and helped produce it.
After Vitale left, Buddy Bennett of The Measles joined us but The Lime broke up in 1970 and pretty much was my claim to fame. We really had a great time. I moved to Seattle and joined The Clique with Jackson. They sold two million copies of a song called 'Sugar on Sunday on the White Whale label. I got to play all up and down the West Coast and Vancouver. We did a stint in Waikiki for about three months. It was Heaven on Earth.
After The Lime we had a band called Smile with Freddie Salem and Jon Guttman (drummer Greg George from the Beatles' tribute band 1964 replaced Guttman). We opened a lot of shows for The Glass Harp. I played with that band after Guttman left to join up with Sonny Geraci in Climax in California. They also recorded 'Child of December' on their album.
Larry and I lived out West in the '70s and '80s--Black Hills, Boulder, Colorado and Los Angeles and Missoula, Montana playing in various bands. Most recently we have played a tribute to Crosby, Stills and Nash in a band called Ohio. You can find some videos online of that band.
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| The Lime behind the Civic Theater. This photo was used for the picture sleeve for 'Love A Go Go'. |
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