"Darlin' Be Home Soon" is a song written by John Sebastian of The Lovin' Spoonful for the soundtrack of the 1966 Francis Ford Coppola film You're a Big Boy Now. It has been described as "...one of the most heartfelt songs about being away from a loved one, written from the point of view of a musician on the road writing a letter." It appeared on The Lovin' Spoonful's 1967 soundtrack albumYou're a Big Boy Now and was released as a single, reaching #15 on the US pop charts. Sebastian performed his composition at Woodstock; it was the fourth song out of the five he performed at the 1969 music festival in White Lake, New York.
Writing and recording
Coppola commissioned Sebastian to write music for the film, and for one scene wanted a song with a similar mood and tempo to "Monday, Monday" by the Mamas and the Papas. Sebastian said that he wrote the song as "pleas for a partner to spend a few minutes talking before leaving.... you never knew if the other person was actually there listening or was already gone". Coppola approved the song, and it was recorded by the band but with session musician Billy LaVorgna rather than Joe Butler on drums. The arrangement was by Artie Schroeck. After the recording was completed and the musicians left, the producer, Erik Jacobsen, discovered that an engineer had mistakenly erased Sebastian's vocal track, so he had to re-record it the next day. Sebastian said: "What you hear on the record is me, a half hour after learning that my original vocal track had been erased. You can even hear my voice quiver a little at the end. That was me thinking about the vocal we lost and wanting to kill someone."
In 1967, a version by Bobby Darin reached #93 on the US charts. In 1969 "Darlin' Be Home Soon" appeared on Joe Cocker's Joe Cocker! album; it became a standard of Cocker's, appearing on many compilations and "best of"s. The song was performed by Slade and appears on their successful 1972 live album Slade Alive!. In the same year The Association almost made the top 100 in the US with a single taken from Waterbeds in Trinidad! The other charting versions of the song are by the Barra MacNeils and Let Loose.
