Elephant's Memory
American rock band
Elephant's Memory (also billed as Elephants Memory, without the apostrophe) was an American rock band formed in New York City in the late 1960s, known primarily for backing John Lennon and Yoko Ono from late 1971 to 1973 under their Plastic Ono Band.
History
Formation and early career (1967–1972)
Elephant's Memory was formed between 1967 and 1968, by Stan Bronstein (saxophone, clarinet, and vocals) and Rick Frank Jr. (drums). In 1968, they briefly added Carly Simon as a vocalist. By 1969, the line-up had expanded to include John Ward (bass) with Danny Adler (guitar and keyboards) who originally performed in the Blues Doctors (1964–1966), Chester Ayers (guitar), Myron Yules (bass trombone), R. Sussmann (keyboards), Michal Shapiro (vocals), Guy Peritore (guitar and vocals), David Cohen (guitar, keyboards, and vocals), and Michael Rose on guitar.
Two of the band's songs, "Jungle Gym at the Zoo" and "Old Man Willow", appeared on the 1969 soundtrack to the film Midnight Cowboy. Elephant's Memory received a gold disc for their contribution to the soundtrack.
In 1970, the band had a minor hit single with the song "Mongoose" on Metromedia Records, peaking at number 50 on the Hot 100 on October 17, 1970, but at number 5 on Chicago's WCFL on November 23, 1970 and reaching number 1 in Pittsburgh on KQV. In Canada, "Mongoose" reached number 71 on September 26, 1970. In 1971 the band released the single "Skyscraper Commando," of which Record World said "the lyric is powerful and the instrumental track is right up there with 'Mongoose'."
Between 1970 and 1973, the line-up remained more or less constant around Bronstein and Frank, together with guitarists Wayne "Tex" Gabriel, keyboardist Adam Ippolito and bassist Gary Van Scyoc.
Work with Lennon and Ono, and later career (1972–1976)
Known around the Greenwich Village area as a politically active street band, Elephant's Memory backed Lennon and Ono on their album Some Time in New York City during recording sessions in March 1972.
“Elephant's Memory” enters the record as american rock band. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Elephant's, Memory and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Elephant's Memory” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Elephant's, Memory and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5359277. VIAF identifies the subject as 262522459. The Library of Congress control number is n95114982. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1973, 1967 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elephant's Memory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.