Sooner Or Later – The Grass Roots | Top 40 Chart Performance, Story and Song Meaning

Chart Performance: Pop (#9); 1971

Story Behind The Song By Ed Osborne

In the mid-1960’s, two of the hottest musical talents on the West Coast were P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. They wrote classic surf songs (Summer Means Fun, Tell ‘Em I’m Surfin’), protest polemics (Eve Of Destruction), and Top 40 pop-rock (Secret Agent Man, You Baby). And – in the beginning at least – they were the Grass Roots. Their first creation as the band, Where Were You When I Needed You, peaked at #28 in July of 1966. The studio svengalis then recruited the 13th Floor from Los Angeles to “become” the Grass Roots: a collaboration that bore instant fruit when Let’s Live For Today hit #8 in 1967. By the following year, Sloan and Barri had parted ways and the group members were contributing more songs. Despite their regular presence on the pop radio playlists, three years passed between Top 10 singles: 1968’s Midnight Confessions and 1971’s Sooner Or Later. Among the five writers who penned Sooner Or Later, two had previously penned the Roots 1969 hit, I’d Wait A Million Years.

This content and all Song Meaning articles were created and written by Top 40 Contributing Editor Ed Osborne. © 2023 Ed Osborne. All Rights Reserved. In addition to these song meaning articles, Ed has written our “Year in Music 1960s-1990s” articles.

Produced by:

• P.F. Sloan
• Steve Barri

Lyrics Written by:

• P.F. Sloan
• Steve Barri