One day in 1965, Felix Cavaliere turned on the radio in his car.  He flipped the dial to WWRL, the New York Soul station, and heard a new song by one of his favorite old doo-wop groups--the Olympics.  

CAVALIERE: "There was such a fine split between the 'black' and 'white' music in those days...You would listen to stations [like WWRL] if you were interested in black music, and here would be things you'd never heard over on the other stations. ['Good Lovin'] was one of those songs. It came and went quickly...and it wasn't a hit for the Olympics.  I happen to be a fan of theirs--'Hully Gully,' 'Peanut Butter.' 'Western Movies'--I thought they were great.  This one just didn't happen for them."  Cavaliere suggested to the rest of the Rascals that they add the song to their live repertoire. The Rascals sped it up (faster than the Olympics' version) to create more excitement.  "It became one of our most-requested numbers," Cavaliere says.  So when they went to record, "Good Lovin'" was on the agenda. 

ON RECORDING IT: "The fact that we'd played it for so long in person actually worked as a disadvantage.  We felt we knew the difference between a good and a bad performance.  In the studio we did it exactly the way it was done on stage, and we really weren't too pleased with our performance on it.  On a scale of one-to-ten, we thought this was about a six or a seven. [We wanted to do it over, but] Tom Dowd [the producer] stood up and said, 'Look, you're making a mistake if you change anything on this thing. You should keep it almost exactly the way it came out of the box.'  The Atlantic philosophy in those days was based upon a jazz performance, which is like an actual event.  If you get it hot in the studio, you don't touch it.  That made an impression on me, especially when I saw how wrong I was about the public's reaction to it...It was quite a shock to us when that thing went to the top of the charts. 

FOR THE RECORD: They'd used the false ending previously in live performances. 

Personnel included the Rascals--Felix Cavaliere, vocals and keyboards; Gene Cornish, guitar; Eddie Brigati, vocals; Dino Danelli, drums. Cavaliere can't recall if  they used a bass player on the song, or an organ bass as they did live.