Van Winkle, Ferris and Brook, all from Northeast Philadelphia, warmed to the words right away.
"How long did the song take to polish?" Van Winkle said, repeating the question. "Three minutes. The initial writing took about a day. We brought in people from the (recording studio) to crash bottles and things in the background."
So, on the group's 1970 blues-rock American Dream album, which Van Winkle said sold 50,000 copies the first week, is an odd little song called ''Frankford El."
It is a tale of riding the elevated train between 69th Street in Upper Darby and the Bridge-Pratt Terminal in Frankford. Riding it twice a day, every day, knowing that "you can't get to heaven on the Frankford El/cause the Frankford El goes straight to Frankford."
The American Dream split up in 1973, but "Frankford El" lives on in oldies shows and record resale shops.
"And to think that the one thing that lasted 16 years was this little song that we put together as a joke, really," Van Winkle said during an interview last week.
Craig Satinsky, manager of the Record Cellar on Bustleton Avenue, "bought the album the day it came out" and keeps a poster of the American Dream in the store.
"When we get (the album) in, it sells. If you want it, you have to keep trying back," Satinsky said. "People call for it all the time."
Managers at several other record stores in Philadelphia report a similar interest in the song and the album by a group of young Philadelphians that got a sudden, if fleeting, taste of fame.
"They were a great group, one of the first that really had it all together," said attorney Lloyd Zane Remick, who represented the band in contract negotiations. "But in this business, you have to be able to sustain yourself."
"In all honesty, we were a blues band," Van Winkle said. "If we'd stayed with blues, I think we would've been successful."
The American Dream did achieve some fame. In Philadelphia, it opened for The Who, Jefferson Airplane and Santana.
