Remember Harvey Wallbanger? Man who made drink a hit dies

No Harvey Wallbanger drinker — and there were once millions of them — ever believed that cockamamie story about the cocktail being inspired by a California surfer named Tom Harvey who banged his head against a wall after taking a sip.

Cocktail historians have been trying unsuccessfully to track down Harvey or anyone with proof of his existence since before his namesake drink went out of style with the pet rock.

But the real man behind the meteoric rise of the Harvey Wallbanger as one of the most popular drinks of the 1970s was far less elusive.

His name was Bill Young and, according to his death notice published in the Democrat and Chronicle on Sunday, he was, among many other things, the "creative talent behind the Harvey Wallbanger phenomenon." Young died Oct. 20 at the age of 81.

From his small advertising studio in Lima, Young created a cartoon mascot and ad slogan that has been credited with making the drink a household name. Young later made his home for many years in Canandaigua.

The mascot — named what else but Harvey Wallbanger — was a bleary-eyed, big-footed dude who surfed, skydived, life-guarded and even ran for president, always wearing a vacant expression of distress. Picture an overweight, hungover Linus Van Pelt fretting over his security blanket and you have Harvey Wallbanger in all situations.

His tag line was: "Harvey Wallbanger is the name and I can be made!" Images of Harvey Wallbanger invariably contained the recipe for the drink in bubble letters: "6 oz. O.J. — 1 oz. vodka — Stir with ice — Splash in ½ oz. Galliano."

"I personally always thought the cartoon was appalling," said Robert Simonson, who writes about cocktails for The New York Times and penned a history of the Harvey Wallbanger. "Does Harvey Wallbanger look happy? No. He looks racked with anxiety.

"Apparently, I don't know what I’m talking about because obviously Bill Young came up with a caricature that people loved and it's how, in part, the drink became such a big success."

Young was a commercial artist and writer who reportedly designed Harvey Wallbanger around 1970 at the behest of a man named George Bednar, who was the marketing director for McKesson Imports Co., which imported the vanilla-scented Italian liqueur Galliano.

Bednar, who died in 2007, had been credited in published reports with creating the Harvey Wallbanger mascot, but historians have since traced its origins to Young. The drink itself is thought to have been invented as early as 1952 by Donato (Duke) Antone, a Hollywood bartender.

Harvey Wallbanger was everywhere in the 1970s, from posters and T-shirts and bumper stickers to buttons and coffee mugs and beach towels. His drink was everywhere, too. It was in vogue at discos, country clubs and fraternity parties and was served on trains and planes.

To put the cocktail's popularity into perspective for younger readers, if Sex and the City were set in 1975, Carrie Bradshaw and her friends would have been sipping Harvey Wallbangers instead of Cosmopolitans.

Consider that the cocktail called for just a splash of Galliano, and then consider that Galliano became the most imported liqueur of the decade, with reportedly around 500,000 cases a year being brought into the United States.

Will Young, 51, recalled that his father got a percentage of each case of imported Galliano as part of his advertising deal.

"I don't remember much (from those days), but I remember when all of a sudden my dad went from driving a Volkswagen to a BMW," he said. "Our whole world changed with the Harvey Wallbanger."

Will Young recalled hearing stories of his father engaging in what can only be described as guerrilla marketing before the term was coined.

He traveled to spring break hot spots, where he handed out Harvey Wallbanger swag to college students and threw Harvey Wallbanger bashes. He anointed Harvey Wallbanger ambassadors who would take word of the fun, easy-to-make drink back to their campuses.

"That was his first knock-it-out-of-the-park moment," his son said.

Young went on to enjoy a lucrative career in advertising and build an impressive wine cellar. He stopped drinking hard liquor 30 years ago.

But the Harvey Wallbanger party was not to last. By the early 1980s, the drink had been swept into obscurity along with disco, leisure suits and roller skates.

I was born at the height of the Harvey Wallbanger craze, although I wouldn't meet the legend for another 23 years.

We made acquaintance in a jazz bar in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in 1998. By that time, Harvey Wallbanger was virtually extinct.

I had been on a date that went so badly, she didn't even want me to walk her home. Left at the bar with nothing to do, I asked the bartender if he made a drink for losers. He pointed at an older man drinking alone and sipping a Harvey Wallbanger.

The cocktail became my go-to drink for a while. I had to tell bartenders how to make it.

A few years later, noted spirits writer Wayne Curtis would write, "The world is not a lesser place because nobody remembers how to make a Harvey Wallbanger."

I respectfully disagree.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.