Captain Freak & the Lunacycle Band was formed specifically to record "Whatever Happened to Superman." The song was a transatlantic collaboration between Robert Lewis, a Philadelphia songwriter who was involved with a number of Jamie/Guyden related songs and artists, In the 1960s, he was one of the composers of "Bristol Twistin' Annie," recorded by the Dovells and also recorded by the Sherrys as "Bristol Twisting Danny." It was Robert Lewis’s one chart record that came a decade before he got involved with his collaborator, Steven Sugar.
Sugar was a Cambridge-educated law student who, listening to the radio one day, said he could write music just as good as that for pop music. Classically trained on the piano, he played primarily for recreation and solace, He had won a coveted first degree in mathematics at Cambridge and switched to studying law after first trying his hand at economics at the London School of Economics. In this restless period in his life, he made the comment about writing songs and put his hand to a title provided him, "Whatever Happened to Superman," which originally ended with a question mark.
When Robert Lewis expressed interest in it as a potential pop record, vindicating Steve Sugar’s confidence in his writing abilities, the song was sent to him to work on to fashion for Captain Freak & the Lunacycle Band.
The band consisted primarily of Captain Freak himself, who was Howard Boggess, a Jamie/Guyden producer who had primarily cut other artists to that point. He saw “Whatever Happened to Superman” as a vehicle for this own tastes and activist song interests, which he further exploited on the B side, “Twentieth Generation Sad.”
