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Toppermost of the Poppermost - UK Number Ones : part 2 - The 1960s

Started by daf, June 12, 2019, 01:55:00 PM

Previous topic - Next topic
He's in my username. I believe he's the greatest musical artist of the last century. This song is fine but his legacy is his recordings from 1925-1932 (a bit longer than Hot Fives and Hot Sevens because he did some great stuff with his orchestra in 1930-32, which I love, such as 'Stardust'.

Keebleman

I didn't realise that Armstrong was the first person to record it.  I had always assumed that it was an established standard and his version became definitive.

daf

Does Your Mother Know Je Suis Un Rock Star?, it's . . .

250.  The Union Gap Featuring Gary Puckett - Young Girl



From : 19 May – 15 June 1968
Weeks : 4
Flip side : I'm Losing You
Bonus : Promo Film

The Story So Far : 
QuoteGary Puckett was born on 17 October 1942, in Hibbing, Minnesota, and grew up in Yakima, Washington and Twin Falls, Idaho. He began playing guitar in his teens, graduated from Twin Falls High School in 1960, and attended college in San Diego, California.

There, he dropped out of college and played in several local bands before joining The Outcasts, a local hard rock group, which produced two unsuccessful singles : "Run Away" (b/w "Would You Care") in 1965, and "I Can't Get Through To You" (b/w "I Found Out About You") in 1966

 

Following the breakup of The Outcasts, Puckett formed a new group he called Gary and the Remarkables, comprising bassist Kerry Chater, keyboardist Gary Withem, tenor saxophonist Dwight Bement, and drummer Paul Wheatbread, while Chater originally hailed from Vancouver in Canada, the other three members were born in San Diego. In 1966, the band toured the Pacific Northwest. 

Gary Puckett : "We were playing all the stuff of the day basically. We were playing The Beatles, The Stones. We liked a lot of the Stax groups...the Eddie Floyds, the Otis Reddings, the Wilson Picketts, Carla Thomas. Those people. We played all that music. The stuff that was popular at the time, the Rock 'n' Roll stuff. Plus, we kind of dug back to my Rock roots, which were Jerry Lee Lewis's and Elvis's. But, we were a club band, so we were trying to appeal to the people in the moment. So, we played whatever was popular on the air."

In early 1967 under manager Dick Badger, the group was renamed The Union Gap - after a city in Yakima County, Washington, where Puckett grew up. Its members outfitted themselves in Union Army-style Civil War uniforms as a visual gimmick.

Gary Puckett : "One day the band is up in Seattle and I come across this shop with all sorts of union army type of clothing. I thought we looked like every other band out there, and maybe if we adopted a certain look it would help us stand out. I decided it would be a great idea if we wore uniforms that were just like the Union Army. I just kind of liked Blue and I grew up in the North. I didn't feel like being a Rebel as such. I just wanted to have a good looking band. I wasn't choosing sides in that moment. I just kind of liked blue better."

They then recorded a demo, which was heard by CBS record producer and songwriter Jerry Fuller. Impressed by Puckett's tenor voice and the band's soft rock leanings, Fuller signed them to a recording contract with Columbia Records.

The band recorded their first single "Woman, Woman", (b/w "Don't Make Promises"), a song about a man's fears that his female partner might be considering infidelity, that had been written and composed by Jim Glaser and Jimmy Payne, in August 1967. It became their first hit in the US, reaching No. 3 in Cashbox and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

 

Quick to cash in, their first album - 'Woman, Woman' was released in January 1968, and featured the hit single, plus versions of Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"  /  The Bee Gees "To Love Somebody"  /  "Kentucky Woman" by Neil Diamond  /  and Puckett's original composition "Believe Me".

   

Their second single, "Young Girl" released as by 'The Union Gap featuring Gary Puckett', reached #2 in the US, and #1 in the UK in April 1968.

 

Their second album - "Young Girl" - once again swiftly assembled to take advantage of their latest hit single, was released in April 1968.

 

As well as contemporary covers of "Lady Madonna" and "The Mighty Quinn", it featured three original songs  co-written by Fuller and Puckett: "The Pleasure of You"  /  "I'm Losing You"  /  and "Say You Don't Need Me".

     

For their next single, "Lady Willpower", (b/w "Daylight Stranger"), their name was changed to 'Gary Puckett And The Union Gap'. The single reached No. 1 in Cashbox, No. 2 in Billboard, and was a Top 5 hit in the UK in August 1968.

 

Gary Puckett : "I had called it The Union Gap featuring Gary Puckett. To them, it didn't sound like a band. It sounded like an orchestra with a singer, which it was basically. With the success of "Woman, Woman" and "Young Girl" following it, they decided it should be called Gary Puckett And The Union Gap. They understood that I was the band leader. They understood the outfits were my idea. I had put it together."



In the wake of their recent chart success, their first single, "Woman, Woman", having originally flopped in December 1967, finally entered the UK charts - peaking at #48 in September 1968.

Gary Puckett : "Playing in the south was a bit rough. I remember one time we did a gig in Alabama. To be safe we carried a big Confederate Flag with us. We draped it across the piano and when the show opened up we held it up. We got a big rebel yell and went right into the music without missing a beat."

In contrast to their first two albums, which used cover versions of hit songs for about half their content, their third album, 'Incredible', released in October 1968, consisted entirely of new songs written by the band members themselves and their producer, Jerry Fuller. Songs included "The Common Cold"  /  "If the Day Would Come"  /  "Reverend Posey"  /  and "I've Done All I Can".

 

Their next single, "Over You" (b/w "If The Day Would Come"), reached No. 5 on Cashbox, and No. 7 on the Billboard chart, but flopped in the UK in November 1968.

   

Gary Puckett : "Looking back it was pretty amazing. In 1968 alone we did 268 concerts and sold over 16 million records. I've heard we were the top selling artists in 1968, selling more than The Beatles. I'm not sure if that's factual, but I know we were huge and everybody wanted us."

   

The band headlined at a White House reception for Prince Charles and at Disneyland in 1968, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1969, losing out to José Feliciano.

Their final US hit, peaking at #15, was "Don't Give In To Him" (b/w "Could I") in April 1969.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Up to this point, all their songs were produced by Jerry Fuller, who also wrote and composed "Young Girl", "Lady Willpower" and "Over You". The band, however, wanted to write and produce its own material, and Puckett resented singing the power ballads written by Fuller. In 1969 Fuller prepared a 40-piece studio orchestra to record a new song he had written, but Puckett and the group refused to record it, the session was canceled, and Fuller never again worked with the group - brilliant move lads!

Produced by Dick Glasser, "This Girl Is A Woman Now" (b/w "His Other Woman") released in September 1969 flopped, as did "Let's Give Adam And Eve Another Chance" (b/w "The Beggar") in April 1970.

Their fourth album, The New Gary Puckett and the Union Gap Album, also produced by Dick Glasser, was released in December 1969. Songs included Puckett's "Lullaby"  /  "Simple Man"  /  and "Don't Give in to Him" written by occasional Beach Boys lyricist, Gary Usher.

 

Discouraged, Chater and Withem left the band; Bement took over on bass guitar and keyboardist, Barry McCoy, and horn player, Richard Gabriel, were added.

In 1970 Puckett began recording as a solo act, but with limited success. His first solo single, "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" (b/w "All That Matters"), was released in September 1970, but failed to trouble the charts.

His later singles included : "Keep The Customer Satisfied" (b/w "No One Really Knows") in January 1971  /  "Life Has It's Little Ups And Downs" (b/w "Shimmering Eyes") in April 1971  /  "Gentle Woman" (b/w "Hello Morning") August 1971  /  and "I Can't Hold On" in November 1971.

Puckett had modest success as a solo artist with the enigmatically titled 1971 album The Gary Puckett Album on Columbia, and The Union Gap remained his live backing band until they were dismissed following an appearance at the 1971 Orange County Fair. Following one final flop - "Leavin' In The Morning" (b/w "Bless This Child") in August 1972 - Puckett's recording contract was terminated.

 

Dwight Bement later joined the oldies act Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids. Kerry Chater moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he worked as a songwriter, and had a minor solo hit in 1977 with the song "Part Time Love". Paul Wheatbread, turned to concert promotion, and Gary Withem returned to San Diego to teach high-school band.

By 1973, Puckett had essentially disappeared from music, opting instead to study acting and dance and performing in theatrical productions in and around Los Angeles. A comeback tour engineered by music writer Thomas K. Arnold brought him to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1981, and from that point on he became a regular on the national oldies circuit.

Gary Puckett : "I found myself in Vegas singing our hits and often adding in other popular songs of the day. I became a regular on the national oldies circuit. I did my first tour in 1984 with The Association and The Turtles. We went out again the next year with Herman's Hermits."

Puckett was on the bill for the first major Monkees reunion tour in 1986.

Gary Puckett : "The Monkees experienced new found fame through the MTV generation, and all of a sudden mothers who adored The Monkees back in the 60's were there with their daughters. It introduced many of the artists to a whole new generation. It was a fun tour. We were selling out everywhere and playing stadiums."

He released some new material, including a 2001 holiday album entitled Gary Puckett at Christmas, and continued to tour.

Gary Puckett : "I have truly been blessed over my life. I am in good health, have a great family, great friends, and I've enjoyed a great career. God has truly blessed me. I spend my days running or walking on the beach. I work out in the gym. I'm in pretty good shape. You have to consider I carried a guitar around for the past 50 years."

The Single :
Quote"Young Girl" was written, composed, and produced by Jerry Fuller and performed by The Union Gap featuring Gary Puckett with instrumental backing by members of The Wrecking Crew.



The song hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, but a No. 1 on the Cashbox chart. It also hit No. 1 in the UK, and No. 2 in South Africa.

 

The song is sung from the point of view of a man who has become delighted "distressed" upon finding out that the girl he is with, contrary to the first impression she had made upon him, is actually younger than the legal age of consent. Though she knew that it was wrong to be alone with him, my client maintains that the saucy minx did have the "Come on look" in her eye, so that's alright then . . .  no further questions, your witness.

In the UK, "Young Girl" was re-released as a double A-sided single with "Woman, Woman", and peaked at #6 in June 1974.

Other Versions include :   Gary Lewis and The Playboys (1968)  /  Jerry Vale (1968)  /  The Lettermen (1968)  /  "Láskou a květem se braň" by Jaromír Mayer (1968)  /  "Nyt tiedän kaiken" by Tapani Kansa (1968)  /  "Prends garde petite fille!" by Claude François (1968)  /  "Jag är mej själv nu" by Frida (1975)  /  Tommy Overstreet (1976)  /  "Kuulin mä kadulla sen" by Kirka (1983)  /  "Tunteet" by Ari Klem (1990)  /  Joe Longthorne (1993)  /  Barbados (1999)  /  Brødrene Olsen (2002)  /  Michael Amante (2003)  /  The Lounge-O-Leers (2007)  /  Glee Cast (2009)  /  Aidan John Moffat (2011)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  John Caton (2019)

On This Day  :
Quote20 May : The Who's Pete Townshend, aged 23, marries Karen Astley
22 May : Graham Linehan, ex-comedy writer & Transphobic stinker, born in Dublin, Ireland
23 May : The Beatles open second Apple Boutique at 161 New Kings Road, London
24 May : Mick Jagger & Marianne Faithfull arrested for drug possession
24 May : French President Charles de Gaulle proposes referendum & students set fire to the Paris Stock Exchange
28 May : Kylie Minogue, pop singer, born Kylie Ann Minogue in Melbourne, Australia
29 May : European Cup Final - Manchester United beats Benfica 4-1, becoming the first English club to win the sport ball trophy
30 May : President De Gaulle disbands French parliament
30 May : University church in Leipzig, East Germany is blown up - God, currently tied up with Cliff's Panto demands, responds by squeezing out some light drizzle in Bognor.
30 May : Tim Burgess, singer (The Charlatans), born Timothy Allan Burgess in Salford, Lancashire
1 June : Helen Keller, deaf-blind author, political activist, and lecturer died aged 87
1 June : Jason Donovan, singer & actor, born Jason Sean Donovan in Malvern, Victoria, Australia
2 June : Jon Culshaw, impressionist, born Jonathan Peter Culshaw in Ormskirk, Lancashire
3 June : American radical feminist Valerie Solanas attempts to assassinate Andy Warhol by shooting him three times.
5 June : Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan shoots prospective presidential candidate Robert Kennedy three times at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
6 June : Senator Robert F. Kennedy dies from his wounds
8 June : James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., captured
11 June : Sophie Okonedo, actress, born in London
13 June : Denice Pearson, singer (Five Star), born Denise Lisa Maria Pearson in Islington, London
13 June : David Gray, musician, born in Sale, Cheshire
15 June : John Lennon and Yoko Ono plant an acorn at Coventry Cathedral
15 June : "New Faces of 1965" closes at Booth Theater NYC after 52 performances
15 June : "I Do! I Do!" closes at 46th St Theater NYC after 561 performances
15 June : "How Now, Dow Jones" closes at Lunt Fontanne NYC after 220 performances

Extra! Extra!
Quote           

Read all about it! :
Quote             



Keebleman

Paedo Rock classic!

QuoteGary Puckett : "Playing in the south was a bit rough. I remember one time we did a gig in Alabama. To be safe we carried a big Confederate Flag with us. We draped it across the piano and when the show opened up we held it up. We got a big rebel yell and went right into the music without missing a beat."

Wow - these guys just can't stop being #Cancelled!!

purlieu

When it started I thought "Oh, this song! I like this!" and by the end I was really bored.

Wow that cover. They can't really pretend that she's 16 having packaged it in that.

Fuller supposedly said:

QuoteI was on the road a lot as an artist, fronting various groups for many years. I guess every entertainer goes through a time when 14-year-olds look like 20-year-olds. That's somewhat of an inspiration not from my own experience, just knowing that it happens.

Which is paedo-justifying bollocks.

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on June 20, 2020, 03:47:36 PM
Wow that cover. They can't really pretend that she's 16 having packaged it in that.


scrolls back to look at the cover

Oh Christ.

The Culture Bunker

I'd be curious to know if at the time anyone flagged it up as being "a bit dodgy", but I would presume most didn't give it much thought. It was still popping up on 60s compilation albums my dad was buying in the late 90s.

Captain Z

"People still thought nothing of hits like 'Playground Bang-around'..."

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on June 23, 2020, 11:50:31 AM
I'd be curious to know if at the time anyone flagged it up as being "a bit dodgy", but I would presume most didn't give it much thought. It was still popping up on 60s compilation albums my dad was buying in the late 90s.

Many people seem to filter what they hear, or just don't pay attention to lyrics at all, but the 60s was an era when white male pop stars got arrested for smoking dope but not when they raped "consenting" 14 year olds.

timebug

I remember at the time it was a hit, that whilst most women we knew liked the song, most blokes didn't. No heavy analysis or anything, it was generally considered a shite tune, by all of our gang. Hey ho, no accounting for taste.

daf

But it's all right now, in fact, it's a bust . . .

251.  The Rolling Stones - Jumpin' Jack Flash



From : 16 – 29 June 1968
Weeks : 2
Flip side : Child of the Moon
Bonus 1 : Early Take
Bonus 2 : Rock & Roll Circus
Bonus 3 : Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out

The Story So Far : 
QuoteIn April 1967, Keith Richard and Anita Pallenberg spent time in Rome, Italy, where she is filming Barbarella.

Brian Jones holidays with Keith Richards' ex-girlfriend, Linda Keith in England. They later all meet up in Cannes, France for the premiere of A Degree of Murder. Brian and Anita have a talk, and Brian leaves the film festival early.

On 9 May 1967, Richard flies back to London and spends time with Jagger at Keith Richard's house, Redlands, discussing their court appearance the following day.

On 10 May, Mick Jagger and Keith Richard are formerly charged -  Jagger for drug possession, and Richard for allowing premises to be used for cannabis use. Simultaneously, Brian Jones is busted for possession of cocaine and hashish at his London apartment, along with his friend 'Prince Stash'.

On 11 May, Jagger joins The Beatles on their recording of Baby You're a Rich Man at Olympic Sound Studios in London. Later that month, The Stones resume recording sessions for their next album at Olympic, and Charlie Watts purchases a mansion in Halland, near Lewes in East Sussex - the Flash get!

 

On 8 June 1967, Brian Jones joins The Beatles on their recording of "You Know My Name, Look Up The Number" at EMI Studios in London, honking away on the saxophone.

Paul McCartney : "To our surprise he brought along a sax. I remember him turning up in this big Afghan coat at Abbey Road and he opened up a sax case and we said, We've got a little track here, and so he played sax on it. It's a funny sax solo - it isn't amazingly well played but it happened to be exactly what we wanted, a ropey sax, kind of shaky. Brian was very good like that."

Taking a break from working on their album, Jagger and Marianne Faithfull holiday in Tangier, Morocco; 
 Brian Jones flies to California and attends the Monterey International Pop Festival; and Bill Wyman joins the Royal Horticultural Society - the Boring bastard!

On 25 June, Jagger, Richards and Brian Jones attend, and sing backup vocals at, the Beatles' live global satellite appearance on Our World, from their EMI Studios in London, recording overdubs on "All You Need Is Love".

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On 27 June, at Chichester court in London, Robert Fraser pleads guilty to Heroin possession and Jagger is tried and found guilty by the jury for illegal possession of Benzedrine. Jagger appeals, but he and Robert Fraser are jailed overnight at Lewes prison.

The following day, Jagger and Fraser are brought back to Chichester court and put into a cell below the courtroom, where Keith Richard's trial starts for allowing his premises to be used for the smoking of 
cannabis.

On 29 June, Keith Richard's trial finishes, the jury retires and Richards is found guilty. He appeals the decision and is sentenced to 12 months in prison and a fine.

In court, Keith Richard was asked if he was embarrassed and found it normal that there was a "young woman wearing only a rug" during the police search : "Not at all... We are not old men. We're not worried about petty morals."

Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser are brought into court for their sentencing. Fraser is ordered 6 months in prison and a fine, and Jagger received a three-month prison sentence for the possession of four amphetamine tablets. Jagger was sent to Brixton prison, while Richard and Fraser to Wormwood Scrubs.

Mick Jagger : "I was deathly scared. I was much more frightened than Keith. I broke into tears when they said we had to go to jail. I'm like that..."

In support The Who announced the release a single of Rolling Stones covers - "The Last Time" and  "Under My Thumb" - the songs were recorded without the bass stylings of The Ox, who was off on his honeymoon.

Bill Wyman : "spontaneous demonstrations broke out all over London. The Who's Keith Moon, his girlfriend Kim and the band's road manager John Wolfe drove in Keith's Bentley to the West End and join the protesters." Moon and his girlfriend were pictured outside a Wimpy Bar, Kim holding a "Free Keith" banner, and The Who drummer one saying "Stop Pop Persecution!"

On 30 June, Jagger and Richards were granted bail and released from jail under conditions, pending their appeals - instantly scuppering the chart chances of The Who's topical single - Bastards!

     

On 2 July 1967, The Times ran the famous editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" in which editor William Rees-Mogg surprised his readers by his unusually critical discourse on the sentencing, pointing out that Jagger had been treated far more harshly for a minor first offence than "any purely anonymous young man".

Mick : "The Times was thrown through the slot in my cell door, and thudded and hit the concrete floor of my cell and I thought, What the fuck is that? I thought, Well, that's nice, they're delivering me The Times. I hadn't had a lot of experience of being in jail. When I read it I realised why they had in fact delivered it to me. The same day I was out."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On 15 July, The Rolling Stones' US compilation album Flowers was released. It was a mixture of recent hits, unreleased songs and album tracks, including : "My Girl", "Ride On, Baby" and "Sittin' on a Fence" - all recorded in 1965, plus the singles, "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" from 1966, and "Let's Spend the Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday" from 1967.

 

It's title and cover seemingly saw them in step with the Hippie zeitgeist of 1967's Summer of Love, causing some of their fans to express concern that the group were drifting away from their blues roots.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

During July, Brian Jones spent a couple of weeks at the Priory Nursing Home in Richmond, Surrey, before leaving for Malaga, Spain, with his new girlfriend Suki Poitier.

On 31 July, Mick Jagger and Keith Richard attended their appeal hearings in court. The court overturned Richard's conviction, while Mick Jagger's was upheld but his sentence quashed - as reported in this charming Pathé Newsreel.



Mick : "The trial wore me out. It wore my bank balance out. Cost a fortune. The whole thing is sort of a game between different lawyers. Nothing happened. I mean, they put us through a lot of hassle and took a lot of bread off of us..."

Keith : "The trial kind of said, OK, from now on it's heavy. Up till then it had been show biz, entertainment, play it how you want to, teenyboppers. At that point you knew they considered you to be outside - the're the ones who put you outside the law. Like Dylan says, To live outside the law, you must be honest. They're the ones that decide who lives outside the law. I mean, YOU don't decide, right? You're just living. I mean your laws don't apply to me, nobody says that, because you can't. But they say it. And then you have to decide what you're going to do from then on."

       

In early August 1967, Keith Richard joins Anita Pallenberg in Rome; Brian Jones vacations in Marbella, Spain; Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull holiday in Ireland; and Bill Wyman and Astrid Lundstrom spend time with Charlie Watts & his missus at their estate.

   

On 18 August, The Rolling Stones' single "We Love You" was released in the UK. The band recorded the song as a thank you for their fans' loyalty, while awaiting the appeal hearings. Having recently sang on The Beatles All You Need is Love, Lennon and McCartney returned the favour, by contributing backing vocals to the single.   


 

The song began with the sound of prison doors closing, and the promotional film for "We Love You", shot, along with one for the filp side "Dandelion" on 30 July 1967. The film included allusions to the trial of Oscar Wilde and featured Marianne Faithfull as Bosie. The courtroom scenes led the BBC to ban the promo from Top of the Pops - the massive idiots!




On 25 August, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull join the Beatles on a transcendental meditation seminar by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Bangor, Wales.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On 20 September 1967, The Rolling Stones announce they are splitting from their manager Andrew Loog Oldham.

Ian Stewart : "At some stage they realized that Andrew's ideas on producing were only ideas he'd got from them in the first place. There must have been some sort of bust-up with Andrew 'cause all of a sudden they really wanted to get rid of him. Before they started Satanic Majesties a lot of time was booked at Olympic. Andrew was supposed to be there as producer. And he was there only in a literal sense. We went in and played a lot of blues just as badly as we could. Andrew just walked out. At the time I didn't understand what was going on. They were probably a bit fed up with Oldham wanting to be the record producer and not really producing."

Mick : "The reason Andrew left was because he thought that we weren't concentrating and that we were being childish. It was not a great moment really—and I would have thought it wasn't a great moment for Andrew either. There were a lot of distractions and you always need someone to focus you at that point, that was Andrew's job."

Ian Stewart : "He's a brilliant guy, actually, Andrew. And if it were not for him, I don't think the Stones would've gotten to where they are now. They WOULD have made it no matter what. I mean, there would have been a group exactly like the Rolling Stones and they would have been as good as the Rolling Stones, whether Brian and I existed on the face of this earth or not. But they would've probably, if not for the careful handling of the group by Andrew, burned themselves out in two or three years by playing too much. Andrew was very careful about the exposure and image of the group. He only slipped up when he tried to be a record producer."

 

In October 1967, the group continue work on the next album at Olympic Sound Studios, finishing 'Citadel' and 'The Lantern' among others, and filming promos for 'She's a Rainbow' and '2000 Light Years from Home' in London.

Bill : "Although I was strongly against drugs for myself, I was put in a vulnerable position by the pushers who were constantly around the band - in the studios, on the tour in dressing-rooms, hotels, planes, cars... I had to keep aware because if the cops did bust us I would have been thrown in jail together with the rest of them, as would Charlie. And who would believe that we weren't involved?... I accepted that if I was in the band, it was something that had to be tolerated. But they wouldn't lift a finger to help me in my family situation... So the "separatism" built up... I hardly socialized with the others for ten years from about 1967."

   

On 23 October, The Rolling Stones complete work on the Their Satanic Majesties Request" album.

Mick : "I was happy. I breathed a sigh of relief because we had finally finished it. It's just there to take it or leave it... I'm very conscious of the fact that it doesn't reflect (our arrests) in any of the songs. That they aren't all about policemen as they could well have been..."

 

On 30 October, Brian Jones appeared in court in London for his trial. He was found guilty of cannabis possession and allowing his premises to be used for the smoking of cannabis, and jailed for 12 months and fined. He spent the night at Wormwood Scrubs prison, while Jagger and Richard fly to New York to mix and master the new album.

   

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On 8 December 1967, The Rolling Stones released 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' - their 8th US studio album, and 6th UK album.  It reached No. 3 in the UK, and No. 2 in the US.

 

Mick : "Satanic Majesties had interesting things on it, but I don't think any of the songs are very good. It's a bit like Between The Buttons. It's a sound experience, really, rather than a song experience. There's 2 good songs on it: She's A Rainbow, and 2000 Light Years from Home. The rest of them are nonsense... I think we were just taking too much acid. We were just getting carried away, just thinking anything you did was fun and everyone should listen to it. The whole thing we were on acid..."

'Satanic Majesties Request' became the first album the Rolling Stones produced on their own. Its psychedelic sound was complemented by the cover art, which featured a 3D photo by Michael Cooper, who had also photographed the cover of Sgt. Pepper.

[son] Adam Cooper : "Well, Sgt. Pepper was such a tremendous success, of course the Stones wanted to jump on that bandwagon and take advantage of it. So they went to Michael as a friend and said, "Look, you've done Sgt. Pepper. We want to do a similar type of thing with Satanic Majesties." Typical of Michael, he wanted to take it one step further, so he said, "Okay, let's do a 3-D cover." One of the only 3-D cameras that existed in the world in those days was in New York, so they went off to Mount Vernon Studios. The tragedy of the cover was that it was supposed to be three-dimensional, so when you angled it in front of your face, the heads of the Stones would change direction. But of course, when Allen Klein and ABKCO received the budget for a worldwide, mass-market edition, it was immediately rejected because the cost was just too much. They ended up doing a 500-copy limited edition, which ended up with lots of friends and family and whatever."

     

Returning the favour for the Stones inclusion on the Sgt Pepper sleeve, images of the Beatles were hidden among the flowers on the album cover - though Ringo and Paul were accidentally cropped off the non-lenticular version of the cover.

Adam Cooper : "The British press were constantly dreaming up rumors that relations between the Beatles and the Stones were always bad, and they presented this bad-boy image of the Stones and the clean image of the Beatles and all of that. It was a complete invention by the press. People believed it, so the Stones, by 1967, said, "We've had enough of this shit. Let's try to communicate through the cover to tell the public this is not the truth. So what you see on the Satanic Majesties cover, amongst the flowers, is the four faces of the Beatles. And in Sgt. Pepper's, which was released earlier that same year, you see the doll in the right-hand corner of the cover, which says "Welcome the Rolling Stones." It was their way of somewhat silently communicating between themselves, but also to the public, to say, "This is all a load of crap. We have great relations with the Beatles. We have great respect for them."

       

Keith : "It's so unbelievable. It was so weird to make an album and not be on the road that it was totally UNLIKE recording. I liked a few songs, like 2000 Light Years, Citadel and She's a Rainbow, but basically I thought the album was a load of crap. That album was made under the pressure of the court cases and the whole scene that was going on in London at that time."

It drew unfavourable reviews and was widely regarded as a poor imitation of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Keith : "I don't know that we were trying to copy the Beatles. I never listened any more to the Beatles than to anyone else in those days when we were working. It's probably more down to the fact that we were going through the same things. Maybe we were doing it a little bit after them. Anyway, we were following them through so many scenes. We're only just mirrors ourselves of that whole thing. It took us much longer to get a record out for us, our stuff was always coming out later anyway."

Mick : "Satanic Majesties was the mood of the time. You can't play or write outside the mood of the times, unless you live on a mountain... In those times it was flowers, beads and stars on your face, that's what it was. In fact, I'm rather fond of that album, and I wouldn't mind doing something like that again... We were just obviously out to lunch. I'm saying this because I just heard it recently and realized how much I liked it. What surprised me was the comedic feeling and all the jokes and things we'd never dream of doing now."

 

Keith : "There was a time in '67, when everybody just stopped, everything just stopped dead. Everybody was trying to work it out, what was going to go on. So many weird things happened to so many  weird people at one time. America really turned itself round, the kids.... coming together... The only thing I can say, from the Stones' point of view, is that it was the first album we ever made off the road. Because we stopped touring; we just burned up by 1966. We finished Between The Buttons, you know, Let's Spend the Night Together, and boom, we stopped working for like a year and a half. And in that year and a half, we had to make another album. And that was insane - on acid, busted, right? It was like such a fractured business, a total alien way of working to us at the time. So it kind of reflects."

Bill Wyman wrote and sang a track on the album: "In Another Land", also released as a single in the US, the first on which Jagger did not sing lead.

 

Bill Wyman : "I went to the studio one night and when I arrived at the studio Glyn Johns said, The session's canceled, so I said, Oh, what a drag, 'cause it was quite a drive for me, about a 45 minute drive. And he said, Well... got any songs you want to mess around, try and demo and things? Nicky Hopkins was there on keyboards. I'm not sure whether Charlie was there or not. I can't remember. And I said, Yeah, 'cause I'd been messing with this song. It was a bit... what I thought was kind of spacy, you know... a bit kind of Satanic Majesties-like. And psychedelic in a way. And he said, We'll have a go at it and I just used those players and next door, in the other studio, were the Small Faces who were recording. And Steve Marriott came in and Ronnie Lane and they sang with me 'cause I just didn't want to sing. So I used that tremolo effect on the voice 'cause I was really uptight about my singing - which I still am. And we just used effects and we tried all kinds of things and it came out quite nice and I went home sort of reasonably satisfied, with an experiment, if you like.

"The next day I got to the studio and we were just chatting about what we were going to do tonight and Glyn said, Hey, hang on, he said to Mick and Keith and Brian. He said, Hang on, have a listen to this, and put the tape on, played them a rough mix. They said, That's really good, what is it? He said, Bill. He did it yesterday. And so they all liked it and they thought it fitted in so we put it on the album."

     

On 12 December 1967, Brian Jones appeared in court in London for his appeal; Mick Jagger attended for moral support. The defence provided medical testimony that he had become suicidal. His prison sentence is quashed, and he is fined £1,000, and given 3 years probation with an order to seek professional help.

Keith : "It started coming down heavy for Brian when he got busted for drugs. After that in the next year Brian was out of it. By then it looked like the police were just out to get Brian."

The following day, Jones was driven to hospital by his chauffeur, after being found unconscious in his flat following drug and alcohol over-use. He returns to the Priory clinic.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In January 1968, Mick Jagger purchases a flat in Chester Square in London; Brian Jones participates in the Jimi Hendrix Experience's recording of 'All Along the
 Watchtower' at Olympic Sound Studios; and Keith Richard recovers in Paris after catching hepatitis in Morocco.

Keith : "Around 1966 or so, after 3 or 4 years of constantly being on the road, rocking the Rolling Stones, I took a little time off and started to listen to some blues again. On the road, none of us had had the time to listen to much beyond the Top 10: our stuff, the Beatles, and Phil Spector's latest. All great records. But when we finally came off the road, I started listening to Blind Blake. A whole lot of blues had become available that we just couldn't get in England back in '61 or '62..."

The band spent the first few months of 1968 working on material for their next album - rehearsing at Keith Richard's house Redlands in West Wittering, Sussex.

Keith : "Then I started looking into some '20s and '30s blues records. Slowly I began to realize that a lot of them were in very strange tunings. These  guys would pick up a guitar, and a lot of times it would be tuned a certain way, and that's how they'd learn to play it. It might be some amazing sort of a mode, some strange thing. And that's why for years you could have been trying to figure out how some guy does this lick, and then you realize that he has this one string that is supposed to be up high, and he has it turned down an octave lower. And later Ry Cooder popped in, who had the tunings down. He had the open G. By then I was working on open E and open D tunings. I was trying to figure out Fred McDowell shit, Blind Willie McTell stuff. I used open D on Beggars Banquet. Street Fighting Man is all that, and Jumpin' Jack Flash."

In February and March 1968, The Rolling Stones hold more rehearsals at R. G. Jones Studios in Morden, Surrey, with newly hired producer Jimmy Miller.

Bill Wyman : "I think that everybody knew that we had to get back to our roots, you know, and start over. That's why we got Jimmy Miller as a producer and came out with Beggars Banquet and those kinds of albums after, which was reverting back and getting more guts - which is what the Stones are all about."

Glyn Johns : "Jagger came to me after Satanic Majesties and said, We're going to get a new producer, so I said, OK, fine. He said, We're going to get an American. I thought, Oh my God, that's all I need. I don't think my ego can stand having some bloody Yankee coming in here and start telling me what sort of sound to get with the Rolling Stones. So I said, I know somebody! I know there's one in England already and he's fantastic, and he'd just done the Traffic album: Jimmy Miller. And it was a remarkably good record he made, the first record he made with Traffic. I said, He's a really nice guy. I'd met him, he'd been in the next studio room and I said, I'm sure he'd be fantastic. Anything but some strange lunatic, drug addict from Los Angeles. So... Jagger actually took the bait and off he went, met Jimmy Miller and gave him the job."

 

In March, Jagger purchased the country house Stargroves, near Newbury in Berkshire, which he starts renovating.  On 17 March 1968 he participates in the first major British demonstration against the Vietnam War, at London's Grosvenor Square outside the American Embassy.

The same day, The Rolling Stones start recording sessions for their next album at Olympic Studios in London. By the time of Beggars Banquet's release, Brian Jones was only sporadically contributing to the band.

Keith : "Brian, in many ways, was a right cunt. He was a bastard. Mean, generous, anything. You want to say one thing, give it the opposite too. But more so than most people, you know. Up to a point, you could put up with it. When you were put under the pressures of the road, either you took it seriously or you took it as a joke. Which meant that eventually - it was a very slow process, and it shifted and changed, and it is so impossible to describe - but in the last year or so, when Brian was almost totally incapacitated all of the time, he became a joke to the band. It was the only way we could deal with it without getting mad at him. So then it became that very cruel, piss-taking thing behind his back all the time... there was no immediate necessity to go through the drama of replacing Brian because no gigs were lined up. We first had to recognize the fact that we needed to make a really good album. After Satanic Majesties we wanted to make a STONES album."

On 20 March, Keith Richards' ex-girlfriend, Linda Keith, is found unconscious at Brian Jones' apartment following a drug overdose.

On 12 May 1968, The Rolling Stones perform their first public performance in over a year, at the NME Poll-Winners' Concert, at the Empire Pool in Wembley, London.

   

During May, sessions continue for the album, with the group working on "Dear Doctor" / "Family"  /  "Factory Girl"  and  "Stray Cat Blues

On 21 May, days before the release of their new single, Brian Jones was arrested for a second time at his apartment, for possession of cannabis. He is sent to Marlborough Street Magistrates Court where he is charged. He moves temporarily into Redlands with Keith Richard.

         

On 24 May, The Rolling Stones' single "Jumpin' Jack Flash" was released in the UK. Within a month, it would top the UK charts - becoming their 8th UK Number 1.

     

The Single :
Quote"Jumpin' Jack Flash" was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard, and performed by The Rolling Stones.



Called "supernatural Delta blues by way of Swinging London" by Rolling Stone magazine, the song was perceived by some as the band's return to their blues roots after the baroque pop and psychedelia heard on their preceding albums, and features a distinctive guitar sound -

Keith : "I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing – same intervals – but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones' band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Philips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker."

Richard has stated that he and Jagger wrote the lyrics while staying at Richard's country house, when they were awoken one morning by the clumping footsteps of his gardener Jack Dyer walking past the window. Surprised, Jagger asked what it was and Richards responded: "Oh, that's Jack – that's jumpin' Jack.".

The line "I was born in a crossfire hurricane", was written by Richard, and refers to his being born amid the bombing and air raid sirens of Dartford, England, in 1943 during World War II.

Mick : "The song arose out of all the acid of Satanic Majesties. It's about having a hard time and getting out. Just a metaphor for getting out of all the acid things."

     

Brian Jones described it as "getting back to the funky, essential essence" following the psychedelia of their previous album.

Bill Wyman claimed to have come up with the song's distinctive main guitar riff on a piano without being credited for it.

     

Released on 24 May 1968, "Jumpin' Jack Flash" reached the top of the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number three in the United States.

   

Some early London Records US pressings of the single had a technical flaw in them: about halfway through the song's instrumental bridge, the speed of the master tape slows down for a moment, before coming back to speed. The first Rolling Stones album on which the song appeared was their 1969 compilation album, 'Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2)', one year after the single was released.

Other Versions include :   Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart (1968)  /  The Ventures (1968)  /  Los Salvajes (1968)  /  Wynder K. Frog (1968)  /  Thelma Houston (1969)  /  Moog Machine (1969)  /  Alex Harvey (1969)  /  Hal Singer (1969)  /  Jamul (1970)  /  Ananda Shankar (1970)  /  Johnny Winter (1971)  /  Peter Frampton (1972)  /  "Synnyin Saatanan merkit käsissäin" by Maarit (1973)  /  Godz (1973)  /  The Flamin' Groovies (1974)  /  Marcia Hines (1975)  /  "Det är jag som är Mick" by Dan Tillberg (1979)  /  Leon Russell & New Grass Revival (1981)  /  Neonbabies (1981)  /  The Vibrators (1982)  /  Flower Leperds (1984)  /  The Replacements (1985)  /  Aretha Franklin (1986)  /  Guns n' Roses (1986)  /  The La's (1986)  /  Terence Trent D'Arby (1987)  /  Shed Seven (1996)  /  Alex Chilton (1996)  /  Motörhead (2001)  /  The Twang (2007)  /  Punk Jones (2009)   /  Giant Sand (2011)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  Sugar Black (2015)  /  Chiptune Planet 8-bit (2015)  /  Krokus (2017)  /  Wolfgang Vrecun (2018)

On This Day  :
Quote17 June : Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Inspector Hound, starring Richard Briers and Ronnie Barker, opened at the Criterion Theatre in London's West End.
18 June : Sally O'Neil, silent film actress of the 1920s, dies aged 59
20 June : Robert Rodriguez, film director, born Robert Anthony Rodriguez in San Antonio, Texas
21 June : Sonique, musician and DJ, born Sonia Marina Clarke in Crouch End, North London
24 June : Joe Frazier knocks out Manuel Ramos in 2 rounds to win heavyweight boxing title
24 June : In the wake of the recent assassinations of Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress for a bill requiring the registration of every gun in the United States.
25 June : Tony Hancock, comic actor, commits suicide, aged 44, in his flat at Bellevue Hill, New South Wales from an overdose of amylobarbitone tablets washed down with vodka.
28 June : Adam Woodyatt, actor (EastEnders), born Adam Brinley Woodyatt in Walford, East London
29 June : The first large free concert ever held in the UK, "Midsummer High Weekend", held in Hyde Park, London. Pink Floyd, T-Rex, Jethro Tull and Roy Harper were among those appearing, attracting a crowd of 650,000 people.
29 June : Kitty Kelly, actress, dies at 66

Extra! Extra!
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Read all about it! :
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The Culture Bunker

I've heard before the story of Bill Wyman coming up with the riff for this - has anyone ever backed him up on it? One to file alongside Andy Rourke getting screwed out of any royalties for "Barbarism Begins at Home", perhaps. Bassists, eh? Who'd be one.

That aside, this might be my favourite Stones song.

daf

The Story So Far & Further : 
QuoteIn early June 1968, The Rolling Stones held a photo shoot for the inside cover of 'Beggars Banquet', at a house in Hampstead, London.

 

Also that month, the group are filmed by French film director Jean-Luc Godard for 'One Plus One' - which featured them recording songs for the new album at Olympic Sound Studios, including "Sympathy for the Devil".

Mick : "I wrote Sympathy for the Devil as sort of like a Bob Dylan song. I mean, Keith suggested that we do it in another rhythm, so that's how bands help you... I knew it was something good, 'cause I would just keep banging away at it until the fucking band recorded it... But I knew it was a good song. You just have this feeling. It had its poetic beginning, and then it had historic references and then philosophical jottings and so on. It's all very well to write that in verse, but to make it into a pop song is something different. Especially in England - you're skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious."

 

Mick : "It has a very hypnotic groove, a samba, which has a tremendous hypnotic power, rather like good dance music. It doesn't speed up or down. It keeps this constant groove. Plus, the actual samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it's also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive - because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it. But forgetting the cultural colours, it is a very good vehicle for producing a powerful piece. It becomes less pretentious because it's a very unpretentious groove. If it had been done as a ballad, it wouldn't have been as good."

Having summoned up The Goat of Mendes, and inhaled deeply upon his foul stench, the studio promptly went up in a ball of flames - nice one, Dev!

     

On 11 June 1968, Brian Jones is back in court at Inner London Sessions and elects trial by jury. He then flies off to Malaga, Spain, with Suki Poitier. On 4 July, Jones and Poitier arrive in Tangier, Morocco  - on the hunt for some top quality "blow" and a 'Tommy Cooper' Fez.

On 7 July 1968, The Byrds, perform a charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Two weeks later Keith Richard, along with Anita Pallenberg and Gram Parsons, arrive in Los Angeles to join the final Beggars Banquet mixing sessions.

Keith : "Mick and I went to L.A. in '68 to mix down Beggars Banquet with Jimmy Miller and stayed for two months. Hung out with Taj and the Flying Burritos. Went to the Palomino a lot... In the 60s, I knew these (old blues) guys were using other tunings. Obviously. Up until about '68, we were just on the road so much, I had not time to experiment: Oh, when I get some time off, I'm gonna figure this out. Up until then, the Stones were out like 315 nights a year. It doesn't give you a lot of room to maneuver and check out new things. Around 1967, I was just starting to hang out with Taj Mahal and Gram Parsons, who are all students too. I mean, Taj, as beautiful as he is, is a student who basically approaches the blues from a white man's angle. He's got it all together, and always did have. But at the same time, he came from that angle. He's very academic about it. He showed me a couple of things. So in that year I started to get into that, and the Nashville tuning the country boys use - the high stringing - and all the other things you can do. When I was locked into regular, I thought, The guitar is capable of more than this - or is it? Let's find out... "

On 23 July, Brian Jones records the Master Musicians of Joujouka in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Mick : "I remember Brian playing his Moroccan tapes. We had this engineer we were working with, George Chkiantz, and George was one of the first people to be heavily into phasing, which was like the scratching of the middle '60s. So Brian took all of the Joujouka tapes and put them through phasing, which was really quite before its time. I always felt the Stones were quite adventurous that way."



In August 1968, Gram Parsons spent time with Keith Richard at Redlands. Richard, rising like a Draclea from his stygian pimp's tomb at midnight, ruthlessly extracted Parsons' country music knowledge - in exchange for some delicious cold turkey sandwiches!!

Keith : "The Byrds' next gig was to be in South Africa, and we told Gram English bands never even went there. So he threw in his lot with the Stones and hung around London. The reason Gram and I were together more than other musicians is because I really wanted to learn what Gram had to offer. Gram was really intrigued by me and the band. Although we came from England, Gram and I shared this instinctive affinity for the real South. Gram showed me the mechanics for country music... Gram knew songs that I'd forgotten or had never known. He introduced me to a lot of players, and he showed me the difference between the way country would be played in Nashville and in Bakersfield - the two schools - with a completely different sound and attitude. But apart from that he was just a very special guy. He was my mate, and I wish he'd remained my mate for a lot longer. It's not often you can lie around on a bed with a guy having cold turkey, in tandem, and still get along."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On 31 August, The Rolling Stones' released the US single "Street Fighting Man", (b/w "No Expectations"). This was barely a week after violent confrontations between the police and anti-Vietnam War protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Worried about the possibility of the song inciting further violence, Chicago radio stations refused to play the song.

Mick : "I'm rather pleased to hear they have banned it. The last time they banned one of our records in America, it sold a million."

 

Keith : "The basic track of Street Fighting Man was done on a mono cassette with very distorted overrecording, on a Phillips cassette player with no limiter. Just distortion. Just two acoustics, played right into the mike, and hit very hard. There's a sitar in the back, too. That would give the effect of the high notes on the guitar. And Charlie was playing his little 1930s drummer's practice kit. It was all sort of built into a little attaché case, so some drummer who was going to his gig on the train could open it up - with two little things about the size of small tambourines without the bells on them, and the skin was stretched over that. And he set up this little cymbal, and this little hi-hat would unfold. Charlie sat right in front of the microphone with it. I mean, this drum sound is massive. When you're recording, the size of things has got nothing to do with it. It's how you record them. Everything there was totally acoustic. The only electric instrument on there is the bass guitar, which I overdubbed afterwards."

Charlie Watts : "Street Fighting Man" was recorded on Keith's cassette with a 1930s toy drum kit called a London Jazz Kit Set, which I bought in an antiques shop, and which I've still got at home. It came in a little suitcase, and there were wire brackets you put the drums in; they were like small tambourines with no jangles ... The snare drum was fantastic because it had a really thin skin with a snare right underneath, but only two strands of gut ... Keith loved playing with the early cassette machines because they would overload, and when they overload they sounded fantastic, although you weren't meant to do that. We usually played in one of the bedrooms on tour. Keith would be sitting on a cushion playing a guitar and the tiny kit was a way of getting close to him. The drums were really loud compared to the acoustic guitar and the pitch of them would go right through the sound. You'd always have a great backbeat."

 

The US single version was released in mono with an additional vocal overdub on the choruses, and thus is different from the stereo version on the album.

Mick : "It was a very strange time in France. But not only in France but also in America, because of the Vietnam War and these endless disruptions.... I wrote a lot of the melody and all the words for Street Fighting Man, and Keith and I sat around and made this wonderful track, with Dave Mason playing the shehani on it live. It's a kind of Indian reed instrument a bit like a primitive clarinet. It comes in at the end of the tune. It has a very wailing, strange sound... There was all this violence going on. I mean, they almost toppled the government in France; De Gaulle went into this complete funk, as he had in the past, and he went and sort of locked himself in his house in the country. And so the government was almost inactive. And the French riot police were amazing. Yeah, it was a direct inspiration, because by contrast, London was very quiet..."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In September 1968, Keith Richard moves into Robert Fraser's apartment in London with Anita Pallenberg, and starts experimenting with heroin.

Keith : "Taking heroin was a really, really gradual thing. I would stop for 6 months, take it for a month, stop for 4 months, then take it for 2. I started taking it because it was... around. I liked it as a mixture."



On 26 September, Brian Jones attends his trial in London, with Jagger, Richard and Brian's current girlfriend Suki Poitier present. He is found guilty of possession of a fez cannabis and fined.

Keith : "It didn't hit me for months because I hadn't seen him a lot. The only time we'd seen him was down at the courthouse, at one of his trials. They really roughed him up, man. He wasn't a cat that could stand that kind of thing and they really went for him like when hunting dogs smell blood. There's one we'll break, so keep on. And they busted him and busted him. That cat got so paranoid at the end like unto Lenny Bruce, the same tactics. Break him down. Maybe with Mick and me, they felt they're just old lads."

During September and October 1968, Mick Jagger shoots his acting part in the film 'Performance' in London, alongside Anita Pallenberg.
 The film stars James Fox as a violent and ambitious London gangster who, after killing an old friend, goes into hiding at the home of a reclusive rock star played by Jagger.

   

Due to the reluctance of Warner Bros. to distribute the film owing to its sexual content and graphic violence - (during a test screening, one Warner executive's wife vomited in shock!) - it was not released until 1970.

   

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In early October, Marianne Faithfull's pregnancy to Mick Jagger's child becomes public. Sadly, she would suffer a miscarriage at the end of the month.

   

In mid October, Jagger appears on British TV's Frost on Saturday, and discusses marriage and living out of wedlock with house-proud town-mouse, Mary Whitehouse, founder of the National Fusspots and Busybodies Association.

On 30 October, Bill Wyman and Astrid Lundstrom moved into 14th Century crumbling pile Gedding Hall, in Bury St Edmunds, no doubt hoping to lure some local sexy schoolgirls into his newly constructed photographic studio, and fully equipped sex-dungeon dark room, to watch him finger his "double bass" - the dirty bugger!



In November, Mick Jagger records the soundtrack for Kenneth Anger's film 'Invocation of My Demon Brother' - providing "wonderful savant Moogisms" at his Cheyne Walk apartment.

The same month, Brian Jones purchases Cotchford Farm in Hartfield, Sussex - the former home of author A. A. Milne, and group began work on their next album , 'Let it Bleed' with sessions at Olympic Sound Studios in London - starting work on "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Memo from Turner" - which was featured in Performance, and later released as a solo Jagger single in 1970.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On 6 December 1968, The Rolling Stones released 'Beggars Banquet' - their 9th US and 7th UK studio album. An eclectic mix of country and blues-inspired tunes, it marked the band's return to their roots. It was also the beginning of their collaboration with producer Jimmy Miller. It was well received at the time of release and reached No. 3 in the UK and No. 5 in the US.

Keith : "There is a change between material on Satanic Majesties and Beggars Banquet. I'd grown sick to death of the whole Maharishi guru shit and the beads and bells. Who knows where these things come from, but I guess it was a reaction to what we'd done in our time off and also that severe dose of reality. A spell in prison ... will certainly give you room for thought ... I was fucking pissed with being busted. So it was, 'Right we'll go and strip this thing down.' There's a lot of anger in the music from that period."

Controversy over the design of the album cover, which featured a public toilet with graffiti covering the walls of a stall, delayed the album's release for nearly six months.

     

The substituted cover took the form of a white invitation card.

   

Mick : "God, what was I doing during that time? Who was I living with? It was all recorded in London, and I was living in this rented house in Chester Square. I was living with Marianne Faithfull. Was I still? Yeah. And I was just writing a lot, reading a lot. I was educating myself. I was reading a lot of poetry, I was reading a lot of philosophy. I was out and about. I was very social, always hanging out with (art gallery owner) Robert Fraser's group of people. And I wasn't taking so many drugs that it was messing up my creative processes. It was a very good period, 1968 - there was good feeling in the air. It was very a creative period for everyone. There was lot going on in the theater. Marianne was kind of involved with it, so I would go to the theater upstairs, hang out with the young directors of the time and the young filmmakers."

 

When he did show up at the sessions, Brian Jones behaved erratically due to his drug use and emotional problems. 

Jimmy Miller : "When he would show up at a session—let's say he had just bought a sitar that day, he'd feel like playing it, so he'd look in his calendar to see if the Stones were in. Now he may have missed the previous four sessions. We'd be doing let's say, a blues thing. He'd walk in with a sitar, which was totally irrelevant to what we were doing, and want to play it. I used to try to accommodate him. I would isolate him, put him in a booth and not record him onto any track that we really needed. And the others, particularly Mick and Keith, would often say to me, 'Just tell him to piss off and get the hell out of here'."

Brian Jones played sitar and tanpura on "Street Fighting Man"  /  slide guitar on "No Expectations"  /  acoustic guitar and harmonica on "Parachute Woman"  /   harmonica "Dear Doctor" and "Prodigal Son"  /  and Mellotron on "Jigsaw Puzzle" and "Stray Cat Blues".

Mick : "That's Brian playing on No Expectations. We were sitting around in a circle on the floor, singing and playing, recording with open mikes. That was the last time I remember Brian really being totally involved in something that was really worth doing. He was there with everyone else. It's funny how you remember - but that was the last moment I remember him doing that, because he had just lost interest in everything."



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In early December 1968, The Rolling Stones rehearsed and filmed The Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus at Intertel Studios in London. Originally began as an idea about "the new shape of the rock-and-roll concert tour", it featured John Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Dirty Mac, The Who, Jethro Toe, Marianne Faithfull, and Taj Mahal.

The performances began at around 2 pm on 11 December, but setting up between acts and reloading cameras took longer than planned, which meant that the final performances took place at almost 5 o'clock in the morning on the 12th. By that time the audience and most of the Rolling Stones were exhausted. It was only due to Jagger's sheer enthusiasm and stamina that they kept going until the end.

Pete Townshend : "When they really get moving, there is a kind of white magic that starts to replace the black magic, and everything starts to really fly. That didn't happen on this occasion; there's no question about that. They weren't just usurped by The Who, they were also usurped by Taj Mahal – who was just, as always, extraordinary. They were usurped to some extent by the event itself: the crowd by the time the Stones went on were radically festive."

       

This was the last public performance of Brian Jones with the Rolling Stones, and for much of the Stones performance he is inaudible, although his slide guitar on "No Expectations", maracas on "Sympathy for the Devil", and rhythm guitar on "Jumpin' Jack Flash" remain clear.

Ian Anderson : "Brian Jones was well past his sell-by date by then... We spoke to Brian and he didn't really know what was going on. He was rather cut off from the others – there was a lot of embarrassed silence. But a delightful chap, and we felt rather sorry for him... I was approached for an interview by a chap from Record Mirror... I inadvertently remarked that the Stones were a bit under-rehearsed and that Brian couldn't even tune his guitar, which was literally the truth but a bit tactless and inappropriate for me to say. This was duly reported, whereupon Mick Jagger was mightily upset. I had to send a grovelling apology to his office."

   

Jagger was reportedly so disappointed with his and the band's performance that he cancelled the airing of the film, and kept it from public view. During April 1969, The Rolling Stones held rehearsals at their London warehouse studio, and planned a re-shoot of their Rock & Roll Circus segment at the Coliseum in Rome in late June.

Mick Jagger : "I have just made arrangements for the new Stones to appear at the Colosseum in Rome... We chose Rome for the concert becaue it is a very good visual thing. And the other reason is that I wasn't satisfied with the Rolling Stones part of the Rock & Roll Circus film we made and we want to do it again in the Colosseum, the first ever circus."

This was never filmed, and the original 1968 footage, shelved for twenty-eight years, was eventually officially released in 1996.

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In December 1968, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richard and Anita Pallenberg fly off for a 3-week holiday in Peru and Brazil.

Keith : "On a trip to South America, Mick and I went to a ranch and wrote Honky Tonk Women because it was into a cowboy thing. All these spades are fantastic cowboys. Beautiful ponies and quarter horses. Miles from anywhere. Just like being in Arizona or something.... We used to see the same couple in the bar, who kept saying to us, Who ARE you? What's it all about? Come on, give us a clue. Just give us a glimmer.  That's when Mick and I started to call ourselves the Glimmer Twins."

In late December 1968, Brian Jones and Suki Poitier start a prolonged stay in Sri Lanka, and 
Anita Pallenberg found herself up the junction with a Keith-shaped bun in the oven.

 

[Keith's mum] Doris Richards : "I didn't know Anita was expecting. Keith simply asked me if I could do some knitting for them. I remember when they came back from South America, Anita pointed to her tummy and said, Marlon's been to Brazil. Keith looked like Jesus Christ then, wearing this big white robe. It seemed like he was floating on air. Anita looked like a schoolgirl when I first met her. They were very lovey-dovey in the beginning. Keith told me they were gypsies. He told me they ate like gypsies and packed like gypsies. In his flat there would be one whole room with clothes on the floor."

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In February 1969: The Rolling Stones resumed recording sessions at Olympic Sound Studios, for their next album, mostly without Brian Jones - starting work on 'You Got the Silver' and 'Gimmie Shelter'. 
In March, the group worked on 'Love in Vain' and 'Sister Morphine', among other songs.

Keith : "Ry Cooder came over with Jack Nitzsche, and we said, Do you want to come along and play? The first thing Mick wanted was to re-cut Sister Morphine with the Stones, which is what we got together. He's also playing mandolin on Love In Vain or ... he's on another track too. He played beautifully, man."

Mick : "Marianne Faithfull wrote a couple of lines [for Sister Morphine]; she always she wrote everything, though. She's always complaining she doesn't get enough money from it. Now she says she should have got it all... (Cousin cocaine...), that's the bit she wrote. ... It's about a man after an accident, really. It's not about being addicted to morphine so much as that. Ry Cooder plays wonderfully on that."

Keith : "For a time we thought the songs that were on that first album by Robert Johnson were the only recordings he had made, and then suddenly around '67 or '68 up comes this second (bootleg) collection that included Love in Vain. Love in Vain was such a beautiful song. Mick and I both loved it, and at the time I was working and playing around with Gram Parsons, and I started searching around for a different way to present it, because if we were going to record it there was no point in trying to copy the Robert Johnson style or ways and styles. We took it a little bit more country, a little bit more formalized, and Mick felt comfortable with that."



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In April 1969, Brian Jones, following another stay at The Priory clinic, starts seeing Anna Wohlin; while Mick Jagger and Keith Richard holiday in Positano, Italy.

Keith : "We wrote some of the songs for Let It Bleed in Positano, south of Naples in Italy. We'd been there before. We knew the place vaguely and someone offered us their house there. It was empty, barren, very cold. Huge fires and we just sat and wrote. Did Midnight Rambler there, Monkey Man and some others."

Mick : "Midnight Rambler is a song Keith and I really wrote together. We were on a holiday in Italy. In this very beautiful hill town, Positano, for a few nights. Why we should write such a dark song in this beautiful, sunny place, I really don't know. We wrote everything there - the tempo changes, everything. And I'm playing the harmonica in these little cafés, and there's Keith with the guitar."

In May 1969, Keith Richard purchases an apartment on Cheyne Walk in London, near Mick Jagger's; while Brian Jones managed to crash his motorcycle into a shop window near his home - the dozy twat!

On 21 May, The Rolling Stones hold their last photo shoot with Brian Jones, near Tower Bridge in London, resulting in the cover used for the compilation album Through The Past, Darkly.

 

Originally issued in September 1969 in a novel octagonal gate-fold sleeve, it featured an epitaph for the recently departed Jones : "With this you see, remember me and bear me in your mind. Let all the world say what they may, speak of me as you find."

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On 28 May, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull are arrested at their Cheyne Walk apartment for possession of cannabis. They are brought to court, charged and released on bail.

On 31 May, Mick Taylor, recent member of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, starts recording with the Rolling Stones, playing on 'Live with Me'.

Ian Stewart : "The band weren't really worried about replacing Brian because in '68-69, they WERE top of the heap. They could have had anybody they wanted, including GOD himself. Clapton came to a recording session. Mick Taylor was very quiet and shy, but they got him playing. He was right. He could play."

Mick Taylor : "Mick was in a side room doing an interview with the International Times, and Jimmy Miller was just sitting there. Keith turned up 3 hours later. It was like a bolt out of the blue, taking me completely by surprise. As soon as it was offered, of course, I wanted the job. It was very loose, nothing was discussed. I just went to the studio and played."

Keith : "Mick Taylor turns up and plays like an angel, and I wasn't going to say no. I thought I'd let the guy develop, because by then I thought I was an old hand - I was all of 25 years old! That's what four years on the road would do to you. You came out at the other end and you were already 50; you'd seen a lot of things."

   

On 7 June 1969, Keith Richard and Anita Pallenberg suffer a car crash near Redlands, while Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull attend the Blind Faith Hyde Park free concert in London.

On 8 June, Mick, Keith and Charlie Watts visit Brian Jones at his home in Cotchford Farm and tell him he has to leave the group. They issue a press statement that 'Brian Jones is leaving the Rolling Stones'.

Mick : "We felt like we had a wooden leg. We wanted to go out and play but Brian couldn't. I don't think that he really wanted to and it was this that really pissed me off. He didn't have any desire to go onstage and play... It was difficult (firing him). Not as difficult as I thought. It's terrible to think about, but when you get there although it's pretty awful, it's not that bad. I wasn't used to kicking people out of the band. But we had to have more than two people. I think Charlie believed in what we did. We had to. It was either stand up or fall over. I elected to stand up."

Jones admitted that he was unable to go on the road again, and left the band saying, "I've left, and if I want to I can come back."

Ian Stewart : "I don't think Brian was all that upset about leaving. He was past being bothered. They were very fair to Brian. He had all the time in the world to get himself together. When the break was made a lot of people rallied round him."

On 13 June, The Rolling Stones held a press conference at Hyde Park, London, announcing the arrival of Mick Taylor and their 5 July Hyde Park Free Concert.

Mick Taylor : "I was pretty sure at first but I felt I wanted a little time to think things over. I examined my own reasons for wanting to do it. And they were for the experience and the musical reasons more than for the recognition and the money. It was so unexpected. It's all a bit strange for me, but I don't really feel a part of the group yet and I won't do until I have been with them for quite a while and played with them on gigs. What they do is a mixture of soul, folk and blues and I like all those things."

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On 2 July 1969, Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm late in the evening. The Rolling Stones are informed while working at Olympic Sound Studios.

Mick Jagger : "I am just so unhappy. I am so shocked and worldless and so sad. Something has gone. I have really lost something. We were like a pack, one family in a way. I just say my prayers for him. I hope he becomes blessed, I hope he is finding peace... and I really want him to."

   

On 5 July, The Rolling Stones performed their first full concert in over two years, headlining a free concert in Hyde Park in London to over 250 000 people, now dedicated to Brian Jones' memory.

Mick Jagger : "Brian will be at the concert. I mean, he'll be there! But it all depends on what you believe in. If you're agnostic, he's just dead, and that's it. When we get there this afternoon, he's gonna be there. I don't believe in Western bereavement. You know, I can't suddenly drape a long black veil and walk the hills. But it is still very upsetting. I want to make it so that Brian's send-off from the world is filled with as much happiness as possible."

Mick Taylor : "Yes, I feel I am a Rolling Stone now. I didn't at first. It wasn't like being part of the group until we did that concert in the park. I've done quite a bit of recording with them now, and I'm playing what I want to play. I don't want to play solos all the time - I like to play songs... we want to do a tour next, probably a world tour in the autumn."



Keith : "I can't stop dreaming about it. It had to be the biggest crowd I've ever seen. They were the stars of the show; like some massive religious gathering on the shores of the Ganges. I was a bit shaky at first but then I started enjoying myself and it was just like it was two years ago."

Mick Taylor : "They certainly never made any comparisons between me and Brian. As far as they were concerned it was a new phase in their career. I was aware of being tested as a personality, but I never felt intimidated as a player. I was a bit overawed by it. I was very tense, very nervous and probably very introverted. They did what they could to make me feel relaxed. On a social level I was very much the new boy of the group. But I always felt we shared a musical rapport. I had to find my own level to become a part of their situation. It took me a long time to find myself within the group. It was a gradual process of fitting in with the band, playing in a way which contributed not only to the sound but to everything."

 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Previously :
173.   It's All Over Now
182.   Little Red Rooster
190.   The Last Time
202.   (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
205.   Get Off Of My Cloud
210b. 19th Nervous Breakdown
215.   Paint It, Black
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

daf

To keep the Glitch King happy, let's have a dip into my emergency 'odds & sods' bag . . .


kalowski

Make no mistake, Jumping Jack Flash is an incredible song. What a sound.

purlieu


daf

Up Yours Enoch!, it's . . .

252.  The Equals - Baby Come Back



From : 30 June – 20 July 1968
Weeks : 3
Flip side : Hold Me Closer
Bonus 1 : Beat Club
Bonus 2 : Live in Paris

The Story So Far : 
QuoteThe Equals were noted as being the first major interracial rock group in the UK and one of the few racially mixed bands of the era. Lead singer Dervan "Derv" Gordon and his brother, Lincoln Gordon were born in Jamaica, and came to the UK as children in the mid-fifties.

Derv Gordon : "When I was about seven years old I came to the U.K. from Jamaica. It was an incredible shock being from the Caribbean. I came in December and I'd never experienced cold before. When the plane landed in London I wanted to go back on the plane and they said, 'Well, no—you can't.' It was so cold. I'd never seen snow before in my life, apart from in movies. What I thought fascinating were all the houses with three or four floors. Never seen that before. In Jamaica you've got bungalows, right? But also what was fascinating was there was smoke coming out of the tops of the buildings. I thought, 'Holy crow—they're on fire! Why are all these buildings on fire?!'"

The group's members met on a Hornsey Rise council estate, where Eddy Grant (Lead Guitar) - originally from Plaisance, British Guiana, and white Londoners Pat Lloyd (Rhythm Guitar) and John Hall (drums) were school friends at Acland Burghley. In 1965, Hall suggested that they form a band.

Derv Gordon : "Eddy Grant and Pat Lloyd and John Hall went to the same school, but myself and my brother went to a different school. We crossed paths because John Hall, the drummer, it was his idea to form a band—not necessarily an interracial band but to form a band. So word got around in the neighborhood. A friend of mine asked me was I interested in joining his band? So I bought a guitar and my brother bought a guitar, and when we turned up for the first meeting, Eddy Grant was there. We'd never met before. So we decided that, 'Yup, it's a good idea we'd form a band.' Eddy Grant was going to be the rhythm guitarist. My brother was going to be the other rhythm guitarist because we wanted two rhythm guitars instead of rhythm guitar and bass. And I wasn't really interested in learning the guitar so I got rid of it, and they decided, 'OK, if you're not going to be the guitarist then you become the lead vocalist.' I said 'That's fine with me!' because I didn't want to learn the guitar."



Derv Gordon : "I went to a youth club one night that was out of our neighborhood and of course we weren't welcome and a skirmish broke out. I saw this guy standing there, so I started to talk to him. I said, 'You know I'm a musician'—you know, as you do after two or three months. He said, 'That's odd because my father just bought me a guitar.' 'Well, we're a guitarist short—would you like to join our band? We could learn as we go along.' That was Pat Lloyd. It wasn't a conscious thing for us to be Black and white, it's just we were Black and white. Later on we were told, 'It's never happened before, it's not going to work. Blacks play with Blacks and whites play with whites.' We thought ... we're friends, we know each other, we like each other. We enjoy doing this together."

At first The Equals performed in London, and gained a following with their apparently limitless energy and a distinct style fusing pop, blues, and R&B plus elements of ska and bluebeat.

Derv Gordon : "We played Chuck Berry and John Lee Hooker and that stuff because we were big fans of bands like the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things—those sort of bands, you know? They were doing cover versions of a lot of rhythm and blues and soul. But we found that whenever we played their songs it just didn't sound right—it didn't feel right. We decided that we're not going to be great blues musicians, we're not going to be great soul artists ... so the best thing to do is to start writing our own material and therefore people can't say 'You're playing it badly!' because it's yours—so whichever way you play it, it's got to be good, right? You can see influences from other artists in our music and from other parts of the world. My father used to play a lot of ska stuff and then blue beat, so there's that little bit of influence in there. Eddy Grant's father was a musician as well—he's from Guyana, so there's this South American thing as well. Influence came from all sorts of directions, really. Then later on we found that writing your own stuff is more profitable because everything belongs to you—all the royalties or whatever. So there you are."

They often opened the bill at shows by visiting American R&B and soul artists such as Bo Diddley, Solomon Burke and Wilson Pickett.

Derv Gordon : "We did what I call our apprenticeship. We had an amateur manager—Lee Shepherd. He was an actor, he knew a lot of people in show business, and he would teach us ... you know, stagecraft. Some of it worked, some of it didn't. One of his great ideas was that I should wear dark glasses. After we were going for about two-and-a-half years we had a gig in a very famous venue at the time, the Bromley Court Hotel. We were supporting—believe it or not—Bo Diddley. The place was absolutely packed. Sweat was pouring from the ceiling, it was so hot. I came onstage with my with my dark glasses and the glasses steamed up and I couldn't see and I fell off the stage! I thought, 'No, this is not going to be my image.' For a start, it's somewhat painful ... But he taught us a lot of stagecraft—not to turn your back to the audience and lots of little things people just take for granted. He'd get us gigs as well, and he knew people in TV and so on and he was a great influence on us."



A neighbour of Grant's, singer Gene Latter, put them in touch with President Records, whose boss Edward Kassner heard them and agreed to sign them.

Derv Gordon : "After about three years ... we were rehearsing one night at Eddy Grant's house and a guy lived next door. His name was Gene Latter and he was a singer. His claim to fame is that he recorded a Rolling Stones song 'Mother's Little Helper' and it got to number 30 or something in Belgium. He knocked on the door and said, 'That song that you're playing—whose is it?' 'Well, it's ours.' 'OK—I like that song. I'm a singer and I would like to record the song. I know a man and he owns a record company... his name is Eddie Kassner. I can get an appointment with him but you would have to come along and perform the song for me, and from that I think I could get a recording contract.' We said, 'Oh wow!' because we'd tried a couple of record companies and sent them tapes but nothing came of it. A couple of days later he said, 'I've got the meeting at President Records in Denmark Street'. We went along and they took us to the basement of the building where President Records was and we set up. We performed 'Baby Come Back,' 'Hold Me Closer' and I think 'I Won't Be There' as well. The guy who owned President—Kassner—he said 'I like your style, I like the way you're playing, and I want your band to record the songs. I need 10 to 12 songs. I'm going to America and it's gonna take about three or four weeks. When I come back, do you think you will have 12 songs?' We looked at each other and in unison, we lied and said 'Yes.' We had about seven songs. We thought, 'Oh sh—holy crow, we'd better write another five songs!'"

Signed to President Records, The Equals released their first single "I Won't Be There" (b/w "Fire") in November 1966.

 


Their first LP "Unequalled Equals" was released in early 1967.

 

This was followed by "Hold Me Closer" in June 1967. It did not do well in the United Kingdom, but after DJs in Europe began playing the flip-side, "Baby Come Back", it went to the number one position in Germany and the Netherlands.

Derv Gordon : "Unequalled Equals got to number eight in the U.K. album charts and it was a big hit on the continent in Germany, Holland, Belgium, and so on. We went off to Germany to do shows like Beat Club, which was a huge TV show shown all over Europe—you had to have a record in the charts in Germany in order to get onto Beat Club. There was a disc jockey in Bremen where Beat Club was recorded, and he had a famous club where the artists that performed on Beat Club would go after recording the show—the usual free drinks and free everything else that you want. On 'Baby Come Back' the A side was 'Hold Me Closer.' 'Baby Come Back' was the B-side. But he thought 'Baby Come Back' was the stronger track and he started playing it. And whatever he played disc jockeys from around Germany would pick up on."

   

"Give Love A Try" (b/w "Another Sad And Lonely Night") was released in October 1967.



Also that month, President released another single by The Equals - "Ethiopia" (b/w "Rough Rider") - due to it's 'bluebeat' sound, it was issued as by The Four Gees . . .

Derv Gordon : "They wouldn't put it out as the Equals because it wasn't considered to be Equals-type material. And that song is actually based on a true story of something that happened to my brother! We were on tour in Germany and after the show you'd be invited to various places, and he got dragged off by this, uh, rather enthusiastic female.  The following morning we were having breakfast and I saw this figure come into the hotel looking somewhat ... disheveled. I said 'Whoa, what happened man?' And he said 'That was a rough ride...' So we wrote 'Rough Rider.' After recording it, we'd get copies and I took it home. We were still living with my parents then. I was playing it and I didn't realize my mother was in the house because it was quite a large house. She came in the room and she called me by my full name: 'Dervin, the words to that song are disgusting!' I was really embarrassed because I'd never used bad language in front of my mother and I had so much respect for her. She said, 'It is absolutely disgusting and I don't think you should ever play that song again!'"

In January 1968, the band released their second album - 'Equals Explosion'.

   

"I Get So Excited" (b/w "The Skies Above") became their first UK chart entry - reaching #44 in February 1968.

   

The subsequent re-issue of "Baby, Come Back" in early 1968 reached the top position in the UK, giving President Records its only number one hit.

Derv Gordon : "'Baby Come Back' got into the German top 10 and was there for quite some time, and then gradually worked its way over to the U.K. So after it was a hit in Germany it took about six months before it became a hit in the U.K. Everything worked in sort of reverse, really."



The group received a gold disc for a combined one million sales of the Baby, Come Back, which had also been released as part of a four track EP, in April 1968, along with : "Is It Right"  /  "Giddy-Up-A Ding Dong"  / and  "Butterfly Red White And Blue"

   

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As well as being top musicians, the band cut a dash in the clothes department, becoming equally known for sporting some right old exotic plumage -

Derv Gordon : "I had purple suits, yellow suits, pink suits ... it was unheard of for a man to be wearing a pink suit in the city. I don't know about the U.S. but in the U.K. if a man wore pink he was considered to be gay, for some odd reason. But being from the Caribbean as well, I just love bright colors. In the Caribbean you have all these beautiful flowers—the women would dress in colorful clothes and the men as well. But when we came to England everything was gray. I asked my dad for a blue suit and he thought I was crazy. He bought me a black suit. I've hated black suits ever since! When I met my wife, I was wearing a mauve suit. I met her outside of a huge train station and she took one look at me and turned around to run away. A guy wearing a mauve suit and what we called Cuban shoes. She just didn't want to walk down the road with me wearing an outfit like that. But that's how we were. I was driving a white sports car as well, which was unusual. From the sports car I bought my first Aston Martin, white with tinted windows which was unusual. Everything about us was unusual."

 

Eddy Grant would also occasionally perform wearing a woman's blonde wig - the crazy cat!

Derv Gordon : "Eddy would have his outfits, my brother Lincoln would have his outfits ... John was a really snappy dresser as well. Even though he was English and brought up in England he was into colors. We never really discussed it. A lot of things we would think alike, you know. In our music, in our clothes, where to go, the types of cars—we were a five-man unit, really. A lot of bands play together but they're not mentally or physically or anything together. But we just seemed to be the right people to be amongst each other. London at the time was 'anything goes.'  In the 50s people would be 'yes sir, no sir,' masters and servants and all that. But in the 60s all that went out—you can be anything you wanted to be, you know? There'd never been a time like it before and there's never been a time like it since."

 

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Cracking straight on, they released their third album - 'Sensational Equals' in the Summer of 1968.

   

In August 1968, "Laurel And Hardy" (b/w "The Guy Who Made Her A Star"), reached #35 in the UK chart.

   

In September 1968, they released their fourth album - 'Equals Supreme'

   

They closed out the year with "Softly, Softly" (b/w "Lonely Rita") which reached #48 in December 1968.

   


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In January 1969, they released another EP, which included : "I Won't Be There"  /  "Don't Throw Your Love Away"  /  "I Can't Let You Go"  /  and "Lonely"

   

Their next single, "Michael And The Slipper Tree" (b/w "Honey Gum"), reached #24 in April 1969

     

The single also featured as the opening song on their fifth album - 'Equals Strike Again'.

   

Their next single, "Viva Bobby Joe", which reached #6 in August 1969, was soon adopted by West Ham football fans to sing "Viva Bobby Moore", and the World Cup Winning Captain was made an honorary member of the group!

Bobby Moore : "I certainly like the Equals - I can't understand why 'Michael and the Slipper tree' wasn't a big hit. But then I'm a fan of pure pop, starting with the Beatles, but I'm not so keen on the clever-clever scientific underground stuff. All I really want is something that takes my ear - something I can sing or whistle along to, in tune, or out of tune."



In September 1969, all five group members were injured in a motorway car accident in Germany. Grant was the most severely injured and as a result left the touring version of the Equals while initially continuing to write songs for them. The band ended the year with "Rub A Dub Dub" (b/w "After The Lights Go Down Low") - which reached #34 in December 1969.

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1970 started badly with a couple of flops : "Soul Brother Clifford" (b/w "Happy Birthday Girl") in April, followed by "I Can See But You Don't Know" (b/w "Gigolo Sam") in June, but they bounced back with "Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys" (b/w "Ain't Got Nothing To Give You") which reached #9 in December 1970.

 

According to Derv Gordon, Kassner did not allow the band to tour the U.S. because of problems that might have arisen because of their multiracial line-up, though the band did tour other parts of the world, including Africa.

 

In 1970, to promote their tour, four "export" singles were released in Zambia without the band's knowledge. These included the topical "Let's Go To The Moon" (b/w "Watching The Girls")  /  "Can't Find A Girl To Love Me" (b/w "I'm A Poor Man")  /  "My Life Ain't Easy" (b/w "Mandy Dandy")  /  and "I'm Gonna Dance All Night" (b/w "Ooh That Kiss")

Derv Gordon : "We toured Zambia a couple of times, and we wanted to tour what was then Rhodesia and now Zimbabwe, but because we were a mixed band they wouldn't issue us a permit. In South Africa our records were not allowed to have photographs of the band on the sleeves. Actually, the South African sleeve for Unequalled Equals is a black-and-white domino.  Somebody had a great sense of humor. The shows were incredible. One we performed for the then-president of Zambia in a huge hall. But most of the gigs were open air and there were people up in trees and on walls and all sorts of places. It was great experience. But to me it was a bit embarrassing, really. As far as I'm concerned, the birthplace of a lot of modern music is Africa. So it was to me quite like taking coal to Newcastle. But people loved it so ... If they love it, what can you say? I was surprised at how successful we were there. I thought, 'These people really know about music, these people really know how to dance.' But it was something different and they enjoyed it. And it was a great privilege to do."

In January 1971, Eddy Grant suffered a collapsed lung and heart infection, following which he returned to Guyana. Although The Equals never charted again after Grant's departure, The Equals continued to record, increasingly influenced by funk and reggae music.

Derv Gordon : "In England you had the teddy boys but they weren't really saying much really. Then the Mod scene started.  I never considered myself to be a Mod, but we had quite a large Mod following, actually. They liked that type of music that we were playing, and that tinge of Caribbean in it as well. The thing with life is that if something is different it doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to sell, and we were not an easy band to sell. Everything was a struggle. But we also built up a reputation as being a very good live performing band. A lot of movement on stage. If you watched a lot of groups from the 60s, they just stood there and didn't move. Their mouths just about moved, their arms just about moved, but we were all over the place. People loved it. And I loved doing it. I cannot stand still and perform. I could never sit and sing a song. I've got to move!"

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"Help Me Simone" (b/w "Love Potion") was released in September 1971, followed by "Stand Up And Be Counted" (b/w "What Would You Do To Survive") in March 1972, and "Have I The Right" ("Lover Let Me Go") in May 1972.

 

Two further chart-dodging flops emerged in 1973 - "Honey Bee" (b/w "Put Some Rock And Roll In Your Soul") in August, and "Diversion" (b/w "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow") in November 1973.

   

"Hang Up My Rock And Roll Shoes" (b/w "She Lives For Today") was released in May 1974, and their final single for President Records was "Georgetown Girl (Yes I)" (b/w "We've Got It All Worked Out"), which was released in May 1975.

The group signed with Mercury and released two singles in 1976 : "Kaywana Sunshine Girl" (b/w "Soul Mother") in May, and "Funky Like A Train" (b/w "If You Didn't Miss Me") in July 1976.

   

In June 1977, they released "Irma La Douce" (b/w "Ire Harry") - the same month as their old record company stuck out "Beautiful Clown" (b/w "Daily Love") - which had originally been recorded with the long departed Eddy Grant in 1971.

In February 1978, now on Ice records, the group released "Red Dog" (b/w "Something Beautiful"), and the album Mystic Syster, before splitting up.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In 1982, Pat Lloyd reformed The Equals and became trademark and copyright owner with Eddy Grant. The band in 1982 consisted of Pat Lloyd, Derv and Lincoln Gordon, plus new bugs - Ronnie Telemacque and Rob Hendry. Lincoln Gordon left the band shortly after its reformation, and in the same year David (Dzal) Martin – who had been a member between 1973 and 1975 – rejoined permanently as lead guitarist.

The group, now on the Moggie label, knocked out one final original single - "No Place To Go" (b/w "Back Streets") - in July 1983. Their final release was an updated remix of Bobby Moore's favourite waxing - "Michael And His Slipper Tree '93" in 1993.

 

In 2017, Derv Gordon left the band, but the group continues with two new members - Decosta Boyce, previously of the funk band Heatwave, on lead vocals, and Mark Haley on keyboards, previously with a touring version of The Kinks and The Bootleg Rubettes.

The Single :
Quote"Baby, Come Back" was written by Eddy Grant, and originally performed and recorded by The Equals.



The song was first released as the B-side to "Hold Me Closer" in 1966, but did not chart. However, after German DJ's flipped the single, it garnered impressive European sales, and the song was re-issued in the UK on 1 May 1968.

   

It reached #1 in the UK Singles Chart on 3 July 1968, spending three weeks at the Top. It also charted at number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Other Versions include :   Baobás (1968)  /  "Non c'è pace per me" by Mario Guarnera (1968)  /  The Rokes (1968)  /  "Volte Meu Bem" by The Brazilian Bitles (1969)  /  Conquerors (1978)  /  Bonnie Raitt (1982)  /  Eddy Grant (1984)  /  Elektric Music (1992)  /  Pato Banton featuring Robin and Ali Campbell (1994)  /  Sam Gooris (1995)  /  Party Animals (2000)  /  Desmond Decker (2001)  /  "Bente kom hjem" by Bamses Venner (2003)  /  Bachman Cummings (2007)  /  Angélique Kidjo (2010)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  23Reasons (2019)

On This Day  :
Quote30 June : Phil Anselmo, (Pantera), born Philip Hansen Anselmo in New Orleans, Louisiana
1 July : John Lennon's 1st full art exhibition (You are Here)
1 July : US, Britain, USSR & 58 nations sign Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
4 July : Arthur Kopit's "Indians" premieres in London
4 July : Radio astronomy satellite Explorer 38 launched
5 July : John Lennon sells his psychedelic painted Rolls-Royce
6 July : Tennis Champion Billie Jean King beats Judy Tegart 9-7, 7-5 to win the first ever prize money offered at Wimbledon (£750)
7 July : The Yardbirds split up
14 July : Three Soviet space program engineers were killed during the prelaunch testing of a Proton-K rocket,
17 July : The Beatles' animated film "Yellow Submarine" premieres in London
17 July : Bloodless coup in Iraq led by General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
18 July : Intel founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon E. Moore
20 July : The first Special Olympics held at Soldier Field in Chicago.
20 July : Joseph Keilberth, German Opera conductor, dies at 60
20 July : Julian Rhind-Tutt, actor, born Julian Alistair Rhind-Tutt in West Drayton, Middlesex
20 July : Kool G Rap, rapper, born Nathaniel Thomas Wilson in Queens, New York
20 July : Jane Asher breaks her engagement with Paul McCartney on live TV

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :
Quote                   

This track is discussed by The Beatles during the Get Back sessions.

daf

With the Short Fat Hairy Dick-a-Dum-Dum, it's . . .

253.  Des O'Connor - I Pretend



From : 21 – 27 July 1968
Weeks : 1
Flip side : Thinking Of You

The Story So Far : 
QuoteDesmond Bernard O'Connor was born in the nude at the age of 0 on 12 January 1932 in Stepney, East London, to Maude (née Bassett) and Harry O'Connor. His mother was Jewish and his father was from Ireland. He was evacuated to Northampton during the Second World War and was briefly a professional footballer with Northampton Town.

After completing his National Service in the Royal Air Force, he worked as a redcoat at Butlins holiday camp in Filey (where he met his first wife Phyllis), and as a shoe salesman at Church's in Northampton, and for United Counties, both on the road and in the office, before entering shoe show business.

On stage, O'Connor starred at the Glasgow Empire, MGM Grand, Las Vegas, the Opera House, Sydney and the O'Keefe Centre, Toronto, and claims to have made more than one thousand solo appearances at the London Palladium.

O'Connor has had a successful career as a singer, recording 36 albums, five of which reached the Top 40 of the UK Albums Chart - don't worry, I'm not touching those with a bargepole!

His first single "Moonlight Swim", (b/w "Sailing Down The Chesapeake Bay"), was released on Columbia records in October 1957. His second Columbia single, "The Glory Of Love" (b/w "It's A Sin To Tell A Lie"), was released in November 1958. He toured with Buddy Holly during Holly's 1958 visit to Britain.

 

Following a few years off to pursue his rib-tickling comic career, he returned in January 1962 with the ethnically suspect 'Big Bad John' parody "Thin Chow Min", (b/w "Twist Drive") on Piccadilly Records.

Stepping aside during the Beat Boom, he resigned with Columbia, and dipped a toe back into the music world in September 1967 with "Careless Hands" (b/w "Danny Boy"). It became his first UK chart entry, reaching #6 in November 1967.

 

In April 1968, he released the single "I Pretend", which somehow crawled up and died at the top of the UK charts - reaching number 1 in July 1968. Boosted by his chart success, perky Des was snapped up to play Buttons in the pantomime Cinderella - Result!

 

In October 1968, "One, Two, Three O'Leary" (b/w "All I Need Is You") bagged the coveted #4 position in November 1968. In 1969, thirteen of O'Connor's variety hours were sold to NBC in the United States, as a summer replacement for the network's Kraft Music Hall. The series was broadcast in more than forty countries.

 

The controversial potty-mouthed single, "Dick-A-Dum-Dum" (b/w "For Love Or Money") caught the public's ear, booting it up to #14 in May 1969. This was followed by "Loneliness", (b/w "With Love"), which reached #18 in November 1969.

 

Between 1977 and 2002, O'Connor presented his own chat show series entitled Des O'Connor Tonight which lasted for seven series on BBC Two and later seventeen on ITV. O'Connor was the first subject of the second incarnation of the long-running television programme This Is Your Life, when the show returned to screens after a five-year absence, produced by Thames Television. He was surprised live on the stage of the London Palladium by Eamonn Andrews in November 1969.

 

"I'll Go On Hoping" (b/w "World Of Dreams") reached #30 in March 1970. His next single, "Something" (b/w "Everybody's Talkin'"), failed to chart in May 1970, but he bounced back with "The Tip Of My Fingers" (b/w "Everyone") - reaching #15 in September 1970 - This proved to be his final solo chart entry.

 

His flop singles for 1971 included "To Be The One You Love" (b/w "Remember My Heart") in May, and "For The Good Times" (b/w "I've Got A Feeling You Don't Care") in November 1971.

Between 1963 and 1971 O'Connor hosted The Des O'Connor Show, a British variety show, for eight series on ITV.

Another couple of stinkers emerged in 1972 - "I Tried To Write A Song" in March - his last single for Columbia, and "Don't Let The Good Life Pass You By" (b/w "I Told You So") - his first single for Pye - in October 1972.

   

in 1973, he appearing in Half a Sixpence, and released "Flash Bang Wallop" as a single. Also released were "There Ya Go" (b/w "Yes, You're Still On My Mind") in July, and "Remember" (b/w "Faded Words") in November 1973.

   

His 1974 singles included "What'll I Do" (b/w "That's Why I Love Her") in May, and "I Do All My Crying In The Rain" (b/w "You Make Me Feel Like Singing A Song") in September 1974.

In the Seventies, O'Connor appeared as a guest on The Morecambe and Wise Show a number of times, becoming a regular comedy 'nemesis' of the TV Comedy double-act after their original foil, Frankie Vaughn, threw his toys out of the pram after a few good-natured ribbings too many. Appearing on their Christmas Shows in 1975, 1976 and 1979. He was the butt of many a joke by Eric Morecambe, being referred to as "Des – short for 'desperate", and "Death O'Connor".

   

Despite the TV exposure, he still couldn't get a sniff of any chart action - dropping a succession of tremendous stiffs, including the following clunkers in 1976 : "I Write The Songs" (b/w "Only You (And You Alone)") in February  /  "What I Did For Love" (From 'A Chorus Line'),  (b/w "I Don't See Me In Your Eyes Anymore") in June  /  and "I Won't Dance" (b/w "Every Day's A Holiday") in September 1976. His TV show, Des O'Connor Entertains, ran for two series between 1974 and 1976 and featured singing, dancing and comedy sketches. During the 70's he also owned several racehorses - probably as a tax dodge!

   

Taking a year off to assess how to respond to the burgeoning Punk Scene, he finally broke his silence in 1978 with three blistering broadsides addressing head-on the crumbing state of the nation and the plight of the troubled kids, including : "I Can't Help Myself (Here Comes The Feeling)" (b/w "Sam") in February, "Chicago" (b/w "It Doesn't Matter Any More") in June, and "Yes There Is A Santa Claus" (b/w "At Christmas") in December 1978.

 

Faced with his failure to smash the state through the pop charts, he retreated, once again, to the safety of television - presenting, between 1977 and 2002, his own chat show series entitled Des O'Connor Tonight - for seven series on BBC Two and another seventeen bum-numbing years of desolation on ITV.

During this time he did manage one final chart entry - performing with Roger Whittaker, the single "Skye Boat Song", which reached #10 in November 1986.

 

Encouraged by this late-flowering success, he decided to sling out any old muck trying to get another hit - including an opportunistic "Neighbours" (b/w "Stay In Love") which reached #100 in April 1988  /  "All I Ask Of You" (b/w "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'") in 1989  /  and the Christmas cash-in "Blue Days" (b/w "The Christmas Song") in December 1992.

From 1992 to 1998 O'Connor presented the game show Take Your Pick. In 1995 and 1997 O'Connor compèred the Royal Variety Performance.

From 2002 to 2006 O'Connor co-hosted Today with Des and Mel opposite Melanie Sykes. The show was a live afternoon light entertainment programme aired on ITV. On 2 January 2007, O'Connor replaced Des Lynam as co-presenter of the Channel 4 game show Countdown with Carol Vorderman. He was replaced by sports presenter Jeff Stelling.

In 2001, O'Connor was presented with the Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards for his contributions to television. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.

The Single :
Quote"I Pretend" was written by Barry Mason and Les Reed, and recorded by comedian Des O'Connor.



Des O'Connor's recording of this track became a number-one hit in the UK Singles Chart in July 1968, and a number-one hit in Ireland the same month. His version was released in the United States on Diamond Records. However, it failed to chart.

   

The only version of the song to chart in the United States was by Mel Carter, whose cover hit #38 on the Easy Listening charts in the Autumn of 1968.

Other Versions include"Ja želim" by Ivo Robić (1968)  /  Slim Whitman (1970)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  Carl de Rome  (2019)  /  Ismail Salih (2020)

On This Day  :
Quote22 July : Virginia Slims - cigarettes specifically marketed at women, introduced by Benson & Hedges
23 July : The PLO hijack their first El Al plane
24 July : New Age Religious order Holy Order of MANS founded in California by Earl Blighton
26 July : United Kingdom announce plans to convert to the metric system by the end of 1975 - good luck with that!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :
Quote           

daf


kalowski

QuoteTaking a year off to assess how to respond to the burgeoning Punk Scene, he finally broke his silence in 1978 with three blistering broadsides addressing head-on the crumbing state of the nation and the plight of the troubled kids
Glorious stuff, daf.

purlieu


daf

Mony, That's What I Want, it's . . .

254.  Tommy James and The Shondells - Mony Mony



From : 28 July – 10 August 1968 (2)
       + 18 – 24 August 1968 (1)
Weeks : 3
Flip side : One Two Three And I Fell
Bonus : Ed Sullivan

The Story So Far : 
QuoteThomas Gregory Jackson was born on 29 April, 1947, in Dayton, Ohio. His family moved to Niles, Michigan. He was a child model at the age of four.

In 1959, at the age of twelve, he formed the band The Echoes, which would eventually evolve into Tom and the Tornadoes. In 1962, while attending Niles Public High School, the group released its first single, "Judy" (b/w "Long Pony Tail") - amazingly, it failed to get to number 1.

 

At some point, possibly around this time, he apparently decided to re-brand himself as Tommy Tadger - sadly this magnificent 'nom de pop' failed to survive the various band permutations over the years, and "The Tadger" never got a chance to enter into the anals of the pop charts.

In 1964, Little Tommy Tadger re-named the band The Shondells in honour of singer Troy Shondell - most famous for his 1961 release "This Time" - and because the name "sounded good".

   

That same year, Alf Ippititimus Jack Douglas, a local DJ at WNIL radio station in Niles, formed his own record label, Snap Records. The Shondells were one of the local bands he recorded at WNIL studios.

At this time, the band included Tommy Jackson (vocals and guitar), Larry Coverdale (lead guitar), Larry Wright (bass), Craig Villeneuve (keyboards) and Jim Payne (drums). Their first single as The Shondells was "Pretty Little Redbird" (b/w "Penny Wishing Well") - which was released on Snap in June 1964.

Their second single was a cover of the Jeff Barry–Ellie Greenwich song "Hanky Panky" - originally a B-side by The Raindrops.

Tommy James : "I was fifteen years old. We went into the studio when we had a small record deal with the company called Snap Records back in my hometown in Niles, Michigan. When I was in high school I was listening to songs I can do, I can record, and I heard this song "Hanky Panky" and I saw what it did to the crowd! Everybody hit the dance floor and they must had around six requests for it! They played it five to six times that night and every time they did, they had a bigger reaction from the crowd! So I said: "Boy, there's one that we gonna do!" and we went to the studio and recorded it. It turns out that it was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich who first recorded it. They called themselves "The Raindrops" and they recorded it for Jubilee Records on the flip side of the record called "That boy John" which was about John Kennedy. After the Kennedy assassination that record was taken of the market, and of course "Hanky Panky" was on it and so nobody ever heard the record.

Released in October 1964, the song sold respectably in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, but as Snap Records had no national distribution, the single failed to chart nationally and the Shondells disbanded in 1965 after its members graduated from high school.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

After first considering taking a job outside of music, Tommy Jackson decided to form a new band, The Koachmen, with Shondells guitarist Larry Coverdale and members of a rival group called The Spinners (not the Detroit or UK group). The Koachmen played a circuit of clubs in the Midwest through the Summer and Autumn of 1965 but returned to Niles in February 1966, after the gigs dried up.

Meanwhile, in 1965, Pittsburgh dance promoter Bob Mack had unearthed the forgotten single "Hanky Panky", playing it at various dance parties, and radio stations there touted it as an "exclusive". Listener response encouraged regular play, and demand soared. Bootleggers responded by printing 80,000 black market copies of the recording, which were sold in Pennsylvania stores.

Tommy James : "I forgot about the record and year and a half later I graduated from high school and I took my band on the road. In the early 1966 we were playing a dumpy little night club in Wisconsin and right in the middle of two weeks the guy goes broke! IRS shut it down and we got all send back home. And that's how the good Lord works, because I went back home and immediately got a call that changed my life. "Hanky Panky" that was over two years old – got bootlegged in Pittsburgh and they sold 80,000 copies in ten days and it was number one! That's when my career started and it was just a miracle."

Tommy Jackson first learned of all this activity in April 1966 after getting a telephone call from Pittsburgh disc jockey "Mad Mike" Metro to come and perform the song. This convinced Jackson to go to Pennsylvania, where he met Bob Mack and Chuck Rubin, who handled the talent bookings for Mack's dance clubs.

   

Before long, all three major music trade papers, Billboard, Cashbox and Record World, were listing "Hanky Panky" as a regional breakout hit. Rubin, who had music industry connections, said it was a good time for the trio to travel to New York City in search of a record deal.

The men made the rounds of the major recording labels, getting initial potential offers from most companies they visited. One label, Roulette Records, gave no initial response because its head, Morris Levy, was out of town until evening. By the next morning, Mack, Rubin, and Tommy Jackson were now mysteriously receiving polite refusals from the major record companies after the enthusiasm for the record the day before.

Tommy James : "We didn't know what in the world was going on, and finally Jerry Wexler over at Atlantic leveled with us and said, 'Look, Morris Levy and Roulette called up all the other record companies and said, "This is my freakin' record."  and scared 'em all away – even the big corporate labels.'"

So their only option would be to sign with Roulette - a label closely associated with organized crime ran by Morris Levy.

Tommy James : "Roulette was the part of Genovese family who were into all kinds of other things... Record business was just one of many that they were in to. I remember when I first joined the Roulette Records, Morris's partner Tommy Eboli was the head of the Genovese family. Several people who came up to Roulette fairly often, four of them as the matter of fact, ended up as the heads of the Genovese family. They made a little secret about it. You know I felt frankly threat joining the Roullete. Basically They weren't paying mechanical royalties, and the good thing that we were making many for other areas of getting royalties like commercials, BMI and radio airplays. But they made it very clear that if we got too loud about it, like go to court or create problems, you know... it could end badly for us."

In April 1966, Tommy Jackson went by himself to make promotional appearances for the Pittsburgh radio station in nightclubs and on local television. He attempted to contact other members of The Shondells, but the useless twats had all moved away, joined the service or had got married and left the music business altogether.

He recruited a quintet out of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, at the Thunderbird Lounge in Greensburg called The Raconteurs, they included : Joe Kessler (guitar), Ron Rosman (keyboards), George Magura (saxophone), Mike Vale (bass), and Johnnie Hogg (drums). This band became the new Shondells.

Tommy James : "I had no group, and I had to put one together really fast. I was in a Greensburg, PA club one night, and I walked up to a group that was playing that I thought was pretty good and asked them if they wanted to be the Shondells. They said yes, and off we went."

It was at this point that he changed his name from Tommy Jackson to Tommy James, and with a new touring group, and National promotion, the single, "Hanky Panky", (b/w "Thunderbolt"), became a No. 1 hit in the US, and reached #38 in the UK in July 1966.

   

Before long, Joe Kessler and Johnnie Hogg were forced to leave after a dispute when many, many, monies were not paid to them by Roulette. They were replaced by Eddie Gray (guitar) and Peter Lucia (drums). Soon after this, saxophonist George Magura departed as well - probably after finding a horses head in his bed!!

   

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now with the 'classic' lineup of Tommy James  -  Eddie Gray  -  Mike Vale  -  Ron Rosman and Pete Lucia, the group recorded a follow-up song to "Hanky Panky".

The only thing James and his new Shondells were sure of when they entered the recording studio for the first time, was that whatever they recorded, it should sound just like "Hanky Panky". Bob Mack told James about another record he found in the same used record bin as "Hanky Panky" - "Say I Am" by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs. Unfortunatley the two songs sounded nothing alike . . . but they decided to record it anyway!

"Say I Am" (b/w "Lots Of Pretty Girls") was released in July 1966. "It's Only Love" (b/w "Ya! Ya!") followed in November 1966.

   

At first, the band played straightforward rock and roll, but they soon became involved in the budding bubblegum music movement.

Tommy James : "We sort of accidentally invented bubblegum with "I Think We're Alone Now." And that was my fault. "I Think We're Alone Now" was brought to me as a mid-tempo ballad and we went in the studio and did a demo of it and I started dum-dum-dum-dum on the guitar and that caught on and became the signature sound for the next several records and the whole album."

 

In April 1967 songwriter Ritchie Cordell gave them the US No. 4 hit "I Think We're Alone Now" (b/w "Gone Gone Gone") and also the US No. 10 hit "Mirage" (b/w "Run, Run, Baby, Run" - Nice work Ritchie!

 

"Out Of The Blue" (b/w "Love's Closing In On Me") was released in January 1968, swiftly followed by "Get Out Now" (b/w "Wish It Were You") in March 1968.

     

Their next single, "Mony Mony", reached No. 3 in the US, and was a No. 1 smash in the UK - spending three non-consecutive weeks at the Top Spot in July and August 1968.

   

Unfortunately, Top of the Pops refused to show the promotional film for the single due to a recent ban on miming. Instead, the record was played over some still photos of the group. They were unable to appear in person in the UK, due to a prior engagement with Democratic Presidential election candidate Hubert Humphrey.

Tommy James : "Yeah, you know, "Mony Mony" was put out in the States just before it did in England and it was one of the big records of the decade in England. Well what happened was, I was supposed to come over and do the "Top of the Pops" but I was asked by the vice-president Hubert Humphrey if I would go on the road with him. So I decided to go on the road with him and I had to cancel my appearance on "Top of the Pops". Well, BBC never really forgave me for that. My next four records weren't played in Britain, as the result, or in Europe. I had number one records over here but no play over there because the BBC was very upset with me. That's how that happened. Gradually, that all works itself out and all of the records ended up being heard and I was happy about that."

Despite losing out to blue-chinned ghoul Richard Nixon, Humphrey later showed his appreciation by writing the liner notes for the Shondells next album.

 

Their next single, "Do Something to Me" (b/w "Somebody Cares"), was released in September 1968, and the group embarked on a brief tour of the UK.

 


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

By now, sensing which way the pop wind was blowing, James was starting to regret being stuck in the bubblegum pigeonhole. Popular music had become album-driven, displacing many performers whose singles had been top sellers. He realized he and the Shondells needed to become an album-oriented group if they were to survive in the business, necessitating a change in their style to psychedelic rock.

Tommy James : "I first became aware of the changing in music scene, especially psychedelic music, in 1967. Strangely enough it started with "Strawberry fields" by the Beatles and I remember listening to AM Top 40 radio, like everybody else. In the February of 1967, I remember I was going to a rehearsal and all the radios played "Happy together" by The Turtles which was about as AM pop as you can get and right after it I heard "Strawberry fields" by the Beatles. That really left an impression on me because I realized that the pop music is being divided into two different categories. Within a month you got Cream, Big Brother and The Holding Company and just a lot of other artists came on the scene. Album sales became to increase and within a year you had FM radio, which up to that time played jazz and classical music, and now played rock n roll! Suddenly there was this huge change in the music and psychedelic sort of became just a part of the landscape. Everybody really changed the record sales from singles to albums."

James was contacted by George Harrison, who was working with a group called Grapefruit at the time. Harrison and the group had written some 'bubblegum' type songs they wanted James to consider recording. Since the group came to a decision to change their musical style, James turned down their offer.

Tommy James : "The following year we were out with Hubert Humphrey on 1968 Presidential campaign and when we left in August of '68 to go on the road with him, I remember distinctly that all the acts on the radio were all "single acts" – the The Rascals, the Beatles of course, Gary Puckett and whole other acts who were selling singles. When I came back, ninety days later, it was all albums – Blood, Sweat & Tears, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Led Zeppelin... It was amazing that in only ninety days the whole industry was turned upside-down and we were very lucky to be working on "Crimson and Clover" at that very moment, because that album allowed us to make that jump from AM Top 40 singles to FM Progressive Album Rock. I don't think that there is any other record, that we ever made, that would allowed us to do that in one shot, like that. I have always been grateful that "Crimson and Clover" became our biggest selling single and also the second half of our career. I think my career could ended right that moment with "Mony Mony" if there wasn't "Crimson and Clover"."

From late 1968, the group began writing their own songs, with James and Lucia penning the psychedelic tinged classic "Crimson and Clover". The song featured the creative use of studio effects such as delay and tremolo.

 

After working out a marketing strategy for their new sound, James visited radio station WLS when the group was in Chicago to play a concert, bringing along a rough cut of "Crimson and Clover" to the station. WLS secretly recorded the music when James played his tape for them. By the time James was out of the building and in the car, its radio was playing the station's dub of the not-yet-finished song. "Crimson and Clover" had to be pressed the way it was heard on the radio station, and the marketing plan was now wasted time and effort.

Despite this, "Crimson and Clover", backed with the bubblegum throwback "Some Kind Of Love", was a huge success in the US, and the group would have two follow-up hits that also reached the Top 10 : "Sweet Cherry Wine" (b/w "Breakaway") In April 1969 . . .



. . . and "Crystal Blue Persuasion" (b/w "I'm Alive") in June 1969.

Tommy James : "It's funny how that song was written. It was just about the time when I became a Christian, so that's really what the song was about. Whoever thought it was about drugs – no it wasn't, it's about becoming a Christian. I took the title from the Book of Revelations in the Bible, reading about the New Jerusalem. The words jumped out at me, and they're not together; they're spread out over three or four verses. But it seemed to go together, it's my favorite of all my songs and one of our most requested."

   

Tommy James : ""Sweet Cherry Wine" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion", which were written immediately after the "Crimson and Clover", sounded like what I believed in that moment and I still do. I was very glad that those records became as big hits as they became, because they were truly very different type of music than what we started out with. You know, we started as the garage band and we ended up selling albums with a lot of different kinds of music. One thing I must say is that we felt our records were like chameleons for a while, and we kept changing the sound! It wasn't that we were trying to do that, it's just we were writing so many different kinds of songs and we just picked the best one of them, and each of them was a snap shot of what we were writing in that moment."

   

The album Cellophane Symphony was released in 1969, and as the band embraced the sounds of psychedelia, they were invited by Artie Kornfeld to perform at the Woodstock concert. Unfortunately, James failed to grasp the importance of the event, and declined the offer.

Tommy James : "Artie was up and asked if you could play at this pig farm up in upstate New York." I said, "What?!?" "Well, they say it's gonna be a lot of people there, and it's gonna be a really important show."

At the time James was in Hawaii and was incredulous about being asked to travel 6,000 miles to play a show on an upstate New York pig farm, telling the Roulette Records secretary, "If I'm not there, start without us, will you please?"

Tommy James : "Of course by that Friday we all knew that we screwed that pretty bad because Woodstock was going to be a historical moment and nobody dreamed that! I really wish that I made the effort gone, but listen, you cannot make up for things."

Picking themselves up, and dusting themselves off, they started all over again with "Ball Of Fire" (b/w "Makin' Good Time") which was released in November 1969. This was followed by "She" (b/w "Loved One") in February 1970 in the UK - the single also featured on their final album, Travellin', released the same year.

Tommy James : "But I must say that the whole hippy movement was always pretty silly. You know, most of the people that were involved in hippy movement were really full of shit! But the bottom line is that music and the times will always be remembered by anybody who loves music, and I'm one of them!"

 

The US-only single, "Gotta Get Back To You" (b/w "Red Rover"), was released in February 1970. The following month, at a concert in Birmingham, Alabama in March 1970, an exhausted James collapsed after coming off stage from a reaction to drugs and was actually pronounced dead. He recovered and moved to the country to rest and recuperate.

One final  single, "Come To Me", (b/w "Talkin' And Signifyin'"), was released in the UK in June 1970. Following this, James decided to leave the band.

 

Now foot-loose and fancy-free, James wrote and produced the No. 7 hit single "Tighter, Tighter" for the group Alive N Kickin'.

His four bandmates carried on for a short while under the name of Hog Heaven, recording two albums in 1970 and a couple of singles in 1971, including : "Theme From A Thought" (b/w "Glass Room')  /  "Wilma Mae" (b/w "Pennsylvania")  /  and "Happy" (b/w "Prayer"). Finding the pickings slim, they disbanded soon afterwards.

 

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James launched a solo career in August 1970 with the single "Ball And Chain" (b/w "Candy Makers"), and was followed by "Adrienne" (b/w "Church Street Soul Revival") in May 1971

His solo success peaked with the Top 4 US hit "Draggin' the Line" (b/w "Bits And Pieces") in August 1971.

 

In 1971 James spent time in Nashville at the recommendation of friends when a "mob war" erupted among organized crime families in New York, and threats against James were intimated due to his connection to Morris Levy

His 1972 UK singles included : "I'm Coming Home" (b/w "Sing Sing Sing") in January, and "Tell 'Em Willie Boy's A Comin" (b/w "Forty Days And Forty Nights") in March 1972.

 

Dipping a tentative toe into County music, he recorded an album with top Nashville musicians - 'My Head, My Bed and My Red Guitar', which received critical acclaim but sold poorly.

In the US, his 1972 singles included : "Cat's Eye In The Window" (b/w "Dark Is The Night") in May, "Love Song" (b/w "Kingston Highway") in July, and "Celebration" (b/w "The Last One To Know") in November 1972.

His 1973 US singles included : "Boo, Boo, Don't 'cha Be Blue" (b/w "Rings And Things") in January, and his final Roulette single - "Calico", (b/w "Hey, My Lady"), which was released in August 1973.

   

He left Roulette Records in 1974, and signed to MCA, releasing the funky single "Glory, Glory" (b/w "Comin' Down") in September 1974.

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In 1976, he signed to Fantasy Records, releasing the album 'In Touch', and the Glam Rock cover single "I Love You Love Me Love" (b/w "Devil Gate Drive") in January, followed by "Tighter, Tighter" in September 1976.

In 1977, he released the album 'Midnight Rider', and the single "Love Is Gonna Find A Way" (b/w "I Don't Love You Anymore") in December of that year.

 

In late 1979, now signed to Millennium Records', he released the single Three Times in Love', (b/w "I Just Wanna Play The Music"), which became a #19 US hit in Early 1980. This was followed in May 1980 by "You Got Me" (b/w "It's All Right (For Now)").

His 1981 US singles included : "You're So Easy To Love" (b/w "Halfway To Heaven") in March, and "Payin' For My Lover's Mistake" (b/w "Lady in White") in September 1981.

He released the single "Say Please" (b/w "Two Times Lover") in the US and UK March 1983 on the Polydor imprint 21 Records, and the album 'Hi-Fi' in 1990 on the independent label Aegis Records.

 

During the 1980s, the group's songs produced major hits for three other artists : Joan Jett & The Blackhearts' version of "Crimson And Clover" reached No. 7 hit in 1982, and Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" and Billy Idol's "Mony Mony" were back-to-back No. 1 singles in November 1987 - effectively eclipsing the original versions in the general public's consciousness.

   

In the mid-1980s, Tommy James began touring in oldies packages with other acts from the 1960s sometimes billed as Tommy Tadger and the Tommy Tadger Band (feat. Tommy Tadger) Tommy James and The Shondells, although he was the group's only original member.

In October 2008 James and the three surviving members of the original Shondells reunited in a New Jersey studio to record again, after 37 years, recording the album, "I Love Christmas". Sadly, original thunder-stick Peter Lucia had died at the age of 39, on January 6 1987, of a heart attack while playing golf.

 

Tommy James : "The relationship with the fans is what makes everything go and work. It's so lucky to have three generations of fans. You reach a point when You feel like it's an extended family! They are the ones who've been putting food on my table for like forty-five years and have stuck with me for all this time. We are lucky because on the concerts we keep making new fans. So I really believe that relationship with the fans is really the only thing that's important. I mean you can have a lot of global records and statistics and everything, but if you don't have relationship with the fans you don't have anything."

The Single :
Quote"Mony Mony" was written by Bobby Bloom, Ritchie Cordell, Bo Gentry and Tommy James, and recorded by Tommy James and the Shondells.



James and Cordell set out to create a party rock single, working out everything except the song's title, which eluded them even after much effort. When they took a break from their creative endeavors on James' apartment terrace, they looked up at the large neon "M.O.N.Y." sign atop the Mutual of New York Building on the New York City skyline from his Manhattan apartment . . .

Tommy James : "I had done the track with Brooks Arthur down at Century Sound. We came up to Roulette and I think we did the keyboards or something and we had this great track that we had no name for and we had written the words to the song. We knew where the background parts were going. It was the night before I was supposed to do the vocal. And we're looking for a "Boney Maronie" or a "Sloopy," some kind of "Louie Louie"-type silly title and everything we came up with sounded so stupid. I put my guitar down and Ritchie and I go out on the balcony and light up a cigarette. We're looking up into the New York sky and first thing my eyes fall on is the Mutual of NY insurance company sign."

     

Tommy James : "It just flashes MONY MONY. I'd been looking at this damn thing for how many years and it never registered and all of a sudden it was like God going, "Here's the title, dopey." Ritchie saw it, too, and we just started laughing. Perfect. I've always thought that if I had looked the other way, it might have been called "Hotel Taft"."

   

A No. 3 hit in in the U.S., "Mony Mony" was the only song by the group to reach the top 20 in the United Kingdom - where it reached No. 1 in August 1968.



Other Versions include :   The Surfers (1968)  /  Armando Peraza (1968)  /  Crni Biseri (1968)  /  The Mohawks (1969)  /  Nighttrain (1969)  /  Celia and The Mutations (1977)  / "Muumi Muumi" by Kontra (1977)  /  Aunt Sally (1978)  /  The Scenics (1979)  /  The Spiders (1980)  /  Billy Idol (1981)  /  The Wigs (1981)  /  Juliet Jonesin Sydän (1987)  /  Amazulu (1987)  /  Sugar Beats (1997)  /  Status Quo (2000)  /  Kingtinued (2001)  /  Osmo's Cosmos (2003)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  LindenStreet 8-bit (2017)

On This Day  :
Quote29 July : Gram Parsons refuses to play with the Byrds in South Africa
29 July : Prudish Incel, Pope Paul VI, declares any artificial forms of birth control prohibited - Spoilsport!
30 July : Sean Moore, drummer (Manic Street Preachers), born Sean Anthony Moore in Pontypool, Wales
30 July : Thames Television goes on the air for the first time, broadcasting to London and the surrounding area.
31 July : African-American character, "Franklin", debuts in the 'Peanuts' comic strip.
31 July : First episode of Dad's Army broadcast on BBC1
31 July : The Beatles close Apple Boutique in London, giving clothes away for free
1 August : The coronation is held of Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei.
3 August : The Bratislava Declaration signed
4 August : Lee Mack, comedian, born Lee Gordon McKillop in Southport, Lancashire
9 August : Gillian Anderson, actress (X-Files), born Gillian Leigh Anderson in Chicago, Illinois
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
20 August : 50,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia in response to the Prague Spring - the rotters!
21 August : Warsaw Pact forces arrest Czech leader Alexander Dubček forcing him to sign the Moscow Protocols
21 August : Dina Carroll, singer, born Geraldine Carroll in Newmarket, Suffolk
22 August : Cynthia Lennon sues John Lennon for divorce on grounds of shagging Yoko Ono
22 August : Pope Paul VI arrives in Bogota, Colombia, during the first Papal visit to south America - Wahey! Cocaine bender Ahoy!
23 August : Ringo temporarily quits The Beatles
24 August : France becomes the nation to detonate a hydrogen bomb - lighting the blue touch-paper on Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific.
24 August : First civil rights protest march held in Northern Ireland - to call attention to discrimination against the Roman Catholic minority.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :
Quote                 

The Culture Bunker

It's a nice little pop song, good sense of excitement going on - the little piano break down in the middle is great. I picked up a compilation of the band some years ago and there's plenty of fab stuff on it. And I did once hear a hilariously bad version of James' 'Draggin' the Line' by Dave Clark, minus the Five, but with 'Friends' instead.

kalowski

QuoteTommy Tadger and the Tommy Tadger Band (feat. Tommy Tadger)
daf, you bloody star.

purlieu

It's a very energetic song, which makes it stand out against some of the pap we've had recently, but the song itself does very little for me.

daf

You're Connor Byrne!, it's . . .

255.  The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Fire



From : 11 – 17 August 1968
Weeks : 1
Flip side : Rest Cure
Bonus 1 : Fanfare - Fire Poem
Bonus 2 : Stereo LP Version
Bonus 3 : Top of the Pops
Bonus 4 : Beat Club

The Story So Far : 
QuoteArthur Wilton Brown was born on 24 June 1942 in Whitby, where his parents ran a guest house.

Arthur Brown : "My father was a self taught jazz pianist, so we had discs of Art Tatum, and the Europeanised version, Charlie Kunz. One of my father's friends was a consummate boogie woogie pianist. He had a handlebar moustache. My father wrote funny limericks. My mother had a beautiful singing voice. My brother and I sang sailors' hornpipes as a duo, before my brother's singing voice disappeared at puberty."

He attended Roundhay Grammar School in Leeds, Yorkshire.

Arthur Brown : "At school, I immersed myself in Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Browning, Tennyson. I read the whole of the historical progression of books from Defoe to Lawrence Sterne etc that lead up to Austen, Bronte, Meredith, D H Lawrence, Trollope, Bram Stoker, – the history of the English novel. I went to see a live production of Murder in the Cathedral. I was astounded at the visual effects they were able to produce. I remember particularly that when the murder happened, the stage – which had been normally lit- was suddenly all bathed in red, with huge shadows. It was some kind of turning point for me. Later I knew I could deal with subjects normally then outside of the province of rock – I could introduce real theatre, with characters."

Brown attended the University of London and the University of Reading. He studied philosophy and law, but he gravitated to music instead, forming his first band, Blues and Brown, while at Reading.

Arthur Brown : "I started my real immersion in music when I went to Reading University, I became the string-bass player for a trad band, but pretty soon I realised what people really liked was me singing. So I took classical singing lessons. While at the University I did a rag record with The Black Diamonds, but we never gigged. I joined a mod band from Fulham, The SW5 – which promptly changed its name to the Arthur Brown Union. We supported John Mayall at Eel Pie Island. And had a residency at a club on Tottenham Court Road. We recorded an album for Claire Francis of Polydor, but I don't know what happened to it."

In 1965 Arthur Brown With The Diamonds released the single: "You'll Be Mine" (b/w "You Don't Know") on the Reading Rag Record Label.

Arthur Brown : "I then went to Paris with The Arthur Brown Set, and we became celebrities in Paris for a year."

After a spell fronting a number of bands in London, Brown then moved to Paris in 1966, where he worked on his theatrical skills. During this period he recorded two songs as The Arthur Brown Set including "Baby You Know What You're Doing"  and "Don't Tell Me" for the Roger Vadim film of the Émile Zola novel La Curée.

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Returning to London around the turn of 1966 to 1967, he was a temporary member of a London-based R&B/soul/ska group The Ramong Sound that would soon become he hit-making soul group The Foundations.

Arthur Brown : "It was when I came back to the UK that I joined The Ramong Sound for a short while. Clem Curtis and I did solo numbers each, and duets, mainly soul material. I was chuffed to be singing with him. The stage act was so outrageous for those times, that we got few gigs. It was only because of the underground venues that I was able to even consider that it was worth putting all my energy into the Crazy World at a time when The Foundations wanted exclusivity for three years, and total commitment."

By the time the Foundations had been signed to Pye Records, Brown had left the group to form his own band, 'The Crazy World of Arthur Brown'.

Arthur Brown : "The Crazy World story began one night in Paris, when the sax player and I were fantasising about the future. I wanted to open a multimedia club. It was to be called, I said, The World of Arthur Brown. However, we both found that a bit tame in the light of some of our antics on stage. So The Crazy World it became. Of course when I got back to the UK after the collapse of the engagements there, there was no money for a club. So, the name was moved onto my next band."

After Paris, he moved into a bohemian boarding house in West Kensington, London.

Arthur Brown : "It turned out that the landlady's daughter was going out with a keyboard player. It was Vincent Crane. Soon we teamed up. He had a small unit which had been called The Word Engine. We tried several gigs together. There was a sax player, Peter Gifford, and a drummer. Vince played the bass pedals. After the first few gigs it became evident that the drummer was suffering from his heroin habit, and in his case was subject to lapses of judgement and was becoming unreliable. So we decided to put an ad in Melody Maker. We got one reply that seemed worth responding to. Drachen Theaker was his name. Tall and good looking with a hard gleam in his eye. Also with a love of jazz , the avant garde, art of all kinds, and an appreciation of the visual flamboyance of my performance. He was also versed in soul music and had a love of Indian and African music. He seemed to fit. It turned out that he had gone for an audition the day before with Jimi Hendrix, but got caught in traffic and missed the appointment. He threw in his lot with us on the spot."

Drachen and Vincent had difficulties with each other from the beginning -

Arthur Brown : "They had a different upbringing and different temperaments. Drachen was always respective of Vincent's musical capacity. He thought Vince was a genius. Vincent thought Drachen couldn't keep time, and was put off that Drachen wasn't more middle class in his way of life. Drachen would often not wash. His feet would stink, and we would have to drive with the windows open. When Vincent, who we later discovered had developed bipolar disease, was in his manic phase his intolerance of Drachen was a real obstacle. I found in Drachen a kindred spirit. We discussed spiritual traditions and art and philosophy at the drop of a hat. This rarely happened with Vincent. The real fact was that Vincent reined in Drachen's wildness with discipline, and Drachen pushed Vincent into areas he would otherwise have ignored."

 

Arthur Brown : "I found a great brightness in Vincent, a witty capacity to improvise. An intelligence that was brilliant. He would undercut himself when depression came on him – but sooner or later he would come out of it. It only got bad after the american tour when he was spiked with LSD and had to go into mental hospital in the middle of the tour. After that, he was never as balanced again."

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In September 1967, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown released their first single - "Devil's Grip" (b/w "Give Him A Flower") which, despite being produced by Pete Townshend and Kit Lambert, failed to chart.


 

Brown quickly earned a reputation for outlandish performances, which included the use of a burning metal helmet, that led to occasional mishaps, such as during an early appearance at the Windsor Festival in 1967, where he wore a colander on his head soaked in methanol. The fuel poured over his head by accident caught fire; a bystander doused the flames by pouring beer on Brown's head, preventing any serious injury. His crazy stage costumes were a sore point for his own producer - Pete Townshend - who shocked the readers of Melody Maker by castigating Brown for "dressing up like a BLOODY TWAT"!

 


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Their next single "Fire" stormed to number 1 in the UK charts for one week in August 1968 - splitting Tommy James and the Shondells time at the Top Spot in two.

 


Shortly after this, the line-up of the band would undergo a re-shuffle  . . .

Arthur Brown : "Nick Greenwood came along after we had recorded "Fire", and the people in the US were firm that we needed a bass and guitar for the tour, in order to be able to rival the US bands. We said bollocks to the guitar, but we'll try a bass player. John Paul Jones was in the picture through Kit Lambert, but somehow that didn't gell. So we held an audition. Nick was the best at the audition. It was a strange event, because all kinds of nuts thought we would take them, because we were supposed to be crazy. One guy who came could only play four notes, but had lights on his hat and guitar. We were not entirely happy with Nick because he could not improvise to jazzy things. But we need the player for the tour. Nick and I got on well, and he stayed in the bass seat for over a year."

Now with a bass player, the classic line up featured : Sean Greenwood (bass) [a.k.a. Nick], Vincent Crane (Hammond organ and piano), and Drachen Theaker (drums).



Their first album, 'The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown', featured a distinctive cover.

Arthur Brown : "For the front cover, as there was no Photoshop in those days, we actually had an artist come and paint both myself and the snazzy glasses I was wearing, with the kind of psychedelic designs that we're then current. It was a brilliant idea. Quite modern tribal. It is at once an abstract design, and a recognisable human face."

 

Managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp were keen to promote Brown as a solo performer, rather than as a member of a group.

Arthur Brown : "You can see from the cover of the album how Lambert and Stamp steered everything away from the group, and into myself. If you look on the album, it doesn't even tell you who plays on it. They wanted me to be a solo artist. They didn't realise that I work best in some kind of group format. They felt Drachen wasn't good enough, and that Vincent was too big for his boots."

Considered a classic of the late-1960s psychedelic scene and a significant influence on progressive rock, the album featured a full side of original songs focused on the horrors of Hell - including : "Prelude - Nightmare", "Come and Buy"  and  "Time / Confusion" - which showcased Crane's organ and brass arrangement as well as Brown's powerful, wide-ranging operatic voice.

Arthur Brown : "The album was a representation of the clarity of the awareness that exists beyond duality. Duality is expressed both in separate deities, the god of Hellfire, and his God brother whose fire is the joy of the human spirit – the song "Come and Buy". It also is expressed in the passage of time. You have to remember that only half the concept was finally put on the album. The whole story looked at the duality involved in society, ancient wisdom, education, sex, religion, and generally all the places we look to find answers."

   

The album's second side contained a mix of original songs, including "Spontaneous Apple Creation" and "Child Of My Kingdom",  plus covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You" and James Brown's "I've Got Money".

Arthur Brown : "The album was designed to have two A sides. You could choose which one you wanted by your mood. If you wanted to enter a dark energy, that was one side. If you wanted to enter a lighter one, that was the other. In fact, "Child of my Kingdom" was to be the last track of the second part of the concept. So, it would have closed one side. It had a generally positive and uplifting feel. As opposed to the darker ending of what became known as the "Fire Suite"."

The album's format reflected a compromise between Brown and the band's producer/manager Kit Lambert - Brown's original intent was to produce an album-long rock opera incorporating the material included on side one, while Lambert wanted to produce a more overtly commercial record, including cover material from the band's stage act.

Arthur Brown : "I must say, a large number of people thought I was crazy, and it was all a loon. Many thought I was a Satanist. Many thought I was claiming to be a real hard-nut. I can only say that I and the others who were involved in creating this musical piece, must have been at least partly successful. Otherwise why would music based on such a strange concept still be popular?"

 

The album was released exclusively in stereo in North America, but both monophonic and stereo versions were available in the UK. Lambert added brass and strings overdubs at Atlantic's request, to mask perceived deficiencies in the percussion tracks.

Arthur Brown : "We had recorded the whole album with just bass, drums, keyboard, and myself. Kit took it over to America, and Atlantic Records said 'Crazy stuff! But, uh, the drummer can't keep time' ... Kit had recorded it on four-track; he'd recorded the drums and the keyboard on the same track. I said, 'We can't possibly redo it all' ... and he said, 'I know what we could do, Arthur. Dub some strings on it.' We found out Vincent could orchestrate it, and that's how it came about ... Kit took two weeks, probably fourteen hours a day to mix it ... after the remix was done, Chris Stamp played us the acetate. He got about four minutes into the acetate, and Drachen leapt across the room, took it off the turntable, smashed it on the wall. Because his drums were buried."

 

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Released in November 1968, "Nightmare" (b/w "What's Happening") failed to replicate the success of "Fire" - which remains their only chart entry.

   

Some copies featured "Music Man" as the b-side - which was actually an alternative mix of "What's Happening".

 

In 1968, original drummer Drachen Theaker was replaced by Carl Palmer from Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds, later a member of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

The band recorded a second album, titled Strangelands, intended for release in 1969 but shelved by their label over concerns that it lacked sales potential. 

Arthur Brown : "Strangelands was entirely improvised, both musically and lyrically. It was done by a group of musicians and myself, with Drachen Theaker on drums and Dennis Taylor on bass. They had both been involved in The Crazy World band. It was a test to see whether the musicians could come up with something worthwhile. The only directions were how I sang. Except that I told them it would involve the city and the country. So it is one of the earliest freestyle albums. We had John Mitchel on keys, who wasn't used to playing rock, so he came up with original musical approaches. Andy Rickell played guitar, and he did so with an inverted funnel on his head. So he became known as Android Funnel. George Khan played electro-sax, varying from jazz to classical, to rock."

Split into four sections - 'Part One: The Country'  /  'Part Two: The City'  /  'Part Three: The Cosmos'  /  and  'Part Four: The Afterlife' - the album featured a more experimental and avant-garde sound that shed the pop sensibilities of the Crazy World's debut.

Arthur Brown : "Giorgio suggested he put the album out on his label Marmalade, but I was already thinking of the next project. So it stayed on the shelf for many years."

Strangelands was eventually released in 1988.

   

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The new lineup practically dissolved on the band's US tour in June 1969. Crane and Palmer left to form Atomic Rooster, Greenwood went on to Khan. Theaker went to join Love and then Rustic Hinge, and Brown with "Puddletown Express".

Arthur Brown : "John Mitchell and George Khan decided to call it a day after the tour. But Drachen, Dennis, and Android, decided to carry on. We found a farmhouse in Puddletown, Dorset, and all moved in and that's how the Puddletown Express was born. That band did many strange gigs over a period of a year, before my publishing royalties ran out."

On occasion he also stripped naked while performing, most notably at the Palermo Pop 70 Festival in Sicily, Italy, July 1970, where he was arrested and deported.

Arthur Brown : "Later, Giorgio put us on a tour in France. This tour was simply outrageous. I performed naked. We lost the communist party one of its seats in Parliament, because they had said our presence would show they had regained control of the students. When they saw our band and me naked the students started rioting all over again. So we were in and out of police stations, and had meetings with me, Giorgio Gomelski, and Philppe and Francoise Mettrani, the leaders of the communist party. It was astonishing!"

 

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In September 1970, Brown would form a new band : Kingdom Come.

Arthur Brown : "Upon the demise of the Puddletown Express, Dennis Taylor, his wife Astrid, my then wife Jeanette, went to Glastonbury. It was there that Dennis said "What ya goin ter do nah?" "Form a new band!" I declared. "What"ll it be called?" said Dennis. "Oh," I said , thinking of Camelot, and King Arthur and me making a come back, "Kingdom." "Why not Kingdom Come, then?" replied Dennis immediately. It was cool, because it suggested the coming of a spiritual perspective, and at the same time had a suggestion of power and destruction- as in the expression "blown to Kingdom Come!" So that was that. Kingdom Come we were."

The three Kingdom Come albums each have a distinctive character. The first, Galactic Zoo Dossier, was a highly complex concept album apparently on the theme of humanity living in a zoo and being controlled by cosmic, religious and commercial forces.

 

Arthur Brown : "The concept behind the album – and stage act – was the confrontation of all the hippie ideals with the actualities of political and police power. It was looking at a spiritual quest in the context of earning money, assassination, wrongful arrests, and it was posed in terms of us all being prisoners in a Galactic Zoo. It was also looking at the fact we are trapped in time by our daily life, while our essential nature is timeless – so we are on a cross – where the horizontal is time and the vertical timelessness. So, in the stage act the image was one of me on a cross. Some have interpreted this as a Christian thing, but it is wider than that."

   

The band appeared at the 1971 Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England and featured in the Glastonbury Fayre film which was shown in cinemas.

Arthur Brown : "It was a return to theatre, but avant-garde theatre. We all wore costumes. And we had a light show projecting images onto a gauze screen that you could lower or raise. You could make us disappear behind images, or appear in the middle of those images – as though we were part of the picture. We had huge cartoon figures that went into the audience. It was a multimedia presentation. The music was heavy. Alice Cooper, with whom we played at the Rainbow Theater, said it was "True Psychodrama!" This was all part of my own intentional inward journey. We lived together and began to take LSD."

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The second album, simply titled Kingdom Come, was loosely based on the theme of water, which Brown had declared four years earlier would be the subject of the second album by the Crazy World.

Arthur Brown : "After a year, we needed to do another album. I wanted to do one about water. So we did. Mentally and emotionally because of the drugs we were in a state of flux. And the album mirrored that."

 

With songs such as "Water", "Traffic Light Song" and "The Teacher", it was musically more conventional than the first, though also stranger in places.

Arthur Brown : "It was less heavy and more playful. There were a series of images that arose from little tales that surfaced in our examination of the psyche. There was the traffic light that couldn't go green. So one of the band became the traffic light and wore that costume. There was the captain of the ship- of consciousness that society was trying to force to come back aground - so I wore a huge boat around me. There was death. There was the school master. There was the Pope and so on, and all these had costumes. The music was going in a direction that Goode didn't identify with. The drummer ran off with the bass- player's wife."

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The third album, Journey, was released in 1973, and featured a 'space rock' sound, with Brown playing the 'Bentley Rhythm Ace' drum machine.

Arthur Brown : "So, by this time another year had passed and we needed to do another album. We decided to do without a drummer altogether and came up with the idea that I should play a drum machine live onstage. Which no one had ever heard of. We wrote new tunes, and had three weeks before we were to do new gigs. Goodge contributed to the writing, but was becoming more and more disenchanted with being on the road. Our first concert was at the London School of Economics. Goodge had decided to call it a day. So we did the concert without a keyboard and got a standing ovation! In the end a visiting synthesiser player from Detroit, Victor Peraino came to a gig and said "I want to play with you guys." We decided to give it a go. We tried it out for a couple of gigs, and it went well."

Featuring "Time Captives", "Superficial Roadblocks", "Spirit of Joy" and "Come Alive",  the album was recorded in Rockfield Studios in Wales.

Arthur Brown : "It was where Dave Edmunds created his hits. He was around when we were recording, and soon he expressed an interest in our project. Though his hits were commercial, he loved experimental things. Soon Dennis Taylor stepped aside to give him a shot at production. It produced a classic album. The musical concept had been to have something with the simplicity of a string quartet, where each instrument is as important as the other. It was also to base it round the capacities of the Bentley Rhythm Ace drum machine, with me at its controls."

 

The stage acts for all three albums featured a wild mix of special effects, dramatic costumes and colourful theatrics, which were sometimes controversial. Brown had declared when Kingdom Come was formed that the intention was to create a multi-media experience and the band always followed that policy. The concepts, the music and the theatrics proved very popular on the university circuit but proved too way-out for a mainstream audience.

Arthur Brown : "We developed a stage act that used yantra, and Blake images, and beautiful interacting geometric shapes. The aim was total art for all the senses. There was movement and dance, painting and colour architecture, as well as music in geometric shapes. It was a total presentation in which all the senses were approached. It was far more abstract than the other two Kingdom Come albums. We wore black velvet jump suits and huge tubular transparent helmets."

Overlooked upon release, Journey has received generally positive retrospective reviews from critics.

Arthur Brown : "The album was rotated on Radio Luxembourg, which played its two sides back to back. We began to play cultural events and open for the Duke Ellington orchestra etc. But, my inner search led me elsewhere, and we disbanded."

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In 1973, he was one of the performers on Robert Calvert's album Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters, together with a number of other Hawkwind members.

He re-emerged in September 1974 with the single "Gypsies" (b/w "Dance"), released on the Gull label. This was followed in May 1975 by a cover of "We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place", backed with "Here I Am".

In 1975, he appeared in the Who's rock opera movie Tommy as "The Priest". Later that year he contributed vocals to the song "The Tell-Tale Heart" on the Poe-based concept album Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Alan Parsons and the Alan Parsons Project (feat. Alan Parsons).

In 1979 and 1980, he collaborated with German electronic musician Klaus Schulze, and can be heard on the albums 'Dune', '...Live...' and 'Time Actor'. Also, In 1979 he moved to Africa and lived there for six months. He directed the Burundi National Orchestra, a nine-piece rock group that played Jimi Hendrix songs and local music.

Arthur Brown : "I did healing work for the wounded in the 1975 war in Israel. I spent a little time at the battle front. I went round Turkey. Then I lived in Africa, and did many things. Then I moved to Texas, got married and concentrated on my family. All the time I did music, but mainly, it was local."

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In the 1980s, Brown moved to Austin, Texas, where his wife came from, and obtained a master's degree in counselling.  In 1992, Brown and fellow counsellor Jim Maxwell founded Healing Songs Therapy, a service that culminated in Brown creating a song for each client about their emotional issues.

Brown returned to England in 1996. In 1997, he re-recorded "Fire" with German band Die Krupps, while in 1998, he provided a spoken-word performance on Bruce Dickinson's The Chemical Wedding album, reading a portion of three poems by William Blake, and appeared as Satan in Dickinson's music video for "Killing Floor".

A further change of musical direction occurred, when he formed an acoustic band and went on tour with Tim Rose in 1999. This band then added Stan Adler (cello and bass) and Malcolm Mortimore (percussion) and produced the album Tantric Lover in 2000. However, the lineup did not last, and Brown put a new band together with guitarist Rikki Patten and multi-instrumentalist Nick Pynn.

In 2001 and 2002, Brown made several guest appearances at live Hawkwind concerts, subsequently touring with them as a guest vocalist. Brown also provided vocals on two of the tracks on Hawkwind's studio album Take Me to Your Leader, released in 2005, including "A Letter to Robert", where Brown recalls a conversation with Robert Calvert.

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The various crazy line-up changes :



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In August 2007, during a concert in Lewes, East Sussex, England, Brown once again set fire to his own hair. While trying to extinguish the flames, Phil Rhodes, a member of the band also caught fire. Brown carried on after the fire was put out; he had however lost a few chunks of hair. Burn on, you Crazy Diamond!

The Single :
Quote"Fire" was written by Arthur Brown and Vincent Crane, and recorded by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.



During live performances and in the black and white promotional television clip, Brown performed the song wearing a burning helmet. The helmet was improvised with a leather skull cap onto which was bolted a metal dish that held lighter fluid or petrol. As the cap was not insulated, the heat from the burning fuel quickly conducted through the fixing bolt to the top of Brown's nut, causing him considerable pain.

The song is an example of the psychedelic rock of the period, though its lack of guitars or bass guitar distinguished it from many of its contemporaries. The lead instrument in this case was Vincent Crane's Hammond organ, augmented by an orchestral section featuring prominent brass. Two studio mixes of "Fire" have been officially released, one in stereo and one in mono. The stereo mix features the additional brass.

Ronnie Wood claims to have played bass on the record, but as there is no bass guitar on the track (only bass pedals), this is incorrect - what do you think Ronnie's thinking about, Arthur - any ideas? . . .

Arthur Brown : "he must have confused it with the BBC session".

Aha, of course - So that clears up that little mystery. Thanks Arthur!

Credit for the composition of "Fire" on the original vinyl single was to Arthur Brown and Vincent Crane only; however, Mike Finesilver and Peter Ker successfully sued for co-credit and royalties based on melodic similarities to their song "Baby, You're a Long Way Behind".

The single reached number one in the United Kingdom in August 1968 and in Canada in October. It also reached #2 on the US Billboard chart, #19 in Australia, #3 in Germany, #4 in France, #6 in the Netherlands, number #7 in Austria . . . I've started, so I'll finish . . . #8 in Ireland, and #18 in Finland. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

     

The original PR sheet for the single amusingly claimed that : "Arthur Brown had all his LEFT shoes stolen on a recent U.S. tour, plus some clothing and 1,000 poems which were future songs in the writing."

Other Versions include :   Mal dei Primitives (1968)  /  "Fuoco" by Popi (1968)  /  "Fuoco" by The Motowns (1968)  /   Deborah Washington (1978)  /  Panama (1978)  /  Lizzy Mercier Descloux (1979)  /  Cirith Ungol (1991)  /  Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1993)  /  Ozzy Osbourne (2005)  /  Arthur Brown (2005)  /  Blues Image (2010)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  Kris G (2014)  /  Miles 8-Bit Metal (2016)  /  The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (2016)  /  Hamburg Blues Band + Special Guest (2017)  /  Bykürius (2019)  /  Cathedral (2019)

On This Day  :
Quote11 August : The Beatles launch "Apple Records" label
11 August : End of main-line steam passenger train service in Britain.
13 August : Greece's dictator, Georgios Papadopoulos, escapes an assassination attempt (car bomb)
14 August : Adrian Lester, English actor, born Adrian Anthony Lester in Birmingham, England
14 August : Darren Clarke, professional golfer, born Darren Christopher Clarke in Dungannon Northern Ireland
15 August : Earthquake in Indonesia's Gulf of Tomini triggers a tsunami - killing more than 200 people on the island of Sulawesi.
17 August : After 8 months of marriage, Mia Farrow is granted a divorce from Frank Sinatra
17 August : Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee authorize the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
17 August : The third and final phase of the Tet Offensive— Phase III— in which Doris gets her Oats!

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famethrowa

I love that it's guitar-free, an unusual thing for the charts until the 90s at least.

Heard it for the first time on the Young Ones, I didn't know it was a real song so I didn't know what was going on!