Podcasts about Steve Marriott

In this episode, we explore the life and career of Kenney Jones, the legendary drummer who played a crucial role in shaping the sound of British rock music during the '60s and '70s. From his early days with The Small Faces, through the raucous years with The Faces, to his tenure with The Who, Jones's rhythmic prowess and adaptability made him a sought-after musician in the evolving rock landscape.Born in Whitechapel, London, Kenney Jones grew up immersed in the vibrant music scene of post-war Britain. Influenced by the burgeoning British Invasion, Jones was drawn to the energetic rhythms of bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, as well as the soulful sounds of American R&B. His early exposure to these genres laid the foundation for his distinctive drumming style, characterized by a blend of precision and flair.In 65, Jones co-founded The Small Faces alongside Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, and Jimmy Winston. The band quickly became emblematic of the Mod movement, delivering hits like "Itchycoo Park," "Tin Soldier," and "All or Nothing." Their music, a fusion of psychedelic rock and soulful melodies, resonated with a generation seeking a fresh, dynamic sound.Jones's drumming provided a solid backbone for the band's intricate arrangements. The Small Faces' influence extended beyond their music, impacting fashion and youth culture in '60s Britain.The departure of Steve Marriott in '69 marked a turning point for the band. The remaining members—Jones, Lane, and keyboardist Ian McLagan—joined forces with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, both from the Jeff Beck Group, to form The Faces. The Faces quickly gained a reputation for their electrifying live performances and unpretentious style. Albums like "A Nod Is As Good As a Wink... to a Blind Horse" and "Ooh La La" captured their energetic spirit and musical prowess. Rod Stewart's simultaneous solo career, particularly the success of "Every Picture Tells a Story" and the hit single "Maggie May," brought additional attention to The Faces. However, this dual focus eventually led to tensions within the group.The Faces' blend of rock, soul, and blues, combined with their charismatic stage presence, earned them a devoted fan base. Tracks like "Stay with Me," "Cindy Incidentally," and "Ooh La La" became anthems of the era, showcasing the band's versatility and Jones's dynamic drumming.Despite their success, internal tensions and the members' individual pursuits led to the band's dissolution in '75. In '78, following the death of drummer Keith Moon, Jones was invited to join The Who. His tenure with the band included contributions to albums like Face Dances and It's Hard, as well as performances at significant events such as Live Aid in '85.While his drumming style differed from Moon's, Jones brought a steady, reliable rhythm to the band's music during a period of transition. His professionalism and experience were invaluable assets to The Who during this time.Beyond his musical endeavours, Jones authored an autobiography titled "Let the Good Times Roll: My Life in Small Faces, Faces, and The Who", providing an in-depth look at his life and career. Kenney Jones's contributions to music have been recognised with inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of both The Small Faces and The Faces. His influence continues to inspire musicians and fans alike, ensuring his legacy endures in the annals of music history.Join us as we delve into the remarkable journey of Kenney Jones, exploring his impact on British rock music and the enduring legacy of The Small Faces, The Faces, and The Who. Whether you're a longtime fan or new to his story, this episode offers a comprehensive look at one of rock's most influential drummers.#thesmallfaces #thefaces #thewho #britishinvasion

No musician is more closely associated with London or left more footprints than Bowie, and you can trace its influence on his life and work (and vice versa) through a series of landmarks from the suburbs to the centre. Author and curator Paul Gorman has just published an annotated street-map – David Bowie's London - listing the places that played a formative role in his world and music, the places he rehearsed, performed, filmed and recorded, the homes of friends and managers, his schools and the addresses where he lived, worked and was photographed, made connections, bought clothes and generally raised the temperature. We talk here about many of those old haunts and the stories attached to them, which include… … mysterious manager Ralph Horton who got him to change his name to Bowie and then vanished from the face of the earth. … the fate of Heddon Street, home of K-West and the Ziggy phone-box.  … Marc Bolan refusing to let him sing at an all-night benefit at Middle Earth. … “the Fairy Godmother of the New Romantics” at the WAG Club. … when Lionel Bart came to Haddon Hall. … Bowie and Steve Marriott auditioning for the Lower Third. … how he levered his way into a Fabulous magazine fashion shoot. … “the end of the age of Showbiz”: performing Chim Chim Cher-ee at the Marquee when at a crossroads between rock and roll and cabaret. … the magical piano at the Trident Studios. … a chance encounter with the otherworldly Vince Taylor whose ‘UFO map' helped inspire the concept of Ziggy Stardust. … the legend of Mr Fish, creator of the man-dress on the cover of The Man Who Sold The World. … the days when people had a white Rolls Royce and matching Alsatian – and “the Great Sarong Scare of the ‘90s”. … and various fringe figures including his art teacher Owen Frampton, Konrads agents Bob Knight and Eric Easton, muse and heartbreaker Hermione Farthingale, producers Shel Talmy and Tony Hatch (“the original Mr Nasty from Opportunity Knocks”) and slum landlord and racketeer Peter Rackman. Order Paul's street-map here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Bowies-London-Paul-Gorman/dp/1068523476Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No musician is more closely associated with London or left more footprints than Bowie, and you can trace its influence on his life and work (and vice versa) through a series of landmarks from the suburbs to the centre. Author and curator Paul Gorman has just published an annotated street-map – David Bowie's London - listing the places that played a formative role in his world and music, the places he rehearsed, performed, filmed and recorded, the homes of friends and managers, his schools and the addresses where he lived, worked and was photographed, made connections, bought clothes and generally raised the temperature. We talk here about many of those old haunts and the stories attached to them, which include… … mysterious manager Ralph Horton who got him to change his name to Bowie and then vanished from the face of the earth. … the fate of Heddon Street, home of K-West and the Ziggy phone-box.  … Marc Bolan refusing to let him sing at an all-night benefit at Middle Earth. … “the Fairy Godmother of the New Romantics” at the WAG Club. … when Lionel Bart came to Haddon Hall. … Bowie and Steve Marriott auditioning for the Lower Third. … how he levered his way into a Fabulous magazine fashion shoot. … “the end of the age of Showbiz”: performing Chim Chim Cher-ee at the Marquee when at a crossroads between rock and roll and cabaret. … the magical piano at the Trident Studios. … a chance encounter with the otherworldly Vince Taylor whose ‘UFO map' helped inspire the concept of Ziggy Stardust. … the legend of Mr Fish, creator of the man-dress on the cover of The Man Who Sold The World. … the days when people had a white Rolls Royce and matching Alsatian – and “the Great Sarong Scare of the ‘90s”. … and various fringe figures including his art teacher Owen Frampton, Konrads agents Bob Knight and Eric Easton, muse and heartbreaker Hermione Farthingale, producers Shel Talmy and Tony Hatch (“the original Mr Nasty from Opportunity Knocks”) and slum landlord and racketeer Peter Rackman. Order Paul's street-map here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Bowies-London-Paul-Gorman/dp/1068523476Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No musician is more closely associated with London or left more footprints than Bowie, and you can trace its influence on his life and work (and vice versa) through a series of landmarks from the suburbs to the centre. Author and curator Paul Gorman has just published an annotated street-map – David Bowie's London - listing the places that played a formative role in his world and music, the places he rehearsed, performed, filmed and recorded, the homes of friends and managers, his schools and the addresses where he lived, worked and was photographed, made connections, bought clothes and generally raised the temperature. We talk here about many of those old haunts and the stories attached to them, which include… … mysterious manager Ralph Horton who got him to change his name to Bowie and then vanished from the face of the earth. … the fate of Heddon Street, home of K-West and the Ziggy phone-box.  … Marc Bolan refusing to let him sing at an all-night benefit at Middle Earth. … “the Fairy Godmother of the New Romantics” at the WAG Club. … when Lionel Bart came to Haddon Hall. … Bowie and Steve Marriott auditioning for the Lower Third. … how he levered his way into a Fabulous magazine fashion shoot. … “the end of the age of Showbiz”: performing Chim Chim Cher-ee at the Marquee when at a crossroads between rock and roll and cabaret. … the magical piano at the Trident Studios. … a chance encounter with the otherworldly Vince Taylor whose ‘UFO map' helped inspire the concept of Ziggy Stardust. … the legend of Mr Fish, creator of the man-dress on the cover of The Man Who Sold The World. … the days when people had a white Rolls Royce and matching Alsatian – and “the Great Sarong Scare of the ‘90s”. … and various fringe figures including his art teacher Owen Frampton, Konrads agents Bob Knight and Eric Easton, muse and heartbreaker Hermione Farthingale, producers Shel Talmy and Tony Hatch (“the original Mr Nasty from Opportunity Knocks”) and slum landlord and racketeer Peter Rackman. Order Paul's street-map here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Bowies-London-Paul-Gorman/dp/1068523476Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tal día como hoy nacieron Steve Marriott (1947), Mark Eitzel (1959), Marty Balin (1942-2018) de Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Josh Kelley (1980) o Jody Watley (1959) de Shalamar. Y mañana será el cumpleaños de Phil Manzanera (1951), guitarrista de Roxy Music, productor de nuestros Antonio Vega o Héroes del Silencio. Y más canciones del momento de Daughter, Daffo, Nada Surf, Steve Forbert, Alberto Ballesteros o The Delfines. CLO PROMO MILEMARKER DISCO 1 PHIL MANZANERA Guantanamera ( ) DISCO 2 SMALL FACES What’ Cha Gonna Do About It) (6) DISCO 3 DAUGHTER Party (Middle Farm Session) (ESCA) CLO LUCAS EXPLORANDO + SEP MARTÍN X (TWITTER) DISCO 4 NADA SURF X Is You (9) DISCO 5 DAFFO Winter Hat (ESCA) DISCO 6 MARK EITZEL No Easy Way Down (1)   CUÑA BUSCAS SAMUSTINA+ INDI PODCAST LUCAS DISCO 7 YASMIN WILLIAMS & Allison De Groot & Tatiana Hardgreaves Hummingbird (LAURA MARLING - 16) DISCO 8 STEVE FORBERT Clouds Rolls Past The Sky (1) DISCO 9 ALBERTO BALLESTEROS Hacemos lo que podemos (ESCA) DISCO 10 The DELINES The Hunting Thoughts (ESCA) Mr. Luck & Ms.Doom PRES. LÍA ALCANDA  DISCO 11 JOSH KELLEY Amazing (1) DISCO 12 JEFFERSON STARSHIP (MARTY BALIN) Count On Me (ESCA) DISCO 13 MARK EITZEL No Easy Way Down (1)Escuchar audio

The best present you can have delivered this Christmas is Jesus. Matthew 2 v1-12 The account of the magi visiting a young Jesus.

What can we learn about sheep and shepherds from the Christmas narrative? Luke 2 v6-18

We're back with our regular audio installment which covers the past, present, and future of the genre we love with the Decibel Geek Times! Aaron Camaro has compiled a thorough list of artists and albums to remember as well as a look to the future with exciting upcoming rock releases! Artists lost that we're remembering this time include Keith Moon, Johnny Ramone, Eddie Money, and more. We also pay tribute to our friends Rockin' Ron Runyon and Bill Chavis (HighVolMusic). A number of great albums are celebrating anniversaries including Aerosmith's 'Pump,' KISS' 'Animalize,' Queensryche's 'The Warning,' Iron Maiden's 'Powerslave,' and a bunch more. Looking ahead, there are great new and upcoming releases by Stryper, Dead Daisies, Fast Eddie Clark, Steve Marriott, Jimi Hendrix estate, and more. It's a bunch of fun rock talk and a bonus for your Geekwire weeks going forward. We hope you enjoy the latest edition of the Decibel Geek Times and SHARE with a friend! Decibel Geek is a proud member of the Pantheon Podcasts family. Contact Us! Rate, Review, and Subscribe in iTunes Join the Facebook Fan Page Follow on Twitter Follow on Instagram E-mail Us Subscribe to our Youtube channel! Support Us! Buy a T-Shirt! Donate to the show! Stream Us! Stitcher Radio Spreaker TuneIn Become a VIP Subscriber! Click HERE for more info! Comment Below Direct Download    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back with our regular audio installment which covers the past, present, and future of the genre we love with the Decibel Geek Times! Aaron Camaro has compiled a thorough list of artists and albums to remember as well as a look to the future with exciting upcoming rock releases! Artists lost that we're remembering this time include Keith Moon, Johnny Ramone, Eddie Money, and more. We also pay tribute to our friends Rockin' Ron Runyon and Bill Chavis (HighVolMusic). A number of great albums are celebrating anniversaries including Aerosmith's 'Pump,' KISS' 'Animalize,' Queensryche's 'The Warning,' Iron Maiden's 'Powerslave,' and a bunch more. Looking ahead, there are great new and upcoming releases by Stryper, Dead Daisies, Fast Eddie Clark, Steve Marriott, Jimi Hendrix estate, and more. It's a bunch of fun rock talk and a bonus for your Geekwire weeks going forward. We hope you enjoy the latest edition of the Decibel Geek Times and SHARE with a friend! Decibel Geek is a proud member of the Pantheon Podcasts family. Contact Us! Rate, Review, and Subscribe in iTunes Join the Facebook Fan Page Follow on Twitter Follow on Instagram E-mail Us Subscribe to our Youtube channel! Support Us! Buy a T-Shirt! Donate to the show! Stream Us! Stitcher Radio Spreaker TuneIn Become a VIP Subscriber! Click HERE for more info! Comment Below Direct Download    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are all leaving a legacy behind, through the relationships and the communications we have. What sort of legacy are you leaving? Some guidance on how to approach leaving a legacy with others.

Andrew Darlington is the author of the brand new book The Small Faces and The Faces: Every Album, Every Song.They started out as a mod fourpiece with Steve Marriott on lead vocals. With hit singles including “Itchycoo Park”, “Lazy Sunday”, “All Or Nothing”, and “Tin Soldier”, they evolved into one of the UK's most successful bands by the end of the 60s. After Marriott left the band to form Humble Pie, the remaining members Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, and Kenney Jones joined forces with singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Ronnie Wood to start a new era as Faces. The band's 1971 album A Nod Is As Good As a Wink... to a Blind Horse, became a worldwide hit, thanks to the single, "Stay with Me". But by the mid-70s, Faces was no more and the members would go on to forge new phases of their careers, most notably Rod Stewart. But the music of the Small Faces and Faces is not forgotten. In the latest book in Sonicbond's On Track series, Darlington lays out the full story of the Small Faces and Faces song-by-song, from the very start, to the very end. Purchase a copy of The Small Faces and The Faces: Every Album, Every Song in the USPurchase a copy of The Small Faces and The Faces: Every Album, Every Song in the UKFollow Andrew Darlington on XFollow Andrew Darlington on Facebook Episode Playlist---------- BookedOnRock.com The Booked On Rock YouTube Channel Follow The Booked On Rock with Eric Senich:FACEBOOKINSTAGRAMTIKTOKX Find Your Nearest Independent Bookstore Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast: thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.com The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” by Crowander / “Last Train North” & “No Mercy” by TrackTribe

Terry Reid shares stories from his incredible career. From his early start in the industry, touring with the Rolling Stones on his 16th birthday, Reid's experiences are nothing short of legendary. The interview features captivating tales of his interactions with icons like Aretha Franklin, Steve Marriott, and Jimmy Page, offering a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the music industry during the golden era. With mentions of John Lennon, Led Zeppelin, Small Faces and Johnny Depp, this engaging conversation is a treasure trove of music history, providing a behind-the-scenes look at one of the greatest unsung hero's of the rock 'n' roll world. If you haven't checked him out yet, once you've listened to this interview, go and check out his music - he's not nicknamed "Superlungs" for nothing! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pacific St Blues & AmericanaSpotlight on Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac Blues BandJune 30, 2024Facebook Contact1. Warren Haynes w/ Grace Potter / Gold Dust Woman 2. New Pornographers / Think About Me 3. John Mayall & the Blues Breakers / Double Trouble4. Long John Baldry / Don't Try to Lay No Boogie Woogie on the The King of Rock and Roll 5. Chris Barber Jazz & Skiffle Group w/ Van Morrison / Goin' Home  6. Alexis Korner (featuring Steve Marriott & Peter Frampton with Keith Richards) / Get Off My Cloud 7. Gary Moore / The Supernatural 8. Fleetwood Mac / Fleetwood Mac9. Amos Milburn / Chick Shack 10. Christian Perfect (McVie) & Chicken Shack / I'd Rather Go Blind 11. Spencer Davis Group feat Stevie Winwood / Gimme Some Lovin'12. Santana / Black Magic Woman 13. Eric Clapton / Man of the World 14. Black Crowes & Jimmy Page / Oh Well15. Led Zeppelin / Black Dog 16. John Mayall feat Mick Taylor / Knockers Step Forward17. Vince Converse & Innes Silbun / Rattlesnake Shake18. Otis Span with Green, McVie, Kirwin / Temperature is Rising (100.2F)

John CorabiHe's back with The Dead Daisies and gearing up for a summer tour to promote the September release of new album, “Light ‘Em Up.” John Corabi joins us to discuss all things Daisies, a memorable meeting with Steve Marriott (and Peter Frampton), partying with Queen and the 30th anniversary of his album with Motley Crue. Created and Produced by Jared Tuten

Juliet and Terence on: Let It Be (4K edition) on Disney+; Touring band woe, but Kiss make millions and millions; Steve Marriott and AI; and Spiritualized in Brighton. {Kevin Harrington}

DAN McCAFFERTY THE VOICE OF NAZARETH  October 14, 1946 – November 8, 2022 'THE LOST INTERVIEWS' EPISODE 9   Scottish Rocker Dan McCafferty has been the quintessential and charismatic frontman for hard rock veterans Nazareth since the band's inception in 1968. McCafferty has fired up live audiences across the globe for 45 years with a heavy dose of undisputed hardcore crooning power. Most recently McCafferty has retired from touring with Nazareth due to a lung disease that makes breathing extremely difficult called COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Dan McCafferty will pass the microphone over to Nazareth's new frontman, 41-year-old Linton Osborne of Rosyth, Scotland. McCafferty will cease touring but will not cease recording in the studio. In fact, McCafferty and Nazareth have recently released a mammoth new hard rock gem entitled ‘Rock ‘N' Roll Telephone.' The album features Dan McCafferty on lead vocals, Pete Agnew on bass, Jimmy Murrison on guitars, and Lee Agnew on drums. It's the band's 23rd studio album and their first since 2011.The CD features 11 original heavy rockers and bluesy ballads. The deluxe digipack edition will include a second disc with two additional studio recordings and five live tracks and will also be available in a double LP gatefold vinyl version. Invigorating and commanding hardcore rock ‘n' roll are back, just the way we remembered it ...It's the rock we all listened to and partied with in high school …I gave ‘Rock ‘N' Roll Telephone' by Nazareth (5) Stars. NAZARETH: Over the years …critics and music aficionados alike have correlated Dan McCafferty's vocal styles with such artists as AC/DC's Brian Johnson, Slade's Noddy Holder, and Humble Pie's Steve Marriott. The band supported Deep Purple on tour during several occasions which led to Purple's bassist Roger Glover producing their third studio album entitled Razamanaz (1973). Subsequent Glover produced albums included … Loud ‘N' Proud (1973) and Rampant (1974). In 1975, while looking for a new direction, Nazareth appointed lead guitarist Many Charlton as their new producer. The band's new order resulted in their biggest selling album to date entitled …Hair of the Dog. The album spawned the self-titled hard rock classic “Hair of the Dog” and their popular Top 40 hit “Love Hurts” (1975 #8 U.S. Billboard Hot 100) a cover track penned by Boudleaux Bryant and first recorded by The Everly Brothers (1960) and Roy Orbison (1961). Nazareth has maintained modest popularity in the U.S. while enjoying significant acceptance in Europe. Across the globe, Nazareth remains a consistent concert-pleaser. Former band members that have contributed to the success of Nazareth were … original drummer Darrell Sweet (1968- 1999, Sweet died in 1999), original lead guitarist Manny Charlton (1968-1990), Zal Cleminson on guitars (1978-1980), Billy Rankin on guitars (1980-83,1990-94), John Locke on keyboards (1980-82, Locke died in 2006), and Ronnie Leahy on keyboards (1994-2002). I had the great pleasure of chatting with legendary Nazareth frontman Dan McCafferty recently about the band's brilliant new CD entitled… ‘Rock ‘N' Roll Telephone' … The inception of Nazareth  October 14, 1946 – November 8, 2022   Support us on PayPal!

De nombreuses stars du rock, dont Robert Plant et David Gilmour, protestent contre la sortie de ‘nouveaux' enregistrements avec la voix générée par l'intelligence artificielle de Steve Marriott, le chanteur des Small Faces et de Humble Pie, aujourd'hui décédé. John Barbata, le batteur qui a joué sur des classiques des Turtles, de Jefferson Starship et de Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, est décédé le 8 mai, il avait 79 ans. La série en huit épisodes de l'émission non scénarisée de téléréalité à propos de Billy Corgan des Smashing Pumpkins a été diffusée pour la première fois sur cette nuit. Paul Weller, ancien leader de The Jam qui s'apprête à sortir 66, son 17e album solo et 28e album studio au total depuis le début de sa carrière en 1977, a rappelé l'impact que les Beatles ont eu sur lui lorsqu'il était enfant. Dans le cadre de la promotion de leur nouveau documentaire, Mike Love et Bruce Johnston des Beach Boys ont parlé du soutien qu'ils ont reçu de la part des Beatles au début de leur carrière et de la santé de l'auteur-compositeur Brian Wilson. Le chanteur d'Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickinson qui fait actuellement la promotion de son nouvel album solo ‘'The Mandrake Project'', s'est confié sur ses expériences difficiles en pensionnat et révèle qu'il s'est fait ‘régulièrement casser la gueule' pendant son adolescence à l'école publique d'Oundle, dans le Nottinghamshire. Mots-Clés : bassiste, Jerry Shirley, droits, nom, groupe, Georgia On My Mind, Hoagy Carmichael, label, chanteur,soul, piste, accompagnement, risible, chanteuse, Mollie Marriott, fille, campagne, diffusion, version, IA, veuve, Toni Marriott, succession, faveur, diffusion, cause, communiqué, fan, coulisses, groupe, famille, mariage, NWA, promoteur, catch, amont, sortie, bande-annonce, rythme , Maman, papa, disque, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis, monde , explorer, gens, trouble neurocognitif, collègue, film, lycée, mémoire, aide médicale, piano, Royaume-Uni, cassette, Pet Sounds, McCartney, John Lennon, soutien, époque, maison de disques, américain, vendre, album, lumière, dortoir, gamins, horrible, résistance, désagréables. --- Classic 21 vous informe des dernières actualités du rock, en Belgique et partout ailleurs. Le Journal du Rock, chaque jour à 7h30 et 18h30. Merci pour votre écoute Pour écouter Classic 21 à tout moment : www.rtbf.be/classic21 Retrouvez tous les contenus de la RTBF sur notre plateforme Auvio.be Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement.

- John Barbata, le batteur des Turtles, est décédé - Robert Plant et David Gilmour soutiennent les enfants de Steve Marriott

We were at the Curzon Mayfair on May 7 for the premier of the rebooted Let It Be in all its burnished finery and came away with a ton of things to unravel, among them … … what we never knew when the film came out 54 years ago. .. seeing it in the shadow of Peter Jackson's Get Back. … how the edit was overtaken by events and the tangled reasons it turned out the way it did. … why Lindsay-Hogg's amphitheatre concept would never have worked. … the divine symbolism of the Beatles v the police. … why it's a perfect social document of late-'60s London. … the band's three-film film contract. … was the world really as distraught about their break-up as the 21st Century assumes? … herringbone coats, red plastic macs, hairy black jackets: why someone should open a Beatles ‘69 clothes emporium. Plus … the noble philosophies of the late Steve Albini expressed in a letter to Nirvana in November 1992. … and what happens when rock stars don't leave wills: Exhibit A - Steve Marriott. Read Steve Albini's letter to Nirvana here: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvanaSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were at the Curzon Mayfair on May 7 for the premier of the rebooted Let It Be in all its burnished finery and came away with a ton of things to unravel, among them … … what we never knew when the film came out 54 years ago. .. seeing it in the shadow of Peter Jackson's Get Back. … how the edit was overtaken by events and the tangled reasons it turned out the way it did. … why Lindsay-Hogg's amphitheatre concept would never have worked. … the divine symbolism of the Beatles v the police. … why it's a perfect social document of late-'60s London. … the band's three-film film contract. … was the world really as distraught about their break-up as the 21st Century assumes? … herringbone coats, red plastic macs, hairy black jackets: why someone should open a Beatles ‘69 clothes emporium. Plus … the noble philosophies of the late Steve Albini expressed in a letter to Nirvana in November 1992. … and what happens when rock stars don't leave wills: Exhibit A - Steve Marriott. Read Steve Albini's letter to Nirvana here: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvanaSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were at the Curzon Mayfair on May 7 for the premier of the rebooted Let It Be in all its burnished finery and came away with a ton of things to unravel, among them … … what we never knew when the film came out 54 years ago. .. seeing it in the shadow of Peter Jackson's Get Back. … how the edit was overtaken by events and the tangled reasons it turned out the way it did. … why Lindsay-Hogg's amphitheatre concept would never have worked. … the divine symbolism of the Beatles v the police. … why it's a perfect social document of late-'60s London. … the band's three-film film contract. … was the world really as distraught about their break-up as the 21st Century assumes? … herringbone coats, red plastic macs, hairy black jackets: why someone should open a Beatles ‘69 clothes emporium. Plus … the noble philosophies of the late Steve Albini expressed in a letter to Nirvana in November 1992. … and what happens when rock stars don't leave wills: Exhibit A - Steve Marriott. Read Steve Albini's letter to Nirvana here: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvanaSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pat Arnold (born Patrica Ann Cole in 1946 in Los Angeles), professionally known as P.P. Arnold, is a soul singer who enjoyed considerable success in the United Kingdom in the 60s and beyond. Born into a family of gospel singers, PP married early, had two children, worked a series of menial jobs until the early 60s, when her friends contacted her with an offer she couldn't refuse. The girls had managed to arrange an audition for them to replace the original Ikettes, the vocal and dancer/singer troupe behind the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. One of the girls didn't show up and PP was asked to fill in. The three girls were offered the job on the spot. PP defied her husband, placed her children in the care of her parents and joined Ike & Tina Turner. She came to England in 1966 on tour in support of The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger was impressed by her soulful voice and convinced Stones manager Andrew Oldham to sign PP to record with his newly founded record label. PP quit the Turner band to establish a solo career. She also had a fling with Jagger. PP enjoyed several major British hits, including songs written for her by Steve Marriott of The Small Faces. She also sung backing vocals on the their hit "Tin Soldier" and toured with them in 68. PP toured with Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Kinks, Blind Faith, David Bowie and others, and scored several hits including a cover version of "The First Cut Is the Deepest" and "Angel of the Morning". After the collapse of record label in the late 60s, PP released two singles produced by Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees, but a planned album with Gibb was never completed. In 1970 she moved to the musical stage, and contributed session musician backing vocals to many notable UK sessions. During these sessions she met bassist Fuzzy Samuels of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They married and had a son. The couple returned to Los Angeles. PP''s marriage to Samuels ended and two weeks after the split, her daughter Debbie was killed in a car accident. She withdrew from public life, re-emerging in 1978 when she was reunited with Barry Gibb and teamed up with Andy Gibb for a duet recording of the Carole King song "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow". She returned to England in 1982 to raise her son there. In 1984 she joined the cast of the musical Starlight Express. She appeared on Roger Waters' album in 1992, providing vocals on the song "Perfect Sense". In 1994 she joined the cast of the award-winning musical Once On This Island. While the production was playing in Birmingham she met leading UK band Ocean Colour Scene, one of the new wave of latter-day mod groups who (like their mentor Paul Weller), idolised The Small Faces. Her friendship with OCS led to her singing the lead vocal, backed by Primal Scream, on a cover of The Small Faces' "Understanding", which was included on a successful Small Faces tribute album. She also worked extensively with Ocean Colour Scene on their 1997 album. This success led to plans for her to record her first solo album in decades, but once again it was not completed. Deciding to put together a new band to promote her material, Arnold joined forces with Chaz Jankel, former pianist with Ian Dury and The Blockheads. This was followed by an invitation to tour widely with Roger Waters. She was a backup vocalist on his 1999–2000 tour as well as the 2006–2008 tour, Dark Side of the Moon Live. In mid 2007 she released her first recorded work for several years. The album is a duet with The Blow Monkeys frontman Dr. Robert and has been met with critical acclaim, as have their live performances at several venues.

In this episode of the LEGENDS: Podcast by All Day Vinyl, host Scott Dudelson explores the life and career of Ricky Byrd, a 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee for his work as guitarist in Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Our conversation spans Byrds early beginnings, the impact of his collaborations with music legends like Steve Marriott, Joan Jett & Roger Daltrey, his inspiring journey to sobriety, the new music he is making on Little Steven Van Zandt's Wicked Cool record label, and the impact Bryd has made as a 'recovery troubadour' We dive deep into Byrd's musical journey, shedding light on his experiences and influences that have helped shape his rock and roll sound. Byrd shares stories from the heart of the New York City rock scene in the 70s and 80s, hanging with Steve Marriott and seeing The Runaways at CBGB's, the destruction his addiction caused and the inspiration he draws for his new music including his new tribute to Jeff Beck, 'Rhapsody in Blues' Byrd shares his personal struggle with addiction and the steps he took towards recovery. His raw and comforting account offers insight into the challenges faced by many people in the music industry and the world at large. This episode extends beyond just a nostalgic journey, providing an insightful lens into the power of resilience and an artist still creating and rocking. -- Thank you for tuning in!  If you like the podcast please rate, subscribe and check out our other episodes with music legends. Thank you!

Avec les Small Faces, Manfred Mann, les Faces et Offspring. En 1964, le manager du groupe britannique The Small Faces, Don Arden, est à la recherche d'un tube. “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” de Manfred Mann avait cartonné quelques semaines plus tôt. Don Arden fait donc appel à Kenny Lynch, compositeur qui va écrire "Sha La La Leee" en compagnie de son ami Mort Schuman. Les Small Faces se transforment en The Faces, avec le départ de Steve Marriott puis l'arrivée de Rod Stewart et Ron Wood (avant les Rolling Stones) en 1969, un de leur succès sera "Ohh La La". Le groupe californien Offspring avec "Self Esteem", en 1994, nous raconte l'histoire d'un personnage masculin qui se fait marcher dessus par sa petite amie parce qu'il n'a pas d'amour-propre. --- Du lundi au vendredi, Fanny Gillard et Laurent Rieppi vous dévoilent l'univers rock, au travers de thèmes comme ceux de l'éducation, des rockers en prison, les objets de la culture rock, les groupes familiaux et leurs déboires, et bien d'autres, chaque matin dans Coffee on the Rocks à 6h30 et rediffusion à 13h30 dans Lunch Around The Clock. Merci pour votre écoute Pour écouter Classic 21 à tout moment : www.rtbf.be/classic21 Retrouvez tous les contenus de la RTBF sur notre plateforme Auvio.be Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement.

Andy is back with another of his eclectic mixes that he likes to call Groovy Soul. Kicking off with the vocal power of Steve Marriott, he brings you a couple of rare tracks from the GWP label; a couple of new ones from Black Pumas and Robert Finley and couple of pure gold belters from Barbara Lynn and Bobby Hebb.There's a classic from Mr Bowie and the end song is for all those sad Liverpool fans!!Tune into new broadcasts of Groovy Soul, LIVE, Sunday 12 - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT.For more info and tracklisting, visit :https://thefaceradio.com/groovy-soul//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reciban un cordial saludo. Desde Cali (Colombia), les habla Sergio Luis López, compartiéndoles un nuevo episodio de "Así la escuché yo..." Uno de los grandes éxitos de la banda británica Led Zeppelin es sin duda alguna su canción de 1969 "Whole lotta love" (Con mucho amor). Así la escuché yo… Poco después surgieron acusaciones insinuando que Led Zeppelin se había basado en otras canciones para crear esta obra musical. Una de estas controversias, indicaba que “Whole lotta love” era una copia de la canción: “You need loving” que la banda británica Small Faces había grabado en 1966. En 1985, Led Zeppelin perdió la demanda instaurada por el músico estadounidense Willie Dixon, quien pudo demostrar que “Whole lotta love” había copiado segmentos de la canción que Dixon escribió en 1962 para el artista estadounidense Muddy Waters con el título “You need love”. Como dato curioso, hay que decir que desde 1985 en los créditos de las grabaciones de “Whole lotta love” se incluye el nombre de Willie Dixon junto al de los miembros de Led Zeppelin como coautor de esta canción. ¿Y tú, conocías el origen de esta canción? Autores: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Paul Jones y John Bonham (británicos) & Willie Dixon (estadounidense) para "Whole lotta love" Autores: Ronnie Lane & Steve Marriott (británicos) para "You need loving" Autor:  Willie Dixon (nombre real William James Dixon, estadounidense) para "You need love" Whole lotta love - Led Zeppelin (1969) "Led Zeppelin II" álbum (1969) Canta: Robert Plant (nombre real Robert Anthony Plant, británico) Led Zeppelin (banda británica) You need loving - Small Faces (1966) "Small Faces" álbum (1966) Small Faces (banda británica) You need love - Muddy Waters (1962) single "You need Little brown bird" (1962) Muddy Waters (nombre real McKinley Morganfield, estadounidense) ___________________ “Así la escuché yo…” Temporada: 7 Episodio: 45 Sergio Productions Cali – Colombia Sergio Luis López Mora

Caroline Stafford is this episode's guest. Caroline and David Stafford are authors of the brand-new book Anymore for Anymore: The Ronnie Lane Story. This is the biography of British singer/songwriter Ronnie Lane. In the 60s he co-founded Small Faces, who recorded several hit singles including “Itchycoo Park”, “Lazy Sunday”, “All or Nothing”, and “Tin Soldier”. But before long, singer Steve Marriott left the band to form Humble Pie, and the band would morph into Faces with Rod Stewart on lead vocals. That lineup would record future classics including “Stay With Me”, “I Know I'm Losing You”, and “Ooh La La”. Anymore for Anymore charts the fortunes of Lane throughout that period, his later work with his band Slim Chance, and his unfortunate early death. Caroline is here to share her experience in writing the book and to talk about the career of the late great Ronnie Lane.Purchase a copy of Anymore for Anymore: The Ronnie Lane Story through Omnibus Press HEREWatch Omnibus Press's animated videos for the Anymore for Anymore book HERE Find out more about Caroline and David Stafford from Omnibus Press HEREListen to a playlist of the Ronnie Lane's music HERE Visit the Booked On Rock Website HERE Watch exclusive video segments from the Booked On Rock podcast HERE Follow The Booked On Rock with Eric Senich:FACEBOOKTWITTERINSTAGRAMTIKTOK Support Your Local Bookstore! Find your nearest independent bookstore HERE Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast: thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.com The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” by Crowander / “Last Train North” & “No Mercy” by TrackTribe

Venerable and selfless band leader talks about moving to Santa Cruz with his band (from Detroit) and playing with Steve Marriott.

In this episode we welcome the very personable Richard Morton Jack to "RBP Towers" and ask him to talk about his monumental new biography of Nick Drake – along with his marvellous Flashback magazine and an audio interview with Small Faces/Humble Pie frontman Steve Marriott. We commence by hearing how Richard was initiated into pop music (and its freakier offshoots) — and how this led him to the arcane cult figures covered in Flashback, not to mention released on his Sunbeam label. From the underground sounds of Sam Gopal, Mad River and Blossom Toes to the exhaustive undertaking that was Nick Drake: The Life was a major gear-shift for Richard, but one that came with the blessing of the Drake estate — and a foreword by Nick's sister Gabrielle. In a long and in-depth conversation, we attempt to make sense of the life, death and musical magic of the troubled troubadour, placing him in the context of producer Joe Boyd's Witchseason stable and hearing about a 1970 Jackie interview with Nick that Richard unearthed during his no-stone-unturned research for the book. A very different legend of '60s/'70s English music can be heard in two clips from Chris Welch's 1985 audio interview with artful rock dodger Steve Marriott. We discuss the Small Faces and then Humble Pie; infamous manager Don Arden and Immediate boss Andrew Loog Oldham; Steve's blue-eyed-soul holler of a voice... and of course 1968's concept album Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. Then we briefly turn our attention to Steve's R&B-boom contemporary Tony McPhee (1944-2023) and the remarkable blues-infused hard rock trio that was the Groundhogs. Finally, Mark and Jasper talk us out with notes on (and quotes from) newly-added library pieces about — among other subjects – Odetta (1963), Marc Bolan (1970), Motörhead (1981), New York's Collective School of Music (2003) and Congolese street musicians Staff Benda Bilili (2009). Pieces discussed: Nick Drake by Jerry Gilbert, Nick Drake in Jackie, In Search of Nick Drake, Nick Drake: Exiled from Heaven, Steve Marriott audio, Tony McPhee audio, Odetta, Marc Bolan, Motörhead, Folk albums, The Who, Terence Trent D'Arby, The Collective and Staff Benda Bilili.

This week on Rockonteurs, Gary and Guy chat to drummer Jerry Shirley from Humble Pie.With some fascinating tales of working with Syd Barrett, John Entwistle, Steve Marriott and many more. He's a lovely fella with some great stories. The Syd Barrett film, ‘Have You Got It Yet' is out now at selected cinemas.Sign up for Rockonteurs Extra to enjoy bonus episodes, video clips, exclusive listener Q&A's and access to early bird tickets for our next live show. Find out more at www.Rockonteurs.comRockonteurs is produced by Ben Jones and Ian Callaghan for Gimme Sugar Productions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rockonteurs, Gary and Guy chat to drummer Jerry Shirley from Humble Pie.With some fascinating tales of working with Syd Barrett, John Entwistle, Steve Marriott and many more. He's a lovely fella with some great stories. The Syd Barrett film, ‘Have You Got It Yet' is out now at selected cinemas.Sign up for Rockonteurs Extra to enjoy bonus episodes, video clips, exclusive listener Q&A's and access to early bird tickets for our next live show. Find out more at www.Rockonteurs.comRockonteurs is produced by Ben Jones and Ian Callaghan for Gimme Sugar Productions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WHAT A CONCEPT!OGDENS' NUT GONE FLAKE by Small Faces (1968, Immediate)You recognize the famous, round, Victorian, snuff tobacco tin cover? It was designed by Nick Twedell and Pete Brown, and announced to Acid heads everywhere that this album was going to be a trip to be reckoned with, and it did not disappoint. Thought by many to be the first Rock n Roll concept record, Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake was the premier British, hot house musical flower from that psychedelic garden, mixing British Music Hall with rocking blues - a recipe that also worked marvelously for Ray Davies and The Kinks. The Artful Dodger-esque ditty Lazy Sunday, brayed by future Humble Pie frontman Steve Marriott, became the big hit, and the album went to #1 in the UK. Side two is dedicated to a single, 19 minute, fairy tale opus, “Happiness Stan”, narrated by comedian Stanley Unwin in his own nonsense language. It recounts the story of a boy named Stan who goes looking for the other half of the moon when it's on the wane.  He rescues a house fly that grows to enormous size, able to transport Stan to the place where he learns the meaning of life. Fanciful? But, of course, and delivered in an insouciant Cockney manner, abetted by processed vocals, keyboards, and guitars. Captain Billy has already covered The Faces with Rod Stewart, which showcases them as an unparalleled R and B outfit, but this thing was the apex of psychedelic “High” Art” - but, never taking itself too seriously. Ps: There was some controversy stirred up by genius entrepreneur manager-producer Andrew Loog Oldham, when he published an ad for the record which parodied The Lord's Prayer - just another aspect of its hallucinogenic conception.

On this day in 1991, aged just 44 years old, we lost the force of nature that was, Steve Marriott! On today's episode you'll hear from his friend and band mate in The Small Faces, Kenney Jones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brand new tracks from The WAEVE & Graham Coxon, Dave Rowntree, Pale Blue Eyes, THUS LOVE & more!+ Loads of #Indie & #Britpop Classics!We remember Tom Verlaine and Steve Marriott.This show was first broadcast on the 30th of January, 2023For more info and tracklisting, visit https://thefaceradio.com/side-effects/.Tune into new broadcasts of Side Effects, LIVE, Monday from 12 - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT on The Face Radio.Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com.Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KurtisPowersInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/kurtispowersMixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/KurtisPowers/Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/kurtispowersTwitter: https://twitter.com/kurtispowersEmail: kurtis@thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's The Muppet Show, yaaaaaaaay! And also two of Heather's favourite things: short men and puppets. In the last episode, we featured two of show business's finest small men, Davy Jones and Steve Marriott. Well, hold onto your potatoes Dr Jones, for this episode we have THREE of show business's finest small men, from the worlds of music, comedy and measuring up to the height requirement for stormtroopers.But more importantly, we also meet The Muppets - a community of weird mutations who are so shunned by society that they're forced to perform humiliating sideshow acts just to survive. Luckily, the bleeding heart liberal elite (ie woke pampered celebrities like Rita Moreno) are on hand to try and lend this spectacle some kind of legitimacy. Something something snowflakes something something millennials.Ahem, sorry, I don't know what came over me.Please like, rate, review and share the podcast, otherwise Peter Sellers will get you.https://twitter.com/retro_tubehttps://shows.acast.com/retrotubeemail: retrotubepodcast@gmail.comTheme Music by Berlin Horse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kenney Jones is rock and roll royalty. He's played drums with the Small Faces, the Faces, The Who and many others. He's in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. He talks about those bands, the British Invasion era, Steve Marriott, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon and much more.My featured song is “I Can't Explain” the live version of my reimagined version of The Who's classic, from the album Greetings From Serbia by my band, Project Grand Slam. Spotify link here.“Dream With Robert Miller”. Click here.---------------------------------------------If you enjoyed the show, please Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Just Click Here.Kenney and I discuss the following:The British Invasion era“Itchycoo Park”Ogdens Nut Gone FlakeSmall Faces“Tin Soldier”FacesRonnie Wood / Rod Stewart“Stay With Me”The Who“You Better You Bet”PP Arnold - “If You Think You're Groovy” BOBBY M AND THE PAISLEY PARADE is Robert's forthcoming album. Featuring 10 new songs and guest appearances by John Helliwell (Supertramp), Tony Carey (Rainbow) and international sitar sensation Deobrat Mishra. "ALBUM OF THE YEAR!" (Indie Shark)"Catchy and engaging with great tunes!" Steve Hackett (Genesis)"This album has life and soul!" John Helliwell (Supertramp)"Bobby M rocks!" Gary Puckett (Union Gap)"Nice cool bluesy album!" Jim McCarty (The Yardbirds)"Robert really really really rocks!" Peter Yarrow (Peter Paul and Mary)"Great songs. Great performances. It's a smash!" David Libert (The Happenings) LIVE AT STEELSTACKS is the 5-song EP by Robert and his band, Project Grand Slam. The release captures the band at the top of their game and shows off the breadth, scope and sound of the band. The EP has been highly praised by musicians and reviewers alike. “Captivating!” Elliott Randall (Steely Dan) “PGS burns down the house!” Tony Carey (Rainbow)“Full of life!” Alan Hewitt (The Moody Blues) “Virtuoso musicians!” (Melody Maker) “Such a great band!” (Hollywood Digest) The album can be streamed on Spotify, Amazon, Apple and all the other streaming platforms, and can be downloaded at The PGS Store.ALL OF THE TIME is Robert's recent single by his band Project Grand Slam. It's a playful, whimsical love song that's light and airy and exudes the happiness and joy of being in love. “Pure bliss…An intimate sound with abundant melodic riches!” Melody Maker/5 Stars) “Ecstasy…One of the best all-around bands working today!” (Pop Icon/5 Stars) “Excellence…A band in full command of their powers!” (Mob York City)Watch the video here. You can stream “All Of The Time” on Spotify, Apple or any of the other streaming platforms. And you can download it here.THE SHAKESPEARE CONCERT is the album by Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, recorded "live" in the studio. It's been praised by Mark Farner (Grand Funk Railroad), Jim Peterik (Ides Of March), Joey Dee (Peppermint Twist), Elliott Randall (Steely Dan) and Sarah Class (British composer). Reviews: “Perfection!”, “5 Stars!”, “Thrilling!”, and “A Masterpiece!”. The album can be streamed on Spotify, Apple and all the other streaming services. You can watch the Highlight Reel HERE. And you can purchase a digital download or autographed CD of the album HERE. THE FALL OF WINTER is Robert's single in collaboration with legendary rocker Jim Peterik of the Ides Of March and formerly with Survivor. Also featuring renowned guitarist Elliott Randall (Steely Dan/Doobie Brothers) and keyboard ace Tony Carey (Joe Cocker/Eric Burden). “A triumph!” (The Indie Source). “Flexes Real Rock Muscle!” (Celebrity Zone). Stream it on Spotify or Apple. Watch the lyric video here. Download it here.FOLLOW YOUR DREAM HANDBOOK is Robert's Amazon #1 Bestseller. It's a combination memoir of his unique musical journey and a step by step how-to follow and succeed at your dream. Available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.  Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with Kenney at:www.kenneyjones.com Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comFacebook - www.facebook.com/followyourdreampodcastEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.comYouTubeLinkedIn Listen to the Follow Your Dream Podcast on these podcast platforms:CastBoxSpotifyApple Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comInstagramPGS Store - www.thePGSstore.comYouTubeFacebook - www.facebook.com/projectgrandslamSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com   

Episode 160 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Flowers in the Rain" by the Move, their transition into ELO, and the career of Roy Wood. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "The Chipmunk Song" by Canned Heat. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Note I say "And on its first broadcast, as George Martin's theme tune for the new station faded, Tony Blackburn reached for a record." -- I should point out that after Martin's theme fades, Blackburn talks over a brief snatch of a piece by Johnny Dankworth. Resources As so many of the episodes recently have had no Mixcloud due to the number of songs by one artist, I've decided to start splitting the mixes of the recordings excerpted in the podcasts into two parts. Here's part one . I had problems uploading part two, but will attempt to get that up shortly. There are not many books about Roy Wood, and I referred to both of the two that seem to exist -- this biography by John van der Kiste, and this album guide by James R Turner.  I also referred to this biography of Jeff Lynne by van der Kiste, The Electric Light Orchestra Story by Bev Bevan, and Mr Big by Don Arden with Mick Wall.  Most of the more comprehensive compilations of the Move's material are out of print, but this single-CD-plus-DVD anthology is the best compilation that's in print. This is the one collection of Wood's solo and Wizzard hits that seems currently in print, and for those who want to investigate further, this cheap box set has the last Move album, the first ELO album, the first Wizzard album, Wood's solo Boulders, and a later Wood solo album, for the price of a single CD. Transcript Before I start, a brief note. This episode deals with organised crime, and so contains some mild descriptions of violence, and also has some mention of mental illness and drug use, though not much of any of those things. And it's probably also important to warn people that towards the end there's some Christmas music, including excerpts of a song that is inescapable at this time of year in the UK, so those who work in retail environments and the like may want to listen to this later, at a point when they're not totally sick of hearing Christmas records. Most of the time, the identity of the party in government doesn't make that much of a difference to people's everyday lives.  At least in Britain, there tends to be a consensus ideology within the limits of which governments of both main parties tend to work. They will make a difference at the margins, and be more or less competent, and more or less conservative or left-wing, more or less liberal or authoritarian, but life will, broadly speaking, continue along much as before for most people. Some will be a little better or worse off, but in general steering the ship of state is a matter of a lot of tiny incremental changes, not of sudden u-turns. But there have been a handful of governments that have made big, noticeable, changes to the structure of society, reforms that for better or worse affect the lives of every person in the country. Since the end of the Second World War there have been two UK governments that made economic changes of this nature. The Labour government under Clement Atlee which came into power in 1945, and which dramatically expanded the welfare state, introduced the National Health Service, and nationalised huge swathes of major industries, created the post-war social democratic consensus which would be kept to with only minor changes by successive governments of both major parties for decades. The next government to make changes to the economy of such a radical nature was the Conservative government which came to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, which started the process of unravelling that social democratic consensus and replacing it with a far more hypercapitalist economic paradigm, which would last for the next several decades. It's entirely possible that the current Conservative government, in leaving the EU, has made a similarly huge change, but we won't know that until we have enough distance from the event to know what long-term changes it's caused. Those are economic changes. Arguably at least as impactful was the Labour government led by Harold Wilson that came to power in 1964, which did not do much to alter the economic consensus, but revolutionised the social order at least as much. Largely because of the influence of Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary for much of that time, between 1964 and the end of the sixties, Britain abolished the death penalty for murder, decriminalised some sex acts between men in private, abolished corporal punishment in prisons, legalised abortion in certain circumstances, and got rid of censorship in the theatre. They also vastly increased spending on education, and made many other changes. By the end of their term, Britain had gone from being a country with laws reflecting a largely conservative, authoritarian, worldview to one whose laws were some of the most liberal in Europe, and society had started changing to match. There were exceptions, though, and that government did make some changes that were illiberal. They brought in increased restrictions on immigration, starting a worrying trend that continues to this day of governments getting ever crueler to immigrants, and they added LSD to the list of illegal drugs. And they brought in the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, banning the pirate stations. We've mentioned pirate radio stations very briefly, but never properly explained them. In Britain, at this point, there was a legal monopoly on broadcasting. Only the BBC could run a radio station in the UK, and thanks to agreements with the Musicians' Union, the BBC could only play a very small amount of recorded music, with everything else having to be live performances or spoken word. And because it had a legal obligation to provide something for everyone, that meant the tiny amount of recorded music that was played on the radio had to cover all genres, meaning that even while Britain was going through the most important changes in its musical history, pop records were limited to an hour or two a week on British radio. Obviously, that wasn't going to last while there was money to be made, and the record companies in particular wanted to have somewhere to showcase their latest releases. At the start of the sixties, Radio Luxembourg had become popular, broadcasting from continental Europe but largely playing shows that had been pre-recorded in London. But of course, that was far enough away that it made listening to the transmissions difficult. But a solution presented itself: [Excerpt: The Fortunes, "Caroline"] Radio Caroline still continues to this day, largely as an Internet-based radio station, but in the mid-sixties it was something rather different. It was one of a handful of radio stations -- the pirate stations -- that broadcast from ships in international waters. The ships would stay three miles off the coast of Britain, close enough for their broadcasts to be clearly heard in much of the country, but outside Britain's territorial waters. They soon became hugely popular, with Radio Caroline and Radio London the two most popular, and introduced DJs like Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travis, Kenny Everett, and John Peel to the airwaves of Britain. The stations ran on bribery and advertising, and if you wanted a record to get into the charts one of the things you had to do was bribe one of the big pirate stations to playlist it, and with this corruption came violence, which came to a head when as we heard in the episode on “Here Comes the Night”, in 1966 Major Oliver Smedley, a failed right-wing politician and one of the directors of Radio Caroline, got a gang of people to board an abandoned sea fort from which a rival station was broadcasting and retrieve some equipment he claimed belonged to him. The next day, Reginald Calvert, the owner of the rival station, went to Smedley's home to confront him, and Smedley shot him dead, claiming self-defence. The jury in Smedley's subsequent trial took only a minute to find him not guilty and award him two hundred and fifty guineas to cover his costs. This was the last straw for the government, which was already concerned that the pirates' transmitters were interfering with emergency services transmissions, and that proper royalties weren't being paid for the music broadcast (though since much of the music was only on there because of payola, this seems a little bit of a moot point).  They introduced legislation which banned anyone in the UK from supplying the pirate ships with records or other supplies, or advertising on the stations. They couldn't do anything about the ships themselves, because they were outside British jurisdiction, but they could make sure that nobody could associate with them while remaining in the UK. The BBC was to regain its monopoly (though in later years some commercial radio stations were allowed to operate). But as well as the stick, they needed the carrot. The pirate stations *had* been filling a real need, and the biggest of them were getting millions of listeners every day. So the arrangements with the Musicians' Union and the record labels were changed, and certain BBC stations were now allowed to play a lot more recorded music per day. I haven't been able to find accurate figures anywhere -- a lot of these things were confidential agreements -- but it seems to have been that the so-called "needle time" rules were substantially relaxed, allowing the BBC to separate what had previously been the Light Programme -- a single radio station that played all kinds of popular music, much of it live performances -- into two radio stations that were each allowed to play as much as twelve hours of recorded music per day, which along with live performances and between-track commentary from DJs was enough to allow a full broadcast schedule. One of these stations, Radio 2, was aimed at older listeners, and to start with mostly had programmes of what we would now refer to as Muzak, mixed in with the pop music of an older generation -- crooners and performers like Englebert Humperdinck. But another, Radio 1, was aimed at a younger audience and explicitly modelled on the pirate stations, and featured many of the DJs who had made their names on those stations. And on its first broadcast, as George Martin's theme tune for the new station faded, Tony Blackburn reached for a record. At different times Blackburn has said either that he was just desperately reaching for whatever record came to hand or that he made a deliberate choice because the record he chose had such a striking opening that it would be the perfect way to start a new station: [Excerpt: Tony Blackburn first radio show into "Flowers in the Rain" by the Move] You may remember me talking in the episode on "Here Comes the Night" about how in 1964 Dick Rowe of Decca, the manager Larry Page, and the publicist and co-owner of Radio Caroline Phil Solomon were all trying to promote something called Brumbeat as the answer to Merseybeat – Brummies, for those who don't know, are people from Birmingham. Brumbeat never took off the way Merseybeat did, but several bands did get a chance to make records, among them Gerry Levene and the Avengers: [Excerpt: Gerry Levene and the Avengers, "Dr. Feelgood"] That was the only single the Avengers made, and the B-side wasn't even them playing, but a bunch of session musicians under the direction of Bert Berns, and the group split up soon afterwards, but several of the members would go on to have rather important careers. According to some sources, one of their early drummers was John Bohnam, who you can be pretty sure will be turning up later in the story, while the drummer on that track was Graeme Edge, who would later go on to co-found the Moody Blues.  But today it's the guitarist we'll be looking at. Roy Wood had started playing music when he was very young -- he'd had drum lessons when he was five years old, the only formal musical tuition he ever had, and he'd played harmonica around working men's clubs as a kid. And as a small child he'd loved classical music, particularly Tchaikovsky and Elgar. But it wasn't until he was twelve that he decided that he wanted to be a guitarist. He went to see the Shadows play live, and was inspired by the sound of Hank Marvin's guitar, which he later described as sounding "like it had been dipped in Dettol or something": [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Apache"] He started begging his parents for a guitar, and got one for his thirteenth birthday -- and by the time he was fourteen he was already in a band, the Falcons, whose members were otherwise eighteen to twenty years old, but who needed a lead guitarist who could play like Marvin. Wood had picked up the guitar almost preternaturally quickly, as he would later pick up every instrument he turned his hand to, and he'd also got the equipment. His friend Jeff Lynne later said "I first saw Roy playing in a church hall in Birmingham and I think his group was called the Falcons. And I could tell he was dead posh because he had a Fender Stratocaster and a Vox AC30 amplifier. The business at the time. I mean, if you've got those, that's it, you're made." It was in the Falcons that Wood had first started trying to write songs, at first instrumentals in the style of the Shadows, but then after the Beatles hit the charts he realised it was possible for band members to write their own material, and started hesitantly trying to write a few actual songs. Wood had moved on from the Falcons to Gerry Levene's band, one of the biggest local bands in Birmingham, when he was sixteen, which is also when he left formal education, dropping out from art school -- he's later said that he wasn't expelled as such, but that he and the school came to a mutual agreement that he wouldn't go back there. And when Gerry Levene and the Avengers fell apart after their one chance at success hadn't worked out, he moved on again to an even bigger band. Mike Sheridan and the Night Riders had had two singles out already, both produced by Cliff Richard's producer Norrie Paramor, and while they hadn't charted they were clearly going places. They needed a new guitarist, and Wood was by far the best of the dozen or so people who auditioned, even though Sheridan was very hesitant at first -- the Night Riders were playing cabaret, and all dressed smartly at all times, and this sixteen-year-old guitarist had turned up wearing clothes made by his sister and ludicrous pointy shoes. He was the odd man out, but he was so good that none of the other players could hold a candle to him, and he was in the Night Riders by the time of their third single, "What a Sweet Thing That Was": [Excerpt: Mike Sheridan and the Night Riders, "What a Sweet Thing That Was"] Sheridan later said "Roy was and still is, in my opinion, an unbelievable talent. As stubborn as a mule and a complete extrovert. Roy changed the group by getting us into harmonies and made us realize there was better material around with more than three chords to play. This was our turning point and we became a group's group and a bigger name." -- though there are few other people who would describe Wood as extroverted, most people describing him as painfully shy off-stage. "What a  Sweet Thing That Was" didn't have any success, and nor did its follow-up, "Here I Stand", which came out in January 1965. But by that point, Wood had got enough of a reputation that he was already starting to guest on records by other bands on the Birmingham scene, like "Pretty Things" by Danny King and the Mayfair Set: [Excerpt: Danny King and the Mayfair Set, "Pretty Things"] After their fourth single was a flop, Mike Sheridan and the Night Riders changed their name to Mike Sheridan's Lot, and the B-side of their first single under the new name was a Roy Wood song, the first time one of his songs was recorded. Unfortunately the song, modelled on "It's Not Unusual" by Tom Jones, didn't come off very well, and Sheridan blamed himself for what everyone was agreed was a lousy sounding record: [Excerpt: Mike Sheridan's Lot, "Make Them Understand"] Mike Sheridan's Lot put out one final single, but the writing was on the wall for the group. Wood left, and soon after so did Sheridan himself. The remaining members regrouped under the name The Idle Race, with Wood's friend Jeff Lynne as their new singer and guitarist. But Wood wouldn't remain without a band for long. He'd recently started hanging out with another band, Carl Wayne and the Vikings, who had also released a couple of singles, on Pye: [Excerpt: Carl Wayne and the Vikings, "What's the Matter Baby"] But like almost every band from Birmingham up to this point, the Vikings' records had done very little, and their drummer had quit, and been replaced by Bev Bevan, who had been in yet another band that had gone nowhere, Denny Laine and the Diplomats, who had released one single under the name of their lead singer Nicky James, featuring the Breakaways, the girl group who would later sing on "Hey Joe", on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Nicky James, "My Colour is Blue"] Bevan had joined Carl Wayne's group, and they'd recorded one track together, a cover version of "My Girl", which was only released in the US, and which sank without a trace: [Excerpt: Carl Wayne and the Vikings, "My Girl"] It was around this time that Wood started hanging around with the Vikings, and they would all complain about how if you were playing the Birmingham circuit you were stuck just playing cover versions, and couldn't do anything more interesting.  They were also becoming more acutely aware of how successful they *could* have been, because one of the Brumbeat bands had become really big. The Moody Blues, a supergroup of players from the best bands in Birmingham who featured Bev Bevan's old bandmate Denny Laine and Wood's old colleague Graeme Edge, had just hit number one with their version of "Go Now": [Excerpt: The Moody Blues, "Go Now"] So they knew the potential for success was there, but they were all feeling trapped. But then Ace Kefford, the bass player for the Vikings, went to see Davy Jones and the Lower Third playing a gig: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and the Lower Third, "You've Got a Habit of Leaving"] Also at the gig was Trevor Burton, the guitarist for Danny King and the Mayfair Set. The two of them got chatting to Davy Jones after the gig, and eventually the future David Bowie told them that the two of them should form their own band if they were feeling constricted in their current groups. They decided to do just that, and they persuaded Carl Wayne from Kefford's band to join them, and got in Wood.  Now they just needed a drummer. Their first choice was John Bonham, the former drummer for Gerry Levene and the Avengers who was now drumming in a band with Kefford's uncle and Nicky James from the Diplomats. But Bonham and Wayne didn't get on, and so Bonham decided to remain in the group he was in, and instead they turned to Bev Bevan, the Vikings' new drummer.  (Of the other two members of the Vikings, one went on to join Mike Sheridan's Lot in place of Wood, before leaving at the same time as Sheridan and being replaced by Lynne, while the other went on to join Mike Sheridan's New Lot, the group Sheridan formed after leaving his old group. The Birmingham beat group scene seems to have only had about as many people as there were bands, with everyone ending up a member of twenty different groups). The new group called themselves the Move, because they were all moving on from other groups, and it was a big move for all of them. Many people advised them not to get together, saying they were better off where they were, or taking on offers they'd got from more successful groups -- Carl Wayne had had an offer from a group called the Spectres, who would later become famous as Status Quo, while Wood had been tempted by Tony Rivers and the Castaways, a group who at the time were signed to Immediate Records, and who did Beach Boys soundalikes and covers: [Excerpt: Tony Rivers and the Castaways, "Girl Don't Tell Me"] Wood was a huge fan of the Beach Boys and would have fit in with Rivers, but decided he'd rather try something truly new. After their first gig, most of the people who had warned against the group changed their minds. Bevan's best friend, Bobby Davis, told Bevan that while he'd disliked all the other groups Bevan had played in, he liked this one. (Davis would later become a famous comedian, and have a top five single himself in the seventies, produced by Jeff Lynne and with Bevan on the drums, under his stage name Jasper Carrott): [Excerpt: Jasper Carrott, "Funky Moped"] Most of their early sets were cover versions, usually of soul and Motown songs, but reworked in the group's unique style. All five of the band could sing, four of them well enough to be lead vocalists in their own right (Bevan would add occasional harmonies or sing novelty numbers) and so they became known for their harmonies -- Wood talked at the time about how he wanted the band to have Beach Boys harmonies but over instruments that sounded like the Who. And while they were mostly doing cover versions live, Wood was busily writing songs. Their first recording session was for local radio, and at that session they did cover versions of songs by Brenda Lee, the Isley Brothers, the Orlons, the Marvelettes, and Betty Everett, but they also performed four songs written by Wood, with each member of the front line taking a lead vocal, like this one with Kefford singing: [Excerpt: The Move, "You're the One I Need"] The group were soon signed by Tony Secunda, the manager of the Moody Blues, who set about trying to get the group as much publicity as possible. While Carl Wayne, as the only member who didn't play an instrument, ended up the lead singer on most of the group's early records, Secunda started promoting Kefford, who was younger and more conventionally attractive than Wayne, and who had originally put the group together, as the face of the group, while Wood was doing most of the heavy lifting with the music. Wood quickly came to dislike performing live, and to wish he could take the same option as Brian Wilson and stay home and write songs and make records while the other four went out and performed, so Kefford and Wayne taking the spotlight from him didn't bother him at the time, but it set the group up for constant conflicts about who was actually the leader of the group. Wood was also uncomfortable with the image that Secunda set up for the group. Secunda decided that the group needed to be promoted as "bad boys", and so he got them to dress up as 1930s gangsters, and got them to do things like smash busts of Hitler, or the Rhodesian dictator Ian Smith, on stage. He got them to smash TVs on stage too, and in one publicity stunt he got them to smash up a car, while strippers took their clothes off nearby -- claiming that this was to show that people were more interested in violence than in sex. Wood, who was a very quiet, unassuming, introvert, didn't like this sort of thing, but went along with it. Secunda got the group a regular slot at the Marquee club, which lasted several months until, in one of Secunda's ideas for publicity, Carl Wayne let off smoke bombs on stage which set fire to the stage. The manager came up to try to stop the fire, and Wayne tossed the manager's wig into the flames, and the group were banned from the club (though the ban was later lifted). In another publicity stunt, at the time of the 1966 General Election, the group were photographed with "Vote Tory" posters, and issued an invitation to Edward Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party and a keen amateur musician, to join them on stage on keyboards. Sir Edward didn't respond to the invitation. All this publicity led to record company interest. Joe Boyd tried to sign the group to Elektra Records, but much as with The Pink Floyd around the same time, Jac Holzman wasn't interested. Instead they signed with a new production company set up by Denny Cordell, the producer of the Moody Blues' hits. The contract they signed was written on the back of a nude model, as yet another of Secunda's publicity schemes. The group's first single, "Night of Fear" was written by Wood and an early sign of his interest in incorporating classical music into rock: [Excerpt: The Move, "Night of Fear"] Secunda claimed in the publicity that that song was inspired by taking bad acid and having a bad trip, but in truth Wood was more inspired by brown ale than by brown acid -- he and Bev Bevan would never do any drugs other than alcohol. Wayne did take acid once, but didn't like it, though Burton and Kefford would become regular users of most drugs that were going. In truth, the song was not about anything more than being woken up in the middle of the night by an unexpected sound and then being unable to get back to sleep because you're scared of what might be out there. The track reached number two on the charts in the UK, being kept off the top by "I'm a Believer" by the Monkees, and was soon followed up by another song which again led to assumptions of drug use. "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" wasn't about grass the substance, but was inspired by a letter to Health and Efficiency, a magazine which claimed to be about the nudist lifestyle as an excuse for printing photos of naked people at a time before pornography laws were liberalised. The letter was from a reader saying that he listened to pop music on the radio because "where I live it's so quiet I can hear the grass grow!" Wood took that line and turned it into the group's next single, which reached number five: [Excerpt: The Move, "I Can Hear the Grass Grow"] Shortly after that, the group played two big gigs at Alexandra Palace. The first was the Fourteen-Hour Technicolor Dream, which we talked about in the Pink Floyd episode. There Wood had one of the biggest thrills of his life when he walked past John Lennon, who saluted him and then turned to a friend and said "He's brilliant!" -- in the seventies Lennon would talk about how Wood was one of his two favourite British songwriters, and would call the Move "the Hollies with balls". The other gig they played at Alexandra Palace was a "Free the Pirates" benefit show, sponsored by Radio Caroline, to protest the imposition of the Marine Broadcasting (Offences) Act.  Despite that, it was, of course, the group's next single that was the first one to be played on Radio One. And that single was also the one which kickstarted Roy Wood's musical ambitions.  The catalyst for this was Tony Visconti. Visconti was a twenty-three-year-old American who had been in the music business since he was sixteen, working the typical kind of jobs that working musicians do, like being for a time a member of a latter-day incarnation of the Crew-Cuts, the white vocal group who had had hits in the fifties with covers of "Sh'Boom" and “Earth Angel”. He'd also recorded two singles as a duo with his wife Siegrid, which had gone nowhere: [Excerpt: Tony and Siegrid, "Up Here"] Visconti had been working for the Richmond Organisation as a staff songwriter when he'd met the Move's producer Denny Cordell. Cordell was in the US to promote a new single he had released with a group called Procol Harum, "A Whiter Shade of Pale", and Visconti became the first American to hear the record, which of course soon became a massive hit: [Excerpt: Procol Harum, "A Whiter Shade of Pale"] While he was in New York, Cordell also wanted to record a backing track for one of his other hit acts, Georgie Fame. He told Visconti that he'd booked several of the best session players around, like the jazz trumpet legend Clark Terry, and thought it would be a fun session. Visconti asked to look at the charts for the song, out of professional interest, and Cordell was confused -- what charts? The musicians would just make up an arrangement, wouldn't they? Visconti asked what he was talking about, and Cordell talked about how you made records -- you just got the musicians to come into the studio, hung around while they smoked a few joints and worked out what they were going to play, and then got on with it. It wouldn't take more than about twelve hours to get a single recorded that way. Visconti was horrified, and explained that that might be how they did things in London, but if Cordell tried to make a record that way in New York, with an eight-piece group of session musicians who charged union scale, and would charge double scale for arranging work on top, then he'd bankrupt himself. Cordell went pale and said that the session was in an hour, what was he going to do? Luckily, Cordell had a copy of the demo with him, and Visconti, who unlike Cordell was a trained musician, quickly sat down and wrote an arrangement for him, sketching out parts for guitar, bass, drums, piano, sax, and trumpets. The resulting arrangement wasn't perfect -- Visconti had to write the whole thing in less than an hour with no piano to hand -- but it was good enough that Cordell's production assistant on the track, Harvey Brooks of the group Electric Flag, who also played bass on the track, could tweak it in the studio, and the track was recorded quickly, saving Cordell a fortune: [Excerpt: Georgie Fame, "Because I Love You"] One of the other reasons Cordell had been in the US was that he was looking for a production assistant to work with him in the UK to help translate his ideas into language the musicians could understand. According to Visconti he said that he was going to try asking Phil Spector to be his assistant, and Artie Butler if Spector said no.  Astonishingly, assuming he did ask them, neither Phil Spector nor Artie Butler (who was the arranger for records like "Leader of the Pack" and "I'm a Believer" among many, many, others, and who around this time was the one who suggested to Louis Armstrong that he should record "What a Wonderful World") wanted to fly over to the UK to work as Denny Cordell's assistant, and so Cordell turned back to Visconti and invited him to come over to the UK. The main reason Cordell needed an assistant was that he had too much work on his hands -- he was currently in the middle of recording albums for three major hit groups -- Procol Harum, The Move, and Manfred Mann -- and he physically couldn't be in multiple studios at once. Visconti's first work for him was on a Manfred Mann session, where they were recording the Randy Newman song "So Long Dad" for their next single. Cordell produced the rhythm track then left for a Procol Harum session, leaving Visconti to guide the group through the overdubs, including all the vocal parts and the lead instruments: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "So Long Dad"] The next Move single, "Flowers in the Rain", was the first one to benefit from Visconti's arrangement ideas. The band had recorded the track, and Cordell had been unhappy with both the song and performance, thinking it was very weak compared to their earlier singles -- not the first time that Cordell would have a difference of opinion with the band, who he thought of as a mediocre pop group, while they thought of themselves as a heavy rock band who were being neutered in the studio by their producer.  In particular, Cordell didn't like that the band fell slightly out of time in the middle eight of the track. He decided to scrap it, and get the band to record something else. Visconti, though, thought the track could be saved. He told Cordell that what they needed to do was to beat the Beatles, by using a combination of instruments they hadn't thought of. He scored for a quartet of wind instruments -- oboe, flute, clarinet, and French horn, in imitation of Mendelssohn: [Excerpt: The Move, "Flowers in the Rain"] And then, to cover up the slight sloppiness on the middle eight, Visconti had the wind instruments on that section recorded at half speed, so when played back at normal speed they'd sound like pixies and distract from the rhythm section: [Excerpt: The Move, "Flowers in the Rain"] Visconti's instincts were right. The single went to number two, kept off the top spot by Englebert Humperdinck, who spent 1967 keeping pretty much every major British band off number one, and thanks in part to it being the first track played on Radio 1, but also because it was one of the biggest hits of 1967, it's been the single of the Move's that's had the most airplay over the years. Unfortunately, none of the band ever saw a penny in royalties from it. It was because of another of Tony Secunda's bright ideas. Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister at the time, was very close to his advisor Marcia Williams, who started out as his secretary, rose to be his main political advisor, and ended up being elevated to the peerage as Baroness Falkender. There were many, many rumours that Williams was corrupt -- rumours that were squashed by both Wilson and Williams frequently issuing libel writs against newspapers that mentioned them -- though it later turned out that at least some of these were the work of Britain's security services, who believed Wilson to be working for the KGB (and indeed Williams had first met Wilson at a dinner with Khrushchev, though Wilson was very much not a Communist) and were trying to destabilise his government as a result. Their personal closeness also led to persistent rumours that Wilson and Williams were having an affair. And Tony Secunda decided that the best way to promote "Flowers in the Rain" was to print a postcard with a cartoon of Wilson and Williams on it, and send it out. Including sticking a copy through the door of ten Downing St, the Prime Minister's official residence. This backfired *spectacularly*. Wilson sued the Move for libel, even though none of them had known of their manager's plans, and as a result of the settlement it became illegal for any publication to print the offending image (though it can easily be found on the Internet now of course), everyone involved with the record was placed under a permanent legal injunction to never discuss the details of the case, and every penny in performance or songwriting royalties the track earned would go to charities of Harold Wilson's choice. In the 1990s newspaper reports said that the group had up to that point lost out on two hundred thousand pounds in royalties as a result of Secunda's stunt, and given the track's status as a perennial favourite, it's likely they've missed out on a similar amount in the decades since. Incidentally, while every member of the band was banned from ever describing the postcard, I'm not, and since Wilson and Williams are now both dead it's unlikely they'll ever sue me. The postcard is a cartoon in the style of Aubrey Beardsley, and shows Wilson as a grotesque naked homunculus sat on a bed, with Williams naked save for a diaphonous nightgown through which can clearly be seen her breasts and genitals, wearing a Marie Antoinette style wig and eyemask and holding a fan coquettishly, while Wilson's wife peers at them through a gap in the curtains. The text reads "Disgusting Depraved Despicable, though Harold maybe is the only way to describe "Flowers in the Rain" The Move, released Aug 23" The stunt caused huge animosity between the group and Secunda, not only because of the money they lost but also because despite Secunda's attempts to associate them with the Conservative party the previous year, Ace Kefford was upset at an attack on the Labour leader -- his grandfather was a lifelong member of the Labour party and Kefford didn't like the idea of upsetting him. The record also had a knock-on effect on another band. Wood had given the song "Here We Go Round the Lemon Tree" to his friends in The Idle Race, the band that had previously been Mike Sheridan and the Night Riders, and they'd planned to use their version as their first single: [Excerpt: The Idle Race, "Here We Go Round the Lemon Tree"] But the Move had also used the song as the B-side for their own single, and "Flowers in the Rain" was so popular that the B-side also got a lot of airplay. The Idle Race didn't want to be thought of as a covers act, and so "Lemon Tree" was pulled at the last minute and replaced by "Impostors of Life's Magazine", by the group's guitarist Jeff Lynne: [Excerpt: The Idle Race, "Impostors of Life's Magazine"] Before the problems arose, the Move had been working on another single. The A-side, "Cherry Blossom Clinic", was a song about being in a psychiatric hospital, and again had an arrangement by Visconti, who this time conducted a twelve-piece string section: [Excerpt: The Move, "Cherry Blossom Clinic"] The B-side, meanwhile, was a rocker about politics: [Excerpt: The Move, "Vote For Me"] Given the amount of controversy they'd caused, the idea of a song about mental illness backed with one about politics seemed a bad idea, and so "Cherry Blossom Clinic" was kept back as an album track while "Vote For Me" was left unreleased until future compilations. The first Wood knew about "Cherry Blossom Clinic" not being released was when after a gig in London someone -- different sources have it as Carl Wayne or Tony Secunda -- told him that they had a recording session the next morning for their next single and asked what song he planned on recording. When he said he didn't have one, he was sent up to his hotel room with a bottle of Scotch and told not to come down until he had a new song. He had one by 8:30 the next morning, and was so drunk and tired that he had to be held upright by his bandmates in the studio while singing his lead vocal on the track. The song was inspired by "Somethin' Else", a track by Eddie Cochran, one of Wood's idols: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Somethin' Else"] Wood took the bass riff from that and used it as the basis for what was the Move's most straight-ahead rock track to date. As 1967 was turning into 1968, almost universally every band was going back to basics, recording stripped down rock and roll tracks, and the Move were no exception. Early takes of "Fire Brigade" featured Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum on piano, but the final version featured just guitar, bass, drums and vocals, plus a few sound effects: [Excerpt: The Move, "Fire Brigade"] While Carl Wayne had sung lead or co-lead on all the Move's previous singles, he was slowly being relegated into the background, and for this one Wood takes the lead vocal on everything except the brief bridge, which Wayne sings: [Excerpt: The Move, "Fire Brigade"] The track went to number three, and while it's not as well-remembered as a couple of other Move singles, it was one of the most influential. Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols has often said that the riff for "God Save the Queen" is inspired by "Fire Brigade": [Excerpt: The Sex Pistols, "God Save the Queen"] The reversion to a heavier style of rock on "Fire Brigade" was largely inspired by the group's new friend Jimi Hendrix. The group had gone on a package tour with The Pink Floyd (who were at the bottom of the bill), Amen Corner, The Nice, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and had become good friends with Hendrix, often jamming with him backstage. Burton and Kefford had become so enamoured of Hendrix that they'd both permed their hair in imitation of his Afro, though Burton regretted it -- his hair started falling out in huge chunks as a result of the perm, and it took him a full two years to grow it out and back into a more natural style. Burton had started sharing a flat with Noel Redding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Burton and Wood had also sung backing vocals with Graham Nash of the Hollies on Hendrix's "You Got Me Floatin'", from his Axis: Bold as Love album: [Excerpt: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "You Got Me Floatin'"] In early 1968, the group's first album came out. In retrospect it's arguably their best, but at the time it felt a little dated -- it was a compilation of tracks recorded between late 1966 and late 1967, and by early 1968 that might as well have been the nineteenth century. The album included their two most recent singles, a few more songs arranged by Visconti, and three cover versions -- versions of Eddie Cochran's "Weekend", Moby Grape's "Hey Grandma", and the old standard "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart", done copying the Coasters' arrangement with Bev Bevan taking a rare lead vocal. By this time there was a lot of dissatisfaction among the group. Most vocal -- or least vocal, because by this point he was no longer speaking to any of the other members, had been Ace Kefford. Kefford felt he was being sidelined in a band he'd formed and where he was the designated face of the group. He'd tried writing songs, but the only one he'd brought to the group, "William Chalker's Time Machine", had been rejected, and was eventually recorded by a group called The Lemon Tree, whose recording of it was co-produced by Burton and Andy Fairweather-Low of Amen Corner: [Excerpt: The Lemon Tree, "William Chalker's Time Machine"] He was also, though the rest of the group didn't realise it at the time, in the middle of a mental breakdown, which he later attributed to his overuse of acid. By the time the album, titled Move, came out, he'd quit the group. He formed a new group, The Ace Kefford Stand, with Cozy Powell on drums, and they released one single, a cover version of the Yardbirds' "For Your Love", which didn't chart: [Excerpt: The Ace Kefford Stand, "For Your Love"] Kefford recorded a solo album in 1968, but it wasn't released until an archival release in 2003, and he spent most of the next few decades dealing with mental health problems. The group continued on as a four-piece, with Burton moving over to bass. While they thought about what to do -- they were unhappy with Secunda's management, and with the sound that Cordell was getting from their recordings, which they considered far wimpier than their live sound -- they released a live EP of cover versions, recorded at the Marquee. The choice of songs for the EP showed their range of musical influences at the time, going from fifties rockabilly to the burgeoning progressive rock scene, with versions of Cochran's "Somethin' Else", Jerry Lee Lewis' "It'll Be Me", "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star" by the Byrds, "Sunshine Help Me" by Spooky Tooth, and "Stephanie Knows Who" by Love: [Excerpt: The Move, "Stephanie Knows Who"] Incidentally, later that year they headlined a gig at the Royal Albert Hall with the Byrds as the support act, and Gram Parsons, who by that time was playing guitar for the Byrds, said that the Move did "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star" better than the Byrds did. The EP, titled "Something Else From the Move", didn't do well commercially, but it did do something that the band thought important -- Trevor Burton in particular had been complaining that Denny Cordell's productions "took the toughness out" of the band's sound, and was worried that the group were being perceived as a pop band, not as a rock group like his friends in the Jimi Hendrix Experience or Cream. There was an increasing tension between Burton, who wanted to be a heavy rocker, and the older Wayne, who thought there was nothing at all wrong with being a pop band. The next single, "Wild Tiger Woman", was much more in the direction that Burton wanted their music to go. It was ostensibly produced by Cordell, but for the most part he left it to the band, and as a result it ended up as a much heavier track than normal. Roy Wood had only intended the song as an album track, and Bevan and Wayne were hesitant about it being a single, but Burton was insistent -- "Wild Tiger Woman" was going to be the group's first number one record: [Excerpt: The Move, "Wild Tiger Woman"] In fact, it turned out to be the group's first single not to chart at all, after four top ten singles in a row.  The group were now in crisis. They'd lost Ace Kefford, Burton and Wayne were at odds, and they were no longer guaranteed hitmakers. They decided to stop working with Cordell and Secunda, and made a commitment that if the next single was a flop, they would split up. In any case, Roy Wood was already thinking about another project. Even though the group's recent records had gone in a guitar-rock direction, he thought maybe you could do something more interesting. Ever since seeing Tony Visconti conduct orchestral instruments playing his music, he'd been thinking about it. As he later put it "I thought 'Well, wouldn't it be great to get a band together, and rather than advertising for a guitarist how about advertising for a cellist or a French horn player or something? There must be lots of young musicians around who play the... instruments that would like to play in a rock kind of band.' That was the start of it, it really was, and I think after those tracks had been recorded with Tony doing the orchestral arrangement, that's when I started to get bored with the Move, with the band, because I thought 'there's something more to it'". He'd started sketching out plans for an expanded lineup of the group, drawing pictures of what it would look like on stage if Carl Wayne was playing timpani while there were cello and French horn players on stage with them. He'd even come up with a name for the new group -- a multi-layered pun. The group would be a light orchestra, like the BBC Light Orchestra, but they would be playing electrical instruments, and also they would have a light show when they performed live, and so he thought "the Electric Light Orchestra" would be a good name for such a group. The other band members thought this was a daft idea, but Wood kept on plotting. But in the meantime, the group needed some new management. The person they chose was Don Arden. We talked about Arden quite a bit in the last episode, but he's someone who is going to turn up a lot in future episodes, and so it's best if I give a little bit more background about him. Arden was a manager of the old school, and like several of the older people in the music business at the time, like Dick James or Larry Page, he had started out as a performer, doing an Al Jolson tribute act, and he was absolutely steeped in showbusiness -- his wife had been a circus contortionist before they got married, and when he moved from Manchester to London their first home had been owned by Winifred Atwell, a boogie piano player who became the first Black person to have a UK number one -- and who is *still* the only female solo instrumentalist to have a UK number one -- with her 1954 hit "Let's Have Another Party": [Excerpt: WInifred Atwell, "Let's Have Another Party"] That was only Atwell's biggest in a long line of hits, and she'd put all her royalties into buying properties in London, one of which became the Ardens' home. Arden had been considered quite a promising singer, and had made a few records in the early 1950s. His first recordings, of material in Yiddish aimed at the Jewish market, are sadly not findable online, but he also apparently recorded as a session singer for Embassy Records. I can't find a reliable source for what records he sang on for that label, which put out budget rerecordings of hits for sale exclusively through Woolworths, but according to Wikipedia one of them was Embassy's version of "Blue Suede Shoes", put out under the group name "The Canadians", and the lead vocal on that track certainly sounds like it could be him: [Excerpt: The Canadians, "Blue Suede Shoes"] As you can tell, rock and roll didn't really suit Arden's style, and he wisely decided to get out of performance and into behind-the-scenes work, though he would still try on occasion to make records of his own -- an acetate exists from 1967 of him singing "Sunrise, Sunset": [Excerpt: Don Arden, "Sunrise, Sunset"] But he'd moved first into promotion -- he'd been the promoter who had put together tours of the UK for Gene Vincent, Little Richard, Brenda Lee and others which we mentioned in the second year of the podcast -- and then into management. He'd first come into management with the Animals -- apparently acting at that point as the money man for Mike Jeffries, who was the manager the group themselves dealt with. According to Arden -- though his story differs from the version of the story told by others involved -- the group at some point ditched Arden for Allen Klein, and when they did, Arden's assistant Peter Grant, another person we'll be hearing a lot more of, went with them.  Arden, by his own account, flew over to see Klein and threatened to throw him out of the window of his office, which was several stories up. This was a threat he regularly made to people he believed had crossed him -- he made a similar threat to one of the Nashville Teens, the first group he managed after the Animals, after the musician asked what was happening to the group's money. And as we heard last episode, he threatened Robert Stigwood that way when Stigwood tried to get the Small Faces off him. One of the reasons he'd signed the Small Faces was that Steve Marriott had gone to the Italia Conti school, where Arden had sent his own children, Sharon and David, and David had said that Marriott was talented. And David was also a big reason the Move came over to Arden. After the Small Faces had left him, Arden had bought Galaxy Entertaimnent, the booking agency that handled bookings for Amen Corner and the Move, among many other acts. Arden had taken over management of Amen Corner himself, and had put his son David in charge of liaising with Tony Secunda about the Move.  But David Arden was sure that the Move could be an albums act, not just a singles act, and was convinced the group had more potential than they were showing, and when they left Secunda, Don Arden took them on as his clients, at least for the moment. Secunda, according to Arden (who is not the most reliable of witnesses, but is unfortunately the only one we have for a lot of this stuff) tried to hire someone to assassinate Arden, but Arden quickly let Secunda know that if anything happened to Arden, Secunda himself would be dead within the hour. As "Wild Tiger Woman" hadn't been a hit, the group decided to go back to their earlier "Flowers in the Rain" style, with "Blackberry Way": [Excerpt: The Move, "Blackberry Way"] That track was produced by Jimmy Miller, who was producing the Rolling Stones and Traffic around this time, and featured the group's friend Richard Tandy on harpsichord. It's also an example of the maxim "Good artists copy, great artists steal". There are very few more blatant examples of plagiarism in pop music than the middle eight of "Blackberry Way". Compare Harry Nilsson's "Good Old Desk": [Excerpt: Nilsson, "Good Old Desk"] to the middle eight of "Blackberry Way": [Excerpt: The Move, "Blackberry Way"] "Blackberry Way" went to number one, but that was the last straw for Trevor Burton -- it was precisely the kind of thing he *didn't* want to be doing,. He was so sick of playing what he thought of as cheesy pop music that at one show he attacked Bev Bevan on stage with his bass, while Bevan retaliated with his cymbals. He stormed off stage, saying he was "tired of playing this crap". After leaving the group, he almost joined Blind Faith, a new supergroup that members of Cream and Traffic were forming, but instead formed his own supergroup, Balls. Balls had a revolving lineup which at various times included Denny Laine, formerly of the Moody Blues, Jackie Lomax, a singer-songwriter who was an associate of the Beatles, Richard Tandy who had played on "Blackberry Way", and Alan White, who would go on to drum with the band Yes. Balls only released one single, "Fight for My Country", which was later reissued as a Trevor Burton solo single: [Excerpt: Balls, "Fight For My Country"] Balls went through many lineup changes, and eventually seemed to merge with a later lineup of the Idle Race to become the Steve Gibbons Band, who were moderately successful in the seventies and eighties. Richard Tandy covered on bass for a short while, until Rick Price came in as a permanent replacement. Before Price, though, the group tried to get Hank Marvin to join, as the Shadows had then split up, and Wood was willing to move over to bass and let Marvin play lead guitar. Marvin turned down the offer though. But even though "Blackberry Way" had been the group's biggest hit to date, it marked a sharp decline in the group's fortunes.  Its success led Peter Walsh, the manager of Marmalade and the Tremeloes, to poach the group from Arden, and even though Arden took his usual heavy-handed approach -- he describes going and torturing Walsh's associate, Clifford Davis, the manager of Fleetwood Mac, in his autobiography -- he couldn't stop Walsh from taking over. Unfortunately, Walsh put the group on the chicken-in-a-basket cabaret circuit, and in the next year they only released one record, the single "Curly", which nobody was happy with. It was ostensibly produced by Mike Hurst, but Hurst didn't turn up to the final sessions and Wood did most of the production work himself, while in the next studio over Jimmy Miller, who'd produced "Blackberry Way", was producing "Honky Tonk Women" by the Rolling Stones. The group were getting pigeonholed as a singles group, at a time when album artists were the in thing. In a three-year career they'd only released one album, though they were working on their second. Wood was by this point convinced that the Move was unsalvageable as a band, and told the others that the group was now just going to be a launchpad for his Electric Light Orchestra project. The band would continue working the chicken-in-a-basket circuit and releasing hit singles, but that would be just to fund the new project -- which they could all be involved in if they wanted, of course. Carl Wayne, on the other hand, was very, very, happy playing cabaret, and didn't see the need to be doing anything else. He made a counter-suggestion to Wood -- keep The Move together indefinitely, but let Wood do the Brian Wilson thing and stay home and write songs. Wayne would even try to get Burton and Kefford back into the band. But Wood wasn't interested. Increasingly his songs weren't even going to the Move at all. He was writing songs for people like Cliff Bennett and the Casuals. He wrote "Dance Round the Maypole" for Acid Gallery: [Excerpt: Acid Gallery, "Dance Round the Maypole"] On that, Wood and Jeff Lynne sang backing vocals. Wood and Lynne had been getting closer since Lynne had bought a home tape recorder which could do multi-tracking -- Wood had wanted to buy one of his own after "Flowers in the Rain", but even though he'd written three hit singles at that point his publishing company wouldn't give him an advance to buy one, and so he'd started using Lynne's. The two have often talked about how they'd recorded the demo for "Blackberry Way" at Lynne's parents' house, recording Wood's vocal on the demo with pillows and cushions around his head so that his singing wouldn't wake Lynne's parents. Lynne had been another person that Wood had asked to join the group when Burton left, but Lynne was happy with The Idle Race, where he was the main singer and songwriter, though their records weren't having any success: [Excerpt: The Idle Race, "I Like My Toys"] While Wood was writing material for other people, the only one of those songs to become a hit was "Hello Suzie", written for Amen Corner, which became a top five single on Immediate Records: [Excerpt: Amen Corner, "Hello Suzie"] While the Move were playing venues like Batley Variety Club in Britain, when they went on their first US tour they were able to play for a very different audience. They were unknown in the US, and so were able to do shows for hippie audiences that had no preconceptions about them, and did things like stretch "Cherry Blossom Clinic" into an eight-minute-long extended progressive rock jam that incorporated bits of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", the Nutcracker Suite, and the Sorcerer's Apprentice: [Excerpt: The Move, "Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited (live at the Fillmore West)"] All the group were agreed that those shows were the highlight of the group's career. Even Carl Wayne, the band member most comfortable with them playing the cabaret circuit, was so proud of the show at the Fillmore West which that performance is taken from that when the tapes proved unusable he kept hold of them, hoping all his life that technology would progress to the point where they could be released and show what a good live band they'd been, though as things turned out they didn't get released until after his death. But when they got back to the UK it was back to the chicken-in-a-basket circuit, and back to work on their much-delayed second album. That album, Shazam!, was the group's attempt at compromise between their different visions. With the exception of one song, it's all heavy rock music, but Wayne, Wood, and Price all co-produced, and Wayne had the most creative involvement he'd ever had. Side two of the album was all cover versions, chosen by Wayne, and Wayne also went out onto the street and did several vox pops, asking members of the public what they thought of pop music: [Excerpt: Vox Pops from "Don't Make My Baby Blue"] There were only six songs on the album, because they were mostly extended jams. Other than the three cover versions chosen by Wayne, there was a sludge-metal remake of "Hello Suzie", the new arrangement of "Cherry Blossom Clinic" they'd been performing live, retitled "Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited", and only one new original, "Beautiful Daughter", which featured a string arrangement by Visconti, who also played bass: [Excerpt: The Move, "Beautiful Daughter"] And Carl Wayne sang lead on five of the six tracks, which given that one of the reasons Wayne was getting unhappy with the band was that Wood was increasingly becoming the lead singer, must have been some comfort. But it wasn't enough. By the time Shazam! came out, with a cover drawn by Mike Sheridan showing the four band members as superheroes, the band was down to three -- Carl Wayne had quit the group, for a solo career. He continued playing the cabaret circuit, and made records, but never had another hit, but he managed to have a very successful career as an all-round entertainer, acting on TV and in the theatre, including a six-year run as the narrator in the musical Blood Brothers, and replacing Alan Clarke as the lead singer of the Hollies. He died in 2004. As soon as Wayne left the group, the three remaining band members quit their management and went back to Arden. And to replace Wayne, Wood once again asked Jeff Lynne to join the group. But this time the proposition was different -- Lynne wouldn't just be joining the Move, but he would be joining the Electric Light Orchestra. They would continue putting out Move records and touring for the moment, and Lynne would be welcome to write songs for the Move so that Wood wouldn't have to be the only writer, but they'd be doing it while they were planning their new group.  Lynne was in, and the first single from the new lineup was a return to the heavy riff rock style of "Wild Tiger Woman", "Brontosaurus": [Excerpt: The Move, "Brontosaurus"] But Wayne leaving the group had put Wood in a difficult position. He was now the frontman, and he hated that responsibility -- he said later "if you look at me in photos of the early days, I'm always the one hanging back with my head down, more the musician than the frontman." So he started wearing makeup, painting his face with triangles and stars, so he would be able to hide his shyness. And it worked -- and "Brontosaurus" returned the group to the top ten. But the next single, "When Alice Comes Back to the Farm", didn't chart at all. The first album for the new Move lineup, Looking On, was to finish their contract with their current record label. Many regard it as the group's "Heavy metal album", and it's often considered the worst of their four albums, with Bev Bevan calling it "plodding", but that's as much to do with Bevan's feeling about the sessions as anything else -- increasingly, after the basic rhythm tracks had been recorded, Wood and Lynne would get to work without the other two members of the band, doing immense amounts of overdubbing.  And that continued after Looking On was finished. The group signed a new contract with EMI's new progressive rock label, Harvest, and the contract stated that they were signing as "the Move performing as The Electric Light Orchestra". They started work on two albums' worth of material, with the idea that anything with orchestral instruments would be put aside for the first Electric Light Orchestra album, while anything with just guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, and horns would be for the Move. The first Electric Light Orchestra track, indeed, was intended as a Move B-side. Lynne came in with a song based around a guitar riff, and with lyrics vaguely inspired by the TV show The Prisoner, about someone with a number instead of a name running, trying to escape, and then eventually dying.  But then Wood decided that what the track really needed was cello. But not cello played in the standard orchestral manner, but something closer to what the Beatles had done on "I am the Walrus". He'd bought a cheap cello himself, and started playing Jimi Hendrix riffs on it, and Lynne loved the sound of it, so onto the Move's basic rhythm track they overdubbed fifteen cello tracks by Wood, and also two French horns, also by Wood: [Excerpt: The Electric Light Orchestra, "10538 Overture"] The track was named "10538 Overture", after they saw the serial number 1053 on the console they were using to mix the track, and added the number 8 at the end, making 10538 the number of the character in the song. Wood and Lynne were so enamoured with the sound of their new track that they eventually got told by the other two members of the group that they had to sit in the back when the Move were driving to gigs, so they couldn't reach the tape player, because they'd just keep playing the track over and over again. So they got a portable tape player and took that into the back seat with them to play it there. After finishing some pre-existing touring commitments, the Move and Electric Light Orchestra became a purely studio group, and Rick Price quit the bands -- he needed steady touring work to feed his family, and went off to form another band, Mongrel. Around this time, Wood also took part in another strange project. After Immediate Records collapsed, Andrew Oldham needed some fast money, so he and Don Arden put together a fake group they could sign to EMI for ten thousand pounds.  The photo of the band Grunt Futtock was of some random students, and that was who Arden and Oldham told EMI was on the track, but the actual performers on the single included Roy Wood, Steve Marriott, Peter Frampton, and Andy Bown, the former keyboard player of the Herd: [Excerpt: Grunt Futtock, "Rock 'n' Roll Christian"] Nobody knows who wrote the song, although it's credited to Bernard Webb, which is a pseudonym Paul McCartney had previously used -- but everyone knew he'd used the pseudonym, so it could very easily be a nod to that. The last Move album, Message From The Country, didn't chart -- just like the previous two hadn't. But Wood's song "Tonight" made number eleven, the follow-up, "Chinatown", made number twenty-three, and then the final Move single, "California Man", a fifties rock and roll pastiche, made the top ten: [Excerpt: The Move, "California Man"] In the US, that single was flipped, and the B-side, Lynne's song "Do Ya", became the only Move song ever to make the Hot One Hundred, reaching number ninety-nine: [Excerpt: The Move, "Do Ya"] By the time "California Man" was released, the Electric Light Orchestra were well underway. They'd recorded their first album, whose biggest highlights were Lynne's "10538 Overture" and Wood's "Whisper in the Night": [Excerpt: The Electric Light Orchestra, "Whisper in the Night"] And they'd formed a touring lineup, including Richard Tandy on keyboards and several orchestral instrumentalists. Unfortunately, there were problems developing between Wood and Lynne. When the Electric Light Orchestra toured, interviewers only wanted to speak to Wood, thinking of him as the band leader, even though Wood insisted that he and Lynne were the joint leaders. And both men had started arguing a lot, to the extent that at some shows they would refuse to go on stage because of arguments as to which of them should go on first. Wood has since said that he thinks most of the problems between Lynne and himself were actually caused by Don Arden, who realised that if he split the two of them into separate acts he could have two hit groups, not one. If that was the plan, it worked, because by the time "10538 Overture" was released as the Electric Light Orchestra's first single, and made the top ten -- while "California Man" was also still in the charts -- it was announced that Roy Wood was now leaving the Electric Light Orchestra, as were keyboard playe

Episode 159 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces, and their transition from Mod to psychedelia. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "The First Cut is the Deepest" by P.P. Arnold. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As so many of the episodes recently have had no Mixcloud due to the number of songs by one artist, I've decided to start splitting the mixes of the recordings excerpted in the podcasts into two parts. Here's part one and part two. I've used quite a few books in this episode. The Small Faces & Other Stories by Uli Twelker and Roland Schmit is definitely a fan-work with all that that implies, but has some useful quotes. Two books claim to be the authorised biography of Steve Marriott, and I've referred to both -- All Too Beautiful by Paolo Hewitt and John Hellier, and All Or Nothing by Simon Spence. Spence also wrote an excellent book on Immediate Records, which I referred to. Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan both wrote very readable autobiographies. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, co-written by Spence, though be warned that it casually uses slurs. P.P. Arnold's autobiography is a sometimes distressing read covering her whole life, including her time at Immediate. There are many, many, collections of the Small Faces' work, ranging from cheap budget CDs full of outtakes to hundred-pound-plus box sets, also full of outtakes. This three-CD budget collection contains all the essential tracks, and is endorsed by Kenney Jones, the band's one surviving member. And if you're intrigued by the section on Immediate Records, this two-CD set contains a good selection of their releases. ERRATUM-ISH: I say Jimmy Winston was “a couple” of years older than the rest of the band. This does not mean exactly two, but is used in the vague vernacular sense equivalent to “a few”. Different sources I've seen put Winston as either two or four years older than his bandmates, though two seems to be the most commonly cited figure. Transcript For once there is little to warn about in this episode, but it does contain some mild discussions of organised crime, arson, and mental illness, and a quoted joke about capital punishment in questionable taste which may upset some. One name that came up time and again when we looked at the very early years of British rock and roll was Lionel Bart. If you don't remember the name, he was a left-wing Bohemian songwriter who lived in a communal house-share which at various times was also inhabited by people like Shirley Eaton, the woman who is painted gold at the beginning of Goldfinger, Mike Pratt, the star of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), and Davey Graham, the most influential and innovative British guitarist of the fifties and early sixties. Bart and Pratt had co-written most of the hits of Britain's first real rock and roll star, Tommy Steele: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, "Rock with the Caveman"] and then Bart had gone solo as a writer, and written hits like "Living Doll" for Britain's *biggest* rock and roll star, Cliff Richard: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, "Living Doll"] But Bart's biggest contribution to rock music turned out not to be the songs he wrote for rock and roll stars, and not even his talent-spotting -- it was Bart who got Steele signed by Larry Parnes, and he also pointed Parnes in the direction of another of his biggest stars, Marty Wilde -- but the opportunity he gave to a lot of child stars in a very non-rock context. Bart's musical Oliver!, inspired by the novel Oliver Twist, was the biggest sensation on the West End stage in the early 1960s, breaking records for the longest-running musical, and also transferred to Broadway and later became an extremely successful film. As it happened, while Oliver! was extraordinarily lucrative, Bart didn't see much of the money from it -- he sold the rights to it, and his other musicals, to the comedian Max Bygraves in the mid-sixties for a tiny sum in order to finance a couple of other musicals, which then flopped horribly and bankrupted him. But by that time Oliver! had already been the first big break for three people who went on to major careers in music -- all of them playing the same role. Because many of the major roles in Oliver! were for young boys, the cast had to change frequently -- child labour laws meant that multiple kids had to play the same role in different performances, and people quickly grew out of the roles as teenagerhood hit. We've already heard about the career of one of the people who played the Artful Dodger in the original West End production -- Davy Jones, who transferred in the role to Broadway in 1963, and who we'll be seeing again in a few episodes' time -- and it's very likely that another of the people who played the Artful Dodger in that production, a young lad called Philip Collins, will be coming into the story in a few years' time. But the first of the artists to use the Artful Dodger as a springboard to a music career was the one who appeared in the role on the original cast album of 1960, though there's very little in that recording to suggest the sound of his later records: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott, "Consider Yourself"] Steve Marriott is the second little Stevie we've looked at in recent episodes to have been born prematurely. In his case, he was born a month premature, and jaundiced, and had to spend the first month of his life in hospital, the first few days of which were spent unsure if he was going to survive. Thankfully he did, but he was a bit of a sickly child as a result, and remained stick-thin and short into adulthood -- he never grew to be taller than five foot five. Young Steve loved music, and especially the music of Buddy Holly. He also loved skiffle, and managed to find out where Lonnie Donegan lived. He went round and knocked on Donegan's door, but was very disappointed to discover that his idol was just a normal man, with his hair uncombed and a shirt stained with egg yolk. He started playing the ukulele when he was ten, and graduated to guitar when he was twelve, forming a band which performed under a variety of different names. When on stage with them, he would go by the stage name Buddy Marriott, and would wear a pair of horn-rimmed glasses to look more like Buddy Holly. When he was twelve, his mother took him to an audition for Oliver! The show had been running for three months at the time, and was likely to run longer, and child labour laws meant that they had to have replacements for some of the cast -- every three months, any performing child had to have at least ten days off. At his audition, Steve played his guitar and sang "Who's Sorry Now?", the recent Connie Francis hit: [Excerpt: Connie Francis, "Who's Sorry Now?"] And then, ignoring the rule that performers could only do one song, immediately launched into Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy!" [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Oh Boy!"] His musical ability and attitude impressed the show's producers, and he was given a job which suited him perfectly -- rather than being cast in a single role, he would be swapped around, playing different small parts, in the chorus, and occasionally taking the larger role of the Artful Dodger. Steve Marriott was never able to do the same thing over and over, and got bored very quickly, but because he was moving between roles, he was able to keep interested in his performances for almost a year, and he was good enough that it was him chosen to sing the Dodger's role on the cast album when that was recorded: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott and Joyce Blair, "I'd Do Anything"] And he enjoyed performance enough that his parents pushed him to become an actor -- though there were other reasons for that, too. He was never the best-behaved child in the world, nor the most attentive student, and things came to a head when, shortly after leaving the Oliver! cast, he got so bored of his art classes he devised a plan to get out of them forever. Every art class, for several weeks, he'd sit in a different desk at the back of the classroom and stuff torn-up bits of paper under the floorboards. After a couple of months of this he then dropped a lit match in, which set fire to the paper and ended up burning down half the school. His schoolfriend Ken Hawes talked about it many decades later, saying "I suppose in a way I was impressed about how he had meticulously planned the whole thing months in advance, the sheer dogged determination to see it through. He could quite easily have been caught and would have had to face the consequences. There was no danger in anybody getting hurt because we were at the back of the room. We had to be at the back otherwise somebody would have noticed what he was doing. There was no malice against other pupils, he just wanted to burn the damn school down." Nobody could prove it was him who had done it, though his parents at least had a pretty good idea who it was, but it was clear that even when the school was rebuilt it wasn't a good idea to send him back there, so they sent him to the Italia Conti Drama School; the same school that Anthony Newley and Petula Clark, among many others, had attended. Marriott's parents couldn't afford the school's fees, but Marriott was so talented that the school waived the fees -- they said they'd get him work, and take a cut of his wages in lieu of the fees. And over the next few years they did get him a lot of work. Much of that work was for TV shows, which like almost all TV of the time no longer exist -- he was in an episode of the Sid James sitcom Citizen James, an episode of Mr. Pastry's Progress, an episode of the police drama Dixon of Dock Green, and an episode of a series based on the Just William books, none of which survive. He also did a voiceover for a carpet cleaner ad, appeared on the radio soap opera Mrs Dale's Diary playing a pop star, and had a regular spot reading listeners' letters out for the agony aunt Marje Proops on her radio show. Almost all of this early acting work wa s utterly ephemeral, but there are a handful of his performances that do survive, mostly in films. He has a small role in the comedy film Heavens Above!, a mistaken-identity comedy in which a radical left-wing priest played by Peter Sellers is given a parish intended for a more conservative priest of the same name, and upsets the well-off people of the parish by taking in a large family of travellers and appointing a Black man as his churchwarden. The film has some dated attitudes, in the way that things that were trying to be progressive and antiracist sixty years ago invariably do, but has a sparkling cast, with Sellers, Eric Sykes, William Hartnell, Brock Peters, Roy Kinnear, Irene Handl, and many more extremely recognisable faces from the period: [Excerpt: Heavens Above!] Marriott apparently enjoyed working on the film immensely, as he was a fan of the Goon Show, which Sellers had starred in and which Sykes had co-written several episodes of. There are reports of Marriott and Sellers jamming together on banjos during breaks in filming, though these are probably *slightly* inaccurate -- Sellers played the banjolele, a banjo-style instrument which is played like a ukulele. As Marriott had started on ukulele before switching to guitar, it was probably these they were playing, rather than banjoes. He also appeared in a more substantial role in a film called Live It Up!, a pop exploitation film starring David Hemmings in which he appears as a member of a pop group. Oddly, Marriott plays a drummer, even though he wasn't a drummer, while two people who *would* find fame as drummers, Mitch Mitchell and Dave Clark, appear in smaller, non-drumming, roles. He doesn't perform on the soundtrack, which is produced by Joe Meek and features Sounds Incorporated, The Outlaws, and Gene Vincent, but he does mime playing behind Heinz Burt, the former bass player of the Tornadoes who was then trying for solo stardom at Meek's instigation: [Excerpt: Heinz Burt, "Don't You Understand"] That film was successful enough that two years later, in 1965 Marriott came back for a sequel, Be My Guest, with The Niteshades, the Nashville Teens, and Jerry Lee Lewis, this time with music produced by Shel Talmy rather than Meek. But that was something of a one-off. After making Live It Up!, Marriott had largely retired from acting, because he was trying to become a pop star. The break finally came when he got an audition at the National Theatre, for a job touring with Laurence Olivier for a year. He came home and told his parents he hadn't got the job, but then a week later they were bemused by a phone call asking why Steve hadn't turned up for rehearsals. He *had* got the job, but he'd decided he couldn't face a year of doing the same thing over and over, and had pretended he hadn't. By this time he'd already released his first record. The work on Oliver! had got him a contract with Decca Records, and he'd recorded a Buddy Holly knock-off, "Give Her My Regards", written for him by Kenny Lynch, the actor, pop star, and all-round entertainer: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott, "Give Her My Regards"] That record wasn't a hit, but Marriott wasn't put off. He formed a band who were at first called the Moonlights, and then the Frantiks, and they got a management deal with Tony Calder, Andrew Oldham's junior partner in his management company. Calder got former Shadow Tony Meehan to produce a demo for the group, a version of Cliff Richard's hit "Move It", which was shopped round the record labels with no success (and which sadly appears no longer to survive). The group also did some recordings with Joe Meek, which also don't circulate, but which may exist in the famous "Teachest Tapes" which are slowly being prepared for archival releases. The group changed their name to the Moments, and added in the guitarist John Weider, who was one of those people who seem to have been in every band ever either just before or just after they became famous -- at various times he was in Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Family, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and the band that became Crabby Appleton, but never in their most successful lineups. They continued recording unsuccessful demos, of which a small number have turned up: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott and the Moments, "Good Morning Blues"] One of their demo sessions was produced by Andrew Oldham, and while that session didn't lead to a release, it did lead to Oldham booking Marriott as a session harmonica player for one of his "Andrew Oldham Orchestra" sessions, to play on a track titled "365 Rolling Stones (One For Every Day of the Year)": [Excerpt: The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, "365 Rolling Stones (One For Every Day of the Year)"] Oldham also produced a session for what was meant to be Marriott's second solo single on Decca, a cover version of the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me", which was actually scheduled for release but pulled at the last minute. Like many of Marriott's recordings from this period, if it exists, it doesn't seem to circulate publicly. But despite their lack of recording success, the Moments did manage to have a surprising level of success on the live circuit. Because they were signed to Calder and Oldham's management company, they got a contract with the Arthur Howes booking agency, which got them support slots on package tours with Billy J Kramer, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Kinks, and other major acts, and the band members were earning about thirty pounds a week each -- a very, very good living for the time. They even had a fanzine devoted to them, written by a fan named Stuart Tuck. But as they weren't making records, the band's lineup started changing, with members coming and going. They did manage to get one record released -- a soundalike version of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me", recorded for a budget label who rushed it out, hoping to get it picked up in the US and for it to be the hit version there: [Excerpt: The Moments, "You Really Got Me"] But the month after that was released, Marriott was sacked from the band, apparently in part because the band were starting to get billed as Steve Marriott and the Moments rather than just The Moments, and the rest of them didn't want to be anyone's backing band. He got a job at a music shop while looking around for other bands to perform with. At one point around this time he was going to form a duo with a friend of his, Davy Jones -- not the one who had also appeared in Oliver!, but another singer of the same name. This one sang with a blues band called the Mannish Boys, and both men were well known on the Mod scene in London. Marriott's idea was that they call themselves David and Goliath, with Jones being David, and Marriott being Goliath because he was only five foot five. That could have been a great band, but it never got past the idea stage. Marriott had become friendly with another part-time musician and shop worker called Ronnie Lane, who was in a band called the Outcasts who played the same circuit as the Moments: [Excerpt: The Outcasts, "Before You Accuse Me"] Lane worked in a sound equipment shop and Marriott in a musical instrument shop, and both were customers of the other as well as friends -- at least until Marriott came into the shop where Lane worked and tried to persuade him to let Marriott have a free PA system. Lane pretended to go along with it as a joke, and got sacked. Lane had then gone to the shop where Marriott worked in the hope that Marriott would give him a good deal on a guitar because he'd been sacked because of Marriott. Instead, Marriott persuaded him that he should switch to bass, on the grounds that everyone was playing guitar since the Beatles had come along, but a bass player would always be able to find work. Lane bought the bass. Shortly after that, Marriott came to an Outcasts gig in a pub, and was asked to sit in. He enjoyed playing with Lane and the group's drummer Kenney Jones, but got so drunk he smashed up the pub's piano while playing a Jerry Lee Lewis song. The resulting fallout led to the group being barred from the pub and splitting up, so Marriott, Lane, and Jones decided to form their own group. They got in another guitarist Marriott knew, a man named Jimmy Winston who was a couple of years older than them, and who had two advantages -- he was a known Face on the mod scene, with a higher status than any of the other three, and his brother owned a van and would drive the group and their equipment for ten percent of their earnings. There was a slight problem in that Winston was also as good on guitar as Marriott and looked like he might want to be the star, but Marriott neutralised that threat -- he moved Winston over to keyboards. The fact that Winston couldn't play keyboards didn't matter -- he could be taught a couple of riffs and licks, and he was sure to pick up the rest. And this way the group had the same lineup as one of Marriott's current favourites, Booker T and the MGs. While he was still a Buddy Holly fan, he was now, like the rest of the Mods, an R&B obsessive. Marriott wasn't entirely sure that this new group would be the one that would make him a star though, and was still looking for other alternatives in case it didn't play out. He auditioned for another band, the Lower Third, which counted Stuart Tuck, the writer of the Moments fanzine, among its members. But he was unsuccessful in the audition -- instead his friend Davy Jones, the one who he'd been thinking of forming a duo with, got the job: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and the Lower Third, "You've Got a Habit of Leaving"] A few months after that, Davy Jones and the Lower Third changed their name to David Bowie and the Lower Third, and we'll be picking up that story in a little over a year from now... Marriott, Lane, Jones, and Winston kept rehearsing and pulled together a five-song set, which was just about long enough to play a few shows, if they extended the songs with long jamming instrumental sections. The opening song for these early sets was one which, when they recorded it, would be credited to Marriott and Lane -- the two had struck up a writing partnership and agreed to a Lennon/McCartney style credit split, though in these early days Marriott was doing far more of the writing than Lane was. But "You Need Loving" was... heavily inspired... by "You Need Love", a song Willie Dixon had written for Muddy Waters: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "You Need Love"] It's not precisely the same song, but you can definitely hear the influence in the Marriott/Lane song: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "You Need Loving"] They did make some changes though, notably to the end of the song: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "You Need Loving"] You will be unsurprised to learn that Robert Plant was a fan of Steve Marriott. The new group were initially without a name, until after one of their first gigs, Winston's girlfriend, who hadn't met the other three before, said "You've all got such small faces!" The name stuck, because it had a double meaning -- as we've seen in the episode on "My Generation", "Face" was Mod slang for someone who was cool and respected on the Mod scene, but also, with the exception of Winston, who was average size, the other three members of the group were very short -- the tallest of the three was Ronnie Lane, who was five foot six. One thing I should note about the group's name, by the way -- on all the labels of their records in the UK while they were together, they were credited as "Small Faces", with no "The" in front, but all the band members referred to the group in interviews as "The Small Faces", and they've been credited that way on some reissues and foreign-market records. The group's official website is thesmallfaces.com but all the posts on the website refer to them as "Small Faces" with no "the". The use  of the word "the" or not at the start of a group's name at this time was something of a shibboleth -- for example both The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd dropped theirs after their early records -- and its status in this case is a strange one. I'll be referring to the group throughout as "The Small Faces" rather than "Small Faces" because the former is easier to say, but both seem accurate. After a few pub gigs in London, they got some bookings in the North of England, where they got a mixed reception -- they went down well at Peter Stringfellow's Mojo Club in Sheffield, where Joe Cocker was a regular performer, less well at a working-man's club, and reports differ about their performance at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, though one thing everyone is agreed on is that while they were performing, some Mancunians borrowed their van and used it to rob a clothing warehouse, and gave the band members some very nice leather coats as a reward for their loan of the van. It was only on the group's return to London that they really started to gel as a unit. In particular, Kenney Jones had up to that point been a very stiff, precise, drummer, but he suddenly loosened up and, in Steve Marriott's tasteless phrase, "Every number swung like Hanratty" (James Hanratty was one of the last people in Britain to be executed by hanging). Shortly after that, Don Arden's secretary -- whose name I haven't been able to find in any of the sources I've used for this episode, sadly, came into the club where they were rehearsing, the Starlight Rooms, to pass a message from Arden to an associate of his who owned the club. The secretary had seen Marriott perform before -- he would occasionally get up on stage at the Starlight Rooms to duet with Elkie Brooks, who was a regular performer there, and she'd seen him do that -- but was newly impressed by his group, and passed word on to her boss that this was a group he should investigate. Arden is someone who we'll be looking at a lot in future episodes, but the important thing to note right now is that he was a failed entertainer who had moved into management and promotion, first with American acts like Gene Vincent, and then with British acts like the Nashville Teens, who had had hits with tracks like "Tobacco Road": [Excerpt: The Nashville Teens, "Tobacco Road"] Arden was also something of a gangster -- as many people in the music industry were at the time, but he was worse than most of his contemporaries, and delighted in his nickname "the Al Capone of pop". The group had a few managers looking to sign them, but Arden convinced them with his offer. They would get a percentage of their earnings -- though they never actually received that percentage -- twenty pounds a week in wages, and, the most tempting part of it all, they would get expense accounts at all the Carnaby St boutiques and could go there whenever they wanted and get whatever they wanted. They signed with Arden, which all of them except Marriott would later regret, because Arden's financial exploitation meant that it would be decades before they saw any money from their hits, and indeed both Marriott and Lane would be dead before they started getting royalties from their old records. Marriott, on the other hand, had enough experience of the industry to credit Arden with the group getting anywhere at all, and said later "Look, you go into it with your eyes open and as far as I was concerned it was better than living on brown sauce rolls. At least we had twenty quid a week guaranteed." Arden got the group signed to Decca, with Dick Rowe signing them to the same kind of production deal that Andrew Oldham had pioneered with the Stones, so that Arden would own the rights to their recordings. At this point the group still only knew a handful of songs, but Rowe was signing almost everyone with a guitar at this point, putting out a record or two and letting them sink or swim. He had already been firmly labelled as "the man who turned down the Beatles", and was now of the opinion that it was better to give everyone a chance than to make that kind of expensive mistake again. By this point Marriott and Lane were starting to write songs together -- though at this point it was still mostly Marriott writing, and people would ask him why he was giving Lane half the credit, and he'd reply "Without Ronnie's help keeping me awake and being there I wouldn't do half of it. He keeps me going." -- but for their first single Arden was unsure that they were up to the task of writing a hit. The group had been performing a version of Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", a song which Burke always claimed to have written alone, but which is credited to him, Jerry Wexler, and Bert Berns (and has Bern's fingerprints, at least, on it to my ears): [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"] Arden got some professional writers to write new lyrics and vocal melody to their arrangement of the song -- the people he hired were Brian Potter, who would later go on to co-write "Rhinestone Cowboy", and Ian Samwell, the former member of Cliff Richard's Drifters who had written many of Richard's early hits, including "Move It", and was now working for Arden. The group went into the studio and recorded the song, titled "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?": [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?"] That version, though was deemed too raucous, and they had to go back into the studio to cut a new version, which came out as their first single: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?"] At first the single didn't do much on the charts, but then Arden got to work with teams of people buying copies from chart return shops, bribing DJs on pirate radio stations to play it, and bribing the person who compiled the charts for the NME. Eventually it made number fourteen, at which point it became a genuinely popular hit. But with that popularity came problems. In particular, Steve Marriott was starting to get seriously annoyed by Jimmy Winston. As the group started to get TV appearances, Winston started to act like he should be the centre of attention. Every time Marriott took a solo in front of TV cameras, Winston would start making stupid gestures, pulling faces, anything to make sure the cameras focussed on him rather than on Marriott. Which wouldn't have been too bad had Winston been a great musician, but he was still not very good on the keyboards, and unlike the others didn't seem particularly interested in trying. He seemed to want to be a star, rather than a musician. The group's next planned single was a Marriott and Lane song, "I've Got Mine". To promote it, the group mimed to it in a film, Dateline Diamonds, a combination pop film and crime caper not a million miles away from the ones that Marriott had appeared in a few years earlier. They also contributed three other songs to the film's soundtrack. Unfortunately, the film's release was delayed, and the film had been the big promotional push that Arden had planned for the single, and without that it didn't chart at all. By the time the single came out, though, Winston was no longer in the group. There are many, many different stories as to why he was kicked out. Depending on who you ask, it was because he was trying to take the spotlight away from Marriott, because he wasn't a good enough keyboard player, because he was taller than the others and looked out of place, or because he asked Don Arden where the money was. It was probably a combination of all of these, but fundamentally what it came to was that Winston just didn't fit into the group. Winston would, in later years, say that him confronting Arden was the only reason for his dismissal, saying that Arden had manipulated the others to get him out of the way, but that seems unlikely on the face of it. When Arden sacked him, he kept Winston on as a client and built another band around him, Jimmy Winston and the Reflections, and got them signed to Decca too, releasing a Kenny Lynch song, "Sorry She's Mine", to no success: [Excerpt: Jimmy Winston and the Reflections, "Sorry She's Mine"] Another version of that song would later be included on the first Small Faces album. Winston would then form another band, Winston's Fumbs, who would also release one single, before he went into acting instead. His most notable credit was as a rebel in the 1972 Doctor Who story Day of the Daleks, and he later retired from showbusiness to run a business renting out sound equipment, and died in 2020. The group hired his replacement without ever having met him or heard him play. Ian McLagan had started out as the rhythm guitarist in a Shadows soundalike band called the Cherokees, but the group had become R&B fans and renamed themselves the Muleskinners, and then after hearing "Green Onions", McLagan had switched to playing Hammond organ. The Muleskinners had played the same R&B circuit as dozens of other bands we've looked at, and had similar experiences, including backing visiting blues stars like Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf. Their one single had been a cover version of "Back Door Man", a song Willie Dixon had written for Wolf: [Excerpt: The Muleskinners, "Back Door Man"] The Muleskinners had split up as most of the group had day jobs, and McLagan had gone on to join a group called Boz and the Boz People, who were becoming popular on the live circuit, and who also toured backing Kenny Lynch while McLagan was in the band. Boz and the Boz People would release several singles in 1966, like their version of the theme for the film "Carry on Screaming", released just as by "Boz": [Excerpt: Boz, "Carry on Screaming"] By that time, McLagan had left the group -- Boz Burrell later went on to join King Crimson and Bad Company. McLagan left the Boz People in something of a strop, and was complaining to a friend the night he left the group that he didn't have any work lined up. The friend joked that he should join the Small Faces, because he looked like them, and McLagan got annoyed that his friend wasn't taking him seriously -- he'd love to be in the Small Faces, but they *had* a keyboard player. The next day he got a phone call from Don Arden asking him to come to his office. He was being hired to join a hit pop group who needed a new keyboard player. McLagan at first wasn't allowed to tell anyone what band he was joining -- in part because Arden's secretary was dating Winston, and Winston hadn't yet been informed he was fired, and Arden didn't want word leaking out until it had been sorted. But he'd been chosen purely on the basis of an article in a music magazine which had praised his playing with the Boz People, and without the band knowing him or his playing. As soon as they met, though, he immediately fit in in a way Winston never had. He looked the part, right down to his height -- he said later "Ronnie Lane and I were the giants in the band at 5 ft 6 ins, and Kenney Jones and Steve Marriott were the really teeny tiny chaps at 5 ft 5 1/2 ins" -- and he was a great player, and shared a sense of humour with them. McLagan had told Arden he'd been earning twenty pounds a week with the Boz People -- he'd actually been on five -- and so Arden agreed to give him thirty pounds a week during his probationary month, which was more than the twenty the rest of the band were getting. As soon as his probationary period was over, McLagan insisted on getting a pay cut so he'd be on the same wages as the rest of the group. Soon Marriott, Lane, and McLagan were all living in a house rented for them by Arden -- Jones decided to stay living with his parents -- and were in the studio recording their next single. Arden was convinced that the mistake with "I've Got Mine" had been allowing the group to record an original, and again called in a team of professional songwriters. Arden brought in Mort Shuman, who had recently ended his writing partnership with Doc Pomus and struck out on his own, after co-writing songs like "Save the Last Dance for Me", "Sweets For My Sweet", and "Viva Las Vegas" together, and Kenny Lynch, and the two of them wrote "Sha-La-La-La-Lee", and Lynch added backing vocals to the record: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Sha-La-La-La-Lee"] None of the group were happy with the record, but it became a big hit, reaching number three in the charts. Suddenly the group had a huge fanbase of screaming teenage girls, which embarrassed them terribly, as they thought of themselves as serious heavy R&B musicians, and the rest of their career would largely be spent vacillating between trying to appeal to their teenybopper fanbase and trying to escape from it to fit their own self-image. They followed "Sha-La-La-La-Lee" with "Hey Girl", a Marriott/Lane song, but one written to order -- they were under strict instructions from Arden that if they wanted to have the A-side of a single, they had to write something as commercial as "Sha-La-La-La-Lee" had been, and they managed to come up with a second top-ten hit. Two hit singles in a row was enough to make an album viable, and the group went into the studio and quickly cut an album, which had their first two hits on it -- "Hey Girl" wasn't included, and nor was the flop "I've Got Mine" -- plus a bunch of semi-originals like "You Need Loving", a couple of Kenny Lynch songs, and a cover version of Sam Cooke's "Shake". The album went to number three on the album charts, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the number one and two spots, and it was at this point that Arden's rivals really started taking interest. But that interest was quelled for the moment when, after Robert Stigwood enquired about managing the band, Arden went round to Stigwood's office with four goons and held him upside down over a balcony, threatening to drop him off if he ever messed with any of Arden's acts again. But the group were still being influenced by other managers. In particular, Brian Epstein came round to the group's shared house, with Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues, and brought them some slices of orange -- which they discovered, after eating them, had been dosed with LSD. By all accounts, Marriott's first trip was a bad one, but the group soon became regular consumers of the drug, and it influenced the heavier direction they took on their next single, "All or Nothing". "All or Nothing" was inspired both by Marriott's breakup with his girlfriend of the time, and his delight at the fact that Jenny Rylance, a woman he was attracted to, had split up with her then-boyfriend Rod Stewart. Rylance and Stewart later reconciled, but would break up again and Rylance would become Marriott's first wife in 1968: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "All or Nothing"] "All or Nothing" became the group's first and only number one record -- and according to the version of the charts used on Top of the Pops, it was a joint number one with the Beatles' double A-side of "Yellow Submarine" and "Eleanor Rigby", both selling exactly as well as each other. But this success caused the group's parents to start to wonder why their kids -- none of whom were yet twenty-one, the legal age of majority at the time -- were not rich. While the group were on tour, their parents came as a group to visit Arden and ask him where the money was, and why their kids were only getting paid twenty pounds a week when their group was getting a thousand pounds a night. Arden tried to convince the parents that he had been paying the group properly, but that they had spent their money on heroin -- which was very far from the truth, the band were only using soft drugs at the time. This put a huge strain on the group's relationship with Arden, and it wasn't the only thing Arden did that upset them. They had been spending a lot of time in the studio working on new material, and Arden was convinced that they were spending too much time recording, and that they were just faffing around and not producing anything of substance. They dropped off a tape to show him that they had been working -- and the next thing they knew, Arden had put out one of the tracks from that tape, "My Mind's Eye", which had only been intended as a demo, as a single: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "My Mind's Eye"] That it went to number four on the charts didn't make up for the fact that the first the band heard of the record coming out at all was when they heard it on the radio. They needed rid of Arden. Luckily for them, Arden wasn't keen on continuing to work with them either. They were unreliable and flakey, and he also needed cash quick to fund his other ventures, and he agreed to sell on their management and recording contracts. Depending on which version of the story you believe, he may have sold them on to an agent called Harold Davison, who then sold them on to Andrew Oldham and Tony Calder, but according to Oldham what happened is that in December 1966 Arden demanded the highest advance in British history -- twenty-five thousand pounds -- directly from Oldham. In cash. In a brown paper bag. The reason Oldham and Calder were interested was that in July 1965 they'd started up their own record label, Immediate Records, which had been announced by Oldham in his column in Disc and Music Echo, in which he'd said "On many occasions I have run down the large record companies over issues such as pirate stations, their promotion, and their tastes. And many readers have written in and said that if I was so disturbed by the state of the existing record companies why didn't I do something about it.  I have! On the twentieth of this month the first of three records released by my own company, Immediate Records, is to be launched." That first batch of three records contained one big hit, "Hang on Sloopy" by the McCoys, which Immediate licensed from Bert Berns' new record label BANG in the US: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] The two other initial singles featured the talents of Immediate's new in-house producer, a session player who had previously been known as "Little Jimmy" to distinguish him from "Big" Jim Sullivan, the other most in-demand session guitarist, but who was now just known as Jimmy Page. The first was a version of Pete Seeger's "The Bells of Rhymney", which Page produced and played guitar on, for a group called The Fifth Avenue: [Excerpt: The Fifth Avenue, "The Bells of Rhymney"] And the second was a Gordon Lightfoot song performed by a girlfriend of Brian Jones', Nico. The details as to who was involved in the track have varied -- at different times the production has been credited to Jones, Page, and Oldham -- but it seems to be the case that both Jones and Page play on the track, as did session bass player John Paul Jones: [Excerpt: Nico, "I'm Not Sayin'"] While "Hang on Sloopy" was a big hit, the other two singles were flops, and The Fifth Avenue split up, while Nico used the publicity she'd got as an entree into Andy Warhol's Factory, and we'll be hearing more about how that went in a future episode. Oldham and Calder were trying to follow the model of the Brill Building, of Phil Spector, and of big US independents like Motown and Stax. They wanted to be a one-stop shop where they'd produce the records, manage the artists, and own the publishing -- and they also licensed the publishing for the Beach Boys' songs for a couple of years, and started publicising their records over here in a big way, to exploit the publishing royalties, and that was a major factor in turning the Beach Boys from minor novelties to major stars in the UK. Most of Immediate's records were produced by Jimmy Page, but other people got to have a go as well. Giorgio Gomelsky and Shel Talmy both produced tracks for the label, as did a teenage singer then known as Paul Raven, who would later become notorious under his later stage-name Gary Glitter. But while many of these records were excellent -- and Immediate deserves to be talked about in the same terms as Motown or Stax when it comes to the quality of the singles it released, though not in terms of commercial success -- the only ones to do well on the charts in the first few months of the label's existence were "Hang on Sloopy" and an EP by Chris Farlowe. It was Farlowe who provided Immediate Records with its first home-grown number one, a version of the Rolling Stones' "Out of Time" produced by Mick Jagger, though according to Arthur Greenslade, the arranger on that and many other Immediate tracks, Jagger had given up on getting a decent performance out of Farlowe and Oldham ended up producing the vocals. Greenslade later said "Andrew must have worked hard in there, Chris Farlowe couldn't sing his way out of a paper bag. I'm sure Andrew must have done it, where you get an artist singing and you can do a sentence at a time, stitching it all together. He must have done it in pieces." But however hard it was to make, "Out of Time" was a success: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, "Out of Time"] Or at least, it was a success in the UK. It did also make the top forty in the US for a week, but then it hit a snag -- it had charted without having been released in the US at all, or even being sent as a promo to DJs. Oldham's new business manager Allen Klein had been asked to work his magic on the US charts, but the people he'd bribed to hype the record into the charts had got the release date wrong and done it too early. When the record *did* come out over there, no radio station would play it in case it looked like they were complicit in the scam. But still, a UK number one wasn't too shabby, and so Immediate Records was back on track, and Oldham wanted to shore things up by bringing in some more proven hit-makers. Immediate signed the Small Faces, and even started paying them royalties -- though that wouldn't last long, as Immediate went bankrupt in 1970 and its successors in interest stopped paying out. The first work the group did for the label was actually for a Chris Farlowe single. Lane and Marriott gave him their song "My Way of Giving", and played on the session along with Farlowe's backing band the Thunderbirds. Mick Jagger is the credited producer, but by all accounts Marriott and Lane did most of the work: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, "My Way of Giving"] Sadly, that didn't make the top forty. After working on that, they started on their first single recorded at Immediate. But because of contractual entanglements, "I Can't Make It" was recorded at Immediate but released by Decca. Because the band weren't particularly keen on promoting something on their old label, and the record was briefly banned by the BBC for being too sexual, it only made number twenty-six on the charts. Around this time, Marriott had become friendly with another band, who had named themselves The Little People in homage to the Small Faces, and particularly with their drummer Jerry Shirley. Marriott got them signed to Immediate, and produced and played on their first single, a version of his song "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?": [Excerpt: The Apostolic Intervention, "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?"] When they signed to Immediate, The Little People had to change their name, and Marriott suggested they call themselves The Nice, a phrase he liked. Oldham thought that was a stupid name, and gave the group the much more sensible name The Apostolic Intervention. And then a few weeks later he signed another group and changed *their* name to The Nice. "The Nice" was also a phrase used in the Small Faces' first single for Immediate proper. "Here Come the Nice" was inspired by a routine by the hipster comedian Lord Buckley, "The Nazz", which also gave a name to Todd Rundgren's band and inspired a line in David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust": [Excerpt: Lord Buckley, "The Nazz"] "Here Come the Nice" was very blatantly about a drug dealer, and somehow managed to reach number twelve despite that: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Here Come the Nice"] It also had another obstacle that stopped it doing as well as it might. A week before it came out, Decca released a single, "Patterns", from material they had in the vault. And in June 1967, two Small Faces albums came out. One of them was a collection from Decca of outtakes and demos, plus their non-album hit singles, titled From The Beginning, while the other was their first album on Immediate, which was titled Small Faces -- just like their first Decca album had been. To make matters worse, From The Beginning contained the group's demos of "My Way of Giving" and "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?", while the group's first Immediate album contained a new recording of  "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?", and a version of "My Way of Giving" with the same backing track but a different vocal take from the one on the Decca collection. From this point on, the group's catalogue would be a complete mess, with an endless stream of compilations coming out, both from Decca and, after the group split, from Immediate, mixing tracks intended for release with demos and jam sessions with no regard for either their artistic intent or for what fans might want. Both albums charted, with Small Faces reaching number twelve and From The Beginning reaching number sixteen, neither doing as well as their first album had, despite the Immediate album, especially, being a much better record. This was partly because the Marriott/Lane partnership was becoming far more equal. Kenney Jones later said "During the Decca period most of the self-penned stuff was 99% Steve. It wasn't until Immediate that Ronnie became more involved. The first Immediate album is made up of 50% Steve's songs and 50% of Ronnie's. They didn't collaborate as much as people thought. In fact, when they did, they often ended up arguing and fighting." It's hard to know who did what on each song credited to the pair, but if we assume that each song's principal writer also sang lead -- we know that's not always the case, but it's a reasonable working assumption -- then Jones' fifty-fifty estimate seems about right. Of the fourteen songs on the album, McLagan sings one, which is also his own composition, "Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire". There's one instrumental, six with Marriott on solo lead vocals, four with Lane on solo lead vocals, and two duets, one with Lane as the main vocalist and one with Marriott. The fact that there was now a second songwriter taking an equal role in the band meant that they could now do an entire album of originals. It also meant that their next Marriott/Lane single was mostly a Lane song. "Itchycoo Park" started with a verse lyric from Lane -- "Over bridge of sighs/To rest my eyes in shades of green/Under dreaming spires/To Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been". The inspiration apparently came from Lane reading about the dreaming spires of Oxford, and contrasting it with the places he used to play as a child, full of stinging nettles. For a verse melody, they repeated a trick they'd used before -- the melody of "My Mind's Eye" had been borrowed in part from the Christmas carol "Gloria in Excelsis Deo", and here they took inspiration from the old hymn "God Be in My Head": [Excerpt: The Choir of King's College Cambridge, "God Be in My Head"] As Marriott told the story: "We were in Ireland and speeding our brains out writing this song. Ronnie had the first verse already written down but he had no melody line, so what we did was stick the verse to the melody line of 'God Be In My Head' with a few chord variations. We were going towards Dublin airport and I thought of the middle eight... We wrote the second verse collectively, and the chorus speaks for itself." [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Itchycoo Park"] Marriott took the lead vocal, even though it was mostly Lane's song, but Marriott did contribute to the writing, coming up with the middle eight. Lane didn't seem hugely impressed with Marriott's contribution, and later said "It wasn't me that came up with 'I feel inclined to blow my mind, get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun/They all come out to groove about, be nice and have fun in the sun'. That wasn't me, but the more poetic stuff was." But that part became the most memorable part of the record, not so much because of the writing or performance but because of the production. It was one of the first singles released using a phasing effect, developed by George Chkiantz (and I apologise if I'm pronouncing that name wrong), who was the assistant engineer for Glyn Johns on the album. I say it was one of the first, because at the time there was not a clear distinction between the techniques now known as phasing, flanging, and artificial double tracking, all of which have now diverged, but all of which initially came from the idea of shifting two copies of a recording slightly out of synch with each other. The phasing on "Itchycoo Park" , though, was far more extreme and used to far different effect than that on, say, Revolver: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Itchycoo Park"] It was effective enough that Jimi Hendrix, who was at the time working on Axis: Bold as Love, requested that Chkiantz come in and show his engineer how to get the same effect, which was then used on huge chunks of Hendrix's album. The BBC banned the record, because even the organisation which had missed that the Nice who "is always there when I need some speed" was a drug dealer was a little suspicious about whether "we'll get high" and "we'll touch the sky" might be drug references. The band claimed to be horrified at the thought, and explained that they were talking about swings. It's a song about a park, so if you play on the swings, you go high. What else could it mean? [Excerpt: The Small Faces, “Itchycoo Park”] No drug references there, I'm sure you'll agree. The song made number three, but the group ran into more difficulties with the BBC after an appearance on Top of the Pops. Marriott disliked the show's producer, and the way that he would go up to every act and pretend to think they had done a very good job, no matter what he actually thought, which Marriott thought of as hypocrisy rather than as politeness and professionalism. Marriott discovered that the producer was leaving the show, and so in the bar afterwards told him exactly what he thought of him, calling him a "two-faced", and then a four-letter word beginning with c which is generally considered the most offensive swear word there is. Unfortunately for Marriott, he'd been misinformed, the producer wasn't leaving the show, and the group were barred from it for a while. "Itchycoo Park" also made the top twenty in the US, thanks to a new distribution deal Immediate had, and plans were made for the group to tour America, but those plans had to be scrapped when Ian McLagan was arrested for possession of hashish, and instead the group toured France, with support from a group called the Herd: [Excerpt: The Herd, "From the Underworld"] Marriott became very friendly with the Herd's guitarist, Peter Frampton, and sympathised with Frampton's predicament when in the next year he was voted "face of '68" and developed a similar teenage following to the one the Small Faces had. The group's last single of 1967 was one of their best. "Tin Soldier" was inspired by the Hans Andersen story “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, and was originally written for the singer P.P. Arnold, who Marriott was briefly dating around this time. But Arnold was *so* impressed with the song that Marriott decided to keep it for his own group, and Arnold was left just doing backing vocals on the track: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Tin Soldier"] It's hard to show the appeal of "Tin Soldier" in a short clip like those I use on this show, because so much of it is based on the use of dynamics, and the way the track rises and falls, but it's an extremely powerful track, and made the top ten. But it was after that that the band started falling apart, and also after that that they made the work generally considered their greatest album. As "Itchycoo Park" had made number one in Australia, the group were sent over there on tour to promote it, as support act for the Who. But the group hadn't been playing live much recently, and found it difficult to replicate their records on stage, as they were now so reliant on studio effects like phasing. The Australian audiences were uniformly hostile, and the contrast with the Who, who were at their peak as a live act at this point, couldn't have been greater. Marriott decided he had a solution. The band needed to get better live, so why not get Peter Frampton in as a fifth member? He was great on guitar and had stage presence, obviously that would fix their problems. But the other band members absolutely refused to get Frampton in. Marriott's confidence as a stage performer took a knock from which it never really recovered, and increasingly the band became a studio-only one. But the tour also put strain on the most important partnership in the band. Marriott and Lane had been the closest of friends and collaborators, but on the tour, both found a very different member of the Who to pal around with. Marriott became close to Keith Moon, and the two would get drunk and trash hotel rooms together. Lane, meanwhile, became very friendly with Pete Townshend, who introduced him to the work of the guru Meher Baba, who Townshend followed. Lane, too, became a follower, and the two would talk about religion and spirituality while their bandmates were destroying things. An attempt was made to heal the growing rifts though. Marriott, Lane, and McLagan all moved in together again like old times, but this time in a cottage -- something that became so common for bands around this time that the phrase "getting our heads together in the country" became a cliche in the music press. They started working on material for their new album. One of the tracks that they were working on was written by Marriott, and was inspired by how, before moving in to the country cottage, his neighbours had constantly complained about the volume of his music -- he'd been particularly annoyed that the pop singer Cilla Black, who lived in the same building and who he'd assumed would understand the pop star lifestyle, had complained more than anyone. It had started as as fairly serious blues song, but then Marriott had been confronted by the members of the group The Hollies, who wanted to know why Marriott always sang in a pseudo-American accent. Wasn't his own accent good enough? Was there something wrong with being from the East End of London? Well, no, Marriott decided, there wasn't, and so he decided to sing it in a Cockney accent. And so the song started to change, going from being an R&B song to being the kind of thing Cockneys could sing round a piano in a pub: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Lazy Sunday"] Marriott intended the song just as an album track for the album they were working on, but Andrew Oldham insisted on releasing it as a single, much to the band's disgust, and it went to number two on the charts, and along with "Itchycoo Park" meant that the group were now typecast as making playful, light-hearted music. The album they were working on, Ogden's Nut-Gone Flake, was eventually as known for its marketing as its music. In the Small Faces' long tradition of twisted religious references, like their songs based on hymns and their song "Here Come the Nice", which had taken inspiration from a routine about Jesus and made it about a drug dealer, the print ads for the album read: Small Faces Which were in the studios Hallowed be thy name Thy music come Thy songs be sung On this album as they came from your heads We give you this day our daily bread Give us thy album in a round cover as we give thee 37/9d Lead us into the record stores And deliver us Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake For nice is the music The sleeve and the story For ever and ever, Immediate The reason the ad mentioned a round cover is that the original pressings of the album were released in a circular cover, made to look like a tobacco tin, with the name of the brand of tobacco changed from Ogden's Nut-Brown Flake to Ogden's Nut-Gone Flake, a reference to how after smoking enough dope your nut, or head, would be gone. This made more sense to British listeners than to Americans, because not only was the slang on the label British, and not only was it a reference to a British tobacco brand, but American and British dope-smoking habits are very different. In America a joint is generally made by taking the dried leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant -- or "weed" -- and rolling them in a cigarette paper and smoking them. In the UK and much of Europe, though, the preferred form of cannabis is the resin, hashish, which is crumbled onto tobacco in a cigarette paper and smoked that way, so having rolling or pipe tobacco was a necessity for dope smokers in the UK in a way it wasn't in the US. Side one of Ogden's was made up of normal songs, but the second side mixed songs and narrative. Originally the group wanted to get Spike Milligan to do the narration, but when Milligan backed out they chose Professor Stanley Unwin, a comedian who was known for speaking in his own almost-English language, Unwinese: [Excerpt: Stanley Unwin, "The Populode of the Musicolly"] They gave Unwin a script, telling the story that linked side two of the album, in which Happiness Stan is shocked to discover that half the moon has disappeared and goes on a quest to find the missing half, aided by a giant fly who lets him sit on his back after Stan shares his shepherd's pie with the hungry fly. After a long quest they end up at the cave of Mad John the Hermit, who points out to them that nobody had stolen half the moon at all -- they'd been travelling so long that it was a full moon again, and everything was OK. Unwin took that script, and reworked it into Unwinese, and also added in a lot of the slang he heard the group use, like "cool it" and "what's been your hang-up?": [Excerpt: The Small Faces and Professor Stanley Unwin, "Mad John"] The album went to number one, and the group were justifiably proud, but it only exacerbated the problems with their live show. Other than an appearance on the TV show Colour Me Pop, where they were joined by Stanley Unwin to perform the whole of side two of the album with live vocals but miming to instrumental backing tracks, they only performed two songs from the album live, "Rollin' Over" and "Song of a Baker", otherwise sticking to the same live show Marriott was already embarrassed by. Marriott later said "We had spent an entire year in the studios, which was why our stage presentation had not been improved since the previous year. Meanwhile our recording experience had developed in leaps and bounds. We were all keenly interested in the technical possibilities, in the art of recording. We let down a lot of people who wanted to hear Ogden's played live. We were still sort of rough and ready, and in the end the audience became uninterested as far as our stage show was concerned. It was our own fault, because we would have sussed it all out if we had only used our brains. We could have taken Stanley Unwin on tour with us, maybe a string section as well, and it would have been okay. But we didn't do it, we stuck to the concept that had been successful for a long time, which is always the kiss of death." The group's next single would be the last released while they were together. Marriott regarded "The Universal" as possibly the best thing he'd written, and recorded it quickly when inspiration struck. The finished single is actually a home recording of Marriott in his garden, including the sounds of a dog barking and his wife coming home with the shopping, onto which the band later overdubbed percussion, horns, and electric guitars: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "The Universal"] Incidentally, it seems that the dog barking on that track may also be the dog barking on “Seamus” by Pink Floyd. "The Universal" confused listeners, and only made number sixteen on the charts, crushing Marriott, who thought it was the best thing he'd done. But the band were starting to splinter. McLagan isn't on "The Universal", having quit the band before it was recorded after a falling-out with Marriott. He rejoined, but discovered that in the meantime Marriott had brought in session player Nicky Hopkins to work on some tracks, which devastated him. Marriott became increasingly unconfident in his own writing, and the writing dried up. The group did start work on some new material, some of which, like "The Autumn Stone", is genuinely lovely: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "The Autumn Stone"] But by the time that was released, the group had already split up. The last recording they did together was as a backing group for Johnny Hallyday, the French rock star. A year earlier Hallyday had recorded a version of "My Way of Giving", under the title "Je N'Ai Jamais Rien Demandé": [Excerpt: Johnny Hallyday, "Je N'Ai Jamais Rien Demandé"] Now he got in touch with Glyn Johns to see if the Small Faces had any other material for him, and if they'd maybe back him on a few tracks on a new album. Johns and the Small Faces flew to France... as did Peter Frampton, who Marriott was still pushing to get into the band. They recorded three tracks for the album, with Frampton on extra guitar: [Excerpt: Johnny Hallyday, "Reclamation"] These tracks left Marriott more certain than ever that Frampton should be in the band, and the other three members even more certain that he shouldn't. Frampton joined the band on stage at a few shows on their next few gigs, but he was putting together his own band with Jerry Shirley from Apostolic Intervention. On New Year's Eve 1968, Marriott finally had enough. He stormed off stage mid-set, and quit the group. He phoned up Peter Frampton, who was hanging out with Glyn Johns listening to an album Johns had just produced by some of the session players who'd worked for Immediate. Side one had just finished when Marriott phoned. Could he join Frampton's new band? Frampton said of course he could, then put the phone down and listened to side two of Led Zeppelin's first record. The band Marriott and Frampton formed was called Humble Pie, and they were soon releasing stuff on Immediate. According to Oldham, "Tony Calder said to me one day 'Pick a straw'. Then he explained we had a choice. We could either go with the three Faces -- Kenney, Ronnie, and Mac -- wherever they were going to go with their lives, or we could follow Stevie. I didn't regard it as a choice. Neither did Tony. Marriott was our man". Marriott certainly seemed to agree that he was the real talent in the group. He and Lane had fairly recently bought some property together -- two houses on the same piece of land -- and with the group splitting up, Lane moved away and wanted to sell his share in the property to Marriott. Marriott wrote to him saying "You'll get nothing. This was bought with money from hits that I wrote, not that we wrote," and enclosing a PRS statement showing how much each Marriott/Lane

It's always a warm delicious treat to sit down with James Lee Stanley. There's a reason he's opened for everyone from Bonnie Raitt, Art Garfunkle, Bill Cosby (before we knew), Robin Williams, Dionne Warwick, Robin Trower, and Steven Wright for 3 years. His 50+ years of friendship and musical partnership with Peter Tork were covered from start till two days before Peter's passing when he was felled by rare cancer under his tongue. Shockingly, James survived his own bout of tongue cancer months later, when his beloved wife Evelina suggested an endoscopy, without cause. James was back performing mere months later. Last September, days after sitting down with us here, James fell off his roof, for the first time not under the watchful eye of his Evelina, broke his back, was airlifted for surgery, took no pain meds, and did a concert two weeks after surgery. This is a substance- sans substances. James treated us to a solo rendition of All I Ever Wanted, one of the many songs he and Peter recorded together. Just today he posted a video of them performing it: https://youtu.be/9VmeUvSYS1A. James also treated us to fab, funny, apropos, Wake The Flock Up, one of my favorite cuts from his All Wood And Doors, Moonlight Drive, and to the ink just dried, brand new, Carnival. Gorgeous vocals and stunning guitars are James' trademarks. We talked about his All Wood And Stones, Doors, and Led series, what inspired it, the players who've graced it, his upcoming album, his 36th, the documentary, The Opening Act – The Extraordinary Journey of James Lee Stanley directed by documentarian Gary J Katz (Badfinger, Humble Pie, Steve Marriott, Manassas), which has received a Peoples Choice Award, was in the London Lift-Off Film Festival and was accepted into the LA, Chicago, and Atlanta Film Festivals, awaiting judging. James Lee always leaves me wanting more. Fortunately, I know exactly where to find it JamesLeeStanley.com James Lee Stanley Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson Wed, 9/21/22, 5 pm PT, 8 pm ET Streamed Live on my Facebook Replay here: https://bit.ly/3S68rJ5 All BROADcasts, as podcasts, also available on iTunes apple.co/2dj8ld3 Stitcher bit.ly/2h3R1fla tunein bit.ly/2gGeItj Also on iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Voox, OwlTail, Backtracks, PlayerFM, Himalaya, Podchaser, and Listen Notes Thanks to Rick Smolkeof Quik Impressions, the best printers, printing, the best people people-ing. quikimpressions.com Nicole Venablesof Ruby Begonia Hair Studio Beauty and Products, for the best tressed. http://www.rubybegoniahairstudio.com/ And, Blue Microphones

For it's fifth studio album, Jethro Tull decided to satirize the concept album which was popular amongst prog rock acts like themselves, Yes, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.  Thick as a Brick is a single piece of music spread across two album sides, and takes inspiration from Monty Python, poking fun at the critics, the audience, and the band itself.  Ian Anderson wrote much of the album, but the entire band contributed to the songs.  The "concept" of this concept album is that the lyrics are written by an 8 year-old genius named Gerald Bostock, and the album is a musical adaptation of Bostock's poem.  The cover art continues the spoof, as it forms a 12-page English newspaper with both articles and advertisements that might be found in a small town paper.  Contemporary critical reviews of the album were mixed, but retrospective reviews would all be positive.  Commercially the album was a success, hitting number 1 in the US, Canada, and Australia, and hitting number 5 in the UK.  Brian brings us this prog rock spoof-turned-classic. Thick as a Brick, part 1This is the entire album side 1.  Most Jethro Tull fans will recognize the first few minutes as the radio cut of "Thick As a Brick," though most FM stations would truncate it as it drifts into the next movement of the suite.  Although it is one continuous piece of music, the movements are actually three- to five-minute songs stitched together to form a continuous whole.   ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:The main theme from the motion picture “The Godfather”  The ultimate mob movie was released this month, and was an offer we couldn't refuse! STAFF PICKS:A Horse With No Name by AmericaRob's staff pick was America's first and most successful single off their self-titled debut album.  The song was originally entitled "Desert Song," and was inspired by prints by Salvador Dali and M.C. Escher.  One unusual thing about this song is that it is built on only two chords.Chelsea Girls  by SpiritBruce brings us a deep cut in the leading track from Spirit's fifth album called Feedback.  This is the only Spirit album to feature John and Al Staehely as band members, and to not feature Randy California as a band member.  This album is a little more California country rock than the prog rock/psychedelic rock for which Spirit is better known.30 Days In the Hole by Humble Pie Wayne presents the version of Humble Pie with guitarist Steve Marriott on lead vocals, as Peter Frampton had left the group.  This is off their fifth and most successful album, “Smokin.'”  This would become Humble Pie's best known song, despite the fact that it did not do well on the charts.Stay With Me by the FacesRod Stewart's voice is hard to miss in Brian's staff pick.  This song chronicles the stereotypical one night stand of a band member on the tour.  Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood co-wrote this song, and  it is off their album "A Nod Is As Good As A Wink...To A Blind Horse."   COMEDY TRACK:Taurus by Dennis CoffeyThis rock instrumental was on the charts in this month.

Can we get a witness??? Testify! This week our rock n' roll grave robbers witness the rise of sumthin' funky! This time our journey through funky town takes sharp left and right turns as we get funk rock from bands that may not necessarily be associated with funk. Sometimes bands just get the urge to write songs that makes your body move and your booty groove. That's why we are asking the question, “Wah Da Funk???”What is it that we do here at InObscuria? We exhume obscure Rock n' Punk n' Metal in one of 3 categories: the Lost, the Forgotten, or the Should Have Beens. In this episode we take a listen to all 3, as we move n' groove our way through funk-infused rock n' roll from bands that don't typically play in the sphere of funkitude. Songs this week include:Jason Becker – “We Are One” from Triumphant Hearts (2018)I Mother Earth – “Like A Girl” from Scenery And Fish (1996)Steve Marriott  – “Late Night Lady” from MARRIOTT (1976)The Organization – “Brainstorm” from The Organization (1993)The BusBoys – “D Day” from Minimum Wage Rock & Roll (1980)Petra – “Holy Ghost Power” from Come And Join Us (1977)fIREHOSE – “It Matters” from Ragin', Full-On (1986)LoveWar – “Keep Your Hands Off My Stuff” from Soak Your Brain (1993)Please subscribe everywhere that you listen to podcasts!Visit us: https://inobscuria.com/https://www.facebook.com/InObscuriahttps://twitter.com/inobscuriahttps://www.instagram.com/inobscuria/Buy cool stuff with our logo on it!: https://www.redbubble.com/people/InObscuria?asc=uIf you'd like to check out Kevin's band THE SWEAR, take a listen on all streaming services or pick up a digital copy of their latest release here: https://theswear.bandcamp.com/If you want to hear Robert and Kevin's band from the late 90s – early 00s BIG JACK PNEUMATIC, check it out here: https://bigjackpnuematic.bandcamp.com/Check out Robert's amazing fire sculptures and metal workings here: http://flamewerx.com/

Welcome to this week's Drum Channel Podcast with Billy Amendola and his special guest Jerry Shirley of Humble Pie. The band recently celebrated the release of its 50th anniversary remaster of their 1972 album “Smokin'.” Billy and the classic rock legend discuss Jerry's early years with the band, Steve Marriott, Peter Frampton, Fastway, Jerry's days as a radio DJ; interviewing Paul McCartney, going shopping with Keith Moon, Shirley's 2011 autobiography “Best Seat in the House,” and more.

Are you all seated comfortable, too square on your botty? Then Love That Album can begin.Welcome to episode 155 of Love That Album podcast.As the 1960s rolled on, popular music evolved....and yet some of it looked back for inspiration. In the late 60s, the pop songs that had propelled the early British Invasion bands had moved on to make way for heavier sounds of psychedelia and blues based rock. The mod bands that had started out as purely “maximum R&B” were exploring different avenues while still maintaining some connections to their roots.In 1968, The Small Faces had been through their share of grief with crooked management, contracts that did not favour them, and money woes. (Sadly, Steve Marriott's own future was set for a lot more grief). They wrote and recorded what many believe was their masterpiece, “Ogden's Nut Gone Flake”. Side 1 was a collection of hard rock, psychedelia, and old world British music-hall inspired tunes. Side 2 was a concept piece – a story about Happiness Stan who searches for the “missing” half of the moon. The story is narrated by Professor of Gobbledegook, Stanley Unwin. Oh yes, oh yes.....I'm joined by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Ian Kitney (Overnight Jones, Tim Rogers and the Temperance Union) to contemplate the moon, lavatories, raising one's “oars”, the drumming of Kenny Jones, whether Marriott was mocking the state of contemporary British music, putting holes in one's snare drum, and what happens when George Formby is cleaning “winders”. It was a thrill to have Ian on the show – not only as a musician I've long admired, but also as a wonderful conversation partner about music we love.I also want to give a shout out to author Alan Pattinson who has written a series of wonderful books about so many musicians and bands from the “classic” rock era. I bought his book on The Small Faces to get a feel for their history, and I'd recommend anything he'd write.You can get Ian's albums from his Bandcamp site at https://iankitney.bandcamp.com/ including his latest called BGM – a wonderful collection of songs crossing over a number of styles over the history of pop.You can read Alan's writings at http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/ which features links to his multiple e-books about the histories and discographies of many bands you love.Download this episode of LTA from wherever you prefer getting your podcasts.Love That Album is proudly part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Go to http://pantheonpodcasts.com to check out all their great shows.You can send me feedback at rrrkitchen@yahoo.com.au (written or mp3 voicemail) or join the Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/lovethatalbumIf you'd consider writing an iTunes review I'd be immensely grateful. However, it'd be even better if you told a friend about the podcast and Pantheon – at a barbecue, over coffee, on social media….whatever way you choose, consider me grateful.Proudly Pantheon.

Are you all seated comfortable, too square on your botty? Then Love That Album can begin. Welcome to episode 155 of Love That Album podcast. As the 1960s rolled on, popular music evolved....and yet some of it looked back for inspiration. In the late 60s, the pop songs that had propelled the early British Invasion bands had moved on to make way for heavier sounds of psychedelia and blues based rock. The mod bands that had started out as purely “maximum R&B” were exploring different avenues while still maintaining some connections to their roots. In 1968, The Small Faces had been through their share of grief with crooked management, contracts that did not favour them, and money woes. (Sadly, Steve Marriott's own future was set for a lot more grief). They wrote and recorded what many believe was their masterpiece, “Ogden's Nut Gone Flake”. Side 1 was a collection of hard rock, psychedelia, and old world British music-hall inspired tunes. Side 2 was a concept piece – a story about Happiness Stan who searches for the “missing” half of the moon. The story is narrated by Professor of Gobbledegook, Stanley Unwin. Oh yes, oh yes..... I'm joined by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Ian Kitney (Overnight Jones, Tim Rogers and the Temperance Union) to contemplate the moon, lavatories, raising one's “oars”, the drumming of Kenny Jones, whether Marriott was mocking the state of contemporary British music, putting holes in one's snare drum, and what happens when George Formby is cleaning “winders”. It was a thrill to have Ian on the show – not only as a musician I've long admired, but also as a wonderful conversation partner about music we love. I also want to give a shout out to author Alan Pattinson who has written a series of wonderful books about so many musicians and bands from the “classic” rock era. I bought his book on The Small Faces to get a feel for their history, and I'd recommend anything he'd write. You can get Ian's albums from his Bandcamp site at https://iankitney.bandcamp.com/ including his latest called BGM – a wonderful collection of songs crossing over a number of styles over the history of pop. You can read Alan's writings at http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/ which features links to his multiple e-books about the histories and discographies of many bands you love. Download this episode of LTA from wherever you prefer getting your podcasts. Love That Album is proudly part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Go to http://pantheonpodcasts.com to check out all their great shows. You can send me feedback at rrrkitchen@yahoo.com.au (written or mp3 voicemail) or join the Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/lovethatalbum If you'd consider writing an iTunes review I'd be immensely grateful. However, it'd be even better if you told a friend about the podcast and Pantheon – at a barbecue, over coffee, on social media….whatever way you choose, consider me grateful. Proudly Pantheon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you all seated comfortable, too square on your botty? Then Love That Album can begin. Welcome to episode 155 of Love That Album podcast. As the 1960s rolled on, popular music evolved....and yet some of it looked back for inspiration. In the late 60s, the pop songs that had propelled the early British Invasion bands had moved on to make way for heavier sounds of psychedelia and blues based rock. The mod bands that had started out as purely “maximum R&B” were exploring different avenues while still maintaining some connections to their roots. In 1968, The Small Faces had been through their share of grief with crooked management, contracts that did not favour them, and money woes. (Sadly, Steve Marriott's own future was set for a lot more grief). They wrote and recorded what many believe was their masterpiece, “Ogden's Nut Gone Flake”. Side 1 was a collection of hard rock, psychedelia, and old world British music-hall inspired tunes. Side 2 was a concept piece – a story about Happiness Stan who searches for the “missing” half of the moon. The story is narrated by Professor of Gobbledegook, Stanley Unwin. Oh yes, oh yes..... I'm joined by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Ian Kitney (Overnight Jones, Tim Rogers and the Temperance Union) to contemplate the moon, lavatories, raising one's “oars”, the drumming of Kenny Jones, whether Marriott was mocking the state of contemporary British music, putting holes in one's snare drum, and what happens when George Formby is cleaning “winders”. It was a thrill to have Ian on the show – not only as a musician I've long admired, but also as a wonderful conversation partner about music we love. I also want to give a shout out to author Alan Pattinson who has written a series of wonderful books about so many musicians and bands from the “classic” rock era. I bought his book on The Small Faces to get a feel for their history, and I'd recommend anything he'd write. You can get Ian's albums from his Bandcamp site at https://iankitney.bandcamp.com/ including his latest called BGM – a wonderful collection of songs crossing over a number of styles over the history of pop. You can read Alan's writings at http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/ which features links to his multiple e-books about the histories and discographies of many bands you love. Download this episode of LTA from wherever you prefer getting your podcasts. Love That Album is proudly part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Go to http://pantheonpodcasts.com to check out all their great shows. You can send me feedback at rrrkitchen@yahoo.com.au (written or mp3 voicemail) or join the Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/lovethatalbum If you'd consider writing an iTunes review I'd be immensely grateful. However, it'd be even better if you told a friend about the podcast and Pantheon – at a barbecue, over coffee, on social media….whatever way you choose, consider me grateful. Proudly Pantheon.

Are you all seated comfortable, too square on your botty? Then Love That Album can begin.Welcome to episode 155 of Love That Album podcast.As the 1960s rolled on, popular music evolved....and yet some of it looked back for inspiration. In the late 60s, the pop songs that had propelled the early British Invasion bands had moved on to make way for heavier sounds of psychedelia and blues based rock. The mod bands that had started out as purely “maximum R&B” were exploring different avenues while still maintaining some connections to their roots.In 1968, The Small Faces had been through their share of grief with crooked management, contracts that did not favour them, and money woes. (Sadly, Steve Marriott's own future was set for a lot more grief). They wrote and recorded what many believe was their masterpiece, “Ogden's Nut Gone Flake”. Side 1 was a collection of hard rock, psychedelia, and old world British music-hall inspired tunes. Side 2 was a concept piece – a story about Happiness Stan who searches for the “missing” half of the moon. The story is narrated by Professor of Gobbledegook, Stanley Unwin. Oh yes, oh yes.....I'm joined by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Ian Kitney (Overnight Jones, Tim Rogers and the Temperance Union) to contemplate the moon, lavatories, raising one's “oars”, the drumming of Kenny Jones, whether Marriott was mocking the state of contemporary British music, putting holes in one's snare drum, and what happens when George Formby is cleaning “winders”. It was a thrill to have Ian on the show – not only as a musician I've long admired, but also as a wonderful conversation partner about music we love.I also want to give a shout out to author Alan Pattinson who has written a series of wonderful books about so many musicians and bands from the “classic” rock era. I bought his book on The Small Faces to get a feel for their history, and I'd recommend anything he'd write.You can get Ian's albums from his Bandcamp site at https://iankitney.bandcamp.com/ including his latest called BGM – a wonderful collection of songs crossing over a number of styles over the history of pop.You can read Alan's writings at http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/ which features links to his multiple e-books about the histories and discographies of many bands you love.Download this episode of LTA from wherever you prefer getting your podcasts.Love That Album is proudly part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Go to http://pantheonpodcasts.com to check out all their great shows.You can send me feedback at rrrkitchen@yahoo.com.au (written or mp3 voicemail) or join the Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/lovethatalbumIf you'd consider writing an iTunes review I'd be immensely grateful. However, it'd be even better if you told a friend about the podcast and Pantheon – at a barbecue, over coffee, on social media….whatever way you choose, consider me grateful.Proudly Pantheon.

Episode 144 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Last Train to Clarksville" and the beginnings of the career of the Monkees, along with a short primer on the origins of the Vietnam War.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a seventeen-minute bonus episode available, on "These Boots Are Made For Walking" by Nancy Sinatra, which I mispronounce at the end of this episode as "These Boots Were Made For Walking", so no need to correct me here. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. The best versions of the Monkees albums are the triple-CD super-deluxe versions that used to be available from monkees.com , and I've used Andrew Sandoval's liner notes for them extensively in this episode. Sadly, though, the only one of those that is still in print is More of the Monkees. For those just getting into the group, my advice is to start with this five-CD set, which contains their first five albums along with bonus tracks. The single biggest source of information I used in this episode is the first edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees; The Day-By-Day Story. Sadly that is now out of print and goes for hundreds of pounds. Sandoval released a second edition of the book last year, which I was unfortunately unable to obtain, but that too is now out of print. If you can find a copy of either, do get one. Other sources used were Monkee Business by Eric Lefcowitz, and the autobiographies of three of the band members and one of the songwriters -- Infinite Tuesday by Michael Nesmith, They Made a Monkee Out of Me by Davy Jones, I'm a Believer by Micky Dolenz, and Psychedelic Bubble-Gum by Bobby Hart. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've obviously talked in this podcast about several of the biggest hits of 1966 already, but we haven't mentioned the biggest hit of the year, one of the strangest records ever to make number one in the US -- "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Sgt Barry Sadler: [Excerpt: Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Berets"] Barry Sadler was an altogether odd man, and just as a brief warning his story, which will last a minute or so, involves gun violence. At the time he wrote and recorded that song, he was on active duty in the military -- he was a combat medic who'd been fighting in the Vietnam War when he'd got a wound that had meant he had to be shipped back to the USA, and while at Fort Bragg he decided to write and record a song about his experiences, with the help of Robin Moore, a right-wing author of military books, both fiction and nonfiction, who wrote the books on which the films The Green Berets and The French Connection were based. Sadler's record became one of those massive fluke hits, selling over nine million copies and getting him appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, but other than one top thirty hit, he never had another hit single. Instead, he tried and failed to have a TV career, then became a writer of pulp fiction himself, writing a series of twenty-one novels about the centurion who thrust his spear into Jesus' side when Jesus was being crucified, and is thus cursed to be a soldier until the second coming. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived until he shot Lee Emerson, a country songwriter who had written songs for Marty Robbins, in the head, killing him, in an argument over a woman. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail for this misdemeanour, of which he served twenty-eight. Later he moved to Guatemala City, where he was himself shot in the head. The nearest Army base to Nashville, where Sadler lived after his discharge, is Fort Campbell, in Clarksville: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] The Vietnam War was a long and complicated war, one which affected nearly everything we're going to see in the next year or so of this podcast, and we're going to talk about it a lot, so it's worth giving a little bit of background here. In doing so, I'm going to use quite a flippant tone, but I want to make it clear that I'm not mocking the very real horrors that people suffered in the wars I'm talking about -- it's just that to sum up multiple decades of unimaginable horrors in a few sentences requires glossing over so much that you have to either laugh or cry. The origin of the Vietnam War, as in so many things in twentieth century history, can be found in European colonialism. France had invaded much of Southeast Asia in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and created a territory known as French Indo-China, which became part of the French colonial Empire. But in 1940 France was taken over by Germany, and Japan was at war with China. Germany and Japan were allies, and the Japanese were worried that French Indo-China would be used to import fuel and arms to China -- plus, they quite fancied the idea of having a Japanese empire. So Vichy France let Japan take control of French Indo-China. But of course the *reason* that France had been taken over by Germany was that pretty much the whole world was at war in 1940, and obviously the countries that were fighting Germany and Japan -- the bloc led by Britain, soon to be joined by America and Russia -- weren't very keen on the idea of Japan getting more territory. But they were also busy with the whole "fighting a world war" thing, so they did what governments in this situation always do -- they funded local guerilla insurgent fighters on the basis that "my enemy's enemy is my friend", something that has luckily never had any negative consequences whatsoever, except for occasionally. Those local guerilla fighters were an anti-imperialist popular front, the Việt Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh, a revolutionary Communist. They were dedicated to overthrowing foreign imperialist occupiers and gaining independence for Vietnam, and Hồ Chí Minh further wanted to establish a Soviet-style Communist government in the newly-independent country. The Allies funded the Việt Minh in their fight against the Japanese occupiers until the end of the Second World War, at which point France was liberated from German occupation, Vietnam was liberated from Japanese occupation, and the French basically said "Hooray! We get our Empire back!", to which Hồ Chí Minh's response was, more or less, "what part of anti-imperialist Marxist dedicated to overthrowing foreign occupation of Vietnam did you not understand, exactly?" Obviously, the French weren't best pleased with this, and so began what was the first of a series of wars in the region. The First Indochina War lasted for years and ended in a negotiated peace of a sort. Of course, this led to the favoured tactic of the time, partition -- splitting a formerly-occupied country into two, at an arbitrary dividing line, a tactic which was notably successful in securing peace everywhere it was tried. Apart from Ireland, India, Korea, and a few other places, but surely it wouldn't be a problem in Vietnam, right? North Vietnam was controlled by the Communists, led by Hồ Chí Minh, and recognised by China and the USSR but not by the Western states. South Vietnam was nominally independent but led by the former puppet emperor who owed his position to France, soon replaced by a right-wing dictatorship. And both the right-wing dictatorship and the left-wing dictatorship were soon busily oppressing their own citizens and funding military opposition groups in the other country. This soon escalated into full-blown war, with the North backed by China and Russia and the South backed by America. This was one of a whole series of wars in small countries which were really proxy wars between the two major powers, the USA and the USSR, both of which were vying for control, but which couldn't confront each other directly because either country had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world multiple times over. But the Vietnam War quickly became more than a small proxy war. The US started sending its own troops over, and more and more of them. The US had never ended the draft after World War II, and by the mid sixties significant numbers of young men were being called up and sent over to fight in a war that had by that point lasted a decade (depending on exactly when you count the war as starting from) between two countries they didn't care about, over things few of them understood, and at an exorbitant cost in lives. As you might imagine, this started to become unpopular among those likely to be drafted, and as the people most affected (other, of course, than the Vietnamese people, whose opinions on being bombed and shot at by foreigners supporting one of other of the dictators vying to rule over them nobody else was much interested in) were also of the generation who were the main audience for popular music, slowly this started to seep into the lyrics of songs -- a seepage which had already been prompted by the appearance in the folk and soul worlds of many songs against other horrors, like segregation. This started to hit the pop charts with songs like "The Universal Soldier" by Buffy Saint-Marie, which made the UK top five in a version by Donovan: [Excerpt: Donovan, "The Universal Soldier"] That charted in the lower regions of the US charts, and a cover version by Glen Campbell did slightly better: [Excerpt: Glen Campbell, "The Universal Soldier"] That was even though Campbell himself was a supporter of the war in Vietnam, and rather pro-military. Meanwhile, as we've seen a couple of times, Jan Berry of Jan and Dean recorded a pro-war answer song to that, "The Universal Coward": [Excerpt: Jan Berry, "The Universal Coward"] This, of course, was even though Berry was himself avoiding the draft. And I've not been able to find the credits for that track, but Glen Campbell regularly played guitar on Berry's sessions, so it's entirely possible that he played guitar on that record made by a coward, attacking his own record, which he disagreed with, for its cowardice. This is, of course, what happens when popular culture tries to engage with social and political issues -- pop culture is motivated by money, not ideological consistency, and so if there's money to be made from anti-war songs or from pro-war songs, someone will take that money. And so on October the ninth 1965, Billboard magazine ran a report: "Colpix Enters Protest Field HOLLYWOOD -Colpix has secured its first protest lyric disk, "The Willing Conscript,"as General Manager Bud Katzel initiates relationships with independent producers. The single features Lauren St. Davis. Katzel says the song was written during the Civil War, rewritten during World War I and most recently updated by Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe. Screen Gems Music, the company's publishing wing, is tracing the song's history, Katzel said. Katzel's second single is "(You Got the Gamma Goochee" by an artist with that unusual stage name. The record is a Screen Gems production and was in the house when Katzel arrived one month ago. The executive said he was expressly looking for material for two contract artists, David Jones and Hoyt Axton. The company is also working on getting Axton a role in a television series, "Camp Runamuck." " To unpack this a little, Colpix was a record label, owned by Columbia Pictures, and we talked about that a little bit in the episode on "The Loco-Motion" -- the film and TV companies were getting into music, and Columbia had recently bought up Don Kirshner's Aldon publishing and Dimension Records as part of their strategy of tying in music with their TV shows. This is a company trying desperately to jump on a bandwagon -- Colpix at this time was not exactly having huge amounts of success with its records. Hoyt Axton, meanwhile, was a successful country singer and songwriter. We met his mother many episodes back -- Mae Axton was the writer of "Heartbreak Hotel". Axton himself is now best known as the dad in the 80s film Gremlins. David Jones will be coming up shortly. Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe were record executives then at Kama Sutra records, but soon to move on -- we'll be hearing about Krasnow more in future episodes. Neither of them were songwriters, and while I have no real reason to disbelieve the claim that "The Willing Conscript" dates back to the Civil War, the earliest version *I* have been able to track down was its publication in issue 28 of Broadside Magazine in June 1963 -- nearly a hundred years after the American Civil War -- with the credit "by Tom Paxton" -- Paxton was a popular singer-songwriter of the time, and it certainly sounds like his writing. The first recording of it I know of was by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, "The Willing Conscript"] But the odd thing is that by the time this was printed, the single had already been released the previous month, and it was not released under the name Lauren St Davis, or under the title "The Willing Conscript" -- there are precisely two differences between the song copyrighted as by Krasnow and Ashe and the one copyrighted two years earlier as by Paxton. One is that verses three and four are swapped round, the other is that it's now titled "The New Recruit". And presumably because they realised that the pseudonym "Lauren St. Davis" was trying just a bit too hard to sound cool and drug culture, they reverted to another stage name the performer had been using, Michael Blessing: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "The New Recruit"] Blessing's name was actually Michael Nesmith, and before we go any further, yes his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, did invent the product that later became marketed in the US as Liquid Paper. At this time, though, that company wasn't anywhere near as successful as it later became, and was still a tiny company. I only mention it to forestall the ten thousand comments and tweets I would otherwise get asking why I didn't mention it. In Nesmith's autobiography, while he talks a lot about his mother, he barely mentions her business and says he was uninterested in it -- he talks far more about the love of art she instilled in him, as well as her interest in the deep questions of philosophy and religion, to which in her case and his they found answers in Christian Science, but both were interested in conversations about ideas, in a way that few other people in Nesmith's early environment were. Nesmith's mother was also responsible for his music career. He had spent two years in the Air Force in his late teens, and the year he got out, his mother and stepfather bought him a guitar for Christmas, after he was inspired by seeing Hoyt Axton performing live and thinking he could do that himself: [Excerpt: Hoyt Axton, "Greenback Dollar"] As he put it in his autobiography, "What did it matter that I couldn't play the guitar, couldn't sing very well, and didn't know any folk songs? I would be going to college and hanging out at the student union with pretty girls and singing folk songs. They would like me. I might even figure out a way to get a cool car." This is, of course, the thought process that pretty much every young man to pick up a guitar goes through, but Nesmith was more dedicated than most. He gave his first performance as a folk singer ten days after he first got a guitar, after practising the few chords in most folk songs for twelve hours a day every day in that time. He soon started performing as a folk singer, performing around Dallas both on his own and with his friend John London, performing the standard folk repertoire of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly songs, things like "Pick a Bale of Cotton": [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith, "Pick a Bale of Cotton"] He also started writing his own songs, and put out a vanity record of one of them in 1963: [Excerpt: Mike Nesmith, "Wanderin'"] London moved to California, and Nesmith soon followed, with his first wife Phyllis and their son Christian. There Nesmith and London had the good fortune to be neighbours with someone who was a business associate of Frankie Laine, and they were signed to Laine's management company as a folk duo. However, Nesmith's real love was rock and roll, especially the heavier R&B end of the genre -- he was particularly inspired by Bo Diddley, and would always credit seeing Diddley live as a teenager as being his biggest musical influence. Soon Nesmith and London had formed a folk-rock trio with their friend Bill Sleeper. As Mike & John & Bill, they put out a single, "How Can You Kiss Me?", written by Nesmith: [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "How Can You Kiss Me?"] They also recorded more of Nesmith's songs, like "All the King's Horses": [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "All the King's Horses"] But that was left unreleased, as Bill was drafted, and Nesmith and London soon found themselves in The Survivors, one of several big folk groups run by Randy Sparks, the founder of the New Christie Minstrels. Nesmith was also writing songs throughout 1964 and 1965, and a few of those songs would be recorded by other people in 1966, like "Different Drum", which was recorded by the bluegrass band The Greenbriar Boys: [Excerpt: The Greenbriar Boys, "Different Drum"] That would more successfully be recorded by the Stone Poneys later of course. And Nesmith's "Mary Mary" was also picked up by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Mary Mary"] But while Nesmith had written these songs by late 1965, he wasn't able to record them himself. He was signed by Bob Krasnow, who insisted he change his name to Michael Blessing, and recorded two singles for Colpix -- "The New Recruit", which we heard earlier, and a version of Buffy Saint-Marie's "Until It's Time For You To Go", sung in a high tenor range very far from Nesmith's normal singing voice: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Until It's Time For You To Go"] But to my mind by far the best thing Nesmith recorded in this period is the unissued third Michael Blessing single, where Nesmith seems to have been given a chance to make the record he really wanted to make. The B-side, a version of Allen Toussaint's swamp-rocker "Get Out of My Life, Woman", is merely a quite good version of the song, but the A-side, a version of his idol Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" is utterly extraordinary, and it's astonishing that it was never released at the time: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Who Do You Love?"] But the Michael Blessing records did no better than anything else Colpix were putting out. Indeed, the only record they got onto the hot one hundred at all in a three and a half year period was a single by one David Jones, which reached the heady heights of number ninety-eight: [Excerpt: David Jones, "What Are We Going to Do?"] Jones had been brought up in extreme poverty in Openshaw in Manchester, but had been encouraged by his mother, who died when he was fourteen, to go into acting. He'd had a few parts on local radio, and had appeared as a child actor on TV shows made in Manchester, like appearing in the long-running soap opera Coronation Street (still on today) as Ena Sharples' grandson Colin: [Excerpt: Coronation St https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FDEvOs1imc , 13:30] He also had small roles in Z-Cars and Bill Naughton's TV play "June Evening", and a larger role in Keith Waterhouse's radio play "There is a Happy Land". But when he left school, he decided he was going to become a jockey rather than an actor -- he was always athletic, he loved horses, and he was short -- I've seen his height variously cited as five foot three and five foot four. But it turned out that the owner of the stables in which he was training had showbusiness connections, and got him the audition that changed his life, for the part of the Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's West End musical Oliver! We've encountered Lionel Bart before a couple of times, but if you don't remember him, he was the songwriter who co-wrote Tommy Steele's hits, and who wrote "Living Doll" for Cliff Richard. He also discovered both Steele and Marty Wilde, and was one of the major figures in early British rock and roll. But after the Tommy Steele records, he'd turned his attention to stage musicals, writing book, music, and lyrics for a string of hits, and more-or-less singlehandedly inventing the modern British stage musical form -- something Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example, always credits him with. Oliver!, based on Oliver Twist, was his biggest success, and they were looking for a new Artful Dodger. This was *the* best role for a teenage boy in the UK at the time -- later performers to take the role on the London stage include Steve Marriott and Phil Collins, both of whom we'll no doubt encounter in future episodes -- and Jones got the job, although they were a bit worried at first about his Manchester vowels. He assured them though that he could learn to do a Cockney accent, and they took him on. Jones not having a natural Cockney accent ended up doing him the biggest favour of his career. While he could put on a relatively convincing one, he articulated quite carefully because it wasn't his natural accent. And so when the North American version found  in previews that their real Cockney Dodger wasn't being understood perfectly, the fake Cockney Jones was brought over to join the show on Broadway, and was there from opening night on. On February the ninth, 1964, Jones found himself, as part of the Broadway cast of Oliver!, on the Ed Sullivan Show: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and Georgia Brown, "I'd Do Anything"] That same night, there were some other British people, who got a little bit more attention than Jones did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on Ed Sullivan)"] Davy Jones wasn't a particular fan of pop music at that point, but he knew he liked what he saw, and he wanted some of the same reaction. Shortly after this, Jones was picked up for management by Ward Sylvester, of Columbia Pictures, who was going to groom Jones for stardom. Jones continued in Oliver! for a while, and also had a brief run in a touring version of Pickwick, another musical based on a Dickens novel, this time starring Harry Secombe, the British comedian and singer who had made his name with the Goon Show. Jones' first single, "Dream Girl", came out in early 1965: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Dream Girl"] It was unsuccessful, as was his one album, David Jones, which seemed to be aiming at the teen idol market, but failing miserably. The second single, "What Are  We Going to Do?" did make the very lowest regions of the Hot One Hundred, but the rest of the album was mostly attempts to sound a bit like Herman's Hermits -- a band whose lead singer, coincidentally, also came from Manchester, had appeared in Coronation Street, and was performing with a fake Cockney accent. Herman's Hermits had had a massive US hit with the old music hall song "I'm Henry VIII I Am": [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry VIII I Am"] So of course Davy had his own old music-hall song, "Any Old Iron": [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Any Old Iron"] Also, the Turtles had recently had a hit with a folk-rock version of Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe", and Davy cut his own version of their arrangement, in the one concession to rock music on the album: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "It Ain't Me Babe"] The album was, unsurprisingly, completely unsuccessful, but Ward Sylvester was not disheartened. He had the perfect job for a young British teen idol who could sing and act. The Monkees was the brainchild of two young TV producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who had come up with the idea of doing a TV show very loosely based on the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night (though Rafelson would later claim that he'd had the idea many years before A Hard Day's Night and was inspired by his youth touring with folk bands -- Schneider always admitted the true inspiration though). This was not a particularly original idea -- there were a whole bunch of people trying to make TV shows based in some way around bands. Jan and Dean were working on a possible TV series, there was talk of a TV series starring The Who, there was a Beatles cartoon series, Hanna-Barbera were working on a cartoon series about a band called The Bats, and there was even another show proposed to Screen Gems, Columbia's TV department, titled Liverpool USA, which was meant to star Davy Jones, another British performer, and two American musicians, and to have songs provided by Don Kirshner's songwriters. That The Monkees, rather than these other series, was the one that made it to the TV (though obviously the Beatles cartoon series did too) is largely because Rafelson and Schneider's independent production company, Raybert, which they had started after leaving Screen Gems, was given two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to develop the series by their former colleague, Screen Gems' vice president in charge of programme development, the former child star Jackie Cooper. Of course, as well as being their former colleague, Cooper may have had some more incentive to give Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider that money in that the head of Columbia Pictures, and thus Cooper's boss' boss, was one Abe Schneider. The original idea for the show was to use the Lovin' Spoonful, but as we heard last week they weren't too keen, and it was quickly decided instead that the production team would put together a group of performers. Davy Jones was immediately attached to the project, although Rafelson was uncomfortable with Jones, thinking he wasn't as rock and roll as Rafelson was hoping for -- he later conceded, though, that Jones was absolutely right for the group. As for everyone else, to start with Rafelson and Schneider placed an ad in a couple of the trade papers which read "Madness!! Auditions Folk and Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys ages 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank's types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview" There were a couple of dogwhistles in there, to appeal to the hip crowd -- Ben Frank's was a twenty-four-hour restaurant on the Sunset Strip, where people including Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison used to hang out, and which was very much associated with the freak scene we've looked at in episodes on Zappa and the Byrds. Meanwhile "Must come down for interview" was meant to emphasise that you couldn't actually be high when you turned up -- but you were expected to be the kind of person who would at least at some points have been high. A lot of people answered that ad -- including Paul Williams, Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks, and many more we'll be seeing along the way. But oddly, the only person actually signed up for the show because of that ad was Michael Nesmith -- who was already signed to Colpix Records anyway. According to Davy Jones, who was sitting in at the auditions, Schneider and Rafelson were deliberately trying to disorient the auditioners with provocative behaviour like just ignoring them, to see how they'd react. Nesmith was completely unfazed by this, and apparently walked in wearing a  green wool hat and carrying a bag of laundry, saying that he needed to get this over with quickly so he could go and do his washing. John London, who came along to the audition as well, talked later about seeing Nesmith fill in a questionnaire that everyone had to fill in -- in a space asking about previous experience Nesmith just wrote "Life" and drew a big diagonal line across the rest of the page. That attitude certainly comes across in Nesmith's screen test: [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith screen test] Meanwhile, Rafelson and Schneider were also scouring the clubs for performers who might be useful, and put together a shortlist of people including Jerry Yester and Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet, Bill Chadwick, who was in the Survivors with Nesmith and London, and one Micky Braddock, whose agent they got in touch with and who was soon signed up. Braddock was the stage name of Micky Dolenz, who soon reverted to his birth surname, and it's the name by which he went in his first bout of fame. Dolenz was the son of two moderately successful Hollywood actors, George Dolenz and Janelle Johnson, and their connections had led to Dolenz, as Braddock, getting the lead role in the 1958 TV series Circus Boy, about a child named Corky who works in a circus looking after an elephant after his parents, the Flying Falcons, were killed in a trapeze accident. [Excerpt: Circus Boy, "I can't play a drum"] Oddly, one of the other people who had been considered for that role was Paul Williams, who was also considered for the Monkees but ultimately turned down, and would later write one of the Monkees' last singles. Dolenz had had a few minor TV appearances after that series had ended, including a recurring role on Peyton Place, but he had also started to get interested in music. He'd performed a bit as a folk duo with his sister Coco, and had also been the lead singer of a band called Micky and the One-Nighters, who later changed their name to the Missing Links, who'd played mostly covers of Little Richard and Chuck Berry songs and later British Invasion hits. He'd also recorded two tracks with Wrecking Crew backing, although neither track got released until after his later fame -- "Don't Do It": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Don't Do It"] and "Huff Puff": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Huff Puff"] Dolenz had a great singing voice, an irrepressible personality, and plenty of TV experience. He was obviously in. Rafelson and Schneider took quite a while whittling down the shortlist to the final four, and they *were* still considering people who'd applied through the ads. One they actually offered the role to was Stephen Stills, but he decided not to take the role. When he turned the role down, they asked if he knew anyone else who had a similar appearance to him, and as it happened he did. Steve Stills and Peter Tork had known of each other before they actually met on the streets of Greenwich Village -- the way they both told the story, on their first meeting they'd each approached the other and said "You must be the guy everyone says looks like me!" The two had become fast friends, and had played around the Greenwich Village folk scene together for a while, before going their separate ways -- Stills moving to California while Tork joined another of those big folk ensembles of the New Christie Minstrels type, this one called the Phoenix Singers. Tork had later moved to California himself, and reconnected with his old friend, and they had performed together for a while in a trio called the Buffalo Fish, with Tork playing various instruments, singing, and doing comedy bits. Oddly, while Tork was the member of the Monkees with the most experience as a musician, he was the only one who hadn't made a record when the TV show was put together. But he was by far the most skilled instrumentalist of the group -- as distinct from best musician, a distinction Tork was always scrupulous about making -- and could play guitar, bass, and keyboards, all to a high standard -- and I've also seen him in more recent years play French horn live. His great love, though, was the banjo, and you can hear how he must have sounded on the Greenwich Village folk scene in his solo spots on Monkees shows, where he would show off his banjo skills: [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Cripple Creek"] Tork wouldn't get to use his instrumental skills much at first though, as most of the backing tracks for the group's records were going to be performed by other people. More impressive for the TV series producers was his gift for comedy, especially physical comedy -- having seen Tork perform live a few times, the only comparison I can make to his physical presence is to Harpo Marx, which is about as high a compliment as one can give. Indeed, Micky Dolenz has often pointed out that while there were intentional parallels to the Beatles in the casting of the group, the Marx Brothers are a far better parallel, and it's certainly easy to see Tork as Harpo, Dolenz as Chico, Nesmith as Groucho, and Jones as Zeppo. (This sounds like an insult to Jones, unless you're aware of how much the Marx Brothers films actually depended on Zeppo as the connective tissue between the more outrageous brothers and the more normal environment they were operating in, and how much the later films suffered for the lack of Zeppo). The new cast worked well together, even though there were obvious disagreements between them right from the start. Dolenz, at least at this point, seems to have been the gel that held the four together -- he had the experience of being a child star in common with Jones, he was a habitue of the Sunset Strip clubs where Nesmith and Tork had been hanging out, and he had personality traits in common with all of them. Notably, in later years, Dolenz would do duo tours with each of his three bandmates without the participation of the others. The others, though, didn't get on so well with each other. Jones and Tork seem to have got on OK, but they were very different people -- Jones was a showbiz entertainer, whose primary concern was that none of the other stars of the show be better looking than him, while Tork was later self-diagnosed as neurodivergent, a folkie proto-hippie who wanted to drift from town to town playing his banjo. Tork and Nesmith had similar backgrounds and attitudes in some respects -- and were united in their desire to have more musical input into the show than was originally intended -- but they were such different personalities in every aspect of their lives from their religious views to their politics to their taste in music they came into conflict. Nesmith would later say of Tork "I never liked Peter, he never liked me. So we had an uneasy truce between the two of us. As clear as I could tell, among his peers he was very well liked. But we rarely had a civil word to say to each other". Nesmith also didn't get on well with Jones, both of them seeming to view themselves as the natural leader of the group, with all the clashes that entails. The four Monkees were assigned instruments for their characters based not on instrumental skill, but on what suited their roles better. Jones was the teen idol character, so he was made the maraca-playing frontman who could dance without having to play an instrument, though Dolenz took far more of the lead vocals. Nesmith was made the guitarist, while Tork was put on bass, though Tork was by far the better guitarist of the two. And Dolenz was put on drums, even though he didn't play the drums -- Tork would always say later that if the roles had been allocated by actual playing ability, Jones would have been the drummer. Dolenz did, though, become a good drummer, if a rather idiosyncratic one. Tork would later say "Micky played the drums but Mike kept time, on that one record we all made, Headquarters. Mike was the timekeeper. I don't know that Micky relied on him but Mike had a much stronger sense of time. And Davy too, Davy has a much stronger sense of time. Micky played the drums like they were a musical instrument, as a colour. He played the drum colour.... as a band, there was a drummer and there was a timekeeper and they were different people." But at first, while the group were practising their instruments so they could mime convincingly on the TV and make personal appearances, they didn't need to play on their records. Indeed, on the initial pilot, they didn't even sing -- the recordings had been made before the cast had been finalised: [Excerpt: Boyce & Hart, "Monkees Theme (pilot version)"] The music was instead performed by two songwriters, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who would become hugely important in the Monkees project. Boyce and Hart were not the first choice for the project. Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems Music, had initially suggested Roger Atkins, a Brill Building songwriter working for his company, as the main songwriter for The Monkees. Atkins is best known for writing "It's My Life", a hit for the Animals: [Excerpt: The Animals, "It's My Life"] But Atkins didn't work out, though he would collaborate later on one song with Nesmith, and reading between the lines, it seems that there was some corporate infighting going on, though I've not seen it stated in so many words. There seems to have been a turf war between Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems' music publishing, who was based in the Brill Building, and Lester Sill, the West Coast executive we've seen so many times before, the mentor to Leiber and Stoller, Duane Eddy, and Phil Spector, who was now the head of Screen Gems music on the West Coast. It also seems to be the case that none of the top Brill Building songwriters were all that keen on being involved at this point -- writing songs for an unsold TV pilot wasn't exactly a plum gig. Sill ended up working closely with the TV people, and it seems to have been him who put forward Boyce and Hart, a songwriting team he was mentoring. Boyce and Hart had been working in the music industry for years, both together and separately, and had had some success, though they weren't one of the top-tier songwriting teams like Goffin and King. They'd both started as performers -- Boyce's first single, "Betty Jean", had come out in 1958: [Excerpt: Tommy Boyce, "Betty Jean"] And Hart's, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me", under his birth name Robert Harshman, a year later: [Excerpt: Robert Harshman, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me"] Boyce had been the first one to have real songwriting success, writing Fats Domino's top ten hit "Be My Guest" in 1959: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Be My Guest"] and cowriting two songs with singer Curtis Lee, both of which became singles produced by Phil Spector -- "Under the Moon of Love" and the top ten hit "Pretty Little Angel Eyes": [Excerpt: Curtis Lee, "Pretty Little Angel Eyes"] Boyce and Hart together, along with Wes Farrell, who had co-written "Twist and Shout" with Bert Berns, wrote "Lazy Elsie Molly" for Chubby Checker, and the number three hit "Come a Little Bit Closer" for Jay and the Americans: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Come a Little Bit Closer"] At this point they were both working in the Brill Building, but then Boyce moved to the West Coast, where he was paired with Steve Venet, the brother of Nik Venet, and they co-wrote and produced "Peaches and Cream" for the Ikettes: [Excerpt: The Ikettes, "Peaches and Cream"] Hart, meanwhile, was playing in the band of Teddy Randazzo, the accordion-playing singer who had appeared in The Girl Can't Help It, and with Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein he wrote "Hurts So Bad", which became a big hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials: [Excerpt: Little Anthony and the Imperials, "Hurts So Bad"] But Hart soon moved over to the West Coast, where he joined his old partner Boyce, who had been busy writing TV themes with Venet for shows like "Where the Action Is". Hart soon replaced Venet in the team, and the two soon wrote what would become undoubtedly their most famous piece of music ever, a theme tune that generations of TV viewers would grow to remember: [Excerpt: "Theme from Days of Our Lives"] Well, what did you *think* I meant? Yes, just as Davy Jones had starred in an early episode of Britain's longest-running soap opera, one that's still running today, so Boyce and Hart wrote the theme music for *America's* longest-running soap opera, which has been running every weekday since 1965, and has so far aired well in excess of fourteen thousand episodes. Meanwhile, Hart had started performing in a band called the Candy Store Prophets, with Larry Taylor  -- who we last saw with the Gamblers, playing on "LSD-25" and "Moon Dawg" -- on bass, Gerry McGee on guitar, and Billy Lewis on drums. It was this band that Boyce and Hart used -- augmented by session guitarists Wayne Erwin and Louie Shelton and Wrecking Crew percussionist Gene Estes on tambourine, plus Boyce and session singer Ron Hicklin on backing vocals, to record first the demos and then the actual tracks that would become the Monkees hits. They had a couple of songs already that would be suitable for the pilot episode, but they needed something that would be usable as a theme song for the TV show. Boyce and Hart's usual working method was to write off another hit -- they'd try to replicate the hook or the feel or the basic sound of something that was already popular. In this case, they took inspiration from the song "Catch Us If You Can", the theme from the film that was the Dave Clark Five's attempt at their own A Hard Day's Night: [Excerpt: The Dave Clark Five, "Catch Us If You Can"] Boyce and Hart turned that idea into what would become the Monkees theme. We heard their performance of it earlier of course, but when the TV show finally came out, it was rerecorded with Dolenz singing: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Monkees Theme"] For a while, Boyce and Hart hoped that they would get to perform all the music for the TV show, and there was even apparently some vague talk of them being cast in it, but it was quickly decided that they would just be songwriters. Originally, the intent was that they wouldn't even produce the records, that instead the production would be done by a name producer. Micky Most, the Animals' producer, was sounded out for the role but wasn't interested. Snuff Garrett was brought in, but quickly discovered he didn't get on with the group at all -- in particular, they were all annoyed at the idea that Davy would be the sole lead vocalist, and the tracks Garrett cut with Davy on lead and the Wrecking Crew backing were scrapped. Instead, it was decided that Boyce and Hart would produce most of the tracks, initially with the help of the more experienced Jack Keller, and that they would only work with one Monkee at a time to minimise disruption -- usually Micky and sometimes Davy. These records would be made the same way as the demos had been, by the same set of musicians, just with one of the Monkees taking the lead. Meanwhile, as Nesmith was seriously interested in writing and production, and Rafelson and Schneider wanted to encourage the cast members, he was also assigned to write and produce songs for the show. Unlike Boyce and Hart, Nesmith wanted to use his bandmates' talents -- partly as a way of winning them over, as it was already becoming clear that the show would involve several competing factions. Nesmith's songs were mostly country-rock tracks that weren't considered suitable as singles, but they would be used on the TV show and as album tracks, and on Nesmith's songs Dolenz and Tork would sing backing vocals, and Tork would join the Wrecking Crew as an extra guitarist -- though he was well aware that his part on records like "Sweet Young Thing" wasn't strictly necessary when Glen Campbell, James Burton, Al Casey and Mike Deasy were also playing guitar: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Sweet Young Thing"] That track was written by Nesmith with Goffin and King, and there seems to have been some effort to pair Nesmith, early on, with more commercial songwriters, though this soon fell by the wayside and Nesmith was allowed to keep making his own idiosyncratic records off to the side while Boyce and Hart got on with making the more commercial records. This was not, incidentally, something that most of the stars of the show objected to or even thought was a problem at the time. Tork was rather upset that he wasn't getting to have much involvement with the direction of the music, as he'd thought he was being employed as a musician, but Dolenz and Jones were actors first and foremost, while Nesmith was happily making his own tracks. They'd all known going in that most of the music for the show would be created by other people -- there were going to be two songs every episode, and there was no way that four people could write and record that much material themselves while also performing in a half-hour comedy show every week. Assuming, of course, that the show even aired. Initial audience response to the pilot was tepid at best, and it looked for a while like the show wasn't going to be green-lit. But Rafelson and Schneider -- and director James Frawley who played a crucial role in developing the show -- recut the pilot, cutting out one character altogether -- a manager who acted as an adult supervisor -- and adding in excerpts of the audition tapes, showing the real characters of some of the actors. As three of the four were playing characters loosely based on themselves -- Peter's "dummy" character wasn't anything like he was in real life, but was like the comedy character he'd developed in his folk-club performances -- this helped draw the audience in. It also, though, contributed to some line-blurring that became a problem. The re-edited pilot was a success, and the series sold. Indeed, the new format for the series was a unique one that had never been done on TV before -- it was a sitcom about four young men living together, without any older adult supervision, getting into improbable adventures, and with one or two semi-improvised "romps", inspired by silent slapstick, over which played original songs. This became strangely influential in British sitcom when the series came out over here  -- two of the most important sitcoms of the next couple of decades, The Goodies and The Young Ones, are very clearly influenced by the Monkees. And before the broadcast of the first episode, they were going to release a single to promote it. The song chosen as the first single was one Boyce and Hart had written, inspired by the Beatles. Specifically inspired by this: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Hart heard that tag on the radio, and thought that the Beatles were singing "take the last train". When he heard the song again the next day and realised that the song had nothing to do with trains, he and Boyce sat down and wrote their own song inspired by his mishearing. "Last Train to Clarksville" is structured very, very, similarly to "Paperback Writer" -- both of them stay on one chord, a G7, for an eight-bar verse before changing to C7 for a chorus line -- the word "writer" for the Beatles, the "no no no" (inspired by the Beatles "yeah yeah yeah") for the Monkees. To show how close the parallels are, I've sped up the vocals from the Beatles track slightly to match the tempo with a karaoke backing track version of "Last Train to Clarksville" I found, and put the two together: [Excerpt: "Paperback Clarksville"] Lyrically, there was one inspiration I will talk about in a minute, but I think I've identified another inspiration that nobody has ever mentioned. The classic country song "Night Train to Memphis", co-written by Owen Bradley, and made famous by Roy Acuff, has some slight melodic similarity to "Last Train to Clarksville", and parallels the lyrics fairly closely -- "take the night train to Memphis" against "take the last train to Clarksville", both towns in Tennessee, and "when you arrive at the station, I'll be right there to meet you I'll be right there to greet you, So don't turn down my invitation" is clearly close to "and I'll meet you at the station, you can be here by 4:30 'cos I've made your reservation": [Excerpt: Roy Acuff, "Night Train to Memphis"] Interestingly, in May 1966, the same month that "Paperback Writer" was released, and so presumably the time that Hart heard the song on the radio for the first time, Rick Nelson, the teen idol formerly known as Ricky Nelson, who had started his own career as a performer in a sitcom, had released an album called Bright Lights and Country Music. He'd had a bit of a career downslump and was changing musical direction, and recording country songs. The last track on that album was a version of "Night Train to Memphis": [Excerpt: Rick Nelson, "Night Train to Memphis"] Now, I've never seen either Boyce or Hart ever mention even hearing that song, it's pure speculation on my part that there's any connection there at all, but I thought the similarity worth mentioning. The idea of the lyric, though, was to make a very mild statement about the Vietnam War. Clarksville was, as mentioned earlier, the site of Fort Campbell, a military training base, and they crafted a story about a young soldier being shipped off to war, calling his girlfriend to come and see him for one last night. This is left more-or-less ambiguous -- this was a song being written for a TV show intended for children, after all -- but it's still very clear on the line "and I don't know if I'm ever coming home". Now, Boyce and Hart were songwriters first and foremost, and as producers they were quite hands-off and would let the musicians shape the arrangements. They knew they wanted a guitar riff in the style of the Beatles' recent singles, and Louie Shelton came up with one based around the G7 chord that forms the basis of the song, starting with an octave leap: Shelton's riff became the hook that drove the record, and engineer Dave Hassinger added the final touch, manually raising the volume on the hi-hat mic for a fraction of a second every bar, creating a drum sound like a hissing steam brake: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] Now all that was needed was to get the lead vocals down. But Micky Dolenz was tired, and hungry, and overworked -- both Dolenz and Jones in their separate autobiographies talk about how it was normal for them to only get three hours' sleep a night between working twelve hour days filming the series, three-hour recording sessions, and publicity commitments. He got the verses down fine, but he just couldn't sing the middle eight. Boyce and Hart had written a complicated, multisyllabic, patter bridge, and he just couldn't get his tongue around that many syllables when he was that tired. He eventually asked if he could just sing "do do do" instead of the words, and the producers agreed. Surprisingly, it worked: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] "Last Train to Clarksville" was released in advance of the TV series, on a new label, Colgems, set up especially for the Monkees to replace Colpix, with a better distribution deal, and it went to number one. The TV show started out with mediocre ratings, but soon that too became a hit. And so did the first album released from the TV series. And that album was where some of the problems really started. The album itself was fine -- ten tracks produced by Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets playing and either Micky or Davy singing, mostly songs Boyce and Hart wrote, with a couple of numbers by Goffin and King and other Kirshner staff songwriters, plus two songs produced by Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, and with token participation from Tork and Dolenz. The problem was the back cover, which gave little potted descriptions of each of them, with their height, eye colour, and so on. And under three of them it said "plays guitar and sings", while under Dolenz it said "plays drums and sings". Now this was technically accurate -- they all did play those instruments. They just didn't play them on the record, which was clearly the impression the cover was intended to give. Nesmith in particular was incandescent. He believed that people watching the TV show understood that the group weren't really performing that music, any more than Adam West was really fighting crime or William Shatner travelling through space. But crediting them on the record was, he felt, crossing a line into something close to con artistry. To make matters worse, success was bringing more people trying to have a say. Where before, the Monkees had been an irrelevance, left to a couple of B-list producer-songwriters on the West Coast, now they were a guaranteed hit factory, and every songwriter working for Kirshner wanted to write and produce for them -- which made sense because of the sheer quantity of material they needed for the TV show, but it made for a bigger, less democratic, organisation -- one in which Kirshner was suddenly in far more control. Suddenly as well as Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets and Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, both of whom had been operating without much oversight from Kirshner, there were a bunch of tracks being cut on the East Coast by songwriting and production teams like Goffin and King, and Neil Sedaka and Carole Bayer. On the second Monkees album, released only a few months after the first, there were nine producers credited -- as well as Boyce, Hart, Jack Keller, and Nesmith, there were now also Goffin, King, Sedaka, Bayer, and Jeff Barry, who as well as cutting tracks on the east coast was also flying over to the West Coast, cutting more tracks with the Wrecking Crew, and producing vocal sessions while there. As well as producing songs he'd written himself, Barry was also supervising songs written by other people. One of those was a new songwriter he'd recently discovered and been co-producing for Bang Records, Neil Diamond, who had just had a big hit of his own with "Cherry Cherry": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] Diamond was signed with Screen Gems, and had written a song which Barry thought would be perfect for the Monkees, an uptempo song called "I'm a Believer", which he'd demoed with the regular Bang musicians -- top East Coast session players like Al Gorgoni, the guitarist who'd played on "The Sound of Silence": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "I'm a Believer"] Barry had cut a backing track for the Monkees using those same musicians, including Diamond on acoustic guitar, and brought it over to LA. And that track would indirectly lead to the first big crisis for the group. Barry, unlike Boyce and Hart, was interested in working with the whole group, and played all of them the backing track. Nesmith's reaction was a blunt "I'm a producer too, and that ain't no hit". He liked the song -- he wanted to have a go at producing a track on it himself, as it happened -- but he didn't think the backing track worked. Barry, trying to lighten the mood, joked that it wasn't finished and you needed to imagine it with strings and horns. Unfortunately, Nesmith didn't get that he was joking, and started talking about how that might indeed make a difference -- at which point everyone laughed and Nesmith took it badly -- his relationship with Barry quickly soured. Nesmith was getting increasingly dissatisfied with the way his songs and his productions were being sidelined, and was generally getting unhappy, and Tork was wanting more musical input too. They'd been talking with Rafelson and Schneider, who'd agreed that the group were now good enough on their instruments that they could start recording some tracks by themselves, an idea which Kirshner loathed. But for now they were recording Neil Diamond's song to Jeff Barry's backing track. Given that Nesmith liked the song, and given that he had some slight vocal resemblance to Diamond, the group suggested that Nesmith be given the lead vocal, and Kirshner and Barry agreed, although Kirshner at least apparently always intended for Dolenz to sing lead, and was just trying to pacify Nesmith. In the studio, Kirshner kept criticising Nesmith's vocal, and telling him he was doing it wrong, until eventually he stormed out, and Kirshner got what he wanted -- another Monkees hit with Micky Dolenz on lead, though this time it did at least have Jones and Tork on backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] That was released on November 23rd, 1966, as their second single, and became their second number one. And in January 1967, the group's second album, More of the Monkees, was released. That too went to number one. There was only one problem. The group weren't even told about the album coming out beforehand -- they had to buy their own copies from a record shop to even see what tracks were on it. Nesmith had his two tracks, but even Boyce and Hart were only given two, with the rest of the album being made up of tracks from the Brill Building songwriters Kirshner preferred. Lots of great Nesmith and Boyce and Hart tracks were left off the album in favour of some astonishingly weak material, including the two worst tracks the group ever recorded, "The Day We Fall in Love" and "Laugh", and a novelty song they found embarrassing, "Your Auntie Grizelda", included to give Tork a vocal spot. Nesmith called it "probably the worst album in the history of the world", though in truth seven of the twelve tracks are really very strong, though some of the other material is pretty poor. The group were also annoyed by the packaging. The liner notes were by Don Kirshner, and read to the group at least like a celebration of Kirshner himself as the one person responsible for everything on the record. Even the photo was an embarrassment -- the group had taken a series of photos in clothes from the department store J. C. Penney as part of an advertising campaign, and the group thought the clothes were ridiculous, but one of those photos was the one chosen for the cover. Nesmith and Tork made a decision, which the other two agreed to with varying degrees of willingness. They'd been fine miming to other people's records when it was clearly just for a TV show. But if they were being promoted as a real band, and having to go on tour promoting albums credited to them, they were going to *be* a real band, and take some responsibility for the music that was being put out in their name.  With the support of Rafelson and Schneider, they started making preparations to do just that. But Don Kirshner had other ideas, and told them so in no uncertain terms. As far as he was concerned, they were a bunch of ungrateful, spoiled, kids who were very happy cashing the ridiculously large cheques they were getting, but now wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. They were going to keep doing what they were told. Things came to a head in a business meeting in January 1967, when Nesmith gave an ultimatum. Either the group got to start playing on their own records, or he was quitting. Herb Moelis, Kirshner's lawyer, told Nesmith that he should read his contract more carefully, at which point Nesmith got up, punched a hole in the wall of the hotel suite they were in, and told Moelis "That could have been your face". So as 1967 began, the group were at a turning point. Would they be able to cut the puppet strings, or would they have to keep living a lie? We'll find out in a few weeks' time...

Episode one hundred and thirty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is a special long episode, running almost ninety minutes, looking at "My Generation" by the Who. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "The Name Game" by Shirley Ellis. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I mispronounce the Herman's Hermits track "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" as "Can You Hear My Heartbeat". I say "Rebel Without a Cause" when I mean "The Wild One". Brando was not in "Rebel Without a Cause". Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist of the music excerpted here. This mix does not include the Dixon of Dock Green theme, as I was unable to find a full version of that theme anywhere (though a version with Jack Warner singing, titled "An Ordinary Copper" is often labelled as it) and what you hear in this episode is the only fragment I could get a clean copy of. The best compilation of the Who's music is Maximum A's & B's, a three-disc set containing the A and B sides of every single they released. The super-deluxe five-CD version of the My Generation album appears to be out of print as a CD, but can be purchased digitally. I referred to a lot of books for this episode, including: Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which I don't necessarily recommend reading, but which is certainly an influential book. Revolt Into Style: The Pop Arts by George Melly which I *do* recommend reading if you have any interest at all in British pop culture of the fifties and sixties. Jim Marshall: The Father of Loud by Rich Maloof gave me all the biographical details about Marshall. The Who Before the Who by Doug Sandom, a rather thin book of reminiscences by the group's first drummer. The Ox by Paul Rees, an authorised biography of John Entwistle based on notes for his never-completed autobiography. Who I Am, the autobiography of Pete Townshend, is one of the better rock autobiographies. A Band With Built-In Hate by Peter Stanfield is an examination of the group in the context of pop-art and Mod. And Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere by Andy Neill and Matt Kent is a day-by-day listing of the group's activities up to 1978. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript In 1991, William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book called Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. That book was predicated on a simple idea -- that there are patterns in American history, and that those patterns can be predicted in their rough outline. Not in the fine details, but broadly -- those of you currently watching the TV series Foundation, or familiar with Isaac Asimov's original novels, will have the idea already, because Strauss and Howe claimed to have invented a formula which worked as well as Asimov's fictional Psychohistory. Their claim was that, broadly speaking, generations can be thought to have a dominant personality type, influenced by the events that took place while they were growing up, which in turn are influenced by the personality types of the older generations. Because of this, Strauss and Howe claimed, American society had settled into a semi-stable pattern, where events repeat on a roughly eighty-eight-year cycle, driven by the behaviours of different personality types at different stages of their lives. You have four types of generation, which cycle -- the Adaptive, Idealist, Reactive, and Civic types. At any given time, one of these will be the elder statespeople, one will be the middle-aged people in positions of power, one will be the young rising people doing most of the work, and one will be the kids still growing up. You can predict what will happen, in broad outline, by how each of those generation types will react to challenges, and what position they will be in when those challenges arise. The idea is that major events change your personality, and also how you react to future events, and that how, say, Pearl Harbor affected someone will have been different for a kid hearing about the attack on the radio, an adult at the age to be drafted, and an adult who was too old to fight. The thesis of this book has, rather oddly, entered mainstream thought so completely that its ideas are taken as basic assumptions now by much of the popular discourse, even though on reading it the authors are so vague that pretty much anything can be taken as confirmation of their hypotheses, in much the same way that newspaper horoscopes always seem like they could apply to almost everyone's life. And sometimes, of course, they're just way off. For example they make the prediction that in 2020 there would be a massive crisis that would last several years, which would lead to a massive sense of community, in which "America will be implacably resolved to do what needs doing and fix what needs fixing", and in which the main task of those aged forty to sixty at that point would be to restrain those in leadership positions in the sixty-to-eighty age group from making irrational, impetuous, decisions which might lead to apocalypse. The crisis would likely end in triumph, but there was also a chance it might end in "moral fatigue, vast human tragedy, and a weak and vengeful sense of victory". I'm sure that none of my listeners can think of any events in 2020 that match this particular pattern. Despite its lack of rigour, Strauss and Howe's basic idea is now part of most people's intellectual toolkit, even if we don't necessarily think of them as the source for it. Indeed, even though they only talk about America in their book, their generational concept gets applied willy-nilly to much of the Western world. And likewise, for the most part we tend to think of the generations, whether American or otherwise, using the names they used. For the generations who were alive at the time they were writing, they used five main names, three of which we still use. Those born between 1901 and 1924 they term the "GI Generation", though those are now usually termed the "Greatest Generation". Those born between 1924 and 1942 were the "Silent Generation", those born 1943 through 1960 were the Boomers, and those born between 1982 and 2003 they labelled Millennials. Those born between 1961 and 1981 they labelled "thirteeners", because they were the unlucky thirteenth generation to be born in America since the declaration of independence. But that name didn't catch on. Instead, the name that people use to describe that generation is "Generation X", named after a late-seventies punk band led by Billy Idol: [Excerpt: Generation X, "Your Generation"] That band were short-lived, but they were in constant dialogue with the pop culture of ten to fifteen years earlier, Idol's own childhood. As well as that song, "Your Generation", which is obviously referring to the song this week's episode is about, they also recorded versions of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth", of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over", and an original song called "Ready Steady Go", about being in love with Cathy McGowan, the presenter of that show. And even their name was a reference, because Generation X were named after a book published in 1964, about not the generation we call Generation X, but about the Baby Boomers, and specifically about a series of fights on beaches across the South Coast of England between what at that point amounted to two gangs. These were fights between the old guard, the Rockers -- people who represented the recent past who wouldn't go away, what Americans would call "greasers", people who modelled themselves on Marlon Brando in Rebel Without A Cause, and who thought music had peaked with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran -- and a newer, younger, hipper, group of people, who represented the new, the modern -- the Mods: [Excerpt: The Who, "My Generation"] Jim Marshall, if he'd been American, would have been considered one of the Greatest Generation, but his upbringing was not typical of that, or of any, generation. When he was five, he was diagnosed as having skeletal tuberculosis, which had made his bones weak and easily broken. To protect them, he spent the next seven years of his life, from age five until twelve, in hospital in a full-body cast. The only opportunity he got to move during those years was for a few minutes every three months, when the cast would be cut off and reapplied to account for his growth during that time. Unsurprisingly, once he was finally out of the cast, he discovered he loved moving -- a lot. He dropped out of school aged thirteen -- most people at the time left school at aged fourteen anyway, and since he'd missed all his schooling to that point it didn't seem worth his while carrying on -- and took on multiple jobs, working sixty hours a week or more. But the job he made most money at was as an entertainer. He started out as a tap-dancer, taking advantage of his new mobility, but then his song-and-dance man routine became steadily more song and less dance, as people started to notice his vocal resemblance to Bing Crosby. He was working six nights a week as a singer, but when World War II broke out, the drummer in the seven-piece band he was working with was drafted -- Marshall wouldn't ever be drafted because of his history of illness. The other members of the band knew that as a dancer he had a good sense of rhythm, and so they made a suggestion -- if Jim took over the drums, they could split the money six ways rather than seven. Marshall agreed, but he discovered there was a problem. The drum kit was always positioned at the back of the stage, behind the PA, and he couldn't hear the other musicians clearly. This is actually OK for a drummer -- you're keeping time, and the rest of the band are following you, so as long as you can *sort of* hear them everyone can stay together. But a singer needs to be able to hear everything clearly, in order to stay on key. And this was in the days before monitor speakers, so the only option available was to just have a louder PA system. And since one wasn't available, Marshall just had to build one himself. And that's how Jim Marshall started building amplifiers. Marshall eventually gave up playing the drums, and retired to run a music shop. There's a story about Marshall's last gig as a drummer, which isn't in the biography of Marshall I read for this episode, but is told in other places by the son of the bandleader at that gig. Apparently Marshall had a very fraught relationship with his father, who was among other things a semi-professional boxer, and at that gig Marshall senior turned up and started heckling his son from the audience. Eventually the younger Marshall jumped off the stage and started hitting his dad, winning the fight, but he decided he wasn't going to perform in public any more. The band leader for that show was Clifford Townshend, a clarinet player and saxophonist whose main gig was as part of the Squadronaires, a band that had originally been formed during World War II by RAF servicemen to entertain other troops. Townshend, who had been a member of Oswald Moseley's fascist Blackshirts in the thirties but later had a change of heart, was a second-generation woodwind player -- his father had been a semi-professional flute player. As well as working with the Squadronaires, Townshend also put out one record under his own name in 1956, a version of "Unchained Melody" credited to "Cliff Townsend and his singing saxophone": [Excerpt: Cliff Townshend and his Singing Saxophone, "Unchained Melody"] Cliff's wife often performed with him -- she was a professional singer who had  actually lied about her age in order to join up with the Air Force and sing with the group -- but they had a tempestuous marriage, and split up multiple times. As a result of this, and the travelling lifestyle of musicians, there were periods where their son Peter was sent to live with his grandmother, who was seriously abusive, traumatising the young boy in ways that would affect him for the rest of his life. When Pete Townshend was growing up, he wasn't particularly influenced by music, in part because it was his dad's job rather than a hobby, and his parents had very few records in the house. He did, though, take up the harmonica and learn to play the theme tune to Dixon of Dock Green: [Excerpt: Tommy Reilly, "Dixon of Dock Green Theme"] His first exposure to rock and roll wasn't through Elvis or Little Richard, but rather through Ray Ellington. Ellington was a British jazz singer and drummer, heavily influenced by Louis Jordan, who provided regular musical performances on the Goon Show throughout the fifties, and on one episode had performed "That Rock 'n' Rollin' Man": [Excerpt: Ray Ellington, "That Rock 'N' Rollin' Man"] Young Pete's assessment of that, as he remembered it later, was "I thought it some kind of hybrid jazz: swing music with stupid lyrics. But it felt youthful and rebellious, like The Goon Show itself." But he got hooked on rock and roll when his father took him and a friend to see a film: [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, "Rock Around the Clock"] According to Townshend's autobiography, "I asked Dad what he thought of the music. He said he thought it had some swing, and anything that had swing was OK. For me it was more than just OK. After seeing Rock Around the Clock with Bill Haley, nothing would ever be quite the same." Young Pete would soon go and see Bill Haley live – his first rock and roll gig. But the older Townshend would soon revise his opinion of rock and roll, because it soon marked the end of the kind of music that had allowed him to earn his living -- though he still managed to get regular work, playing a clarinet was suddenly far less lucrative than it had been. Pete decided that he wanted to play the saxophone, like his dad, but soon he switched first to guitar and then to banjo. His first guitar was bought for him by his abusive grandmother, and three of the strings snapped almost immediately, so he carried on playing with just three strings for a while. He got very little encouragement from his parents, and didn't really improve for a couple of years. But then the trad jazz boom happened, and Townshend teamed up with a friend of his who played the trumpet and French horn. He had initially bonded with John Entwistle over their shared sense of humour -- both kids loved Mad magazine and would make tape recordings together of themselves doing comedy routines inspired by the Goon show and Hancock's Half Hour -- but Entwistle was also a very accomplished musician, who could play multiple instruments. Entwistle had formed a trad band called the Confederates, and Townshend joined them on banjo and guitar, but they didn't stay together for long. Both boys, though, would join a variety of other bands, both together and separately. As the trad boom faded and rock and roll regained its dominance among British youth, there was little place for Entwistle's trumpet in the music that was popular among teenagers, and at first Entwistle decided to try making his trumpet sound more like a saxophone, using a helmet as a mute to try to get it to sound like the sax on "Ramrod" by Duane Eddy: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Ramrod"] Eddy soon became Entwistle's hero. We've talked about him before a couple of times, briefly, but not in depth, but Duane Eddy had a style that was totally different from most guitar heroes. Instead of playing mostly on the treble strings of the guitar, playing high twiddly parts, Eddy played low notes on the bass strings of his guitar, giving him the style that he summed up in album titles like "The Twang's the Thang" and "Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel". After a couple of years of having hits with this sound, produced by Lee Hazelwood and Lester Sill, Eddy also started playing another instrument, the instrument variously known as the six-string bass, the baritone guitar, or the Danelectro bass (after the company that manufactured the most popular model).  The baritone guitar has six strings, like a normal guitar, but it's tuned lower than a standard guitar -- usually a fourth lower, though different players have different preferences. The Danelectro became very popular in recording studios in the early sixties, because it helped solve a big problem in recording bass tones. You can hear more about this in the episodes of Cocaine and Rhinestones I recommended last week, but basically double basses were very, very difficult to record in the 1950s, and you'd often end up just getting a thudding, muddy, sound from them, which is one reason why when you listen to a lot of early rockabilly the bass is doing nothing very interesting, just playing root notes -- you couldn't easily get much clarity on the instrument at all. Conversely, with electric basses, with the primitive amps of the time, you didn't get anything like the full sound that you'd get from a double bass, but you *did* get a clear sound that would cut through on a cheap radio in a way that the sound of a double bass wouldn't. So the solution was obvious -- you have an electric instrument *and* a double bass play the same part. Use the double bass for the big dull throbbing sound, but use the electric one to give the sound some shape and cut-through. If you're doing that, you mostly want the trebly part of the electric instrument's tone, so you play it with a pick rather than fingers, and it makes sense to use a Danelectro rather than a standard bass guitar, as the Danelectro is more trebly than a normal bass. This combination, of Danelectro and double bass, appears to have been invented by Owen Bradley, and you can hear it for example on this record by Patsy Cline, with Bob Moore on double bass and Harold Bradley on baritone guitar: [Excerpt: Patsy Cline, "Crazy"] This sound, known as "tic-tac bass", was soon picked up by a lot of producers, and it became the standard way of getting a bass sound in both Nashville and LA. It's all over the Beach Boys' best records, and many of Jack Nitzsche's arrangements, and many of the other records the Wrecking Crew played on, and it's on most of the stuff the Nashville A-Team played on from the late fifties through mid-sixties, records by people like Elvis, Roy Orbison, Arthur Alexander, and the Everly Brothers. Lee Hazelwood was one of the first producers to pick up on this sound -- indeed, Duane Eddy has said several times that Hazelwood invented the sound before Owen Bradley did, though I think Bradley did it first -- and many of Eddy's records featured that bass sound, and eventually Eddy started playing a baritone guitar himself, as a lead instrument, playing it on records like "Because They're Young": [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Because They're Young"] Duane Eddy was John Entwistle's idol, and Entwistle learned Eddy's whole repertoire on trumpet, playing the saxophone parts. But then, realising that the guitar was always louder than the trumpet in the bands he was in, he realised that if he wanted to be heard, he should probably switch to guitar himself. And it made sense that a bass would be easier to play than a regular guitar -- if you only have four strings, there's more space between them, so playing is easier. So he started playing the bass, trying to sound as much like Eddy as he could. He had no problem picking up the instrument -- he was already a multi-instrumentalist -- but he did have a problem actually getting hold of one, as all the electric bass guitars available in the UK at the time were prohibitively expensive. Eventually he made one himself, with the help of someone in a local music shop, and that served for a time, though he would soon trade up to more professional instruments, eventually amassing the biggest collection of basses in the world. One day, Entwistle was approached on the street by an acquaintance, Roger Daltrey, who said to him "I hear you play bass" -- Entwistle was, at the time, carrying his bass. Daltrey was at this time a guitarist -- like Entwistle, he'd built his own instrument -- and he was the leader of a band called Del Angelo and his Detours. Daltrey wasn't Del Angelo, the lead singer -- that was a man called Colin Dawson who by all accounts sounded a little like Cliff Richard -- but he was the bandleader, hired and fired the members, and was in charge of their setlists. Daltrey lured Entwistle away from the band he was in with Townshend by telling him that the Detours were getting proper paid gigs, though they weren't getting many at the time. Unfortunately, one of the group's other guitarists, the member who owned the best amp, died in an accident not long after Entwistle joined the band. However, the amp was left in the group's possession, and Entwistle used it to lure Pete Townshend into the group by telling him he could use it -- and not telling him that he'd be sharing the amp with Daltrey. Townshend would later talk about his audition for the Detours -- as he was walking up the street towards Daltrey's house, he saw a stunningly beautiful woman walking away from the house crying. She saw his guitar case and said "Are you going to Roger's?" "Yes." "Well you can tell him, it's that bloody guitar or me". Townshend relayed the message, and Daltrey responded "Sod her. Come in." The audition was a formality, with the main questions being whether Townshend could play two parts of the regular repertoire for a working band at that time -- "Hava Nagila", and the Shadows' "Man of Mystery": [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Man of Mystery"] Townshend could play both of those, and so he was in. The group would mostly play chart hits by groups like the Shadows, but as trad jazz hadn't completely died out yet they would also do breakout sessions playing trad jazz, with Townshend on banjo, Entwistle on trumpet and Daltrey on trombone. From the start, there was a temperamental mismatch between the group's two guitarists. Daltrey was thoroughly working-class, culturally conservative,  had dropped out of school to go to work at a sheet metal factory, and saw himself as a no-nonsense plain-speaking man. Townshend was from a relatively well-off upper-middle-class family, was for a brief time a member of the Communist Party, and was by this point studying at art school, where he was hugely impressed by a lecture from Gustav Metzger titled “Auto-Destructive Art, Auto-Creative Art: The Struggle For The Machine Arts Of The Future”, about Metzger's creation of artworks which destroyed themselves. Townshend was at art school during a period when the whole idea of what an art school was for was in flux, something that's typified by a story Townshend tells about two of his early lectures. At the first, the lecturer came in and told the class to all draw a straight line. They all did, and then the lecturer told off anyone who had drawn anything that was anything other than six inches long, perfectly straight, without a ruler, going north-south, with a 3B pencil, saying that anything else at all was self-indulgence of the kind that needed to be drummed out of them if they wanted to get work as commercial artists. Then in another lecture, a different lecturer came in and asked them all to draw a straight line. They all drew perfectly straight, six-inch, north-south lines in 3B pencil, as the first lecturer had taught them. The new lecturer started yelling at them, then brought in someone else to yell at them as well, and then cut his hand open with a knife and dragged it across a piece of paper, smearing a rough line with his own blood, and screamed "THAT'S a line!" Townshend's sympathies lay very much with the second lecturer. Another big influence on Townshend at this point was a jazz double-bass player, Malcolm Cecil. Cecil would later go on to become a pioneer in electronic music as half of TONTO's Expanding Head Band, and we'll be looking at his work in more detail in a future episode, but at this point he was a fixture on the UK jazz scene. He'd been a member of Blues Incorporated, and had also played with modern jazz players like Dick Morrissey: [Excerpt: Dick Morrissey, "Jellyroll"] But Townshend was particularly impressed with a performance in which Cecil demonstrated unorthodox ways to play the double-bass, including playing so hard he broke the strings, and using a saw as a bow, sawing through the strings and damaging the body of the instrument. But these influences, for the moment, didn't affect the Detours, who were still doing the Cliff and the Shadows routine. Eventually Colin Dawson quit the group, and Daltrey took over the lead vocal role for the Detours, who settled into a lineup of Daltrey, Townshend, Entwistle, and drummer Doug Sandom, who was much older than the rest of the group -- he was born in 1930, while Daltrey and Entwistle were born in 1944 and Townshend in 1945. For a while, Daltrey continued playing guitar as well as singing, but his hands were often damaged by his work at the sheet-metal factory, making guitar painful for him. Then the group got a support slot with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, who at this point were a four-piece band, with Kidd singing backed by bass, drums, and Mick Green playing one guitar on which he played both rhythm and lead parts: [Excerpt: Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, "Doctor Feel Good"] Green was at the time considered possibly the best guitarist in Britain, and the sound the Pirates were able to get with only one guitar convinced the Detours that they would be OK if Daltrey switched to just singing, so the group changed to what is now known as a "power trio" format. Townshend was a huge admirer of Steve Cropper, another guitarist who played both rhythm and lead, and started trying to adopt parts of Cropper's style, playing mostly chords, while Entwistle went for a much more fluid bass style than most, essentially turning the bass into another lead instrument, patterning his playing after Duane Eddy's work. By this time, Townshend was starting to push against Daltrey's leadership a little, especially when it came to repertoire. Townshend had a couple of American friends at art school who had been deported after being caught smoking dope, and had left their records with Townshend for safe-keeping. As a result, Townshend had become a devotee of blues and R&B music, especially the jazzier stuff like Ray Charles, Mose Allison, and Booker T and the MGs. He also admired guitar-based blues records like those by Howlin' Wolf or Jimmy Reed. Townshend kept pushing for this music to be incorporated into the group's sets, but Daltrey would push back, insisting as the leader that they should play the chart hits that everyone else played, rather than what he saw as Townshend's art-school nonsense. Townshend insisted, and eventually won -- within a short while the group had become a pure R&B group, and Daltrey was soon a convert, and became the biggest advocate of that style in the band. But there was a problem with only having one guitar, and that was volume. In particular, Townshend didn't want to be able to hear hecklers. There were gangsters in some of the audiences who would shout requests for particular songs, and you had to play them or else, even if they were completely unsuitable for the rest of the audience's tastes. But if you were playing so loud you couldn't hear the shouting, you had an excuse. Both Entwistle and Townshend had started buying amplifiers from Jim Marshall, who had opened up a music shop after quitting drums -- Townshend actually bought his first one from a shop assistant in Marshall's shop, John McLaughlin, who would later himself become a well-known guitarist. Entwistle, wanting to be heard over Townshend, had bought a cabinet with four twelve-inch speakers in it. Townshend, wanting to be heard over Entwistle, had bought *two* of these cabinets, and stacked them, one on top of the other, against Marshall's protestations -- Marshall said that they would vibrate so much that the top one might fall over and injure someone. Townshend didn't listen, and the Marshall stack was born. This ultra-amplification also led Townshend to change his guitar style further. He was increasingly reliant on distortion and feedback, rather than on traditional instrumental skills. Now, there are basically two kinds of chords that are used in most Western music. There are major chords, which consist of the first, third, and fifth note of the scale, and these are the basic chords that everyone starts with. So you can strum between G major and F major: [demonstrates G and F chords] There's also minor chords, where you flatten the third note, which sound a little sadder than major chords, so playing G minor and F minor: [demonstrates Gm and Fm chords] There are of course other kinds of chord -- basically any collection of notes counts as a chord, and can work musically in some context. But major and minor chords are the basic harmonic building blocks of most pop music. But when you're using a lot of distortion and feedback, you create a lot of extra harmonics -- extra notes that your instrument makes along with the ones you're playing. And for mathematical reasons I won't go into here because this is already a very long episode, the harmonics generated by playing the first and fifth notes sound fine together, but the harmonics from a third or minor third don't go along with them at all. The solution to this problem is to play what are known as "power chords", which are just the root and fifth notes, with no third at all, and which sound ambiguous as to whether they're major or minor. Townshend started to build his technique around these chords, playing for the most part on the bottom three strings of his guitar, which sounds like this: [demonstrates G5 and F5 chords] Townshend wasn't the first person to use power chords -- they're used on a lot of the Howlin' Wolf records he liked, and before Townshend would become famous the Kinks had used them on "You Really Got Me" -- but he was one of the first British guitarists to make them a major part of his personal style. Around this time, the Detours were starting to become seriously popular, and Townshend was starting to get exhausted by the constant demands on his time from being in the band and going to art school. He talked about this with one of his lecturers, who asked how much Townshend was earning from the band. When Townshend told him he was making thirty pounds a week, the lecturer was shocked, and said that was more than *he* was earning. Townshend should probably just quit art school, because it wasn't like he was going to make more money from anything he could learn there. Around this time, two things changed the group's image. The first was that they played a support slot for the Rolling Stones in December 1963. Townshend saw Keith Richards swinging his arm over his head and then bringing it down on the guitar, to loosen up his muscles, and he thought that looked fantastic, and started copying it -- from very early on, Townshend wanted to have a physical presence on stage that would be all about his body, to distract from his face, as he was embarrassed about the size of his nose. They played a second support slot for the Stones a few weeks later, and not wanting to look like he was copying Richards, Townshend didn't do that move, but then he noticed that Richards didn't do it either. He asked about it after the gig, and Richards didn't know what he was talking about -- "Swing me what?" -- so Townshend took that as a green light to make that move, which became known as the windmill, his own. The second thing was when in February 1964 a group appeared on Thank Your Lucky Stars: [Excerpt: Johnny Devlin and the Detours, "Sometimes"] Johnny Devlin and the Detours had had national media exposure, which meant that Daltrey, Townshend, Entwistle, and Sandom had to change the name of their group. They eventually settled on "The Who", It was around this time that the group got their first serious management, a man named Helmut Gorden, who owned a doorknob factory. Gorden had no management experience, but he did offer the group a regular salary, and pay for new equipment for them. However, when he tried to sign the group to a proper contract, as most of them were still under twenty-one he needed their parents to countersign for them. Townshend's parents, being experienced in the music industry, refused to sign, and so the group continued under Gorden's management without a contract. Gorden, not having management experience, didn't have any contacts in the music industry. But his barber did. Gorden enthused about his group to Jack Marks, the barber, and Marks in turn told some of his other clients about this group he'd been hearing about. Tony Hatch wasn't interested, as he already had a guitar group with the Searchers, but Chris Parmenter at Fontana Records was, and an audition was arranged. At the audition, among other numbers, they played Bo Diddley's "Here 'Tis": [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Here 'Tis"] Unfortunately for Doug, he didn't play well on that song, and Townshend started berating him. Doug also knew that Parmenter had reservations about him, because he was so much older than the rest of the band -- he was thirty-four at the time, while the rest of the group were only just turning twenty -- and he was also the least keen of the group on the R&B material they were playing. He'd been warned by Entwistle, his closest friend in the group, that Daltrey and Townshend were thinking of dropping him, and so he decided to jump before he was pushed, walking out of the audition. He agreed to come back for a handful more gigs that were already booked in, but that was the end of his time in the band, and of his time in the music industry -- though oddly not of his friendship with the group. Unlike other famous examples of an early member not fitting in and being forced out before a band becomes big, Sandom remained friends with the other members, and Townshend wrote the foreword to his autobiography, calling him a mentor figure, while Daltrey apparently insisted that Sandom phone him for a chat every Sunday, at the same time every week, until Sandom's death in 2019 at the age of eighty-nine. The group tried a few other drummers, including someone who Jim Marshall had been giving drum lessons to, Mitch Mitchell, before settling on the drummer for another group that played the same circuit, the Beachcombers, who played mostly Shadows material, plus the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean songs that their drummer, Keith Moon, loved. Moon and Entwistle soon became a formidable rhythm section, and despite having been turned down by Fontana, they were clearly going places. But they needed an image -- and one was provided for them by Pete Meaden. Meaden was another person who got his hair cut by Jack Marks, and he had had  little bit of music business experience, having worked for Andrew Oldham, the Rolling Stones' manager, for a while before going on to manage a group called the Moments, whose career highlight was recording a soundalike cover version of "You Really Got Me" for an American budget label: [Excerpt: The Moments, "You Really Got Me"] The Moments never had any big success, but Meaden's nose for talent was not wrong, as their teenage lead singer, Steve Marriott, later went on to much better things. Pete Meaden was taken on as Helmut Gorden's assistant, but from this point on the group decided to regard him as their de facto manager, and as more than just a manager. To Townshend in particular he was a guru figure, and he shaped the group to appeal to the Mods. Now, we've not talked much about the Mods previously, and what little has been said has been a bit contradictory. That's because the Mods were a tiny subculture at this point -- or to be more precise, they were three subcultures. The original mods had come along in the late 1950s, at a time when there was a division among jazz fans between fans of traditional New Orleans jazz -- "trad" -- and modern jazz. The mods were modernists, hence the name, but for the most part they weren't as interested in music as in clothes. They were a small group of young working-class men, almost all gay, who dressed flamboyantly and dandyishly, and who saw themselves, their clothing, and their bodies as works of art. In the late fifties, Britain was going through something of an economic boom, and this was the first time that working-class men *could* buy nice clothes. These working-class dandies would have to visit tailors to get specially modified clothes made, but they could just about afford to do so. The mod image was at first something that belonged to a very, very, small clique of people. But then John Stephens opened his first shop. This was the first era when short runs of factory-produced clothing became possible, and Stephens, a stylish young man, opened a shop on Carnaby Street, then a relatively cheap place to open a shop. He painted the outside yellow, played loud pop music, and attracted a young crowd. Stephens was selling factory-made clothes that still looked unique -- short runs of odd-coloured jeans, three-button jackets, and other men's fashion. Soon Carnaby Street became the hub for men's fashion in London, thanks largely to Stephens. At one point Stephens owned fifteen different shops, nine of them on Carnaby Street itself, and Stephens' shops appealed to the kind of people that the Kinks would satirise in their early 1966 hit single "Dedicated Follower of Fashion": [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Dedicated Follower of Fashion"] Many of those who visited Stephens' shops were the larger, second, generation of mods. I'm going to quote here from George Melly's Revolt Into Style, the first book to properly analyse British pop culture of the fifties and sixties, by someone who was there: "As the ‘mod' thing spread it lost its purity. For the next generation of Mods, those who picked up the ‘mod' thing around 1963, clothes, while still their central preoccupation, weren't enough. They needed music (Rhythm and Blues), transport (scooters) and drugs (pep pills). What's more they needed fashion ready-made. They hadn't the time or the fanaticism to invent their own styles, and this is where Carnaby Street came in." Melly goes on to talk about how these new Mods were viewed with distaste by the older Mods, who left the scene. The choice of music for these new Mods was as much due to geographic proximity as anything else. Carnaby Street is just round the corner from Wardour Street, and Wardour Street is where the two clubs that between them were the twin poles of the London R&B scenes, the Marquee and the Flamingo, were both located. So it made sense that the young people frequenting John Stephens' boutiques on Carnaby Street were the same people who made up the audiences -- and the bands -- at those clubs. But by 1964, even these second-generation Mods were in a minority compared to a new, third generation, and here I'm going to quote Melly again: "But the Carnaby Street Mods were not the final stage in the history of this particular movement. The word was taken over finally by a new and more violent sector, the urban working class at the gang-forming age, and this became quite sinister. The gang stage rejected the wilder flights of Carnaby Street in favour of extreme sartorial neatness. Everything about them was neat, pretty and creepy: dark glasses, Nero hair-cuts, Chelsea boots, polo-necked sweaters worn under skinny V-necked pullovers, gleaming scooters and transistors. Even their offensive weapons were pretty—tiny hammers and screwdrivers. En masse they looked like a pack of weasels." I would urge anyone who's interested in British social history to read Melly's book in full -- it's well worth it. These third-stage Mods soon made up the bulk of the movement, and they were the ones who, in summer 1964, got into the gang fights that were breathlessly reported in all the tabloid newspapers. Pete Meaden was a Mod, and as far as I can tell he was a leading-edge second-stage Mod, though as with all these things who was in what generation of Mods is a bit blurry. Meaden had a whole idea of Mod-as-lifestyle and Mod-as-philosophy, which worked well with the group's R&B leanings, and with Townshend's art-school-inspired fascination with the aesthetics of Pop Art. Meaden got the group a residency at the Railway Hotel, a favourite Mod hangout, and he also changed their name -- The Who didn't sound Mod enough. In Mod circles at the time there was a hierarchy, with the coolest people, the Faces, at the top, below them a slightly larger group of people known as Numbers, and below them the mass of generic people known as Tickets. Meaden saw himself as the band's Svengali, so he was obviously the Face, so the group had to be Numbers -- so they became The High Numbers. Meaden got the group a one-off single deal, to record two songs he had allegedly written, both of which had lyrics geared specifically for the Mods. The A-side was "Zoot Suit": [Excerpt: The High Numbers, "Zoot Suit"] This had a melody that was stolen wholesale from "Misery" by the Dynamics: [Excerpt: The Dynamics, "Misery"] The B-side, meanwhile, was titled "I'm the Face": [Excerpt: The High Numbers, "I'm the Face"] Which anyone with any interest at all in blues music will recognise immediately as being "Got Love if You Want It" by Slim Harpo: [Excerpt: Slim Harpo, "Got Love if You Want it"] Unfortunately for the High Numbers, that single didn't have much success. Mod was a local phenomenon, which never took off outside London and its suburbs, and so the songs didn't have much appeal in the rest of the country -- while within London, Mod fashions were moving so quickly that by the time the record came out, all its up-to-the-minute references were desperately outdated. But while the record didn't have much success, the group were getting a big live following among the Mods, and their awareness of rapidly shifting trends in that subculture paid off for them in terms of stagecraft. To quote Townshend: "What the Mods taught us was how to lead by following. I mean, you'd look at the dance floor and see some bloke stop during the dance of the week and for some reason feel like doing some silly sort of step. And you'd notice some of the blokes around him looking out of the corners of their eyes and thinking 'is this the latest?' And on their own, without acknowledging the first fellow, a few of 'em would start dancing that way. And we'd be watching. By the time they looked up on the stage again, we'd be doing that dance and they'd think the original guy had been imitating us. And next week they'd come back and look to us for dances". And then Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp came into the Railway Hotel. Kit Lambert was the son of Constant Lambert, the founding music director of the Royal Ballet, who the economist John Maynard Keynes described as the most brilliant man he'd ever met. Constant Lambert was possibly Britain's foremost composer of the pre-war era, and one of the first people from the serious music establishment to recognise the potential of jazz and blues music. His most famous composition, "The Rio Grande", written in 1927 about a fictitious South American river, is often compared with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue: [Excerpt: Constant Lambert, "The Rio Grande"] Kit Lambert was thus brought up in an atmosphere of great privilege, both financially and intellectually, with his godfather being the composer Sir William Walton while his godmother was the prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, with whom his father was having an affair. As a result of the problems between his parents, Lambert spent much of his childhood living with his grandmother. After studying history at Oxford and doing his national service, Lambert had spent a few months studying film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris, where he went because Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Renais taught there -- or at least so he would later say, though there's no evidence I can find that Godard actually taught there, so either he went there under a mistaken impression or he lied about it later to make himself sound more interesting. However, he'd got bored with his studies after only a few months, and decided that he knew enough to just make a film himself, and he planned his first documentary. In early 1961, despite having little film experience, he joined two friends from university, Richard Mason and John Hemming, in an attempt to make a documentary film tracing the source of the Iriri, a river in South America that was at that point the longest unnavigated river in the world. Unfortunately, the expedition was as disastrous as it's possible for such an expedition to be. In May 1961 they landed in the Amazon basin and headed off on their expedition to find the source of the Iriri, with the help of five local porters and three people sent along by the Brazillian government to map the new areas they were to discover. Unfortunately, by September, not only had they not found the source of the Iriri, they'd actually not managed to find the Iriri itself, four and a half months apparently not being a long enough time to find an eight-hundred-and-ten-mile-long river. And then Mason made his way into history in the worst possible way, by becoming the last, to date, British person to be murdered by an uncontacted indigenous tribe, the Panará, who shot him with eight poison arrows and then bludgeoned his skull. A little over a decade later the Panará made contact with the wider world after nearly being wiped out by disease. They remembered killing Mason and said that they'd been scared by the swishing noise his jeans had made, as they'd never encountered anyone who wore clothes before. Before they made contact, the Panará were also known as the Kreen-Akrore, a name given them by the Kayapó people, meaning "round-cut head", a reference to the way they styled their hair, brushed forward and trimmed over the forehead in a way that was remarkably similar to some of the Mod styles. Before they made contact, Paul McCartney would in 1970 record an instrumental, "Kreen Akrore", after being inspired by a documentary called The Tribe That Hides From Man. McCartney's instrumental includes sound effects, including McCartney firing a bow and arrow, though apparently the bow-string snapped during the recording: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, "Kreen Akrore"] For a while, Lambert was under suspicion for the murder, though the Daily Express, which had sponsored the expedition, persuaded Brazillian police to drop the charges. While he was in Rio waiting for the legal case to be sorted, Lambert developed what one book on the Who describes as "a serious anal infection". Astonishingly, this experience did not put Lambert off from the film industry, though he wouldn't try to make another film of his own for a couple of years. Instead, he went to work at Shepperton Studios, where he was an uncredited second AD on many films, including From Russia With Love and The L-Shaped Room. Another second AD working on many of the same films was Chris Stamp, the brother of the actor Terence Stamp, who was just starting out in his own career. Stamp and Lambert became close friends, despite -- or because of -- their differences. Lambert was bisexual, and preferred men to women, Stamp was straight. Lambert was the godson of a knight and a dame, Stamp was a working-class East End Cockney. Lambert was a film-school dropout full of ideas and grand ambitions, but unsure how best to put those ideas into practice, Stamp was a practical, hands-on, man. The two complemented each other perfectly, and became flatmates and collaborators. After seeing A Hard Day's Night, they decided that they were going to make their own pop film -- a documentary, inspired by the French nouvelle vague school of cinema, which would chart a pop band from playing lowly clubs to being massive pop stars. Now all they needed was to find a band that were playing lowly clubs but could become massive stars. And they found that band at the Railway Hotel, when they saw the High Numbers. Stamp and Lambert started making their film, and completed part of it, which can be found on YouTube: [Excerpt: The High Numbers, "Oo Poo Pa Doo"] The surviving part of the film is actually very, very, well done for people who'd never directed a film before, and I have no doubt that if they'd completed the film, to be titled High Numbers, it would be regarded as one of the classic depictions of early-sixties London club life, to be classed along with The Small World of Sammy Lee and Expresso Bongo. What's even more astonishing, though, is how *modern* the group look. Most footage of guitar bands of this period looks very dated, not just in the fashions, but in everything -- the attitude of the performers, their body language, the way they hold their instruments. The best performances are still thrilling, but you can tell when they were filmed. On the other hand, the High Numbers look ungainly and awkward, like the lads of no more than twenty that they are -- but in a way that was actually shocking to me when I first saw this footage. Because they look *exactly* like every guitar band I played on the same bill as during my own attempts at being in bands between 2000 and about 2005. If it weren't for the fact that they have such recognisable faces, if you'd told me this was footage of some band I played on the same bill with at the Star and Garter or Night and Day Cafe in 2003, I'd believe it unquestioningly. But while Lambert and Stamp started out making a film, they soon pivoted and decided that they could go into management. Of course, the High Numbers did already have management -- Pete Meaden and Helmut Gorden -- but after consulting with the Beatles' lawyer, David Jacobs, Lambert and Stamp found out that Gorden's contract with the band was invalid, and so when Gorden got back from a holiday, he found himself usurped. Meaden was a bit more difficult to get rid of, even though he had less claim on the group than Gorden -- he was officially their publicist, not their manager, and his only deal was with Gorden, even though the group considered him their manager. While Meaden didn't have a contractual claim though, he did have one argument in his favour, which is that he had a large friend named Phil the Greek, who had a big knife. When this claim was put to Lambert and Stamp, they agreed that this was a very good point indeed, one that they hadn't considered, and agreed to pay Meaden off with two hundred and fifty pounds. This would not be the last big expense that Stamp and Lambert would have as the managers of the Who, as the group were now renamed. Their agreement with the group had the two managers taking forty percent of the group's earnings, while the four band members would split the other sixty percent between themselves -- an arrangement which should theoretically have had the managers coming out ahead. But they also agreed to pay the group's expenses. And that was to prove very costly indeed. Shortly after they started managing the group, at a gig at the Railway Hotel, which had low ceilings, Townshend lifted his guitar up a bit higher than he'd intended, and broke the headstock. Townshend had a spare guitar with him, so this was OK, and he also remembered Gustav Metzger and his ideas of auto-destructive art, and Malcolm Cecil sawing through his bass strings and damaging his bass, and decided that it was better for him to look like he'd meant to do that than to look like an idiot who'd accidentally broken his guitar, so he repeated the motion, smashing his guitar to bits, before carrying on the show with his spare. The next week, the crowd were excited, expecting the same thing again, but Townshend hadn't brought a spare guitar with him. So as not to disappoint them, Keith Moon destroyed his drum kit instead. This destruction was annoying to Entwistle, who saw musical instruments as something close to sacred, and it also annoyed the group's managers at first, because musical instruments are expensive. But they soon saw the value this brought to the band's shows, and reluctantly agreed to keep buying them new instruments. So for the first couple of years, Lambert and Stamp lost money on the group. They funded this partly through Lambert's savings, partly through Stamp continuing to do film work, and partly from investors in their company, one of whom was Russ Conway, the easy-listening piano player who'd had hits like "Side Saddle": [Excerpt: Russ Conway, "Side Saddle"] Conway's connections actually got the group another audition for a record label, Decca (although Conway himself recorded for EMI), but the group were turned down. The managers were told that they would have been signed, but they didn't have any original material. So Pete Townshend was given the task of writing some original material. By this time Townshend's musical world was expanding far beyond the R&B that the group were performing on stage, and he talks in his autobiography about the music he was listening to while he was trying to write his early songs. There was "Green Onions", which he'd been listening to for years in his attempt to emulate Steve Cropper's guitar style, but there was also The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and two tracks he names in particular, "Devil's Jump" by John Lee Hooker: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "Devil's Jump"] And "Better Get Hit in Your Soul" by Charles Mingus: [Excerpt: Charles Mingus, "Better Get Hit In Your Soul"] He was also listening to what he described as "a record that changed my life as a composer", a recording of baroque music that included sections of Purcell's Gordian Knot Untied: [Excerpt: Purcell, Chaconne from Gordian Knot Untied] Townshend had a notebook in which he listed the records he wanted to obtain, and he reproduces that list in his autobiography -- "‘Marvin Gaye, 1-2-3, Mingus Revisited, Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Smith Organ Grinder's Swing, In Crowd, Nina in Concert [Nina Simone], Charlie Christian, Billie Holiday, Ella, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk Around Midnight and Brilliant Corners.'" He was also listening to a lot of Stockhausen and Charlie Parker, and to the Everly Brothers -- who by this point were almost the only artist that all four members of the Who agreed were any good, because Daltrey was now fully committed to the R&B music he'd originally dismissed, and disliked what he thought was the pretentiousness of the music Townshend was listening to, while Keith Moon was primarily a fan of the Beach Boys. But everyone could agree that the Everlys, with their sensitive interpretations, exquisite harmonies, and Bo Diddley-inflected guitars, were great, and so the group added several songs from the Everlys' 1965 albums Rock N Soul and Beat N Soul to their set, like "Man With Money": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Man With Money"] Despite Daltrey's objections to diluting the purity of the group's R&B sound, Townshend brought all these influences into his songwriting. The first song he wrote to see release was not actually recorded by the Who, but a song he co-wrote for a minor beat group called the Naturals, who released it as a B-side: [Excerpt: The Naturals, "It Was You"] But shortly after this, the group got their first big break, thanks to Lambert's personal assistant, Anya Butler. Butler was friends with Shel Talmy's wife, and got Talmy to listen to the group. Townshend in particular was eager to work with Talmy, as he was a big fan of the Kinks, who were just becoming big, and who Talmy produced. Talmy signed the group to a production deal, and then signed a deal to license their records to Decca in America -- which Lambert and Stamp didn't realise wasn't the same label as British Decca. Decca in turn sublicensed the group's recordings to their British subsidiary Brunswick, which meant that the group got a minuscule royalty for sales in Britain, as their recordings were being sold through three corporate layers all taking their cut. This didn't matter to them at first, though, and they went into the studio excited to cut their first record as The Who. As was typical at the time, Talmy brought in a few session players to help out. Clem Cattini turned out not to be needed, and left quickly, but Jimmy Page stuck around -- not to play on the A-side, which Townshend said was "so simple even I could play it", but the B-side, a version of the old blues standard "Bald-Headed Woman", which Talmy had copyrighted in his own name and had already had the Kinks record: [Excerpt: The Who, "Bald-Headed Woman"] Apparently the only reason that Page played on that is that Page wouldn't let Townshend use his fuzzbox. As well as Page and Cattini, Talmy also brought in some backing vocalists. These were the Ivy League, a writing and production collective consisting at this point of John Carter and Ken Lewis, both of whom had previously been in a band with Page, and Perry Ford. The Ivy League were huge hit-makers in the mid-sixties, though most people don't recognise their name. Carter and Lewis had just written "Can You Hear My Heartbeat" for Herman's Hermits: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "Can You Hear My Heartbeat?"] And, along with a couple of other singers who joined the group, the Ivy League would go on to sing backing vocals on hits by Sandie Shaw, Tom Jones and others. Together and separately the members of the Ivy League were also responsible for writing, producing, and singing on "Let's Go to San Francisco" by the Flowerpot Men, "Winchester Cathedral" by the New Vaudeville Band, "Beach Baby" by First Class, and more, as well as their big hit under their own name, "Tossing and Turning": [Excerpt: The Ivy League, "Tossing and Turning"] Though my favourite of their tracks is their baroque pop masterpiece "My World Fell Down": [Excerpt: The Ivy League, "My World Fell Down"] As you can tell, the Ivy League were masters of the Beach Boys sound that Moon, and to a lesser extent Townshend, loved. That backing vocal sound was combined with a hard-driving riff inspired by the Kinks' early hits like "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night", and with lyrics that explored inarticulacy, a major theme of Townshend's lyrics: [Excerpt: The Who, "I Can't Explain"] "I Can't Explain" made the top ten, thanks in part to a publicity stunt that Lambert came up with. The group had been booked on to Ready, Steady, Go!, and the floor manager of the show mentioned to Lambert that they were having difficulty getting an audience for that week's show -- they were short about a hundred and fifty people, and they needed young, energetic, dancers. Lambert suggested that the best place to find young, energetic, dancers, was at the Marquee on a Tuesday night -- which just happened to be the night of the Who's regular residency at the club. Come the day of filming, the Ready, Steady, Go! audience was full of the Who's most hardcore fans, all of whom had been told by Lambert to throw scarves at the band when they started playing. It was one of the most memorable performances on the show. But even though the record was a big hit, Daltrey was unhappy. The man who'd started out as guitarist in a Shadows cover band and who'd strenuously objected to the group's inclusion of R&B material now had the zeal of a convert. He didn't want to be doing this "soft commercial pop", or Townshend's art-school nonsense. He wanted to be an R&B singer, playing hard music for working-class men like him. Two decisions were taken to mollify the lead singer. The first was that when they went into the studio to record their first album, it was all soul and R&B apart from one original. The album was going to consist of three James Brown covers, three Motown covers, Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man", and a cover of Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Louie Louie" sequel "Louie Come Home", retitled "Lubie". All of this was material that Daltrey was very comfortable with. Also, Daltrey was given some input into the second single, which would be the only song credited to Daltrey and Townshend, and Daltrey's only songwriting contribution to a Who A-side. Townshend had come up with the title "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" while listening to Charlie Parker, and had written the song based on that title, but Daltrey was allowed to rewrite the lyrics and make suggestions as to the arrangement. That record also made the top ten: [Excerpt: The Who, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere"] But Daltrey would soon become even more disillusioned. The album they'd recorded was shelved, though some tracks were later used for what became the My Generation album, and Kit Lambert told the Melody Maker “The Who are having serious doubts about the state of R&B. Now the LP material will consist of hard pop. They've finished with ‘Smokestack Lightning'!” That wasn't the only thing they were finished with -- Townshend and Moon were tired of their band's leader, and also just didn't think he was a particularly good singer -- and weren't shy about saying so, even to the press. Entwistle, a natural peacemaker, didn't feel as strongly, but there was a definite split forming in the band. Things came to a head on a European tour. Daltrey was sick of this pop nonsense, he was sick of the arty ideas of Townshend, and he was also sick of the other members' drug use. Daltrey didn't indulge himself, but the other band members had been using drugs long before they became successful, and they were all using uppers, which offended Daltrey greatly. He flushed Keith Moon's pill stash down the toilet, and screamed at his band mates that they were a bunch of junkies, then physically attacked Moon. All three of the other band members agreed -- Daltrey was out of the band. They were going to continue as a trio. But after a couple of days, Daltrey was back in the group. This was mostly because Daltrey had come crawling back to them, apologising -- he was in a very bad place at the time, having left his wife and kid, and was actually living in the back of the group's tour van. But it was also because Lambert and Stamp persuaded the group they needed Daltrey, at least for the moment, because he'd sung lead on their latest single, and that single was starting to rise up the charts. "My Generation" had had a long and torturous journey from conception to realisation. Musically it originally had been inspired by Mose Allison's "Young Man's Blues": [Excerpt: Mose Allison, "Young Man's Blues"] Townshend had taken that musical mood and tied it to a lyric that was inspired by a trilogy of TV plays, The Generations, by the socialist playwright David Mercer, whose plays were mostly about family disagreements that involved politics and class, as in the case of the first of those plays, where two upwardly-mobile young brothers of very different political views go back to visit their working-class family when their mother is on her deathbed, and are confronted by the differences they have with each other, and with the uneducated father who sacrificed to give them a better life than he had: [Excerpt: Where the Difference Begins] Townshend's original demo for the song was very much in the style of Mose Allison, as the excerpt of it that's been made available on various deluxe reissues of the album shows: [Excerpt: Pete Townshend, "My Generation (demo)"] But Lambert had not been hugely impressed by that demo. Stamp had suggested that Townshend try a heavier guitar riff, which he did, and then Lambert had added the further suggestion that the music would be improved by a few key changes -- Townshend was at first unsure about this, because he already thought he was a bit too influenced by the Kinks, and he regarded Ray Davies as, in his words, "the master of modulation", but eventually he agreed, and decided that the key changes did improve the song. Stamp made one final suggestion after hearing the next demo version of the song. A while earlier, the Who had been one of the many British groups, like the Yardbirds and the Animals, who had backed Sonny Boy Williamson II on his UK tour. Williamson had occasionally done a little bit of a stutter in some of his performances, and Daltrey had picked up on that and started doing it. Townshend had in turn imitated Daltrey's mannerism a couple of times on the demo, and Stamp thought that was something that could be accentuated. Townshend agreed, and reworked the song, inspired by John Lee Hooker's "Stuttering Blues": [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "Stuttering Blues"] The stuttering made all the difference, and it worked on three levels. It reinforced the themes of inarticulacy that run throughout the Who's early work -- their first single, after all, had been called "I Can't Explain", and Townshend talks movingly in his autobiography about talking to teenage fans who felt that "I Can't Explain" had said for them the things they couldn't say th

Episode 125 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Here Comes the Night", Them, the early career of Van Morrison, and the continuing success of Bert Berns.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Dirty Water" by the Standells. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used two biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word "hagiography" would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. I also used information from the liner notes to The Complete Them 1964-1967, which as the title suggests is a collection of all the recordings the group made while Van Morrison was in the band. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to take a look at a band whose lead singer, sadly, is more controversial now than he was at the period we're looking at. I would normally not want to explicitly talk about current events upfront at the start of an episode, but Van Morrison has been in the headlines in the last few weeks for promoting dangerous conspiracy theories about covid, and has also been accused of perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes with a recent single.  So I would like to take this opportunity just to say that no positive comments I make about the Van Morrison of 1965 in this episode should be taken as any kind of approval of the Van Morrison of 2021 -- and this should also be taken as read for one of the similarly-controversial subjects of next week's episode...   Anyway, that aside, today we're going to take a look at the first classic rock and roll records made by a band from Northern Ireland, and at the links between the British R&B scene and the American Brill Building. We're going to look at Van Morrison, Bert Berns, and "Here Comes the Night" by Them:   [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"]   When we last looked at Bert Berns, he was just starting to gain some prominence in the East Coast recording scene with his productions for artists like Solomon Burke and the Isley Brothers. We've also, though it wasn't always made explicit, come across several of his productions when talking about other artists -- when Leiber and Stoller stopped working for Atlantic, Berns took over production of their artists, as well as all the other recordings he was making, and so many of the mid-sixties Drifters records we looked at in the episode on "Stand By Me" were Berns productions. But while he was producing soul classics in New York, Berns was also becoming aware of the new music coming from the United Kingdom -- in early 1963 he started receiving large royalty cheques for a cover version of his song "Twist and Shout" by some English band he'd never heard of. He decided that there was a market here for his songs, and made a trip to the UK, where he linked up with Dick Rowe at Decca.    While most of the money Berns had been making from "Twist and Shout" had been from the Beatles' version, a big chunk of it had also come from Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, the band that Rowe had signed to Decca instead of the Beatles. After the Beatles became big, the Tremeloes used the Beatles' arrangement of "Twist and Shout", which had been released on an album and an EP but not a single, and had a top ten hit with their own version of it:   [Excerpt: Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, "Twist and Shout"]   Rowe was someone who kept an eye on the American market, and saw that Berns was a great source of potential hits. He brought Berns over to the UK, and linked him up with Larry Page, the manager who gave Rowe an endless supply of teen idols, and with Phil Solomon, an Irish manager who had been the publicist for the crooner Ruby Murray, and had recently brought Rowe the group The Bachelors, who had had a string of hits like "Charmaine":   [Excerpt: The Bachelors, "Charmaine"]   Page, Solomon, and Rowe were currently trying to promote something called "Brum Beat", as a Birmingham rival to Mersey beat, and so all the acts Berns worked with were from Birmingham. The most notable of these acts was one called Gerry Levene and the Avengers. Berns wrote and produced the B-side of that group's only single, with Levene backed by session musicians, but I've been unable to find a copy of that B-side anywhere in the digital domain. However, the A-side, which does exist and wasn't produced by Berns, is of some interest:   [Excerpt: Gerry Levene and the Avengers, "Dr. Feelgood"]   The lineup of the band playing on that included guitarist Roy Wood, who would go on to be one of the most important and interesting British musicians of the later sixties and early seventies, and drummer Graeme Edge, who went on to join the Moody Blues. Apparently at another point, their drummer was John Bonham.   None of the tracks Berns recorded for Decca in 1963 had any real success, but Berns had made some useful contacts with Rowe and Solomon, and most importantly had met a British arranger, Mike Leander, who came over to the US to continue working with Berns, including providing the string arrangements for Berns' production of "Under the Boardwalk" for the Drifters:   [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"]   In May 1964, the month when that track was recorded, Berns was about the only person keeping Atlantic Records afloat -- we've already seen that they were having little success in the mid sixties, but in mid-May, even given the British Invasion taking over the charts, Berns had five records in the Hot One Hundred as either writer or producer -- the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout" was the highest charting, but he also had hits with "One Way Love" by the Drifters:   [Excerpt: The Drifters, "One Way Love"]   "That's When it Hurts" by Ben E. King:   [Excerpt: Ben E. King, "That's When it Hurts"]   "Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)" by Solomon Burke:   [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)"]   And "My Girl Sloopy" by the Vibrations:   [Excerpt: The Vibrations, "My Girl Sloopy"]   And a week after the production of "Under the Boardwalk", Berns was back in the studio with Solomon Burke, producing Burke's classic "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", though that track would lead to a major falling-out with Burke, as Berns and Atlantic executive Jerry Wexler took co-writing credit they hadn't earned on Burke's song -- Berns was finally at the point in his career where he was big enough that he could start stealing Black men's credits rather than having to earn them for himself:   [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"]   Not everything was a hit, of course -- he wrote a dance track with Mike Leander, "Show Me Your Monkey", which was definitely not a big hit -- but he had a strike rate that most other producers and writers would have killed for. And he was also having hits in the UK with the new British Invasion bands -- the Animals had made a big hit from "Baby Let Me Take You Home", the old folk tune that Berns had rewritten for Hoagy Lands. And he was still in touch with Phil Solomon and Dick Rowe, both of whom came over to New York for Berns' wedding in July.   It might have been while they were at the wedding that they first suggested to Berns that he might be interested in producing a new band that Solomon was managing, named Them, and in particular their lead singer, Van Morrison.   Van Morrison was always a misfit, from his earliest days. He grew up in Belfast, a city that is notoriously divided along sectarian lines between a Catholic minority who (for the most part) want a united Ireland, and a Presbyterian majority who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. But in a city where the joke goes that a Jewish person would be asked "but are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?", Morrison was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and for the rest of his life he would be resistant to fitting into any of the categories anyone tried to put him in, both for good and ill.   While most of the musicians from the UK we've looked at so far have been from middle-class backgrounds, and generally attended art school, Morrison had gone to a secondary modern school, and left at fourteen to become a window cleaner. But he had an advantage that many of his contemporaries didn't -- he had relatives living in America and Canada, and his father had once spent a big chunk of time working in Detroit, where at one point the Morrison family planned to move. This exposed Morrison senior to all sorts of music that would not normally be heard in the UK, and he returned with a fascination for country and blues music, and built up a huge record collection. Young Van Morrison was brought up listening to Hank Williams, Sister Rosetta Tharpe,  Jimmie Rodgers, Louis Jordan, Jelly Roll Morton, and his particular favourite, Lead Belly. The first record he bought with his own money was "Hootin' Blues" by the Sonny Terry Trio:   [Excerpt: The Sonny Terry Trio, "Hootin' Blues"]   Like everyone, Van Morrison joined a skiffle group, but he became vastly more ambitious in 1959 when he visited a relative in Canada. His aunt smuggled him into a nightclub where an actual American rock and roll group were playing -- Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks:   [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins, "Mary Lou"]   Hawkins had been inspired to get into the music business by his uncle Delmar, a fiddle player whose son, Dale Hawkins, we looked at back in episode sixty-three. His band, the Hawks, had a reputation as the hottest band in Canada -- at this point they were still all Americans, but other than their drummer Levon Helm they would soon be replaced one by one with Canadian musicians, starting with bass player Robbie Robertson.   Morrison was enthused and decided he was going to become a professional musician. He already played a bit of guitar, but started playing the saxophone too, as that was an instrument that would be more likely to get him work at this point.   He joined a showband called the Monarchs, as saxophone player and occasional vocalist. Showbands were a uniquely Irish phenomenon -- they were eight- or nine-piece groups, rhythm sections with a small horn section and usually a couple of different singers, who would play every kind of music for dancing, ranging from traditional pop to country and western to rock and roll, and would also perform choreographed dance routines and comedy sketches.    The Monarchs were never a successful band, but they managed to scrape a living playing the Irish showband circuit, and in the early sixties they travelled to Germany, where audiences of Black American servicemen wanted them to play more soulful music like songs by Ray Charles, an opportunity Morrison eagerly grabbed. It was also a Black American soldier who introduced Morrison to the music of Bobby Bland, whose "Turn on Your Love Light" was soon introduced to the band's set:   [Excerpt Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn on Your Love Light"]   But they were still mostly having to play chart hits by Billy J Kramer or Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Morrison was getting frustrated. The Monarchs did get a chance to record a single in Germany, as Georgie and the Monarchs, with another member, George Jones (not the famous country singer) singing lead, but the results were not impressive:   [Excerpt: Georgie and the Monarchs, "O Twingy Baby"]   Morrison moved between several different showbands, but became increasingly dissatisfied with what he was doing. Then another showband he was in, the Manhattan Showband, briefly visited London, and Morrison and several of his bandmates went to a club called Studio 51, run by Ken Colyer. There they saw a band called The Downliners Sect, who had hair so long that the Manhattan members at first thought they were a girl group, until their lead singer came on stage wearing a deerstalker hat. The Downliners Sect played exactly the kind of aggressive R&B that Morrison thought he should be playing:   [Excerpt: The Downliners Sect, "Be a Sect Maniac"]   Morrison asked if he could sit in with the group on harmonica, but was refused -- and this was rather a pattern with the Downliners Sect, who had a habit of attracting harmonica players who wanted to be frontmen. Both Rod Stewart and Steve Marriott did play harmonica with the group for a while, and wanted to join full-time, but were refused as they clearly wanted to be lead singers and the group didn't need another one of them.   On returning to Belfast, Morrison decided that he needed to start his own R&B band, and his own R&B club night. At first he tried to put together a sort of supergroup of showband regulars, but most of the musicians he approached weren't interested in leaving their steady gigs. Eventually, he joined a band called the Gamblers, led by guitarist and vocalist Billy Harrison. The Gamblers had started out as an instrumental group, playing rock and roll in the style of Johnny and the Hurricanes, but they'd slowly been moving in a more R&B direction, and playing Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley material. Morrison joined the group on saxophone and vocals -- trading off leads with Harrison -- and the group renamed themselves after a monster movie from a few years before:   [Excerpt: THEM! trailer]   The newly renamed Them took up a regular gig at the Maritime Hotel, a venue which had previously attracted a trad jazz crowd, and quickly grew a substantial local following. Van Morrison later often said that their residency at the Maritime was the only time Them were any good, but that period was remarkably short -- three months after their first gig, the group had been signed to a management, publishing, and production deal with Philip Solomon, who called in Dick Rowe to see them in Belfast. Rowe agreed to the same kind of licensing deal with Solomon that Andrew Oldham had already got from him for the Stones -- Them would record for Solomon's company, and Decca would license the recordings.   This also led to the first of the many, many, lineup changes that would bedevil the group for its short existence -- between 1964 and 1966 there were eighteen different members of the group. Eric Wrixon, the keyboard player, was still at school, and his parents didn't think he should become a musician, so while he came along to the first recording session, he didn't sign the contract because he wasn't allowed to stay with the group once his next term at school started. However, he wasn't needed -- while Them's guitarist and bass player were allowed to play on the records, Dick Rowe brought in session keyboard player Arthur Greenslade and drummer Bobby Graham -- the same musicians who had augmented the Kinks on their early singles -- to play with them.   The first single, a cover version of Slim Harpo's "Don't Start Crying Now", did precisely nothing commercially:   [Excerpt: Them, "Don't Start Crying Now"]   The group started touring the UK, now as Decca recording artistes, but they almost immediately started to have clashes with their management. Phil Solomon was not used to aggressive teenage R&B musicians, and didn't appreciate things like them just not turning up for one gig they were booked for, saying to them "The Bachelors never missed a date in their lives. One of them even had an accident on their way to do a pantomime in Bristol and went on with his leg in plaster and twenty-one stitches in his head."   Them were not particularly interested in performing in pantomimes in Bristol, or anywhere else, but the British music scene was still intimately tied in with the older showbiz tradition, and Solomon had connections throughout that industry -- as well as owning a publishing and production company he was also a major shareholder in Radio Caroline, one of the pirate radio stations that broadcast from ships anchored just outside British territorial waters to avoid broadcasting regulations, and his father was a major shareholder in Decca itself.    Given Solomon's connections, it wasn't surprising that Them were chosen to be one of the Decca acts produced by Bert Berns on his next UK trip in August 1964. The track earmarked for their next single was their rearrangement of "Baby Please Don't Go", a Delta blues song that had originally been recorded in 1935 by Big Joe Williams and included on the Harry Smith Anthology:   [Excerpt: Big Joe Williams' Washboard Blues Singers , "Baby Please Don't Go"]   though it's likely that Them had learned it from Muddy Waters' version, which is much closer to theirs:   [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Baby Please Don't Go"]   Bert Berns helped the group tighten up their arrangement, which featured a new riff thought up by Billy Harrison, and he also brought in a session guitarist, Jimmy Page, to play rhythm guitar. Again he used a session drummer, this time Andy White who had played on "Love Me Do". Everyone agreed that the result was a surefire hit:   [Excerpt: Them, "Baby Please Don't Go"]   At the session with Berns, Them cut several other songs, including some written by Berns, but it was eventually decided that the B-side should be a song of Morrison's, written in tribute to his dead cousin Gloria, which they'd recorded at their first session with Dick Rowe:   [Excerpt: Them, "Gloria"]   "Baby Please Don't Go" backed with "Gloria" was one of the great double-sided singles of the sixties, but it initially did nothing on the charts, and the group were getting depressed at their lack of success, Morrison and Harrison were constantly arguing as each thought of himself as the leader of the group, and the group's drummer quit in frustration. Pat McAuley, the group's new keyboard player, switched to drums, and brought in his brother Jackie to replace him on keyboards.    To make matters worse, while "Baby Please Don't Go" had flopped, the group had hoped that their next single would be one of the songs they'd recorded with Berns, a Berns song called "Here Comes the Night". Unfortunately for them, Berns had also recorded another version of it for Decca, this one with Lulu, a Scottish singer who had recently had a hit with a cover of the Isley Brothers' "Shout!", and her version was released as a single:   [Excerpt: Lulu, "Here Comes the Night"]   Luckily for Them, though unluckily for Lulu, her record didn't make the top forty, so there was still the potential for Them to release their version of it.   Phil Solomon hadn't given up on "Baby Please Don't Go", though, and he began a media campaign for the record. He moved the group into the same London hotel where Jimmy Savile was staying -- Savile is now best known for his monstrous crimes, which I won't go into here except to say that you shouldn't google him if you don't know about them, but at the time he was Britain's most popular DJ, the presenter of Top of the Pops, the BBC's major TV pop show, and a columnist in a major newspaper. Savile started promoting Them, and they would later credit him with a big part of their success.   But Solomon was doing a lot of other things to promote the group as well. He part-owned Radio Caroline, and so "Baby Please Don't Go" went into regular rotation on the station. He called in a favour with the makers of Ready Steady Go! and got "Baby Please Don't Go" made into the show's new theme tune for two months, and soon the record, which had been a flop on its first release, crawled its way up into the top ten.   For the group's next single, Decca put out their version of "Here Comes the Night", and that was even more successful, making it all the way to number two on the charts, and making the American top thirty:   [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"]   As that was at its chart peak, the group also performed at the NME Poll-Winners' Party at Wembley Stadium, a show hosted by Savile and featuring The Moody Blues, Freddie and the Dreamers, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Herman's Hermits, Cilla Black, Donovan, The Searchers, Dusty Springfield, The Animals,The Kinks, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, among others. Even on that bill, reviewers singled out Them's seven-minute performance of Bobby Bland's "Turn on Your Love Light" for special praise, though watching the video of it it seems a relatively sloppy performance.   But the group were already starting to fall apart. Jackie McAuley was sacked from the group shortly after that Wembley show -- according to some of the group, because of his use of amphetamines, but it's telling that when the Protestant bass player Alan Henderson told the Catholic McAuley he was out of the group, he felt the need to emphasise that "I've got nothing against" -- and then use a term that's often regarded as an anti-Catholic slur...   On top of this, the group were also starting to get a bad reputation among the press -- they would simply refuse to answer questions, or answer them in monosyllables, or just swear at journalists. Where groups like the Rolling Stones carefully cultivated a "bad boy" image, but were doing so knowingly and within carefully delineated limits, Them were just unpleasant and rude because that's who they were.   Bert Berns came back to the UK to produce a couple of tracks for the group's first album, but he soon had to go back to America, as he had work to do there -- he'd just started up his own label, a rival to Red Bird, called BANG, which stood for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui, Gerald -- Berns had co-founded it with the Ertegun brothers and Jerry Wexler, though he soon took total control over it. BANG had just scored a big hit with "I Want Candy" by the Strangeloves, a song Berns had co-written:   [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"]   And the Strangeloves in turn had discovered a singer called Rick Derringer, and Bang put out a single by him under the name "The McCoys", using a backing track Berns had produced as a Strangeloves album track, their version of his earlier hit "My Girl Sloopy". The retitled "Hang on Sloopy" went to number one:   [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"]   Berns was also getting interested in signing a young Brill Building songwriter named Neil Diamond... The upshot was that rather than continuing to work with Berns, Them were instead handed over to Tommy Scott, an associate of Solomon's who'd sung backing vocals on "Here Comes the Night", but who was best known for having produced "Terry" by Twinkle:   [Excerpt: Twinkle, "Terry"]   The group were not impressed with Scott's productions, and their next two singles flopped badly, not making the charts at all. Billy Harrison and Morrison were becoming less and less able to tolerate each other, and eventually Morrison and Henderson forced Harrison out. Pat McAuley quit two weeks later,    The McAuley brothers formed their own rival lineup of Them, which initially also featured Billy Harrison, though he soon left, and they got signed to a management contract with Reg Calvert, a rival of Solomon's who as well as managing several pop groups also owned Radio City, a pirate station that was in competition with Radio Caroline. Calvert registered the trademark in the name Them, something that Solomon had never done for the group, and suddenly there was a legal dispute over the name.   Solomon retaliated by registering trademarks for the names "The Fortunes" and "Pinkerton's Assorted Colours" -- two groups Calvert managed -- and putting together rival versions of those groups. However the problem soon resolved itself, albeit tragically -- Calvert got into a huge row with Major Oliver Smedley, a failed right-libertarian politician who, when not co-founding the Institute for Economic Affairs and quitting the Liberal Party for their pro-European stance and left-wing economics, was one of Solomon's co-directors of Radio Caroline. Smedley shot Calvert, killing him, and successfully pled self-defence at his subsequent trial. The jury let Smedley off after only a minute of deliberation, and awarded Smedley two hundred and fifty guineas to pay for his costs.   The McAuley brothers' group renamed themselves to Them Belfast -- and the word beginning with g that some Romany people regard as a slur for their ethnic group -- and made some records, mostly only released in Sweden, produced by Kim Fowley, who would always look for any way to cash in on a hit record, and wrote "Gloria's Dream" for them:   [Excerpt: Them Belfast G***ies, "Gloria's Dream"]   Morrison and Henderson continued their group, and had a surprise hit in the US when Decca issued "Mystic Eyes", an album track they'd recorded for their first album, as a single in the US, and it made the top forty:   [Excerpt: Them, "Mystic Eyes"]   On the back of that, Them toured the US, and got a long residency at the Whisky a Go-Go in LA, where they were supported by a whole string of the Sunset Strip's most exciting new bands -- Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, The Association, Buffalo Springfield, and the Doors. The group became particularly friendly with the Doors, with the group's new guitarist getting thrown out of clubs with Jim Morrison for shouting "Johnny Rivers is a wanker!" at Rivers while Rivers was on stage, and Jim Morrison joining them on stage for duets, though the Doors were staggered at how much the Belfast group could drink -- their drink bill for their first week at the Whisky A Go-Go was $5400.   And those expenses caused problems, because Van Morrison agreed before the tour started that he would be on a fixed salary, paid by Phil Solomon, and Solomon would get all the money from the promoters. But then Morrison found out how much Solomon was making, and decided that it wasn't fair that Solomon would get all that money when Morrison was only getting the comparatively small amount he'd agreed to. When Tommy Scott, who Solomon had sent over to look after the group on tour, tried to collect the takings from the promoters, he was told "Van Morrison's already taken the money".    Solomon naturally dropped the group, who continued touring the US without any management, and sued them. Various Mafia types offered to take up the group's management contract, and even to have Solomon murdered, but the group ended up just falling apart.    Van Morrison quit the group, and Alan Henderson struggled on for another five years with various different lineups of session men, recording albums as Them which nobody bought. He finally stopped performing as Them in 1972. He reunited with Billy Harrison and Eric Wrixon, the group's original keyboardist, in 1979, and they recorded another album and toured briefly. Wrixon later formed another lineup of Them, which for a while included Billy Harrison, and toured with that group, billed as Them The Belfast Blues Band, until Wrixon's death in 2015.   Morrison, meanwhile, had other plans. Now that Them's two-year contract with Solomon was over, he wanted to have the solo career people had been telling him he deserved. And he knew how he was going to do it. All along, he'd thought that Bert Berns had been the only person in the music industry who understood him as an artist, and now of course Berns had his own record label. Van Morrison was going to sign to BANG Records, and he was going to work again with Bert Berns, the man who was making hits for everyone he worked with.   But the story of "Brown-Eyed Girl", and Van Morrison going solo, and the death of Bert Berns, is a story for another time...

Some songs call for you to speak out & demand action. Some songs explore the deepest depths of your soul. Some songs are timeless expressions of love. This song... it just kicks ass. Humble Pie was a guitar riff machine, and Steve Marriott was 5' 5" of vocal dynamite. Add a trio of the finest backing singers-- Venetta Fields, Clydie King and Sherlie Matthews-- and you've got a party."Thunderbox" (Clemson/Marriott) Copyright 1974 Almo Music Corp/Rule One Music (ASCAP)If you enjoyed this show, please check out these episodes:https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/small-faces-tin-soldierhttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/thin-lizzy-rosalie-- This show is part of the Pantheon network of music-related podcasts, check out all the other great shows! And please subscribe to this show — that way, you'll never miss an episode, they'll be delivered right to you.