The brothers were lucky when they came to England from Australia in early 1967. Not only was London in full swing but pop was taking on a range of new and exotic influences from medieval minstrelsy to mellotrons, ragas to Victoriana.
Much of this found its way into the Bee Gees’ music. That was nothing unusual, it was what a lot of bands were doing at the time – absorbing, adapting and adapting again. But when these influences combined with the brothers’ distinctive harmonising talents – honed over a decade of performing live – and their solidly melodic songwriting, the results were amongst the most solid yet engaging of the psychedelic pop genre.
Bee Gees 1st marked the beginning of a sustained campaign which kept the brothers’ Gibb in the charts throughout the remainder of the 60s, consistently balancing discipline with flair, accessibility with a desire to grow and change.
Ear to the zeitgeist
Some would say 1st is the Bee Gees’ strongest album and it’s not hard to hear why. Their ear-to-the-zeitgeist is evident everywhere: the Edwardian toytown pop of Turn of the Century, the fairytale swirl of Red Chair, Fade Awayand the bendy monastic weirdness of Every Christian Lionhearted Man Will Show You. As the 60s progress, the psychedelic trimmings gradually fall by the wayside but here they’re in full flight and put across with a confidence and, as always, terrific melodic ease.
They play with structure too, not just for the sake of it, but in a way which shows genuine musical understanding: listen to Robin’s sudden operatic digression taking Close Another Door to a whole other level and psychedelia triumphing over pop to bring an inventive fade to I Close My Eyes.
Startling soulfulness
And then there’s their soulfulness. It’s startling just how fully formed were the brothers’ soul credentials even at this early stage and indeed soul forms the often underappreciated alternative arm of Bee Gees 1st. There is incredible emotion in Robin’s vocals for I Can’t See Nobody – and that’s before you even get to Nina Simone’s cover. And how To Love Somebody was so undervalued at the time is a mystery: what an utterly consummate pop ballad.
Interestingly, the album’s programming accentuates the psychedelia/ soul division with all the baroque pop/psychedelic tracks (bar Cucumber Castle) placed on side one and side two showing a definite leaning towards soul as well as a greater group feel.
Folk, Beatlesque pop art, cute whimsy, medieval psychedelic drones, soul ballads – beneath the genre hopping and sometime Craise Finton cheekiness these brothers simply write great pop music.
Bee Gees 1st sets out their stall and proves that they are songwriters to watch and be reckoned with.
And so to the most overrrated Bee Gees‘ track of 1966-72…
I know I will make myself unpopular with pop-psych fans by finding fault with a song upheld by many as the pinnacle of Bee Gees’ psychedelia (sure enough it’s top of the list in this month’s Shindig ‘Bee Gees Deep Cuts’ feature).
Criticising Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You goes against the grain of my general preference for psychedelic over romantic ballad Bee Gees. And there’s no doubting this is one of their most outré pieces. But being self-consciously experimental and ‘psychedelic’ in themselves aren’t enough to make a song any good.
Far out
This dreary (as against dreamy, as it might like to think it is) dirge sounds as if it was written to simply get as far out as the Bee Gees were able to get in early 1967. Its melody is by far the dullest on Bee Gees 1st. I can almost hear the needle getting stuck in the groove in the yawning depth of Maurice’s pitch bend.
Indeed Maurice does a terrific job in controlling the notorious mellotron. And yes the lyrics are strange but does that mean they are stimulating or that they emotionally connect with the listener in any way?
Red Chair Fade Away has an OK, fairly fluffy kind of weirdness but at least it’s about something and makes me feel a response, not ‘when is this sub-Beatles moan going to end?’ No wonder we need Craise Finton Kirk as an antidote.
Out to impress
Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You sets out toimpress and I’m amazed by the ease with which it does so. But for me, it screams ‘let’s collect some counter cultural brownie points’, never mind writing a decent song.
That’s really that’s all there is to say apart from the oft-quoted ‘the brothers sound like Gregorian monks.’ But how much better do they put their chanting abilities on a well-crafted, properly atmospheric and genuinely ambitious composition such as Odessa?
So I’m afraid this is well outside my Top 50 and easily the most skipable track on 1st.
By Robin & Barry Gibb Lead Vocal: Barry & Robin Album Bee Gees’ 1st 1967
“Would it hurt to say hello or don’t you know?”
An appeal to a mysterious female, One Minute Woman is a pleasing, melodic ballad set to Barry’s slightly faltering vocal phrasing.
Robin’s earlier far smoother vocal irons out much of the song’s soulfulness. Billy Fury’s version resembles Robin’s in this respect and perhaps it was Robin’s version which was given to Fury as a template for his cover.
Shifting moods
Melody and lyrics caress one another, touching on a variety of shifting moods – chivalrous at each titular verse opening, then imploring (‘I go down on my knees’), humbly sincere (‘to say to you with a word so true’), later even accusatory (‘Would it hurt to say hello?’) and crestfallen, bewildered (‘Or don’t you know?’). We end on the simple ‘I love you’ – declamatory yes, but through landing on the sub-tonic against a flattened seventh chord, characteristically open-ended too.
Like several songs on Bee Gees1st, One Minute Woman conceals a soulful quality beneath an immaculate pop-ballad exterior.
By Barry & Robin Gibb Lead Vocal: Barry Album Bee Gees’ 1st
“Sitting eating hot cross buns”
The most derivative track on 1st, In My Own Time inspires a lot of fondness for being a mere collection of blatant Revolver-era Beatles rip-offs. Dressed in button down collars and Cuban heels, it’s a stab at ’66 sharpness amidst ’67’s frills. A cheekiness lends an undeserved freshly-minted quality.
InMy Own Time wants to be copycat cool. But its rather better at the copycat than the cool. Those nods to Revolver keep on coming: Vince’s needling guitar, those clarion harmonies, the sweetly sour, mock cynical lyrics.
Pin sharp modernism
Yet rather than Dr Robert or Taxman, In My Own Time is actually closer in spirit to Whistling Jack Smith’s 1967 novelty hit I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman being a half send-up, half celebration of Carnabetian, theatrical, neo-Victorian Englishness (‘sitting eating hot cross buns…’) swapping the latter’s forced merriment for the odd thrown in moment of arch sarcastic disregard (‘thousand suckers every one’.)
The couplet ‘Even when the lights go out, Still got things to think about’ serendipitously recalls With a Little Help from My Friends’ ‘What do you see when you turn out the light?’ though there could have been no debt.
Out of time
Robin, it must have been Robin, gets in his mention of the United Nations. For all its pin sharp modernism musically, lyrically In My Own Time can be seen as an early hint at his out-of-timeness.
In My Own Time is a necessary pre-antidote to the over-rated, over-extended and, sorry, rather dull Every Christian Lionhearted Man Will Show Youwhich follows. Its careful calculation is ultimately its very fresh-faced charm.
I recently returned from a thoroughly enjoyable though characteristically wet week in Blackpool so I thought I’d Take Three Songs about the northern seaside town.
She Sold Blackpool Rock
Performed by Honeybus Written & lead vocal by Ray Cane
Produced by Ivor Raymonde Deram A-Side, May 1969
Ivor Raymonde’s string quartet is too overly refined to evoke Blackpool but that scarcely matters, the precise seaside setting is incidental though Blackpool sounds and feels right in a way that Brighton or Bangor would not.
Ray Cane was a Londoner; whether he ever visited Blackpool I have no idea. She Sold Blackpool Rock is less about the place, more about a bitter-sweet memory of a summer seaside girl who ‘sold Blackpool rock in a funny hat’.
I loved this song on first listening and love it still, so much so I’d hesitate if asked to name I Can’t Let Maggie Go or She Sold Blackpool Rock as my favourite Honeybus single which surprises me. Maggie is imbued with Pete Dello’s finely spun, almost scholastic Englishness whereas Ray Cane’sBlackpool Rock, though baroque pop by any other name, sits squarely centre stage just crying out to be a huge hit. And yet somehow it wasn’t.
Sweet memory
How that simple melody effortlessly finds its way into your head… The string quartet (sweetness of the memory flooding back?) contrasts perfectly with Colin Hare’s jangly guitar, Pete Kircher’s tasty drums and some very late 60s tambourine. Jim Kelly supplies occasional, understated countryish licks, the chorus breakout harmonies are, of course, loveliness incarnate and we get the hoped for ‘aah!’ leadoff.
Yet despite such impeccable late 60s pop credentials, it is Cane’s thoughtful, subtle touches as a songwriter which really make the song special.
Goes right through
The letters in the rock have different meanings as the story progresses. They are the secret between him and the girl which begins as a playful encounter (his opening chat-up line, perhaps) then becoming fleeting intimacy ‘(the games we played’) and, years later, a rediscovered memory (‘I remember her, How could I forget?’).
And he cleverly uses that tell tale lyric
Then she told me that she knew, How they make the letters go right through
to form a conceit running through the entire song both musically and lyrically; the lines make up the vocal counterpoint underpinning the build to the second chorus, (‘Then she told me that she knew…’) and then return as the wistful afterthought beneath the leadoff (‘…how they make the letters go right through.’)
Magic bus
Pete Dello left Honeybus in the wake of Maggie’s big chart success. He may have been a huge loss to the band but no more than here, Ray Cane shows he could step up to the breach as chief songwriter. His gently yearning voice on Blackpool Rock is just right too.
This glance back to a treasured sunny seaside day from the standpoint of winter gathers extra poignancy by being Honeybus’ last single of the 60s making the splendid last minute Beatlesque slow fade like a long, slow sunset across the Irish Sea.
Up the ‘Pool
Performed by Jethro Tull Written and produced by Ian Anderson Life Is a Long Song EP, Chrysalis, September 1971 Available on Living in the Past, double album, June 1972
Despite being Scottish born (and a resident of Scotland still), Ian Anderson spent his teenage years in Blackpool. His abiding affection for the place is obvious in this postcard portrait shot through with an endearing down-to-earthness hinting at the bawdy. Anderson never stints on the warts and all, unpretentious, working-class nature of the place with its bingo, tea swigging, ‘old vests, braces dangling down’.
Go north
Presumably written during the period of Tull’s early successs, Up the ‘Pool describes a return trip for Anderson as he travels ‘from down the smoke below.’ By 1971, Jethro Tull had toured with Hendrix and had Top of the Pops appearances under their belts but Anderson still longs to ‘taste me mum’s jam sarnies and to see our Aunty Flo’. I’m guessing he travelled up on British Rail as Preston platform is name-checked on the cynical Cheap Day Return also from 1971.
Up the ‘Pool’s, swipe at politicians ‘who’ve come to take the air’ is more good humoured but I grimace every time I hear that awful ‘blame the mess on Edward Bear’ rhyme (does he mean Edward Heath?).
An early take (available on Aqualung 40th Anniversary box set) has piano and is crucially far less developed rhythmically and consequently less dramatic than the finished version. Thank goodness this smoothness was roughed up by some lively, jolly, syncopated rhythms. The guitar work, with occasional string inflections, is just right.
Singalong
An inherent singalong quality at last finds voice on the final verse with the band piping up. I can’t quite make out some of the ragged ribaldry but who cares?
I like the way the obvious touch of an organ is introduced only briefly as background colour over the closing cries of ‘Oh Blackpool!’ A lesser band would surely have plastered it over the whole song.
If you’ve windows wound down driving up the M6 or are hanging around on eternally drafty Preston Station and need a singalong to get you in the mood for going up the ‘pool, this is it.
Blackpool
Written and performed by Roy Harper Produced by Peter Richards
Available on Sophisticated Beggar, Strike, 1967
My third song should rightfully be George Formby’s immortal, innuendo laden With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock, a seaside postcard set to ukulele: ‘With my little stick of Blackpool Rock, along the promenade I stroll. It may be sticky but I never complain, it’s nice to have a nibble at it now and again.’ This, the ultimate Blackpool song bar none, was recorded as long ago as 1937 and is frightfully well known.
So I’ve opted for something poles apart from that and indeed from songs one and two.
As a child, Roy Harper lived in Blackpool’s respectable neighbour, St Anne’s on Sea, a place he described as ‘like a cemetery with bus stops’. Blackpool would have been but a short bus ride away.
The remarkable thing about this piece is that it is about Blackpool at all. Only the title tells us so. For a name which carries so much baggage (see Up the’ Pool for the lowdown) there is none of that here.
No baggage
Blackpool may be synonymous with communal human pleasure yet Harper finds solace in the midst of quiet beauty. In fact, I feel he’s a little outside the town alone (literally and metaphorically), watching. The crowds have departed or perhaps it’s winter. Laughter comes from the sea itself, coldly indifferent to humanity yet to Harper’s eyes, beautiful.
The five minute piece is all but an acoustic guitar instrumental until 4.14. The briefest of lyrics (probably a poem set to music) simply say:
The rain falls like diamonds Pinpricks the still waters And spreadeagles its laughter Across the green sheet of the sleeping sea.
Fingerflurrying
Harper’s fingers flurry across the strings lending the piece a loose, impressionistic feel like wind whipping across water. It’s virtuoso without being showy.
I find it lovely to hear the purity and fragility of his early voice, qualities not associated with Roy Harper. This comes from his debut album recorded in 1966.
By Barry, Maurice & Robin Gibb Lead Vocals: Robin, Barry & Maurice Album Horizontal 1968 Single A-side, 1967
“And the lights all went down…”
In Life With the Bee Gees I explained how my earliest acquaintance with the band was inextricably linked to Massachusetts and my feelings towards the song at the time. Some residue of that still holds true.
Fifty years after Massachusetts‘ release, I’m less concerned with whether the song is an ‘honest’ or original evocation of flower-power as what it tries to impart emotionally.
That certain something
The obliqueness of most Bee Gees’ songs works in their favour but Massachusetts hints at something without ever declaring what that could be. And that’s not intriguing. It’s just frustrating.
What was the experience of being in Massachusetts? What left its mark upon the singer? Was it the place itself or someone the singer met there? Massachusetts doesn’t provide any clues, giving the song a kind of vacant core.
Pedant’s protest?
Adding to its sense of slight pointlessness is the fact that Massachusetts isn’t a place anyway but a region. This wouldn’t matter much if the song managed to convey a proper sense of mystery (the brothers chose the name because they liked its sound).
Untouched
So Massachusetts’ spuriousness isn’t so much that it taps into a kind of flower-power drifter sensibility far too calculatively, (‘gotta hitch a ride to San Fransisco, gotta do the things I wanna do’) as its curious ability to leave me untouched.
I’ve heard the song – by far the blandest, least interesting track on Horizontal – numerous times but still Massachusetts is one place I have never been to.
By leaving out these giants from my Top 50, I’ve not purposefully adopted a connoisseur’s perspective, despising common artefacts in favour of polishing some obscurities. I’ve tried to consider each song truly on its merits. My No 1, I Started a Joke, was a major hit and one of the Bee Gees’ best known songs from their early period.
Still, a Bee Gees Top 50 which doesn’t include Massachusetts, Words and First of May is a bit like a Beatles Top 50 which doesn’t include She Loves You, A Day In the Life and I am the Walrus. It requires an explanation.
So over three posts, I’ll comment on these songs and try to justify their omission, starting with Massachusetts.
By Robin & Barry Gibb Lead Vocal: Barry Album Bee Gees’ 1st 1967 Single A-side 1967
“There’s a light, a certain kind of light”
Barry and Robin wrote this moving ballad with Otis Redding in mind in 1967. Redding died in a plane crash later that year and never recorded the song. Its inauspicious placing on the 1stalbum – side two, track three – suggests it was not regarded as one of the album’s prime cuts. The almost casual ‘slotting in’ makes its quality all the more startling.
Although released as a single, To Love Somebody generally underperformed in the charts, making No. 17 in the United States and only No. 41 in the UK. Yet over the years its stature has grown to near standard status. The song has garnered an array of cover versions and featured in at least half a dozen films. Its air of locked-in, pained love set to a winning melody, coupled with the distinctive rhythmic ‘triplet’ motif of the chorus have ensured a long karaoke afterlife.
Pained love
To Love Somebody‘s stance could be said to be that of the pained adolescent in love – ‘You don’t know what it’s like’ – a familiar pop motif.
Yet key elements – a dignity held in abeyance until the declamatory choruses, the colours lent by Bill Shepherd’s orchestration, an overall sense of classic modernity – ensure To Love Somebody is as far from ‘Teenager in Love’ cornball territory as it is possible to get.
Orchestral colours
Many reviewers criticise the orchestration as taking away from the song whereas I wouldn’t be without it: the mellow string opening theme giving way to a romantic repeated harp arpeggio over bendy bass, flourishes of flute and horn during the verses, the sense of a gathering climax in the lead-up to each burst of chorus and then that engaging percussive triplet pulse between each ‘To love somebody…. To love somebody… the way that I love you.’ Although, taken overall, these inevitably lend the recording a lushness (which is, I think, what its detractors dislike), each touch is applied with such precision and expertise that without them the song would simply be lacking not just in sonic richness but emotional impact.
For comparison, listen to Jimmy Somerville’s 1990 cover. This replaces the thoughtfulness of Bill Shepherd’s orchestration with constant ticking drums and a dry-ice synthscape. Hearing this again a quarter century later, I ‘get’ the originality of his reggae approach but the arrangement still sounds thin, samey, generic and now dated too.
Pop par excellence
To Love Somebody is a lesson in mainstream pop par excellence. It exhibits none of the derogatory connotations of that phrase – blandness, bog-standardness, juvenilia, ephemerality – but all of the positive ones – universal emotions expressed with clarity, an instant but lasting appeal, rhythmic and melodic assurance.
And I almost forgot to mention how well a young Barry Gibb sings. The final chorus is announced with an impassioned ‘No no no nooo’ which sounds like Robin but appears to be from Maurice in the promo.
Gilbert Green’s non-appearance on 1st is something of a mystery given the song’s unique qualities in the brothers’ canon. Perhaps Robert Stigwood felt deathly themes had been sufficiently aired in New York Mining Disaster 1941, a song which marries the Gibbs’ originality with just enough folk-rock commerciality.
Or perhaps there is something too esoteric and obscure about ‘Gilbert Green’ which is precisely what makes it so fascinating. Given its enigmatic theme, it is apt that the brothers’ rendition should remain buried in the vaults for almost forty years.
The song was given to Gerry Marsden, presumably in the hope that it might reignite his career as a kind of psychedelic hipster. The former Pacemaker turns in a creditable enough performance and the well dressed 1967 strings are present and correct. But the Bee Gees’ own version definitely has the superior edge.
Psychedelic fairy-tale
Various elements combine to create a disconcerting mood. Even the introduction and opening bars remind me of something from Julian Cope’sFried.
Firstly, the intriguing verse melody is set to solo electric guitar, underscored only by Barry’s mournful backing vocal. For the Bee Gees this is an unusually stark arrangement (their own) which ideally suits the song’s fairy-tale strangeness.
The melody is folk-based yet never adheres to a strict folk template with its twists and turns as the story unfolds.
Then at times it feels as if we are in a minor key even when we’re not hearing minor chords; rather than offering relief, unresolved major excursions serve only to emphasise a shadowy quality.
And the tempo has a flexibility which lends the song a particular air of uncertainty.
Attic alchemist
The approach here is more imaginative and multilayered than the tragi-romantic ballads of 1969/70 onwards, which is why I have a special regard for the Bee Gees’ very earliest UK years.
Like some kind of alchemist, Gilbert labours away alone, trying to write the perfect song while the world carries on, oblivious. The mood is of secrecy and mystery couched in a sadness which is ironic. We are never quite meant to feel sorry for Gilbert Green, not even his eventual demise in a fire presumably of his own making, though we are perhaps meant to wonder whether he was mad, bad or brilliant.
Lines like ‘His hearing wasn’t good but his eyes were clear’ are vaguely unsettling but still quirky enough to raise a smile. ‘Mending fifty carpets that are worn’ is another especially good line – a vivid image of Gilbert’s threadbare quest.
Then we have the tumble from the attic of the second verse to the surviving basement song of the last verse, implying a descent into madness and a man brought down by lofty (sorry!) ambitions – classic fairy-tale morality.
Threadbare quest
Robin sings the verses with understatement. His questioning, dropping away at the end of phrases is especially effective. Only the lyric ‘laughing men and yellow beans’, for me, works against the song’s careful tension between sobriety and sly humour, moving into comic nonsense.
The chorus, announced by a simple double drum beat, is a more conventional beast both melodically and lyrically but ends with the arresting: ‘We can tell the world that he was right!’
Hearing this, for the first time we are brought suddenly and directly into the mystery. This feels unexpected and disconcerting. Gilbert Green, a man barely known let alone understood, is nevertheless made known to us by the telling of this ‘song that wasn’t seen’. The song we hear is Gilbert’s song, his sole legacy. We have become a party to his secret story and a part of it.
The joke is on…
The song’s central event, the burning of the house ‘along with Gilbert Green’ – happens off stage. Was the fire a result of simple carelessness or was Gilbert Green, in some sense, consumed by his own passions? Perhaps the ‘laughing men and yellow beans’ hint at Gilbert’s madness yet somehow the joke seems to be on the world at large. The song exits on an extended meandering ‘aah’ vocal coda, fading like a question mark in the air.
Gilbert Green sits squarely in that peculiarly ‘60s pop genre ‘portraits of eccentric outsiders’. It shares elements with the genre’s pinnacle, Eleanor Rigby: a story of a lonely life followed by death and then mourning, a sense of surreal disassociation, the significance of a few carefully chosen details, a willingness to visit discomfort upon the listener and a would-be literary sensibility.
Gilbert Green also represents an early example of the brothers’ skill at absorbing musical styles around them and working them into a uniquely Gibb sensibility. It’s amazing to think that Gilbert Green was written when the Bee Gees were not yet out of their teens.
No, my Fading Yellow reviews haven’t disappeared, maybe just faded for a while.
I wanted to review the volumes in order which meant tracking down the elusive Volume 4. It’s a solidly enjoyable collection.
I hope you will find it easier to pick out individual tracks than in previous Fading Yellow reviews.
#1 Thoughts and Words – Morning Sky [1969] *****
‘I’ll fly the morning sky and then I’ll fly away’.
A fine melodic start to this comp. Wistful harmony folk-pop not unlike Simon and Garfunkel crossed with Christie with an echo of ‘Across the Universe’-Beatles. Producer MikeBatt brings sparkle to acoustic guitar strings whilstmaintaining an overall natural vibe.
Bob Ponton (who wrote Morning Sky) and Martin Curtis were ex members of Pandamonium (not the Manchester based group of the same name). There is a 13 track Liberty album also produced by Mike Batt with a cover depicting the duo in a woodland setting which I have not yet heard.
#2 The Picadilly Line – At the Third Stroke [1967] ***
From The Huge World of Emily Small the Line’s only album (Picadilly was intentionally spelt with one ‘c’ since London Underground owned the copyright to the original though Fading Yellow adds the second).
The duo were Welsh born Ron Edwards and Roger Hand who began as folkies before being signed to CBS for an album of very 1967 lightly orchestrated folk-pop-rock.
The arrangements are John Cameron’s, fresh from his revitalisation of Donovan’s career via Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow. ‘Emily Small’ shares many of the same musicians – Danny Thompson on bass, Harold McNair on flute, Tony Carr on drums for some tracks – but the arrangements never quite fly as freely as they do for Donovan.
At the Third Stroke is a little twee at times (‘the circus returns to the town’), but is redeemed by an undercurrent of mystery or incipient threat. There’s a feel of Chad and Jeremy in its determination to fully paint a scene and a tasty guitar sound which I know from somewhere.
I’m not sure what the ‘at the third stroke’ aspect of the song is apart from an obvious reference to the then ‘talking clock’ telephone service and this being the third track. A concept ran through the album but it was enigmatic at the time and utterly lost a half century later.
#3 The Majority – Charlotte Rose [1969] ****
The Majority (1965-69) were an accomplished band especially in their later Majority One incarnation (1969-71) as 2005’s Rainbow Rockin’ Chair comp shows in abundance.
This is an enjoyably multi-part love song written by Grapefruit’s George Alexander with baroque flavourings, Beatlesque moments in those ‘I don’t know’ backing vocals and perhaps a flavour of ‘Man in a Shop’ era Marmalade.
#4 The J & B – There She Goes [1966] ***
Micky Jones and Tommy Brown’s promising first release before changing their name to the more zeitgeist State of Micky & Tommy.
Here we have a post beat/just pre-psychedelic sound, so it’s electric guitars with sometime strings which enjoy some nicely augmented moments.
#5 The Playground – The Girl Behind the Smile [1969] ****
B-side to I Could Be So Good, this Essex band released three singles around 1969/70 and this is the second.
Some nice piano arpeggios over twangy acoustic guitar and harmonies suggest innocence and indeed in its sunnier passages, The Girl Behind the Smile reminds me of Malcolm Holland’s Wendy from Piccadilly Sunshine 16
#6 Frabjoy & Runcible Spoon – Animal Song [1969] *****
B-side to I’m Beside Myself (on the fabulous Marmalade label) and both sides written by Godley and Creme, Animal Song is charmed and charming, an escape into a beguiling realm similar to the more mellow tracks from Godley and Creme’s 1970 album as Hotlegs.
Tony Meehan (early Shadows) opts for a shimmering sitar arrangement which perfectly complements Kevin Godley’s rapturous vocals post-script on this point
Intriguingly imaginative before they placed too much cleverness between them and their music.
#7 Pipes of Pan – Monday Morning Rain [1967] ***
Buzzing cello, clanging guitar, organ, telegraph wire strings and a slowed down lysergic mood. The B-side was an instrumental version.
Monday Morning rain was just too outré to make it. The sleeve says produced by Larry Page and written by Chip Taylor.
#8 The Toyshop – Send My Love to Lucy [1969] *****
A trippy fantasy of loneliness and yearning – wonderful. The singer is missing his love but seems strangely content to remain in an enchanted world.
B-side to Carter-Lewis’s poppy Say Goodbye to Yesterday, this is ambitious and beautifully put together and will truly take you on a journey. A portentous vocal recalls Moody Blues as do lyrics such as ‘and in the depths of deep unconsciousness you’ll find you’re on a journey to the cities of your mind…’ I can almost hear early Family too.
A fine arrangement overall though I’m not sure about the wailing backing vocals… still, this scrapes to five stars.
How come they only made the one 45?
#9 The Candlelight – That’s What I Want [1967] ***
Written by Carter-Lewis in their Ivy League vein with echos of ‘Sealed With a Kiss’, That’s What I Want has been recorded since 1963 by The Cicadas, The Marauders, The Liverpool Five and probably others.
The Candlelight’s version comes with dense harmonies, ‘cello and nice guitar work. This works up a little to be like Hour Girl (The Rites, #10, Fading Yellow 2) but not half as powerful.
#10 The Epics – Henry Long [1968] ***
B-side to Travelling Circus. Written by Chip Hawkes and produced by ex-Tremelo Alan Blakley,Henry Long perhaps sounds later than 1968 with that compact piano sound and the electric guitar break. I’m sure there’s a story in there somewhere.
‘Travelling Circus’ b/w ‘Henry Long’ was The Epics third and final single release before they morphed into Christie but not before releasing the Roy Wood produced ‘Round the Maypole’.
#11 Finders Keepers – Light [1966] ***
Big drums, big production, surf-influenced vocals and a girl group influenced sound… dramatic brass, strings, harpsichord flourishes set to fairly banal girl/boy vocals. Those descending piano motifs do give a sense of ‘when the night closes in’ though.
Finders Keepers included future Deep Purple member Glenn Hughes but, that apart, is one of the less interesting tracks here.
#12 Martin, Martin – Imagine [1967] ***
The trippy B-side to Say Shalom on Buddha with a desolate bookending (well, OK, breath wind effects) trippy, drony and vocoded backing vocals and – trumpet.
The rather knowing picture sleeve portrait of Martin Martin in shades suggests he was well hip to the vibe of ’67.
#13 The Young Brothers – Mirror, Mirror [1968] ***
Cook-Greenway produced and wrote the A-side I’ve Always Wanted Love whilst group member Paul Young went on to Sad Café.
Not the Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours song, the melody recalls Jimmy Campbell’s ‘Forever Grateful’ from his 1970 album Half Baked.
Mirror, Mirror breaks out into a soul influenced chorus which prepares us for…
#14 Robbi Curtice – The Soul of Man [1968] ****
Robbi Curtice truly operates at the crucible of mod, soul and psychedelia. His epic ballad When Diana Paints the Picture was a definite highlight of Fading Yellow 3
Knowing this A-side pairing represented his more upbeat northern soul side, I was eager to hear it, hotly anticipating Robbi would inject excitement into proceedings, which he does from the word go with pounding drums/bass, dramatic stop-start ‘Smash!’ ‘Damn!’ lyrics before we open out into full chorus with brass and flutes.
This slab of hi energy dynamism is a great pairing for its dreamy B-side though ‘Diana’ remains the single’s crowning glory but see also #25.
#15 Alan Bown – All I Can [1969] ***
Written by Tony Catchpole, this was B-side to Deram single Gypsy Girl.
I’m getting to find out more about this band through various fragmentary sources.
#16 Jason Paul – Shine a Little Light into My Room [1969] ***
According to Fading Yellow‘s notes, this A-side orchestrated pop piece was written by Al Gorgoni of The Flying Machine and Bobby Weinstein.
#17 The Californians – Can’t get You Out of My Mind [1967] ***
Of Follow Me and The Cooks of Cakes and Kindness fame, this is the swinging pop B-side from The Californians first single, Sunday Will Never be the Same (a hit for Spanky and Our Gang).
#18 Wayne Fontana – The Impossible Years [1967] ****
A survey of the titles of Wayne Fontana’s 1967/78 singles – 24 Sycamore, The Words of Bartholomew, Storybook Children – show how eager was he to jump aboard the psychedelic bus.
After a portentous beginning this sympathetic exploration of the mixed emotions of adolescence develops into a characteristically minor-key Graham Gouldman revelation complete with plucked strings, precision trumpet and that Gouldman giveaway final off-tonic strum.
Gouldman was bassist with the Mindbenders and recorded his own version of The Impossible Years for The Graham Gouldman Thing LP. Gouldman’s English enunciation and baroque stylings add a delicate feel but Wayne Fontana provides more edge.
#19 Wayne Fontana – In My World [1967] ***
Hats off to Fading Yellow’s policy of featuring rarer tracks from artists not associated with psych, sike or psychedelia showing how almost everyone was touched by the changing times.
This is a Sergeant Pepper influenced invitation written by fellow Mindbender, Glyn Ellis aka Wayne Fontana.
#20 John Bromley – If You Were There With Me [1968] ****
This achingly idyllic track from Sing, John Bromley’s 1968 Polydor album, is consummately gentle folk-pop with wispy female backing vocals courtesy of Yvonne ‘Sue’ and Heather ‘Sunny’ Wheatman.
John credits Graham Dee as probably having come up with the idea for the female counterpoint melody.
The arrangement is by Gerry Shury who, despite his later pop-soul leanings, here turns in a gorgeously understated baroque accompaniment.
#21 The Gibsons – You Know I Need Your Loving [1967] ***
B-side to The Magic Book, with a more US flavour though there is a Beatles influence to some of the vocal phrasing.
The band hailed from Australia but came to England in 1965 – hence their inclusion here.
#22 Dave Berry – And I Have Learned to Dream [1967] ***
B-side to 1967 Bee Gees’ penned single Forever, this is a highly wistful song written by Ian Hunter (given as Ian Patterson here). You can straightaway tell it’s Dave though even through the heavily vocoded vocal.
His best chart-era single was 1970’s Chaplin House, captured on Fading Yellow Volume 12.
#23 The Majority – Wait By the Fire [1967] ****
A sobering, atmospheric B-side (produced by Ivor Raymonde) to I Hear a Rhapsody – ‘in the cold light of the dawn you will understand’ – also recorded lower, slower and more sombre still by Just Us.
#24 David McNeil – Linda [1969] ***
David is the son of Marc Chagall!
A stoned, self-written A-side complemented by rich harmonies and string/woodwind arrangement though sub-par sound quality.
It’s atmospheric but doesn’t quite do enough despite a springy energy, hinting at a breakout into something which never arrives.
#25 Robbi Curtice with Tom Payne – Gospel Lane [1968] ****
Robbi Curtice truly operates at the crucible of mod, soul, psychedelia and – music hall? Well it worked for The Small Faces.
An assured touch from the very start with a Billy Nicholls’ cheekiness and a vein of quirky graveyard humour all set to a catchy melody.
Gospel Lane was written by Rob Ashmore and Tom Payne and feels like it wants to break out into a big arrangement but doesn’t perhaps because this is a home recorded demo.
The track is dated 1969 by Fading Yellow but Robbi Curtice’s Youtube upload says 1968 so let’s go with that.
I hold the next volume in my hand so hopefully the gap won’t be quite as long before Fading Yellow 5 fades into view.
1. Thoughts and Words – Morning Sky 3.36 • 1967 ***** 2. The Picadilly Line – At the Third Stroke 3.03 • 1967 *** 3. The Majority – Charlotte Rose 2.59 • 1969 ****
4. The J & B – There She Goes 2.46 • 1966 *** 5. The Playground – The Girl behind the Smile 3.02 • 1969 **** 6. Frabjoy & Runcible Spoon – Animal Song 2.22 • 1969 ***** 7. Pipes of Pan – Monday Morning Rain 3.02 • 1967 *** 8. The Toyshop – Send My Love to Lucy 4.20 • 1969 ***** 9. The Candlelight – That’s What I Want 2.26 • 1967 *** 10. The Epics – Henry Lord 2.46 • 1968 *** 11. Finders Keepers – Light 3.12 • 1966 *** 12. Martin Martin – Imagine 2.13 • 1967 *** 13. The Young Brothers – Mirror Mirror 3.25 • 1968 *** 14. Robbi Curtice – The Soul of Man 2.32 • 1968 **** 15. The Alan Bown – All I Can 2.46 • 1969 *** 16. Jason Paul – Shine a Little Light Into My Room 2.48 • 1969 *** 17. The Californians – Can’t get You Out of My Mind 2.05 •1967 *** 18. Wayne Fontana – The Impossible Years 2.31 • 1967 **** 19. Wayne Fontana – In My World 3.04 • 1967 *** 20. John Bromley – If You Are There With Me 3.14 • 1968 **** 21. The Gibsons – You Know I Need Your Loving 3.02 • 1967 *** 22. Dave Berry – And I Have learned to Dream 3.11 • 1968 ***
23. The Majority – Wait By the Fire 3.14 • 1967 ****
24. David McNeil – Linda 2.50 • 1969 ***
25. Robbi Curtice with Tom Payne – Gospel Lane • 2.38 • 1968 ****
Carnabetian, theatrical, neo-Victorian Englishness (‘sitting eating hot cross buns…’) swapping the latter’s forced merriment for the odd thrown in moment of arch sarcastic disregard (‘thousand suckers every one’.)
with Pete Dello’s finely spun, almost scholastic Englishness whereas Ray Cane’s Blackpool Rock, though baroque pop by any other name, sits squarely centre stage just crying out to be a huge hit. And yet somehow it wasn’t.
and then return as the wistful afterthought beneath the leadoff (‘…how they make the letters go right through.’)
had Top of the Pops appearances under their belts but Anderson still longs to ‘taste me mum’s jam sarnies and to see our Aunty Flo’. I’m guessing he travelled up on British Rail as Preston platform is name-checked on the cynical Cheap Day Return also from 1971.
songs one and two.
in Massachusetts? What left its mark upon the singer? Was it the place itself or someone the singer met there? Massachusetts doesn’t provide any clues, giving the song a kind of vacant core.
gathering climax in the lead-up to each burst of chorus and then that engaging percussive triplet pulse between each ‘To love somebody…. To love somebody… the way that I love you.’ Although, taken overall, these inevitably lend the recording a lushness (which is, I think, what its detractors dislike), each touch is applied with such precision and expertise that without them the song would simply be lacking not just in sonic richness but emotional impact.
unfolds.
Flower Machine Records, FMRCD1004
The arrangements are John Cameron’s, fresh from his revitalisation of Donovan’s career via Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow. ‘Emily Small’ shares many of the same musicians – Danny Thompson on bass, Harold McNair on flute, Tony Carr on drums for some tracks – but the arrangements never quite fly as freely as they do for Donovan.
The Majority (1965-69) were an accomplished band especially in their later Majority One incarnation (1969-71) as 2005’s Rainbow Rockin’ Chair comp shows in abundance.
This achingly idyllic track from Sing, John Bromley’s 1968 Polydor album, is consummately gentle folk-pop with wispy female backing vocals courtesy of Yvonne ‘Sue’ and Heather ‘Sunny’ Wheatman.
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