Most people are somewhat familiar with Family Feud, a popular TV game show in which families compete against each other to guess the most popular answers to surveyed questions. It could be in response to something as innocuous as naming something you can buy for under a dollar or something a man might do when his wife isn’t at home. The list of answers is generally representative of a good cross section of the population. In other words, it doesn’t pay to be smart at this game – just pretty darn average.
So, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture this scenario: The affable game show host (maybe Richard Dawson or Steve Harvey, depending on your generation), calls up one person from each family to face off at the podium, and says to them: “Name an English musical group from the ’60s.” Each of the contestants’ hands slaps their buzzer, and the winner yells out, “the Beatles!” or maybe “the Rolling Stones!”
Easy enough – but now you can hear the gears grinding, as one of the teams tries to complete the afore-surveyed list. So, maybe they mention “the Who” or “the Kinks,” but sooner or later, crazy ol’ Uncle Charlie (every family has one) pipes up with “the Beach Boys!” which earns him the annoying wrong! noise and the big red [X]. Now it turns into guesswork: “Led Zeppelin?” (very popular in the ’70s, but yes, got their start in the late ’60s); “Pink Floyd?” (another winner here); “How about… Guns N’ Roses?” Wrong again! [X][X]. And so on. Like I said: use your imagination.
The point is this, one band that no one is likely to mention is the Pretty Things, who were right there at the beginning of the British Invasion but just never made it particularly big – not on this side of the pond anyway. And with frontman Phil May passing earlier this year from complications during surgery, it’s probably a good time to mark his contributions, and that of his bandmates, during the classic era of rock ‘n’ roll.
THE ROLLING STONES/ENGLISH R&B CONNECTION: The Stones are remembered for their love of old rock and blues standards before they became the main outlet for their built-in song writing team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But let’s not forget the parallel recordings of the Pretty Things, whose self-titled first album contained a number of Bo Diddley workouts, and other American blues and rock gems. One might even argue they were a tougher edged, more garage-y version of the Rolling Stones. Phil May also supposedly had the longest hair in the burgeoning English rock scene, right at the time when that sort of thing really mattered. To top it off, Pretties guitarist Dick Taylor actually played in a very early version of the Rolling Stones with Mick and Keef and Brian Jones, before moving on to form the band with lead vocalist May for which both of them are best remembered.
PSYCHEDELIA AND JUST WHO WROTE THE FIRST ROCK OPERA? Oddly enough, it wasn’t Pete Townshend. The Who’s Tommy was completed after the Pretty Things’ own S.F. Sorrow, which got little promotion from their record company and didn’t even get released Stateside until after Tommy. It’s the depressing life story of the fictional protagonist Sorrow – but no less depressing than a deaf, dumb and blind kid that plays pinball. Maybe their increasingly trippy music was just too far out to pass as a rock opera back in the Woodstock era.
THE BEATLES, ETC., ETC.: It always comes back to the Fabs, right? Well, after three albums on Fontana, the Pretty Things were signed to EMI. They recorded at EMI/Abbey Road Studios at roughly the same time the Beatles were working on the White Album and Pink Floyd was also at Abbey Road working on A Saucerful of Secrets. So, they were at least that good.
And for those who duly deputize Badfinger as the inheritors of the Beatles’ pop hooks and rock ’n’ roll chops, give a spin to early ’70s Pretty Things efforts like Parachute or the underrated Freeway Madness, which occupy similar musical territory to the self-titled Badfinger album (on Warner Bros.) or Wish You Were Here.
GLAM ROCK?: The Beatles signed Badfinger to Apple; Led Zeppelin signed the Pretty Things to Swan Song, where they released Silk Torpedo and Savage Eye in 1974 and 1976 respectively. And though these actually did hit the lower end of the U.S. album charts, somehow their increasing tendency towards hard rock were interpreted as “glam rock” to many. Perhaps it was because David Bowie, very much the glam standard bearer of the era, recorded two of their early singles on Pinups, his cover album. Or maybe more to the point, it was just as easy to place them in the glam-rock category like Mott the Hoople, another bunch of rockers often thought as a glam band due to their association with Bowie.
AND … THE ELECTRIC BANANA: And finally, there’s actually the Pretty Things masquerading as Electric Banana, writing and recording music for use on soundtracks by the De Wolfe music library. It was a side project that paid the bills for a while in the late ’60s. Interestingly, the Banana sounded much like the Pretty Things, so one can speculate about the greater success they might have had if these songs had been held over for an actual Pretty Things album.
Though Phil May, Dick Taylor, and their various associates continued to record sporadically well into the 21st century, they never did embed themselves in the public memory as well as some of their counterparts. Give them a listen if you get a chance; there’s always lots to find in the ol’ rock ‘n’ roll quarry.
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