Category Archives: Songs from 1967

Album: single, 1967

Justification: Being reminded of this song is but one of the benefits of having friends with housemates who own extensive record collections.

Fun fact: this photo is to scale. Allan Clarke is genuinely about eight and a half feet tall.

While hanging at Big Pink – Marrickville’s premier share house – the other night, Mr Garth Tregillgas (him out of 78 Saab, purveyors of quality Canberra-via-Sydney indie popsmanship) had just gotten home from a show at the Annandale and commandeered the house stereo. After a very entertaining 80s hair metal power ballad playlist, which involved quite a lot of Skid Row, he shifted gears into more of a 60s pop mood and this came up on his iPod. And I thought “The Hollies! Jesus, I haven’t listened to them in freakin’ ages – not since my ex-wife went through a brief but spirited Hollies jag after falling in love with ‘The Air That I Breathe’ and most of the rest of the Virgin Suicides soundtrack!” Which is a great soundtrack, by the way. The score by Air, not so much.

(Garth also played ‘Hush’ by Deep Purple, which was referenced only yesterday and put me in mind of the Charlatans. See how this all works? Maybe I shouldn’t give it all up just yet.)

Anyway, the third verse of this is sung by co-writer Graham Nash, before he quit the band and relocated to the US to be the surname after the ampersand with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. The band still exist, technically, although just about everyone has quit at one time or another. I kinda dismissed them as being a third-string British Invasion band when I was first getting into the Who and the Kinks and so on, but then I heard the Posies‘ cover of ‘King Midas In Reverse’ and thought “um, I’m going to need to explore this band a lot more.”

I’m not sure why Nash and Allan Clarke are wearing those jerkins in the above video, though.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: Lush were enjoying the fruits of Britpop with ‘Ladykillers’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

494. The Waitresses: I Know What Boys Like (11 July)

495. Health: Die Slow (12 July)

496. Metric: Monster Hospital (13 July)

497. The Bamboos feat. Megan Washington: King of the Rodeo (16 July)

498. The Charlatans: I Never Want An Easy Life… (17 July)

Album: single, 1967

Justification: Bandwagon jumping wasn’t something confined to the cynical 80 and 90s, you know. The noble art of suddenly deciding that nah, you were always totally a hippie/punk/shoegaze/Britpop/grunge/trance/retro artist has had a long and glorious lineage ever since the Rolling Stones’ 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, changed at the last minute from its proposed titles of Sgt Bleppers Blonely Blarts Blub Bland and No Really We’re Totally Psychedelic, Honest, Far Out Man Groovy. But 60s British band no band did it better than the Small Faces who went from being a hard-as-nails r’n’b band to a fluffy gambolling pop puppies on the spot, particularly via this slight-but-glorious psych confection.

It was part of their run of classic singles (preceded by ‘Here Come The Nice’ and followed by ‘Tin Soldier’ and ‘Lazy Sunday’) and confused the hell out of people during the Britpop years who heard Parklife, bought themselves a Small Faces anthology and discovered that Steve Marriot was a soul-blues belter of the highest order rather than a cockernee cheeky chappy.

Hell of a song, though.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED IN 2010: The Psychedelic Furs’ much-misunderstood song about hot, hot nudity: ‘Pretty in Pink’.

Album: Younger Than Yesterday, 1967

Justification: Well, I’ve got a few reasons for this one. One is that it’s a great song. Second is that it’s a song about making songs, for which we’ve already established I have a fondness. Third is that the Byrds were cited in an article I read a few months ago at avclub.com that got me thinking about why it was that US bands were just not as great as UK bands in the 60s. This was a hell of a single (reportedly inspired by the rise of the Monkees, which made Roger McQuinn and Chris Hillman a mite snarky) made by a band that did a bunch of great singles. Why, then, is there such a gulf between the Byrds and the rest of the US A-list of the 60s (the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, maybe the Band or the Lovin’ Spoonful) and what was happening across the pond?

And it’s not like UK music, as a whole, was better than what was happening in the US. The US had a stranglehold on great solo artists – Elvis was still active for one thing, as were Little Richard and Roy Orbison, and then you also had Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix (though his success was mainly in the UK), Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Pickett and (Little) Stevie Wonder. At that time the UK’s premier solo artists of the day were, what? Cliff Richard, Sandi Shaw and Donovan?

But however good the best US bands were, they were outclassed in every way by the Who, the Kinks, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and, obviously, the Beatles. Was it consistency? Hardly – the ‘Stones albums were patchy as hell, in the main. A permanent, solid line-up? Again, the Stones fail, as do the Kinks. I suspect it comes down to the fact that most of the US bands were, to whatever degree, trying to ape the UK fashions while most of the aforementioned bands were deliberately exploring new terrain. Then again, Creedence don’t fit that definition – which is one of the reasons why the AV Club attempted to make a claim for them as The US Beatles (solid line up, string of hits, distinctive style, recognisable songwriters). For my part, I’d say that the closest thing that the US had to the Beatles was the Eagles – just in terms of sheer ubiquity – but that’s a rant for another time.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Sydney 80s pop music was going strong with Machinations’ ‘No Say In It’.

Album: The Who Sell Out, 1967

Justification: It’s the fucking Who. There’s your justification.

Oh, alright. This, it turns out, was the Who’s biggest US hit (#10) and neatly signposts the heavier future of the band’s music. Just listen to Roger Daltrey’s voice: he’s still the buttoned-down Mod with bluesman aspiration, as opposed to the shirtless Dionysus he was to become post-Tommy. It also marks the point where Pete Townshend’s musical aspirations were to start to really challenge the band: the complex harmonies were damn near impossible to pull of live, let alone the layered guitar overdubs. The band didn’t often play it until after Keith Moon’s death, and even then they simplified it significantly.

It’s also significant in that a review of its parent album supposedly inspired Paul McCartney (who’d not heard it at the time) to try and write a song that would beat ‘I Can See For Miles’ in sheer heaviness, which led to ‘Helter Skelter’. Take note, kids: musical pissing contests lead to great art.

Album: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, 1967

Justification: The history of Pink Floyd can be divided into several distinct eras:

1963-1967: The Increasingly Barking Psychedelic years

1968-1971: The Two Songs Per Album era

1972-1980: The Inexplicably Commercially-Successful Period When All The Floyd Songs You Know Were Released

1981-1984: Roger Waters’ Four-Year Tantrum

1985-present: The Whenever David Gilmour Can Be Arsed Crawling Out From Within His Enormous Pile Of Money years

Syd Barrett was Pink Floyd’s founder, singer, guitarist and main songwriter during the first era. ‘Arnold Layne’ was the band’s debut single and represented the flowering of Syd Barrett’s whimsical genius in 1967; a flower which Barrett was to spend the next few years using as the central prop in an extended game of She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not So How About Another Fistful Of Mandrax, Then? In any case, it was catchy as all get out yet had enough of a trippy organ freak out solo to qualify as psychedelic, which was enough to make EMI ignore the subject matter (a snowdropping crossdresser who gets sent to prison) and hope that The Kids would find it sufficiently Groovy (which they did: it cracked the top 20 in the UK, despite a ban by Radio London for its racy subject matter).

Syd was to get odder and odder as time went on and more hallucinogenics were ingested, although songs like ‘Dark Globe’ and ‘Gigolo Aunt’ proved that his muse still had her moments even as his grip on reality crumbled. By 1968 he’d been replaced by David Gilmour and began his slide into mental illness, leaving music (and, arguably, the real world) altogether by 1972, living as a recluse in Cambridge until his 2006 death. Meanwhile, his old band changed direction, forged their own unique musical path and became global superstars – in the end, this playful track was effectively the Floyd’s charming, childlike false start.