You pretty thing - let me buy you a wedding ring

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

02/05/65 : The Pretty Things - The Pretty Things


This was actually supposed to be our sixth visit with Cliff Richard, but I was completely unable to find it - and I promise I did actually look for it, but there are a LOT of Cliff albums out there and this one didn't help matters by being eponymous which always makes things trickier. So instead we get this - I've heard of them, but I've no idea what to expect.

Hmmm. Listened to with the benefit of hindsight, it's pretty standard rock and roll - but I can imagine it sounded quite out there at the time. It's definitely not the "nice boy" sound that most people were peddling - The Stones are the closest thing we've got, but this pushes things further than they were doing at the time and paves the way for what a lot of people did in the late 60s and 70s. I didn't love it, but it was an interesting listen to fill a gap in my musical knowledge.

We're at #13 in the charts this week on their seventh week of a ten week run with it peaking at #6 in its fourth week, which feels a lot longer than I would have expected. The top five this week were The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, TSOM and Bob Dylan - it's weird how the first half of the year feels a lot more representative of the time than the second half. And you'll never guess who had a new entry this week - yes, it was one Mr Bob Dylan (#16).

Wikipedia tells us it's their debut album - they released thirteen albums over a 55 year period, but only this and 1970's Parachute charted. Four of the tracks are Bo Diddley numbers, including "Pretty Thing" from which they chose their name. Apparently the band were somewhat of a handful back in the day and the first producer quit the recording session after thirty minutes - their entry goes into a lot more detail about their antics and it's quite amusing. Apparently their behaviour whilst touring New Zealand was so bad that it was discussed in Parliament and they didn't go back until 2012 - apparently part of it was that Viv Prince, the drummer "paraded around in a leopard-skin pillbox hat, carrying around a dead crayfish on a string". 

His entry is well worth a read because he was the first British musician had up in court for drugs, he inspired Keith Moon, he missed his flight home from New Zealand and then got thrown out of the band altogether. In later life he campaigned for The Monster Raving Loony Party, got thrown out of the Hells Angels for bad behaviour and survived a house fire - and he's still with us at the grand old age of 83. The band's entry is well worth a read too because there's all sorts in there including that Dick Taylor was one of the founding members of The Rolling Stones and David Bowie was a big fan and recorded two of their tracks on Pin Ups.

"Customers also listened to" The Outsiders, The Sorrows, The Birds and The 13th Floor Elevators - and The Birds are not The Byrds, so I've never heard of any of this lot. And whilst I'd heard of The Pretty Things before, I knew nothing about them so I enjoyed this musical education (if not particularly the music) and feel they were pretty influential in certain circles (if not particularly circles I like).

25/04/65 - A fun enough trip
09/05/65 - Him again?!?

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