Richard Morton Jack’s new book Pressing News: British Music As It Happened 1962-1972, as detailed in my previous post, is built around reproductions of more than a hundred press releases for British rock artists between the early 1960s and early 1970s. Usually the releases are tied to specific records, from the most famous (Sgt. Pepper) to some by very obscure acts (Fresh Maggots, Jerusalem, and the Pete Best Four, to name just a few examples). These are accompanied by quite a few reprints of reviews, and sometimes full stories, that appeared about these records and acts at the time, not years later, when critical views about the performers and their importance often shifted. There are also reproductions of some ads from the period, and each entry has a substantial paragraph from the author explaining the context of the material and the performers’ career at the time.

I described a few of the entries in my previous post. This month I took the opportunity to ask the author about how the book was assembled, and what the press releases can tell us about British rock of the period. The book can be ordered through https://lansdownebooks.com.

I think they’re interesting and worthwhile and deserve to be proliferated. Having collected a large number, it seemed obvious to me to share them in book form. Not all of them contain revelations, but a lot of hard information about often obscure artists or much-loved classics can be gleaned from them, and – if you read between the lines – they contain fascinating insights into the way music was marketed in that period. They’re period pieces, for sure, and often use language that is quaint or even absurd to modern sensibilities, but I think that makes them of sociological as well as musical interest.

Music press releases aren’t the easiest things to collect, since I would guess almost all of them are quickly discarded after they’re received. A few journalists and the like saved some, and some collectors have been lucky enough to find them in the original LPs. But how did you go about accumulating such a large collection of them, and what were the biggest challenges in doing so?

You’re right – by definition, press releases are scarcer than the records they relate to, and most were instantly tossed. In fact, I’m unaware of any record company that maintained an archive of them. I discussed this with Chris Blackwell, and he expressed regret at Island’s cavalier (in hindsight) attitude towards its marketing materials, which were frequently gathered and thrown away. I acquired mine piecemeal, often on eBay, but also through generous-spirited fellow collectors who know I value them. I also had the good fortune to acquire a large number from the estate of the music journalist historian Fred Dellar. The biggest challenge in collecting press releases, and all promo materials, is the fact that no one knows what existed in the first place until it happens to pop up. There are no catalogues or lists, or specialist dealers in such things. It makes it a fun but frustrating area.

What were the biggest surprises you found in the press releases, both in terms of their general approach during this decade, and specific examples of things you didn’t know or that you found surprising were being promoted?

It’s constantly striking that in many cases the people writing them had no idea how the record in question was going to fare – there’s a freshness to reading about artists that are now regarded as ‘legendary’ when they were just embarking on their careers. I mean, when Decca released Tintern Abbey’s sole 45 in November 1967, they didn’t have a clue whether it would be another “Whiter Shade Of Pale,” which had shot to number one from nowhere that May. The major labels followed the same formula in many of their press releases, with a short descriptive page followed by a questionnaire. Some of the questions and answers are ludicrous in one sense – who needs to know that Ringo Starr disliked Donald Duck? –  yet it’s important to remember that these press releases were serving a wide range of publications, many of which catered for children, so they had to cover different bases. It’s also intriguing to see how many major stars were already hard at work well before they found success: Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and so on. In their cases clearly it was just a matter of time.

Although press releases are the core of the book, a lot of space is also given to reprints of articles about the acts spotlighted in them, as well as vintage advertisements and reviews. You’ve used excerpts of many reviews in your huge and comprehensive reference guides to UK and North American records of the 1960s and early 1970s, but these reprint the reviews in their entirety. What’s the value of reading these vintage reviews?

Record reviews were typically written by people who had – I assume – only just glanced over the relevant press releases, so marrying up the two seemed logical. I wanted to demonstrate how the press releases might have influenced what was written – or not. It’s important to remember that record reviews were almost always written at great speed, without serious engagement with what the artist was trying to convey. One prominent music journalist of that period told me that, on the publication he worked for, LPs with voluminous notes on the back cover were the most sought-after for review, because you didn’t have to listen to the music in order to bash out some copy. So, in short, I wouldn’t say that all old reviews necessarily contain worthwhile insights, but if interpreted in the right spirit they offer another fascinating window into the way pop was marketed and promoted. As the book’s subtitle indicates, I wanted to put the reader in the moment as far as possible. Towards the end of the decade, of course, reviewing albums became a more serious affair, and certain critics, such as Mark Williams of International Times, wrote with considerable intelligence and insight.

Records now esteemed as classics were sometimes dismissed or ignored when they came out, and some very popular ones are now disdained or seldom discussed. What are some of the most striking examples of how differently a record/act is perceived now than then?

I agree, many of the most popular groups of the 1960s are barely listened to today. I wonder how many people can identify more than a handful of songs by Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, the Love Affair and so on, yet the music press was jammed with coverage of them in those days. Conversely, artists that barely made a ripple in those days are now widely admired, even if their audience remains small: COB, Fuchsia, Nick Drake and so on. Time Of The Last Persecution by Bill Fay, a deeply personal and heartfelt record set to adventurous rock arrangements, was scorned by critics upon release, yet resonates powerfully with many people down the decades. Conversely, an awful (to my ears) album called Ark II by Flaming Youth was garlanded with praise upon release and has no critical standing today, and the well-known journalist Charles Shaar Murray championed a dreadful (to my ears) group called Gnidrolog. Inevitably, tastes change over time and cream can be slow to rise.

Sometimes received wisdom about an act – not just their musical quality, but basic facts about their career – are called into question or disproved by artifacts like press releases and reviews. As Nick Drake’s biographer, you found this when you uncovered numerous complimentary reviews demonstrating he wasn’t ignored or dismissed in his lifetime, as some other historians have conveniently claimed. The same holds true for the Velvet Underground, and there are other instances. Is this something you often discover, and are there a few particularly interesting examples you’d like to cite, whether Drake or others?

I am constantly uncovering intriguing information from vintage sources that disprove received wisdom. We’re talking about an era in which there were numerous weekly newspapers devoted to current popular music, as well as various monthly magazines, yet depressingly few writers and researchers use them. It always surprises me how many famous albums’ release dates are constantly cited inaccurately. Only yesterday I was ridiculed online by [a writer] for pointing out that he had the release date of Neil Young’s debut album wrong by three months. Upon request, the sources he cited were its Wikipedia and Allmusic pages. So I hope the book will help to correct a few dating errors, at least.

Some artists who are typically portrayed as unfathomably overlooked did, in fact, receive a good deal of coverage. Vashti Bunyan springs to mind – her album was widely and warmly reviewed at its time of release, and she received feature coverage in both the music and the national press (not that it influenced the record-buying public!). As anyone who has ever worked in the record business will tell you, trying to break a record by an artist with no live / public visibility is a fool’s errand, and that often explains why such acts failed to connect, rather than their going unmentioned in the press.

On a related note, very few albums received absolutely no coverage at all. One example – as far as I am aware – is Beginnings by Ambrose Slade, which came out on Philips’s Fontana imprint in May 1969. Of course, what’s especially interesting about that is that they went on to [as Slade] become one of the biggest British groups of the 1970s.

As one of the leading collectors of the UK music press at the time, you know how important it is to preserve and research issues of the weeklies and monthlies that had vital information. Even some of the weeklies with big circulations, like Record Mirror and Disc, often aren’t easy to find, even in libraries with big collections of vintage papers. The value of their reviews/interviews/stories is obvious, but of the four most popular ones (NME, Melody Maker, Record Mirror, and Disc), do you find notable differences in their quality and approach, having read more of them than virtually anyone?

In the period covered by Pressing News, the simple answer is that Melody Maker wasn’t predominantly chart-focused. The others, whilst covering of a wide variety of artists, were fundamentally geared towards those who were having hits. (This shifted in the 1970s, to some extent.) As such, Melody Maker tends to contain the most detailed, thorough and wide-ranging coverage, but all of them are valid and contain interesting and thoughtful journalism – as do Combo, Music Echo, Top Pops, Music Now, Record Retailer, Music Business Weekly and so on.  

A significant attribute of Pressing News’s sections for reviews and stories is that you also reprint material from much more obscure music publications that are very hard to find vintage issues of now. There’s Beat Instrumental, which paid more serious attention to musicianship than other publications, and ZigZag, which was the first widely distributed underground-oriented UK music magazine of note. But there are also ones that are yet far more obscure, like Music Now and Top Pops, as well as some business-oriented publications that few have paid attention to. What are the biggest challenges in finding those back issues, and what are some particular values some of the more obscure papers provide?

The biggest challenge in collecting the more obscure music publications is obvious: far fewer copies were printed and sold, so far fewer survive. It is virtually impossible to assemble complete runs of some of them, and the British Library’s collection is far from complete. There are gaps in my collection that I may never fill, and in one or two cases I wonder if the missing issues even exist anywhere. Certainly no person or institution I’m aware of has them. In terms of their content, as a rule of thumb, the more obscure a paper is, the less likelihood it had of bagging interviews with major stars, so papers such as Music Now often feature acts that received scant attention elsewhere. The same applies to photographs and adverts.

Pressing News also spotlights music coverage from general interest papers, rather than music or even entertainment ones. There are stories from the newspapers of cities around the UK, some of them sizable cities, some of them quite modest in circulation. For instance, there’s even a review of the Beatles’ first single, “Love Me Do,” in the Newtown & Earlestown Guardian. You’ve unearthed many such items, which is a source of great satisfaction to researchers unaware of such material. Yet there must also be frustration knowing there must be many more such items in publications that are difficult to find in any form, and extremely time consuming to peruse for the rock-oriented coverage that happened to pop up. What are the biggest rewards and challenges of trying to find such material? 

The joy of looking through such papers is not knowing what may lurk over the page. It’s time-consuming, but always a thrill to discover an unfamiliar review or article relating to an artist I consider worthwhile. In recent weeks I have found pieces that include a photograph of Syd Barrett performing a solo show in 1970, and of Jimmy Page performing with a group under a pseudonym in late 1963, neither of which have ever been circulated, to the best of my knowledge. In writing my Nick Drake book, I attempted to pin down every piece of press that he received during his lifetime, but I am aware that there must be more. Received wisdom had it that he only ever gave one interview, but I came across another, and am wide open to the possibility that others might exist. 

Records were sent out widely for review, and I have been told that local newspapers often wielded more influence over young record buyers than the music press, hence their pop writers were carefully cultivated by record companies. However, their writing was often lazy. I was delighted to find a long piece about Egg from the summer of 1969, then realized it was a word-for-word reprint of Decca’s press release for their debut 45. They’re not the only act I had to omit for a lack of supporting material in the music or general press. Bulldog Breed come to mind, too, and there are a few others.

It’s odd that a Move album was reported to be on the way in late 1966, yet didn’t appear until early 1968. Odder to me is a report on April 24, 1967 that their manager announced tapes had been stolen from their agent’s car in Denmark Street, a factor in delaying an album release for quite some time. Do you think this might have been planted? 

In short, the answer is yes – their manager, Tony Secunda, was a great believer in publicity at any cost (and the cost ended up being pretty high when the Prime Minister sued them), so he fed a steady diet of bullshit to anyone willing to consume it. I’m sure they’d have been successful without his gimmicks, but either way, the saga of the Move’s first album / early recording career is long and vexed, and it’s a shame they didn’t have an album out in late 1966.

For the Who’s My Generation album, there are a couple press reprints of great value, from papers that aren’t easy to access. In the July 1965 Beat Instrumental, there’s an advance report of sorts on what was initially supposed to be the Who’s first LP, describing eight tracks (although the story refers to an acetate with nine, only eight are detailed). All but one of the songs were covers, and they, quite unusually considering there must have been pressure to get an album out quickly to capitalize on their first two hit singles, decided to pretty much start the album over, only keeping four of the eight tracks for the final My Generation LP. Then in the December 4, 1965 Record Mirror, Pete Townshend gave a detailed track-by-track rundown of the album, and a very forthright one, heavily criticizing some songs and insinuating some criticism of Roger Daltrey and producer Shel Talmy. I’m devoting a full future blogpost to these items, but would you agree it was both very unusual to have such an advance report of an album in the making in 1965, and very unusual to have such a track-by-track rundown from the main songwriter/leader, though such rundowns would become more common in future years?

Yes, I would agree. From the start Townshend was unusually outspoken and forthright, both to the press and as regards what he wanted the group’s recordings to consist of. It’s intriguing that the scrapped first version of My Generation got so far as to be reported in detail. Asking artists to comment on each track on an album wasn’t unheard of, though – off the top of my head, I can recall the Beatles, Scott Walker, Roy Wood and others doing so too. But to insult your own work in such plain terms is clearly peculiar, and typical of Townsend’s self-critical candour.

Getting back to press releases, one of the relative surprises of Pressing News is that many obscure acts who sold very few records were granted substantial press releases: Vashti Bunyan, Jackson C. Frank, the Virgin Sleep, Blossom Toes, Cressida, the Human Beast, Fresh Maggots, and Mellow Candle, among many others. Was it just considered pro forma by labels and publicists to churn out press releases regardless of commercial prospects, or sometimes indicative that they were considered to have had greater prospects than many realized? Or kind of a combination of those approaches?

Review copies of virtually every new record were accompanied by some form of publicity material, not least because record companies had precious little idea what would or would not connect and had to cover each base. Black Sabbath were treated with near contempt by Philips in the run-up to their first album’s release. (Almost unbelievably, none of the members had heard the finished LP or seen the cover before it was in the shops. Luckily, they were delighted with both.) Review copies of that album simply came with the usual bland Vertigo single typed sheet, yet it became a huge success right away. So I don’t think any record’s success can be attributed to whatever the publicity department said or did, though in some cases they made journalists’ lives easier by including obvious material to parrot. The Beatles’ “Love Me Do” press release even included a readymade review by Tony Barrow for reprinting! As time went on, more elaborate promotional materials started to be generated, often indicating a level of excitement about an act. For example, the first Yes album was promoted with a bespoke promo folder containing info on headed paper, photos and a poster. That said, such things were often funded by management or other interested parties, rather than the record company.

As many press releases as there are in Pressing News, obviously many more exist that could have been considered, particularly for big acts like the Beatles and Rolling Stones (for whom not every album is represented), but also for more obscure acts who aren’t represented at all. Were there criteria you applied in how you had to be selective, and any you regretted omitting?

One criterion was my own taste, hence the absence of disposable pop, mainstream ballad singers, novelty acts and so on. Another limitation was my memory: I recently found the press release for Reality by Second Hand inside the cover of my copy when I played it. I would have included it in the book if I’d remembered I had it. The same goes for But That Is Meby Mandy More. Another is the fact that I simply don’t have certain press releases – for example, I have the ones for Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left and Pink Moon, but have never seen one for Bryter Layter. It seems unlikely that Island didn’t generate one, so I’ll just have to wait until a copy surfaces. The same goes for The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and various others. Finally, I didn’t want to include too many by one artist, so I had to be selective about what to include relating to, say, the Beatles, the Stones and David Bowie.

Would you consider publishing another volume or volumes?

Yes, albeit with a certain hesitancy, because it was a fiendish book to lay out. Pressing News only covers Britain, and I have many American press releases that I would like to put into book form one day. Off the top my head, it would include rare and unseen material relating to Love, Captain Beefheart, Silver Apples, Big Star, the Monks, Fifty Foot Hose, Karen Dalton, Jefferson Airplane, Leonard Cohen, the Stooges and many others. To a lesser extent, I have press releases relating to artists from non-English speaking countries (Can, Culpeper’s Orchard, Pan, Oriental Sunshine etc), but those would obviously be more problematic to make into a book with any semblance of commercial viability!

Do you find notable differences between how US and UK acts were promoted, in press releases specifically, but also in how they gained press coverage?

American press releases weren’t much different to British ones – a mixture of hyperbole, quaint idioms and information of varying degrees of usefulness. The big difference between the territories is that, despite being a much larger market, America had a bafflingly limited music press compared to Britain (trade magazines aside). There were a few great publications – Hit Parader springs to mind – but no weekly music press until Go started publication in April 1966 (but that was a flimsy publication distributed via radio stations). Most pop coverage was in magazines aimed at youngsters, such as Flip and Sixteen, which – whilst occasionally pretty cool – tended to be flippant and superficial. A few regional papers appeared circa 1966, like New England Teen Scene and Mojo Navigator, and magazines like TeenSet, Hullabalooand Crawdaddy! took up some slack, but it wasn’t really until the end of the 60s that America had a really solid national music press, with Rolling Stone, Fusion, Circus, Changes, Rock and others appearing regularly. There were useful articles about interesting musicians in the national press, but these were often syndicated and consisted of rehashed press releases rather than original material. So, in general, serious American pop fans weren’t as well served by the press as British ones. As a sidenote, of course the American record industry was so enormous that no weekly consumer publication could have compassed it all.

Pressing News hasn’t been out for long, but has it resulted in any readers contacting you with copies of press releases you haven’t seen, and if so, have any been of special interest?

Alas, not! But press releases are very rare, and I didn’t publish the book in the expectation that it would result in a flurry of them resurfacing. But there are many wonderful records whose press releases I have yet to see, and I would be delighted if anyone were to share items of interest… For me, locating such things is all about sharing, not hoarding.

Pressing News can be ordered through https://lansdownebooks.com.

Richard Morton Jack’s new book Pressing News: British Music As It Happened 1962-1972 is the kind of book whose interest is pretty limited to intense historians/collectors/fanatics, and that you use for reference rather than reading all at once, or even in its entirety. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable, of course, built around reproductions of more than a hundred press releases for British rock artists between the early 1960s and early 1970s. Usually the releases are tied to specific records, from the most famous (Sgt. Pepper) to some by very obscure acts (Fresh Maggots, Jerusalem, and the Pete Best Four, to name just a few examples). These are accompanied by quite a few reprints of reviews, and sometimes full stories, that appeared about these records and acts at the time, not years later, when critical views about the performers and their importance often shifted. There are also reproductions of some ads from the period, and each entry has a substantial paragraph from the author explaining the context of the material and the performers’ career at the time.

A little disappointingly—and this has nothing to do with the talent of the author and the usual fine design he brings to his specialized books—the releases themselves (and the reviews) are often bland and basic, if reflective of how the industry promoted rock at the time. There aren’t a ton of genuine surprises, though it’s a great service to have reviews from UK music papers reprinted, as (except for Melody Maker, and to extent NME) accessing the ones from British weeklies is difficult, even for the major Disc and Record Mirror publications.

Morton Jack also dug up quite a few items from general interest/regional newspapers and magazines that have seldom been seen since their publications, going back to a few (such as a review in the Newtown & Earlestown Guardian) for the book’s first entry, on the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” single. Almost all of the reviews and stories, incidentally, are sourced from UK publications, though a very few from the US are present. While it’s unlikely every reader wants to go through the clippings and releases for all of the selections depending on their taste (especially the more esoteric ones from the late 1960s and early 1970s), there’s something for every fan of British rock of the period here, from the superstars to worthy cult acts like Blossom Toes.

There are some surprising nuggets here and there for British rock obsessives. I’m detailing some of the ones of most interest to me in particular in this post. I interviewed the author in my next post:

** The Yardbirds are justly hailed for pioneering blues-rock and psychedelic guitar work, often with volume, especially with the guitar, that was loud for the time. Yet in a press release for their first single (“A Certain Girl”/ “I Wish You Would,” May 1964), lead singer Keith Relf revealed, “Actually, up until last year I was a real purist, wouldn’t have anything to do with electricity.”

** The Zombies were most highly esteemed for their wealth of fine original material, usually written by either keyboardist Rod Argent or bassist Chris White, though singer Colin Blunstone wrote a bit. They are not highly regarded for their occasional R&B/soul covers, though they did a few good ones, some of which (like “The Look of Love”) were only done for the BBC rather than for their official releases. 

So it’s a little surprising, in a press release for their first LP (UK version), to see road manager Terry Arnold cite a cover as the most interesting song. “Probably the most interesting track is ‘Sticks and Stones’—it’s a slowed-down version of the oldie that Ray Charles made famous,” he states. “The boys give it a really earthy feel.”

** Vashti isn’t a name known to the average rock fan, but she’s pretty well known to the kind of people who read these blogs, if mostly for her cult 1970 folk album. Five years earlier, she had a brief career as a more Marianne Faithfull-like folk-pop singer, including the single “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind,” written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and produced by Rolling Stones producer/manager Andrew Oldham. According to a press release for that 1970 LP (which misspells the title as “Somethings Just Stick in Your Mind”), “Although the disc sold as many as were pressed, for some unknown reason, Decca stopped production.”

It seems it would be highly unusual for a record label to stop pressing a single that had sold out. Could this not have been accurate—misstatements and outright untruths, as shocking as it sounds, not being unknown in press releases then and until the present? This is supported by Vashti Bunyan’s memoir Wayward, in which she writes, “the single went nowhere,” and doesn’t refer to it selling as many as were pressed and production getting stopped. Maybe, say, only fifty were pressed and they all sold, but that seems highly unlikely.

** Welsh singer-songwriter Mike Stevens is another name not known to the average rock fan. Like Vashti, however, he’s pretty well known to the kind of people who read these blogs, but under a different name: Meic Stevens. But he was billed as Mike Stevens when his first single came out in 1965. All very footnotish, but in the “Lifelines” section of a press release for that June 1965 single, Robert Johnson is listed as one of his favorite singers. Johnson is today extremely famous, but in 1965 he was known only to a pretty small cult of folk/blues enthusiasts. It wouldn’t surprise me if Stevens was the first to list him on a “Lifelines” or similar list.

It also might seem unusual Stevens even found any Johnson records in the UK, though the first Johnson LP compilation had come out in 1961. But was it as unusual as we might think? Eric Clapton made his debut as a lead singer on a cover of Johnson’s “Ramblin’ On My Mind” on the famous 1966 Blues Breakers: John Mayall with Eric Clapton album. I’m guessing that’s the first Johnson cover by a rock act (though the Bluesbreakers might have preferred to think of themselves as a blues band), predating Cream’s cover of “Four Until Late” on their first album in late 1966.

So Clapton found something by Robert Johnson in the UK, but was it as rare for young British musicians to find obscure (or at least then-obscure) American blues as we might think? Some such LPs were available at specialty shops like Dobell’s on Charing Cross Road in London. It’s been reported that Syd Barrett named Pink Floyd after coming across the names of Pink Anderson and Floyd Council in the liner notes to Blind Boy Fuller’s Country Blues 1935-1940 LP. It’s unclear how much he and the other members actually heard Anderson and Council, if they heard anything by them at all, or if or how much they heard Fuller for that matter. 

** It’s well known, among serious Who fans at any rate, that they finished or almost finished a debut LP dominated by R&B/soul covers before abandoning it and making a better one dominated by Pete Townshend originals. It’s not so well known, though this was likely the source for historical writing on the issue, that Beat Instrumental had a comprehensive July 1965 story on the first version, which they reported “has been completed.” Producer Shel Talmy played reporter John Emery an acetate with nine tracks, and Emery—with unusually acute observation by the standards of the mid-‘60s pop press—was hit “slap in the face just looking at the titles [by] the lack of originality in choice of material.” Eight of the nine tracks were cover versions, and although some were used on the My Generation LP and all the others named in the piece have come out on archival releases, this would indeed have made for an underachieving core of a debut Who longplayer.

To list the precise tracks cited: James Brown’s “I Don’t Mind” and “Please Please Please” (both of which did make the My Generation LP), Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” (which also made the LP, although only the UK version), Martha & the Vandellas’ “Heat Wave” (re-recorded for the Who’s second LP, although only the UK version), “Motoring” (the flipside of Martha & the Vandellas’ hit “Nowhere to Run”), “Leaving Here” (first done on Motown by Eddie Holland), “Lubie” (the most obscure item, first done by Paul Revere & the Raiders), and  “You’re Going to Know Me,” the sole Pete Townshend original. The description (“is opened with guitar strumming and bursts into an uptempo raver. There is some feedback used here”), makes it obvious this was an early title for “Out in the Street,” which did lead off the My Generation LP.

If you’ve noticed the math doesn’t add up, you’re right. That’s seven cover versions and one original, though the acetate had nine tracks. The identity of the ninth one is unknown. Whatever the case, the Who were certainly right to redo the album for the most part. The Who did some good R&B/rock covers in 1965 (especially the B-sides “Daddy Rolling Stone” and “Shout and Shimmy”), but that wasn’t their forte, and the outtake covers aren’t that hot. They’re rather dull, actually, which isn’t something you’d say about anything on the final My Generation LP.

** Speaking of My Generation, Marc Bolan—then barely known, and barely recorded—had this strange comment on the album in the February 19, 1966 issue of London Life: “The song ‘My Generation’ really swings but for me this is a bad LP. Nevertheless, for the track ‘My Generation’—the LP is very much worth buying.” It would have been quite an investment for the average young British rock’n’roll fan to buy an album for just one track—one that would still have been easily available as a much cheaper hit 45.

** In a Record Mirror interview published on August 13, 1966, just after Cream formed, Eric Clapton was asked what he thought of the Yardbirds’ new self-titled album (since often called Roger the Engineer). He was most uncharitable about the band he’d left in early 1965, to be replaced by Jeff Beck. “I just don’t want to know, he said after what the paper reported as “a short snort.” “One of those numbers I gave to them two years ago and arranged it and everything.” It would be interesting to know which one that was—maybe “Lost Woman,” basically a rewrite of Snooky Pryor’s “Someone to Love Me,” which the Yardbirds did play with Clapton, as it’s on an archival release of a July 1964 concert.

Sadly, Clapton wasn’t done dumping on his old band and others. In the same feature, he went on to carp about the Yardbirds, “They do this thing about Keith Relf collapsing five minutes before they go on stage, then they pull the whole band out. Everyone’s waiting for the big split”—which wouldn’t happen for a couple years, but after a couple major lineup changes. Asked to rate fellow guitarists, he had good if brief words for Jeff Beck and Peter Green, but added, “If I was sure that everything George Harrison played was his own ideas, I’d say he was good, but I’ve got this feeling it’s Paul McCartney telling him what to do.” That was considered colorful enough to be rephrased for the article’s headline, though if George read the piece, he apparently didn’t hold grudges, he and Clapton famously becoming close friends within a couple of years.

Finally, Clapton stated “there are only about four groups in the country who are developing their own directions—the Beatles and the Kinks, and the Small Faces and the Who I suppose.” The Yardbirds were conspicuous by their absence.

** John’s Children are a group known more for their overhype than their music, though actually some of their records were pretty good. They never did make it over to the US, though there was more than one report of them coming over to capitalize on the success of their “Smashed Blocked” single in some Californian markets. One such report is in a February 1967 press release, which claims “there’s the chance of an American tour in March.” An easy claim to back out of when the chance didn’t come through, but it goes on to read, “and a Monkees-style TV programme for them while they’re over there.” Who knows if there was anything to that or just a flight of fancy to gain them attention, but there’s barely even any surviving film footage of the group, let alone a full TV program.

** As the Move had their first UK hit single in January 1967 and three big ones in the country that year (though they’d never make it in the US), it’s odd their first LP didn’t appear until more than a year later. This is how Morton Jack summarizes it in his text: “The Move’s debut LP was promised for November 1966, with publicity-hungry manager Tony Secunda bragging: ‘Our aim is to outdo Revolver with new musical innovations.’ The date came and went, but in the spring of 1967 Rave magazine reported ‘The Move’s first album, called Move Mass and due out soon, contains some really weird tracks…There’ll be one called ‘Kilroy Was Here’ and another provisionally titled ‘Roy Wood’s Toytown Band,’ which features the group playing toy instruments.’ On April 24, however, Secunda announced that the tapes had been stolen from their agent’s car in Denmark Street. Work on it stalled thereafter, as they gigged relentlessly, moved from Decca to EMI, lost a libel action brought by the Prime Minister and weathered bassist Ace Kefford’s mental difficulties. Late December was promised, but the LP didn’t appear until March 1968.”

That’s a really long period of gestation, and I have to wonder if the story about the tapes getting stolen—not something that often happened to an act with hits and a high profile—was planted to stall for more time if progress on the LP was laborious. (And what was the agent doing with the tapes anyway, and why would it have been the only copy?) “Kilroy Was Here” was indeed a song, and a good one, that was featured on their debut album, though it’s unclear whether it was re-recorded if tapes were actually stolen. No track titled “Roy Wood’s Toytown Band” appeared on a Move release, and going from the description, that might be a blessing. Incidentally, the album title reported back in spring 1967, Move Mass, wasn’t used, the debut LP bearing the most unimaginative title The Move.

** Speaking of overhype, the Idle Race were a good-but-not great group most known for including Jeff Lynne before he joined the Move, let alone co-founded Electric Light Orchestra. A Liberty Records ad from October 1968 is headlined, “First album from the group second only to the Beatles!” At least John’s Children’s overhype was making some outrageous and dubious claims as to their burgeoning success, and not anything along the lines of “second only to the Who,” though they did support the Who on a rambunctious German tour. The Idle Race did have some elements of the Beatles at their lightest, though they were considerably closer in sound—though again, in a notably lighter fashion—to fellow Birmingham group the Move. And they never did get a hit, let alone challenge the Beatles in sales or innovation, though they have their cult following.

** In the November 23, 1968 issue of Melody Maker, Long John Baldry—a much bigger name in the UK than in the US, where he made virtually no impression in the 1960s—commented on Fleetwood Mac’s new “Albatross” single, and not very positively. “It’s a bit Roy Rogers and Trigger riding into the sunset,” he surmised, before really digging the knife in: “I don’t see the point of this record by any standards—pop, blues or jazz. I don’t see what it’s got to do with anything.” He also predicted “it won’t get into the pop market because it doesn’t mean anything”—most inaccurately, at least for the UK, where it got to #1.

** In the June 7, 1969 issue of the now-forgotten UK magazine Top Pops, a sidebar to a feature on the emerging group King Crimson—who had yet to issue a record—listed four favorite pieces of music by each member. The original King Crimson, and the one album they recorded, are rightfully thought of as cutting-edge hip. Their lists, however, remind us that not everything cited as cool and influential at the time by cool and influential musicians is what we’d expect, or what has been with codified as unhip and uninfluential. Folky material figured surprisingly strongly, Robert Fripp listing Judy Collins’s “First Boy I Loved” (her version, not the original one by the Incredible String Band); Greg Lake listing Collins’s “Michael from Mountains” (her version, not the one by the writer of the song, Joni Mitchell); Michael Giles listing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Old Friends”; and Greg Lake listing Donovan’s “Deed I Do” (Donovan’s “Get Thy Bearings” was covered by King Crimson in concert in 1969, as heard on archival releases).

As far as unhip, Ian MacDonald lists Vanilla Fudge’s “Break Song.” Lake lists the Moody Blues’ “Never Comes the Day,” and although the Moodies aren’t rated as high as King Crimson by many rock historians, there were more similarities between the bands than many are willing to acknowledge. Of course they both used Mellotron heavily at the time, but also Moody Blues producer Tony Clarke worked on King Crimson’s first album before the band took the production reins themselves.

** Syd Barrett’s solo work might not be as highly regarded as the godhead stuff he did as Pink Floyd’s leader on their first album and handful of singles, but it’s generally felt to be at least interesting, and by some to be charmingly whimsical. Not so the Newcastle Sunday Sun, which gave his first album a pretty harsh rundown on January 25, 1970. “Judging by the sleeve of…The Madcap Laughs, Syd sings to a naked lady these days,” it reads. “Either the stool she is perching on is a trifle chilly or she finds Syd’s serenading troublesome.

“Syd’s all right doing his own thing as long as everyone concerned helps him along. They seem to impress on each other how good and groovy it all is really. In the end, they seem to persuade themselves, and reach a point at which they cannot distinguish between junk and genius.”

** Scott Walker briefly reverted to his birth name, Scott Engel, when he went in his most serious singer-songwriting direction on his fourth LP. Although that was his best and most artistic record, it wasn’t a commercial success, and he subsequently become Scott Walker again, never again reaching the heights of his simply titled 4 album. While he was still Scott Engel, however, he gave an interview to the now-forgotten paper Music Now for its December 5, 1970 issue. Here he disclosed a surprising and interesting ambition: “I am interested in Russian music. I have got great sympathy for the people over there. I would like to do a ‘political’ album, for want of a better word. It would be about life there and the lives of the people.” Elsewhere in the story he claimed, “I think I probably have the largest collection of Russian classical music in London.”

That record never did come out, and perhaps would not have been welcome in a Western world unsympathetic to Russia, as it often has been to the present day. Although Walker was noted for crediting non-rock influences like Frank Sinatra, Jacques Brel, and Russian classical music, and incorporating them into his work, in this story he does compliment a couple rock stars, Neil Young and the Band. More surprisingly, he adds that “Johnny Winter is another person I respect. I have played with a lot of good guitarists and I’ve seen a lot too, but he beats so many of them. He plays real shit-kicking music”—though most would fail to hear even an echo of Winter in Walker.

** Trader Horne, the duo of ex-Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble and ex-Them keyboardist Jackie McAuley, lasted for just one 1970 album. Apparently more ambitious plans were afoot, as Dyble said in a June 1970 story in Beat Instrumental they were going to the US in August. They never made it over, as Dyble left in May, around the time the Beat Instrumental story would have appeared.

** The transition of the Move into Electric Light Orchestra remains a puzzling and odd period, as it seems these acts were envisioned as having overlapping careers, although in fact the Move ended only very shortly after Electric Light Orchestra began (and ELO only included the Move’s Roy Wood for a short time). A press release from December 1971 seems to indicate plans were different, Wood “clarifying,” “We can still expect to hear new records from the Move for another three years or so, but live appearances will be rare.” Actually the last Move release, the single “Do Ya,” would come out only half a year later, in June 1972.

Information about Pressing News and how to order a copy is at https://lansdownebooks.com/products/pressing-news.