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Home , Brian Pendleton, Dick Taylor, Midnight to Six Man, Peter Stringfellow, Pretty Things, Prodigal Sons

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Midnight to six men: (l-r) , John Stax, Viv Prince, and Phil May.

Words: Claudia Elliott

On the 50th anniversary of the iconic ’s debut , Phil May and Dick Taylor look back on the R&B-fuelled mayhem of the 60s.

cruffier, louder and more offensive the world. In addition to the two founding members, than , the Pretty their current line-up is bolstered by a young rhythm Things were the prodigal sons of section (Jack Greenwood on drums and George Perez the 60s R&B scene. -born on bass), and guitarist Frank Holland, who joined the guitarist Dick Taylor provided the band in the late 80s. missing link between The source of the group can be traced to the same and , a young David Dartford spring as the Rolling Stones. Growing up in Bowie worshipped frontman Phil May as ‘God’, and the 1940s, Dick Taylor’s earliest exposure to music S in Viv Prince they had a drummer who taught Keith was hearing cowboy songs and crooners such as Perry Moon how to loon. The Pretty Things are also regarded Como on the wireless. Spending Christmases with his as “one of the greatest R&B bands of all time” by Van granddad introduced him to the wondrous world of Morrison, a man not generally noted for his fulsome stringed instruments, including the mandolin and the praise of fellow musicians. guitar. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh God, I’m never going They enjoyed a certain notoriety but didn’t bask in the to be able to do this!’ I really wanted to play but this was creative admiration afforded to , nor were they something unattainable.” respected for their purity like . Yet Then came rock’n’roll – and a certain bespectacled they produced some of the most adrenalin-fired singles youth from Lubbock, Texas inspired Dick and his of the 60s, including Rosalyn and Don’t Bring Me Down schoolfriends to buy plastic ukuleles and learn a few in 1964, and Come See Me in 1966, influencing a slew of chords. “It was seeing the cover for the Buddy Holly snotty young garage bands in the US (despite being one album (The Chirping Crickets) and thinking, ‘Wow, look of the bands that didn’t actually invade) at those guitars, I’d really like one of those.’ I didn’t and distantly inspiring the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. know what I was looking at until I figured out the Their reputation for bad behaviour, unlike that of the Gibsons, Fenders and what have you.” Stones, wasn’t contrived by marketing or management, After a short-lived flirtation with trumpet lessons but happened just because they were being themselves. – “I wanted to be Miles Davis” – Taylor formed his first The day The Blues meets Phil May and Dick Taylor, the band with fellow classmates Pretty Things are preparing to play at the wedding of Bill Robert Beckwith and Michael Jagger. “There was so Nighy’s daughter – it turns out the suave actor is a long- much music of all sorts going on – modern , trad, time fan and friend of the band (after our interview, Dick skiffle, rock’n’roll – I loved all of it. I remember seeing lets slip that Strange Fruit’s Ray Simms in Still Crazy is a film about Big Bill Broonzy [Low Light And Blue Smoke, affectionately played as Phil May). It’s a funny thought 1956. Keith Richards also saw it and decided he wanted but, although they have had their ups and downs over to be black]. Mick and I were both into , they are far from a comedy old-farts rock band. – he’d bring into school, the band would practise These days, career options for their contemporaries round my house and gradually learnt how to play Jimmy who didn’t burn out or fade away range from selling out Reed stuff and Chuck Berry.” soulless stadiums to recycling three hits on a nostalgia At 16, Dick went to Art School, where he package tour. The Pretty Things, meanwhile, are met Keith Richards, and the pair would sit in the boys’ celebrating 50 years in the biz with a live LP recorded cloakroom and play their guitars until the head teacher at one of their 1960s strongholds, ’s . came out of his study and shooed them away. They’re still one of the most exciting rock’n’roll outfits “Keith found out that I was in a band with Mick, who rex around and draw followers of all ages and tour around he’d known when he was a kid, but he was too

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of his was being pinned up against an amp the pub over the road wouldn’t were on another ill-matched The earliest known sighting of three Pretty Things: Phil May (left), John Stax (right) and Dick with the Pretty Things roaring away at the Mojo. serve him.” package tour with Sandie Shaw Taylor (front) in 1963, with John’s Singer Le Mans. Quite something, given all his groupies. We fell Dick: “And the reason the and Eden Kane. Was that Viv’s Below: a press clipping from an incident while on out with him. We got up there one night and pub wouldn’t serve him is… fault as well? (Phil and Dick tour in . there was a huge queue of our fans outside. They Phil: “… because he pause to ponder the question. were all moaning because they couldn’t get in smashed it up with The This is beginning to feel like because they had jeans and long hair. How could Kinks the night before.” reading a charge sheet instead you fucking turn our audience away? We look like Dick: “Behind the pub was the of conducting an interview.) them! They had rules, a dress code. So we never hotel they stayed in and caused “No, that was down to all of played there again.” a load of aggro, he had been there, us,” Phil cackles. “The whole Their progress from the art-school R&B so when the barman saw him tour was unruly. The fans were explosion to record contract, TV shows and tours and said ‘you’re barred’, he thought it was because unruly, they set light to some of the seats because was also an amphetamine rush. “It seemed to me he was a scruffy oik. In fact, he was being barred they cut our shows short. They pulled the plug on like 10 days,” remembers Phil. “One night this because of the night before. His logic was, they’re us in the theatre. We had trouble with . drunken Geordie actually fell up the stairs into our serving all the people who are going to see our Our manager ended up with a duodenal ulcer dressing room and said, ‘I’m a talent spotter from gig but they won’t serve him so he’s not going to in hospital in Auckland with the pressure of the Phonogram.’ We thought, ‘Yeah yeah, go and have play for them.” whole thing. Sandie Shaw fired her father, who another drink.’” Phil remembers: “We had to get the drummer was her manager, because we’d got him to play Taylor adds: “A week or so later he did get us into from Hedgehoppers Anonymous in, which is cards and got him drunk. Fontana and we did a demo. The only caveat to like chalk and cheese, just so we didn’t get sued. “It was chaos,” he continues gleefully. getting signed was, ‘You need a different drummer,’ We played half a set just to cover our arses. He “Wonderful, absolute madness. Especially in who turned out to be Viv Prince, so it was all quite was playing in and someone had to Gisborne. The whole tour landed together. Before easy – there was no traipsing round the country.” whizz him over to the Stockport Manor Lounge.” the plane stopped, the fans surrounded the plane Prince, a -born, ex-civil And then there’s the small matter of being and were hanging on the wings upside down, servant and jazz sessioneer, was brought in by ordered to leave New Zealand in 1965, where they looking in this guy’s plane. He started revving management who felt the band needed a steadying, the engine – he wanted to take off again – and professional hand at the helm. To put it mildly, we said, ‘Hang on, there’s people on top!’ They he turned out to be a bad influence on an unruly were running around the plane. We got to some bunch who didn’t need any encouragement in that Viv was theatres and the janitors put a chain across the direction. On the day of John Stax’s wedding in door – ‘We have decent artists, we’re not being 1965, Viv was arrested and spent the night in the sacked after sullied by these reprobates’ – so we had to run cells for knocking a policeman’s helmet off. he set fire to a the show ourselves. They went on strike.” May says: “Viv made look like At one gig, Viv continued drinking while a choirboy. Viv was so much ahead, everything he rotten crayfish drumming, then took off a shoe, poured booze did. I know that Keith used to come and sit at his into it and walked around the stage drinking from feet at the 100 Club and just study him. All sorts on the flight it. He also decided to liven up one of Eden Kane’s of things happened everywhere we went sets by walking across the stage brandishing – controversy, gas guns… home and the a lighted newspaper. There was enough bad “He was a really brilliant drummer, a top session behaviour on the tour to fill a book (Don’t Bring guy. I had a lot of fun with him but in the end we band were all Me Down… Under, by Mike Stax, Andy Neill and couldn’t work with him because he’d start a fight John Baker). Eventually, even the band could take in the first number with the bouncer so we had to arrested. no more of Prince’s antics and, after Viv set fire to get rid of him. One time he went on strike because a rotten crayfish on the flight home, they were all arrested and he was sacked before they touched down in the UK. Hip-shaking, Even when they weren’t setting fire to maraca-wielding Phil May. things, the band frequently got up the noses shy to ask if he could come and rehearse with didn’t want to play bass any more and enrolled The main difference between the Pretty Things of the more traditional showbiz side of the us. One day he met Mick and plucked up the at the Central School of Art, where he met the and the Stones, Phil May explains, was speed music industry, which was still in the main courage, and said, ‘Is it alright if I come along?’ We guy who was to become the Pretty Things’ – both the musical and chemical kind. “It was run by Ernie Jobsworths. had a surplus of guitarists so I started playing my manager, Bryan Morrison. The the same blueprint really. We’ve Back then the experience of going into the grandfather’s drums, a tiny kit from the 1920s, line-up was completed in 1963 by been called thrash R&B because studio, Phil says, was “almost like going to the which I’d inherited. We were playing urban blues, fellow longhairs Brian Pendleton on we tended to speed things up, as Ministry of Defence and trying to make a good Chuck Berry songs and Ritchie Valens’ La Bamba.” , John Stax on bass and opposed to being laid-back, which rock’n’roll record”. They got wind of Alexis Korner’s R&B club their first drummer Pete Kitley, in had quite a bit to do with the drugs The head of A&R at Fontana lasted half an hour in Ealing, went over there mob-handed and had turn replaced by Viv Andrews. we were taking, which was speed.” with them: “He refused to stay in the studio with their minds blown by slide guitarist So how did Mick and Keith Phil found the Ealing Club’s us: he ran upstairs and said, ‘I’m not staying with accompanying Paul Pond (soon to be Manfred react when Taylor told them he esoteric, precious blues scene that scruffy bastard down there.’” Mann’s Paul Jones) and . was leaving the Rollin Stones? rather tiresome: “It was like, ‘Don’t On another occasion, their manager received Impressed by Mick’s turn with Korner, Brian “I dunno, I think they were a bit fuck with the bible.’ [Prissy voice] a phone call from the TV crew of Ready Steady Go!, Jones invited him to form a band, Mick took pissed off, but in those days bands ‘This is how it’s played.’” saying, “We can’t control your mob.” “So Morrie Keith along and Dick was asked to join as bass were a lot more fluid,” says Dick. Their manager was the social had to jump in a taxi because they were gonna player. Meanwhile, Alexis asked the old band “Brian was very complimentary. secretary of the students’ union can us off the show,” Phil remembers. “There were (Dick, Mick and Keith) to make a tape, which ‘You’re the best R&B bass player in and booked the band to play quite a few acts and it was, ‘You’ve got to be on they did under Mick’s choice of name – Little Britain,’ which made me feel good. art-school dances with a set your marks.’ We were like, ‘Oh, fuck off.’ Nobody Boy Blue & The Blue Boys. I think they all knew that I was of raw, raucous R&B covers came out of the dressing room, so that’s when Brian’s band started rehearsing in the really a guitar player because Keith including Road Runner, Big Boss they rang Bryan up. They were just anal about it. Bricklayer’s Arms in , named themselves and I used to swap licks – I’d show Man, Route 66 – and a cheeky We’d get there just before the cameras rolled to the Rollin’ Stones, and Alexis got them their him something and he’d show me things that he version of . They were so loud, piss them off. When they give you earache, you first gig at the Marquee, where Dick also ended knew, so that was my forte. We were friends and Mojo club owner lost don’t really respond. They’re jobsworths.” up filling in for Long John Baldry’s bass player. remained so, there was no animosity. I was just his hearing for several days after a gig. Phil says: Dick recalls another incident, this time at the By this time, he’d met Phil May, decided that he moving on and doing something else.” “I read somewhere that he said the greatest night Commodore Cinema on the :

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“We usually did Hey Mama Keep Your Big Big Boss Men Mouth Shut in our first set, which used to go on for about 10 minutes, and they Phil May and Dick Taylor on their said, ‘Look, if you’re going to play these encounters with some of the long numbers we’re going to pull the legends of rhythm and blues. curtain on you,’ so Phil got the wind up the tail about that. The second half we started off with Hey Mama… and every time we tried to finish it, Phil starts singing it again, and – guess what – the curtain closed.” [Phil cackles.] Everywhere they went, taxi drivers took one look at the band and put the hired sign on, while restaurants ‘closed’ as soon as they walked in, prompting the band to momentarily consider an ‘authentic’ R&B song title of Closed Restaurant Blues. Despite the ‘ugly’ tag, they had their Alexis Korner fair share of screaming girls. Taylor Phil May: “I don’t think he was a particularly great The post-Viv line-up remembers: “You’d go to Newcastle with Skip Alan (far player. He was one of those people where scenes right) on drums. or clubs happened around him, he was like and it was just as mad as ever, it was a magnet, a bit like John Mayall, who attracted like Beatlemania. We’d get into town people and gave them their start. I never had any and there’d be girls running alongside truck with Alexis. I just felt the whole thing was a bit the car. We did a record signing in Whitley Bay, “He was a nice guy but I wasn’t sure if he wasn’t creepy, the religious studying of tempos, getting the I arrived in the van with the roadie and we sat a stalker,” adds Phil. “It made me a bit nervous, but harp solo exactly the same, which seems silly to there and all these girls came up and they stripped then his need for knowledge was genuine, it wasn’t me because the originals did it so well.” our van – they took the mirrors off, the wipers sycophantic: ‘Can I have one of your socks?’ It was off, there’s faces appearing upside down in the more about what thickness of guitar strings you window. Help! It’s quite scary.” had, what amplifiers. A bit anoraky.” But their most hardcore fan, who followed Despite their huge live following, and a debut them everywhere they went, was a young David album, The Pretty Things, that reached number six Bowie. “He was more than a fan. You could see he in the UK charts in 1965, the mid-60s were all was quite special,” Phil recalls. “He had a presence about singles, and those didn’t do so well for the about him. Quite a spooky presence, actually. You band, most of them barely scraping into the Top couldn’t have said, ‘You’ll be a rock star, my son.’ 50, with the exception of Don’t Bring Me Down, He was very shy but when you came off stage, he which was Top 10. was very keen to see what guitar you were playing, The band started writing their own songs when soaking it all up. He was like a man on a mission, it was pointed out to them that they were giving collecting all these bits and pieces for later in life.” away their B-sides, which earned as many royalties Chuck Berry Dick adds: “He worshipped Phil. Phil had to as the flip. There were more self-penned numbers Phil May: “I sang with Chuck Berry in . write his telephone number in David’s book on their second album, 1965’s Get The Picture?, He was a real arsehole, a nasty piece of work. He and realised he had to write it under G for ‘God’.” including You Don’t Believe Me, co-written didn’t even say, ‘Thank you, this is Phil May of the Pretty Things.’ He didn’t acknowledge anyone, he was making the promoter pay 50 quid for another song. He wouldn’t give any stage room to anyone – you saw the behaviour with Keith Richards. Shocking, talk about payback time.” Dick Taylor: “His autobiography is like one big Chuck Berry song. He’s so good with words.”

Jimmy Reed “We had a residency at the Noreik Club all-nighter in Tottenham and we made the guy get as a support. Jimmy told us he was on 30 bucks in New York the night before. We got him a thousand dollars and a bottle of whisky, he’s playing in front of 1,200 people: ‘Thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Bottle of whisky, thousand dollars in my pocket and more young pussy than joins you could shake a stick at!’ Jimmy was magic.” the Pretties on stage at the 100 Club, 2010.

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The Pretty Things in 2014: (l-r) Jack Greenwood, Frank Holland, Phil May, Dick Taylor and George Perez.

with , and the title track, which veered unfettered frontman and they had an innate grasp into fuzz-guitar territory. Their signature of authentic R&B. The frenzy with which they song, , could have been about Phil had to played (May says of Taylor: “He might look like their own lifestyles – ‘I sleep through the day…’ – Wilfrid Brambell but he rocks like a mother”), written when Dick Taylor was living in Gloucester write his their snarling defiance and raggedy, ugly-bugly Road in Kensington and spending every night on sex appeal has continued to inspire and fascinate patrol with the Carnabetian Army in clubs such telephone a younger generation of musicians and fans. as the Cromwellian and Blaises. The question of why, 50 years on, they’re still Given their riotous behaviour and hectic tour number in playing generates another burst of self-mockery: schedule (they did three concerts in three countries “Stupidity?” “Lack of imagination…” “Didn’t like in one day in Scandinavia, which wasn’t unusual), ’s the look of the dole queue…” “Dick’s down to his their own songwriting didn’t fully develop to last chateau so we gotta keep going.” fruition until 1968 with the SF Sorrow book and it “It’s the audiences. If you really didn’t feel (their masterpiece, especially compared with the anybody was interested then you couldn’t do it,” Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request). was under says Phil. “I’m not such a great buff that I want to The rivalry with the Stones was played up in go and make records for myself or play in a room the papers, according to the band, but there was ‘G’ for ‘God’. for three people. If people turn up when you go no enmity between them. Brian Jones shared to Hamburg or Berlin, and you give them a good a flat with Phil May and Viv Prince. “If we’d both Phil chimes in: “The Kinks asked me to join time, it makes the journey worthwhile.” come back from up North, the only place you them. There was a mutual stimulation. You’d hear They still play SF Sorrow as part of a psychedelic could get a drink was Covent Garden, where Waterloo Sunset, think, ‘Fucking great, can’t wait to set, but they recognise that it’s the timeless, primal the porters’ pubs were open,” says Phil. “So the get into the studio.’ It drove you on and you were potency of rhythm and blues that keeps hooking three of us would smoke some dope and wander quite proud of the fact that they’d made this really people in. Phil says: “It’s whatever we heard, and around among all the porters, because you weren’t good record. It was the same with ’ Jagger heard, back then. It’s still got that… You going to get mobbed – ‘Allo there boys, there you Strawberry Fields. When you heard that, you felt hear something like Bring It To Jerome, it’s infectious. go, nice record, like that one.’” good, you didn’t think, ‘Ooh rotten bastards.’” Muddy’s things, Judgement Day, Big Boss Man, it’s an However, there was some cloak-and-daggery Was sick of singing? “Well, no, internal mantra, it’s inside you.” whereby Tony Calder, one of the Stones’ I think they wanted a kind of hip-shaking Dick, who always says that he’ll keep playing management, is said to have been sent to RSG! frontman, not somebody who played guitar and as long as his fingers keep working, adds: “It just to tell them, “If you book the Pretty Things again, didn’t move. That was the formula that seemed to gets into your blood, what else is there? Goodness you won’t get the Stones.” “Suddenly we went be doing the business.” You weren’t tempted to join knows how many jobs I’ve done but this is from playing all the time on RSG! then nothing. The Kinks? “I had my own band,” is the firm reply. what always comes back, I would not wanna do We didn’t know why,” says Phil. On the face of it, the Pretty Things appeared to anything else but play music.” ✰ Dick: “The people who would have been our be another gang of rabble-rousers out for a good getty x 3 rivals were The Kinks and The Yardbirds. But there time while annoying as many stiffs as possible in Live At The 100 Club is out now on LMS. Find out more wasn’t that scene, I was matey with Dave Davies.” the process, but in Phil May they had an instinctive, at www.theprettythings.com.

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