20 Things You May Not Have Known About The Pretty Things!
Aficionados of R&B freak-outs and totally freaky
psychedelia already know The Pretty Things were the nastiest, longest-haired
mob of hooligans Swinging London ever belched up. They know the band was a
(sort of) outgrowth of the Rolling Stones, an early form of which counted
Pretty Dick Taylor as a member, and that they beat The Who to the shops with
the first LP-length rock opera, and that the Pretties will soon be the focus of
their very own luxurious career-spanning box set. But even the die-est hardest
Pretty-o-phile may learn something new among these 20 Things You May Not Have Known About The Pretty Things!
1. Singer Phil May
was raised by his aunt and uncle, and believed them to be his biological
parents. Phil was devastated when sent to live with his biological mother and
her new husband at the age of nine. Although this meant he became Phil Kattner
for a while, he ultimately decided to permanently keep his aunt and uncle’s
surname May for himself.
2. Phil May told journalist
Richie Unterberger that he learned many of the lyrics to the blues and early
R&R the Pretties played from the songbook Mick Jagger personally compiled
in a notepad.
3. Brian Jones
and Andrew Oldham’s shaky relationship probably didn’t get any better when
Jones moved into the same Georgian house as Phil May, Viv Prince, Brian
Pendelton, and Jones’s former bandmate, Dick Taylor, in 1964. Rolling Stones
manager Oldham supposedly hated the Pretties because he considered them his
clients’ direct competition.
4. Although it
was soul singer J.J. Jackson who wrote “Come See Me”, the booklet of the
upcoming box set Bouquets from a Cloudy
Sky misidentifies the MTV VJ of the same name as its composer in a caption
beneath a photo of him with Phil May and Robert Plant on “The Midnight
Special”.
5. The Pretty
Things were supposedly given first refusal on “Mr. Tambourine Man”. Their
refusal allowed The Byrds to be the first band to cover Dylan’s classic.
6. Van Morrison
and The Pretty Things were great friends and mutual admirers. Morrison once
called the Pretties “One of the greatest R&B bands of all time.” True to
character, May called Morrison “the dog’s bollocks” and said “he’s like a bloke
who really knows where he is and doesn’t take any bullshit.”
7. The working
title of the short film, “Pretty Things on Film” was “A Day in the Life of the
Pretty Things”.
8. Although
keyboardist Jon Povey and bassist Wally Waller would totally transform The Pretty
Things’ sound with their harmonies, the first album they made after joining the
band, Emotions, is nearly as devoid of
harmonies as the two albums before it.
9. According to
May, that low bass drone at the beginning of “Defecting Grey” is the sound of
an acoustic guitar hitting the floor.
10. S.F. Sorrow started life as a Phil May
short story called “Cutting Up Sergeant Time”
11. The stereo
mix of S.F. Sorrow is infamously
poorly balanced. The mix hits its nadir with “She Says Good Morning”. For the
majority of the song, the right channel is occupied by nothing but vocals and a
single, syncopated snare drum! No wonder the band stands by the mono mix.
12. According to
Wikipedia, the oft-repeated legend that Parachute
was selected as Rolling Stone’s Album
of the Year in 1971 was started four years later by RS critic Steve Turner. According to this online article, the
album’s title didn’t appear in the magazine until Stephen Holden reviewed Freeway Madness a year after the alleged
honor was bestowed.
13. The Pretty
Things not only recorded library songs for low-budget films under the
hilariously “sixties” pseudonym The Electric Banana, but they appeared on screen
in one: a 1969 sex comedy called What’s
Good for the Goose.
14. Eleven years
later, they returned to the screen in Roy Ward Baker’s terrifically
tongue-in-cheek horror portmanteau The
Monster Club where they could be seen and heard performing the reggae-ish
title track. Vincent Price and John Carradine could be seen grooving along to it!
15. That David
Bowie was a major Pretty Things freak should be known to anyone who has heard
the two Pretties covers (“Don’t Bring Me Down” and “Rosalyn”) on his Pin-Ups album. According to Dick Taylor,
Bowie’s worship went deeper than that: apparently, Bowie listed Phil May under
G for “God” in his personal phone directory!
16. Joey Ramone once
identified The Pretty Things as The Ramones’ biggest influence. When his
massive—and fabulous—record collection went up for auction in 2013, it included
The Vintage Years.
17. Apparently,
young Johnny Lydon got a crash course in punk attitude when his mother, a huge
Pretties fan, brought her son to a string of the band’s gigs. On July 9, 1976,
the man now known as Johnny Rotten and his band The Sex Pistols joined The Pretty
Things in opening for The Ramones at London’s Lyceum Theatre.
18. The first
concert Mick Jones of The Clash ever saw was The Pretty Things and The Nice in
Hyde Park when he was twelve years old.
19. The band
received one of their more obscure yet impassioned shout outs when Rachael
Olson of Minneapolis neo-psychedelicists The Blue Up? began her lengthy list of
acknowledgements in the booklet of the Spool
Forka Dish CD with “EVERYONE GO BUY S.F. SORROW AND PARACHUTE BY THE PRETTY
THINGS. NOW.”
20. The book
included with Bouquets from a Cloudy Sky
misidentifies the location of Little Steven’s 2004 Underground Garage Fest—
which The Pretty Things co-headlined with The New York Dolls, The Strokes and
The Stooges— as Riker’s Island. It actually took place on Randall’s Island. I
should know, I was there and the Pretties were awesome!
