Review: 'Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production'

Producer Shel Talmy is a controversial figure in sixties pop. He got his first major gig by passing off records by The Beach Boys and Lou Rawls as his own productions (they weren’t). He foisted an old blues song called “Bald Headed Woman” on many of the artists he produced to collect royalties on a song he claimed to have written (he didn’t). He perpetuated a difficult-to-kill rumor that Jimmy Page played on The Kinks “You Really Got Me” (he didn’t), much to the infuriation of Dave Davies. He trapped The Who in a terrible contract that gave him a ridiculous chunk of their royalties, creating legal and financial troubles for the band for years (he did).

Talmy’s machinations were questionable to say the least, but there is no question that he cut some of the weightiest, greatest records released between 1964 and 1970. His signature Wall of Noise is evident in some of the best recordings by The Kinks, The Who, The Easybeats, and The Creation. However, there are also subtler colors and innovations in his work. He gave The Who the go-ahead to stir up so much aural chaos on “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” that most DJ’s thought the record suffered from some sort of awful technical glitch. He caught Eddie Phillips using his innovative guitar-bow technique on The Creation’s mighty “Making Time”. He etched the gentler acoustic sounds on Chad & Jeremy’s “A Summer Song” and beat The Beatles and Moody Blues to the punch by using the Mellotron on Manfred Mann’s “Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James” in 1966.

These are some of the unquestionable classics that appear on an essential and well-annotated new comp from Ace Records called Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production. This 25-song disc is not just a lesson in Talmy’s recording history, but more importantly, a simply smashing collection of sixties records familiar and obscure. The song selection is excellent with The Kinks represented by their finest early single (“Tired of Waiting for You”, personally selected by Ray Davies), rare alternate versions of common items such as Davy “Bowie” Jones’s “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving” and The Easybeats’ “Lisa”, and other superb tracks by the likes of Roy Harper, The Nashville Teens, The Pentangle, and Lee Hazelwood, as well as less famous artists such as The Mickey Finn, The Rokes, Lindsay Muir’s Untamed, and The Sneekers, who put a few more bucks in Talmy’s pocket with yet another rendition of “Bald Headed Woman”. Oh, Shel.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 147

The Date: February 24

The Movie: Privilege (1967)

What Is It?: An early attempt at a “serious” pop movie finds Paul Jones of Manfred Mann becoming some sort of messianic figure a few years in the future. Groovy weirdness and far-out pretentiousness, ahoy!

Why Today?: On this day in 1942, Paul Jones born.

Full Line-Up of Ray Davies's Meltdown Announced

Just a quick follow-up on last month's announcement about the Ray Davies-curated, "Ready, Steady, Go"-themed, Meltdown Festival that will be hitting London's Southbank Centre on June 11. Vicki Wickham, original "Ready, Steady, Go" editor and manager of the late Dusty Springfield, lent a hand in selecting the festival's final artist line-up, and our friends across the pond should be most pleased. The already-announced artists --Davies, The Fugs, Arthur Brown, The Alan Price Set, Yo La Tengo, Nick Lowe, Lydia Lunch, and The Legendary Pink Dots--will be joined by Eric Burdon, Sandie Shaw, Nona Hendryx of The Bluebelles and Labelle, Ronnie Spector, and reformed members of Manfred Mann, The Manfreds. My envy continues to grow.

Hendryx and Wickham