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.