The Pretty Things: Emotions

THE PRETTY THINGS: EMOTIONS (1967)

1) Death Of A Socialite; 2) Children; 3) The Sun; 4) There Will Never Be Another Day; 5) House Of Ten; 6) Out In The Night; 7) One Long Glance; 8) Growing In My Mind; 9) Photographer; 10) Bright Lights Of The City; 11) Trip­ping; 12) My Time; 13*) A House In The Country; 14*) Progress; 15*) Photographer (alternate mix); 16*) My Time (alternate mix); 17*) The Sun (alternate mix); 18*) Progress (alternate mix); 19*) Children (alternate mix).

Emotions indeed — by the time the band had completed the album, only two members were left from the original lineup for the previous one. First Brian Pendleton, and then John Stax both quit because of financial pressures and artistic disagreements, as the Fontana label was pressing the group to move in a more pop direction, which is where pretty much everybody else was moving at the time, including the Pretties' biggest competition acts on the hard rock market — the Stones, The Kinks, The Who, The Animals, you name 'em. The challenge was certainly a difficult one, because hard rock acts could allow themselves to rely on groove and energy rather than song­writing, but in the pop sphere, you couldn't really get anywhere unless you got busy composing your own material; and although May and Taylor had already cut their teeth on several impres­sive singles, such as ʽMidnight To Six Manʼ, they hardly had what it takes to break through into the big leagues — not yet.

Nevertheless, it was do or die; so, with the extra aid of the band's new bass player, Wally Waller, and their old friend Ian Stirling, May and Taylor wrote the entirety of their third album, once again following in the footsteps of the Stones, to the extent that a few of these songs sound very much like forgotten outtakes from Aftermath (ʽGrowing In My Mindʼ is so instrumentally and vocally close to ʽI Am Waitingʼ, for instance, that it is hard to imagine that Aftermath had not been sitting on these guys' turntables as a guiding light, even if they did not openly admit it). The big difference lies in production values: American pop producer Steve Rowland, who'd previous­ly worked with Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, thought that the band's songs would feel more fleshed out with brass and strings, so he called in arranger Reg Tilsley and overdubbed a lot of the material against the band's wishes.

These «sappy» arrangements have frequently been criticized, and dissatisfied fans were rewarded in the CD era with several bonus tracks presenting «clean» mixes of the same tracks without the sentimental overdubs — but I think that where the tracks are good on their own, Tilsley's arrange­ments actually suit them fine, never obscuring the main melody and always emphasizing the required mood rather than going against it. After all, he is not drowning the sound in lush Holly­wood orchestration: his preferred treatment is either a touch of jazzy brass fanfare or a modest string flourish à la Left Banke or other baroque-pop acts. It must simply have been the shock of hearing one of the world's wildest R&B bands suddenly get civilized and sentimentalized that prompted the reaction, but what with the future proving that the change was not a fluke, but part of a general transformation of the band from a purveyor of R&B into an art-pop ensemble, we must now simply regard Emotions as the beginning of a new chapter in history.

And while the Pretties had not yet reached the peak of their songwriting potential, the songs do not exactly look like naïve attempts to ape their superiors. It is true, of course, that everything here was written under the huge influence of Jagger/Richards and especially Ray Davies — after all, one of their preceding singles was Ray's ʽHouse In The Countryʼ, which they somehow managed to release before Ray issued it himself as an LP track on Face To Face; for some reason, they thought that it could have chart potential (and maybe it could, but they sure did not add anything to it that was not on the Kinks version already). Clearly, if you begin your album with a number called ʽDeath Of A Socialiteʼ, you are walking in Uncle Ray's footsteps. But they are not stealing any of Uncle Ray's melodic moves, and they still preserve a certain burly roughness, even when they are just playing acoustic guitars, that separates them from the «gentlemanly» Kinks sound. It makes sense to compare the opening acoustic strum of ʽDeath Of A Socialiteʼ with the corresponding acoustic strum of the Kinks' ʽDandyʼ — I think that the former still sounds as if they are on the verge of breaking into an R&B groove at any time, whereas the Kinks are too busy folk-dancing to do anything of the sort.

In addition, Emotions is a pretty dark album. If the Stones' social comment was largely all sneer and grimace, and the Kinks' one was sadness and empathy, the Pretty Things rather decide to specialize on quietly boiling anger and frustration. ʽDeath Of A Socialiteʼ, in particular, was written based on the car crash incident of Tara Browne (the same one that later got indirectly mentioned in ʽA Day In The Lifeʼ), and while the song's jumpy, fussy rhythm guitar symbolizes the protagonist's mad rush through life, May's lyrics and vocals are those of an angry preacher, frustrated at the perspective of his client trading in his life for a bunch of nothing; "don't you know it's over?", he nearly shouts at the end, bitterly amazed that somebody could be so stupid. (Tilsley's little brass flashes, spread all over the place, are actually quite clever here — creating the atmosphere of a busy street intersection, with honking cars as the harbingers of death). ʽChil­drenʼ is nowhere near a Graham Nash type of sentimental ballad, but rather a gritty prophecy about how society's ills are already rooted in the playground level, with ominous martial drums and mournful raga-style guitar providing a sharp contrast to the seemingly cheerful and upbeat verse melody. And ʽHouse Of Tenʼ, contemplating the faceless fate of a lower class worker, is far more brooding in nature than any given Kinks song — maybe not as directly bang-your-head-against-the-wall hopeless as ʽDead End Streetʼ, but ultimately reaching the same conclusion.

The best of these mournful ballads, however, is not directly related to any social issues: it is ʽThe Sunʼ, which I have always regarded as not just the masterpiece of this particular record, but as an all-time classic song by the band that never truly got what it deserved (the song, that is, not the band). Here is where Tilsley's string flourishes work particularly well (the alternate mix without the strings sounds fairly hollow in comparison), giving the impression of the sun's mechanical, emotionless, faraway circular movement, and May's sad vocals second that movement — the song's two main verses form a completed cycle with implications of the endlessness of suffering. To that particular date, I believe, none of the big British Invasion bands had yet penned anything comparable in sheer grimness and hopelessness... well, maybe the Zombies did, but even their grimmest material is all on Odessey And Oracle, and that wouldn't be openly forthcoming until a couple more years.

Not all of the album is spent in the throngs of doom and gloom: ʽPhotographerʼ is a lively post-Berry pop-rocker, punctuated by more of Tilsley's brass bursts and a rapid-fire angry vocal deli­very from May (as, once again, opposed to a comparable sneery-sarcastic delivery that a Mick Jagger would have probably loaned to the song); ʽTrippingʼ has the most Stonesy sound of all, being the only track here on which May adopts the same sneery-sarcastic tone, well attenuated by the equally sneery high-pitched acoustic lead guitar; and ʽThere Will Never Be Another Dayʼ, to me, sounds like Elton John would later use it as a blueprint for ʽSaturday Night's Alright For Fightingʼ, though I wouldn't be as stupid as to take him to court for that. And at least ʽMy Timeʼ finishes the album on a more optimistic note than the rest of Emotions, even offering a chaotic, quasi-Stravinsky-passionate orchestrated climax to support Phil's last-minute stab at self-assertion and hopefulness for the future.

But if we really want to re-establish this album's reputation, and cease regarding it as some sort of embarrassing transition stage between the band's early wild days and their later cult status as the creators of rock's first opera, then, I think, the only way to do this is to focus on the darker aspects of Emotions — an album that, with a little extra care, could outgrim them all, despite arriving on the market at a time when most of the competitors were too busy trying to change the world, rather than mourn its pathological resistance to change. Maybe that was not even the intended message — who really knows? — but this is a cohesive image that somehow got congealed in my mind, and I'm perfectly happy-sad to let it stay that way, so that the thumbs up rating — yeah, for both the Pretties' work on it and Tilsley's intelligent arrangements — could be fully justified.

The Pretty Things: Get The Picture?

THE PRETTY THINGS: GET THE PICTURE? (1965)

1) You Don't Believe Me; 2) Buzz The Jerk; 3) Get The Picture?; 4) Can't Stand The Pain; 5) Rainin' In My Heart; 6) We'll Play House; 7) You'll Never Do It Baby; 8) I Had A Dream; 9) I Want Your Love; 10) London Town; 11) Cry To Me; 12) Gonna Find A Substitute; 13*) Get A Buzz; 14*) Sittin' All Alone; 15*) Midnight To Six Man; 16*) Me Needing You; 17*) Come See Me; 18*) L.S.D.

Drummer Viv Prince was kicked out of the band right before the release of their second LP — in fact, relations with him had reached breaking point during the sessions, so that many tracks fea­ture session player (and the band's producer) Bobby Graham instead. Although Viv was not that much involved in the band's songwriting, it may be argued that this first out of many lineup changes was the most significant one — think of The Who firing Keith Moon as an awful ana­logy. Somehow this initiated a shift of image, as The Pretty Things began to drop the «wildness» aspect and turn towards more soulful, psychedelic, and artsy matters: fortunately, not before relea­sing their flawed masterpiece of the «wild thing» period.

Get The Picture? is a massive improvement over the self-titled debut, largely because much of the material is now self-written, with Phil May and Dick Taylor emerging as a competent and convincing songwriting duo — still not on the Jagger/Richards level if you average out the results, but not so much because they did not have an ear for melody as it is due to inferior technical aspects of the performances and recordings. Every time I listen to something like ʽCan't Stand The Painʼ with its decidedly Stonesy atmosphere (in some ways, predicting the slightly cavernous mystical-sexual sound of Aftermath), I can't help but wonder if it could be hailed as a timeless classic of longing-and-yearning with Mick on vocals and Keith on guitar.

And there are aspects where The Pretties would indeed go farther than their chief superior com­petitors. You only have to get past the opening number (ʽYou Don't Believe Meʼ is a mix of over­playe R&B ecstasy with crude Byrdsy jangle guitars) to hit the jackpot: ʽBuzz The Jerkʼ is, I believe, not only the very first pop song to feature the word "jerk" in the title (only two years earlier, the Stones had to guiltily censor the word in their cover of Chuck Berry's ʽCome Onʼ), it is as heavy and as uncompromising as it ever gets (at least, in 1965) in a song seemingly dedi­cated to problematic issues of rough sex. The rhythm section is on an adrenaline kick here: John Stax plays a broken-up bass riff that does things to your girl that even whacky perv Bill Wyman, all gentlemanly on the outside but EVIL on the inside, would never dream of, while Viv (I do hope that's Viv, I don't think Bobby Graham would dare play with that much aggression) goes so heavy on the cymbals and snares that Keith Moon could be his only competition. Throw in a mean fuzzy tone from one of the guitarists, and the entire tune is a two-minute explosion of garage rock wildness that ranks together with the greatest nuggets of the decade. Finally, by get­ting their act together and achieving tight focus, The Pretty Things explode.

The title track, when you take a detached look at the verse, is just one of those simple Britpop tunes, à la Dave Clark Five, that is usually supposed to put you into a jovial mood; but with May's breathy-beastly vocal onslaught and Taylor's crisply roasted guitar, it is only a tad less wild than ʽBuzz The Jerkʼ. "I ain't gonna quit ya / Get the picture?" predates The Troggs in its brief musical summary of the life of the Neanderthal lover. Later on, you are informed that ʽWe'll Play Houseʼ, obviously a nod to Elvis' ʽBaby Let's Play Houseʼ because of the title, but taking the metaphor to a whole new level. But the top prize is ʽYou'll Never Do It Babyʼ, a song originally recorded by the little-known UK act Cops & Robbers in a weak, piano-centered version: it took the Pretties to open up its full potential — the shotgun-style «blast 'em and pick up the pieces» riff and May's bluntly threatening lyrics give the song a bit of murderous feel, as in, she'll never do it, baby, because I've got a knife and I know how to... oh, never mind, just toying around with the dark side for a moment.

Not everything is equally exciting: as long as they keep up and nourish the sinister vibe, the re­sults are cool, but a few of the songs are second-rate R&B grooves (ʽI Want Your Loveʼ) that pale in comparison; besides, on this front they are natural losers in comparison with the Stones, and their version of Solomon Burke's ʽCry To Meʼ is nothing compared to the slower and far more turbulent commotion of guitars and vocals that the Stones had going on Out Of Our Heads. But they are also treading different types of water, such as melancholic folk rock (Tim Hardin's ʽLondon Townʼ) and soulful blues-rock — ʽCan't Stand The Painʼ is a very adventurous type of song, alternating between slow, moody, dreamy folksy passages with groaning, echoey slide guitars and fast, chugging, paranoid verses. I don't think there was anybody else in Britain in 1965 who'd be making that same sort of music: it's like an amalgamation of the soft melancholy of The Searchers with the raw aggressive energy of the Stones.

The expanded CD edition makes things even better: without getting overboard in terms of length (throw in all those bonus singles and you still get only 45 minutes of music), it fattens up the record with such classics as ʽGet A Buzzʼ (this is basically ʽBuzz The Jerk Vol. 2ʼ, although a tad less explosive), ʽMidnight To Six Manʼ (one of the band's catchiest singles ever and one of the greatest affirmations of Night Power), and, oh my God, ʽL.S.D.ʼ — actually, correction: ʽ£SDʼ, so the song formally refers to currency, but they do sing it with an L: "everybody's talking about my LSD... yes I need LSD, yes I need LSD"! Sometimes, you know, it helps being second class: neither the Stones nor the Beatles would probably be allowed to issue anything like that, but since nobody cared that much about The Pretty Things, these guys could get away with everything next to murder. They just wouldn't be paid for it.

Ultimately, Get The Picture? gets my vote for the most «badass-nasty» recording of 1965, which is, of course, absolutely not the same as its «best» recording — in any case, on their second try the band totally got it right, and carved a proper niche for itself that everybody else was either too afraid or too shy to try out. Not even The Who were that nasty: with Townshend's «thinking» approach to songwriting, those guys were far more happy, from the very start, to dress in Union Jacks rather than Neanderthal furs. The problem was that — at the time, at least — it was unclear how they could take this thing further, and so Get The Picture? remains the unsurpassed pin­nacle of The Pretties' nasty phase. Their glory days would be far from over, yet it can also be argued that this was their single most important «individual-identifying» moment, placing them in nobody's category but their own. A glorious thumbs up here — do not waste any time trying to buzz the jerk, now.

The Pretty Things: The Pretty Things

THE PRETTY THINGS: THE PRETTY THINGS (1965)

1) Road Runner; 2) Judgement Day; 3) 13 Chester Street; 4) Big City; 5) Unknown Blues; 6) Mama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut; 7) Honey, I Need; 8) Oh Baby Doll; 9) She's Fine She's Mine; 10) Don't Lie To Me; 11) Moon Is Rising; 12) Pretty Thing; 13*) Rosalyn; 14*) Big Boss Man; 15*) Don't Bring Me Down; 16*) We'll Be Together; 17*) I Can Never Say; 18*) Get Yourself Home.

It is pretty damn hard to discuss the early phase of The Pretty Things' career outside of the con­text of The Rolling Stones — and not just for formal reasons, such as Dick Taylor, the Stones' former lead guitar and then bass player, becoming one of the founding fathers of the Pretties. If there was an explicit ideology to this band from the start, it consisted of one driving purpose: to one-up the Stones and wrestle the title of Britain's wildest band from that snotty, too overtly com­mercialized Andrew Loog Oldham clique.

Even the cover art here is reminiscent of the early Stones cover: a bunch of long-haired, grim-looking, fuck-off-will-ya thugs staring you down or downright ignoring you out of the darkness, but their hair is really longer than that of the Stones (and Dick Taylor actually has a beard! like a grown-up!), and their facial expressions are way more Neanderthal, particularly that of drummer Viv Prince, the immediate spiritual and aesthetic predecessor of Keith Moon in his love to raise hell and make noise. «Pretty things» indeed — like the Stones, they took their name from the song of a Chess artist, but they chose Bo Diddley rather than Muddy to be their mascot, for all the wild African paganism reflected in the former's rave-ups. Let the Stones simply ooze aggressive sexu­ality: the Pretty Things were ready to embark on a highway to hell, right away.

Unfortunately, they miscalculated just a bit. Of the three most important elements in a pop music album — musicianship, songwriting, and attitude — the band had most heavily invested in the third one, somewhat downplaying the other two: none of the players here seem to be outstanding musicians by the standards of early 1965, and original songwriting is practically non-existent. The emphasis is strictly on loudness and wildness, reflected, above all, in the ferocious predator vocals of Phil May, who is, at this point, probably the single most interesting link in the chain: barking and roaring rather than singing, he shows certain rabid undertones to his voice that you would not be able to get even by the likes of Eric Burdon. There had already been wild screamers on the garage rock scene by that time — remember Gerry Roslie of the Sonics, for instance — but most of them still sounded more like rowdy pub goers than minions of Satan, and Phil has that leery, sarcastic whiff added to the bark-and-roar that really provides him with a certain demonic effect, like an early spiritual precursor to Iggy Pop.

Wild vocal practices alone are not gonna get you through the day, though: the entire band needs to get wild, and that is precisely what you get on their first single, ʽRosalynʼ (conveniently appen­ded as a bonus track to the CD edition). «Written» by their co-manager Jimmy Duncan, it is an amalgamation of the Bo Diddley beat, the Chuck Berry rap, and Animals-style dark harmonies, where the overall level of energy and nastiness matters far more than melodic ideas or playing techniques. Released in May 1964, it may have been Britain's wildest single for about three months, before getting undercut by ʽYou Really Got Meʼ — largely because of the insane proto-Keith Moon drum work and Phil's insane screaming, although Brian Pendleton's bashing the shit out of his rhythm guitar and Taylor's minimalistic waves of lead slide guitar certainly add to the atmosphere. The uncomfortable part is that outside of the context of May 1964, the song might seem a bit boring — in terms of sheer wildness, this sound would soon be overtaken by even more caveman-like styles of various garage bands (not to mention The Who), and in other terms, once the groove has been established in the first ten seconds, they stay with it forever, not taking it anywhere special. (Not that you could really frame this as an accusation, because it would apply just as adequately to Bo Diddley himself as it does to them; but hey, at least Bo was the author of this style).

This is pretty much how it goes with the entire album: coming in a bit too late on the heels of their first two singles, it may have already been a tad anachronistic for early 1965. Not in terms of the overall sound: the cover of ʽRoad Runnerʼ that opens the album is as noisy and reckless as it gets in those months, messy drumming and guitar feedback and caveman vocals and all. But in terms of creativity, the Pretty Things had little to offer — following the standard practice that an «original» song could simply consist of a stolen melody with a few changes to earlier lyrics; hence, ʽ13 Chester Streetʼ = ʽGot Love If You Want Itʼ; ʽUnknown Bluesʼ = just about any 12-bar blues (e.g. Robert Johnson's ʽKindhearted Woman Bluesʼ); and only their third single, ʽHoney I Needʼ, does not seem to be immediately ripped off, but it also kinda sucks.

And even though they had a good collective sound going for them, there was not a single truly impressive and / or unique player in the band — Taylor and Pendleton may have favored a rougher, dirtier guitar sound than Keith Richards and Brian Jones, but they lacked their sharpness, precision, and stylistic variety. A good starting point for comparison would be ʽThe Moon Is Risingʼ, a Jimmy Reed cover that (no surprise here) sounds almost identical to his own ʽHonest I Doʼ, covered on the Stones' debut album — the Stones' song has far more clarity, and their guitar and harmonica parts just slice through the speakers, making much better use of the scale than the Pretties; though the Pretties do sound wilder, dirtier, and sloppier.

All in all, this album has not aged all that well, though it remains an important historical link in the line of rock music evolution in those crazy days. But I still cannot resist giving it an honorary thumbs up, because it was driven by good purposes, backed by adequate talent, and, while we're at it, there is not a single ballad anywhere in sight — it's like the frickin' equivalent of AC/DC for early 1965! Indeed, the boys stay very true here to their wild, relentless nature, and this uncom­promising stance has to have some recognition. (I mean, they may have sucked much fun out of ʽDon't Lie To Meʼ by slowing it down and playing it closer to the Tampa Red original than the rock'n'roll version of Chuck Berry, but there's something to be said about authenticity, right?). It is, however, one of those albums where the whole is unquestionably more impressive than the sum of its parts — as I glance back at the track names, I do not think I recognize even a single embarrassment, yet I cannot for the life of me think of one or two particular highlights, either. It's just one of those group gang things.