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A trawl through 1970 editions of Music Now and Disc and Music Echo pulled in a couple of interviews with the Mighty Five on their first visit to England. The band were here to take part in Phun City, record a little of their third album and, it seems, to do a bit of PR. Bottom of the pile is the better known contemporary piece from Richard Williams in Melody Maker . . . Wayne Kramer takes centre stage.
Full UK gig list is HERE
A recent acquisition of the two volumes of the Best of the Troggs, released in 1967 & 1968, had me heading back to Lester Bangs’ essay from 1971, ‘James Taylor Marked for Death(What we need is a lot less Jesus and a whole lot more Troggs!)’ to see which of the 23 tracks on these comps he had also singled out for praise.
(There are a dozen tracks apiece on the two albums but for an unknown reason the less than essential b-side of ‘Wild Thing’, ‘From Home’, gets a place on both discs).
Turns out Bangs only put seven tracks under analysis on his groin thunder odometer: ‘Wild Thing’, most obviously, ‘I Want You’, ‘I Can’t Control Myself’, ‘Give It to Me’, ‘I Can Only Give You Everything’, ‘Gonna Make You’, ‘66–5–4–3–2–1’ and ‘I Just Sing’ (which didn’t appear on either of the Best of volumes). Honourable mentions along the way are given to ‘Anyway That You Want Me’, ‘With A Girl Like You’, ‘Girl in Black’ ‘I Want You to Come into My Life’ and ‘Night of the Long Grass’.Bangs kicked off his essay with his preferred trope of directly addressing his reader in what might turn out to be a conversation, debate, argument or rhetorical ramble. I’m not sure he knows which it will be until the piece is done. Here’s the rumpus:
PART ONE: KAVE KIDS
All right, punk, this is it. Choose ya out. We're gonna settle this right here.
You can talk about yer MC5 and yer Stooges and even yer Grand Funk and Led Zep, yep, alla them badasses’ve carved out a hunka turf in this town, but I tell you there was once a gang that was so bitchin' bad that they woulda cut them dudes down to snotnose crybabies and in less than three minutes too. I mean their shortest rumble was probably the one clocked in at 1:54 and that's pretty fuckin swift, kid. Oh, they didn't look so bad, in fact their appearance was a real stealthy move ’cuz they mostly photographed like a bunch of motherson polite mod clerks on their lunch hour, but they not only kicked ass with unparalleled style when the time came, they even had the class to pick one of the most righteous handles of all time: the Troggs.
Perfectly named, the Troggs sprung fully-loaded out of the primal ordure that all great rock n’ roll comes from. Subterranean Neanderthals who briefly stepped into the light to promote a clutch of hit singles:
’Cause this was a no-jive, take-care-of-business band (few of the spawn in its wake have been so starkly pure) churning out rock 'n' roll that thundered right back to the very first grungy chords and straight ahead to the fuzztone subways of the future. And because it was so true to its evolutionary antecedents, it was usually about sex, and not just Sally-go-to-movieshow-and-hold-my-hand stuff, although there was scads more of that in them than anyone would have suspected at first, but the most challengingly blatant flat-out proposition and prurient fantasy.
That’s the cue for Bangs to range far and wide over his adolescent wet dreamscapes. His term for the Troggs’ libidinous thrusts was ‘groin thunder’ which was an image as impeccably realised as the band’s name. Its most basic expression, he wrote, is obtained in ‘I Want You’:
This is the Troggs at their most bone-minimal (which is also where they are usually most effective). Like the early Kinks, they had strong roots in ‘Louie, Louie’, which is where both song and guitar solo issue from here. The lyrics are almost worthy of the cave: ‘I want you / I need you / And I hope that you need me too . . .’ The vocal has a musk of yellow-eyed depravity about it, and the singer sounds absolutely certain of conquest-steady, methodical, deliberate. This is the classic mold for a Troggs stalking song.
Bangs developed his line:
‘Gonna Make You’ is more of the same, Diddley rumbleseat throbbing with sexual aggression and tough-guy disdain for too many words, while the flip side of that single, ‘I Can't Control Myself’, begins to elaborate a bit. It opens with a great Iggyish ‘Ohh, NO!’, employs a buckling foundation of boulderlike drums as usual, and takes the Trogg-punk's intents and declarations onto a more revealing level. ‘Yer socks are low and yer hips are showin’,’ smacks Presley in a line that belongs in the Great Poetry of Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.
I hear ‘slacks’ not ‘socks’ though maybe the latter fits better with whatever fetish or ‘pube punk fantasy’ Bangs had a predilection for. ‘A two-sided single whose titles were “Give It to Me” and “I Can't Control Myself” was on a collision course with some ultimate puissant bluenose from the start, and sure enough it was banned in America’.
About midway through his essay Bangs hits the caps lock on his typewriter and finally lets loose about why all of this fuss n’ bother over Reg and the Boys is worth his reader’s attention:
THE LESSON OF ‘WILD THING’ WAS LOST ON ALL YOU STUPID FUCKERS sometime between the rise of Cream and the fall of the Stooges, and rock 'n' roll may turn into a chamber art yet or at the very least a system of Environments.
Bangs was not wrong, the Velvets, MC5 and the Stooges, he wrote, all gainfully pushed back against the tide of musical civility but they could not be the primal thing itself, they were all too knowing, too self-reflective, too intellectual. As for the Troggs:
Quite possibly they understood or ruminated about what they were doing on very limited levels. Because that was all that was necessary. Had they been a clot of intellectual sharpies hanging out in the London avant-garde scene, they would most likely have been a preening mess unless they happened to be the Velvet Underground who were a special case anyway. I really believe maybe you've gotta be out of it to create truly great rock 'n' roll, either that or have such supranormal, laser-nerved control over what you are consciously manipulating that it doesn't matter (the Rolling Stones) or be a disciplined artist with an abiding joy in teenage ruck jump music and an exceptionally balanced outlook (Lou Reed, Velvets), or chances right now are that you are almost certain to come out something far less or perhaps artistically more (but still less) than rock 'n' roll, or go under.
From here on in James Taylor and his self-obsessed singer/songwriter peers become the target of Bangs’ ire. But Bangs is soon back on the trail of Reg Presley and co., chasing down the real meaning of ‘66–5–4–3–2–1’ – the countdown to penetration; the S&M overtones of ‘Girl in Black’ and the anal sex pleasures espoused in ‘I Want You to Come into My Life’ and, of course, the drug scene of ‘Night of the Long Grass’. He spends a good deal of time on ‘I Just Sing’ – ‘an anthem of loneliness and defiant individuality’ that he likens to the Stooges ‘No Fun’ but by this point in his essay the band’s catalogue is looking empty and Bangs is running on fumes.
I’m not a hardcore Troggs fan, other than the two Best of LPs, I’ve a handful of singles and the 3xCD set Archeology from 1992 that Bill Inglot, Bill Levenson, Andrew Sandoval and Ken Barnes put together, the first disc is mostly essential 1966–67 cuts, disc two is filled with not so essential selections from 1967–76. Disc three is the infamous Trogg Tapes . . . Part of the brilliance of Bangs’ take on their catalogue is to ignore the copious amount of filler they recorded, which were anything but explosions of groin thunder. Bangs name checks only twelve cuts (his editor Greg Shaw questioned this self-imposed limit – see above), each Best of has a dozen, and I think that is the perfect number for any Troggs set, so here’s my 2 x 6:
‘Gonna Make You’/’ ‘66–5–4–3–2–1’/‘I Want You’/‘I Can’t Control Myself’/‘Anyway That You Want Me’/‘Girl in Black’//‘Night of the Long Grass’/‘Mona’/‘I Can Only Give You Everything’/‘Anyway That You Want Me’/ ‘I Want You to Come into My Life’/‘Give It to Me’/‘Louie Louie’.
I’ve dropped ‘Wild Thing’ because I don’t need to hear it again and I anyway prefer those rewrites like ‘I Want You’, not because they refine ‘Wild Thing’ but because they amplify what’s great about it. Bangs’ choice of ‘With A Girl Like You’ and ‘I Just Sing’ fall short of my other selections because there’s too much Donovan and not enough Bo Diddley in them for my primitive taste buds even if, on the latter, the band put in a little bit of Yardbird-style faux-sitar licks.
Side one starts off in a hurry with the first three tracks but cools it down toward the end with ‘Anyway That You Want Me’ and ‘Girl in Black’. The last of those two songs comes in at just under 2 minutes and is a solid rip-off of The Who (and all the better for that), while the cello and violin accompaniment on the former, at least in my imagination, following Bangs’ lead, leaks into John Cale’s contributions to the more melodic songs of the Velvet Underground and in Nico’s solo work. Side two stays in mood with ‘Night of the Long Grass’ followed by two non-single tracks, both something of beat standards. Bo’s ‘Mona’ is perhaps the longest cut from 66/7 that they recorded, it has an extended, by their standards, instrumental section but, unlike the Yardbirds say, they are not minded to do much with it; very Stooge-like in its focus, I think. Rob Tyner has said the MC5 recorded a cover of ‘I Can Only Give You Everything’ when the Shadows of Knight got the jump on them and released ‘Gloria’ so they turned to the next best thing in Them’s songbook. I don’t doubt the truth of that but Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith’s slashing guitar riff on the Five’s single is a straight lift from the Troggs’ version.
The last track on my imaginary compilation, which I’ll call I Want –You Want as it seems to adequately distil down the subject and theme of Reg’s songwriting (or maybe I should name it more simply Come), is ‘Louie Louie’ which is at the very heart of the matter. This album cut is by far the best of the period’s covers by a British band and leaves the Kinks’ tepid version far behind even if it doesn’t quite make the grade of the Sonics, whatever it’s a good place to end things.
In his inestimable study of ‘Louie Louie’, Dave Marsh ignores the Troggs version but he homes in on its most potent progeny, ‘Wild Thing’. Marsh writes,
Art it may not possess, but in its own way ‘Wild Thing’ is a rock ’n’ roll classic. The way it descends to lower depths with each bar is so astonishing, its unending thud so remorseless (the Troggs aren't playing this way because it's effective, even though it is – they're doing it because they can't think of anything else), that it just about takes your breath away, clouds your vision, brings unbidden moistness to the corners of your eyes. Of course, these symptoms might be nothing more than a neurological reaction to the axe murder of Western musical civilization, but let's cut the clowns some kind of break.
Bangs would have agreed that the Troggs held no pretension to creating art but they were not clowns, idiot savants perhaps? I like to think of them as carnivalesque jesters capable of upending the courts of Procol Harum, Jethro Tull and the like – a band whose role was to cock-a-snook at those who thought themselves to be the band’s betters.
In January 1965 reader Alex Donald wrote a letter to Record Mirror about Richard Berry’s ur-text, or what he called a ‘pop yardstick’, ‘Louie Louie’:
British pop must be in a desperate state when the whole scene has revolved round one song – The Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie – for months. Besides completely copying the Kingsmen’s vocal and instrumental style, The Kinks rose to fame with two watery twists of this classic, then provided us all with endless amusement by recording it openly [released November 1964 on Kinksize Session EP]. Heinz had his second biggest hit ever with another disguised version of this R&B opus [‘Questions I Can’t Answer’] and recently it has been put out as a single on Philips by someone sounding like an in competent one-man band [Liverpool’s Rhythm And Blues Inc]. The parasites should at least leave off the newer American greats.
The Troggs version was yet to come, but I doubt Alex would have felt more kindly disposed toward it than he did to any other of the British covers. One of the issues conveniently ignored in Bangs’ piece was that, at least to the more hip British ears, the Troggs were always sort of behind the times, their parsing of ‘Louie Louie’ or Bo Diddley’s big beat had long been abandoned by the Kinks and Pretty Things. The Troggs in their company feel like an anachronism, or an echo.
Chris Britton’s slash and chime guitar patterns were very obviously modelled on Pete Townshend (checkout the perfected Who-like guitar chord that introduces the bridge in ‘I Can’t Control Myself’) giving a modern steel-sprung edge to the antediluvian thump of Ronnie Bond and Pete Staples’ rhythm section. Just as complementary to Britton’s guitar shards was Reg’s lewd thug sneer, which was often backed by a simple, most un-Who like, vocal refrain ‘da dah, da dah’ that would be varied, when the need for novelty called, from song to song by using ‘pah’, ‘bah’ or ‘lah’. The Troggs didn’t deal in subtlety, that was their appeal. They weren’t complex like the Who, full of contradictions, rather their method was, as Richard Meltzer called it, ‘blatant overstatement’ that Bangs more pertinently named ‘groin thunder’.
Postscript
In June 1973, Melody Maker’s Roy Hollingworth interviewed Reg Presley in Hyde Park. At age 31, the singer was a veteran of the music scene, chubby and ruddy cheeked, he spends much of his time with Hollingworth making lewd comments about women who pass by. Once he was a pop star now he is simply ‘legendary’: the Troggs, were a ‘very heavy little band to be sure. “Punk music”, says Reg. “I like that word punk”’.
The band are capitalising on their fabled status and taking their act onto the university circuit:
‘Was at Hull the other week’, said Reg . . . ‘and after a couple of numbers we thought we’d turned up at the wrong gig. I mean people were screamin’ out and clappin’ and goin’ wild . . . I thought Reg old boy, what’s goin’ on here?’
In the State’s the Troggs’ reputation had been enhanced by the use of ‘Wild Thing’ on a Miller’s beer commercial and then the single is ‘installed on the infamous Nobody’s jukebox, Bleeker Street’ and then word of mouth has done its turn and, ‘so’, writes Hollingworth, here [in New York] starts the Troggs Preservation Society’. Lester Bangs’ piece is not mentioned but Reg’s repeated and enthusiastic use of ‘punk’ to describe his band could hardly have come from a more local source; ‘Wild Thing’ and I Can’t Control Myself’ are ‘very punky records. Hollingworth explains:
. . . everything works in cycles. There’s a progression from a basic quality, through success to an art form – but then it must go back. It doesn’t of course go back to the exact basis it started from. It goes back having collected valid points during its progress. But if it didn’t go back ‘then rock will become as boring as jazz’, as Reg would have it.
‘If you could do anything this year’, Hollingworth summarises, ‘it would be to see The Troggs punking it out for the whole world and making it. It's people like Reg Presley that keep this business sane to a degree . . . ‘We're whap, whap, whap’, said Reg, ‘And I think that’s what it’s about’.
Mid-way through 1977, when all the reissues of Stooges and MC5 albums were cluttering up the review sections of the British weekly music press, Miles of Better Books fame (at least I think it is him) offered his take on the Mighty Five and the claim du jour they were Punk’s progenitors – he counter-asserts they were a ‘hippy band’ and Exhibit No.1 in his defence is a ‘Programme’ (English spelling for extra cultural capital) for ‘An Evening Recital of New Music as performed by Detroit’s Own MC5 at the Grande Ballroom May 10 & 11, 1968’.
As a bit of memorabilia it would be nice to own but as a historical document I think it fascinating, produced between ‘Looking At You’ b/w ‘Borderline’ – ‘latest underground killer single’ – and Kick Out the Jams recorded five months later.
In the set they would play in October only ‘Kick Out the Jams’, ‘Come Together’ and ‘Borderline’ from the 14 listed as to be performed in May made it onto the album. Many like ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’, ‘I Put a Spell On You’, ‘Ice Pick Slim’, ‘I Believe to My Soul’ and ‘Upper Egypt’ have subsequently been made available on Total Energy discs, so perhaps there are few surprises here, but seeing just how dependent they were at this stage in their development on covers of familiar blues and R&B numbers – Larry Williams ‘Slow Down’ used ‘by revolutionaries to dissolve inhibitions, cause fucking in the streets & give you “sickness in the mind”’– and an obligatory Dylan tune, suggest they, like The Yardbirds, were struggling to create their own songs while still cleaving something wholly original out of the found material.
‘Riot, Punk and Revolution Rock' . . .’ (March 1977)
I’d love to hear what they did with John Coltrane’s ‘Tungi’ [sic. I think that should be ‘Tunji’] – I also love that they give you the album cat. no’s. for both the album’s mono and stereo versions; as they do too for Pharoah Saunders’ Tauhid. From that album comes ‘Upper Egypt’, which they don’t directly cover but use for inspiration (you can hear a version on the CD of the Sturgis Armory show from June 1968). It works in the same way that ‘Starship’ would draw on Sun Ra, I suppose, or ‘Ice Pick Slim’ pulls on Archie Shepp.
I don’t know how common it was to produce a printed programme for a rock concert in 1968, I’m guessing this is a one-off. It does seem antithetical to being a high energy rock n’ roll combo that the Five as Punk forbearers were being credited with; it is certainly pretentious though it is not embarrassing, as the NME editorial intervention calls it. I think of it as a testimonial to the band’s genuine ambition to expand the music they loved in ways that stayed true to both rock n’ roll and to the moment they were working within.
‘Black to Comm’, the programme noted, had been part of the band’s set since 1964 and was responsible for forcing out their original rhythm section, because:
In those days it was difficult to relate to new forms. The people could dig exaggerations of existing forms but new founding concepts were intolerable. Even today in some places where we play, it often gives people an excuse to dislike us.
Sounds (May 28 1977)
Sounds (March 12 1977)
It was cheap so took a punt, flicking past the usual boring 60s into 70s acts – Joe Cocker, Jethro Tull, Grateful Dead, Blood, Sweat and Tears – I pulled up short when the VU caught my pop-eye. The unimaginative use of the 3rd album sleeve is given a bit of a boost by the editor spinning the William Faulkner quote Jean-Luc Godard had used in Breathless (À bout de souffle). He topped that with the best downer of a recommendation for the band I’ve read:
Everything in a Velvet Underground song is gray, agonized, drab and inexorable. But what they lack in hope and passion, they make up for in chilly perfection and basic rock, a good reason to accompany them down the razor-blade of life.
The book is organised into ten thematically arranged sections, the Velvets located in ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’. Further on toward the end is the Marshall McLuhan influenced ‘The Medium Is The Message’ chapter which is where, good lord, the Stooges are found; all three pages of ‘em and all new to me . . . Photographed by James Roark at the Fun House sessions by the look of things – sax man Steve McKay is front and centre. The image of Dave Alexander might just be my favourite pic of him; the one of Iggy Stooge is none too shoddy either. Scott Asheton is MIA.
Rock is sex and violence. . . Rock is revolution. Rock is ceremony. It is the Stooges. . . It is Iggy Stooge, the latest high-energy uni-sex symbol, a second generation Jagger and Morrison.
The Stooges are what rock is about – stuck-up, overbearing, formless, insane, driving, intense
The Stooges: they’re wiggy.
The book ends with a dedication to John Cage and to noise and silence while Little Richard looks on – Nik Cohn would approve . . . Awopbobaloobopalopbamboom!
Unintentional, no doubt, but finding the Stooges in this context, among all the dross acts, is, I think, akin to unsuspecting record buyers discovering the band in the cut-out racks just a few years later; a chance encounter that turned the mundane into the marvellous.
Written by Michael Ross and with original photography by James Roark – the book was published by the Los Angeles based Petersen Publishing Company in 1970, which would make the Stooges pix of the moment. If I’ve got the right man, Roark was best known for his sports photography. Ross I know nothing about.
Following the baptism in the fire of love delivered by ‘Sister Anne’ and ‘Baby Won’t Ya’ on Side One of High Time comes Wayne Kramer’s paean to love’s healing power, ‘Miss X’ – the Five’s most affecting trip into the arms of carnal romance. But who was Kramer’s amour fou, his mystery woman, his Miss X? The Seth Man has gleaned the righteous dope on this tale of passion unwound, or what he calls – ‘an exercise in capturing the spirit of sexual abandon and outright helpless rutting (“Sensations rollin’, turnin’ from me to you / Causing this aura of heat to swirl, yeah”)’.
Here ’Tis; his story:
Miss X, MC5 & Pink Fairies At The Speakeasy August 4, 1970 (Tuesday night) and aftermath (Wednesday morning)
In August, the International Times ran with a parody of a sensational tabloid-styled headline that it splashed across its front page: ‘NUDE WOMAN, LONDON PIGS & REBEL MUSICIAN’. Above and below the headline, in equally bold san serif type: ‘TITS, ASS & HOT REVOLUTION! / MULTIPLE L.S.D. – RAPE SUICIDE BID’. The main story was sub-headed ‘Lovely New Zealander’s night of drama’ and delivered in scandalous detail the events that had unfolded one night at the Speakeasy club. The piece, by Mick Farren, satirised newspaper shock and sensation stories of the underground freak scene, and referred to the ‘nude woman’ in question as ‘auburn-haired Miss X’, whose name we are unable to reveal’. Since Wayne Kramer was already fast friends with Farren, could it be that he took the anonymous appellation of said woman and used it as both title and subject of one of his most uncharacteristic songs? As told in IT, the story follows closely the first-hand account of the night’s events that was much later told to me by Joly McFie, a member of The Pink Fairies road crew at the time.
***
A little more than a fortnight after their televised appearance at a free concert staged at Wayne State University in Detroit on Tartar Field, the MC5 were in the UK for the legendary Phun City Festival, held near Worthing in West Sussex. Promoted and assembled by ex-Deviants vocalist Mick Farren, it would become known as a highwater mark of 1970 Rock Music in the UK courtesy of The MC5’s high energy performance as well as that of The Pink Fairies whose two drummers, Twink and Russell Hunter, stripped naked at one point during their set in a show of zapped-out freak power.
Following Phun City, on August 4, The MC5 were scheduled to appear at the Speakeasy club, located at 48 Margaret Street in London’s busy West End. Earlier that day, MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer encountered a young woman from New Zealand who expressed a desire to get high. Always obliging, he passed the young woman some speed along with an invitation to see his band that night.
Supporting the MC5 were the Pink Fairies, who shared their gear with the headliners. Twink, however, was banned from the Speakeasy, so had to be secretly transported into the club hidden inside a bass drum case. Let loose, and dressed, once more, only in his birthday suit, he invaded the stage during the MC5’s set, which led to him being, yet again, ejected from the club.
MC5 Kicking it out at the Speakeasy, photograph by Noel Shearer
After the MC5 finished their set, the young woman had begun to exhibit the effects of not only the speed but of several alcoholic drinks and a dose of LSD from an unknown donor. Acting in an irrational and agitated manner, in the ladies’ room she began blocking the sinks and turning on all the taps before, like Twink, stripping off all her clothing. The manager of the club insisted the scene cease at once or law enforcement officials would be summoned. Swift steps were then taken by Pink Fairies bass player, Duncan ‘Sandy’ Sanderson and Roderick ‘Noddy’ Mackenzie of White Trash, who ushered the young woman into a waiting Morris 1100 automobile driven by Pink Fairies roadie, Joly McFie. Once on the road, the young woman, still naked, still freaking out, was now repeatedly screaming: ‘I NEED A FUCK!! CAN NONE OF YOU GIVE ME A FUCK?!’ While doing so, she was positioned on her back, lodged in-between the front seats with her head blocking the gear stick, causing Joly to make the short journey stuck in third gear. As he recalled later: ‘every light seemed to be red, and I was having to crawl away using the clutch’.
As the woman repeatedly yelled out for ‘A PROPER FUCK!’, Sandy attempted to oblige her while the automobile wended its way through the early morning hours to Regent’s Park where Joly found a quiet spot to pull over and park the car, where upon he got out. Those left inside kept ‘sensations rollin’ until Miss X changed position and popped out the windscreen with her feet, which Joly, standing nearby, caught whole. Coitus interruptus, Miss X then ran off in the direction of the nearby Regent’s Canal into which she jumped.
Sandy and Joly kept an eye on the intoxicated woman while she swam and continued her vocal dissatisfactions for several minutes before the police showed up. While the police cars were converging, Joly procured a blanket to cover her up. She was then escorted by Metropolitan police to a nearby hospital. Her condition improved with daylight and, according to Joly, ‘she was feeling much better and graciously sent thanks for our efforts’ on her behalf.
Whether or not Kramer just swiped his title from the story or from elsewhere, or even if ‘Miss X’ was more profoundly influenced by the ‘lovely New Zealander’s night of drama’, is perhaps neither here nor there. However compelling the coincidences, keeping true to convention the subject of ‘Miss X’ must remain as much a mystery as Miss X herself.
– The Seth Man
The tale of Miss X’s night of misadventure has also been retold in Rich Deakin’s inestimable biography of The Deviants and Pink Fairies, Keep It Together, with further collaboration from Sandy Sanderson, but the potential link to Kramer’s composition is all The Seth Man’s. Farren didn’t re-live that night in his autobiography, he does, however, give over a fair few pages to the Speakeasy and the sexual politics of the time:
The Speakeasy was not only the place for late booze. It was also where the girls were; one of the city's high temples of the groupie culture that would so fascinate the media. The lipstick killer parade of assumed boredom, platform shoes, scarlet talons, transparent chiffon, fishnets, false eyelashes, appliqué glitter, hotpants, short-short dresses and attitudes of superiority would continue for more than a decade. Much has been made of the oppression of women in rock & roll. Was the groupie a brainwashed victim craving a second-hand and illusionary contact high, or an independent woman making her own choices, fully in control of her own body and sexuality? Germaine [Greer] appeared to cleave to the former in both word and deed when I knew her, but in later life I understand she has recanted her former hedonism.
Tracking back only a few years and ‘Miss X’ was the nom de plume used by the press for Christine Keeler in the Profumo Affair . . . West End Stories on repeat with a Cha Cha Cha rhythm as scored by John Barry [click on the image below]
The Seth Man’s outstanding webpage The Book of Seth on Julian Cope’s Head Heritage can be read HERE His Fuz magazine from the end-of-the-twentieth-century is equally essential reading.
The Love Bug Pink Fairie style
In anticipation of my 13 page epic tale of the MC5 in Britain 1972 — Ugly Things #66 (Summer 2024) — here’s a list of the gigs the band played in the UK as they neared the end of their tumultuous career: 4 shows in 1970 and circa 36 in 1972
The Five’s second visit to the UK was chaotic and without record company support. Gigs were announced and then cancelled. Sometimes the band turned up late and played only one number, sometimes they didn’t even get past the soundcheck. Not every date listed here is confirmed though for most shows I have at least two or three pieces of evidence that they did take place. I expect there are some omissions, ad hoc appearances, but as of today it is the most comprehensive list we have. A fair few of the shows were reviewed in the weekly music press and I quote from these and a good number of news stories and interviews in ‘MC5 Live On Saturn, London 1972’, which is fully referenced.
Melody Maker (August 8, 1970)
Zigzag (August 1970)
Disc and Music Echo (August 8 1970)
July 25 Phun City, Sussex
July 26 Roundhouse, London
July 31 Marquee, London
August 4 Speakeasy, London
The Speakeasy, London photo: Noel Shearer
Music Now (August 15 1970)
February 5 (Sat) London School of Economics, London
February 11 (Fri) Friars, Aylesbury
February 13 (Sun) The Greyhound, Croydon (Michael Davis’ last performance)
Croydon’s White Panther Party UK get disgruntled . . . full account HERE
February 17–22 France
February 24 (Thur) Corn Exchange, Cambridge
February 25 (Fri) Lanchester Poly, Coventry
February 27 (Sun) Barbarella’s Birmingham
February 29 (Tue) Flamingo, Redruth
March 1 (Wed) Plymouth Polytechnic
March 3 (Fri) Seymour Hall, London
March 4 (Sat) Odeon, Canterbury
March 8–23 France/Germany
March 23 (Thur) Speakeasy, London
Sounds gig list
April/May USA
June 1 (Thur) City Hall, Leeds
June 3 (Sat) Clitheroe Festival, Clitheroe
Manchester Evening News
June 5 (Mon) Magee University, Derry
NME gig list
June 7 (Wed) The Stadium, Liverpool (unconfirmed and unlikely as the Five are not listed in adverts the Stadium ran in the Liverpool Echo)
June 9 (Fri) Guild Hall, Northampton
NME
June 10 (Sat) Kings Cross Cinema, London
June 11 (Sun) Letchworth Youth Centre, Letchworth
Time Out listing
June 12 (Mon) Trinity College, Cambridge
Sounds
June 16 (Fri) Edgehill Rag Ball, Top Rank, Liverpool
Liverpool Echo
June 18 (Sun) Wake Arms, Epping
June 19 (Mon) York City Rowing Club, Lendal Bridge, York
Melody Maker
June 23 (Fri) Penthouse, Scarborough
June 24 (Sat) Hornsea Rock, Hull
June 27 (Tues) Merton College, Oxford
June 28 (Wed) Greyhound, Fulham Palace Road, London
June 29 (Thur) Kingston Polytechnic, London
Time Out
June 30 (Fri) Bedford College, London
July 1 (Sat) St Albans City Hall, St Albans
July 3-9 (Monday thru Sunday inc.) Bumpers, Coventry St. London
Bumpers Club hostesses . . . promo photograph circa late 1971
July 12–22 Holland/Belgium
Rob Tyner glams it up in Wembley
August 5 Rock ’n’ Roll Show, Wembley
Though listed/advertised/rumoured the MC5 didn’t appear at
February 10 Corn Exchange, Cambridge
February 12 Mardi Gras Club, Liverpool
March 5 Implosion, Roundhouse, London
September 16 Pier Pavilion, Felixstowe
September 23 Windsor Arts Festival, Windsor
November 16 Sundown, Mile End, London
December 2 Epsom Baths Hall, Epsom
December 9 LSE, London
Just 18 catalogue entries separate the MC5’s Back in the USA and The J. Geils Band’s debut on Atlantic, released in March and December 1970 respectively. The matched pair share the same sleeve photographer, Stephen Paley, stripped back aesthetic and belief in full-throttle rock ‘n’ roll that spins out of the garage greased up, burning alcohol and smoking its own exhaust fumes.
The two albums were reviewed in Rolling Stone, in May ‘70 Greil Marcus covered the MC5; he thought Back in the USA a valid but flawed effort:
Phil Spector once talked about the difference between ‘records’ and ‘ideas’ – ‘The man who can make a disc that’s a record and an idea will rule the world’, he said in his typically moderate fashion. The MC5 album for the most part, remains an idea, because in the end it sounds like a set-up. ‘Teenage Lust’ and ‘American Ruse’ and ‘Human Being Lawnmower’ break through, and they belong on singles, and on the charts. All the way up the charts.
Bostonian, journalist and the MC5’s producer, Jon Landau reviewed The J. Geils Band’s debut in January ‘71. He loved it all:
The best album I’ve heard in sometime . . . It is a goodtime, modern piece of rock and roll; it is also totally devoid of the self-consciousness and pretentions that usually mar this kind of thing.
Where Back in the USA was all edgy, dry and hard-wired, the J. Geils album pulled in the oppositie direction with keys and harp filling out the middle and the upper reaches. The J. Geils Band’s choice of producers were Atlantic in-house Muscle Shoals and Critierion studio tyros Dave Crawford and Brad Shapiro, producers who brought the funk with them. Landau’s neophyte production of the MC5 careens into the corners and then skitters down the lanes. Crawford and Shapiro play for a less immediate impact. It is a more comfortable ride, but equally thrilling when they pile-in and threaten to spill out of control. Landau took what he heard here and used it to help shape the E. Street Band.
On the otherside of the Atlantic ocean, the matched pair's impact was most keenly felt in Essex, in its suburbs and in Southend and Canvey Island. Wilko Johnson was an admirer of the MC5 after witnessing their performance at Wembley in 1972. He was there backing Heinz, (you can catch him in the movie of the gig if you keep your wits about you. His hair is long, so be warned) and one of the few who wasn’t throwing cans at Rob Tyner. In April 1976, Eddie and the Hot Rods told the NME’s Max Bell that they were ‘bored to tears with long songs. We play short and punchy . . . We don’t want to be a heavy albums band. We come on with high energy . . to get the MC5 feel from Back in the USA, bang, two minutes, over and carry on.’ J. Geil’s ‘Hard Drivin’ Man ‘was a keynote cover version in their live set and in Lew Lewis they had, at least for a while, their own Magic Dick and his lickin’ stick.
The Feelgoods and Hot Rods never exactly hid their debt to either band, it’s written all over their lp sleeves.
The J. Geils Band’s ‘Wait’ was a Lew Lewis Reformer showstopper. Like J. Geils, the Feelgoods covered Otis Rush’s ‘Homework’ (on Stupidity), but the influence of the Beantown band on Canvey’s finest doesn’t really show through until Gypie Mayo gets on board. ‘Milk and Alcohol’ had copped its lyrical imagery from John Lee Hooker’s ‘It’ll Serve You Right to Suffer’ – “Your doctor put you on milk, cream and alcohol” – but they (and co-writer Nick Lowe) most likely nicked it from the J. Geils Band, who on their debut had taken the song uptown, downtown and all around. The whole of Be Seeing You, Otis Clay’s ‘Baby Jane most evidently, is cut from the same cloth .
Eddie and the Hot Rods finally got around to releasing ‘Hard Drivin’ Man’ on their second EP, about the same time as they backed Rob Tyner on his solo 45. Their keen pursuit of amphetamine psychosis meant they never really acquired the funk n’ grease of the J. Geils Band but that attack strategy did help them align with the MC5’s razor-edged rock ’n’ roll, even if it was more a shared attitude than aptitude that took them up and down Shakin’ Street. Whatever their merits, and there are many, I got to the MC5 and J. Geils Band by riding in the slipstream left behind as the Feelgoods, followed by the Hot Rods, pelted along the A127
Letters page, The Garage Band Appreciation Society, Maidenhead, Sounds (May 8, 1976) no doubt Hot Rods’ manager Ed Hollis’s concoction but mark me down for membership
This 1970 German compilation comes close to what I imagine a biker movie soundtrack might be like if its producers had access to Atlantic and Elektra artistes . . . It’s rock ’n’ roll as filtered through Rock, so Clapton, Delaney & Bonnie on a live medley of Little Richard numbers, followed by Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse chugging through de blues, Ray Charles caught in performance with ‘What’d I Say’, and Al Kooper closing the side with another piano led tune. Side 2 gets going in style with the MC5 kicking out the jams, followed by the Stooges telling it like it was in ‘1969.’ The Danish Matadors stay in keeping with the musical theme of R ’n’ R with their cover of Chuck’s ‘Memphis Tennessee’, but they are otherwise out of time with this 1965 recording. The MC5 return with their homage to Richard Penniman on ‘Tutti Frutti.’ Bobby Darin supplies the only genuine slice of fifties sound with ‘Splish Splash’, before Jody Grind get hard ‘n heavy on their cover of ‘Paint It Black.’ I believe this is the only contemporaneous album to feature both the Stooges and The MC5, ain’t that something?
The cover features members of the Nederlands Harley-Davidson Club - rockers to the max. Now you know what I meant about those caps [see Feb 12 entry].
