Though he was a performer in his own right he is better known as a songwriter; perhaps best remembered for Wild Thing, a song The Troggs had a huge hit with and was then taken up by Jimi Hendrix. The Troggs later recorded Taylor’s very different Any Way That You Want Mebut in the meantime Taylor composed Angel of the Morning, brought to prominence by Merrilee Rush and later a hit in the UK for P P Arnold.
I must confess that until I read Taylor’s wiki page I hadn’t realised that he was a brother of actor Jon Voight (and therefore uncle to Angelina Jolie) nor that he had co-written I Can’t Let Go, a UK no. 2 for The Hollies in 1966.
The Hollies: I Can’t Let Go
James Wesley Voight (Chip Taylor): 21/3/1940 – 23/3/2026. So it goes.
Some songs remain fixed in the public mind with one particular artist. Others take on a life of their own. One of the latter is I Fought the Law, written by Sonny Curtis who joined Buddy Holly’s band The Crickets in 1958 just before Holly’s death and took over as lead vocalist (as well as lead guitar) in the band after that sad event.
The Crickets version was an LP track and a B-side in 1960 but only became a hit when the Bobby Fuller Four released the song in 1965. The Clash also famously recorded I Fought the Law.
The Crickets: I Fought the Law
Bobby Fuller Four: I Fought the Law
Curtis also wrote Walk Right Back which was a UK No 1 for the Everly Brothers in 1961.
The Everly Brothers: Walk Right Back
In addition he wrote the theme for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Love Is All Around, (not to be confused with the similarly titled song written for The Troggs by Reg Presley in 1967 and turned into a humongous hit by Wet Wet Wet in 1994.) This theme will bring back memories for anyone around in the mid- to late 60s.
Mary Tyler Moore Show Theme (Love Is All Around):
Sonny Curtis: 9/5/1937 – September 19/9/2025. So it goes.
A small hit in the UK (no 36) but a no 8 in Germany. The track has echoes of The Troggs and The Who of I’m a Boy and prefigures the Roy Wood era Electric Light Orchestra. The video features “guitarist” Eddie Phillips playing his instrument with a violin bow – reputedly the first to do so – a major contributor to the record’s sound. Another antecedent of Prog Rock?
Phillips had also used this technique on their previous single, Making Time.
In one of my early posts about The Troggs I mentioned a promotional film they made while walking about in a forest and that I could no longer find it on the web.
Well, now I have – except their stripy jackets are nowhere in evidence.
The Troggs:-Night of the Long Grass (forest video)
The place The Troggs had for me in the 60s and Sweet in the early 70s was taken by Marillion in the early 80s.
Marillion have been forever tagged with the Prog Rock label and while their first songs – especially the 17 minute long Grendel and most of the debut album Script For a Jester’s Tear – fit that bill (which was why I got into them in the first place) by the time of Fugazi they had mainly moved on to a more guitar based rock sound.
Their initial success, though, shows that Prog wasn’t as moribund a genre as its detractors would have had it.
Mind you their third and fourth LPs, Misplaced Childhood and Clutching at Straws were those most Prog of things, concept albums (though arguably one concept album spread over two releases.)
I think I first saw them on television on The Oxford Road Show (who remembers that!) when this was one of the songs they played. Despite it being from Fugazi there is still a hint of Prog and echoes of Genesis.
This clip, though, is from Top of the Pops. Check out Fish – with hair!
I’ve said before that for a while in the Sixties The Troggs were my favourite band so I was sad to hear of the death of lead singer and composer of a fair few of their hits, Reg Presley, earlier this week.
Thinking about it, it occurred to me that, with the sparseness of the arrangements in the raunchier part of their output, they were a kind of proto punk band.
Speaking of The Troggs, this was the first of their singles that I bought. Almost the first single I ever bought, it being two or so years since the previous one.
If The Troggs were my musical vice of the 1960s the band which took that role in the 1970s was The Sweet.
Their early hits were mostly rubbish created by the songwriters Chinn and Chapman (who also were responsible for the band Mud and wrote for Suzi Quatro among others) but The Sweet began to hit their stride when they moved away from directly appealing to the young “teenybopper” market in 1973 with the harder edged Blockbuster which started off their biggest run of chart success.
Examination of their B-sides – which they wrote themselves, and leaned toward heavy rock – reveals more than a degree of casual sexism: a feature mostly absent in the bands they aspired to emulate.
Some sources have it that lead singer Brian Connolly was related to the actor who played Taggart, Mark McManus. As Wiki says that Connolly was fostered this would not quite be the case.
The Six Teens was the most lyrically interesting of their big 1973/4 hits, referencing the disturbances of 1968, but it was the start of their popular decline.
