Published on Mar 26, 1999
Two rhetorical questions to start out today’s review:
If Dick Taylor hadn’t left an early incarnation of The Rolling
Stones, would The Pretty Things ever have come into existence?
Had The Rolling Stones not become the superstars they are today,
would The Pretty Things now be the household name?
These are questions I’ve been pondering, both with the recent
release of the latest album from Phil May and company (
Rage Before Beauty – we’ll get to it soon!) and the release
a few months ago of five albums from their back catalog. Today,
we’ll look at their self-titled debut album from 1965.
At first glance, The Pretty Things might have sounded like a
Stones clone, albeit with a slightly harder edge at times. Both
bands came up in the birth of the British blues scene in the early
’60s, and with Taylor’s departure from an early lineup of the
Stones, The Pretty Things came into existence. Their antics were
the stories of legend – it’s said that drummer Vivian Prince was
the mold from which Keith Moon came from, and compared to Prince,
Moon was a pussycat. May’s vocal sneer wasn’t quite as strong as
Mick Jagger’s, but on tracks like “Rosalyn,” May showed he was no
slouch in the vocals-with-an-attitude department.
Musically,
The Pretty Things has the rough-and-tumble feel of a band
who wanted to grind out their album while they still had a chance.
Recorded in just 48 hours, the feel is often sloppy, often
energetic, and is a veritable mixed bag for the listener. By the
time this album – expanded from the original 11-track British
version – wraps up, you feel like you’ve been in the blues version
of a slam dance.
The birth cries of this band can be very interesting, especially
when tracks like “Rosalyn”, “Roadrunner”, “Judgment Day” and “The
Moon Is Rising” kick in. Relying on several Bo Diddley compositions
provides an anchor for the band, giving them something with
structure to return to after trying their hand at some originals.
(Whatever the “popping” noise is on “13, Chester Street,” it’s
damned annoying. It almost sounds like someone had a movie
clapboard, and was playing with it during the recording.)
Despite the historical importance of
The Pretty Things, I do have two complaints. First, the
liner notes are sorely lacking some key information, such as which
of the 11 tracks were on the British version (information I got
from All-Music Guide), and which tracks were substituted on the
American version. Some basic information laid out in a simple
format would have been a great help to the newcomers to The Pretty
Things, like myself.
Second, while the inclusion of bonus material is intriguing,
after a while, listening to this disc becomes a little exhausting.
Whether it’s because of the hopped-up energy that is poured into
the performances on these tracks or because there’s not enough
variety in the music I’m not sure, but you feel like a prize
fighter after the main event once this disc finally stops spinning
in the player.
The multimedia section, by the way, is decent enough – though I
couldn’t see the video until after I re-installed QuickTime and
rebooted my computer.
The Pretty Things was not an album released to compete with
The Rolling Stones; rather, the two bands ended up complementing
each other. If the mid-’60s British blues scene is your cup of tea,
then this remastered album may well be the Rosetta Stone in your
collection. For the rest of us, it’s an interesting disc to put on
in small doses.