Moved by The Move

 

I was utterly oblivious of The Move for most of the 1960s. Their run of hit singles was nearing its end when I finally became aware of them with the release of their only number one hit, “Blackberry Way”. It held the top spot for just one week in February 1969, around the time of my brother’s sixth birthday. He had the record bought for him, so we heard it a lot. As a song, I rather liked it, but when I saw the band miming to it on Top of the Pops, I was aghast. In response to Roy Wood’s lyric ‘what am I supposed to do now?’ I replied, instantly: “get a haircut.” The single had been released on EMI’s Regal Zonophone label, an antiquated imprint that had been revived in the wake of the mid 60s fad for Victoriana and Edwardiana. I had no knowledge of this, of course, but noticed the old fashioned logos on the label and sleeve and wondered why the band wasn’t on a more modern label...

Hailing from Birmingham, The Move were bona fide local heroes. People were always saying they’d seen members of the band around Sutton Coldfield where we lived, and this knowledge seemed to confirm what I’d thought all along – “Blackberry Way” had surely been inspired by the real life Blackberry Lane, only a mile or so from where we lived. The song also seemed to be referencing Sutton Park with lyrics like ‘down to the park/ overgrowing but the trees are bare’ and ‘boats on the lake/ unattended now for all to drown.’

Our dad, a semi-pro drummer, even played on the same bill as the Move: going through some of his old reel-to-reel tapes many years later, I found a very muffled recording of a band doing a number of incongruous cover versions and an interesting version of “I Can Hear the Grass Grow” with different lyrics. I knew that The Move had played cabaret dates in the late 60s and asked my dad if it was them on the tape. He confirmed that it was. I was much too young to have seen them myself, though my partner Julia, seven years older than me, saw them playing an outdoor date in Sutton Park at which, she reports, Carl Wayne was completely drunk.

Back in 1969, The Move were finally on my radar. Their next single came along at the end of the summer holidays in the form of “Curly”, an upbeat folky number featuring a recorder and detuned acoustic guitar. There was a story going around at the time that the song had been written about Carl Wayne’s pet pig, and the BBC’s local news magazine Midlands Today even ran a short feature that seemed to confirm the tale. The Move’s next venture into the charts, however, was radically different – the plodding, proto-metal “Brontosaurus” was the heaviest sound I’d ever heard on a pop single. Too heavy for me – I preferred the lighter touch of “Curly” and “Blackberry Way”. The band dropped off my radar for a couple of years during which time Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne were busy getting their new project, The Electric Light Orchestra off the ground, and the next time I heard them on the radio was at the time of their last chart entry, “California Man” (its fifties-tinged sound foreshadowing Roy Wood’s future musical direction with Wizzard).

In all this time, the only Move record to have made it into our household was the “Blackberry Way” single. Then, around 1974, my brother found a compilation album in our local branch of Woolworths. Fire Brigade was a collection of singles and B-sides that had been put out on EMI’s budget label Music For Pleasure in 1972, the first Move compilation LP ever to be issued. Being an EMI release, the album omitted the band’s early hits on the Deram label, picking up their discography with “Flowers in the Rain”, but it was nevertheless an outstanding collection. It was this album that really introduced me to the band, and the songwriting genius of Roy Wood.

MFP’s sleevenote on the album was, frankly, a joke, clocking in at a mere fifty-six words: ‘A lengthy commentary on this superb collection of titles by The Move would be superfluous,’ it ran, neatly excusing the writer from having to say anything more or do any research. This left new listeners like me with no clear idea which tracks had been singles, and when any of them had been released. The centre label at least provided copyright dates, giving some idea of chronology, and you could clearly hear the developments in the band’s sound, from the light, jangling pop of “Flowers…” all the way through to the heavyweight “Brontosaurus.” 

The album kicked off with what is probably the band’s best remembered hit, “Flowers in the Rain”, followed by its B-side “(Here we go round) the Lemon Tree”. But “Lemon Tree” sounded like an A-side to me, as did every other track on the collection. Track three, “Beautiful Daughter”, was a ballad with strings that had been intended for single release but pulled at the last minute when lead singer Carl Wayne left the band in 1970. This was followed by the band’s flop single “Wild Tiger Woman” – released in 1968, the track clearly showcases the influence of Jimi Hendrix with whom The Move had been hanging out, playing support and singing backing vocals on a couple of his own recordings. It was too much for the BBC, who banned it on account of the line ‘tied to the bed, she’s waiting to be fed’. Tony Blackburn reportedly didn’t think much of it either. Side one was rounded off with “Blackberry Way”, whose pedigree was familiar enough to me, and I well remembered “Curly” which kicked off side two. This was followed by “Omnibus” – surely another single? But no, this catchy, commercial song had been relegated to the B-side of “Wild Tiger Woman”, a decision the band later regretted. The psychedelic “Walk Upon the Water” came next and again, it was hard to believe that this hadn’t been a chart hit back in 1967. It too was a B-side, the flip of "Fire Brigade", and was, in fact, the earliest recording on the album, having been taped back in January 1967. The band can be seen playing a very tight live version on the German TV show Beat Club, in a performance recorded in June ‘67. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6AA0qWI4dQ

The album took a heavier turn with “When Alice Comes Back to the Farm”, an unsuccessful single from 1970 – I didn’t care so much for this kind of sound – before reverting to psychedelia with the apocalyptic stomp of “Yellow Rainbow”. The album’s closer was the plodding “Brontosaurus” which I’d heard back in 1970. As the cursory sleevenote assured us, ‘this, undoubtedly [was] the best of The Move.’

At this time (1974), the Move’s original album releases were unobtainable, but luckily MFP made a second collection available, this time comprised of album tracks. I acquired this shortly afterwards, and while some of the heavier, experimental tracks were less immediately appealing, it included the sublime “Mist on a Monday Morning”, a baroque folk tune that outclassed everything else in its field. Once again, it was more than strong enough to have been released as a single, but ended up tucked away on the band’s first LP released in 1968. The same album also found room for the psychedelic smash-that-never-was “Cherry Blossom Clinic”. The song had been slated for single release in 1967 but was relegated to album track status after fears that its mental illness theme might result in bad publicity. The Move had had quite enough of that already, following a recent legal spat with Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Between them, the two MFP collections harvested all the band’s best cuts, ignoring the cover versions that bulked out albums like Shazam! (1970) and passing over the final album Message From the Country (1971). It wasn’t until some years later that I turned up the original albums at various record fairs only to discover that I already owned all the best tracks on them. I wasn’t interested in cover versions like Moby Grape’s “Hey Grandma” or cabaret schmaltz like their ill-advised cover of “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart”. All of Roy Wood’s numbers from their first two LPs had been included on the MFP collections, so for many years these remained the only Move albums in my collection. My brother turned up a copy of the single “I Can Hear the Grass Grow” at a school record fair, and with that we more or less had the band’s entire singles output covered, save for the first release “Night of Fear”.

When their output began to be collected on CD, collectors were finally able to hear rare cuts including the unreleased “Vote For Me” and a few other early efforts, but nothing came close to the quality of the songs on those old MFP albums.

* * *

The Move are probably one of the most underrated bands of all time. Whilst their contemporaries like The Kinks and The Who would go on to acquire legendary status, The Move have never been held in quite such high regard. When did you last see a documentary on the band? Never, that’s when. And how many books and articles have interrogated their career? Very few.

Why is this? Roy Wood’s songs were some of the best examples of psychedelic pop ever recorded, and The Move were arguably the first British band to fully realise the commercial potential of psychedelia. It may sound like heresy, but I’d choose any of the Move’s chart hits from 1967-69 in preference to the Beatles’ singles of that same period. The only downside to the Move’s catalogue is that some of the mixes are decidedly iffy. “Cherry Blossom Clinic” should sound fabulous, but it’s all tinny and top end, with little or no low or middle in the mix. Their singles were all mixed for mono, and often rather badly at that. Yet the songs still shine through on account of their inherent quality. 

Why doesn't Roy Wood get the plaudits so often showered on his 1960s and 70s contemporaries? There's no questioning his songwriting genius, yet even his own band members could be unmoved by his talents – Carl Wayne refused to sing lead vocal on “Blackberry Way”, while Trevor Burton felt the song was too commercial, preferring the harder, bluesy sound of cuts like “Wild Tiger Woman”, and ultimately choosing to leave the band.

Roy Wood still lives in the Midlands, and over the past couple of decades, I’ve seen him on several occasions – twice in a branch of Tesco, and more recently in a Lichfield pub that is also frequented by 70s crooner Tony Christie. Every time, I’ve wanted to go up and thank him for giving us so much great music, and every time I’ve stopped myself – he doesn’t need me to tell him he’s a genius. For me, it was tantamount to running into Paul McCartney (and at least Roy has never blotted his copybook with a Frog Chorus). ‘My God,’ I thought, ‘this guy in the purple specs pushing his shopping trolley around Tesco is the bloke who wrote Blackberry Way… Omnibus… Flowers in the Rain… Fire Brigade...’

When Alan Partridge was asked to name his favourite Beatles album he answered, unconvincingly, ‘The Best of the Beatles.’ But if you asked me what’s my favourite Move album, the answer has to be that old MFP compilation, Fire Brigade. I dug it out and played it this afternoon. It’s not just the best of The Move – for sheer songwriting quality, it’s one of the best albums I know of.

Credit Where It's Due...

 

Ten Years of Talking Pictures

It is ten years this week since the digital channel Talking Pictures TV first began broadcasting. When they started out, TPTV were the only broadcaster out of hundreds across the Sky and Freeview platforms to base their schedules around vintage film and television. The channel grew out of the Renown Pictures DVD label, a small publisher that specialised in obscure and neglected relics of British cinema, with a strong focus on the immediate postwar era.

Back in 2015, TPTV’s output was comprised mostly of old movies from the Renown catalogue, plus a handful of vintage American TV series like Amos Burke and Honey West. It was a very black and white channel, and the preponderance of old movies probably accounts for why it chose to present itself in the manner of a fifties cinema – a stylistic trope that persists to this day.

I was, of course, involved in the business of old film and television myself, employed by the Network DVD label, who had been instrumental in resurrecting vintage and forgotten gems from both media. At first, there was no crossover in content, and TP had no access to the ITV archive which was such a prime source of material for us. 

I soon became aware, however, that there was a big difference between Network and Talking Pictures – public awareness. TPTV very quickly became a talking point across the mainstream media – I even heard it used as a gag on the radio comedy series Dead Ringers. They’d made an impact. Whereas Network had not. Granted, we had our supporters in the form of a small but loyal fanbase, but we remained unknown to the wider audience who had picked up on Talking Pictures.

It wasn’t long before the new channel started making inroads into Network’s back catalogue. The biggest early success was when they secured the rights to the dimly remembered ITC crime drama Gideon’s Way. They got a lot of praise when it debuted on their channel, with viewers welcoming its return after an absence of over fifty years... Except that it hadn’t been absent – anyone wishing to revisit Gideon’s Way could have done so on the medium of DVD: Network released the series way back in 200x – it was one of our earliest ITV releases. We just forgot to tell anyone we were doing it – or rather, we didn’t make enough of a song and dance about it, and a potential audience slipped through our fingers.

Before long, more and more Network titles were appearing in Talking Pictures’ schedule, and each new title won plaudits from viewers and critics for their dedication in reviving lost classics. They’re still showing Budgie, yet it had been available on Network DVD for years. Eventually, they added the Gerry Anderson series to their roster, and again, were showered with praise. Well, why not? They were making the effort where others didn’t – there are very few broadcasters willing to chance their arm on obscure black and white television of sixty plus years’ vintage.

Now that Network is no more, TPTV seems increasingly like the label’s afterlife. From our own archives, they have bought rights to series including Space Patrol, Dial 999 and The Cheaters, none of which would have been available had it not been for the efforts of Tim Beddows in acquiring the rights in the first place. I’m not saying this in a spirit of criticism – quite the reverse, in fact. It’s good that this old archive material is being brought to air instead of being left to rot (quite literally) in film archives or sold off to collectors. I know for a fact that rarities from Tim's personal archive are being broadcast on TPTV – today's schedule includes an archive film of the Blue Pullman railway service, which we watched some years ago when it resided in his collection, and other items have turned up on the weekly Footage Detectives programme. It's just a shame that Tim never gets more credit for his efforts in preserving vintage films and television series.

Some years ago, Network sold TPTV broadcast rights to the BBC TV series Maigret – but it went to air without any on-screen credit for Network (who had spent a lot of money on rights and restoration). Why had we not appended a ‘Network Presentation’ credit to the Maigret masters? None of this would really matter were it not for the fact that, once again, it was TPTV who got showered with praise when they brought Maigret to air. I even had people asking me if I’d seen it. Seen it? I’d only set the whole thing in motion back in 2018 when I recommended to Tim Beddows that we should try to release it. I don’t often blow my own trumpet, but, honestly, without me, those old Maigrets would still be in the BBC's vaults...

In the past decade, Talking Pictures has flown the flag for vintage television and film, finding an audience that more mainstream broadcasters have always sought to avoid. They’ve shown the way for others to follow, and viewers can now take their pick from a number of other channels dedicated to archive content. Newcomer Rewind TV has been going for exactly a year, and others are following their example – although in some cases, there is plenty of room for improvement.

Talking Pictures has successfully carved out a niche for itself as a provider of 'I thought I'd never get to see that again' televisual moments. If they've proved anything in these past ten years, it's the simple fact that a broadcaster will always find an audience where a physical media provider might struggle. Is it my kind of television? Undoubtedly. My only regret is that Network was never as successful in promoting the same kind of vintage content.

Oh, and one last thing – is anyone ever going to give that flustered usherette the right change?

Ra-Boom De-Aye!

 

Revisiting the Tara King Avengers

There’s a lot of received wisdom in popular culture. It’s hard to approach any book, film, comic or TV series without being influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by the prevailing consensus of opinion. You don’t need to have seen any of the Bond movies to know that, for most people, Sean Connery was the best in the role; and it goes without saying that Thunderbirds was Gerry Anderson’s finest hour. That’s all well and good: but what if you don’t happen to agree? In this blog, I’m going to argue for a contentious point of view regarding one of cult TV’s most beloved properties: The Avengers.

I first got to see The Avengers towards the end of the Diana Rigg era, when it was being shown late on Saturday evenings by ABC television. The company had less than a year left of its franchise, and when it ended, in August 1968, it effectively became Thames. This move signalled a shift in scheduling for the series, and here in the Midlands it now occupied a Friday evening slot when, in September 1968, the Tara King episodes began transmission. When this run ended, in the spring of 1969, it was replaced by Diana Rigg repeats. Thereafter, it would be almost a decade before I saw anything more of The Avengers. Late night repeats continued until around 1971, but these were well after my bedtime.

By the late 1970s, my friend Tim Beddows and myself were soon trying to launch an Avengers Appreciation Society, unhindered by the fact that we’d seen barely half a dozen episodes from only one of the six original series. In the second edition of our very occasional newsletter, I found myself with half a page to spare and for want of anything better to go in it, I wrote a short critique of the Tara King era, arguing that the introduction of Patrick Newell as ‘Mother’ had been to the detriment of the series. The article prompted at least one letter of criticism, from no less an authority than Brian Clemens. A nerve had clearly been touched, and knowing what I now know, I can understand why. Clemens himself had brought in Mother as part of an attempt to salvage the series which was failing under the production of John Bryce.

When I wrote that short critique, I’d not had sight of a ‘Mother-era’ episode in over ten years. Not long afterwards, Channel 4 began a repeat run of The Avengers, beginning, logically enough, with the most popular era, series five… the colour Diana Rigg episodes. The repeats continued into the Tara King era. And then I lost interest…

It wasn’t until a few years ago, and a repeat run on ITV4, that I finally sat down to watch the Tara King era in earnest, and when the channel ran them again, I watched them once more. At time of writing, I’ve just completed a third run through, this time on the That’s Action channel, which means that I’ve now seen most of the Tara King episodes at least four times.

It was around the beginning of this fourth time around that realisation dawned – I was enjoying the Tara King episodes more than those of the Emma Peel era. This couldn’t be right, could it? But more to the point, why did I prefer them? 

I will, of course, concede that there are episodes from series six that are almost without merit – Terry Nation’s Invasion of the Earthmen is diabolical, and The Rotters plays out like an amateur’s attempt to create a ‘classic’ Di Rigg episode. These are by no means the only examples. Yet, taken as a whole, the series has, for me, something that the Emma Peel episodes lack.

One aspect of this was the more imaginative use of location filming during series six. The Emma Peel era established a milieu for the stories that has since become known, quaintly, as ‘Avengerland’, typified by the bucolic scenery to be found in the immediate environs of the series’ production base at Elstree studios. Aside from the London mews where Steed lived, the location work never ventured into urban areas: it was all country lanes and chocolate box villages, like Aldbury (used as a location in Murdersville and Dead Man’s Treasure). Watching the Tara episodes, I began to notice a greater diversity in the location work, none more so than The Morning After, which all takes place in the streets of St. Albans. Elsewhere, we even get to see some council estate backdrops (False Witness), and a memorable lighthouse (All Done With Mirrors). The whole look of the series is different.

On top of all that scenery, we now have Mother: Patrick Newell’s irascible performance definitely adds entertainment value, and his ever-changing headquarters provide some of the most bizarre visuals seen in any of the six series. Newell may have been ten years younger than Patrick Macnee, but there’s no denying he was perfect casting as Steed’s superior.

Perhaps the most important aspect that sets this series apart from its predecessors is the direction, and here I would argue for Robert Fuest as the most creative and innovative director the show ever employed. His name on the credits can salvage an otherwise average episode like Game or The Rotters. Fuest directed only seven episodes, including the oft-reviled Pandora (which I actually rather like), but his style feels like a signature for the whole series.

The stories themselves are different – there’s less of the tounge-permanently-in-cheek vibe that had become a calling card of series five in particular, and some of the stories are much darker in tone, occasionally venturing into the realm of the psychological dramas that Brian Clemens would explore in his famous Thriller series. There are, of course, a few duds, or episodes that try too hard to be off the wall – I don’t personally like Look… Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One (etc), which is too campy and theatrical and plays like a bad Emma Peel storyline, but on the whole the series managed to maintain quite a high standard of writing and direction. Most fans agree that it all ended on a sour note with the oddity that is Bizarre, and it’s clear that Brian Clemens had by this point totally lost interest and simply played the self-indulgence card: "Bagpipes??" The tag scene with Steed’s home-made space rocket is preposterous and Mother even breaks the fourth wall. It’s all a bit end of term, frankly.

Then, of course, there’s Tara herself. I’d never argue for her in preference to Emma Peel, and outside of the tag scenes her character never quite develops quite the same on-screen chemistry with Steed; but she works. She’s tough, but also vulnerable, and in some episodes actually arrives at the eleventh hour to save the day. Perhaps the producers sensed that the Steed/Tara relationship wasn’t as successful as Steed/Peel because the characters are kept apart for whole episodes at a time – The Morning After sees Tara sleep through the whole story, and in Killer she’s on vacation, replaced by Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney. On the other hand, Tara does get to carry several stories almost single-handed, including All Done With Mirrors and the Prisoner-inspired Wish You Were Here, both superior entries in the series.

I think the problem with series six is inconsistency: after a shaky start, it takes several episodes to establish a style and atmosphere, but once it does, there’s enough variety both in terms of ideas and visuals to keep viewers hooked week after week. With the few notable exceptions I’ve mentioned above, none of the episodes is quite as bad as popular opinion seems to suggest, and for myself, I’d still rather watch Bizarre than almost any episode of The Champions.

The Avengers series six may be a bit of a curate’s egg, but where it’s good, I’d argue it’s up there with the best of Diana Rigg. Maybe I’m biased, as series six was the first Avengers era that I got to watch from start to finish, but even allowing for nostalgia, I still feel that these episodes have much to recommend them. Perhaps it’s time to set aside received wisdom and bang the drum for Tara King: “Ra-boom de-aye!”