The Pretty Things - Emotions (1967)

The Pretty Things grew out of Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, which consisted of Dick Taylor, fellow Sidcup Art College student Keith Richards, and Mick Jagger, among others. When Brian Jones was recruiting for his own band, all three joined Brian and Ian Stewart and were dubbed Rollin' Stones by Jones in June 1962, but because there were too many guitar players in the band, Taylor switched to bass. He quit the Stones five months later, when he was accepted at the Central School of Art and Design in London, but Phil May, another Sidcup student, convinced him to form a new band, and so Taylor was once again playing guitar, with May singing and playing harmonica. They recruited John Stax on bass and harmonica, Brian Pendleton on rhythm guitar, and Pete Kitley on drums, who was soon replaced by Viv Andrews, and then in turn by Viv Prince. After signing a deal with Fontana Records, their first three singles appeared in the UK Singles Chart in 1964 and 1965, with 'Don't Bring Me Down' breaking the Top Ten. They never had a hit in the United States, but had considerable success in their native UK, and in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands. The first of what would be many personnel changes over the years also began, with Prince, whose wild antics had become too much for the other members to endure, being the first to go in November 1965, being replaced by Skip Alan. 

They released two albums in 1965, with the self-titled debut appearing in March, and 'Get The Picture' following in December. 1966 saw the R&B scene fall into decline and the Pretty Things began moving away, flirting with soul music, and in December 1966 came the single 'Progress', where the band were joined by a brass section. Sessions for their next album 'Emotions' were spread across a few months during which there were major changes in the band's line up. Their record company Fontana had not been happy with how their three 1966 singles 'Midnight To Six Man', 'Come See Me' and the Kinks cover 'A House In The Country' had sold, and so assigned them producer Steve Rowland, who was producing hits for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. The band were not pleased by this intervention and were keen to leave Fontana, so they simply went along with Fontana's demands to fulfil the contract which included a third album. The first result of the sessions was the 'Progress' single, and though it was a fairly commercial record, it failed to sell. Pendleton was unhappy with the direction the band was heading in, and, with money being rather short, he quit the band that Christmas. A month later, bassist John Stax, similarly unhappy, also quit, so May called childhood friend Wally Waller to help record the rest of the album. In the event, Waller took over the bass duties, and brought in his ex-bandmate from Bern Elliott And The Fenmen, Jon Povey, as the drummer and keyboardist.

Waller and Povey were huge Beach Boys fans and between them had developed their own distinctive harmonies, which when paired with May's vocals gave the Pretty Things a new dimension. The style of 'Emotions' showed a fusion of hard blues and psychedelia, but Rowland decided the new songs sounded rather empty, so he enlisted arranger Reg Tilsley to write and conduct orchestral arrangements for most of the tracks. Again, the band were not pleased by this but to appease Fontana and be able to break free, they went along with the idea. Tilsley was given tapes of demos and work in progress of the songs, and wrote the arrangements, some of which were fairly simple, requiring a brass section, whilst others were more elaborate, bringing in strings. Whilst some of these arrangements were overdubbed on what had already been recorded, Taylor has recalled there were a couple of sessions where the band and Tilsley's ensemble were together in the studio. Because the songs had mostly already been written, new members Waller and Povey weren't able to contribute much to the writing, nor add their harmonies to most of the album, although they did appear on 'Out In The Night', 'Bright Lights Of The City', 'My Time', and 'Children', which was also issued as a single.

Outside the studio, the band's live sound had changed drastically as they became involved in the burgeoning psychedelic scene, and by the time 'Emotions' was released, the contrast between the band on record and on stage was enormous, and so they did nothing to promote it, and as soon as they could they left Fontana to seek out a new record contract. None of the songs from 'Emotions' were ever played live, and they simply carried on as if it didn't exist. The only exception was the single 'Children', which they did play live onstage in Paris, and which was broadcast live on French TV.

Paul over at albumsthatshouldexist had a pretty good go at fixing this album a few years ago, when a re-issue of the album included undubbed versions of a few of the songs, which could then just be replaced in the running order, but the only problem was that they were in mono, as opposed to the stereo versions on the original record. Also, a few tracks were not presented in this form, and so he found a version of the record with extreme stereo separation, and as the strings and horns were mostly in one channel then he could isolate and remove them. Since then, programmes to edit music have come on in leaps and bounds, and so I am now able to take the original stereo tracks and remove the strings and horns, and not only that, but by isolating the guitar and vocals and then putting the whole thing back together with some panning, I was even able to make a rudimentary stereo version of the stand-alone single 'House In The Country' to tag onto the end of the rather short album. To distinguish the cover from the original I've simply reversed the colours of the text.  

Track listing

01 Death Of A Socialite
02 Children
03 The Sun
04 There Will Never Be Another Day
05 House Of Ten
06 Out In The Night
07 One Long Glance
08 Growing In My Mind
09 Photographer
10 Bright Lights Of The City
11 Tripping
12 My Time
13 A House In The Country