Drummer Chris Townson and singer Andy Ellison formed The Clockwork Onions in the town of Great Bookham in 1965, which later became the Few, and then the Silence. The Silence consisted of Townson and Ellison, plus Geoff McClelland on guitar and John Hewlett on bass guitar, and while performing in France in mid-1966, Townson met the Yardbirds's manager Simon Napier-Bell and invited him to come and see the Silence. Napier-Bell described them as "positively the worst group I'd ever seen", but still agreed to manage them, changing their name to John's Children, dressing them up in white stage outfits and encouraging them to be outrageous to attract the attention of the press. Their outrageous stage shows included on-stage fights, fake blood and feathers, and trashing their instruments, as the band whipped their audience into a frenzy. Napier-Bell signed them to the Yardbirds's record label, Columbia Records, and they released their first single in late 1966, being the Napier-Bell co-write 'Smashed Blocked'/'Strange Affair' (with the A-side released as 'The Love I Thought I'd Found' in the UK), but because of his lack of confidence in the band's musical abilities, Napier-Bell used session musicians on the recording. To everyone's surprise 'Smashed Blocked' broke into the bottom of the US Billboard Hot 100 and reached local top ten charts in Florida and California. In early 1967 they released their second single, 'Just What You Want – Just What You'll Get'/'But You're Mine', which also featured session musicians, plus a guitar solo from Jeff Beck on the b-side, and this one made it to the British Top 40.
The band's third single, 'Not the Sort Of Girl (You'd Like To Take To Bed)', was rejected outright by their UK label, which prompted the band to switch to Track Records, publishers of artists like the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Who. In the meantime, their US label, White Whale Records, asked for an album, and Napier-Bell and the group obliged, producing 'Orgasm'. This was a fake live album they recorded in the studio, with overdubbed screams taken from the Beatles' 'A Hard Day's Night', and it was Napier-Bell's idea to give the album a "live" feel to make it seem like the band was very popular in England. However, White Whale rejected 'Orgasm' because of its title, and pressure from Daughters of the American Revolution, and it was four years before it eventually appeared in 1971. In March 1967 Napier-Bell replaced guitarist McClelland with Marc Bolan, another of his clients, who took over as lead guitarist, and also took on the role of the band's singer/songwriter. Bolan composed and sang on the band's next single, 'Desdemona', which was banned by the BBC because of the controversial lyric, "Lift up your skirt and fly". In April 1967 Napier-Bell arranged for John's Children to tour Germany as support act to The Who.
The Who were notorious for their own wild stage performances, which included smashing their instruments, and so John's Children pulled out all the stops and upstaged the Who with performances that included Bolan whipping his guitar with a chain, Townson attacking his drums, Ellison and Hewlett pretending to fight each other, and Ellison ripping open pillows and diving into the audience. In Düsseldorf they caused a riot at the venue, and The Who were not happy at being upstaged and so sent the band home mid-tour. Notwithstanding John's Children's antics in Germany, Townson was later asked to replace Keith Moon on drums near the end of the Who's UK tour in June that year after Moon had injured himself demolishing his drum kit on stage. With no time for rehearsal, Townson performed with the Who for five days, and did it so well that most of the audience didn't realise it wasn't Moon. John's Children played at The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream concert at the Alexandra Palace in London on 29 April 1967, and Bolan left two months later following disagreements with the way Napier-Bell was producing the band's next single, 'A Midsummer Night's Scene'.
The single was never released, but in its place the b-side of 'Desdemona', 'Remember Thomas à Becket', was re-recorded with new lyrics and released as 'Come And Play With Me In The Garden'. After Bolan left, Townson switched to guitar and former roadie Chris Colville took over on drums, and the band recorded another single, 'Go Go Girl', which was a Bolan composition that he later recorded with Tyrannosaurus Rex as 'Mustang Ford'. They recorded one more single, 'It's Been A Long Time', which was issued as an Andy Ellison solo single, and then embarked on a 'disastrous' tour of Germany, after which they split up in 1968. Ellison went on to make several solo singles before resurfacing in Jet in 1974, along with drummer Chris Townson, who then metamorphosed into Radio Stars in the mid-Seventies. John's Children were active for less than two years and were not very successful commercially, having released only six singles and one (in my opinion) extremely disappointing album, but they are seen by some as the precursors of glam rock, and as their reputation has grown over the years their singles have become amongst the most sought-after British 1960's rock collectables. As the 'Orgasm' album is almost unlistenable because of the fake screams all over it, we need a collection of the band's music that actually represents what they were doing in the studio, and there was more than enough music recorded by 1967 to release an album, which would have included a few single tracks, some alternate takes, and some of their demos, and had they decided to do that then this is what it could have sounded like.
Track listing
01 The Love I Thought I'd Found
02 But She's Mine
03 Midsummer Night's Scene
04 Hippy Gumbo
05 Strange Affair
06 Go-Go Girl
07 Remember Thomas À Becket
08 Desdemona
09 The Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith
10 Casbah Candy
11 Sara, Crazy Child
12 Just What You Want - Just What You'll Get
13 Not The Sort Of Girl You Take To Bed
14 Sally Was An Angel
15 Jagged Time Lapse
