The Pretty Things are Britain's great lost band

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Sixties heyday: ( from left) Phil May, Wally Allen, Dick Taylor, Skip Alan and John Povey in 1967

Going strong: May is still performing with Taylor

Not many people will remember The Pretty Things' first chart hit, Don't Bring Me Down, from 1964. Especially as it was also their last. Yet they are still worshipped by some of rock's biggest names, from Pink Floyd and Aerosmith to The Clash, The Libertines, Kasabian and The Dirty Pretty Things.

The great, lost British band, The Pretty Things were there at the beginning, emerging in London at the very moment when rock and roll overturned the old order. Members have died, disappeared or simply retired hurt, but today founder members Phil May and Dick Taylor remain bloodied and unbowed, their turbocharged, blues-fuelled R&B more revered than ever. They are about to achieve mainstream recognition at last when, on 11 June, they are handed Mojo magazine's coveted Hero award.

“We've taken a few kicks in our time,” says May, the 64-year-old singer, “but I can't look back and say I regret anything. We're just a bunch of uncompromising bastards.”

In truth, they have been a bunch of uncompromising bastards for 46 years of titanic, often self-destructive struggle. These days, the intense and affable May may sport the regulation mature rock star outfit of wraparound sunglasses, leather jacket and silver-grey coiffure, but The Pretty Things have been the ultimate outsiders from the moment Dartford Scala barred them because they refused to wear dinner jackets on stage. “We wore jean-jackets: they were our suits,” May recalls.

Such rebellion sounds tame now, but those were conservative times and the principles of rock and roll had not yet been established. The youth of the day were desperate for their cultural revolution, however, and an undercurrent of raw violence followed The Pretty Things, which no doubt stopped the band from reaping the same commercial rewards as the more malleable Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. That must have irked Taylor, especially, since he had earlier played with the pair in their Sidcup art college band, the pre-Rolling Stones Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys.

Outsiders or not, these revered pop Zeligs moved in the most rarefied of Sixties company. Bob Dylan, on a visit to London, insisted that bard and band spent a day together. “We've never met since,” May sighs, but Dylan did namecheck the group on his song Tombstone Blues.

May has plenty of colourful stories to tell. The Beatles were Pretty Things fans and hours after Sgt Pepper was completed, May found himself in an early morning lock-in at The Speakeasy near Carnaby Street, with John Lennon and George Harrison. “They put Sgt Pepper on. All I can remember is George standing on a table playing air guitar to the first few notes and then my stepping out into the early light being blown away. We were very, very stoned.”

And then there was May's date with Rudolf Nureyev and Judy Garland. “Our late drummer, Viv Prince, had been trawling London's drinking clubs one afternoon. He'd encountered Judy, had arranged to meet her later and informed me we were on a double date. She walked in with Rudy on her arm. She was in quite a state: she held my hand so tightly her nails cut into my flesh. There was blood.”

Things took a more surreal turn still when the party staggered back to the Pretty Things' Mayfair pad in Chester Street, where they lived with Rolling Stone Brian Jones. The last thing May remembers is Prince (imagine a less stable Keith Moon) and Jones wrestling on the carpet, each attempting to stab the other with a penknife. “If one of them had slipped ...” And what about his date with Nureyev? Did he, as legend has it, um ... ?

“Look, if I'd been to bed with Rudolf Nureyev and I could remember it, I'd certainly tell you.” I believe him, too. The band's lost days and nights must have hindered their progress as much as their attitude.

As the Stones and The Who conquered the world, the musically similar Pretty Things were scrapping with yokels after gigs in deepest Wiltshire. “The farmhands at the back hated their women throwing knickers at us and afterwards a dozen of them jumped us. We were getting a good kicking, so our roadie got out a shotgun, but that didn't stop them and one of these idiots grabbed the barrel and started swinging around on it.”

New Zealand turned out to be a more welcoming place to play. They accepted Prince's somewhat pungent jewellery: a recently deceased crayfish fashioned into a brooch (“Oh, it stank”). They tolerated the bottles labelled “meths” that the boys ostentatiously guzzled at breakfast (“water, actually”), but after May had started a fire on an internal flight while trying to light a joint, the band were banned from the country.

And, just for good measure, from Australia without actually setting foot there. “A few seats caught alight, but it was blown out of all proportion,” May shrugs.

Miraculously, The Pretty Things continued to record, and the albums remained strong. S F Sorrow, a flop on its release in 1968 but now their most revered work, was the first ever concept album — a melancholy collection of songs about a working-class anti-hero. Their other great critical hit was Parachute, voted Rolling Stone magazine's album of the year in 1970.

So, the critics loved them. Other bands loved them. Dare I suggest that they may have thrown it all away? “So what?” May counters, sounding more nonchalant than belligerent. “We're selfish. We've never thought commercially. To be honest, I admire those who do, but we just can't. We've been offered songs that would have been hits, but how could we have been so dishonest to record something we didnt like?”

Their cult status continued to grow through the Seventies. Led Zeppelin's notorious manager Peter Grant took on their affairs (a man full of “rage and anger — he saw a lot of himself in us, but he was like a father to me”) and The Clash namechecked the Pretty Things' single Midnight to Six Man on (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais. The Eighties, though, were “a musical desert. The light was always on inside us on stage, but I couldn't see the circle turning our way again.”

How wrong May was. It was their first studio album in nearly 20 years, 1999's Rage...Before Beauty, rapturously received, that brought them to the attention of a new generation of fans, including Pete Doherty and Kasabian. For one who has so obviously lived the rock and roll life style, he looks remarkably good — but then he does go to the gym these days. He has two grown-up children — his daughter, Sorrel, 31 is an acupuncturist, and Paris, 26, is in up-and-coming band, Mavro. May is no longer with their mother.

There is plenty of material for the autobiography he is now writing, between working on a new Pretty Things album. But has he mellowed?
“Back then, we were only angry about policemen feeling our collar because we had long hair or were smoking dope. Now we've got the race thing, the whole Middle East situation and Afghanistan. Anger is still the battery that powers our music.”

May's unexpected political awakening is as surprising as his newly found social conscience. On Monday, the latter-day Pretty Things will perform at ChildLine Rocks at the O2 Indigo, on a bill featuring members of Deep Purple and Steve Harley.

“We dont do many charity gigs,” he concedes, “but ChildLine is incredible. It's finally given children a voice: after all, if you're with a dodgy mum and dad, what can you do otherwise? Check into the local Hilton with their credit card?”

ChildLine Rocks is at O2 Indigo on
1 June. Information: 0870 242 4442, www.childlinerocks.co.uk

 

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