Original Vinyl Issue Notes:
ROGER McGOUGH and MICHAEL MCGEAR are two human beings from Liverpool. They came into a recording studio one day with a few friends. Some of the friends had musical instruments with them but some hadn't so they just played on the floor. Roger read some of his poetry and Michael sang some of his songs and the friends joined in when necessary and even when it wasn't necessary. They all had a good time. This is the LP. Roger McGough is not just a Liverpool poet but one of the Liverpool poets, part of that little group of provincial poets, unique in Great Britain, who somehow manage to live on just being poets. They've been giving readings since 1960 and built up their own local fanatical following, just as the Beatles did, long before London and the rest of the country realised what was happening. There is nothing show businessy or tinselly about the Beatles and there is nothing poetic or long-haired or sitting at a table with a glass of water about Liverpool poetry. It's all real. Since 1967 the Liverpool poets have been discovered by London, particularly Roger McGough. He has had a novel and several books of poems published. The Sunday Times even suggested him as a possible Poet Laureate. Some other Poet Laureate got the job instead, which doesn't say much for the Sunday Times suggestions. Michael McGear, the one who composes and does the singing on the LP also wrote "Thank U Very Much" which even got into the Top Ten, which doesn't say much for the Top Ten. But back to this record then which combines naturalistic poetry, Liverpool humour, and good pop music.
ONE SIDE: The words of "So Much In Love" were written jointly while Michael composed the music. He can't write music, but who can. He just sang out the tune and all together they worked out the arrangement in the studio. The words are fairly conventional, but the music is very inventive. It's a good solid, well polished pop song. It contrasts well with "A Little Bit of Heaven" (written by Roger, sung by both of them) which is a little bit of Liverpool-Irish street music, plus some contemporary black comedy. "Basement Flat" could probably drive you mad eventually, especially that pneumatic drill. It's written by Roger composed by Michael, with an echo, a cuckoo clock and friends thrown in. The whole session was inprovised, though it doesn't always show, but it does tell in the line "So why don't you marry me". You can sense Michael having a go at singing it in different ways, waiting to see how the instruments will answer him. Roger's poems, "Summer with Monika" take up the rest of side one. Andy Roberts, on guitar, is his main accompanist although other instruments join in. The music fits and complements the poetry, talking to it, commenting on the jokes or just being gently lyrical or satirical in the background. It doesn't often work, when poets read their own poetry, but it's always preferable to actors using poetry just to show off their actors' voices. The thing about Roger's voice is that it is so unpoetic. He finishes lines flatly and pronounces hair like hur and sounds like a real person. The poems, which form a narrative, are about a real couple spending a real summer in a real house, full of domestic images. It's sometimes very funny and sometimes very sad.
TWO SIDE: Begins with some piano exercises hesitant and looking for something, like many of their numbers. Roger reads his "Comeclose and Sleepnow" which is full of Roger word-play. She "put on a dress of guilt" and "shoes with broken high ideals." All clever stuff. "Yellow Book" is a beautiful ballad in the moon-june tradition but with some nicely unusual similes. The words are by Roger. The smooth singer is Michael. At the haunting piano is a haunting friend. "House In My Head", words again by Roger and music by Michael, is another with disturbing chords but still retaining that hesitant, tentative feeling. Towards the end, you can feel Michael waiting again for the pianist, talking to him, not knowing what he's going to play next. "Mr. Tickle" is Michael reading his own. All the other friends thought it was nice. I am not very keen on significant insignificance. But give it a chance. You might grow to love it. The hazy pianist in the background didn't realise he was going to be on this one. He was trying out something else in another corner of the studio. "Living Room" is again completely by Michael. Like so many of the other songs, it's rich in ideas and invention. "Do You Remember" words by Roger and music by Michael, is my favourite. The words are delightfully corny and so are the soft shoe shuffle overtones, but it's beautifully constructed. "Please Don't Run Too Fast" is Michael being simple and not trying to be significant. Michael being brilliantly simple. "Ex-Art Student", words by Roger and music by Michael, is the all-together one. All the friends were allowed their head this time, even the one banging on the floor. There's a flute talking to a sitar and a guitar blowing bubbles. There are all sorts of jungle noises. It could have gone on forever. If you listen afterwards in your head, it probably does.
HUNTER DAVIES.
Produced by All of Us.
Gnomes by Auntee Dill and Ruth
Window by Versalles Palace
Musicians by kind permission of themselves.
"Monika" poems from Frink.
A Life in the Day Of and Summer with Monika - Michael Joseph
"Come Close and Sleep Now" and "Little Bit of Heaven" from "Penguin Modern Poets 10" - Penguin
2012 CD Reissue Notes:
Remastered by at Battery Studios, NYC
A beguiling mixture of pop-rock, poetry, comedy, and a touch of psychedelia, McGough & McGear was nonetheless almost totally overlooked upon its release in the spring of 1968. The presence of some of the biggest rock stars of the era didn't help that much, as contractual complications prevented their contributions from being credited at the time. More than forty years later, this CD gives the album its first US release, and properly acknowledges the presence of Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix, among several other luminaries.
The heart of the album, however, was very much the duo of Roger McGough and Mike McGear, who with John Gorman had formed the comedy act Scaffold in Liverpool. After gaining wider recognition as regulars on the television show Gazette, they moved into whimsical comedy-pop as a recording act for Parlophone Records in 1966, with George Martin serving as producer. After a couple hitless singles, poet McGough and McGear (aka Mike McCartney, younger brother of Paul) began work on a pop-and-poetry-oriented album of their own.
Scaffold became known in the UK, explains Roger, because of their "success as essentially a wacky comedy band, whereas prior to that we played mainly in theaters as a poetry/satire spoken word trio. This LP was a return to our poetic roots in a sense, with John, who was very much a comic actor, not involved." Adds Mike, "John was a comedian; you just looked at him, and you laughed. We thought, should we try and do something different?"
When the sessions began on June 18, 1967, notes Mike, "it was just a selection of song ideas that had been done with me collaborating with Roger McGough. I don't think we had a name for it then." Accompanying them to the studio of Beatles publisher Dick James was Mike's older brother Paul, who that very day was celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday in the most hectic of circumstances. "That day our kid [the Liverpudlian term for one's brother or sister] had the word gone out that he had slipped some LSD into a drink and imbibed it," remembers Mike. "So the world's media was waiting for us as we left his house in London. Because our kid was being exposed as taking LSD, there is all the media watching this vicious drug-taker and his younger brother - 'ha, we gotcha!' And they're rolling their cameras.
"Both of us shut our windows down. Suddenly the fans pushed the media out of the way to get to their idol, and his good-looking brother obviously, and these presents of flowers showered into the car. Then the media are thinking, 'oh my god, we can't use any of this footage,' because of the adulation, all these children loving this man who is a drug-taking bastard. What they wanted was this LSD-mind-blown druggy scowling. And there is this lovely thing where life took over, 'cause it was his birthday."
As sessions progressed at Dick James's facilities and De Lane Lea studios elsewhere in London (Mike thinks some might have been done at Abbey Road as well), a host of illustrious rock stars dropped in to lend a hand. Although not credited on the initial release, contributors included Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Graham Nash, Dave Mason of Traffic, Gary Leeds of the Walker Brothers, ex-Pretty Thing Viv Prince, and ex-Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith. Paul McCartney's girlfriend, Jane Asher, sang some background vocals, even bringing along her mother.
"It was just a case of who was in town," says Mike. "We'd all signed contracts [with different labels], and it was like in perpetuity, which really is for life and beyond. We were saying to the record companies and the lawyers, 'Sod off. We're friends. There'll be trouble if we put our names to it, but we're doing it, whether you like or not.'
"That's why all of these beautiful people came along, and that's why it was such a free, no barriers [project], particularly with us. Because Scaffold don't play musical instruments, so we rely totally on brothers and friends who can play the musical aspect of what we were trying to do. They could help us, they could do what we couldn't do." Roger took primary responsibility for the words and Mike for the music, with some overlap.
Though production was credited to "All of Us," those duties were in fact shared by several fellows. if his brother Paul was there, Mike recalls, "he would be the producer, 'cause I'd be out on the floor. If our kid didn't do it, it would be me doing it. I, having been brought up with a musical brother, and having seen so much of what he did, learned a lot myself of what I wanted. If I was in the studio and our kid wasn't there, Paul Samwell-Smith [later to produce Cat Stevens and Carly Simon] would have helped. He was a great listener, very good producer."
Even by the standards of such an adventurous era in pop, McGough & McGear was an unusually diverse outing, especially in its combination of pop music with pieces emphasizing spoken word and poetry. "It's good to do something that is unique," feels Mike. "You're not selling anything, you're not sticking to a format. You're free. [Sgt.] Pepper is a good example; it has real light, and real shade. I've always liked that in life. If I do an exhibition [of his photography], I like black and white and color, and big pictures and little pictures. I just like contrasts. You'd have 'Mr. Tickle,' just a stupid little story I had, and then 'Yellow Book,' and then the poetry, which was equally valid, we felt. Very different, and very uncommercial. But it was sort of revolutionary."
The faint piano On "Mr. Tickle," incidentally, spilled over from the next room where Paul McCartney was ad-libbing on the instrument. Reveals Mike, "The engineer said, 'Oh, sorry, the other microphone was open, so it's on the track you've just done.'" As it happened the way the piano built up suited the pace of the narrative, "so I said, 'bloody hell, let's keep that.'"
There was also hit-ready upbeat pop in "So Much," which benefited from both Paul McCartney's harmonies and Jimi Hendrix's guitar. After Hendrix put a far-out psychedelic solo on his first pass at an overdub, Mike had to inform his brother in the control room that "he didn't actually come in at the right place. Jimi did the stuff sitting down on the floor in the end, and me on the carpet, tapping Jimi Hendrix's knee telling him when to come in for the solo." After comparing the first take and a more polite if appropriately timed one, Mike agreed that the first should be used, only to be told by the tape operator, "There's no tracks left on this. I've been wiping every one. So the only one you've got is the last one." Asked by Paul if he wanted to go in and ask Jimi to do another solo like the first take, Mike replied, "No no. That's fine. We'll have that one."
Hendrix got his chance to fly his freak flag high by cranking his wah-wah on the psychedelic homage "Ex Art Student." "I think it was Dave Mason on sitar, Jimi on wah-wah guitar, and Will Bennett on the flute, floating over everything," according to Mike. "It was free-form, sort of jazzy, rock-jazz at certain bits. Because there were no barriers. People could experiment. In their own musical box, they had to be the Beatles, they had to be Traffic, they had to be Jimi Hendrix, as a known sound. Whereas in ours, anything went."
For McGough, "Having Macca produce 'Summer With Monika" - which would also make it into printed form in a 1968 book of poems of the same name - "was the highlight of the exercise." Though Scaffold would record another track from the LP, "Do You Remember," for a small 1968 hit single, both McGough and McGear prefer the version on their album. "If they'd have released that, it would have been a hit in my opinion." feels Mike. "Because our kid's piano was very strong. In fact, he did the harmonies on that. If you listen to the harmonies, that's the two brothers at it." But it couldn't be issued as a single because of "contracts or whatever, so Scaffold had to redo it in the studios in Abbey Road."
Despite a sleeve note by Beatles biographer Hunter Davies, and getting picked as pop album of the month in Melody Maker, the album received little attention. By the time it came out, Scaffold's star had risen with the UK Top Five hit "Thank U Very Much," and McGough and McGear would concentrate their recording activities with that group for the next few years. The McGough & McGear LP, however, remains a highlight of their recording career, with a freewheeling genesis that, in Mike's words, "was very synonymous with the '60s."
- Richie Unterberger
Thanks to Roger McGough, Mike McCartney and Jarrett McGehee.
(Some Photos) (C) Pictorial Press
(P) 1968 The copyright in this sound recording is owned by EMI Records Ltd.
© 1968 EMI Records Ltd.
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