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‘Whatever Happened to PJ Proby?’: The hellraising madman of rock & roll is a god amongst men
07.25.2017
09:21 am
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“My idea of fun is what puts most people in jail.”
—PJ Proby

The entire point underlying this blog is to impart enthusiasm for the given subject matter. Sharing something extraordinary, remarkable or even just plain fun with the audience. Life’s too short to focus on lameass things. And to have to write about things you don’t even like? Nope, not how we really want to spend our days. Plus, why would you, the reader want to read about something mundane? Of course you don’t want that. You want awe-inspiring. Or at least things with cute cats and Twin Peaks-themed pot pipes. It’s our primary job here at Dangerous Minds to entertain you. Sometimes it’s simply to distract you from all of the bad shit going down…

You’ll get all of the above, in spades, I reckon, in the form of Texas-born rock and roller, PJ Proby, the entire package. He’s admittedly a pretty obscure figure. Frankly not even the most archly jaded rock snobs have probably ever heard of the guy. The subset of crate diggers who have actually heard the sound of the man’s truly phenomenal voice is smaller still. (His classic albums have hardly existed in the CD age.) I’ve been obsessed with him since the late 80s and have long wanted to make a documentary about him. Frankly I’m not really sure if I am acquainted with anyone who knows or cares about him like I do. (Maybe you do, but I don’t know you, do I?) Considering the intense megawatt talent the man possesses, all the lucky breaks that he’s had over his six decade-long career, and all of the immortals his orbit has collided with, PJ Proby should be, as he’s said himself—and I agree with this wholeheartedly—at least as famous as his one-time drinking buddy Tom Jones. That was not to be, although it coulda been and shoulda been.
 

 
When Tom Jones was just starting out, he was often accused—unfairly I think—of copying Proby’s act. In many ways PJ Proby and Jones are performers in that same general mold: powerful belters, macho, sexy, equally at home singing heart-breaking lonely boy ballads or bellowing balls-out rockers. When Proby’s infamous onstage trouser-splitting stunt occurred in Croydon (more on this below), it was in fact Jones who hastily replaced him on the package tour he was embarked upon after Proby was summarily banned from most of the live stages in Britain. If you like early Scott Walker, or the big ballady material Dusty Springfield excelled at, or even Nick Cave, then PJ Proby is probably in your wheelhouse. His records are easy to find—usually for really cheap—in used record bins. Every one of them is a mixture of filler and hits, but when he connects with the material, something sublime happens. I think he’s one of the all time greatest talents in rock and roll history, but few people would know that in 2017, or care.

PJ Proby was born James Marcus Smith on November 6, 1938, in Houston. His great-grandfather on his mother’s side was the outlaw gunfighter John Wesley Hardin and his father was a successful banker. He was educated at the strict San Marcos Military Academy, but even at school he was known as a bit of a hellraiser and was early on convinced that he was a genius and destined for greatness of some sort. His showbiz ambitions started early with local preteen appearances singing country music. He met Elvis Presley on that circuit when he was just 12 or 13 and Elvis at one point dated his step sister, Betty. But this was just the start of Proby’s improbable, Zelig or Forrest Gump-like ability to always be where the action was. Even at that age, he just was warming up, but already in the right places at the right time and always with the right crowd.
 

 
After moving to Hollywood in the mid-50s to become and actor and/or a singer, Smith took the name “Jett Powers” and recorded the single “Go, Girl Go!,” which is best known today as a song that the Cramps dug. (Jett’s backing band the Moondogs included Elliot Ingber/“Winged Eel Fingerling,” later of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, on lead guitar). Signed to a songwriting and performing contract with Liberty (along with the likes of Leon Russell and Glen Campbell), he recorded under the name Orville Woods so that the public would think he was black! Additionally Proby made a living working as a bodyguard for closeted gay entertainers like Rock Hudson, Liberace and Tab Hunter (by his own account, brutally dispensing anyone who dared hassle one of them in a “gay bashing” manner). Proby also recorded “vocal guides” for $10 a pop so that performers like Elvis could more efficiently make use of expensive recording studio time. (He did twenty such vocal guides for Presley, mimicking his singing style in a full-throated manner that was said to have amused the King.) In early 1964 Jackie DeShannon and songwriter Sharon Sheeley (who’d been his best friend, Eddie Cochran’s, fiancée) introduced Proby—then bearded and wearing his hair extremely long as he was hoping to play the part of Jesus in a musical—to Jack Good who was visiting from London. The meeting would change the course of his life.

Good, the prominent TV producer and manager who gave the world Shindig!, Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and others of Britain’s first wave of rock and roll stars (he’s also the guy who convinced Gene Vincent to don that Richard III garb) is alleged to have grabbed Proby’s ponytail to see if it was real. Soon afterward, Good’s secretary called from London and offered the complete unknown a spot on the Beatles’ upcoming television special “With the Beatles.”
 

Upon his arrival at Heathrow airport Proby told reporters of his intentions for Great Britain: “I’m going to fight all your men, fuck all your women and steal all your money. Then I’m going to buy myself a yacht and sail off into the wide blue yonder.”

When the show aired, Proby immediately became extremely famous, the very definition of the overnight sensation, even if his fame was to be short-lived. A single, “Hold Me” was recorded and rushed out so quickly that a stray vocal was inadvertently pressed into the record’s fadeout on the initial run. The song became a smash, reaching #3 in the UK charts. He racked up more hits with utterly histrionic (and almost insane-sounding, yet mesmerizing) cover versions of West Side Story‘s “Somewhere” and “Maria,” as well as with a song the Beatles had tried unsuccessfully to record for the Help! soundtrack, but that none of them could adequately sing. They opted to gift the song, “That Means a Lot,” to someone with the pipes who could, their American pal (well at least Lennon liked him) Proby. Incredibly, George Martin even arranged the song for him!
 

PJ Proby performs the castoff number from ‘Help!’ that Lennon and McCartney gave him, “That Means a Lot” on ‘Hollywood A Go-Go’ in 1965. If you are not mazed by this, I cannot possibly help you.

What insane luck, right? Soon Beatles manager Brian Epstein set up Proby with a UK package tour, co-headlining with Cilla Black. That’s when things got a bit out of the egotistical young rocker’s control: At a date in Croydon, Proby clad in his trademark tight velvet jumpsuit and looking like an 18th century dandy, was doing his James Brown-inspired stage act (the likes of which still staid post war Britain had not yet seen) and slid across the stage, tearing his pants around the knees and upwards from there. The crowd of teenaged girls went utterly mad, but the incident caused a stir in the media getting Proby on the radar of Britain’s self-appointed moral censor, Mary Whitehouse. When Proby did the same thing two nights later it was widely reported that he’d done something lewd in Luton. The Daily Mirror wrote that he was a “morally insane degenerate” and urged parents to keep their children from attending one of his shows. Whitehouse called his “thrusting” obscene but Proby claimed otherwise and available photos seem to corroborate his side of the story. He was kicked off the tour anyway and banned from the ABC theater chain and BBC radio and television. This was a good decade before the Sex Pistols, of course. Proby had a few more semi hits, but without radio play his star quickly faded. He later said of the incident:

“I was Britain’s Errol Flynn, the rough mother of pop. I was Jimmy Dean all busted up. I was Marlon Brando. They wanted rid of me.”

 

Canadian audiences were still able to thrill to Proby live in concert, while his work visa was yanked for a time in the UK
 
Back in Hollywood, Proby had his sole Billboard Hot 100 Top 30 hit with the infectious cajun-spiced rocker “Niki Hoeky.” He bought a mansion in Beverly Hills and married one of Dean Martin’s daughters. When he found out that she’d been having an affair with his car mechanic and saw them walking together hand in hand, he discharged his gun in the air several times to intimidate them. He soon found himself surrounded at gunpoint by much of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department and did a three month stint in a holding cell before moving back to the UK. He recorded his Three Week Hero album in 1968 with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones, then of the New Yardbirds, but soon to be rechristened Led Zeppelin. It was the very first time all four of them would be inside of a recording studio together.

In 1971 Proby played Cassio on the West End in Catch My Soul, Jack Good’s rock musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello. He made the cabaret and nightclub circuit for money and even recorded an album with the Dutch prog rockers Focus (it’s amazing!). In 1977, again with Good producing, he co-starred in Elvis – The MusicalShakin’ Stevens played the young King of rock and roll while Proby played him in his later years—which won a Best Musical award the following year. Proby was fired when he began getting drunk before going onstage and started speaking directly to the audience.

There are all kinds of crazy PJ Proby stories involving Jack Daniels, bankruptcies, guns, underage girls, more guns and more Jack Daniels. Every once in while during the 80s he’d turn up again in some completely insane or scandalous situation. He went through six wives. He worked as a shepherd on a farm before running off with the farmer’s daughter. He recorded some totally off the wall covers of songs like “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Heroes” and “Tainted Love” for the Manchester-based Savoy label, there was at least one fairly lurid television news piece about him…

Much more PJ Proby after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.25.2017
09:21 am
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‘Around The Beatles’: Little-known 1964 TV special made concurrently with ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
04.08.2014
11:03 am
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Scroll down for a chance to win The Beatles in Mono box set or the Bitches Brew: 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition from our sponsor, POPMarket

Although it was made during the first flush of Beatlemania and broadcast on television on both sides of the Atlantic (and internationally) in 1964, “Around The Beatles,” a one-off TV special produced concurrently while A Hard Day’s Night was being shot, is a comparatively “buried” Beatles treasure. It had once been released as a bootleg by Media Home Entertainment (who bootlegged tons of Beatles material in the early days of VHS and Betamax) but most people have never heard of it. A bit of it was used in The Beatles Anthology TV mini-series, and the Shakespeare bit has made the rounds, but YouTube doesn’t even have a complete version currently. Thankfully, there’s a high quality file on Dailymotion, embedded below for your listening and viewing pleasure.

“Around the Beatles” refers to the set, a theater in the round. Fading up from black, John, Paul and George, dressed in Renaissance garb, raise their horns. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is seen and Ringo raises a flag with the show’s title before firing off a cannon with disastrous results (and cartoon sound effects). The opening comedy skit is a shambolic performance of Pyramus and Thisbe (complete with hecklers) with Paul McCartney as Pyramus and John Lennon in bad drag as his beloved Thisbe.

The special was directed by Jack Good, the TV producer and manager who gave the world Shindig!, Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and others of Britain’s first wave of rock and roll stars (he’s also the guy who convinced Gene Vincent to don that Richard III garb—see a pattern here?). Featured on the program along with the Fab Four were Cilla Black, Long John Baldry, PJ Proby, the Vernons Girls, Jamaican teenage ska sensation Millie “My Boy Lollipop” Small, The Jets and Sounds Incorporated, an instrumental group who were Cilla Black’s backing group as well as the opening act when the Beatles toured. (Both Black and Sounds Incorporated were represented by Brian Epstein’s management company, NEMS. PJ Proby was Jack Good’s charge.)

The Beatles lip sync along to “Twist And Shout,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “I Wanna Be Your Man,” “Long Tall Sally” and “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and a medley “Love Me Do” / “Please Please Me” / “From Me To You” / “She Loves You” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” They also cover The Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and the Fab Four are seen providing (literally) offstage back vocals for some of the other acts.

Of particular interest here is PJ Proby’s wild performance of “Cumberland Gap.” Introduced by Paul McCartney, he brings the house down! On the night this aired in Britain (May 6, 1964, to be exact), PJ Proby—who had been recording for years in Los Angeles without success—became an instant sensation. In the wake of his appearance on “Around the Beatles”, “Hold Me,” his first single released under this name (formerly he’d been “Jett Powers” a name probably familiar to Cramps fans for “Go Girl Go”) was rushed released to the screaming teenagers clamoring for it. (In fact the record was so rushed that they didn’t even finish mixing it, leaving stray vocals after the fadeout on the initial pressing of 45s.) Soon after the special aired “Hold Me” would rise to the #3 spot on the English pop charts, making Proby (who I think is one of the single most talented yet fascinating flawed figures of this era) a star for a short moment.
 

 
This post was sponsored by POPMarket.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.08.2014
11:03 am
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The album Led Zeppelin recorded BEFORE ‘Led Zeppelin’
06.01.2013
11:38 am
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Most Led Zeppelin fans are unaware that the band’s first recordings were actually not the songs that became Led Zeppelin I, but rather P.J. Proby’s quirky Three Week Hero album recorded shortly before their debut was and released in 1969. Even if they have heard of it, chances are they haven’t heard the actual music. I’m here to help!

John Paul Jones, who like Jimmy Page, was then a very much sought-after session musician and arranger got the gig working with the, um, mercurial front man—Proby was, and is, a man considered mad, bad and dangerous to know, one of rock’s original madmen, inexplicably still alive—via producer Steve Rowland. Jones asked if he could bring in his own group for the session, thinking it would serve as a rehearsal of sorts before they went into the studio themselves and Rowland agreed. Jones told Chris Welch:

“I was committed to doing all the arrangements for the album. As we were talking about rehearsing at the time, I thought it would be a handy source of income. I had to book a band anyway, so I thought I’d book everybody I knew.”

It’s not known exactly when the two-day recording commenced, but August 25th, 1968 is probably the correct date, and would mark the very first time that Led Zeppelin, then still-known as The New Yardbirds, would enter a recording studio together.
 

 
Proby had already worked with Jimmy Page before, as the young rhythm guitarist had played on his 1964 debut long player, I Am P.J. Proby, with legendary session player “Big Jim” Sullivan supplying lead (The slight, baby-faced Page was then informally known as “Lil’ Jim Pea” to differentiate him from the slightly older Sullivan).

From an interview with P.J. Proby on the Led Zeppelin fansite, Finding Zoso:

FZ: One of my favorite records of yours, which was actually your last record with Liberty [Records] was Three Week Hero. A lot of people don’t know that the entire lineup of Led Zeppelin backed you up on that album. Can you tell us a little bit about that album and what it was like?

PJ: Yeah, after that session, Big Jim Sullivan was the most sought after lead guitar player in England so he was on everybody but everybody’s sessions. At that time Jimmy Page couldn’t really pick lead all that well. So he went off and wasn’t heard for a long time and the next thing I knew he was in The Yardbirds. About 1968, a friend of mine from Hollywood, Steve Roland had come over to London and had done pretty well as a producer for [the group] Dave, Dee Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. So I went down to Steve and asked him to produce my next album, EMI wanted one out now. I listened to some stuff he had there, demos, and he said, “I’ll put a band together for you.”

So when I got to the studio that day, there was what they called, “The New Yardbirds”. There was Jimmy Page, lead guitar player, a great lead guitar player by now and John Bonham and another guy Paul Jones and Albert Lee [Huh?]. Anyway, we recorded that album, I think it was in two days. We even undershot, we recorded it with about thirty-five minutes left over, and so Roland yelled down, “Why don’t you all busk it? We shouldn’t waste the studio time.” I told the boys, “Y’all start picking and I’ll write as you pick.” So the three last numbers on the album, [the medley], I just made up as the boys played.

Afterwards, I said, “Man, y’all did a terrific job. I’ve got some tours coming up, would you back me?” They said, “We’d love to, we’ll be your backing band, but first we’ve got two obligations we’ve got to honour in California and they named two places in California that I had just come back from playing with a band of mine that was called Canned Heat. The boys told me they were going over to play in San Francisco and all that, and I said, “Look, from what I’ve heard and the way you boys played tonight, not only are you not going to be my backing band, I’m going to say goodbye right now, because I don’t think I’m ever going to see you again. That’s how successful you’re going to be. You’re exactly what they want, you play all that psychedelic stuff and everything.“

The heavy metal word hadn’t been invented then, it was just hard blues and stuff. So I said, “You’re going to go over there and go down so great I don’t think you’re ever going to come home.” They didn’t ever come back until they changed their name to Led Zeppelin and stayed over there and came back huge huge stars.

FZ: Did you ever manage to catch up with them once they became big stars?

PJ: No I never have and I have never seen Jimmy Page since. I said goodbye that day when I cut that album and I haven’t seen one of them since.

In case you’re wondering, Robert Plant played harmonica on Three Week Hero. He doesn’t sing on it.
 

 

 
If you’re a Led Zeppelin fan and you’ve never heard “The Day That Lorraine Came Down,” before, prepare to have your ever-lovin’ mind blown. Easily in my top 100 favorite songs:
 

 
This improvised in the studio number, “Mery Hopkins Never Had Days Like These” was not on the Three Week Hero album, rather appearing on the B-side of the “The Day That Lorraine Came Down” single. As if there could any doubt—trust me, there won’t be—Proby calls the players out by name (including the great Alan Hawkshaw who is playing organ), but I’m not sure if this is John Bonham here as Proby refers to the drummer as both a “fat man” and bald.
 

 
“Jim’s Blues”—basically the prototype for Led Zeppelin‘s “You Shook Me.” “Jim” probably refers to Proby (real name James Marcus Smith) and not Jimmy Page.

Below, a scant two years later and Led Zeppelin were headlining at the Royal Albert Hall:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.01.2013
11:38 am
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