The Flower Pot Men
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The Flower Pot Men were a British pop group created in 1967, who enjoyed fleeting fame. The group's sound was characterised by rich, three-part vocal harmonies.
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[edit] History
The Flower Pot Men were created as a result of the chart success of the single "Let's Go To San Francisco", written and recorded by songwriters John Carter and Ken Lewis (Carter-Lewis and the Southerners and The Ivy League, which had three UK top twenty hits previously).
The duo licensed the recording to Deram Records which suddenly found itself with a full-fledged hit, but with no group to promote it. Carter and Lewis, having no interest in going on the road to promote the record, created the group from a hand-picked collective of recording studio session musicians and vocalists. They continued to write, record and produce all the subsequent recordings for the next three years until the project ended in 1970.
The name was clearly derived from the children's show Flower Pot Men, with the obvious psychedelic era puns on flower power and "pot" (cannabis).
[edit] Let's Go to San Francisco
The band's most popular song remained "Let's Go To San Francisco." Some listeners at the time assumed that the song was either a pastiche of - or in some way inspired by - Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" which was a hit earlier that summer - but the band have denied this. The topic of San Francisco was being discussed widely in UK in early 1967 because of British mass media coverage of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene - and the Scott McKenzie single was certainly not the only place where the songwriters may have found inspiration to write a song about the new social developments in that city. The track reached Number 4 in the UK Singles Chart in 1967. It was their only appearance in that chart, earning them the unenviable title of one-hit wonder.
Burrows and Shaw later surfaced in The First Class, whose sole Top 40 hit "Beach Baby" sounded similar; a harmony phrase shortly before the fadeout of this record references "Let's Go To San Francisco".
[edit] Personnel
The complete line-up of The Flower Pot Men and Their Garden, as they were sometimes billed, was loosely based around the following:
- Tony Burrows: vocals - ex The Ivy League, later with White Plains, and The First Class
- Neil Landon: vocals (born Patrick Cahill, 26 July 1941, Kirdford, Sussex)
- Robin Shaw: vocals (born Robin Scrimshaw, 6 October 1943, Hayes, Middlesex) - later with White Plains, and The First Class
- Pete Nelson: vocals (born Peter Lipscomb, 10 March 1945, London) - also later with White Plains
- Ged Peck: guitar (19 October 1947, West Hendon, London)
- Carlo Little: drums (born Carl O'Neil Little, 17 December 1938, Shepherd's Bush, West London - died 6 August 2005, Cleadon, County Durham).
- Nick Simper: bass
- Jon Lord: organ
Singer Tony Burrows' voice is also heard on many UK hit singles of that era, such as, White Plains: "My Baby Loves Lovin'", Brotherhood of Man: "United We Stand", Edison Lighthouse: "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)", The First Class: "Beach Baby", The Pipkins: "Gimme Dat Ding"
In 1968, Nick Simper and Jon Lord became founding members of the heavy metal rock band, Deep Purple. This connection was later lampooned in the fake rock documentary, Spinal Tap, whose fictional first hit was called "(Listen to the) Flower People", a reference to "Let's Go to San Francisco".
[edit] References
- Guinness Book of British Hit Singles - 16th Edition - ISBN 0-85112-190-X
