THE TROGGS – "With A Girl Like You"

Having grown up with (literally) piles of 60s singles scattered around the house I’m genuinely surprised to come across a number one that I can’t even think how it goes. I guess I’d recognise it if I heard it but now I’m not so keen to do that!

Nice to see popular fizzing back into life – I’ve been enjoying it up until now (I keep meaning to say thanks but never had – so consider this that).

It was I Want You. From Home was the B-side of Wild Thing. And yes, boo hiss nasty Tom; the Troggs are ace, though Girl Like You is weaker than Wild Thing or the priaprismic I Can’t Control Myself…

Tommy Mack

The Troggs are friends with General Khaki on myspace. True fact.

Marcello – Isn’t “Louie Louie” a clear precedent for “Wild Thing”? (I have no idea, however, if “Louie Louie” ever charted in Britain, though it was a Kinks album track at some point.)

We should bear in mind – not that my mind knows what to make of it – that “Wild Thing” was written by Chip Taylor, an ambitious country music songwriter square enough to work with Chet Atkins. Taylor’s other immortal Top 40 achievement was to write and produce first Evie Sands’ and then Merrilee Rush’s version of “Angel of the Morning.” His most recent album made No Depression magazine’s list of best albums of 2005, though it, like all of his albums, remains unheard by me.

Chip Taylor’s version of Wild Thing was awful though. I saw he and Reg Presley doing a horrible acoustic version on TOTP2 a couple of years back. Reg, Reg Reg…

I’m torn between Wild Thing and Louie Louie as to which is best… Louie is more danceable and has Jack Ely’s deranged vocal, but Wild Thing is more audaciously primal, no wonder the Beeb banned it, despite there being nothing explicit in the lyrics – Reg doesn’t have to get dirty; Chris Britton’s guitar wants to rape you…

I bloody love The Troggs, me…

This wasn’t any influence on the Rutles’ “With A Girl like You”, was it?

Cute ‘n all, Andover Reg gettin’ a lil bit romantic (enough for Michelle Pfeiffer to pin him up on her teenage bedroom wall) but both Wild Thing and the bulging I Can’t Control Myself, singles either side, deserved top spot ahead of With A Girl Like You. I’d pair this with Spencer Davis’s Somebody Help Me as a non-entity sequel that would have done little without the initial smash.

I recall that the now discredited Jonathan King made a bet around this time that the Troggs would be dead within a year. As their 1967 singles continued to bomb, he looked like winning his bet until the Troggs pulled ‘Love is All Around’ out of the bag in Autumn 1967 and so won the day.
That was their last hurrah, however, so King was a bit unlucky, though Reg Presley had the last laugh with the royalties he got from Wet,Wet, Wet’s massive hit with the same song almost 20 years later (just ahead of King’s subsequent prison stretch!).

Reg Presley is in hospital and not very well after a suspected stroke. Lots of love to him.

Reg Presley R.I.P.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21332048

If only there were a way that Popular could mark the man and his musical legacy

Just found to my delight that the Troggs Tapes are on YouTube – if you don’t know what they were, take a listen, you won’t regret it.

Apparently one time Ron Wood was doing some studio work with Bob Dylan and over the course of the gig played Dylan the “Troggs Tapes”. Not unnaturally, Dylan thought they were very funny.

It turned out that Reg Presley was working in an adjacent studio making a demo for a commercial.

When Wood discovered this, he approached Dylan all excited, saying “Remember that guy on the tape I played you? Well, he’s next door right now!”

Dylan says, “Really?! Wow, I gotta meet him. You gotta introduce me!”

So Wood takes Dylan next door to find Reg disconsolately fumbling with a bass guitar.

Dylan, by way of introduction, says “Hey, I didn’t know you played bass, man. How long you been playing bass?”

Reg looks up and with a deep sigh says, “All f—in’ afternoon, mate, all f—in’ afternoon”.

Thanks Reg for the Tapes and so much more. RIP.

I’ve heard a lot of this of late (it seems to be Absolute Radio 60s’ favourite Troggs song)

Surely sluggish heft is what this song’s narrator is all about? The music underscores the pathos of the situation: Reg spots the girl of his dreams a the village hall dance and tries to impress her by putting on a rock’n’roll swagger (think Garth channelling Hendrix in Wayne’s World) but this clangy yet strangely prissy garage rock lope is the best he can manage. It still seems utterly charming to me though, as others have noted, Wild Thing or I Can’t Control Myself would have made much better #1s.

RE: Troggs playing at the limits of their abilities: I dunno…you listen to some of their B-sides/less well known tracks and while no-one’s going to mistake them for Cream, there’s some nifty garage-band blues guitar etc. which makes me think they CHOSE to play in such a reductive fashion for effect on their biggest hits (or Larry Page chose for them), which is a pretty punk thing to do in an era when everyone else was reaching to expand their musical pallette.

Not that I’m saying that makes The Troggs better than The Beatles, Beach Boys etc. I’m not Billy Childish but there’s something audacious about swimming against the tide before most people had even realised which way the tide was turning.

Love the Troggs. Not an obvious #1, but I will be very generous and go to a 7/10 here.