WILLIAM LEITCH

1 COLLEGE HOUSE ...Return Lindsay Anderson's If.... has returned to cinema's for it's 50th anniversary and I was very excited to catch it on the big-screen - in a evocatively worn 35mm print - recently at the GFT as part of their Spirit of 68 season. On it's London premiere, in December 1968, the film looked to have bottled the fevered mood of the moment. It formed part of artistic statements that seemed to have the heavy shadows of the year's new stories at every turn, work

Len Deighton's London Dossier is a guide book from 1967, with stunning Penguin design (the cover flap lifts to reveal a photograph of Twiggy). The content of the book is every chapter is prefaced by writing from Deighton (riding high from the wave of success his debut novel The Ipcress File had started), then a contributor (broadsheet writers from the time) writes the individual chapters. There are some gems of social history detail and the book has been referenced as a sourc

I recently finished reading I Read the News Today, Oh Boy by Paul Howard. Subtitled The Short and Gilded Life of Tara Browne, the Man Who Inspired the Beatles' Greatest Song (and breathe out), I highly recommend seeking out a copy. It's, as the subtitle suggests, a biography of Tara Browne, Guinness heir, friend to Beatles & Stones. Because Browne died so young there is little in the way of footage of him, I wondered if the book would hold interest outside of the connection t

WATERLOO SUNSET THE KINKS PRODUCED AND WRITTEN BY RAY DAVIES PYE/MAY 1967 UK CHART: 2 Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, when discussing New Order's beautifully maudlin single Regret, noted that great pop music makes you feel happy about being sad. That phrase could equally apply to Waterloo Sunset. Originally intended as Liverpool Sunset (a title that sounds like the curtain being drawn on that city's fading line of chart-bothering groups that followed in the Beatles slipstr

SAN FRANCISCO (BE SURE TO WEAR FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR) SCOTT McKENZIE PRODUCED BY LOU ADLER & JOHN PHILLIPS/WRITTEN BY JOHN PHILLIPS COLUMBIA/JULY 1967 UK CHART: 1 One of the top-selling singles of the Sixties, San Francisco was written to act as a theme for the first 'rock festival' - The Monterey International Pop Music Festival. The festival organiser was John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas, and he gave this song to a friend of the group who'd had several misses in the

Having long been a fan of the kitchen sink dramas of the 1960's, I finally got around to reading two books by Alan Sillitoe, a highly-influential figure in the movement. Starting with his short story collection The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, I got caught up in the prose style, the world portrayed and the unstinting clarity of the author. Well-known of course through the BAFTA-winning screen adaption of the same name starring Tom Courtenay, I actually found the ti

WALK RIGHT BACK/EBONY EYES THE EVERLY BROTHERS PRODUCED BY WESLEY ROSE/WRITTEN BY SONNY CURTIS WARNER BROS./FEBRUARY 1961 UK CHART: 1 Walk Right Back is a honeyed, pleading sigh of a record. Two minutes of pining for the past, the song only has one verse which gets repeated twice. This fits the mood of being lost thinking back to the better times of relationship that's come to an end. The gorgeous percussive guitar riff tries to win over the lover that has left but as the rec

KITES SIMON DUPREE & THE BIG SOUND PRODUCED BY DAVID PARAMOR/WRITTEN BY HAL HACKADAY & LEE POCKRISS PARLOPHONE/OCTOBER 1967 UK CHART: 9 This is the first blog entry in a series where, as a tribute to my favourite music book This is Uncool by Garry Mulholland, I'm going to write a short entry of the 7" singles that I pick up in charity shops, at record fairs or have found their way to me through friends and family. Kites was one I was after despite a flavour of cash-in. The Si

Having watched the BBC4 broadcast of the Classic Album's documentary on Pet Sounds, and gone back to the album for fresh listening, here's some quick thoughts: I forgot how pronounced the Phil Spector influence is on the sound, but Brian Wilson added a fragility and sincerity missing from the Wall of Sound. Is there a glaring missed opportunity? It seems that the relatively cool commercial reception in the U.S. (the LP made #10, predecessor Beach Boys Party! had hit #6 around