This two-minute clip is from a must-see documentary A Year In The Life made for the BBC by
Paul Watson during 1968 and 1969 which follows Brighton pop group The Span (aka
Mike Stuart Span, best known for their "Children of Tomorrow" 45) and their bid for stardom.
The stark, cynical realities of the music industry are
best summed up by the television producer who books them yet says, “This particular
record is like most of the other rubbish that’s turned out by the pop world; it’s
ordinary, dull, silly and very predictable”.
Shifty managers come and go, they change their name to Leviathan
(very 1969), yet by the time the film was broadcast in September they had
spilt up, deciding they could earn more money labouring on building sites.
To view a half-hour edit of the film (and you really should) see Adam Curtis’s blog article Between The Gutter and the Stars which also features an interesting film Gene Vincent’s 1969 trip to the UK.
To view a half-hour edit of the film (and you really should) see Adam Curtis’s blog article Between The Gutter and the Stars which also features an interesting film Gene Vincent’s 1969 trip to the UK.
Since posting this yesterday, I’m grateful to Span
vocalist Stuart Hobday for getting in touch with the following background
information:
“Just a couple of points you might like to know about
this clip. The song, written by Ken Howard and Allan Blakely (who wrote all the
hits for Dave See, Dozy, Mick & Titch) was recorded at Radio Luxembourg
studios in London and produced by Albert Hammond (It Never Rains In Southern
California etc). It was universally hated by the group but our previous single
Children of Tomorrow had not sold so we were persuaded to release it by our
manager.
At the time of recording CoT we had also recorded a
number of demos of similar material, and it was these recordings that our
manager had originally taken to Tony Palmer, the TV producer who you see in
this clip. He liked what he heard and he booked us when our new record was due
to be released. Of course the new record was nothing like CoT and he was, shall
we say, underwhelmed; hence the acerbic comments about the song and the manager
– both of which were, of course, true.
One more fact – the documentary was actually called ‘Big
Deal Group’ and was transmitted first in the series ‘A Year In The Life’. It
was actually 50 minutes long (not 30 minutes) and was shown again over the
Christmas period in 1989, along with one or two other programmes from the series,
under the heading ’20 Years On’. This was an updated version and included
contemporary interviews with the members of the group on how their lives had
changed. The Adam Curtis blog article is an edited-down version of the original
programme from 1969.”
