THE TROGGS UNLEASH WILD THING
Straight out of Andover in deepest Hampshire, REG PRESLEY’s earthy proto-punks were desperate for their shot. Then, in 1966, they put a little bit of fairy dust over a CHIP TAYLOR howl of urgent lust, and had a smash on both sides of the pond. More hits followed, but ground down on the road in Europe, and too late to the British invasion, their fire soon burned out. “We didn’t have time to think,” they say. “The girls were always screaming.”
Chris Britton: There were two bands in Andover, Ten Feet Five, which me and Pete Staples were in, and The Troggs, with Reg Balls and Ronnie Bullis. Both fell to pieces around the same time in late ’64, so we came together. Reg and the original line-up had made a demo tape which included a version of The Kinks’ You Really Got Me. He took it around Denmark Street and someone suggested he take it to Larry Page, who managed The Kinks. Larry liked it but thought that incarnation of the group was rough around the edges and said come back in a year’s time.
Larry Page: A year to the day, they came back to the office. I admired their tenacity. Reg had written a song called Lost Girl. I liked it, booked them into [Regent Sound] studio to record it. I liked Reg, he was unique, he was also nice.
“THEY WERE JUST ‘F’-ING AND BLINDING AT EACH OTHER ALL THE WAY THROUGH, ‘F’ THIS, ‘F’ THAT.” Chris Britton
Pete was a solid bass player, Ronnie could pound the drums like no one else, Chris was good too.
Pete Staples: Our co-manager Stan Phillips had a fitting business and we rehearsed in his workshop. It was huge, full of workbenches and machinery, and freezing cold. The single was released on CBS in February ’66 and got a few plays on Radio Luxembourg. It was enough to get us excited.
Keith Altham: I was working at the NME and Larry rang me up, saying, “I’ve got this great little band from Andover but their names are a bit pedestrian. I’ve changed the drummer’s name to Bond after James Bond, the guitarist is Britton so that’s nice and butch, but the singer I’ve got a problem with – his name is Reginald Winston Balls.” I said, “Call him Presley, Larry.” He said, “All right,” and I said, “I’m only joking, you can’t seriously call him Reg Presley.” Next week Reg picks up the NME and reads how The Troggs have got this singer called Reg Presley. He thinks someone else has joined and rings Larry up to complain.
CB: Reg was very pushy, very upfront, and on his say-so we forced ourselves on Larry. We collected all our thruppenny bits together and each of us phoned him every day from the local phone box, four calls a day. I think he felt he had to do something to pacify us.
LP: I had a meeting with April Blackwood Music in America. I asked them if they had any demos. They gave me a few titles, one of which was Wild Thing. I liked it straight away.
Chip Taylor: I was writing some rock’n’roll type things, quite raw, simple, very catchy. I’d got a call about a song for a group called The Wild Ones. I started banging out these chords on my old Kay guitar and the words started coming out, “Wild thing you make my heart sing/You make everything groovy.” I had a session booked that afternoon. I loved it, but the whole thing sounded so sexual, I was embarrassed to let people hear it. I went to the studio the next day and took the acetates off the shelf and hid them.
PS: Larry sent Wild Thing down to us in Andover to rehearse, along with a song by The Lovin’ Spoonful called Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind.
CB: Larry had a session booked at Olympic Studios with the Larry Page Orchestra. He got us to drive up to London on the off chance there would be some time left over for us to record. Just outside Andover the van seized up. The throttle linkage broke and Reg had to operate the accelerator from the passenger seat, we had to tie the carburettor in with a bit of string, and it needed two people to turn the steering wheel. But we made it, loaded in and in 20 minutes put down Wild Thing, With A Girl Like You, which Reg had written, and Go Home. So, a [UK] Number 2 and Number 1 single and a B side.
LP: I came out of the studio very, very excited but I was the only one. I went round the BBC and every producer hated Wild Thing. I was walking down Bond Street and I bumped into [producer] Brian Wiley. I told him, “I’m pissed off. I’ve got a hit record and no one will play it.” He was sitting in on Saturday Club that week. He put it in the show without even hearing it and it took off like a rocket.
PS: I was working as an electrician putting a light switch on the wall of a house when the DJ on the radio said, “At Number 8, The Troggs!” I thought, “What am I doing here?” That evening we crammed in the phone box and rang Larry, asked if we should pack our jobs in. From then on, he worked us hard.
KA: The band were getting big and needed an image, and Larry was reading the News Of The World and saw an article about these stripy suits for sale in Sid Brent’s Take 6 boutique in Carnaby Street. Larry got the idea to say that Sid Brent had bet the group a thousand pounds’ worth of gear from the shop if Wild Thing got in the Top 5. So they got some clothes, Sid got some publicity.
PS: We wore the stripy suits on the front of the album [1966’s From Nowhere]. Of course, Larry said why not be photographed in caves because of the troglodyte connection? So we went to the Cheddar Caves in Somerset. It was fun. It was always fun at that time, hard work but fun.
CB: We recorded the album live in three and a half hours, and it was pretty much like [notorious 1970 in-studio swearathon] The Troggs Tapes – when Reg and Ronnie got together, they said the ‘f’ word every other word. They were just ‘f’-ing and blinding at each other all the way through, ‘f’ this, ‘f’ that… but it got done.
KA: Larry and I were always cooking up stunts, most of them involving animals because of Wild
Thing. There was a photo shoot at Berlin zoo, and then there was the time Mary Chipperfield of Chipperfield’s Circus brought Marquess The Lion to the Marquee Club. The group were supposedly recording a song called The Lion and needed to record a lion’s roar. Mary and the lion took the stage. A mike was placed in front of the lion to make it look realistic for photos, the lion licked the mike and someone must have stupidly switched it on, as Marquess got a shock off it and he went crazy. Everyone ran for the exit. It was chaos, but they got a great story.
PS: For that first year after we hit, we had no break. We didn’t have time to think, it was seven days a week, press, TV, radio, recording, then of course travelling to and from and playing all the shows. The girls were always screaming and wetting themselves at our performances. There’d be puddles down the front. We did the same circuit as the Small Faces, and after one show I asked the caretaker how we compared puddle-wise – he said about the same. But we were really dead on our feet.
LP: I was looking after Sonny And Cher. They were in London and Sonny called [Atlantic producer] Jerry Wexler and said, “Larry’s really excited, he thinks he’s got a big hit.” Jerry got me on the phone, told me to send the song over. I sent him Wild Thing and With A Girl
Like You, then phoned him a week later. He said, “Rubbish” and that was it. I then met with Fontana, they loved it and we did a deal. The minute Fontana got airplay, all of a sudden Jerry puts the record out on Atco with With A Girl Like You on the B-side. They claimed there was a verbal contract which was utter bullshit. There was no deal. We had a Number 1 in the US with Wild Thing, and at the same time we had With A Girl Like You at Number 1 in the UK [in August 1966].
CT: The Wild Ones’ version just didn’t capture the base, guttural nature of Wild Thing. The Troggs’ version did. I was at the swimming pool with my son when it came on the radio and it sounded great. They’d captured the feel of the demo but added magic. Jimi Hendrix’s version did the same. He loved The Troggs’ version so much he covered it at Monterey and from that moment Wild Thing became a part of rock’n’roll history.
PS: The problems really started when Wild Thing went to Number 1 in the States, on two different labels. We never got to tour there until ’68. It felt like we missed the boat.
LP: As for America, I knew so many bands getting ripped off out there. You’d be playing a venue which had a bill of 20 bands a day, you’d go on and play two songs then wait four hours and play another two songs. It was ludicrous to tour the US with only one hit. Even though we were Number 1, we weren’t getting played on New York radio.
CB: The work schedule eventually took its toll. With A Girl Like You had got to Number 1 in August, I Can’t Control Myself was Number 2 in October, then we released Any Way That You Want Me, another Chip Taylor song. We did Ready Steady Go! to promote it. We were just off a 21-date tour of Germany with Los Bravos, two shows a day, Reg’s voice was knackered and he had to sing this soft, gentle ballad. His voice was like sandpaper. On the same show that week, Jimi Hendrix made his TV debut with Hey Joe and blew everyone away.
PS: [Number 5 hit] Love Is All Around was the pinnacle of ’67. When we finally got to the States in ’68 [they played dates with The Who in spring and summer], there was still no money. [In early 1969] I brought it up with the band, we arranged a meeting with Larry, the band were all a bit quiet in the car on the way up and when we got there Larry said how the band wanted me to leave. Reg was really nasty. He was a rat, said, “If you don’t go I won’t sing any more,” and I thought, After all we’ve been through. That was that.
CB: Love Is All Around was our last hit. We never had time to think about what we were doing, we were always just doing it. And then it was over. We stumbled on, but it became all about these long, drawn out, contrived guitar solos, and I eventually left in ’72 to set up some nightclubs in Portugal. There were no hard feelings. It just felt the right time to go.