I wrote ‘Thank U Very Much’ while on the phone to Paul!
“I was the only singer among The Scaffold, I could get away with it. But I was never gonna have anything to do with music until I wrotethank U Very Much,” Mike explains, referring to their first hit.
“It was the height of Beatlemania, so whenever our kid answered the phone it was silent cos he waited for you to talk. If a fan had found the number or you were somebody he didn’t wanna talk to, he’d then become a Chinese restaurant or Indian takeaway.
“I rang to thank him for a beautiful Nikon camera he sent me. He picked the phone up...silence...then this song came into the top of my head.
“So instead of talking I sang ‘Thank you very much for the Nikon camera, thank you very much, thank you very very very much…’ Afterwards I thought ‘I better write that down!’”
Thank Uvery Much was a UK No.4 in November 1967, and a year later The Scaffold climbed to the top …as predicted bywirral-born disc jockey John Peel. Mike says: “I played a white label of Lilythe Pink to John Peel and he immediately said, ‘That’s a No.1’ A curly-headed boy there, who later became Marc Bolan, said ‘I agree!’”
Lilythe Pink was recorded, with backing from Reg Dwight (the future Elton John),tim Rice and Graham Nash, in the same studio at Abbey Road where the Beatles performed Allyou Need Is Love to a globaltv audience.
“I was sat on floor at the foot of the Gods whilst they were singing live,” says Mike, unmissable in the famous footage. His young self also appears in Peter Jackson’s recent documentary series Get Back.
“I would go to Abbey Road all the time when my brother was playing there.with the likes of Sergeant Pepper, he’d be going there for months. I always popped in and listened to these extraordinary things unfolding and then defying musical barriers.”