How Important Are The Pretty Things? Just Ask The Guests On Their Aus Farewell Tour

Billy Gardner, The Living Eyes

Living Eyes started out as die-hard '60s garage fans and The Pretty Things’ first two albums fell perfectly into that category and played a HUGE influence on us starting out. We used to attempt to cover Don’t Bring Me Down and Come See Me in the garage when practising just for fun. As we grew older and matured a bit more our music taste did too and we discovered The Pretty Things’ later psych side that everybody knows and loves like SF Sorrow and Parachute. We are all very much looking forward to these shows!

Steve O’Brien, Tumbleweed

I discovered The Pretty Things’ Get The Picture LP as a young garage punker in the mid 1980s. I was in a band called the Unheard and we already did a version of the Australian garage band the Wild Colonials’ cover of the Pretty’s song Get the Picture but had never heard the original as yet – these were the days of pre-internet and to discover music you relied on a peer group of cassette swaps, word of mouth and the likes of Dean Mittelhauser's Livin' End fanzine or him sending me tapes. I bought the LP – a New Zealand copy for $5 from Frank Cotterell at Waterfront Records funny enough (thanks Frank!) and the original song was far dirtier and slower and I was instantly hooked. I searched until I found a copy of their debut self-titled LP and that was as good if not better. From then on the Unheard took on a more R&B slant and less of the US garage punk we had been playing before. We even threw Buzz The Jerk and Don’t Bring Me Down into the set soon after.

I remember eagerly seeking out a wobbly VHS tape of the 15 minute promo clip that had Midnight To Six and being amazed by these long haired crazies. Wow! If the Stones were considered compared nasty to the Beatles, then The Pretty Things were downright filthy. I loved it!

One time drinking beers at a gig at the Oxford Tavern in Wollongong, it was around 11pm on a Friday night and mates and I were talking about our Melbourne friends the Puritans having their EP launch in Melbourne the next night and the rumour the now Melbourne living original Pretty’s bass player John Stax was possibly going to make an appearance. Too much to think about so we jumped into Tom Dion’s 1965 Ford Falcon and drove the nine hours over night down the Hume Highway. I remember the gig but don’t recall how I got home but I was back in the gong by Sunday arvo slightly worse for wear but it was worth it as John Stax ripped through some howling R&B tunes with the Puritans that night. Later on when Paul and I left the garage punk days of the Unheard for Tumbleweed we were listening more to the trippier psych sounds of the SF Sorrow and Parachute LPs and that definitely had an influence on the more spaced out sounds of Tumbleweed. I was lucky to see them in Sydney a few years back and it was a great show. I shouted some cocktails to guitarist Frank Holland after the show it was that good! To be asked to play a show on what is their final ever tour of Australia is incredible and Tumbleweed are humbled to share the stage with The Pretty Things. Me especially, I can’t wait to see them again.

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Nick VanBakel, Bananagun

The Pretty Things: when they psych out you can taste the acid on your tongue and feel that nylon shirt itch and when they play blues you can see the rural earth and grit and cow shit and windmills!

Every band and its dog was doin’ it, countless dogs going for the old R&B bone but The Pretty Things broke the collar and leash in search of fresh meat. Never stopped to stoop!

They nailed every style they did with a naive flare and energy that only bona fide champions can. Over achieving under dogs of the '60s! Heroic status.

Owen Penglis, Straight Arrows

I'm super stoked to get to DJ at the Sydney show for The Pretty Things, a band that have been so important informing my tastes and musical upbringing. I used to hit the local grimy second-hand record store deep in the suburbs near where I grew up (Discovery Records, Hornsby, for any old locals) at least a couple of times a week as a teen trying to find cool records that I could afford. There was usually a couple of amazing $5-$10 finds I could buy on my shitty $9 an hour pizza delivery wage. And they never seemed to care that I was skipping school sport and hogging the only listening station in the shop, burning through anything that looked half OK. One of the owners, Nick, saw that I was into Nuggets, and the first Rolling Stones LP and started putting aside beat up copies of early rhythm & blues Pretty Things 45s 'cause he figured that should be next on my list, and I went for them, HARD. They were weirder, tougher, with a RAW heavy beat - which are qualities I've ever since been constantly chasing in my own recordings, AND when I'm spending TOO MUCH money on obscure 45s.

For years people were telling me, along with every second old-man music magazine I'd read, 'YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO SF SORROW'. I figured that was bullshit, like someone's stoner dad making you listen to Dark Side Of The Moon on headphones while the fucking Wizard Of Oz is playing or something. Years later I took a listen and it BLEW ME AWAY. I'd say that album's in my all time top five. It's absolutely incredible; weird, tender, and tough. The songs are top notch and it sounds AMAZING too. I sure hope they play She Says Good Morning when I get to see em.

Christopher Hollow, Sand Pebbles

There was a Beasts of Bourbon song that I loved as a kid called ESP, which was a phrase that was thrown around in everyday conversation back then. 'Oh, she must have E.S.P reading my thoughts like that." I later found out it was a cover of The Pretty Things' LSD, just tweaked for the times, and my love affair with The Pretty Things started. The thing I find most inspirational now is a live version of Reincarnation that's up on YouTube from French TV in 1967. It's just a total performance. The drummer, Skip Alan, dishes out an incredible in-the-moment, manic, in-the-crowd, in-your-face performance. He's just on and if someone did that in Melbourne right now it would absolutely light up the city as a legendary act. I hope that either The Pretty Things or the Sand Pebbles can do something similar in November.

Dom Mariani, Datura4, The Stems

I've always dug The Pretty Things. I was in London for a week in early December of 2010, visiting my daughter Ruby, and I was keen to catch a show while I was there. We had two options on the night we’d planned to go out; It was either The Psychedelic Furs or The Pretty Things. For me it had to be The Pretty Things. A band that had been a favourite of mine ever since I’d discovered their albums in the mid '80s. A few years earlier I’d seen them play a short set at Little Steven's Underground Garage Festival in New York. This time around they were doing SF Sorrow in its entirety at The 100 Club. A club show - I had to see it! We got there early, and we managed to get a spot right in front of Dick Taylor, and for a long-time fan it was a dream come true, I wasn’t disappointed - they were fantastic. From the early rhythm and blues years right through to their psychedelic and hard rock of the late ’60s and ’70s, they made some great albums. In my opinion their 1970 album Parachute is one of greatest acid rock records of all time.

Richard Walsh, The Electric Guitars

Dirty pretty ugly things huddled around a sickly blue flickering midnight-to-6th generation copy videocassette of The Pretty Things on Film drinking in oscilloscope manipulations and melting brutal buildings and echoed footsteps and lonesome spectral Can’t Stand the Pain riff and Phil May KNOWS we’ll never again see the people we know in the bright light of day. Perfect!

Dave Grey, The Electric Guitars

The Pretty Things are the masters of snarling R&B garage punk, beautiful psychedelia and intelligent heavy prog rock. Their inventive harmonies can even be heard in the likes of The Sweet and Queen. They’re all things to all people, especially you.

Vic Conrad, Vic Conrad & The 1st 3rd

For all their reputation as being the wildest band around, The Pretty Things crossed and indeed transcended the boundaries of Pop, Rock, Blues, Psych and whatever else they chose to throw into the mix, to create a peerless collection of ’60s musical wonder and beauty. The sublime Can’t Stand The Pain was an early sign that something special was going on. With at least three masterpieces (Get The Picture, SF Sorrow and Parachute) and a string of singles of increasing delicacy, power and exhilaration, The Pretty Things never wavered. Personal favourites include You Don’t Believe Me (which we covered in The Dust Collection), Alexander and Walking Through My Dreams, but there is so much more. Defecting Grey, anyone?