Phil May obituary | Pop and rock
Phil May obituary
This article is more than 3 years oldPowerful vocalist, frontman and songwriter with the Pretty Things, the outlandish rock band that inspired Bowie and NirvanaAs the singer and chief songwriter of the Pretty Things, Phil May, who has died aged 75 from complications following hip surgery after a cycling accident, achieved a status in pop history out of all proportion to his group’s record sales. The Pretty Things were outlandish and endlessly inventive, and inspired any number of punk, indie and glam-rock bands.
Their admirers have included David Bowie, David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop and Nirvana, while their 1966 single Midnight to Six Man supplied the opening line of the Clash’s (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais. Mick Jagger wanted to stop them from appearing on the TV pop show Ready Steady Go! because they were the one band who could challenge the delinquent-outlaw status of the Rolling Stones.
They started out playing raucous blues and R&B, but evolved speedily through soul, hard rock and psychedelia. In 1968 May delivered his tour de force in the shape of the album S. F. Sorrow. It is now considered to have been the first rock opera, but a botched release meant the album was overshadowed by the Who’s Tommy.
They signed to Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song label and enjoyed some US success with the albums Silk Torpedo (1974) and Savage Eye (1975). Only the Rolling Stones can match their achievement in surviving from the early 1960s until the present day.
Born in Dartford, south-east London, Phil was the son of Dennis and Daphne Kattner. However, his parents entrusted his upbringing to Daphne’s sister Flo and her husband, Charlie, whom May considered to be his real parents and whose surname he adopted. When he was 10 his birth parents decided they wanted him to return and a solicitor was sent to bring him back to their home.
He studied graphic design at Sidcup Art College, and formed the Pretty Things in 1963 with the guitarist Dick Taylor, who had previously been in an embryonic version of the Rolling Stones. The Pretty Things were completed by the bass player John Stax, the rhythm guitarist Brian Pendleton and the drummer Pete Kitley. The last of these was soon replaced by Viv Andrews and then Viv Prince, who would star in most of the group’s drink-and-drugs escapades.
They signed to Fontana Records in 1964, and made a rapid start with Rosalyn. Powered by a furious beat and May’s yowling vocal, it went to No 43 on the singles chart. Don’t Bring Me Down and Honey I Need reached the Top 20, while Cry to Me reached No 28. Meanwhile their eponymous debut album (1965) reached No 6.
However, the band were hampered by bad luck and poor choices. Offered an American tour by the New York-based promoter Sid Bernstein, who had introduced the Beatles to the US, their manager Bryan Morrison turned it down because the fee was too low and sent the band to New Zealand instead.
This reinforced their image as pop’s hairiest wild men (May boasted that his hair “reached down to my arse”) and they were deported for lighting a fire on an aircraft and sundry outrages, but a priceless opportunity to storm the American market was lost.
Sustained chart success also eluded them, and a No 50 placing for their 1966 single A House in the Country was their final appearance on the UK singles chart. Their late 1965 second album Get the Picture? found them moving in a more soulful direction, though it flopped in the charts. Their third album, Emotions, did not appear until April 1967. Unhappy with the band’s poor chart placings, Fontana had assigned them the producer Steve Rowland, creator of pop hits with Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.
The results found the Pretty Things playing some mainstream pop songs with strings and brass, though with hints of the more psychedelic music they were now playing. “It was almost like paying off a debt before you can move on, but in the meantime we were evolving in the stuff we were doing; more experimental stuff,” said May.
A new deal with EMI’s subsidiary Columbia brought the single Defecting Grey in November 1967. Its teasing lyrics, acoustic singalongs and raving acid-rock pointed the way towards the milestone of S.F. Sorrow, based on a story by May detailing the life of the titular S. F. Sorrow from birth through childhood, love, war, loneliness and old age. “I thought it was a great idea to have a story,” May reflected later. “There seemed no reason that the music we were writing was not for a whole 40-minute piece.”
During nine months of recording at Abbey Road studios, London, the group raised extra funds by acting alongside – and smoking marijuana with – Norman Wisdom in the sex comedy What’s Good for the Goose (1969), and recorded pieces for the De Wolfe music library, calling themselves the Electric Banana.
S.F. Sorrow stands now as a landmark of British psychedelia, but EMI did little to promote its release in December 1968. By the time it appeared in the US on the Motown subsidiary Rare Earth in mid-1969, Tommy had already arrived and reviewers dismissed the Pretty Things as copyists. A disillusioned Taylor quit the band, to be replaced by Victor Unitt and later Pete Tolson.
Parachute (1970) was a successful mix of rock, pop and psychedelia and won enthusiastic reviews, reaching No 43 on the UK chart. In 1974 came the offer of a deal with Swan Song, along with management by Led Zeppelin’s own manager, Peter Grant. Mark St John, their manager since 1984, recalled: “Peter said ‘I’d rather manage anybody than the Pretty Things, they pushed their advance up their nose, I had to pay for another record and then they fuckin’ split up.’ But they loved him and he got on really well with Phil.”
Silk Torpedo was one of their most accessible efforts, with Bowie-like glam – Bowie had covered a couple of Pretty Things songs on his album Pin Ups (1973) – and reached No 104 on the US chart. Savage Eye also made a minor dent in the US, reaching No 163. However, May was fired from his own band after failing to turn up for a gig, the Pretty Things disintegrated and the Swan Song deal lapsed.
During the 80s, May reunited with Taylor and toured in Europe with a varying cast of bandmates. In 1993 they won a legal battle against EMI, who gave them back their master tapes as well as paying them a lump sum. The band’s 1967 incarnation reunited and they began reissuing remastered versions of their albums through Snapper Music. New recordings became increasingly rare, though they released … Rage Before Beauty in 1999 and Balboa Island in 2007. The Sweet Pretty Things (Are in Bed Now, of Course) – the title came from Bob Dylan’s Tombstone Blues – followed in 2015.
In December 2018 the Pretty Things played their Final Bow concert at the Indigo, O2, in London, featuring guest appearances by Gilmour and Van Morrison. A heavy drinker and smoker, and also notoriously insecure despite his extrovert performances, May was suffering from lung disease and St John urged them to do the show before his condition made it impossible.
“Phil was wholly trustworthy, absolutely honest in a way that didn’t help him, and completely honourable,” said St John. “That’s rare in rock’n’roll because it’s so full of overpaid nincompoops who believe their own bullshit.”
The Pretty Things completed a new acoustic album before May’s death. He is survived by his son, Paris, and daughter, Sorrel, from his marriage to Electra Nemon, which ended in divorce, and by his partner from the mid-90s, Colin Graham.
Phil May (Philip Dennis Arthur Kattner), singer and songwriter, born 9 November 1944; died 15 May 2020
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