Dick Taylor on The Pretty Things’ final chapter

Last year they finally changed their minds and set to work on a collection of 12 songs, not knowing at the time it would be pair’s final chapter together. In spring 2020, singer May died following complications from surgery for injuries he sustained in a cycling accident.

Bare As Bone, Bright As Blood, out now, serves an epitaph to a remarkable talent revered by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.

Guitarist Taylor, 77, says the rethink was prompted by May’s ill-health from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema that halted the band’s touring in 2018. “We were also trying to find a way to do something different,” he says. “We had actually started another electric album but then realised this band has to wind down because of Phil’s health. Phil was still performing incredibly well but he found all the travelling (too much), he just wasn’t capable of touring like we were.

“We had actually used an acoustic line-up live in the past and in the middle of our electric set we used to do two or three songs just with me playing the acoustic and Jack (Greenwood), the drummer, joining in and people were actually saying ‘we would like a recording of this’. So that was kind of the start of the new album, we started with a couple of songs that we used to do with the whole band and then it developed from there.”

The band’s manager Mark St John has described the recording process as “arduous”. Taylor says that was in part due to it being unfamiliar territory. “Also Phil was finding it difficult,” he adds. “When we would go off to the studio some days he would be feeling great and other days he wouldn’t, so that was a big factor. And Phil, surprisingly enough, didn’t particularly like recording.

“He was nervous about doing live gigs but once he was on the stage it kind of electrified him, whereas the whole process of recording was (more complex). You would work out the backing track largely and Phil would be doing guide vocals and then there would be a big thing of making sure the instruments sounded good, so there was a lot of sitting around, particularly for the vocalist, which he wasn’t all that happy about. But don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t sitting there pouting and being miserable.”

The new album features blues songs by Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and Gillian Welch. The inclusion of Love in Vain, Taylor admits, was “in part” a nod to the Rolling Stones, with whom he played guitar for a few months in 1962 before forming The Pretty Things with May the next year.

“Yes the Stones did it (on their 1969 album Let It Bleed), so that was a little bit of a factor, but it was more the fact that it’s a different kind of blues song,” he says. “It has a certain quality to it which makes it stand out, a very slightly different (chord) sequence and all those things that make a song more individual. It’s just a bloody good song – that’s one reason why the Stones chose it.”

St John has also noted Bare As Bone is the sound the “two old men...who are acting their age”. Taylor says: “I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. It was a different challenge and also it was nice to be doing something unique. We had a reputation as being a rock band and doing something that wasn’t expected was really good to do. The stimulus of trying to make something very minimalistic interesting, and the fact that it was bare as bone.”

Five months after May’s death, Taylor is still coming to terms with the loss of his longtime friend. “We didn’t live in each other’s pockets which I think in some ways helped,” he reflects. “We remained really close friends but we wouldn’t be inviting each other round to dinner because working together you spend masses of time with one another.

“Even on the road we’d all go off and do our own individual things mostly, but then when you’re in the dressing room and when you’re on stage you’d have that real closeness. I think it helped that we weren’t all the while in one another’s company apart from when we working.”

The Pretty Things forged a reputation as an explosive live band during the British R&B boom of the mid 1960s. Taylor jokingly once referred the group as “incompetent reprobates” who played a “thrash” alternative to many of their contemporaries. “We started off as terrible amateurs,” he chuckles today. “None of us had any proper musical training. One of the things I really liked about the punk era and the skiffle era was the fact that really what they were playing was something that was accessible, and you didn’t have to be schooled for goodness knows how many years in order to do it.

“When I grew up we used to go to my grandparents’ house and everybody would be able to play a bit on something, particularly my grandfather. He was a really good player of any instrument he picked up, but strictly for enjoyment – and that’s what music is all about. I think there’s room for people of all different abilities, and I hope that Pretty Things all through their career reflected that, in a way.”

The wild notoriety of their gigs and a high turnover of band members were simply part and parcel of how they were, Taylor says. “It certainly wasn’t some conscious effort to be bad boys or anything like that, and I’m not really sure how we ranked amongst the bad boys,” he chuckles.”I think our image got people to write about us in the way that we were reprobates, but quite honestly when we were touring some of the bands that had a squeaky clean image were probably just as bad.”

The Pretty Things were successful in Britain and Europe but struggled to break into the US market, despite a brief liaison with Motown and patronage in the 70s from Led Zeppelin. Taylor is not one for regrets.

“You can’t really change the way things were, and we wouldn’t have been in the position we were when Phil died,” he says. “We seem to have achieved a status which suited us, and I don’t think either Phil or I were interested in giant amounts of money or a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, although I think when they did go to the States in the 70s when I wasn’t in the band, the Led Zeppelin era, Phil did enjoy that very much, I’m sure he would say so as well, but I don’t think that was the best thing for us. It’s not something that I would really want to be limousined around all the while and living that lifestyle, and I don’t think Phil did.

“When Phil was on the road he would be drawing all the while, and that’s one of the things he really loved doing. He always viewed himself more as an artist than a singer, and although he didn’t earn money from it that was a great part of his life.”

The band’s most ambitious album, SF Sorrow, flopped when it came out in 1968, but has come to be regarded as one of the finest rock operas. It’s a latterday reputation is a source of pride for Taylor. “When we did it I was quite certain we’d done something which was an artistic success,” he says. “Even then I thought it was a pretty amazing piece of work. Quite how we managed to do it I’m not sure, but I realised that it was something pretty special. The fact that it didn’t sell millions was disappointing but on the other hand you realise over the years people are starting to pick up on the fact that it was a bit important and I’m very happy that it achieved the status that it did eventually.”

Bare As Bone may be The Pretty Things’ last release, but Taylor is adamant he is not done with performing. “Obviously the coronavirus has affected everybody’s ability to do live gigs but funnily enough, in the last couple of weeks I’ve done three gigs outside with different lots of people and really enjoyed it,” he says. “As soon as I can I will continue to do so.”

Bare As Bone, Bright as Blood is out now. www.theprettythings.com