Them

Track	Single / Album
Baby Please Don't Go	Decca F12018
Gloria	Decca F12018
Here Comes The Night	Decca F12094
I Gave My Love A Diamond	The Angry Young Them
You Just Can't Win	The Angry Young Them
Mystic Eyes	Decca F12281
Could You, Would You	Them Again
My Lonely Sad Eyes	Them Again
It's All Over Now Baby Blue	Them Again
Friday's Child	Major Minor MM 509

 

Them (clockwise from top left): Pat McAuley (keyboards), Van Morrison (vocals/harmonica), Billy Harrison (guitar), Alan Henderson (bass) – photo from the front cover of ‘Them Featuring Van Morrison’ (Decca 1982)

 

 

Them playlist

 

Contributor: Dave Stephens

When friends were friends
And company was right
We’d drink and talk and sing
All through the night

So started The Story Of Them, released as a two parter single in the UK in May 1967 after the break-up of the group.

Within the song, Van moves from the general to the specific – “With the help of the three J’s, started playin’ at the Maritime” – even describing members of the band, “That little one sings, and that big one plays the guitar, with a thimble on his finger” (a clear reference to Billy Harrison) and “The bass player don’t shave much, I think they’re all a little bit, touched”.

In its conversational manner, the record owes a lot to the Howlin’ Wolf version of Goin’ Down Slow; Van even borrows the “Good Times, mmmmm”, changing the ordering but catching the intonation. What he makes no attempt to do is capture the near-death bed drama of the Wolf rendition which is unusual in itself since our man rarely resisted an opportunity to let it all hang out. It could be that he was already mentally putting Them to bed and moving on, or maybe he just wanted to record a slow blues, something that was relatively rare in the Them recorded career, or was he already reaching out for immortality? On a more mundane level I’d note that the Animals had already included an Eric Burdon written Story Of Bo Diddley on their first (1964) album which might just have given Van the idea.

 

THE HITS

Like many things about Them, their recording career was hardly conventional. They bagged themselves a hit in the UK with side one of record #2, Baby Please Don’t Go, followed it with a minor hit in the US with its flip, Gloria, though the A-side did nothing over there. Then they had a hit on both sides of the pond with their next record, Here Comes The Night which has to be seen as the peak of their career, singles wise. There were to be no more UK hits but a later single, Mystic Eyes, did well enough in the US to get into their Top Forty. And that was it.

All those records were remarkable and they were all different. What they had in common was a high level of musicianship, a willingness to experiment beyond what might have been expected of a British & Irish R&B based band of the era and an extremely distinctive and in-your-face vocalist in young George Ivan Morrison who was 19 when Baby Please Don’t Go/Gloria was released in November 1964.

Baby Please Don’t Go was ostensibly that familiar thing, an updating of an American black blues number to appeal to a new, young white audience. Most writers have the original source as Big Joe Williams who recorded the title in 1935 and again in later years. Morrison could well have heard multiple versions of the number plus I’m Alabammy Bound by Leadbelly and, separately, Lonnie Donegan, both early heroes of his; the latter song had melodic similarities to Baby Please Don’t Go. But the direct source usually quoted in relation to the Them recording was John Lee Hooker’s take on the song: it appeared on the 1959/60 LP, Highway Of Blues (which he shared with Sticks McGhee) under the title Don’t Go Baby.

Which is all fine and dandy but what was of key significance in this instance was the updating. The band – and one has to give credit to the full occupancy of the studio rather than just Morrison – had produced a transformation to that song which was every bit as major as the one that Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black did to Arthur Crudup’s That’s All Right. Elvis & co turned blues into rockabilly; Them and Van turned blues into electric rock. And yes, I know I’ve used this analogy before but as transformations go, Elvis and his cohorts set the benchmark. There were hints in Billy Harrison’s biting guitar riff of the Hooker ‘original’ but the propulsive two note bass riff came from nowhere; was it an attempt to emulate John Lee’s stamping foot one wonders. Then there was the surging organ that emerged from somewhere down below (and was to be a regular feature on Them records). And I’ve not even mentioned the speed of the Them cut. It was hard to the right of the dial, as far as you could go, and when Morrison entered he seemed to be pushing the band on to an even greater expenditure of energy. The usually forceful Hooker sounded almost intimate when compared to the near desperation of the Morrison/Them agonised pleading.

I’ve seen the record referred to as one of the finest examples of white blues. I’d differ. To me it’s a rock record and a brilliant one.

Gloria was another brilliant rock record. Given its provenance – it was one of the earliest of Van’s compositions, indeed Wiki report (and they’re not alone) that it was kicking around in Van’s set in the summer of ’63 when he was fronting the Monarchs – then the rather short and tubby singer can file a justifiable claim for having invented US garage rock before anyone in the US did. The tropes were there and by golly were they executed well. And I’ve found a genuine live clip this time, from “Les” Them in France, date not given:

Like to tell ya about my baby
Lord, you know she comes around
She about five feet four
Right from her head down to the ground

Bert Berns was in the producer’s seat for Baby Please Don’t Go though his influence wasn’t strongly apparent; the arrangement was worked up by the band, with or without Jimmy Page and the consensus is without – see also Footnotes. He, Bert that is, was back for the A-side of single #3, Here Comes The Night, and the fact that he’d also written the number suggested that more aural evidence of his presence was likely to be heard than on the boys’ preceding effort. As indeed it was. The near baroque intro with hints of Espana plus organ washes was Bert writ large though the break to the verse with a sort of country knees-up taking over (though it might have been intended more as a cool, jazzy interlude), wasn’t Bert, and it shouldn’t have worked. Strangely though it did and repeats of that intro as a chorus didn’t disturb the flow either. Van and the boys and Bert had managed to break into George Martin plus Beatles territory circa Rubber Soul (which wasn’t out yet!) with a more than significant level of success. It wasn’t perfect. The lyrics give the impression of being rushed. But that doesn’t matter. It’s only the advancing gloom (and magnificence) of the repeated title line in the chorus which really strikes home.

Here Comes the Night was hardly the sort of black material that we’d already learned to expect from Van and company even if it did evoke memories of the sounds that were coming out from Atlantic a few years earlier, via Berns and other producers like Leiber & Stoller; The Drifters’ There Goes My Baby is a good example but there were plenty more.

Mystic Eyes, on the other hand, was an example of a distinctly Brit approach to American R&B that you heard in the clubs those days from groups like the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things and the Animals, often, but not always, using a Diddley number as a base on which to build guitar, and sometimes bass or organ and often harmonica improvisation. Such numbers were usually no more than one or two chord based and built to one or more climaxes over an extended duration. ‘Mystic’ was probably the best example of its type to be captured on record. According to Wiki, it originated from a long instrumental jam that the boys got rolling in the studio with the switches set to ‘On’. Out of nowhere, Van suddenly puts aside his harmonica and breaks into life vocally using words he’d been putting together for an as yet unrealised song. The engineer edited down the initial eight minutes or whatever of instrumental work to leave a still lengthy – one minute plus – introduction before the Morrison vocal and, lo and behold, the record was created.

One Sunday mornin’
We went walkin’
Down by
The old graveyard
The mornin’ fog
I looked into
A-yeah, those mystic eyes

As a digression I’d note that Them were unlike the ‘norm’ for British R&B groups of the period in that they didn’t cover any Diddley or Berry songs, on record that is; they could well have included them in live gigs. The only exception I’m aware of is the fact that they did produce a version of Bo’s You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover in their first recording session but it’s still not surfaced within the rarities that have appeared on compilations within the last decade or two.

 

THE OTHER SINGLES

Looked at in black & white, that heading almost lumbers a significant amount of Them’s output with the throwaway title, ‘The Rest’. But it was almost like that. With a few honourable exceptions, the other eight Decca and Major Minor singles – with Major Minor being a subsidiary of Decca – had nothing like the quality of the hits. All were good records but they didn’t stand out in a highly competitive marketplace.

The debut single warrants attention. Somehow, Van or one of the boys – it’s unlikely to have been the producer – had gotten hold of the US 1961 single of Don’t Start Cryin’ Now by Slim Harpo (see also Footnotes). The original took the form of a semi-urgent shuffle with Harpo on top telling his lady, in no uncertain terms, that he’s about to leave her even if his vocal didn’t carry a lot more intensity than his normal insinuating style. The Them version ups the tempo – by a lot – and delivers the message at almost an emergency level of priority. Slim would hardly have recognised the song. This record should have warned potential buyers of the level of reinvention the group would go on to apply to numbers like Baby Please Don’t Go and several of the cover tracks on the first album.

The flip, to my ears, was even better. One Two Brown Eyes was the first Morrison composition to see release. It might have been little more than a one chord thing over a bouncy latinish rhythm but the performance was so good that it almost got into my ten. Alan Henderson on bass finds a riff and sticks to it, Billy Harrison on guitar is an absolute star, switching between semi-slide work (using a thimble we’re told) and indulging in a counterpoint riff to the bass, with Morrison up front, extemporising all over the place very much in the manner he would on many of those later solo efforts.

I highlight some of the other singles under the Almost-Made-Its heading but I’d request the reader to give a listen to couple of late releases which seem to indicate that Van and maybe the band were headed in a folk rock direction. Richard Cory was a cover of the Paul Simon written number which had appeared on S&G’s Sounds Of Silence. While there’s more immediacy and identification in this version (and the rumbling guitar sounds even more ominous), I still have some attachment to the elegance of the original.

My final track under this heading appears to have been something of an afterthought. It was released to accompany a reissue of Gloria in April 1967. The song was written by Morrison and entitled Friday’s Child. According to the Chrome Oxide sessionography, it was recorded the best part of two years before release which might scotch the theory of a late Van/Them switch towards the folk direction; it was more likely to be evidence of Van moving in multiple directions at once, almost from the start. And duty tells me that this was more of a mood piece than folk, with or without rock. But with banks of acoustic guitars and complex chords – well, one anyway – this was miles away from typical Them music. A little beauty.

From the North
To the South,
Ya’ walked all the way.
Ya’ know ya’ left your,
Left your home
For good to stay

 

THE ALBUMS

There were two LPs released in the UK, The Angry Young Them and Them Again, and one EP. That’s not including compilation sets from well outside the group’s lifetime or an EP released in 1984. If you ignore the comps then both of the albums should be viewed as essential purchases for anyone interested in sixties music in general and the British ‘beat boom’ in particular, or for solo Morrison fans aiming at building a more representative collection.

Spread across the two LPs were a dozen cover versions (that’s if you regard Little Girl as a cover, more on which later). The covers ranged from major reinventions like their take on Jimmy Reed’s Bright Lights, Big City which managed to purloin the highly recognisable descending chord sequence from Ray Charles’ Hit The Road Jack, to the relatively straight take on Turn On Your Love Light which might have indicated that Van would have been happy to have gone head to head with the great Bobby Bland. A few years downstream, the Grateful Dead would turn this number into one of their epics; Bobby and Van between them said it all in less than two and a half minutes.

But there are covers and there are covers. Even before you heard Van utter the immortal words, “You must leave, take what you need, you think will last” on Them Again, you knew you were into something special. I’m far from alone in viewing the boys’ shimmering take on Dylan’s It’s All Over Now Baby Blue as among the very best covers of Dylan material. Lester Bangs has stated that the Them version was “… perhaps the most unusual version of this song ever recorded” with Van showing “real love and regret, shot through with painful resignation” as opposed to the “self righteous putdown” of the original (these quotes appear in a piece from Lester in 1972 entitled “Spawn Of The Dublin Pubs: Them Creatures & A Wight Named Van” and yes, he did get a tad confused with his geography).

At least as interesting, if not more so than the covers on the two albums, was a load of numbers penned by Morrison which hadn’t seen single (or EP) release (see Footnotes for information on the EPs). I’ve selected one such track from The Angry Young Them called You Just Can’t Win which could be regarded as a curate’s egg – that’s to say good in parts but less so in others. The song has been reported as having been Dylan inspired and the lyrics aren’t bad for pop (but nothing like Dylan). The initial melodic picture painting is very good but the climax portion of each verse is clumsily structured. An interesting failure perhaps but it was pleasing to see the ambition.

If the occasional Van composition was appearing in an incompletely formed state on The Angry Young Them, that wasn’t the case with Morrison tracks on Them Again. There was obviously some faith by Decca in the marvellous Could You, Would You since they gave the track the starting position on the album. Quite why they didn’t go a step further and release it as a single we’ll never know. This was Berns without Berns; the Atlantic label hybrid of proto-soul and pop but delivered by some boys from Belfast (mainly) who’d learned their lessons well. An absolute triumph. According to Van himself in the sleeve notes to The Complete Them 1964-1967, the track and certain others were originally intended for a solo album which didn’t happen, and the backing came purely from session musicians. But I should add that there was a consistency and continuity of sound across the tracks on The Angry Young Them and Them Again which strongly indicated a stable group in the Decca studio, though as we’ve subsequently learned that was far from the case.

From the same album, My Lonely Sad Eyes was another very fine Morrison composition but one that didn’t look to the past and across the pond for inspiration. Rather this was one of the few that looked forward to the solo work of, say, Moondance, with influences buried more deeply – faint hints of jazz and the Celtic tradition deep down there somewhere. Yes you could call it folk but folk as performed solely by George Ivan Morrison. His lyrics were improving too:

Fill me my cup
And I’ll drink your sparkling wine
Pretendin’ everything is fine
‘Till I see your sad eyes

I’m dropping back to The Angry Young Them for my final selection from the albums. The track, I Gave My Love A Diamond, is another that could be said to be flawed. Written by Bert Berns but in cohorts with Wes Farrell, it has that Bert feel whereby you could imagine it being sung by the man who so often interpreted his songs, the great Solomon Burke. Not only that, approximately half way in the band break into Bert’s patented Twist And Shout chord sequence. The problem with the whole thing is that Morrison is, at least in part, disconnected from the backing; he’s either slightly before or slightly after the beat, I can’t make up my mind which. The song also seems to be performed at an agonisingly slow tempo such that the whole thing, reverb guitar and all, sounds like it’s coming through treacle. It puts me in mind of the Neil Young album, Tonight’s The Night and tracks like Tired Eyes. It’s no secret that the contributors to that album, including Young, were high on a range of substances when the album was cut. To make matters even more curious, two alternate takes of ‘Diamond’ have emerged, the first on The Story Of Them and the second on The Complete Them 1964-1967. This is the first of the two; it’s even slower and more intense than The Angry Young Them version. It’s the most uptight Morrison ever got in the studio in the Them days. You can imagine him wrapped up in a tight little ball about to explode.

 

THE ALMOST-MADE-ITS

My opener, The Story Of Them was a candidate, as were:

If You And I Could Be As Two (flip of ‘Mystic’) – yearning ballad from Van featuring spoken intro and a recitation section plus double time support in which both piano and organ appear but maybe there’s just a little too much going on.

Call My Name (single) – penned by producer Tommy Scott and it’s a poppish item not unlike some Berns songs.

Bring ‘Em On In (flip of Call My Name) – Van composition and fast chugger – 12 bar structure somewhat disguised by the punchy, declamatory vocal approach – sax break (was this Van?)

Little Girl (The Angry Young Them) – two chord romp from Van and he claims credit for writing even with words part plagiarised from Good Morning School Girl (sometimes Good Morning Little Schoolgirl) which is believed to have been first recorded by Sonny Boy Williamson I. In its original format it received covers from several Brit R&B bands/artists inc. the Yardbirds and Rod Stewart.

Just A Little Bit (The Angry Young Them) – a song which featured in the set list of several Brit R&B groups but Van & co completely expunge the New Orleans style riff which was the most distinctive feature of the Rosco Gordon original and replace it by a backing that could almost have come straight from Sonny Boy Williamson II’s Help Me, but with increased insistency. For those not aware I’d also comment that the arrangement of Help Me wasn’t unrelated to the famous riff in Booker T. & the M.G.s’ Green Onions.

Don’t Look Back (The Angry Young Them) – another cover but a most unusual one in that it derives from a completely atypical John Lee Hooker ballad, and yes I mean ‘ballad’ in terms of almost teen ballad, which was released as a single in the US in 1964 but not in the UK. It also appeared on the Hooker LP, On Campus, that same year. Van and the boys stick pretty close to the original this time, unlike the other covers on The Angry Young Them.

Something You Got (Them Again) – the song was written by New Orleans native Chris Kenner but it had received covers from Fats Domino, Alvin Robinson, and Chuck Jackson with Maxine Brown, before Them got their hands on it (and further covers were to follow). The writer of the sleeve notes to the Them Again LP states that Van recorded the song as an acknowledgement to Chuck Jackson who he admired. That may be the case but this version is far more raw than any of those I’ve mentioned, putting it broadly in line with I Gave My Love A Diamond for approach/attitude.

I Can Only Give You Everything (Them Again) – another Tommy Scott composition (with Phil Coulter) but this time aimed squarely at the US garage market – it was released as a single in the US but not in the UK – while the track might have had the air of a pastiche about it, it was still head and shoulders above most garage releases.

Hello Josephine (Them Again) – another much covered song (from Fats Domino) with several of those covers having merit of their own – Them contribute their distinctive version to the pile with a bar room piano and splendid sax standing out in the arrangement – the words ‘urgency’ and ‘insistence’ appear in my brain all over again, as they do on so many Them tracks.

Time’s Gettin’ Tougher Than Tough (didn’t see release till it appeared on a Dutch EP in 1967 – no clip available) – in which Van and the band demonstrate with assurance that they were perfectly happy to take on a slightly jazz-inclined jump blues – the original came from Jimmy Witherspoon who recorded the song several times – Van probably heard the ’64 Stateside single release.

Mighty Like A Rose (didn’t see release until the Backtrackin’ compilation LP in 1974) – something of a mystery record which didn’t even get included in the Chrome Oxide sessionography – I only came across it recently but it’s growing on me – reportedly (Simon Gee in Wavelength 14), Van wasn’t too keen on its possible inclusion in The Story Of Them claiming it was only a demo though the mentions of sugar cubes and fourteen summers might have been on his mind too

And the, the hazard, oh
The wind blows
Through your ears
Ya haven’t got enough
Of those
What ya haven’t got for years
Yeah, but never mind
Steppin’ on my toes
Yeah, child
You’re gettin’ mighty
Like a rose

 

POST VAN THEM (PART 1)

In August 1965 (date from Wiki), the first serious breakaway within Them occurred; it was eventually to lead to the final group breakdown in early ’67. Billy Harrison and Pat McAuley left and attempted to form a rival Them which almost inevitably led to legal action. The Van Morrison/Alan Henderson grouping won the case and retained the name (and the Henderson ‘rump’ inherited that name after Morrison himself split, but that comes in Part 2). Pat’s brother Jackie also left Them and joined the new grouping and Billy Harrison left the new group at broadly the same time. Jackie McAuley took over the vocal lead in a manner that owed a lot to his erstwhile leader.

The new group called themselves (The) Belfast Gypsies but that name change didn’t occur until their first single had seen release in France and a few other countries. Hence on Disques Vogue we had “Them” with Gloria’s Dream c/w Secret Police sometime in ’66 – 45cat doesn’t specify more than that. The A-side was an obvious sequel to Gloria but the flip was more interesting: an original composition which, while sticking to the garage mode of delivery, did have a few things to say and an attractively energetic way of saying them. The name “Fowley” appears in the credits of both songs. It won’t come as any surprise to learn that that was the surname of the ubiquitous Californian, Kim Fowley, whose tentacles reached as far as London where the boys were based at the time.

If my counting is correct, the group released ten numbers in all, spread across singles and EPs. The second of the UK singles which was evidently aimed at more of a psych market with the titles, People! Let’s Freak Out and The Shadow Chasers, was credited to The Freaks Of Nature. If that selection of tracks gives a rather one dimensional view of the Belfast Gypsies then it might be worth bending an ear to their one and only album, Them Belfast Gypsies (with the “Them” in much larger lettering than the group name) which initially only saw release in Scandinavia. Tracks like their version of Derroll Adams’ Portland Town and The Last Will And Testament (a copy of St James Infirmary) plus the harmonica work on Magnificent Train show that the group had taken on board much of Van’s taste as well as his vocal styling.

 

POST VAN THEM (PART 2)

After Van followed his muse in the direction of Bert Berns and Bang Records, the ‘legitimate’ Them decamped to the American west coast in early 1967 after recruiting new lead vocalist, Kenny McDowell. A clutch of singles appeared from the band in the US over the next few years across several labels. These didn’t appear in the UK though a few other countries picked up on one or two releases. One of the most frequently seen singles in terms of number of countries it appeared in, was Walking In The Queen’s Garden in late ’67, an example of garage psych which was fairly popular in the US.

That same year the group released an album entitled Now And Them which contained the singles plus a load of new tracks. Sonically, the album didn’t tell the listener much about the group other than the facts that they bore minimal resemblance to the ‘old’ Them and that they had a sound level of musical competence but little idea what to do with it. They appeared to have a desire to be seen as ‘in’ and ‘current’ judging by one or two psychish tracks though others weren’t too many miles from west coast easy listening. The LP kicked off with a decent version of I’m Your Witchdoctor which might have been there to burnish the Brit connection but didn’t add any value to the Mayall/Clapton original. Given the new fashion for lengthy pieces there was a jam weighing in at 9 minutes and 59 seconds entitled Square Room. I’ve mentioned it for completeness. It’s not bad but hardly in the class of Kaleidoscope or the Dead.

There were to be four more albums but, judging by the decreasing level of interest shown by YouTube uploaders, they don’t warrant in depth investigation.

 

FINAL WORDS

“Van Morrison, the lead singer with Them, sometimes throws his supporters into a frenzy of hair-tearing despair . . . moody, unpredictable, perverse, often downright wilful – but always creative. On sessions, when asked to alter the phrasing of a number, he will say with quiet rebellion: ‘No! I always sing this way . . . the way I feel’ and he is invariably right.”
(Sleeve Notes to the Them Again LP)

“Van Morrison sings “Gloria” in a lustful croak, like a demented horny frog”

and

“The best truly dirty record ever.”
(Dave Marsh in “The Heart Of Rock And Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made”, where he made Gloria his number 69)

“In 1965, Them’s “Baby Please Don’t Go” was out loud, on the radio, and its yarragh was its heedlessness.”
(Greil Marcus in “Listening To Van Morrison” – not everyone was blown over by Baby Please Don’t Go though he was complimentary about other numbers in his/their output – see quote below)

“Morrison made two brilliant albums, Them (called The Angry Young Them in the United Kingdom, it sounded it) and Them Again.”
(Greil Marcus in “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of Rock & Roll”)

“The original Them had the best of everything, their British blues chops down so solid they could let the standard forms ride and cruise out on some stuff that was pretty damned experimental, and successfully so, for its day (some of it still is). An impeccably tight and always driving ensemble sound, and soloists who knew how to compress enough feeling and enough ideas into a few deliberate seconds as to make you sob in this post Cream era of rampant guitar ego tripping. And a little tiny cat who was pretty funny looking, it seemed to us at the time.”

and

“And as gorgeous as Van’s recent work has been (and as fine as he must feel to have somehow, finally resolved the tensions brimming from his early music), any reasonable ear just gotta fess up to the fact that one or two “Wild Nights” an album don’t really satiate, especially when these early Them albums were burger heaven and wham, bam, thank you ma’am from stem to stern.”
(Lester Bangs in the 1972 piece referred to earlier – and in reference to this comment I would note that at the time he wrote this piece there had only been 5 or 6 solo Morrison albums released, with number depending on precise time of writing)

I’ve commented more than once that if a musician creates just one record that is seen as remarkable, or going beyond the day to day run of singles and album tracks, then he, her, or they, should be remembered with a place in musical history. Them did this on multiple occasions – at least half a dozen by my count – others may differ. They were something very special.
(Yours truly)

 

Them (l to r): Peter Bardens, Alan Henderson, Van Morrison, Billy Harrison, Pat McAuley – (photo by Tony Frank / National Portrait Gallery)

 

FOOTNOTES

1. Sir George Ivan Morrison was born on 31st August 1945 in East Belfast. The knighthood came later. He was interested in music from an early age and his interest must have been fuelled by the large and wide-ranging record collection accrued by his father George. That collection, a portion of which came from a period George spent in Detroit in the early fifties, included blues, jazz, gospel, early soul and country, much of it unsurprisingly, American in origin. But it might well have been Scottish singer Lonnie Donegan on the radio who persuaded young Ivan to try to start playing guitar and sing along with his strumming – a common backdrop which, with some variation, was shared by many British musicians who came to fame in the sixties.

At the tender age of 12, Ivan, or Van as it got shortened to, started his first skiffle group which, within a year or so of its formation, was playing some gigs at local cinemas. A second skiffle group called the Midnight Special followed, then other short-lived bands. He persuaded his father to buy him a sax which made him more attractive to groups looking to broaden their sound. He left school in 1960 and got a job as a window cleaner but picked up extra cash from working with a band in the evenings and weekends.

By 1962, he had joined the Monarchs who (a) toured Europe, and (b) made a record which included Van on sax – unfortunately said record didn’t find its way to YouTube. The Monarchs disbanded and Van played and sang with other groups over the next year or so with his focus shifting more towards blues.

An opportunity arose for a band to play at the opening of a new R&B club in the Maritime Hotel in Belfast, a venue that had in its past been a dance hall often used by sailors. Van was involved with the set-up of the club along with entrepreneurs Jimmy Conlon, Jerry McKernan and Gerry McKervey (the “three J’s” mentioned in The Story Of Them). He recruited a band from an existing outfit called The Gamblers whose members consisted of Ronnie Millings (drums), Billy Harrison (guitar) and Alan Henderson (bass). They brought in young Eric Wrixon on keyboards and Van himself played harmonica, rhythm guitar and sax, and fronted the band vocally. It was Eric who came up with the inspiration for a new group name: “Them” came from the fifties horror film Them!.

The band’s performances at the Maritime have now acquired almost mythological proportions. Numbers could stretch out well beyond their original two or three minutes. Gloria, one of Van’s earliest compositions, would sometimes last for up to 20 minutes. This called for extemporisation well beyond any original lyrics which might or might not have been written down. Their set was largely based on covers of American black material but with Van’s growing list of compositions also starting to get an airing.

Word of the group got to Dick Rowe of Decca Records in late spring/early summer 1964, possibly via a fan’s taping of the group with Turn On Your Lovelight (Wiki on Them). They were signed to a two year contract and their first recording session was held in the Decca, West Hampstead studio on 5th July 1964. A number of songs were cut during the session including both sides of their first single. The shuffling of group members had already started before the session was held; Eric Wrixon was technically still a minor and his parents wouldn’t sign the contract for him which led to Pat McAuley replacing him on keyboards (and later, drums).

This was merely the start of an almost continual process of change in membership for Them. In a piece entitled “Band History”, Richie Unterberger of AllMusic discusses the subject, opening with the following paragraph:

“Them’s history is more confused than that of any other significant British Invasion group. In his The Beatles and Some Other Guys: Rock Family Trees of the Early Sixties, Pete Frame documents no less than nine lineups of the group between 1964 and 1966. His extensive Them family tree does not take into account several occasions in which original members Eric Wrixon and Billy Harrison rejoined the band briefly. And let’s not even talk about the post-Van Morrison version of Them, which managed to make four albums in America – twice as many as Them had been able to put out while Morrison was in the group. On top of all this, confusion persists to this day whether session men played a large role in their recordings. About the only thing certain is that Van was the only one singing lead on the pre-1967 discs. This has made it difficult to give the group a solid identity, other than that of an amorphous Van Morrison backup unit, to historians.”

As a footnote to a footnote and in regard to Jimmy Page’s rumoured appearance on several Them records, I’d state that he undoubtedly was there on some but on precisely which and in what role, is more difficult to ascertain. However, for Baby Please Don’t Go there appears to be agreement that he was on rhythm guitar or in synch with bass player Alan Henderson while Billy Harrison took the lead guitar role.

2. I can’t claim originality for opening this piece with the record, The Story Of Them. The first CD era compilation of the group, released in 1997, was entitled The Story Of Them featuring Van Morrison. It placed the track as starter on CD1 prior to switching to the chronological order of singles, EP and LP releases. In my somewhat feeble defence I can only claim that I came up with my approach before investigating the album.

That album is still available but its content has largely been superseded by the 3CD set, The Complete Them 1964-1967, which contains the singles, the content of both LPs plus a number of demonstration, live and alternate tracks.

3. These are the facts on Them’s hits. Baby Please Don’t Go reached the #10 spot in the UK Chart in February 1965. Its flip, Gloria, did nothing in the UK at the time but got to #65 on rerelease in 1991. In the US, Gloria achieved the #71 position at the start of 1966 but a cover version from US band, the Shadows Of Night stole Them’s thunder and reached #10. Record #3 from Them, Here Comes The Night charted at #2 in the UK and #24 in the US. Record #5 in the US (but #6 in the UK) Mystic Eyes, reached #33 in their chart but did nothing over here.

4. Slim Harpo who recorded for Excello Records in the US in the late 50s and 60s, didn’t have an outlet in the UK until his most famous tracks got included in Authentic R&B, the compilation put together by Guy Stevens which shone a spotlight on Louisiana Excello material. However, Don’t Start Cryin’ Now wasn’t on that album. I wonder if Van had managed to find Transat Imports, that basement shop in Lisle St., Soho, which sold US soul, blues and R&B records. I bought Excello singles from there and maybe Van got wind of the place (see the relevant Blue Moment from Richard Williams.

5. There was one EP from Them released in the UK between 1964 and 1967 (as mentioned in the main text). It came out in February 1965, was entitled simply Them and contained 4 tracks; 3 of which had already seen single release but the remaining track, a Morrison composition, was entitled Philosophy. This track, which was certainly not without interest, wouldn’t receive single release, nor would it appear on an album other than compilations. There were a small number of EPs released in other countries. By far the most interesting was one that was released by Decca in the Netherlands in May 1967 entitled Friday’s Child. Its content included the song with that title plus three covers which hadn’t been released anywhere up to that date: Jimmy Reed’s Baby What You Want Me To Do, T-Bone Walker’s Stormy Monday and Jimmy Witherspoon’s Time’s Gettin’ Tougher Than Tough.

6. For non-British readers and for some who aren’t as long-in-the-tooth as yours truly, the expression ‘curate’s egg’ is one that has come down through the years (with slight change only) – it refers to something that is partly good and partly less so. It came from a cartoon which appeared in a satirical magazine in 1895:

SCENE: BISHOP’S BREAKFAST TABLE. Bishop (to timid Curate on a visit). “Dear me, I’m afraid your egg’s not good!”; Timid Curate. “Oh, yes, my Lord, really – er – some parts of it are very good.”

7. I was curious about the song I Gave My Love A Diamond, wondering whether any other artist had recorded it. The only one I came across was cut by a South African group named John E. Sharpe And The Squires and the YouTube uploader was kind enough to tell us that it was included in an album entitled Maybelline and that it was a cover of the Them track. This is it. The song is taken at a much faster tempo than the Them version which technically works better (although the lead vocal lets the whole thing down somewhat).

8. “Lozarithm”, a reviewer of the Them Belfast Gypsies album in Amazon UK, retells a story that apparently appears in the sleeve notes to that album:

“They had yet to acquire a proper name in February 1966, being known simply as the Other Them, when maverick American producer Kim Fowley met up with them in the Gioconda coffee bar in Denmark Street, a favoured Tin Pan Alley watering hole. I suspect Kim Fowley’s recollection of events may have an apocryphal element, but according to this album’s sleeve notes, Kim said, “I went in and had a ham and cheese sandwich and saw these guys sitting at a table near by. ‘Are you in a group?’, I asked, as so many people who used the café were, and they replied, ‘Yeah, we were in Them.’ ‘Oh really?’ I said, ‘Let’s go and make an album’, and that was that.””

9. All dates for record releases given in the text come from 45cat.

10. I mention the Animals (from Newcastle) in my introduction. There were parallels between the groups. Both were from major UK cities other than London or the broad South East which is where all other Brit R&B groups seemed to come from – John Mayall had to move south to find fame. Both featured organ as a prominent instrument in their respective line-ups – the bands who did this in the south tended more to a jazzy approach. Both groups had more varied repertoires than southern groups. The lead singers of both bands had a particular fondness for the work of John Lee Hooker.

11. Peter Bardens played keyboards on Them’s first album in 1965, The Angry Young Them. In that same year, he went on to form Peter B’s Looners (with Peter Green on guitar and Mick Fleetwood on drums) which became the Shotgun Express in 1966 and featured Rod Stewart and others. In 1971, Bardens was one of the founder members of the prog rock band, Camel. Although his contribution to Them was fleeting, he was a key player in British rock music. He died in 2002 at the age of 57.

12. Jackie McAuley, who also played keyboards and toured with Them in 1965, teamed up with ex-Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble in 1970. As Trader Horne, they released the now-classic, psych-folk album, Morning Way. He went on to become Lonnie Donegan’s guitarist and musical director.

13. I commented on the scarcity of clips of live work from Them. What I didn’t say was that I found a fine clip of Here Comes The Night, marred only slightly by a little misunderstanding on the switch from the first run through of the chorus to the verse/bridge but Van looks totally unconcerned. It comes from the 1965 NME Poll Winners Concert:

 

Alan Henderson (1944-2017)

Eric Wrixon (1947–2015)

Peter Bardens (1944-2002)

Ray Elliott (1939-1993)

Pat McAuley (1944-1984)

 

Bring ‘em On In: webpage dedicated to Them

Them at 45cat

Them at Discogs

Van Morrison official website

Billy Harrison recordings

Them biography (Apple Music)

Dave Stephens is the author of two books on popular music. His first, “RocknRoll”, is described by one reviewer as “probably the most useful single source of information on 50s & 60s music I’ve come across”. Dave followed this up with “London Rocks” in 2016, an analysis of the early years of the London (American) record label in the UK. You can follow him on Twitter @DangerousDaveXX

Read the Toppermosts of some of the other artists mentioned in this post:
Animals, Bobby Bland, Solomon Burke, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Lonnie Donegan, Drifters, Slim Harpo, Howlin’ Wolf, Chris Kenner, John Mayall, Van Morrison, Pretty Things, Rod Stewart, T-Bone Walker, Yardbirds

TopperPost #791