The Pretty Things: S. F. Sorrow - 1968

Concept albums, oh those dreaded concept albums. From blues rockers turned psychedelic purveyors The Pretty Things, To The Who to The Kinks to the seventies prog artists, they all dabbled in them. 

This was said to be the first "rock opera" and was said to have inspired The Who's Tommy from the following year and Pink Floyd's The Wall from ten years later. It follows the story of an imaginary character, Sebastian F. Sorrow, through from his birth, youth, subsequent insanity (what a surprise!) and eventual sad demise. You would imagine, from this description and, when thinking about Tommy and others such conceptual albums, that this would be a series of short vignettes, tracks only a minute long and the like. Not so. Most of the songs top three minutes and are all fully formed creations in their own right. 

Although there is a certain up-and-down feeling to the album and it lacks the cohesiveness you would expect something like this to have, many of these overtly psychedelic offerings are really good, particularly the strong, very 1968-sounding opener, S.F. Sorrow Is Born. I also like the heavily Beatles-influenced She Says Good Morning and Private Sorrow, which sounds like something off The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request, as does I See You. 

Some fine guitar introduces Bracelets Of Fingers and Ballon Burning is a great serving of swirling, crazy late sixties psychedelia, man. Check those wild guitar sounds. Baron Saturday has some madcap drums in its middle passage. Trust could almost be The Beatles, couldn't it? 

There is all sorts going on on this kitchen sink of an album (loads of great guitar interjections, heavenly bass and Ringo-influenced drum rolls) and all manner of influences abound, both ones influencing this and being influenced by it subsequently - The Beatles, The Stones, Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, The Small Faces, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, Jethro Tull to name just a few. I reckon Old Man Going had an effect on Alice Cooper (he probably never heard it, but you never know).

I find the album a bizarrely enjoyable listen. The sound is great for a start, with some nice sixties stereo separation, something I always enjoy and a lovely warm bass sound (check out The Journey). There are so many weird and wonderful bits of instrumentation floating around but the album never rambles, because, as I said earlier, the songs are all well-formed. It is much better than Pink Floyd's Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, for example, an album to which is has been compared. Recording of the album was begun in November 1967 at Abbey Road Studios, therefore you can't help get the feeling that this is a wayward child of Sgt. Pepper, one that paved the way for prog rock. 

It was not a commercial success at all, but it went on to achieve a cult status, particularly during the seventies' prog era. It is rightly and widely respected now. I am a new convert to its mysterious, enigmatic pleasures too.

* A bit of interesting trivia is that producer Norman Smith had a couple of easy-listening pop hit singles in the early seventies as Hurricane Smith - Don't Let It Die and Oh, Babe, What Would You Say. They were nothing like this.