The Flower Pot Men were a British
pop
group
created in 1967, who enjoyed fleeting fame. The group's sound was
characterised by rich, three-part vocal harmonies.
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Contents
- 1 History
- 1.1 Let's
Go to San Francisco
- 2 Personnel
- 3 References
- 4 External
links
- 5 The
Flowerpot Men (1980s)
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History
The Flower Pot Men were created as a result of the chart
success of the single "Let's Go To San Francisco",
written and recorded by songwriters John Carter and Ken
Lewis (Carter-Lewis And
The Southerners and The Ivy League, which had three UK
top twenty hits previously).
The duo licensed the recording to Deram
Records which suddenly found itself with a full-fledged hit, but with
no group to promote it. Carter and Lewis, having no interest in going
on the road to promote the record, created the group from a
hand-picked collective of recording studio session
musicians and vocalists.
They continued to write, record and produce
all the subsequent recordings for the next three years until the
project ended in 1970.
The name was clearly derived from the children's show Flower
Pot Men, with the obvious psychedelic
era puns on flower
power and "pot" (cannabis).
Let's Go to San Francisco
The band's most popular song remained "Let's Go To San
Francisco." Some listeners at the time assumed that the song was either
a pastiche of - or in some way inspired by - Scott
McKenzie's "San
Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" which was a hit
earlier that summer - but the band have denied this. The topic of San Francisco was being
discussed widely in UK in early 1967 because of British mass media
coverage of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene - and the
Scott McKenzie single was certainly not the only place where the
songwriters may have found inspiration to write a song about the new
social developments in that city. The track reached Number 4 in the UK
Singles Chart in 1967. It was their only appearance in that chart,
earning them the unenviable title of one-hit
wonder.
Burrows and Shaw later surfaced in The
First Class, whose sole Top 40 hit "Beach Baby" sounded similar; a
harmony phrase shortly before the fadeout of this record references
"Let's Go To San Francisco".
Personnel
The complete line-up of The Flower Pot Men and Their Garden,
as they were sometimes billed, was loosely based around the following:
- Tony Burrows: vocals - ex The
Ivy League, later with White Plains, and The
First Class
- Neil Landon: vocals (born Patrick Cahill, 26 July 1941, Kirdford, Sussex)
- Robin Shaw: vocals (born Robin Scrimshaw, 6 October 1943) - later with
White Plains, and The First Class
- Pete Nelson: vocals (born Peter Lipscomb, 10 March 1945, London) - also
later with White Plains
- Ged
Peck: guitar
(19
October 1947,
West
Hendon, London)
- Carlo Little: drums (born Carl
O'Neil Little, 17 December 1938, Shepherd's Bush, West
London - died 6
August 2005,
Cleadon,
County
Durham).
- Nick Simper: bass
- Jon
Lord: organ
Singer Tony Burrows' voice is also heard on many UK hit
singles of that era, such as, White Plains: "My Baby
Loves Lovin'", Brotherhood of Man: "United We
Stand", Edison Lighthouse: "Love Grows
(Where My Rosemary Goes)", The First Class: "Beach
Baby", The Pipkins: "Gimme Dat Ding"
In 1968, Nick Simper and Jon Lord became
founding members of the heavy metal rock band, Deep
Purple. This connection was later lampooned in the fake rock documentary,
Spinal
Tap, whose fictional first hit was called
"(Listen to the) Flower People", a reference to "Let's Go to San
Francisco".
References
- Guinness Book
of British Hit Singles - 16th Edition - ISBN
0-85112-190-X
External links
The Flowerpot Men (1980s)
An unrelated electronic group called "The Flowerpot Men"
surfaced in the UK in the 1980s. This group
featured electronic musician Ben Watkins and cellist Adam
Peters, and recorded several LPs, including Alligator
Bait, Jo's So Mean, and Walk on
Gilded Splinters. Their most successful and well-known song
"Beat City" was featured in the 1986 film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
The group later became known as Sunsonic.
