The Flower Pot Men

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.

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 remains "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.

Other records

The follow-up to "Let's Go To San Francisco" was "A walk in the sky". It was not a hit in the UK, but got to # 4 in The Netherlands and also proved popular in other continental countries like Germany. Carter and Lewis continued writing and recording new material, but Deram Records wanted another hit the size of "Let's Go To San Francisco". When the third Carter-Lewis single "Man without a woman"/"You can never be wrong" flopped, they had the touring band record a song by Roger Greenaway (without the involvement of Carter and Lewis) called "In a moment of madness", but that also failed to chart. Neil Landon left in 1969 to become lead singer of Fat Mattress, the new band of Noel Redding, who'd left The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The remaining three singers stayed with Greenaway, added a few musicians and changed their name to White Plains, scoring a hit with "My baby loves lovin"' in 1970.

Burrows and Shaw later surfaced in another John Carter project, 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". First Class also recorded a track "Let's go BACK to San Francisco", but later that appeared on a compilation album by The Flower Pot Men.

In 2002 Carter released a cd "Peace Album / Past Imperfect" that comprises two albums recorded between 1967 and 1969 as The Flower Pot Men, but that were never released at the time.

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, Hayes, Middlesex) - 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

* [http://beehive.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/default.asp?WCI=SiteHome&ID=8354&PageID=90259 Jon Lord interview on the Leicester Bands website]