For those not familiar with Ruperts People & my connection with them, I should probably start off by just briefly explaining the following. I first saw the guys play & met Rod, Ray, Steve, John & Dai in 1967 on Hastings Pier, not long after I started working backstage there. We have all been friends now for coming up to 60 years. After all of us doing our own thing over the years since 1969 when the band called it a day, in 1999 there was a re-union gig at the old Marina Pavillion, as it was then called, in St Leonards. The gig was driven by the resurgence of Mods & Mod culture. After the gig, & much reminiscing between Rod, Ray, Steve & myself (no John sadly & Dai was never a ‘core member’) I put forward the suggestion that there was probably enough recorded material to put together an album (it would be the first & only one) after much discussion it was decided to explore the practical possibility. There then ensued 2 long years, much work in tracking down tapes, finding the bands original manager & many other issues. Ray’s breakfast table in deepest Essex was the scene of much debate & planning. Eventually in 2001 after all the effort, the finished result was the release of the album ‘The Magic World of Ruperts People’ on vinyl & CD. I was delighted to pen the liner note on the release & tell the story of Ruperts People & how they played a big part in the launch of my own career in the music biz & thank them in black & white. Now here we are nearly 25 years on & Strawberry Records have released this new edition of the album, complete with an additional track not on the original release. The story of the band is told in a new interview with bassist Ray contained in the accompanying booklet. That story is long & often confusing, & I’m glad Ray is doing the explaining this time round! If you’re not familiar with the band at all, they released 3 excellent singles on Columbia Records in 1967-68. The first of which ‘Reflections of Charles Brown’ (written by Rod, as were all 3) was nearly a hit & gained significant airplay, unfortunately for Ruperts, Procol Harum released ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ & both records co-incidentally shared the same ‘Air on a G String’ melody as inspiration & Procol won the day. The second single ‘Prologue To A Magic World’ a beautifully constructed psychedelic song using Alice in Wonderland as its inspiration also inexplicably failed to become a hit, but has always remained my personal favourite, & is beloved by fans of psychedelia, as is it’s ‘B’ side ‘Dream In My Mind’ which has showed up on various psyche compilations over the years. The third single, & arguably the most commercial sounding, ‘I Can Show You’ (video at end of review) sadly made for a hat trick of singles that just didn’t break through to the charts. However, the 3 singles subsequently became ‘cult’ records & as the years passed started to command high prices for original vinyl copies. Ruperts People became this cult, almost mystical band, talked about by psyche fans & later the new Mod movement. These 3 singles & their ‘B’ sides form the nucleus of the anthology album & are complimented by 2 tracks from Rod & Steve’s first band Sweet Feeling, featuring the ambitious psyche single ‘All So Long Ago’ complete with backward taping & phasing effects, & the original version of ‘Reflections of Charles Brown’ which was/is radically different in its structure & simply entitled ‘Charles Brown’. Added to this are 4 live tracks recorded in London in 1969 & 4 tracks from the aforementioned St Leonards re-union gig of 1999, the latter includes covers of ‘My Mind’s Eye’ (Rod was a big Steve Marriott fan) & The Beatles ‘Rain’. The anthology concludes with the previously un-released track ‘Flying High in 67’ Sadly original RP member keyboard player John Tout who later joined Renaissance passed away in 2015 & is missed by us all. This has been a rather strange experience for me ‘reviewing’ an album I was instrumental in organising originally. Despite my love for the guy’s as people, I trust I haven’t let that fact influence my honest judgement when it comes to being impartial regarding the music. I believe now as I did all those years ago that on musical merit Ruperts People deserved greater success than came their way. Enjoy.
Larkin Maria Joanna… Love This
Mike Tobin… Got to know Rod really well when we worked together at John Sherry Enterprises and I managed the band Stackridge. Last time I saw him was just over 10 years ago when he came to see them play at The Half Moon ,Putney.