JELLY COVERED KROWS
The Shindig! guide to
Scaffold’s most out-there moments. 1. 2 DAYS MONDAY
(Parlophone A-side,May ’66)
A truly bizarre debut. Sounds like the soundtrack to a crudely re-voiced Cockney version of The Family Way.
2. GOODBAT NIGHTMAN
(Parlophone A-side, December ’66) Batman and Robin-esque characters say their prayers. “God bless Superman and Superwoman”. Tons of puns.
3. CARRY ON KROW
(Parlophone B-side,March ’68) Demented nursery rhyme featuring “authentic” rural accents and stunning harpsichord accompaniment.
4. BUTTONS OF YOUR MIND (Parlophone B-side, October ’68)
More harpsichord, this time colouring a truly gorgeous faux folk ditty. There’s nothing comedic about McGough’s monologues.
5. GOOSE (Parlophone B-side, June ’69)
“Think you’re a part of some imaginary scene”. Sly dig at hippies and groovers convincingly delivered as freaky rock tune.
6. JELLY COVERED CLOUD
(Parlophone LP Lily The Pink, ’69) The title says it all really. British
psychedelic whimsy as interpreted by three scousers with tongues permanently in cheeks. Very good actually.
7. UPDOWN & DOWNTOWN
(MikeMcGear Island LP Woman, ’72) Seriously funky two-minute rock workout with our Mike as strutting soul shouter. Should have had DJs slavering by now.
8. TAKE IT WHILE YOU CAN (EMI CD, At Abbey Road, ’98)
Solo Lennon circa ’71 set to ’67 Beatles psychedelia. Cut but unreleased by Scaffold, re-cut by post-Scaffold supergroup Grimms.
Amazingly, all of these tracks appear on the 2002 EMI CD Thank U Very Much: The Very Best Of Scaffold
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not fill their pockets. “We suddenly realized that in doing our poetry and satirical comedy we weren’t getting very far. We decided that maybe our agents – Hope, Leresche & Steele – despite the fine work they’d put in to helping us develop our theatrical performances, were not the ones to help us broaden our appeal and that maybe Brian Epstein and NEMS were. After all our Paul wasn’t doing too badly with them! So we signed with NEMS – not in a singing capacity but on the theatrical side.”
Unfortunately by now NEMS had expanded beyond The Beatles, Cilla Black, Billy J Kramer and their ilk to handling American artists such as The Supremes and Johnny Mathis and so Scaffold didn’t get the look-in they had expected. However, it was whilst with Epstein that they succumbed to his notion to become recording artists – with George Martin at the helm. “We chose George not because of his Beatles connection but because of The Goons! Before The Beatles, he was renowned as the UK’s top producer of comedy records such as Peter Sellers’ Songs For Swingin’ Sellers, which had been a family favourite of ours. Years later I discovered it had also been a great favourite with HRH The Queen Mother – as was ‘Thank U Very Much For The Aintree Iron’ which apparently she loved to sing after supper.”
So, possibly against their better judgment, Scaffold cut a debut single. “We thought if we were going to do a bit of music it would be our music. We didn’t want to do ‘pop’ because Paul did that. And so for our first record – to ‘cash in’ on the pop scene – we chose something very ‘unpop’ called ‘2 Days Monday’ – a Cockney dirge! We may have been the three “lively whacker wits” but we performed the song with Cockney accents.
“Before Mersey Beat exploded when people heard Liverpool accents they’d turn away in disdain – to them you were even less than shit on their shoe. Mersey Beat had changed all
that – it helped break down a very important part of the horrible class system, until Thatcher got it back again. We turned that one on its head by going Cockney!”
Despite Spike Milligan’s endorsement on TV’s Juke Box Jury the record was not a hit. Neither was their second, ‘Goodbat Nightman’, and so Scaffold and NEMS parted company. But, just as their career as record makers seemed doomed by indifference, Scaffold hit gold. Mike’s end of show thank you to their audiences was proving so popular the group knew that, potentially, it was the hit they’d been seeking. George Martin agreed. Convening in
Abbey Road’s number three studio the record was cut and with some skilful PR, courtesy of their new management company, ‘Thank U Very Much for the Aintree Iron’ hit the charts on November 22nd ’67 and rose to number four. Pop stardom had arrived.
One year on they did it all over again – but this time Scaffold hit the very “toppermost of the poppermost”: ‘Lily The Pink’ sold a million and became ’68’s Christmas number one. Co-produced by McGear and Norrie Paramour, the MD was Mike (Manfred Mann) Vickers and among the session musicians playing on the record were bassist Jack Bruce (Cream) and Reg Dwight (soon to become Elton John) on backing vocals. Graham Nash sang the ‘Jennifer Eccles’ verse while young Tim Rice “Na-Na-Ne-arnied”. Accentuating the dance beat, McGear thumped away on Ringo’s “borrowed” bass drum. From the satire and experimental comedy of their genesis, Scaffold had entered the mainstream.
For Scaffold their goal of making records to ease their financial concerns had been achieved – with (Christmas) bells on. Ultimately however McGear believes it exacted too great a price: “It took us into the world of show business and afterwards although we could afford to buy sports cars,
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