成人快手

From working in an office to touring with the Stones, Bob Stanley looks at the amazing career of ...

When Rod Stewart recorded The First Cut Is The Deepest in 1977, he was in the States, without a copy to hand, and sang it from memory, garbling the odd line in the process. The version he remembered was PP Arnold's 1967 Top 20 hit on the Immediate label.

How Pat Arnold, a native of the Watts' district of Los Angeles, came to record for Andrew Loog Oldham's label is a curious tale. She had joined the Ikettes in 1964, as much to get away from an abusive marriage as anything. As backing singers for the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, they were invited on to a 1966 Rolling Stones tour of Britain in the wake of River Deep Mountain High's UK chart success. Their first UK show was at the Royal Albert Hall, and Pat hit it off with both the Stones and their manager. Mick Jagger was so taken with the Ikettes that he arranged for limousines to pick them up, while Ike and Tina had to make do with a battered Ford Zephyr.

Ike Turner, unsurprisingly, was less than pleased with this turn of events and let his feelings be known. Pat decided to quit the Ikettes; over lunch with Mick Jagger, she heard about and decided to go solo. Oldham decided to make her a star. First, she had a session with fabled photographer Gered Mankowitz, who also gave Pat her new identity - PP Arnold - which sounded a little more glamorous and outre than "Pat". By now living in Epsom, Surrey, PP Arnold's first single was Everything's Gonna Be Alright, issued on February 3rd 1967. It was co-written by Oldham and David Skinner, half of another Immediate act Twice As Much but, in spite of a terrific Arthur Greenslade arrangement, it flopped badly; copies were scarce enough for it to be bootlegged in the seventies.

By the time Immediate folded in 1970, PP Arnold had recorded with the Small Faces, the Nice and Rod Stewart, yet First Cut Is The Deepest was her only major success. She called the label her family and was distraught when it broke up. By the time Everything's Gonna Be Alright was getting regular spins at Wigan Casino in the seventies, PP had become Pat once more, and was in-demand as a session singer.