成人快手

by Bob Stanley

' name will never die, thanks to the primal power (not to mention the ocarina solo) of their debut hit Wild Thing. It was a number one in the US but was held at the number two spot over here by the Rolling Stones' Paint It Black. Their sole UK number one was With A Girl Like You, a sweet, atypical midtempo song written by their singer Reg Ball.

The man who discovered the Troggs, Larry Page, was also responsible for renaming them - using the logic that the biggest male icons in the world were and 007, so Reg Ball became Reg Presley and the drummer became Ronny Bond. This may all seem faintly ridiculous in retrospect, but in the States the teenage Michelle Pfeiffer took Reg Presley very seriously, and he was the only pop star whose picture was deemed fit for her bedroom wall.

The Troggs remain the most famous group from the Hampshire market town of Andover though Larry Page, in the wake of Wild Thing's international success, must have thought he'd come across a wellspring of hitmakers as he signed up two more Andover groups, the Loot and the Nerve; both put out some great, lightly psychedelic singles without scoring any hits. The Loot's brash Baby Come Closer and Lennonesque She's A Winner are particularly fine.

Unfortunately, while Page was walking the streets of Andover looking for the next Reg Presley, he took his eye of the ball in America, where ATCO bizarrely put With A Girl Like You on the b-side of Wild Thing and threw away a guaranteed follow-up smash hit. The singles were also released separately in the States on the Fontana label, and With A Girl Like You scraped into the Top 30 under its own steam, but the confusion meant momentum was lost, The group only scored one more Top 10 hit in America - Reg's deathless Love Is All Around made no.7, and reached no.5 here, in the cool autumn after 1967's summer of love. Even 's glossy remake can't dim the magical, lying-in-the-long-grass atmosphere of the Troggs' original. And, of course, Wet Wet Wet's 15 weeks at number one did wonders for Reg Presley's bank account.