Barclay EP 70907 Medium
- Feel So Fine
- Take A Heart
- Little Nightingale
- You Don't Believe Me
In late spring of 1965,
Barclay, a French label, were looking for talent and held auditions in Birmingham. The respective members of
The 'N' Betweens had decided, somewhat rashly, to give up their day jobs but the
Astra Agency wasn't quite ready to handle them as a professional band yet. In order to buy some time,
Maurice Jones (their manager) decided to ship them off to Germany for a month, a move that had worked wonders for
The Beatles a couple of years prior. Unfortunately, they had no passports and it took time to arrange work permits.
In the meantime, the group attended an audition at
Le Metro Club in Birmingham, held by
Bobby Graham. They played
But Not For Me at the audition, which was a
Sammy Davis song but, by chance, had been a French #1 hit for
Johnny Halliday. Graham was impressed enough to join forces with Jones and sign them up to
Barclay Records and arrange a recording session at
PYE studios where he
produced the four tracks which feature on this EP.
The 4 track EP was a French release on the Barclay label, No70907 featuring
(I believe?) matrix numbers HBLY70907A & HBLY70907B engraved in the run out groove
(but I've yet to see one in the flesh).
Feel So Fine was written by Leonard Lee and made popular in the UK by American vocalist Johnny Preston in August 1960. Take A Heart was written by Mickey Dallon and performed by UK artists, The Sorrows. They reached #21 in the Top 40 in September 1965.
Chris Charlesworth co-incidentally claims in his
'Feel The Noize' book, that the
Little Nightingale track is written by
Jimmy Page (who would later join
Led Zeppelin) a belief that was upheld by
Don Powell and therefore perpetuated on later releases. The EP and the subsequent re-release, the
Juanita Banana EP, clearly credit
Williams though.
John Williams was a PYE studio engineer and
Jimmy Page was Graham's studio session musician.
This anomaly was explained by Chris Selby's contacts at Led Zeppelin's official site.
Little Nightingale was written by
John Williams, who had formed a partnership with
Jimmy Page in 1965. Williams would write songs and Page would try to get them recorded by the artists that he played session with. Page convinced Bobby Graham to use 2 of their songs for
The 'N Betweens session.
You Don't Believe Me was written by Merrell, Graham, May &
Jimmy Page. Page talked the group into recording both the tracks after their first session when they recorded four different songs that were not used
(available on the Genesis Of Slade CD).
When Bobby Graham was asked if Page
(who believed he was booked for the studio session) had played on the Barclay sessions, he told
Chris Selby that
Page had looked in but
Hill was good enough.
John Ogden wrote a report about the recording session in the
Express & Star on June 24th 1965. T
he group finally left for Dortmund, Germany at the end of October 1965. They played the 29th October 1965 at the Woolpack in Wolverhampton, it was advertised as...
"The 'N Betweens last night before they leave for Germany"
...and they left next day.
The next 'N' Betweens gig appears on 5th December 1965 at Wolverhampton Civic Hall with Zero 5. The 'N' Betweens Feel So Fine EP was released in France during December 1965. It was probably available across the European Continent but not in the UK?
Artwork courtesy of John Haxby. Does anybody have good quality, cover and labels please? A copy of The 'N Betweens EP sold for £360 on Ebay in November 2009. I've yet to see one 'in the flesh', so to speak?
