John Carter & Russ Alquist— “Laughing Man”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — May 7, 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,201) John Carter & Russ Alquist — “Laughing Man”

Too weird to be a hit? Too irresistible not to be? To me, the latter, but in the UK unfortunately, this ‘68 A-side by one of the UK’s great songwriters was the former, “[n]ice pop psych that is worth a listen if the Circus Clown laugh doesn’t freak you out” (teabiscuit, https://www.45cat.com/record/srl1017), a “[v]ery bizarre single [unlikely to] ever st[an]d a chance of charting; imagine tuning the car radio on to this while driving and hearing that spoken section!” (CorporalClegg, https://www.45cat.com/record/srl1017)

Mark Frumento writes:

The clear highlight . . . is the over-the-top spoken word section performed by [Russ] Alquist, sounding strangely close to dialogue from the movie Yellow Submarine. . . . [John] Carter remembers the session fondly. “When Russ did that part we were so surprised. We were cracking up because we had never heard anything like it. “That part was almost all improvised,” Russ Alquist explains. “I’d record a section and we would keep the lines that worked.”

liner notes to the CD comp The Ministry of Sound: Men from the Ministry/Midsummer Nights Dreaming

Tim Sendra:

One of the leading tunesmiths of the ’60s and ’70s English pop scene, John Carter was responsible for writing big hits and timeless classics like “Can’t You Feel My Heartbeat” by Herman’s Hermits, “My World Fell Down” by Sagittarius, and the Music Explosion’s “Little Bit o’ Soul[]” . . . . the Ivy League’s “Funny How Love Can Be,” the Flowerpot Men’s “Let’s Go to San Francisco,” and “Beach Baby” for First Class. Typified by harmony vocals, simple melodies and, during the psychedelic era, very soft Baroque arrangements, the songs and productions Carter was a part of helped define the sound of English pop during his heyday. . . . Carter began writing songs at the age of 15 with classmate Ken Lewis. Inspired by the first wave of rockers . . . they worked up a batch of songs and in 1959, left their hometown [of Birmingham] for London . . . . find[ing] a publisher right away . . . . In 1960, they moved over to Southern Music and . . . began singing . . . under the name Carter-Lewis. . . . [and then] Carter-Lewis & the Southerners . . . . Between 1961 and 1964 they issued seven singles . . . . [t]heir sound was firmly rooted in the tradition of the Everly Brothers . . . . Though . . . a popular live act, the two songwriters quickly figured out that it made more sense financially to stay behind the scenes instead. Carter in particular exhibited no interest in becoming a pop star . . . . They soon shifted to cranking out demos . . . . [With] Perry Ford, [they] started . . . the Ivy League in late 1964 . . . . [W]hen the Rockin’ Berries turned down the song “Funny How Love Can Be,” the group released it themselves and had a Top Ten hit. Their sound was pitched somewhere between Del Shannon and the Beach Boys . . . . Carter left the band to head back to the . . . studio . . . with new [writing] partner Geoff Stephens. Along with songs penned for the Ivy League . . . the pair had hits with Manfred Mann, Mary Hopkin, the New Vaudeville Band, and Herman’s Hermits. Carter even ended up singing lead vocals on “Winchester Cathedral[.]” . . . [H]e was also working in the studio with a pair of songwriters, Robin Keen and Mickey Shaw, who he had signed to his newly formed music publishing company. Every week the pair would meet with Carter and play him the songs they had written. He’d pick his favorites and they would assemble a crack team of musicians to record them. Though they continued to work in this fashion for almost two years, they only issued one single, 1966’s “White Collar Worker,” [as] the Ministry of Sound. . . . Lewis left the Ivy League in 1967 and paired up with Carter again. . . . “Little Bit of Soul” [became a hit] . . . . [as did t]heir soft psychedelic confection “Let’s Go to San Francisco” . . . . Once again, Carter and Lewis decided not to go on the road and hired a band to go out and perform as the Flowerpot Men . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-carter-mn0000222625#biography

As to John and Russ, Bob Stanley explains:

Russell Alquist became John’s third writing partner . . . . They’d known each other for years — John and Ken [Lewis] demo’d his A little Lovin’, a hit for the Fourmost in ’64. [John recalled] “Russ is American, a great laidback hippy. To him, everything is ‘Hey man, don’t worry’, which was great for us because we’re so hyper!” The Carter-Lewis-Alquist partnership got their own office in Old Compton Street in 1968. “Underneath was a porn cinema, you had to turn your collar up coming in so that no one would recognise you.” Every Friday . . . . “Russ would bring a big bag of sweets with him, we used to call it Candy Day. Something would always come out of it.”

liner notes to the CD comp Measure for Measure: The John Carter Anthology 1961-1977

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