THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,267) West Coast Delegation — “Mister Personality Man”
Master producer and songwriter Tony Macaulay gives us this ‘67 B-side, a delightful slice of pop rock about a lady’s man who’s out to get your girlfriend.
As to WCD:
This obscure band was the first to be given the Macaulay/Macleod composition “Reach the Top” . . . . [It was] led by Rod Clark who had temporarily replaced Clint Warwick on bass guitar in 1966 only to leave the Moody Blues with Denny Laine by the end of the year. In 1967 [he] fronted his new band with friends, Don Paul and Tony Macaulay. The West Coast Delegation signed to Deram before Denny Laine made it over and issued “Reach the Top” b/w “Mister Personality Man” in February . . . . Clark and Paul immediately moved on to Pye to assault the sense of pop sensibility with Pennsylvania Experience and their version of “Love of the Common People” . . . .
liner notes to the CD comp Piccadilly Sunshine: Volumes 1-10: A Compendium of Rare Pop Curios from the British Psychedelic Era
Bruce Eder:
[Tony Macaulay] manifested a love of music as a boy, and in his late teens went to work as a song-plugger . . . before moving over to Pye Records as a producer . . . . He continued to write songs, often in collaboration with John MacLeod, and in both capacities he demonstrated a good ear for pop-soul. In 1967, he found the perfect canvas for his sonic vision with the Foundations, a big-scale British soul outfit who scored a huge hit with “Baby Now That I’ve Found You,” a Macaulay-MacLeod copyright that hit number one on the British charts . . . . Soon . . . he was working with the Marmalade [see #101, 897] , scoring a pair of hits with “Baby Make it Soon” and “Falling Apart at the Seams,” though his crowning achievement at this stage of his career had to be the 5th Dimension’s “(Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep At All” . . . . [H]e also scored hits on the British side of the Atlantic with Long John Baldry’s “Let the Heartaches Begin,” Pickettywitch’s “That Same Old Feeling,” and the Paper Dolls’ “Something in My Heart (Keeps A-Telling Me No).” Macaulay was also heavily involved with the songwriting team of Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, and was something of the mastermind behind such studio-created ensembles as the Brotherhood of Man (“United We Stand”) and Edison Lighthouse (“Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)”), all of whom scored huge international hits. Those records, and the Foundations’ hit “Build Me Up Buttercup[]” . . . sold well on both sides of the Atlantic, and during the early ’70s Macaulay, along with Cook and Greenaway, practically ruled the pop music world in London. . . . [Yet] Macaulay abandoned the pop music business in favor of composing for the stage . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tony-macaulay-mn0000009429#biography
Here are the Foundations:
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