John Bromley — “What a Woman Does”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — September 17, 2024

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

1,338) John Bromley — “What a Woman Does”

This ’68 A-side, a truly “[b]eautiful tune” (Eddie the Amateur, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnAozY6AcJs) by English singer/songwriter John Bromley (see #337, 350, 703, 1,026) is where his solo career began. He “never thought of himself as a singer. . . . ‘I was really only interested in performing on my own original recorded demos’”. (Mark Johnston, liner notes to the CD reissue of Sing (expanded and renamed Songs, as was Bromley’s original preference)). The way Bromley was discovered comes right out of a movie:

[He was working in a record shop in London when Graham Dee] overheard a bored Bromley busking behind the shop’s counter with a cheap plastic guitar. Graham was . . . trying to place the tune that was being sung. . . . [and] was suitably impressed to learn that the song that he thought he recognized, “What a Woman Does”, was actually a John Bromley original. . . . “He asked me to hold on and he ran around the corner and came back five minutes later asking if I could slip away for twenty -minutes to record a demo of the song.” . . . Dee ran off with the demo to Atlantic Records’s European managing director Frank Fenter[, who] was impressed enough by what he heard to rush John into his office the very next day. John was shocked, “Frank loved the song . . . . he offered me a recording contract for three singles and one album on the spot! I was hoping to get one of my songs placed with a major act by Frank, not a recording contract for myself.”

Mark Johnston, liner notes to Songs

Bromley says that:

I so wish I had the original demo that Graham Dee and I put together some weeks prior to the Sing Sessions. It was just acoustic guitar and vocal, but it had so much more ‘feel’ than the version that eventually got recorded. I just didn’t capture the same mood. I was nervous in the studio and the voice just didn’t have the same emotion.

liner notes to the CD reissue of Sing

I’d love to hear the demo if it were ever located, but I am enthralled by the “feel” of the single!

John Bromley has written “over 200 works with over 60 recorded and performed worldwide by major artists such as Shirley Bassey, Sacha Distel, Petula Clark, Richard Harris, Paul Anka . . . John Farnham”, Jackie De Shannon and the Ace Kefford Stand. (Facebook). He also recorded some of his songs in the 60’s, releasing them as singles (backed by The Fleur De Lys (see #32, 122) which were eventually collected on his sole album, ’69’s Sing. Reviewers often comment on how Bromley’s songs are imbued with the spirit of Paul McCartney: Rob Jones calls his songs “Macca-esque psychedelia” (https://thedeletebin.com/2014/09/01/john-bromley-sings-so-many-things/), and John Reed calls Bromley “a singer-songwriter firmly rooted in the Macca tradition – and it’s possible to hear echoes of Beatles ballads such as ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Eleanor Rigby’ in many of his compositions.” (https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/album/john-bromley-songs).

If Bromley’s singles had been released a year or two earlier, they would likely have received the rapturous reception they deserved. Rob Jones perceptively notes that:

[B]y 1969, there had been a bit of a shift where this approach was concerned since the height of the psych period in 1966-67. The world had become less optimistic and open to whimsy by then, two years after the summer of love, and after some of the figureheads of the civil rights movement were no more. British psychedelia had begun to mutate into a more “progressive”  and serious direction to contrast the nostalgic and twee nature of what psych bands had created. King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King is a good example of a darker, and less romanticized musical and thematic landscape from bands in Britain by the end of the 1960s when Bromley’s record came out. Perhaps this is why [Sing] didn’t take off. Bromley eventually left the music business for a time, escaping the ins and outs of an often callous industry.  This record has been a sought-after treasure for vinyl collectors over the years since, an artifact perhaps of a lost era that is attached, ironically, to a new kind of hazy nostalgia for many. Listening to this song now, it’s easy to appreciate its charms . . . .

https://thedeletebin.com/2014/09/01/john-bromley-sings-so-many-things/

Psychedelic Baby is out with a new interview with Bromley: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2024/07/john-bromley-interview.html.

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