Argosy — “Mr. Boyd”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — November 7, 2024

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

1,393) Argosy — “Mr. Boyd”

Blind Faith may have been the Supergroup of ’69, but Argosy was the BeforeTheyWereSuperandBeforeTheyWereSupertramp-Supergroup of ’69. Blind Faith had Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Rick Grech and Steve Winwood. Well, Argosy had Roger Hodgson, Elton John (then Reginald Dwight) (see #175), Caleb Quaye (see #175, 807, 1,169), and Nigel Olsson! Blind Faith was over in a flash, only recording one LP. Well, Argosy was over in a nanoflash, only recording one single!

But what a 45 it was, a “melancholy string drenched popsike 45 which goes for a bit of money partly due to the connections with Supertramp and Elton John but probably mainly because it’s very good indeed!” (45TopCat, https://www.45cat.com/record/djs214) Both glorious sides were written by Hodgson, “Mr. Boyd” (the A-side) being “a lovely slice of Baroque Pop”. (Oldrock, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/argosy/mr-boyd-imagine-1/)

Here are some excerpts from a Russell Trunk interview with Roger Hodgson:

(Trunk) And knowing you recorded your first single (“Mr. Boyd”) right at the end of your final boarding school year, just who was Mr. Boyd anyway? 

(Hodgson) Mr. Boyd was a fictional character.

(Trunk) And being that you had a session band backing you that included pianist Reg Dwight (Elton John), what are your memories of that glorious time? 

(Hodgson) When I left school, I really didn’t know how to proceed or how to break into the music industry at all. The only lead I had was the band Traffic, Steve Winwood’s band. They lived a few miles away from me, so I used to go and knock on their door whenever I had enough courage to do that. One of the demo tapes that I made of my songs got into a music publisher’s hands in London. He liked what he heard. He signed me up and put me in a studio in London which was my first time in a recording studio with session musicians, one of whom was a man called Reg Dwight who later became known as Elton John. He had an incredible band with him; some of them were members of the band that he toured with later, Caleb Quaye and Nigel Olsson on drums. They did an awesome job of playing my songs and then I sang on top this music. . . . “Mr. Boyd[]” . . . came very close to becoming a hit in England. It was played a lot on the radio but never actually charted. If it has been successful, my destiny would have been different.

https://annecarlini.com/ex_interviews.php?id=1275

Wow, only one degree of separation between Argosy and Blind Faith!

Paul Pearson waxes philosophical about the Hodgson/Dwight hookup:

This collaboration wasn’t improbable when it happened in 1969. It might have been more improbable a few years later, after the respective participants had established superstar careers of their own, but back in 1969, before either of them had made too much headway in the music scene, it wasn’t improbable at all. Which is not to say it was probable. Come to think of it probability and improbability, relatively speaking, probably don’t have that much to do with this collaboration. If you ask me I would say there’s more an element of randomness to this collaboration. There were no reasons or conditions either favoring or disfavoring this collaboration from happening in the time and place when it did, which was 1969 in England. But perhaps the absence of reasons or conditions tilting the scales in either direction, by merit of its absence, would therefore confer that the collaboration was in fact improbable. This argument, of course, omits the view of many monotheistic faiths that worldly fate is predetermined by forces outside our control or accessibility, a view this blog considers specious. . . .

http://paul-pearson.blogspot.com/2016/06/song-20160618-argosy.html?m=1

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