THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,425) One in a Million* — “Double Sight”
I’ve featured the A-side, “Fredereek Hernando” (see #1,171), here is the Scottish band’s ’67 Christmastime B-side, “simply one of the greatest Who-circa-1966-1967 soundalike songs ever . . . killer” (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/double-sight-mw0001743746), with the 45 being “one of the very greatest obscure British psychedelic singles” (Unterberger again), “one of the jewels of British psychedelia — a superb double-sided disc with psychedelic guitar work out of the top drawer” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited), “what just might be the most cataclysmic single to escape from the primordial mushroom soup of the British psychedelic underground” with both sides being “astonishing, skull-busting examples of the crash-and-burn end of the British psychedelic spectrum, marrying acid-ravaged lyrics and a psychotropic lead vocal to a blitzkrieg sonic assault led by Jimmy McColloch, astonishingly just 14 years old at the time”. (David Wells, Record Collector 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era)
As to OM, David Wells notes that they were “[i]nitially known as The Jaygars, Alan Young (rhythm guitar, lead vocals), William Scenters (bass) and brothers Jimmy and Jack McColloch (lead guitar and drums respectively) [and] regrouped as One in a Million when they moved down from Scotland to London in 1966.” (Record Collector 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era) Richie Unterberger adds:
Featuring young teenage prodigy Jimmy McCulloch (later of Thunderclap Newman, Stone the Crows, and Wings) on guitar . . . . While it’s something of a cliché for pet collector bands like these to be unable to match their one capture of lightning in a bottle in the rest of their repertoire, that is, alas, true of One in a Million. Though taken altogether th[eir] material could have comprised an actual LP back in the late ’60s, it just doesn’t sound like the band was ready for that honor. The remainder of the group’s output was pretty average mod rock with occasional psychedelic spice, and sometimes quite derivative of the Who . . . .
Well, as Alan Young freely admits, “We were always very influenced by the Who, really — we used to cover a lot of their songs . . . That was the sound we were aiming for.” (Record Collector 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era)
* Alan Young recalls:
[The band’s name] was inspired by Jimmy, who was still only 13 and was considered by us to be one in a million. . . [W]e had to have private tutor during the day to make sure that he didn’t miss out on his education. I guess he probably shouldn’t have been playing in the clubs either, but everyone turned a blind eye.”
Record Collector 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era
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