THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,896) Philwit & Pegasus — “My, What a Lovely Day It’s Been”
My, what a lovely song — it’s been such a lovely day, and, in apparent response to John Lennon’s interjection in “Getting Better”, “it couldn’t get much better”! As John Paul writes, this is a song of “regal majesty . . . , as close as [Mark Wirtz’s] album gets to attaining its soaring, operatic pop aspirations . . . building and building to an explosion of flower-powered harmonies, strings, horns and a massive hook.” (https://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2025/09/philwit-and-pegasus-philwit-and-pegasus.html) The LP is “a lovely orchestrated harmony-pop concept album” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited) where “[t]he influence of the most Baroque elements of the Beach Boys [see #667, 1,825] and late-’60s California sunshine pop can be felt at times . . . particularly on [‘Lovely Day’]”. (John Paul again)
The album as a whole has its ups and downs. John Paul writes:
Like so many albums released in the waning days of psychedelia and sunshine pop, the story of Philwit & Pegasus’ lone, self-titled release is not that of an actual band but rather a producer and his coterie of musicians. . . . [T]hat producer was Mark Wirtz . . . yet another hallmark of the era in which the underground fully erupted into the mainstream and beyond. But Wirtz had cred within the psychedelic scene having co-written and produced Tomorrow’s [see #72] “Excerpt from a Teenage Opera[]” . . . presag[ing] the “rock opera” floodgates opened by The Who [see #548, 833, 976] with the release of Tommy. . . . Wirtz’s concept for the teenage opera came out piecemeal over the course of the next four decades . . . . Wirtz’s songwriting skills were not entirely in keeping with his ambitions. . . . Philwit & Pegasus sounds very much a product of its time. There are elements of psychedelia, hints of folk rock and more than a little West Coast sunshine pop . . . . Presented as a thematic song cycle . . . Philwit & Pegasus borrows bits and pieces of Wirtz’s teenage opera to construct a loose narrative arc. . . . [and takes a] scattershot approach to assembling an arc or general theme . . . . [Wirtz] clearly spent a fair amount of time taking [Curt] Boettcher’s [see #1,881, 1,886] production work and the more baroque elements of the Beach Boys, post-Pet Sounds . . . . Were it built on stronger material, the album could well be granted the coveted “lost masterpiece” sobriquet. As it stands, however, it’s little more than a snapshot of a time when ideas far outweighed content. These ideas are well executed with a crack team of musicians (Wirtz himself acted only as producer) that included legendary session guitarist Chris Spedding . . . , Terry Cox (Pentagle), Joe Moretti (Gene Vincent), along with a half dozen or so vocalists who were proven hit makers – in Britain at least. . . . What the narrative of Philwit & Pegasus was actually meant to convey is anyone’s guess; the songs seem only vaguely related, and stylistically the album is all over the map . . . . By no means an outright failure, it’s is an interesting curio from a more ambitious era in pop music when, post-Pepper, it seemed anything was possible. . . . The album will appeal to those with a soft spot for baroque, sunshine pop that’s musically lush and gorgeous; if only it weren’t lyrically lacking, at times dissolving into wordless vocalizing and hippy-dippy cliches.
https://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2025/09/philwit-and-pegasus-philwit-and-pegasus.html
Richie Unterberger is less tolerant and more disapproving:
Philwit & Pegasus is an epic in search of a narrative or gripping theme, not to mention decent pop songs. . . . Wirtz thought he was devising an arty song cycle of sorts, or a movie on record. What it sounds like, however, is a collection of fairly unrelated unexceptional pop songs, decorated by occasionally ambitious grandiose instrumentation that sometimes puts it as close to easy listening as to pop/rock. The influence of the most Baroque elements of the Beach Boys and late-’60s California sunshine pop can be felt at times . . . as can . . . early mellow laid-back L.A. country-folk-rock. Then, however, you get to “And I Try,” which sounds like an even more overwrought Tom Jones tackling an MOR ballad. It’s an odd and not especially tasty mixture. . . .
Philwit & Pegasus were . . . an odd one-off studio project by producer Mark Wirtz. In the late ’60s, Wirtz was known primarily as the creator of rock-influenced easy listening mood music albums, and also as the producer of the fine British psychedelic pop band Tomorrow. . . . [His] idea was to make a sort of movie-on-record LP, and he wrote a song cycle of sorts with his girlfriend of the time, Maria Feltham. There really wasn’t a plot or narrative to the album, though Wirtz has said . . . that the theme was “struggle, fear, and fantasized happiness.” . . . [N]either [Wirtz nor Feltham] actually played or sang on the album. The vocal parts were taken by John Carter [see #1,201, 1,304], Peter Lee Stirling, Chas Mills, Guy Fletcher, and Roger Greenaway . . . . The conception and ambition behind Philwit & Pegasus were more interesting than its reality. It in fact consisted of mediocre pop songs that drew from both easy listening and rock, though the arrangements were lush and varied, at times influenced by folk-rock harmonies, at others by histrionic Tom Jones [see #330, 380, 1,691]-styled crooning, theatrical musicals, and the Beach Boys. The album flopped, and Wirtz moved to Hollywood the following year.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/philwit-pegasus-mw0000739960, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/philwit-pegasus-mn0000636066#biography
Tim Sendra tells us of Wirtz:
Producer, arranger, songwriter, and vocalist Mark Wirtz was one of the more underrated behind-the-scenes characters of the U.K. music scene in the 1960s. He was responsible for a number of classic psychedelic pop records, and his musical influence spread far beyond its commercial prospects. His recordings with Tomorrow on their 1967 self-titled album helped invent psychedelic pop . . . . Wirtz was also a fine producer of girl group sounds, mainstream pop, and, under the Mood Mosaic moniker, a first-rate creator of groovy easy listening music. His career petered out in the late ’70s, but as his music was rediscovered in the ’90s and 2000s, he took a well-deserved victory lap, writing and producing music until his death in 2020. Wirtz was born in Germany in 1943, growing up a music fan and a budding musician. He moved to London to go to art school, then . . . formed his first group, the Beatcrackers. They were soon signed to EMI under the name Mark Rogers and the Marksmen and issued a pre-Beat Boom novelty track . . . . It didn’t do much on the charts, but it did propel Wirtz into a career writing and producing artists, beginning with a stint working with Marlene Dietrich. He also worked with girl groups, female singers . . . and the pre-Hot Chocolate group the Soul Brothers. His first foray into concept albums was his work as a easy listening producer, making sunny orchestral versions of the hits of the day as well as Wirtz-written songs . . . . One of the tracks — “A Touch of Velvet – A Sting of Brass” . . . ended up being used as theme music by a number of TV shows. Wirtz got a job in 1967 as an in-house producer for EMI Records and worked on psychedelic Tomorrow’s classic single “My White Bicycle” and their self-titled debut album. At the same time, he had hatched a plan for a concept A Teenage Opera album called based around his lush psychedelic productions and songs about the characters of an imagined village. The first single — “Excerpt from ‘A Teenage Opera'” — featured Tomorrow’s Keith West on vocals and nearly topped the U.K. singles chart upon its 1967 release. Wirtz continued to work doggedly on the project, calling on all his skills as a writer and arranger. The second single, “Sam[]” . . . didn’t do quite as well in the charts. West left the project soon after, and the third single — “(He’s Our Dear Old) Weatherman” — failed to garner much radio or sales support. Wirtz put the project on the back burner and continued to write and produce songs for other artists and for himself . . . . Many of the songs used recycled pieces of the Teenage Opera; some, like Kippington Lodge’s [see #672, 1,156, 1,444] “Shy Boy,” [see #1,444] were definitely meant to appear on the album. He did eventually move on from the project, recording another concept album as Philwit and Pegasus. . . . Wirtz had left EMI by this point to become an independent contractor, helming sessions for vocalists like Samantha Jones [see #1,042, 1,045] and forming a bubblegum group called the Matchmakers. Nothing clicked commercially, and as a result he packed up and moved to Los Angeles. Once there, he tried his hand as a solo artist, releasing two . . . albums in 1973 . . . . Once again, his music didn’t connect with the record-buying public, and he went back behind the scenes to work as an arranger/producer for hire, scoring gigs with the likes of Dean Martin, Helen Reddy, and Leon Russell. By the time the ’70s ended, Wirtz had retired from the music business to raise a family and pursue his interest in comedy. He also wrote novels, worked a series of jobs, and took up painting. . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mark-wirtz-mn0000846575#biography
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