THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,926) Keith West — “On a Saturday”
Ah, Saturday in Swinging London with Keith, a “fantastic slab of pop psych” that “[s]hould have been a huge hit” (AnthonyMonaghan, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=soYuUaFBJSE&list=RDsoYuUaFBJSE&start_radio=1&pp=ygUYS2VpeWggd2VzdCBvbiBhIHNhdHVyZGF5oAcB), “a gorgeous jazzy ballad” with “jumbo acoustic guitar, double bass [by Ron Wood] and manic offbeat drumming [by Aynsley Dunbar]”. (biffbampow, https://www.45cat.com/record/r5713) Martin Crookall writes that “Saturday” “conveys all it needs to to hypnotise, the beauty of the girl you are to meet, the sense of no urgency whatsoever, on those free Saturdays in summer when nothing matters but being and enjoying it.” (https://mbc1955.wordpress.com/2022/07/07/the-infinite-jukebox-keith-wests-on-a-saturday/) And, without saying, no thoughts of Tomorrow.
Tim Sendra writes of Keith:
Keith West is a talented singer and songwriter who got his start in the mid-’60s during the British Beat boom, then was a key member of the seminal psychedelic group Tomorrow [see #72] in the second half of the decade. At the same time that the band was struggling to release their self-titled debut album, West became a surprise pop star as lyricist and singer on “Excerpt from a Teenage Opera.” Neither the pop fame nor Tomorrow lasted long, and he issued a string of singles and solo albums in a laid-back singer/songwriter vein before transitioning to a behind-the-scenes career. West’s first band was Four + 1, who after releasing a cover of “Time Is on My Side” in 1965 evolved into the In Crowd. The group issued a string of singles in 1965, then when guitarist Steve Howe joined, they shifted their sound to incorporate early psychedelic pop and changed their name to Tomorrow. The band released the single “My White Bicycle” in 1967 and were regulars at psychedelic-oriented venues like Middle Earth and the UFO Club. Working with producer Joe Boyd, the band finished their self-titled first album in 1967. West also launched a simultaneous solo career with producer Mark Wirtz, releasing a few solo singles . . . in the late ’60s. The first of these, the ornately arranged slice of pop-psychedelia “Excerpt from a Teenage Opera,” was an unexpectedly huge smash, reaching number two on the British charts during the summer of 1967 . . . . The song was meant to be the first installment of Wirtz’s projected rock opera, but nothing else had been written, and a projected double album never materialized. West did release one more installment as a single, the even more rococo “Sam,” an ambitious orchestral-psychedelic production that briefly made the British Top 40. West’s solo success hindered the career of the much less pop-oriented Tomorrow, who had yet to even release their album when “Teenage Opera” hit. Although West was far more interested in working with Tomorrow than staging whimsical pop-psych operettas, the difficulty in balancing the two concerns led to Tomorrow’s premature demise in 1968. West did manage to release another solo single, 1968’s “On a Saturday,” then in the early ’70s he issued a handful of soft rock singles and an album in Germany, 1974’s Wherever My Love Goes. In 1975 he teamed with violinist John Weider to form the group Moonrider, issuing a single self-titled album before splitting. That marked the end of his recording career for the most part, though he produced a few bands, worked with his old partner Howe occasionally in the studio in the ’90s, and produced music for television and radio commercials.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/keith-west-mn0000084412#biography
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