THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,994) Mike Vickers — “On the Brink”
No, not “the Vicar’s Daughter” (see #78) — Mike Vickers! Manfred Mann man, future Beatles collaborator Mike Vickers gives us a “scooter rally stomper” (gandorthemagnificent1476, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HeG31XCaIRw&list=RDHeG31XCaIRw&start_radio=1&pp=ygUZTWlrZSB2aWNrZXJzIG9uIHRoZSBicmlua6AHAQ%3D%3D&ra=m) “which became something of a Mod Anthem at the time, and later a Northern Soul Anthem (two anthems in one!).” (Mike Vickers himself!, https://mikevickers.net/a-potted-biography/) It is “full of blowsy horns and high-end climaxes via its stomping beat, a pounding piano theme, and strings effected with an intense vibrato” (Mark Roland, https://www.electronicsound.co.uk/features/long-reads/mike-vickers-song-of-the-unsung/), a “Northern Soul anthem!!”, “monster instrumental” that is “still a powerful driving amphetamine driven piece of music that conjours up image’s of a young underground scene dancing their arse’s off”. (NaturalSoulBrother1, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HeG31XCaIRw&list=RDHeG31XCaIRw&start_radio=1&pp=ygUZTWlrZSB2aWNrZXJzIG9uIHRoZSBicmlua6AHAQ%3D%3D&ra=m)
JustCazBolt says: “Huge dance halls heaving with wizzed up sweating scooterboys and scootergirls dancing for their lives, tugging hard on cigarettes, still holding a beer and not spilling it. Thank god I was there, thank god. Thank you god! Yes!”(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HeG31XCaIRw&list=RDHeG31XCaIRw&start_radio=1&pp=ygUZTWlrZSB2aWNrZXJzIG9uIHRoZSBicmlua6AHAQ%3D%3D&ra=m)
martinward7239 says:
Hammersmith Sneakers club o a Monday or Tuesday night. Can’t remember exactly. Rode there on my PK50 with the Surrey Musketeers. Drank Pernod and black all night. Couldn’t dance for sh*t so didn’t. But watched in awe at those who could. Got left behind on the way back home but couldn’t get this song out of my head. Comes up on my music player every now and then and I’ll jump up and wriggle around a bit.
Bruce Eder:
Mike Vickers is best known as the resident multi-instrumentalist in the original Manfred Mann, but he has participated on and played significant roles in the recording of dozens of successful (and occasional monster hit) records by everyone from the Beatles [see #28-29, 113, 132, 374, 422-23, 520-22, 545, 669, 779-81, 840, 872, 942, 1,087, 1,256, 1,437, 1,473, 1,910] to Gentle Giant, in addition to composing numerous film scores. Vickers’ jazz background and multi-instrumental skills made his musicianship a centerpiece of Manfred Mann’s sound; his guitar, sax, and flute highlighted their live shows and dozens of their sides from the beginning of their career in 1963 through his departure from the group in October of 1965. His exit from the lineup marked the beginning of the end for the original group. Vickers’ decision to leave Manfred Mann was apparently at least reasonably amicable, because the other bandmembers participated extensively on his debut solo album, I Wish I Were a Group Again, released in 1968, which is virtually a lost Manfred Mann record. Upon leaving the band, he began a career as a composer of film music, debuting with the comedy Press for Time in 1966. He also began a career as a composer, arranger, and conductor, working in the idioms of rock, jazz, and orchestral music. Among other projects, Vickers was the conductor of the 13-piece core ensemble playing behind the Beatles on their live broadcast (and record) of “All You Need Is Love” on June 25, 1967, and he later played synthesizer on their final album, Abbey Road. Since then, he has worked across the entire spectrum of English popular music, with singers as diverse as Cilla Black, Francoise Hardy [see #459, 476-77, 515], and Ella Fitzgerald in various capacities as arranger, orchestrator, or conductor, with groups as different as the Hollies [see #461], the Bee Gees [see #291, 353-54, 439, 466, 484, 497, 570, 594, 717, 861, 962, 1,065, 1,101, 1,125, 1,190, 1,321, 1,336, 1,343, 1,465, 1,584, 1,640, 1,685, 1,843], and Gentle Giant, and even turned up playing synthesizer on the original 1971 recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. The ’70s also saw him move into the scoring of films with more of an international exposure, including Dracula AD 1972 and At the Earth’s Core.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mike-vickers-mn0000490674#biography
Mark Roland adds:
A trained woodwind musician, Mike Vickers played guitar in Manfred Mann. Although he wasn’t that interested in the guitar, the band recognised they had a multi-instrumentalist onboard who was capable of putting together orchestrations that swelled their sound considerably. “I knew how to write for other instruments,” says Vickers, “and occasionally we used extras, like strings, and there were horns on one piece I think.” These modest orchestrations tended to happen when the rest of Manfred Mann weren’t in the studio. Vickers worked with hired players and the band’s producer John Burgess at the controls. Burgess was a producer at Abbey Road, where the Manfreds recorded for EMI imprint His Master’s Voice, which is how Vickers came to the attention of The Beatles’ producer George Martin. Vickers’ ambitions had long stretched beyond the pop treadmill he found himself on. Following a string of hits with Manfred Mann, he left the band in late 1965. His first extra-curricular success had come in the same year . . . called “On The Brink”, which was used as the theme tune for the BBC TV programme The Wednesday Play, and was released as a seven-inch single under his own name. . . . [It] resulted in Vickers being offered the chance to score a film, a comedy vehicle for Michael Bentine called The Sandwich Man. . . . “I left the band pretty soon after getting the film commission,” says Vickers. “I thought, ‘If I’m going to do this properly, I’m going to need lots of time to do it’.” More film and TV work followed, as well as sessions arranging pop hits for the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck. Vickers was seen as a safe pair of hands that could be turned to all manner of styles. His versatility, reliability and modesty are almost certainly why he got his first call to work with The Beatles. In 1967 . . . he spent a week helping with the orchestration of “All You Need Is Love” in the frenetic scramble to get The Beatles ready for their imperial performance on the Our World live broadcast.
https://www.electronicsound.co.uk/features/long-reads/mike-vickers-song-of-the-unsung/
Finally, Vickers himself:
John Burgess, the MM producer, asked me if I’d like to do some of my own material with session musicians. The result was “On the Brink” . . . . Some film producers heard it, and asked me to write a score for their next movie. I said yes, and gave in my notice to MM, in order to have plenty of time to write the music. This started a period in my life when I worked so hard that I still don’t know how I did it. I rapidly came into great demand as an arranger – someone who turns a rough voice & guitar demo into an orchestral piece or a brassy blockbuster. . . . It was non-stop work – finish an arrangement, start the next, go to a recording session, finish the second arrangement, start the next, go to another recording session, have meetings with singers and producers to discuss songs and choose keys, go to another studio for orchestral or vocal overdubs, go back home and finish the third arrangement and write three more. And so to bed, perchance to sleep, if my overloaded brain ever let me. I wrote a number of other music scores, for comedy films that weren’t funny, horror films that weren’t scary, adventure films that weren’t adventurous, and sex films that weren’t sexy. Odd, that. I also wrote commercials, and tons of library music. I bought a Moog Series III synthesizer, one of the first to arrive in the UK, and used it a lot in the studios, including programming all the electronic sounds heard on the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
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