Influential band The Pretty Things in Bilston
To serious fans of music, The Pretty Things need no introduction. They were the band The Stones would love to have been; they were the inspiration for some of Bowie's best work.
They also almost single-handedly paved the way for punk. Where The Pretty Things led, other bands followed.
Without The Pretty Things, there'd have been no Sex Pistols, no Ramones and probably no Nirvana.
The Pretty Things were a game-changing, genre-defining, musically apocalyptic tour de force.
Remarkably, they lived to tell the tale.
Phil May is the band's only ever-present member. Phil was a contemporary of Brian Jones, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.
"A group of us, including Mick and Keith, were at the Sidcup School of Art. Mick only met Keith because he saw him standing at Dartford train station with a blues record under his arm."
While The Stones went supernova, The Pretty Things followed their own route.
Singles like Rosalyn – which was later covered by Bowie – Don't Bring Me Down and the self-penned Honey I Need made them chart stars and brought them to the attention of the wider world.
Their career, however, has been characterised as much by their refusal to conform. They were punk, long before punk came along.
When punk broke, Phil hooked up with a few of his other mates, Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, to check out the scene.
"It was funny. Robert, Jimmy and I went down to the Roxy in Soho. We just got spat it."
Since then, The Pretty Things have refused to die. Phil said: "If you don't want to walk the line, you shouldn't be in a band.
"As an artist it's your job to go to the edge and bring back information. Otherwise you end up as an MOR band and it's safe. What's the point in that?"
The Pretty Things play Bilston's Robin 2 on Thursday (28 February).
By Andy Richardson
