Sounding like an expression of surprise from Batman’s suspiciously young ‘protégé’, The Holy Mackerel were a sixties group born from the brain of Paul Williams II. Williams would later be inaugurated into the Songwriters Hall of Fame after penning a bazillion hits, but in 1967 following an unsuccessful spell with the White Whale label, he found himself devoid of a contract.
This dry patch didn’t last. Williams bagged a new deal with Reprise, care of Richard Perry, on the back of a B-side written to order.
With confidence flagging, the charge of recording a solo album proved too daunting for Williams and so a new group, The Holy Mackerel, were assembled to help cut the record. The ensuing eponymous (and only) LP would prove to be a product of its time and doubtless laid the bedrock for the fledgling songwriter’s subsequent fruitful career.
I came to The Holy Mackerel a number of years ago, via a compilation in Elektra’s expanded Nuggets series, in particular through the song ‘Wildflowers’. To my mind this druggy, wobbling meander through psychedelic garden metaphors remains one of the standout, albeit less obvious, tracks on both the Mackerel’s album and the compilation which drew my attention to it. Expertly arranged with cellos, sitars and tablas, drenched in phase, it is powered by a deep rolling bass-line that pulls the track together. This mother would get George Harrison hot under the collar and make him rethink ‘Within You Without You’, which sorely lacks the Mackerel’s funky bottom end. Sort it out George, you dead bastard.
The remainder of this collection jumps about stylistically. For the most part they loosely remain in the psychedelic folkish popular vein - further evidence, were it needed, that the so-called ‘Summer of Love’ was barely the cusp of a pop wave ridden by a few rich rockers. Psyche would continue its influence through the remainder of the decade and beyond fusing with folk, soul and heavy rock along the way.
Punchable Face
Opener ‘The Secret of Pleasure’ serves as a standard psychedelic rallying cry, laden with the usual confusing imagery and incoherent ramblings: “Come now we’ll arm ourselves with paper hats and pleasure,”; or childhood throwbacks, “Time to remember the stories you wanted to hear”. All the usual obsessions about secrets and Time are also present and correct. It is whimsical and catchy, bouncing along on a jaunty melody and it fades away in a haze of Cynthia Ann Fitzpatrick’s dreamy flutes. I certainly have a soft spot for the attempts made by this era’s pop to follow fashion and ladle the off-the-peg psychedelia on thick.
Also present is the ubiquitous femme fatal, found in the uninspired ‘Scorpio Red’ and the obligatory faux-gibberish nursery rhyme (‘Prinderella’) of the sort that blighted discs by anyone from the Small Faces to The Monkees. Lennon managed to publish two volumes of this kind of wannabe nonsense.
Not wishing to typecast himself, Williams throws in a couple of country pastiches, tapping into the vogue for inane, cumbersome titles along the way – ‘The Somewhere in Arizona at 4:30A.M. Restaurant Song, (And Now I Am Alone)’ - and a fake Nashville-style live recording (‘The Wild Side of Life’), both of which are amiable enough.
As the album progresses, the listener cannot help but feel that Williams is trying to cover all his bases and, though in its infancy, can all but hear him hone his craft. ‘Bitter Honey’ has a touch of McCartney about its plinky-plonky upbeat piano balladry, akin to a lesser Monkees track, whilst ‘Nothin’ Short Of Misery’ has echoes of Randy Newman - sounding for all the world like something you have heard a million times before. This is the true skill of a hack songsmith and it is little wonder Williams would go on to compose songs for the Carpenters, Helen Reddy, Scissor Sisters and even Kermit The Frog. The Monkees comparisons are not farfetched – Williams auditioned and was rejected for a role in the group, but they would later score a minor hit covering his ‘Someday Man’.
It is the cod psychedelia, however, that tickles Old Rope. ‘The Golden Ghost of Love’ is light and dainty, haunting and laced with echoes, flutes and banjos; ‘10,000 Men’ is a bluesy number, with traces of Dylan, The Hollies, maybe even The Byrds, and carries a sombre drone beneath its dark harp-driven vocal-laden core. The LP ends on a vaguely folkish psyche note that almost calls to mind some of The Hollies’ forays into psychedelic arrangements. With its strings and flutes it is a gentle, if dystopian, tone on which to bow out.
The influence of psyche on mainstream sixties pop turns me on and, though far from perfect, this little album makes me grin. Although that may be due to all the LSD I had for breakfast.
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