Johns Children
John's Children were a 1960s pop art/mod rock band from Leatherhead, England that briefly featured future T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan. John's Children were known for their outrageous live performances and were booted off a tour with The Who in Germany in 1967 when they upstaged the headliners. Their 1967 single "Desdemona", a Bolan composition, was banned by the BBC because of the controversial lyric, "Lift up your skirt and fly". Their US record label delayed the release their album, Orgasm for four years from its recording date due to objections from Daughters of the American Revolution.
John's Children were active for less than two years and were not very successful commercially, having released only six singles and one album. But they had a big influence on punk rock and are seen by some as the precursors of glam rock. In retrospect the band has been praised for the impact they had, and their singles have become amongst the most sought-after British 1960s rock collectables.
In 1965 in Great Bookham, near Leatherhead, England, drummer Chris Townson and singer Andy Ellison formed a band called the Clockwork Onions, which later became The Few, and then The Silence. The Silence consisted of Townson and Ellison, with Geoff McClelland on guitar and John Hewlett on bass guitar. While performing in France in mid-1966, Townson met The Yardbirds's manager Simon Napier-Bell and invited him to come and see The Silence. Napier-Bell described them as "positively the worst group I'd ever seen", but still agreed to manage them. He changed their name to John's Children, dressed them up in white stage outfits and encouraged them to be outrageous to attract the attention of the press. He named the band after its bass player because he played so badly and Napier-Bell wanted to be sure the band would not fire him. Townson described their live acts as "theatre", "anarchy" and "deconstruction". They fought each other on stage, used fake blood and feathers, and they trashed their instruments. In general the band "whip[ped] the audience into a frenzy". They also often posed naked for the press, with flowers covering their private parts.
Napier-Bell signed John's Children to The Yardbirds's record label, Columbia Records, an EMI subsidiary, and they released their first single, "Smashed Blocked/Strange Affair" (released as "The Love I Thought I'd Found/Strange Affair" in the UK) in late-1966. Napier-Bell co-wrote "Smashed Blocked" with Hewlett, but because of his lack of confidence in the band's musical abilities, Napier-Bell used session musicians on the recording. Allmusic described the single as a "disorienting piece of musical mayhem", but said it was "one of the first overtly psychedelic singles". To Napier-Bell's surprise "Smashed Blocked/Strange Affair" broke into the bottom of the US Billboard Hot 100 and reached local top ten charts in Florida and California. In early-1967 they released their second single, "Just What You Want – Just What You'll Get/But You're Mine", which also featured session musicians, plus a guitar solo from The Yardbirds's Jeff Beck on the B-side. This one made it to the British Top 40.
The band's third single, "Not the Sort of Girl (You'd Like to Take to Bed)" was rejected outright by their UK label, which prompted the band to switch to Track Records, publishers of artists like The Jimi Hendrix Experience and The Who. In the meantime, their US label, White Whale Records asked for an album, and Napier-Bell and the group obliged, producing Orgasm. This was a fake live album they recorded in the studio with overdubbed screams taken from The Beatles's A Hard Day's Night soundtrack. It was Napier-Bell's idea to give the album a "live" feel to make it seem like the band was very popular in England. But White Whale rejected Orgasm because of its title and pressure from Daughters of the American Revolution. The label did, however, release it four years later in 1971.
In March 1967 Napier-Bell replaced guitarist McClelland with Marc Bolan, another of his clients. Napier-Bell had Bolan, an acoustic guitarist, play electric guitar, and take on the role of the band's singer/songwriter. Bolan composed and sang on the band's next single, "Desdemona", which was banned by the BBC because of the controversial lyric, "Lift up your skirt and fly". He also featured on several unreleased songs and BBC radio sessions, and contributed to the band's antics by whipping the stage with a chain.
Breakup and legacy
John's Children played at The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream concert at the Alexandra Palace in London on 29 April 1967. Bolan left in June 1967, after only four months with the band, following disagreements with the way Napier-Bell was producing the band's next single, "A Midsummer Night's Scene". The single was never released, but in its place the B-side of "Desdemona", "Remember Thomas à Becket" was re-recorded with new lyrics and released as "Come and Play with Me in the Garden". Bolan went on to form folk duo Tyrannosaurus Rex (later glam rock band T. Rex).
After Bolan left, Townson switched to guitar and former roadie Chris Colville took over on drums. John's Children recorded another single, "Go Go Girl", a Bolan composition he later recorded with Tyrannosaurus Rex as "Mustang Ford". John's Children also performed Bolan's "Mustang Ford" version of the song. The band released one more single, "It's Been a Long Time" (issued as an Andy Ellison solo single) and then embarked on a "disastrous" tour of Germany. Their last performance was at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany (substituting for the Bee Gees), after which they split up in 1968. Ellison went on to make several solo singles, before resurfacing in Jet in 1974, along with drummer Chris Townson. Jet metamorphosed into Radio Stars in the mid-Seventies.
John's Children reformed in the mid-1990s with Boz Boorer on guitar and former Radio Stars member Martin Gordon on bass, performing gigs for the New Untouchables in the UK, Italy, Spain and the USA. In 1999, Ellison, Townson and Gordon were joined by guitarists Trevor White (a former member of Sparks) and Ian Macleod (Radio Stars) to perform a selection of John's Children, Jet and Radio Stars repertoire, released as "Music for the Herd of Herring" and recorded in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.
With Gordon and Boorer, John's Children performed at the Steve Marriott Memorial Event at the London Astoria on 20 April 2001. Ellison, Hewlett and Townson plus guitarist Trevor White officially reformed John's Children in June 2006 and have been performing and recording occasionally ever since. Townson died in February 2008. Several compilation albums of John's Children's music have been issued retrospectively, some of which include previously unreleased material. An account of Napier-Bell's time with John's Children and Bolan is given in his 2005 book You Don't Have To Say You Love Me.
