The Troggs
The summer of 1966 was on the way and all kinds of good and varied things
had been topping the charts that year in Britain - The
Spencer Davis Group's Keep On Running, The
Walker Brothers' The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, plus the
then-inevitable Beatles, whose Paperback Writer
was the tenth Number One for the Liverpool crew.
 Suddenly,
in that sunny June, there were rumblings of something important happening to
pop music - in Andover, Hampshire of all places. Not an area generally noted
for the uninhibited high life, and certainly not for rock & roll
revolutions.
But from Andover emerged a band called The Troglodytes, a rather
uncommercial name which was shortened to The Troggs once they landed a
recording contract with Fontana.
What manner of men were these blinking into the daylight from the heart of
sleepy Hampshire? They had a lead singer named Presley - Reg Presley to be
exact, and quite definitely no relation to Elvis.
There were four Troggs: Guitarist Chris Britton, bassist Pete Staples,
drummer Ronnie Bond and Presley, and their first record was Wild Thing,
produced by Larry Page.
Page knew a thing or two about what made pop music tick. He'd toured and
recorded under the billing 'Larry Page the Teenage Rage' and had his share of
controversial headlines. Then he had switched to production and management.
The record came just at the right time to upset the psychedelic apple cart
which was infecting the straightforward pop scene. Presley rasped out the
lyrics in a blatantly sexy manner and there was a positive minimum of musical
adventure or invention about what went on behind that rurally-accented voice -
"woild thing oi think oi love you".
Their records rang with a naive enthusiasm which allowed the group to build
a respectable following on the club scene, where they continued to recreate the
good old days.
The Troggs clearly were a business-like bunch of rockers who eschewed the
apparent apparent build-up of progressive music in the pop business. The second
record was With A Girl Like You, a Number 1 where Wild Thing had
reached second place.
 The
third, I Can't Control Myself, went to Number Two and then came Any
Way That You Want Me, Give It To Me, Night Of The Long Grass
and Love Is All Around (which was destined for greater fame over a
quarter of a century later at the hands of Wet Wet Wet
- and Bill Nighy in Love Actually).
Then after just 18 months of fervent furious activity, The Troggs stopped
having Top 20 hits. But in that short space of time they had laid claim to
being 'living legends of pop'.
Wild Thing was a song by Chip Taylor, a very experienced writer, and
The Troggs simply lambasted both melody and lyrics. A couple of years later it
was to become a highlight of the stage act of one Mr Jimi
Hendrix.
By the time of I Can't Control Myself, controversy really hit The
Troggs. One line in the song had them banned in Australia, placed on the BBC's
'restricted list' and widely criticised by the battalions of self-appointed
guardians of pop morals. The line was "your slacks are low and your hips
are showing", which was regarded as being unnaturally outspoken at the
time. But the truth was that Reg Presley had developed a style of vocal
delivery that could make reading from the telephone directory appear sexy.
With The Troggs it wasn't a matter of the songs they sang being all that
sexy - it was the way they sang and played them. The controversy fired The
Troggs to develop their rustic personalities. They exaggerated their accents,
splattering conversations with "oi's" and "moi's", and they
deliberately cultivated the use of country bumpkin language.
 Two
Troggs' albums, From Nowhere and Trogglodynamite, were big
sellers, but in LP form it must be admitted the group's musical imperfections
and weaknesses came through. At no time, though, did their sheer exuberance and
energy dry up.
Legal hassles with Larry Page no doubt contributed to their demise as a
chart band, but they did continue working overseas clubs with the occasional
tour of one-nighters in Britain. Then in 1973, there were unmistakable and
unexpected signs that The Troggs were becoming cult figures in America. After
all it was US audiences who failed to make The Troggs superstars when they
first had the chance.
The band had toured with The Who and, on a slightly
different level, with Herman's Hermits. But
the rumblings from the US pop papers got louder and louder. The Troggs old,
sexy singles were being played over and over again on radio stations, injecting
a bit of old-fashioned fire into what was in danger of becoming a staid rock
scene.
There had been personnel changes. Chris Britton had got fed up with the
delay in finding fame a second time around and went off to run a disco in
Portugal and was replaced by Canadian-born Richard Moore. And Tony Murray had
taken over from bassist Staples. But there was still the ebullient, podgy,
amiable and outspoken Reg Presley doing the singing, and drummer Ronnie Bond
improving his interpretation of the role of rustic layabout.
As America latched onto The Troggs, so did Larry Page (again) who patched up
old differences and took the band back into the studios. The first single from
the new period was a version of the old Beach Boys'
hit Good Vibrations, and it proved a very good talking point. It was
talked about mostly as a strong comeback bid, whereas in truth Reg Presley had
not done badly out of pop. There had been royalties coming in from his songs
over the years, and he had built his own £50,000 Swiss chalet-style house,
overlooking the Hampshire hills near Andover.
 In
Andover he was still known as Reggie Ball. The Presley moniker had been given
to Reg by Larry Page (who obviously didn't think Reg Sinatra or Reg Crosby
would do the trick).
What sustained The Troggs over the years was that things in pop come and go
in cycles. They played unabashed, straightforward rock and didn't give a damn
for those who thought it was repetitive and unadventurous.
The psychedelic and progressive eras put them temporarily out of business
but every so often The Troggs came up with that kind of offbeat ingredient for
survival. There was a chart-topper in Spain called Strange Movies which
Reg wrote and contained a string of eminently bannable clichés. But it managed
to escape the normally ever-vigilant Spanish authorities.
Wild Thing remains one of THE rock classics of all time.
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