"Rage....Before Beauty"
Do you get it? Do you understand what we're saying here? Plugged in and ready for your reality check Sir?
"Hello, anybody in there Madam....?"

Whatever....
So, in this, the year of Our Lord 1999 (in the words of our artist formerly known as?), we are teetering on the
edge of the new millennium and our digital, infotech, e-mail, internetting, consumer world is Oh So Preciously
preoccupied with the sizzle, not the steak - the wrapper, not the filling - and with the gloss on the spin on the
take on the box on the blah, blah, blah.... We have finally created just exactly what all you boys and girls
need to complete your portfolio of personal possessions - the brand new Pretty Things album.

Goodness, how excited you must be just thinking about it....

The Pretty Things, they're pretty cred, right? I mean, they did a lot of drugs and stuff years before it was
big didn't they - a sort of supercool 'Stones' without the Riviera credibility fall-out - didn't they live with Brian
Jones for a while and get into real fights and have bi-sexual encounters in the mid '60's and get banned from
places and stuff? Sure, their new album is a must have...got to keep the old "cred" up haven't we.......
So....... What sort of music do they play?

We (well, I) wanted to call this album "Fuck Oasis and Fuck You" - but wiser heads than ours prevailed. It
was Skipper, I think, who coined the phrase. We were talking about the sad and sorry way that older bands
try to look interested and keenly wax lyrical about whatever crop of dreary new Turks are feeding at the Rock
Trough and someone helpfully mentioned Oasis (oh, he meant well, poor thing). Skipper hates Oasis: "they
don't fucking get it do they? Everything choreographed - every tantrum a photo-opportunity, everything
conveniently caught on film - what a load of fucking bullshit....."
"The Emperor's New Clothes" etc and so on...

But, for once we all agreed - most of this "new" shit is "bull" shit - old hands and (un)wise old heads can
smell out a charlatan over a satellite MTV network broadcast at a thousand paces. Usually it's just crap -
nothing to say, too much time to say it and too much money for saying it - so back then, our proposed title
seemed relevant and timely....
Anyway, it doesn't matter anymore - we've screwed up on getting the album finished, the moment has
passed, Oasis have fucked themselves, and what "You" do is your own business.

Hmmm....OK, but I digress.

So. I suppose I should write something about the record.

This isn't "The Best Album In The History Of The World....EVER"
This isn't even "The best album in the history of 'The Pretty Things' - Ever"
This is just the best album I have ever heard from a band of middle-aged men.
This is committed, relevant heartfelt, experienced, passionate and flawed music made by men who have
earned the right to make music and to keep making it until they are 90, if they want to. Fashion and the whims
of the media have played no part in this recording. It is the record these guys made at the time they made it -
at its best this is a glorious record and at its worst it is an inspired, heartfelt document of bleakness and failure.

It took a very long time to make, this record - there were times when I thought it would never get finished,
much less released. Dick still calls it "The Albatross".
We started a year after the last studio recording, 'Crosstalk', was released - and that was 1980. It's finally
coming out in 1999...
You can join up the dots yourself.
Throughout this, shit was going down all over the place and everywhere you looked it was all going down.
The 1980's were "Groundhog Day" in "PrettyWorld"

"Love Keeps Hanging On": there are only so many times that you can turn up at the singer's flat
and see the remains of the sodden mattress out in the street after the Fire Brigade have dealt with another
drunk’s self-induced Holocaust. Watching the sun slant through the windows of the Fulham hospital and
looking at the back of Phil s head, covered in soot, shit and dust, just sitting there in front of a blank TV
screen, trying to put it all back together in his head and then, turning as he hears me coming, he summons
up the old charming twinkle and a deprecatory little joke - Jesus. Phil. that was my old friend coming apart at
the seams. It was a bleak fucking year, 1989.
God, he's turned into a great singer though, Phil. There's no substitute for meaning it. It was all over
between him and Electra by that time and he just put it all down in the song.

Eventually, we did two vocal takes, one after the other - just me, Dave and Phil in the studio, with Soho busily
working it's little media heart rate up to 110 way above our heads. After he had finished we both cried. I
could never decide which take to use for the line "A little Shakespeare... goes an awfully long way". Both
takes were just so fucking sad - I didn't really know if we should expose him that much. Later on, Dave
Gilmour came in and laid down a lead guitar track - he and Phil are very close and he knew everything. He
plays it beautifully. He felt all of it and got right down, deep inside the anguish. The choir (The Bach Chorale
- thanks, Fulva) are just the final twist - all that pain. All that beauty...

"Vivian Prince": Viv hangs over this band like a fine shroud that you can‘t shift - 'The Floyd' still have
the remnants with Syd and in a way, 'The Stones' too, with Brian.
In 1987 we wanted to rebuild a real 'Pretty Things' so Phil and I went to find Viv. We found him in Devon,
with a couple of his mates, fisherman, they were...
He was totally wrecked and he had this little kiddies kit of drums. He was so happy to see Phil and so blown
away at the mixes of the new album (it was new then. too). So he sat at the kit and tried to play a roll and
some licks - he just fell sideways off the stool and lay there half-laughing. This was the man who showed the
way to Keith Moon - Christ, maybe the way things fell were kinder for Keith....
From there on the whole trip got out of hand, but somehow we still can't lose Viv. To this day, Skipper feels
that he has to live up to his memory and so he's quite a handful Skipper - a big, difficult and often violent
middle-aged man. Really, the Demons hide everywhere...
So this song is for and about Viv - he still shines so bright, however hard you rub. you can never quite lose
the iridescence. God Bless You Vivian Prince, you showed us all the way.

"Everlasting Flame": when I was a kid, I used to strain to hear the lyrics of ‘The Stones' early
singles - the put-down's were so fierce, you could feel the little kohl-eyed debs recoiling at the intensity of the
attack. The vocals were often mixed way back too, and the mystery was deeper because of it. Now the
debs have been replaced by an altogether more resilient strain of little rich girl and they have even less to
commend them - I think that they are fair game in the specific - Phil prefers the abstract - so we have an
uneasy compromise here and the song feels uncomfortable, edgy and somehow less than clear because of
it. There is patent tension and unfinished business. This should be a single, but we have a disagreement
with Dougie at Snapper about it - his view is valid. but watch this space anyway.

"Fly Away": after an eight year lost weekend. Phil has started to straighten out a little bit during the last
two years. I think he finally lets go of something with this song. He can write some beautiful delicate stuff
and this represents that side of him perfectly.

We recorded this in one take, absolutely live, late last year. Everyone was complaining because I wouldn't let
them overdub the BV's and the solo and so you can hear the whispered counts through the breaks. It works
great, though - it's really pure and true and it was just like that in the room - very rare.

"Goodbye, Goodbye/Goin' Downhill": my favourite - you get suckered into this smooth,
creamy vocal thing and this dreamy feel just washes over you, and then the second half kicks in and you're
suddenly in the epicentre of someone's worst nightmare. One of the GREAT lyric writers is Mr. May - "The
headless pillow next to me". What an image. Standing back, I guess all the signs were already visible here
and this is one of the very first things we did - recorded at Freerange Studios in 1980.
Before the week was out Phil and John were in a vicious, cut throat street fight out in the street, about
nothing, really...
I didn't see any of them after that for another 6 years.

I could go on...

Along the way we lost Tolson, too. You can hear him snarling around the edges of some of the tracks
here, but I fear he's lost to the 'Pretties' for ever - what a guitarist he was - shit, he would blow your socks
off and so cool and controlled - like the anger in a switchblade fight, all intensity and focus. Never a
wasted note or sound.

Peter Grant died whilst this record was being made, Phil and the band had just re-discovered him after
losing touch for a while and he brought them joy and confidence just by caring. Although he was ill, he
turned up in 1995 at the 100 Club to film a video with the band and stayed for the show. It was packed and
he stood at the back and took it all in - Skipper seized up after the set and it was Peter who took care of him
- just like the old days.
There will never be another like him.

We have a cut here with Phil duetting with Ronnie Spector. They toured together in 1964 and did Ready,
Steady. Go together. Thirty years later they were in Soho in my old studio in Wardour Street kicking out the
jams and rolling back the years - she's a class act, Ronnie.....she sounds just like Ronnie Spector.

That's enough prattle....

If the sanitised, pre-packed, two dimensional, squeaky clean, anorexic, glossy image we are force-fed daily is
beauty, then three cheers for rage. You'll either get all of this or you won't.
There'll always be some cluckhead with an RB,B or psychedelic fixation who expects all time to be frozen in
'66 or whatever, but these guys have earned the right to represent everything that they are - not just
something that they were.
Like Phil always says, who the fuck needs another 'Pretty Things' album? We'll make one when we're ready,
but we each have a life too. In the end, it's only Rock & Roll.
So, maybe if they'd spent a little more time playing the corporate game and a little more time worrying about
their future, they would be gigging at your local ENORMODROME this weekend - thank God they didn't.
In a time and space where honesty has long since been relegated to the lower shelves. I know why I care and
I know why this matters.

So, it's 1999 - 'The Pretty Things' have a new album and, finally, a GREAT record label, staffed with human
beings - perhaps truth will out and perhaps it won't.

Work it out for yourself.

Mark St. John
Soho, Christmas 1998