S. F. Sorrow

The Pretty Things' April 1967 album Emotions was their last made under the Fontana label. It was an album they were dissatisfied with, but agreed to make in order to be released from their contract. Smith said yes and the first product released for the new label was the November 1967 single "Defecting Grey", which did not chart but introduced the group's new, heavily psychedelic sound. In the meantime, the band continued to play live shows and produce film soundtrack music under the name Electric Banana in order to pay off its debt. == Composition ==

S. F. Sorrow is a psychedelic rock opera that explores the life of a single character "from rural birth to Prodigal's Oliver Twist freakout". and several critics disagreed with the Who. Phil May claims that Townshend urged the group to release S. F. Sorrow in America before Tommy. ==Story==

According to the printed story in the album's original liner notes, the lead character Sebastian F. Sorrow is born to parents who live in an ordinary factory town on a night when no star is to be seen. As a child he has a strong imagination and often dreams of the moon. As he comes of age he joins his father in the factory but the boom period is over, with many older workers now laid off. He falls in love with "the girl next door" but war is soon declared and out of a sense of duty, he enlists in the army. At the end of the years-long war he finds himself in the new country of "Amerik" and decides to move there, sending a balloon ticket to his girlfriend to come join him. However, just as the balloon arrives it explodes, taking the girl with it and plunging Sorrow into deep grief as he wanders the streets of New York City alone. One day he is approached by Baron Saturday, wearing a black cloak and tall silk hat. He takes Sorrow's eyes and lifts him to the roofs of the city, where sparrows (prodded by Saturday) carry him on a journey through a hall of mirrors through which Sorrow sees fragments of his past life. At the end of the hall he walks up a spiral staircase to see "the most painful sight yet." Saturday then takes him to the Well of Destiny, after which he begins to search for new, spiritual values in life. However, as he wanders the streets once more he sees people who he believes will not be saved. As new values appear elusively out of reach and his madness slowly builds, it shuts out the light and only darkness remains. ==Recording==

Recording for the album began at EMI (now Abbey Road) Studios not long after "Defecting Grey"'s release, with "Bracelets Of Fingers" and "Talkin' About The Good Times" put to tape in November 1967 and "Walking Through My Dreams" from 12-13 December. with "Loneliest Person" being the final song recorded. Producer Norman Smith and engineer Peter Mew were open to the band's experimentation, often coming up with new sounds and even new instruments (Dick Taylor remembers making a twangy dulcimer-like instrument for "Death"). Sessions often ran all the way into the early morning, sometimes as late as 6am, and would only stop when the engineers couldn't stand up anymore. In the process, Taylor recalls the studio's four-track machines being bounced with overdubs hundreds of times, along with new gadgets that "made a kazoo sound like a VC10." Instruments used during the recording of the album included sitar, mellotron, Tibetan drum, trumpets, recorder, and marching drum. The group were not concerned with playing the songs live, feeling that doing so would limit the album's development. Midway through the album's recording, in April 1968, the group experienced a lineup change when drummer Skip Alan was replaced by Twink, formerly of the group Tomorrow. Twink recalls that when he joined, Skip had completed drum tracks for three of the album's songs, which did not need to be re-recorded. According to May, Twink was promised a share in the album's publishing if he would complete the album with them, since the group had no other way to pay him. The band's finances were so poor during this period that May ended up drawing the cover design himself, with photographs taken by Taylor. ==Release==

The album's release was delayed several months by EMI, eventually appearing in the UK in December 1968, by which time psychedelia was fading in favor of rootsier sounds. Both May and Taylor have expressed bitterness over the album's commercial failure and over The Who claiming "first rock opera" status with Tommy. According to May: "It was a kick in the balls. It’s one thing to let us make the bloody thing, but then all they gave us was little quarter-inch adverts saying, ‘The new album by The Pretty Things’ – nothing about the story, nothing about the narrative. When Tommy came out, everybody was so keen because it was presented so well that everyone knew what it was: it was a rock opera. Ours, from six months earlier, was just a Pretty Things record. Motown acquired the rights to release S. F. Sorrow through a licensing deal with EMI. Rare Earth Records was launched with a five album promotional box set that included S. F. Sorrow alongside releases by Love Sculpture, Rustix, the Messengers and Rare Earth, the band the subsidiary was named after. However, S.F. Sorrow did not chart in America, either. ==Reception==

In Rolling Stone, Lester Bangs termed it "an ultra-pretentious concept album, complete with strained 'story' [...] like some grossly puerile cross between the Bee Gees, Tommy, and the Moody Blues" and suggested that the band "should be shot for what they've done to English rock lyrics." By contrast, Melody Maker enthused that it represented a "much improved group" and praised the playing by each individual member. Later reviews have been far more positive, with many considering the album a UK psychedelic classic. AllMusic said that the album "straddles the worlds of British blues and British psychedelia better than almost any record you can name". ==Legacy==

In 1998, Pretty Things, along with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and singer Arthur Brown, performed the album in its entirety at Abbey Road Studios for an Internet simulcast, The 2009 incarnation of the Pretty Things featuring May, Taylor, Frank Holland, George Perez, Jack Greenwood and Mark St. John would perform the album onstage on 10 April, at the 5th annual le Beat Bespoke Weekender sponsored by Mojo magazine. In 2023, all 13 of the band's studio albums were released in the box set The Complete Studio Albums 1965-2020. AllMusic wrote in its review of the album, "Although it may have helped inspire Tommy, it is, simply, not nearly as good. That said, it was first and has quite a few nifty ideas and production touches. And it does show a pathway between blues and psychedelia that the Rolling Stones, somewhere between Satanic Majesties, "We Love You," "Child of the Moon," and Beggars Banquet, missed entirely." The Guardian called it "one of the few consistently brilliant British psych albums [...] the taut drums and endless two-note guitar riff of Balloon Burning sounds remarkably like motorik krautrock a decade early [...] the SF Sorrow-era Pretty Things seem not disaster-prone but perfectly poised, not behind the times but ahead of them." ==Track listing==

The Pretty Things • Phil May – vocals • Dick Taylor – lead guitar, vocals • Wally Waller – bass, guitar, vocals, wind instruments, piano • Jon Povey – organ, sitar, Mellotron, percussion, vocals • Skip Alan – drums (on some tracks, quit during recording) • Twink – drums (on some tracks, replaced Alan), vocals Production • Norman Smith – producer • Peter Mew – engineer • Ken Scott – engineer on "Bracelets of Fingers" • Phil May – sleeve design • Dick Taylor – photography == See also ==