Month: August 2025

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Episode 329 – The Flower Pot Men

Link to video episode on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7YqUnbIa-A

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Postcards From The Edge . . . OF CONNECTICUT!

  • Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie

History:

  • The band was formed in 1967 after recording the hit single “Let’s Go To San Francisco.”
  • John Carter and Ken Lewis of The Ivy League formed the group.
  • In the summer of 1966 Brian Wilson decided to stop touring with The Beach Boys to focus on studio work. The Beatles made the same decision. John Carter decided to do the same.
  • The new bandleader for The Ivy League decided to replace several members so John Carter recruited them into his new project The Flower Pot Men.
  • John Carter partnered with other songwriters on a project called The Ministry of Sound which wrote the song “Time and Motion Man” later recorded by Episode Six.
  • With Lewis Carter decided to write “Let’s Go To San Francisco” after reading about so much of the bands from the West Coast of the United States along with the whole scene that was developing at that time.
  • The single for “Let’s Go To San Francisco” was released in August of 1967 and had to be split over two sides of the single. The single reached #4 in the UK charts.
  • To be played in the US the band had to be called The Flower Pots to avoid the reference to drug use.
  • At the time there was a lot of controversy over The Monkees not performing on their own albums so attention was put on The Flower Pot Men who had really recorded it as members of The Ivy League.
  • John had been lead singer on the track but refused to do any live performances. Live the singers included Tony Burrows, Neil Landon, Robin Shaw, and Peter Nelson.
  • Backing the singers was a band called The Sundial which consisted of Jon Lord, Nick Simper, Ged Peck, and Carlo Little.
  • “The eight of us soon gelled into a slick, confident act, with each show being better than the last”, claims Simper. “The opening song was always The Four Seasons’ ‘Let’s Hang On’, with Tony Burrows hitting Frankie Valli’s high notes with ease, followed by various songs by The Four Tops, The Beach Boys and Wilson Pickett. Of course, the hit song ‘Let’s Go To San Francisco’ was always a showstopper.”
  • This lineup recorded a couple of the sessions for the newly branded Radio 1 featuring this lineup.
  • Nick Simper and Jon Lord’s first gig with The Flower Pot Men – 22 September 1967 –  Broken Wheel, Retford (Derbyshire Times/Retford Times) (FIRST DOCUMENTED)

The Flower Pot Men: Midsummer Dreaming – An Anthology 1967-1970, 3CD Digipak

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Band & Tracks

Let’s Go To San Francisco Parts 1 and 2 (original mono version) 

The single that started it all.

The following are 5 tracks recorded live on the BBC featuring Jon Lord, Nick Simper, Carlo Little, and Ged Peck.

The Sundial featuring Ged Peck, Carlo Little, Jon Lord, and Nick Simper

13 Let’s Go To San Francisco* BBC session

14 California Dreamin’* BBC session

Mamas and The Papas

15 Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall* BBC session

Simon & Garfunkel Cover

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_Never_Bend_with_the_Rainfall

16 Don’t Worry Baby* BBC session

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Worry_Baby

Beach Boys Cover

17 A Walk In The Sky* BBC session

Original song written by John and Ken as the follow up to “Let’s Go To San Francisco”

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Reception and Charts:

  • February 24, 1968 – Nick Simper and Jon Lord’s last gig with The Flower Pot Men (??) California Ballroom, Dunstable (LAST DOCUMENTED). Less than two months later they’d be playing their first live show with Deep Purple billed as Roundabout in Denmark.
  • John Carter had written the song “Beach Baby” with his wife Gillian Shakespeare and recorded it with his group First Class.
    • “Now on American Top 40, I have that song that was launched by a criminal act, an act that could have cost the owner of a British record company at least a stiff fine [sic]. He’s also a recording artist, Jonathan King. He’s known to Americans as the guy who hit back in 1965 with ‘Everyone’s Gone to the Moon‘, remember? Well, since then he’s become a successful producer in England, and he started his own label a couple of years ago. Last year, during the United Kingdom’s severe energy crisis, a songwriter came to Jonathan’s house with a master tape of a new song that he’d just recorded, but he’d come on a bad day of the week. You see, it was a day when Britons were prohibited from using electricity because of the power shortage. But something told King to take a chance. He invited the artist to come in, and, in a room lit only by candles, keeping the volume turned way down, he listened to that tape, and he knew he’d bought a hit song. Here it is, up to #25 this week, ‘Beach Baby’ by First Class.”
    • The song contained two instrumental passages, the first from the composer Sibelius, the second a direct quote from “Let’s Go To San Francisco.”
    • The single version of the song was almost 5 minutes long so most stations faded it out before the instrumental break in order to shorten it and to avoid the legal action that was being taken against Carter from the Sibelius family which would end up giving half of the proceeds from the song to the estate.
  • Beach Baby
  • https://open.spotify.com/track/5J74pF4Nn86qyLQihpkXq4

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