Listen: Forget Me Baby / Lulu & The Luvers LuluForget.mp3

Listen: Satisfied / Lulu & The Luvers LuluSatisfied.mp3

Listen: Surprise Surprise / Lulu & The Luvers LuluSurprise.mp3

With a moniker like Lulu, it’s not too surprising if your powerful voice is overlooked. Shame. Lulu could, well still can, really sing. Does anyone honestly not love ‘The Boat That I Row’ or ‘Me, The Peaceful Heart’?

But even in ’65 the ruthless star making machinery was in aggressive full swing, preceding Clive Davis’ criminal dismantling of Big Brother & The Holding Company for a solo Janis Joplin by several years. Decca’s victims, although not as cleanly disassembled: Lulu & The Luvers or as sometimes listed, Lulu & The Luvvers. Initially known as The Gleneagles with Lulu as one of the vocalists, they played their brand of R&B regularly around Glasgow’s clubs. At 14, Lulu and band had their first hit with The Isley Brothers’ ‘Shout’, making theirs the definitive version in the UK. Pretty quickly peeling her away from a band setting began. But not before one more single as Lulu & The Luvers was released (after a few solo Lulu singles confused the process): ‘Satisfied’ / ‘Surprise Surprise’. They sounded like a hot band, even if they were part studio guys, and I wish Decca had afforded them an album before her solo career commenced. Plus the way their name alliterates off the tongue is just perfect.

Seems even Lulu forgot about the Luvvers, based on her jukebox tab below:

Listen: Out There In The Night / The Only Ones OnlyOnesOutThereInTheNight.mp3

Listen: Trouble In The World / The Only Ones OnlyOnesTrouble.mp3

I’m a sucker for an atonal vocalist. So The Only Ones’ Peter Perrett is right up my alley. These two singles are by far my favorites from the boys. Never did get to see them, some arrest nonsense cut their US tour short, the one whereby they were playing my town. Hence not much to say about them, except I still love these records. Oh, hold on, the sleeve pictured for ‘Trouble In The World’ was sent along, at the time, by Howard Thompson. He A&R’d the band, by assignment as opposed to choice. He doesn’t reflect fondly on it all. Whether by coincidence or design, ‘Trouble In The World’ echoes Mott The Hoople, with it’s Sue & Sunny background female vocals. Seems like an HT influence to me.

For reasons unknown, the sleeve was scrapped allowing or forcing the record to be issued in a stock CBS bag. The label was quite good at making pitiful judgement calls when it came to picture sleeves. Unlike in the US, picture sleeves were quite uncommon in England until punk. So what did CBS do? They released a bunch of punk singles without them. Although the corporate waste exponentially accelerated by the time I was employed by Columbia in 1995, it seems seeds were planted decades before. Hey, let’s actually manufacture the sleeves then destroy them, why cancel it in the pre-production phase? Kill another tree. No problem.

But the records speak for themselves. Great stuff. And although spelled differently, you have to admit Peter Perrett was pretty hip to choose, for his surname, that of the great US label, Parrot, which included Them, The Zombies, Los Bravos, Lulu & The Luvvers and Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours amongst it’s roster.