Wizzard

Listen: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday / Wizzard
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Pay attention. This might get complicated.

A famous writer once told me Roy Wood’s songs were never about topics that the critics and public assumed. For example, at the height of LSD psychedelia, we’re talking summer ’67, ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’, recorded by his band The Move, was indeed based on a children’s fantasy story, not drugs. This particular detail, in fact, from Roy Wood himself. Apparently, he never did drugs.

So it’s an interesting theory that ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ was indeed not a seasonal song at all, but instead about one’s beloved coke dealer. Pay close attention to the lyrics: “When the snowman brings the snow…”, etc. Quite a hilarious double entendre indeed.

More interesting to myself though are the details about this single’s actual appearance into the UK marketplace.

Roy Wood and his band, Wizzard, were red hot property in ’72. And after two consecutive #1 singles, the first, ‘See My Baby Jive’ reportedly being one of the all time biggest selling UK singles, at least for a while, he could basically write his own ticket.

Possibly resulting from both bad judgement and advice, Roy Wood prematurely signed to Warner Brothers after a very successful run with the EMI group’s various labels, and planned on releasing ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ via his new label home. Warners even pressed up copies, complete with an elaborate picture cover, the front of which is pictured above. In actuality, the sleeve was a gatefold, and an absolute beauty.

Someone, somewhere put a halt, I’m guessing by pointing out that EMI’s Harvest label indeed still had the rights to his output, and so the Warner Brothers copies were withdrawn, subsequently never to be seen again. Well until now, above.

The existing sleeves, however, now housed the Harvest pressing, without the bother of even stickering over the Warner Brothers catalog number. And why not? The record still barreled to a UK #4 in ’73. A true work of genius, right down to the children’s choir, possibly signing about the joys of cocaine. How funny if indeed this were fact, but given Roy Wood’s public aversion to drug use, probably not the case.

To slightly complicate these details and unfortunately ruffle some hard core collector’s coloured feathers, Roy Wood’s US label at the time, United Artists, basically chickened out on giving ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ a proper release, so instead pressed up weird bootleg looking copies, servicing them to radio.

Huh? Is this a way to make stations feel a commitment to your act? Stupidity of the highest degree, but as a result, adding incredible value to the handful of copies in existence. Thank you Rich Fazekas for mine.

Two years ago, I was in a Bed, Bath & Beyond, scouring some last minute gifts for obligatory friends, when what came over the store sound system? ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’. Only took thirty five years.

More importantly, a classic song is forever just that, a classic. Roy Wood has been recognized as a living Beethoven, and I am front of the line in agreeing.

‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ has re-charted in the UK many times during the holidays: ’81, ’84, ’07, ’08, ’09 and ’10. I’m betting on ’11 to repeat that process.

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