PJ Proby: Three Week Hero
I've especially enjoyed sharing some of my enthusiasms for obscure musical acts here on Boing Boing as the guest blogger. This post is about PJ Proby, crazed crooner and rock and roll hellion. I am a massive, massive fan of this guy's music. I've been fascinated by him for years and would LOVE to make a documentary about him. No one plays the sad, apologetic lonely guy better than PJ Proby. His voice can make a grown man cry, but you'd almost have to be half-mad to sell a song like he can. And half-mad PJ Proby probably is...
Once famously blacklisted in the UK for repeated splitting his blue velvet trousers onstage, it's tempting to call PJ Proby the "Zelig of rock and roll." Despite the fact that today almost no one remembers who the guy is/was, he was a peer and fellow performer of The Beatles, Tom Jones, Cilla Black, The Rolling Stones, Jackie DeShannon, Marc Almond, St. Etienne and many others. His sister dated Elvis Presley and Proby himself sang the "vocal guides" imitating Elvis that the King would then re-record during his Hollywood movie phase. His first British TV appearance was as a special guest on "Around the Beatles."
His 1968 album "Three Week Hero" featured none other than a young Led Zeppelin (or the "New Yardbirds" as they were then known) warming up as his backing band and he appeared as "The Godfather" touring with The Who during their 1997 "Quadrophenia" production. Van Morrison even wrote a song called "Whatever Happened to PJ Proby?" I could go on and on, he's led a very colorful, albeit very self-destructive life, but I'll leave the bio for the links and concentrate on all the great PJ Proby performances you can find on YouTube after the jump (and trust me, this isn't the best stuff that's out there).
"You Can't Come Home Again (If You Leave Me Now) | "Around The Beatles" (1964) | "Hold Me" (first UK hit single) | "That Means A Lot" (Lennon-McCartney composition) | "Somewhere" | ""What's Wrong With My World?" | PJ Proby/Marc Almond duet "Yesterday Has Gone" (1996) | Interesting Marc Almond interview on the difficulties of working with PJ Proby | "Niki Hoeky" (audio only) (Can someone out there please post a video of this?) | Official PJ Proby site | Get Hip to His Conflagration | The Fall and Rise of PJ Proby | How P.J. Proby's life is falling apart at the seams (Recent article about the 69-year-old singer's legal troubles) | St. Etienne's Bob Stanley on the Pop Mavericks
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Fantastic! I've never heard of PJ Proby, but he's fantastic. I was blown away by his singing in "Around the Beatles" (and those dancers are WILD).
The stream for Beyond the Beat Generation often plays a commercial spot from the '60s for PJ Proby. I'd never heard of him before that. Excellent!
PJ Proby is also supposedly the real-life model for the protagonist of the rock novel "I Am Still The Greatest Says Johnny Angelo" by noted critic Nik Cohn, published in 1967 by Secker & Warburg, with a dust jacket designed by Alan Aldridge (illustrator of the Beatles Lyrics Songbook). Contact me at
hyprlx@gml.cm if you would like to buy my first edition (review copy) of this rare and important book.
When he was younger there looked like he could be a lost Cusack relative.
In the photo above, I thought of Seth MacFarlane.
Today he could pass for a relative of either.
Have you heard his readings of Lord Horror? There are points at which he expresses his disbelief and bafflement at what he's reading, but reads it anyway.....
http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/HTML/horrcd.html
I have a new obsession. Thanks, Richard.
Other tidbits:
PJ got his start via his sister dating Elvis early on. He was marketed as a fop, in olde-tyme clothes and a page-boy haircut. He released an insane rap record in the 80s:
http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/HTML/hardc.html
To quote Mel Brooks' 2,000 year old man - he used to come in the store. I worked for Woolworths for a while back in the 80s and was sent in 82 to their store in Keighley, a desperate former mill town in Yorkshire whose only claims to fame are that its railway station was a location for the film Yanks ansd that it's near Haworth, home of the Bronte sisters. Proby lived between Keighley and Haworth (in a caravan I was told but I can't confirm that) and was often to be seen stalking around the town, and the store, in Stetson, rawhide jacket and sunglasses, usually accompanied by a girl who, if not actually under age, was waaaay too young to be hanging with a guy his age. He was regarded locally as well beyond half-mad - but then we know what small town mentality can be like.
Aha!
"His career in freefall, he was reduced to muckspreading on a Yorkshire farm, where he says he developed a serious relationship with the farmer's 14-year-old daughter."
That'll be when I used to see him. He seems to be in better shape now (the headline is gloomier than the actual piece):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-523368/How-P-J-Probys-life-falling-apart-seams.html
Still likes those jackets!
Well that explains a few things. There's a guy who runs a stall at the Noordermarkt in Amsterdam, and he has a small poster saying PJ Proby Live and it has a phone number. I vaguely remembered the name (probably from the wonderful Book Of Rock Lists), but fiigured out he does a tribute act, since he looks like a Dutch version of Proby.
PJ Proby inspired a tribute act!
PJ Proby has always been a legendary figure to me, always mentioned in histories of rock. I hadn't ever seen video of him before now. It's been great to see what the fuss was about.
#8 - there's a clip on youtube - PJ Proby 1980 BBC - I can imagine that's the very stetson you saw.
#3 - Agreed about the importance of "Johnny Angelo" I read it 10 years ago after finding it by chance and was enthralled by my rock'n'roll fairytale. Supposedly it was the inspiration for Alladin Sane.
That's Cornell Wilde.
#5 Blue Kephra,
I HAVE TO HEAR THIS. Sounds nutty. Thanks for the great tip!
RM
LuxuriaMusic.com often plays PJ Proby.
I don't think PJ is among the musicians on stage during this performance, but points if you can name them all....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFspshhFfJE
Wow - I met him when I worked on an arts TV show. He was a real prick - thought he was still a major star, pissed off everyone he met. We pulled out of the interview half-way through, it was impossible to continue....
His version of "Somewhere was one of the first tracks I tried to get off Napster back in the day and when it popped up, I knew Napster had really done the extraordinary.
And this is why the original Napster should still be around.
Richard, since you're a major P. J. Proby fan, I have a question that's been bugging me for years.
In the scene from Bedazzled where Dudley Moore temporarily becomes a monster rock and roll star, is he riffing on P.J. Proby, or is it some other act?
#19 Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Not sure who Dud's channeling there, but Peter Cook seems to be doing Gary Numan's act a good twelve years in advance of "Cars" in the very next scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au9_vfx6t6c
Proby's cover of Love will Tear Us Apart is worth checking out. The production is ridiculously 90s with histerical orchestra stabs and crazy gated drums. His vocals are great though, especially at the end when he goes really low.
http://pogoagogo.blogspot.com/2008/09/torn-covers.html
Walk hard!
His love Will Tear Us Apart, and a Cramps cover, and some irish rebel songs and a bunch of stuff designed to offend as many people as possible , are all part of the stuff he recorded with Savoy, the same people who did the Lord Horror stuff. There's a lot of great stuff on their site about him.
I remember him well - saw him on pop TV shows like Shindig. He was the first guy I saw with a pony tail (although the singer on Paul Revere and the Raiders was a close second). I even got a copy of his Niki Hokey LP as a Christmas present. That song was later covered by Aretha Franklin.
Teresa, it's me, Kip W! bOINGbOING isn't letting me log in any more, and I think it sent the "change my password" mail to my non-existent address from the last residence.
Anyway, the thing I thought of when I listened to him doing "That Means a Lot" was "Love Me!" from Bedazzled. I'm glad I wasn't the only one.
Wish me luck. I'm going to try and match the captcha now.
Hi
The guy working on the Amsterdam market is Brian Dolan.His wife Manja can almost be described as the manager of P.J.Proby.Anything you want to know or ask about P.J.P. then look no further than these 2 lovely people.
Ronaldo
I met a young Australian singer who told me that he sang on the same bill with P.J. Proby, but he had no idea who P.J. was. Before they went onstage, he asked P.J. what he was singing. When P.J. said, "Maria", the young guy started giving him advice. He explained it was a tough audience, and he should start with something uptempo, not a ballad -- he dished out advice to P.J. for several minutes. Surprisingly, P.J. kept quiet, until the young guy finished, when P.J. said, "Watch, listen and learn".
As soon as the audience heard the first 2 words of the song they went wild, and didn't stop for the entire act.
The young guy said to me, "lesson learned".