THE TROGGS - “With A Girl Like You”
(#221, 6th August 1966)
In Incredible Hulk comics there’s often a scene where the ‘emerald man-beast’, cast out from human society, finds something of fragile beauty - a flower, maybe, or a baby deer - which he then accidentally crushes with his mighty strength. Listening to the Troggs I find myself thinking “Hulk form beat group.” There’s a sluggish heft to the playing which sits oddly with the my-first-love-song rhymes, the ba-ba-bas, the way the chief cave-child picks his way so carefully through his lyrics. I’d call it pig-iron bubblegum, except that sounds kind of appealing. 4
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Anonymous on January 2nd, 2006
Doctor Mod said:
I thought I wanted to say something about this clumsily sincere song, but I can’t improve on “pig-iron bubblegum.” I’d say I was chewing on that thought, but …..
Andy on January 2nd, 2006
Having grown up with (literally) piles of 60s singles scattered around the house I’m genuinely surprised to come across a number one that I can’t even think how it goes. I guess I’d recognise it if I heard it but now I’m not so keen to do that!
Nice to see popular fizzing back into life - I’ve been enjoying it up until now (I keep meaning to say thanks but never had - so consider this that).
Frank Kogan on January 4th, 2006
Tom, Tom, Tom. Turn the record over! The flip side is one of the great punk classics. (But I’m not at home, and I don’t remember which great punk classic it is. Either “From Home” or “I Want You.” The MC5 recorded “I Want You” a few years later but were a lot clumsier. Lester Bangs’ essay “James Taylor Marked for Death” is something of a meditation on the fact that the MC5’s version of “I Want You” isn’t as good as the Troggs’; they could do yesterday what we cannot do today (how the age of something-or-other vanished in two years)(or something) I’m still in parens.) Anyhow, my affection for Bambi meets Godzilla is clearly stronger than yours. I found the A-side touching back in the day, and didn’t actually hear the B until six years later.
Anonymous on January 4th, 2006
It was I Want You. From Home was the B-side of Wild Thing. And yes, boo hiss nasty Tom; the Troggs are ace, though Girl Like You is weaker than Wild Thing or the priaprismic I Can’t Control Myself…
Tommy Mack
Marcello on January 4th, 2006
This post has been removed by the author.
Anonymous on January 4th, 2006
The Troggs are friends with General Khaki on myspace. True fact.
Lena on January 5th, 2006
This wasn’t any influence on The Smithereens’s song “A Girl Like You,” was it?
Frank Kogan on January 7th, 2006
Marcello - Isn’t “Louie Louie” a clear precedent for “Wild Thing”? (I have no idea, however, if “Louie Louie” ever charted in Britain, though it was a Kinks album track at some point.)
We should bear in mind - not that my mind knows what to make of it - that “Wild Thing” was written by Chip Taylor, an ambitious country music songwriter square enough to work with Chet Atkins. Taylor’s other immortal Top 40 achievement was to write and produce first Evie Sands’ and then Merrilee Rush’s version of “Angel of the Morning.” His most recent album made No Depression magazine’s list of best albums of 2005, though it, like all of his albums, remains unheard by me.
Joe Williams on January 7th, 2006
‘Louie Louie’ got to number 26 in the UK in 1964.
Anonymous on January 10th, 2006
Chip Taylor’s version of Wild Thing was awful though. I saw he and Reg Presley doing a horrible acoustic version on TOTP2 a couple of years back. Reg, Reg Reg…
I’m torn between Wild Thing and Louie Louie as to which is best… Louie is more danceable and has Jack Ely’s deranged vocal, but Wild Thing is more audaciously primal, no wonder the Beeb banned it, despite there being nothing explicit in the lyrics - Reg doesn’t have to get dirty; Chris Britton’s guitar wants to rape you…
I bloody love The Troggs, me…
Anonymous on January 10th, 2006
Oh and the Troggs did a version of Louie Louie on the first album with Wild Thing on it. Which smacks of deperation, really, but there you go…
TM
Emily Robinson on February 1st, 2006
This wasn’t any influence on the Rutles’ “With A Girl like You”, was it?
Doctor Casino on November 16th, 2006
This is really groovy! As usual: NEVER heard it before, or even heard of it, or even contemplated the idea of the Troggs having other songs besides “Wild Thing.” This is a fun track - I like the cleanly muffled rigidity of the drums especially - wonderfully drum machine-like. There’s sort of a dearth of hooks (the ba-ba-ba-ba thing being pretty much it), but at 2:05 you can get away with that. Thumbs up.
wichita lineman on May 14th, 2008
Cute ‘n all, Andover Reg gettin’ a lil bit romantic (enough for Michelle Pfeiffer to pin him up on her teenage bedroom wall) but both Wild Thing and the bulging I Can’t Control Myself, singles either side, deserved top spot ahead of With A Girl Like You. I’d pair this with Spencer Davis’s Somebody Help Me as a non-entity sequel that would have done little without the initial smash.