Review: The Missing Links - The Missing Links (1965)

Tracks: 1) Wild About You; 2) Hobo Man; 3) Bald-Headed Woman; 4) Not To Bother Me; 5) Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut; 6) Some Kinda Fun; 7) You’re Drivin’ Me Insane; 8) Nervous Breakdown; 9) Speak No Evil; 10) On The Road Again; 11) All I Want; 12) H’tuom Tuhs; 13*) Somethin’ Else; 14*) I’ll Go Crazy; 15*) Don’t Give Me No Friction; 16*) One More Time; 17*) Wooly Bully.

REVIEW

I first heard of The Missing Links through the inclusion of ‘You’re Drivin’ Me Insane’, their first «classic lineup» single, on the Nuggets II boxset — and I’m pretty sure that most other people have, too, which is a bit sad since this is not even their best song (probably), and while it does offer a decent approximation of their sound, it is not quite enough to make one understand the place this short-lived band occupies (or should occupy) in the history of Australian rock’n’roll... not to mention squeezing out all the possible aural fun concealed in the band’s catalog. Admittedly, even if you embrace it all it’s still not too much — one LP, one EP, a few outtakes and quite a bit of it ain’t really worth your attention — but still, The Missing Links deserve to be remembered as something a bit more worthy than the stereotypical «one-hit wonder». Make it at least a «twenty-minute wonder». It’s The Missing LinkS after all, plural, not singular.

Amusingly, we are actually talking of a Russian doll kind of band, because inside The Missing Links there is a missing link of its own: the original Missing Links, formed in early 1964 in Sydney, were Peter Anson, Dave Boyne (guitars), Bob Brady (vocals), Danny Cox (drums), Ron Peel (bass). They quickly gained the reputation of Australia’s top-level musical hooligans, wearing their hair longer than most competition and milking the «debauchery» angle during their performances with all the verve technically possible in those early years — but their only legacy is just one single from March 1965, with the A-side credited to Anson and the B-side to... uh, somebody else. It’s fun, well worth hearing for any fans of garage-rock in its infancy: ‘We 2 Should Live’ (possibly the first recorded use of numeric substitution, though in this case ‘2’ honestly transcribes two, not too) is a catchy and slightly original Kinks-influenced (think ‘So Mystifying’) pop-rocker with a nasty, swaggery lead vocal backed by rock’n’rollin’ acoustic rhythm guitar. The B-side, ‘Untrue’, is suitably darker and more directly menacing; in between the two, a curious pale shadow of a really heavy rebellion is somehow preserved — it’s like the Kinks musically, but vocally fronted by a highly inebriated Mick Jagger, unfortunately, stamped out of existence before this lineup could ever seriously prove itself in the studio.

After a series of incidents and lineup changes, the summer of 1965 saw a completely different Missing Links rise out of the ashes, but still continue to uphold the spirit of its predecessor: these included John Jones and Doug Ford on guitars, Andy Anderson (a.k.a. Andy James) on vocals, Baden Hutchens on drums, Ian Thomas on bass, and Chris Gray on keyboards and harmonica. It is this six-man lineup that is responsible for all (both) of the band’s classic singles and their only LP, though it stayed together for only about six months or so, with Gray leaving the band before the end of 1965 and the rest of it collapsing by spring of 1966. Nevertheless, while together, they managed to do plenty to uphold Australia’s burgeoning reputation as a harbor for the wildest rock’n’roll strain of them all — legend has it that even Johnny O’Keefe, “The Wild One”, the original Australian Elvis, had them banned from his TV show for being too vulgar and obscene.

The first recording from that lineup that could be officially bought in stores was ‘You’re Drivin’ Me Insane’ — that one song included on Nuggets II and, most likely, the only Missing Links song any «non-burrowing» fan of Sixties’ rock will recognize. Credited to «Badan Hutchins» (misspelled!), it’s a dark mid-tempo groove with guitar / organ interplay clearly influenced by The Animals (think ‘I’m Crying’ or ‘Bright Lights Big City’) but notably more chaotic and distorted, with a messy, feedbacky guitar solo that is far more Dave Davies à la ‘You Really Got Me’ than anything Hilton Valentine would ever play. Of particular note are the lyrics — it’s basically a simplistic mantra, consisting of two or three lines repeating over and over with the textbook «lustful caveman» flair: “when I kiss your lips“ — “you’re driving me insane“ — “I want your loving little girl“ — “I want your loving little girl“... Few pop writers, even the most simplistic ones, could allow themselves to be that laconic at the time, so welcome to the forefather of the Stooges and the Ramones, I guess.

The end result is a bit slow for my tastes, and Andy’s vocals, while certainly nasty and sleazy, in the proper garage-rock vein, lack subtlety or dynamics — unlike Eric Burdon, who had the art of going from «quiet menace» to «frontal assault» worked out to a tee, the vocal mantra of ‘You’re Drivin’ Me Insane’ reeks somewhat of the “I’m in love but I’m lazy“ attitude, where the protagonist seems content to simply taunt from afar without showing any signs of actually delivering the goods. Whether this was intentional or they just did not know how to give the song a proper ending, I have no idea, but I do kind of lose interest after the solo break. Still, the way they combine the Animals (main groove), the Kinks (guitar break), and the Who (Keith Moon-style drumming and scratchy feedback barrages à la Townshend) in a pretty organic whole is certainly impressive, and fully justifies the song’s elevation to Nugget-royalty.

For my money, though, the real top highlight of the Missing Links’ career is their second (third if you count the original lineup) single — ‘Wild About You’ is where the caveman properly breaks out of the cave, after a whole lot of sulking and rutting around. Credited to Andy James this time, it’s a speedy thing now, with maniacal bass, guitar, and organ, over which Andy, in his best hoodlum voice, sneers, struts, and makes all sorts of guttural noises which, once again, predate Iggy Pop by a good four years. The lyrics are a little more flowery this time, drowning in actual «scary» caveman metaphors (”you make me feel like a savage“, “you look so good I could eat you“) and equally scary bits of «caveman logic» (”but I won’t kiss a steak so I won’t eat you“), but ultimately it all comes down to a mutual celebration of animal lust (”you’re wild — and I’m wild about you“), liberating and harmless... well, relatively harmless, if you don’t count all those armies of poor conservative mothers sent to an early grave by the sonic waves and social implications. This is absolutely top-notch classic garage rock (why wasn’t this on Nuggets II? criminy!), and it became enough of a cult song in Australia to be resuscitated by The Saints for their debut LP in 1977 (where it was properly updated for the new age of chainsaw buzz guitar, but lost much of its primal sleaze and glorious sloppiness in transition).

One month later, despite neither of the singles managing to break into the Australian charts (perhaps that Johnny O’Keefe ban was doing its job, or maybe this stuff was way too heavy even for the naturally rambunctious Aussies), Philips Records executives were somehow convinced to give the green light to one of the weirdest singles — in some respects, the single weirdest single — of 1965. One of the more popular American tunes to be covered that year around the world was Bo Diddley’s ‘Mama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut’, first tackled by the Pretty Things and also by the Boots over in Germany, so the Missing Links recorded their own version as well, extending it to nearly six minutes, with three of them given over to a psychedelic jam, drenched in power chords, feedback, and spontaneous harmonica blasts — occupying a spot somewhere in between the Who’s ‘The Ox’ and the Velvet Underground’s ‘European Son’: not the epitome of improvisational greatness, perhaps, but pretty atmospheric and I do find myself getting into the messy proto-stoner-rock groove.

That would only come out on the LP in December, though. For the single release, what the band decided to do with the song is that they cut it in two, reversed all the tapes and put it out under the title ‘H’tuom Tuhs’ (part 1 and part 2 on each side of the single, respectively). Yes, that is exactly what they did — in October 1965, preceding any of the well-known Beatles experiments with backward tapes and stuff, and essentially making The Missing Links into absolute pioneers of the avant­garde strain of rock music in 1965, leaving everyone else face down in the moral dust. (The fact that nobody ever bought the record only strengthens its case, I guess).

Now of course it’s just the gesture that counts; I probably don’t need to state the obvious fact that the end result is virtually unlistenable — it’s one of those records where you should actually pay the customer for taking it home, not the other way around. Backward tape usage is an art that needs to be mastered and tamed, which is what the Beatles and George Martin actually did, while the Missing Links were too lazy to actually work on the idea. But just the fact that somehow, somewhere, in the age of ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hang On Sloopy’, somebody was able to convince a respectable record label to release this as a single is, in my mind’s eye, a historical landmark the likes of which we shall probably never see again — it’ll take all of World War Three, polar ice cap melting, and an invasion of radioactive pink elephants from outer space before we get back to any similar set of circumstances.

It could be suspected that the decision to release ‘H’tuom Tuhs’ singlehandedly destroyed their reputation, made the band fall out of grace with the baffled Australian rock’n’roller crowd and ultimately led them to their doom — but that’s not how it usually works in the real world, and even the Philips label preferred to ignore the debacle at first and gave the band an even bigger chance with a full-fledged LP in December 1965 (followed by a short extra EP in April 1966). Impressively, the LP included both the proper long version of ‘Mama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut’ (on Side A) and ‘H’tuom Tuhs’ on Side B, where it now innocently played the part of «LP filler» — without the back story of its single release, most people would have been absolutely convinced they just put it there to use up the remaining groove space, much like people prefer to believe that ‘Revolution #9’ did the same thing on the Beatles’ White Album (and in both cases, they’re wrong).

Both of the classic singles’ A-sides are on the album as well, along with only one (for some reason) of the B-sides, both of which, surprisingly, were Eddie Cochran covers — ‘Nervous Breakdown’ made it to the LP, but ‘Somethin’ Else’ did not, perhaps for the sake of diversity, or perhaps because they were dissatisfied with it (‘Nervous Breakdown’ does have a much finer vocal performance and a stylish guitar break, whereas ‘Somethin’ Else’ feels even more repetitive here than in Eddie’s original). For the record, the other covers on the LP include Shel Talmy’s ‘Bald Headed Woman’ (one of the numbers that the entrepreneurial British producer stole from Odetta and hoisted on all his bands like the Kinks and the Who to get his share of royalties — why all those overseas bands like Hep Stars and The Missing Links wanted their own finger in this pie as well still baffles me); Chris Montez’ ‘Some Kinda Fun’ (this begins a tradition of toughening up old-school prom dance numbers that would later be honored by the Ramones with ‘Let’s Dance’); and, in a slightly more modern twist, Bob Dylan’s ‘On The Road Again’ — a rare choice indeed, as this second-tier track from Bringing It All Back Home was a pretty rare choice for Bob’s army of followers to embrace (I think the only other known cover from that era is by The Deverons, a long-forgotten bunch of Winnipeg high schoolers who did know how to kick some garage ass, nevertheless). The bad news is that Dylan himself was on such a roll in 1965, he had the power of tricking you into believing he knew the answer to all of the world’s mysteries even through his second-rate songs, what with all that confidence and swagger and proto-post-modern intellectual browbeating; meanwhile, a vocalist like Andy James is disclosed as a phoney prophet in a matter of fifteen seconds, possibly even fewer.

Impressively (at least if you just look at the credits), at least four out of six members of the band are awarded with official songwriting credits on the album: in particular, Baden Hutchins is credited for ‘You’re Drivin’ Me Insane’ and Andy James for ‘Wild About You’. Not so impressively, the remaining four «originals» do not show a whole lot of originality. Andy’s other song, ‘Speak No Evil’, is a flat-0ut Bo Diddley imitation, with a classic Bo Diddley «tribal rhythm» and vocal lines that come straight out of ‘Who Do You Love’ — though the razor-sharp distorted guitar break definitely updates Bo Diddley for the garage-rock era. Doug Ford’s ‘Hobo Man’, which he wrote and sang himself, is a mechanical cross between Booker T. & The MG’s ‘Green Onions’ and Dion’s ‘The Wanderer’ (but I’ll be damned if that particular variant of the verse melody wasn’t somehow later stolen by The Velvet Underground for ‘Run Run Run’): not a naturally organic concoction, I’d say, especially if you’re familiar with the taste of the original ingredients.

Bass player Ian Thomas does distinguish himself by writing (and also singing lead vocal on) the album’s only ballad, the folk-pop number ‘Not To Bother Me’ with its very light proto-psychedelic elements (mainly just a faint, shadowy organ line and deep cavernous reverb on Thomas’ voice, soon to be a trademark for Jefferson Airplane recordings). Finally, one more catchy, Beatlesque pop rocker, ‘All I Want’, is contributed by the band’s manager Norm Stannard, with second guitarist John Jones on lead vocals — I don’t really know what to say about it except that it borrows its catchiest guitar licks from ‘You Can’t Do That’, but the song itself doesn’t quite sound like ‘You Can’t Do That’, and the guitar break certainly does not sound like anything that could ever have been possibly played by George Harrison. Every once in a while, it may be fun to hear a Beatlesque song done with the fervor of a ‘You Really Got Me’, and while this is not a quintessential example, it can definitely do in a pinch. Too bad all those other band members couldn’t quite match the animal fever of Andy James’ vocals, though I can understand the generously democratic decision to have them all share lead vocal spotlights.

Despite the songwriting deficiencies, though, with the exception of ‘H’tuom Tuhs’, this is a very listenable and fun album through and through — the highlights are great, and everything else is just solid quality generic garage-rock, which, in my book, always makes for more fun than, say, an equally generic solid-quality «alt-rock» album from the 1990s or 2000s. The band’s got its own personality, the rhythm section is enthusiastic, the guitar breaks are crazy, and the diversity level shows intelligence and audacity, as the guys seem equally inspired by original American rock’n’roll and the recent advances of the British Invasion. I’ve certainly heard much, much worse full-on LP experiences from one-hit garage wonders — this one ranks among the more satisfying ones.

If you have the standard CD edition of the album, you’ll also get the original band’s four-song EP, The Links Unchained, as a bonus; by the time of its release, in April 1966, the band had already lost its rhythm section of Ian Thomas and Baden Hutchins, so Andy James had to switch to drums himself. Unfortunately, it also seems to have already lost its innovative spirit as well — all the four songs on the EP are covers, and though the diversity range remains laudable (from James Brown to Van Morrison to Sam The Sham!), all the songs are just pale shadows of the originals (Andy does a pretty decent imitation of Van on ‘One More Time’, but that’s all it is — a slightly inferior imitation). I gotta admit that there is a slight element of defiance in covering a song as primitive as ‘Wooly Bully’ in the age of Revolver and Pet Sounds, but 1966 was not 1976 and there was no chance for such a gesture to be properly appreciated when pop music was yearning to shed the shackles of its childhood, not re-embrace them as an act of liberation and empowerment.

In any case, the sudden crumble and demise of one of Australia’s mightiest garage-rock acts (by August 1966, they were no more, and most of the band members even quit music for good) should not prevent us from remembering and enjoying their small, but cherishable legacy. ‘You’re Drivin’ Me Insane’ and ‘Wild About You’ still kick more ass than any of today’s music — and remain a must-hear for anybody who embraces the aesthetics of the Stooges’ Fun House as much as I do.

• Only Solitaire reviews: The Missing Links