Roy Wood always had a way of making the whimsical sound seismic, and ‘Flowers in the Rain’ is no exception. A baroque-pop nursery rhyme wrapped in strings, woodwinds, and one particularly famous toilet flush, it was The Move’s breakthrough and the first record ever played on BBC Radio 1. The song’s kaleidoscopic charm hinted at the sonic playground Wood would later explore, but don’t let the innocent title fool you, this was a record that caused a storm.
Enter Tony Secunda, The Move’s PR agent and full-time chaos merchant, who thought a saucy promotional postcard of then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson in bed with his secretary would give the single a boost. He was right, just not in the way the band hoped. A libel suit followed, the royalties were handed over to charity, and The Move learned the hard way that psychedelic hijinks had their limits. But while Secunda’s stunt burned bridges, the song itself endured, outlasting the scandal with its bright-eyed, rain-drenched optimism.
Looking back, ‘Flowers in the Rain’ is both a snapshot of Swinging London’s anything-goes attitude and a reminder that not every pop revolution needs a fuzz pedal. It’s Wood at his most McCartney-esque, The Move at their most melodically intoxicating, and proof that sometimes, a great hook is all it takes to weather the storm.
In the following extract from Jim McCarthy’s Flowers In The Rain: The Untold Story of The Move, McCarthy drops the needle on a moment when British rock went from cheeky to combustible, with The Move finding themselves at the centre of a scandal.
Tony Visconti spotted the special musicianship and songwriting in The Move pretty much immediately, “I recognised their talent straight away – it was a cutting edge song. They were like the second Beatles to my young mind. Denny Cordell was a very temperamental and perfectionist producer and wanted to discard the song. Because of a slight dip in the tempo, as how Denny saw it. But I didn’t see that. I wanted to work on it (as a co-producer) and “save” the song. I got Denny to agree to spend £60.00 extra on added oboe, flute, clarinet, cor anglais and French horn. I wrote some Schubert-like stuff and we really saved the track. It has a pastoral feel to it. It reminded me of ‘Spring Song’ by Mendlessohn. I actually nicked a bit from that and you can hear it on the clarinet, as the song is fading out”
In another very funny ad – lib, piece of freewheeling,1960s recording ‘techniques.’ They wanted the song to open with a big cannonade of thunder and rain. The thunder effects were found, in the special effects library at Advision Studios by Gerald Chevin. However, it was felt that some extra rain and gushing water effects, were also needed. It fell upon the head of Allen Harris, who was The Move’s steady, road manager. Denny Cordell instructed Harris to take a long lead and a microphone. And to walk it out to the toilets.
Allen maintains this was at least, a good 30 feet from the recording console approximately. “I think we tried it about three times, three “takes”! I held the mic over the loo and flushed the chain. We all had a laugh really, because nobody would have thought? You would have used a mic down the loo like that?” Keen listeners can hear this, after the initial thunder effects, in the beginning section. Just after, you can hear the tinkling ‘toilet flush effects’ courtesy of Allen Harris.
‘Flowers In The Rain’ reached Number Two in 1967 on the UK Singles Chart and Number Four in the Ireland charts. It achieved its own place in pop history, by being the first record to be played on BBC Radio 1. When the station was launched on 30th September 1967. George Martin’s specially commissioned “Theme One” and Johnny Dankworth’s “Beefeaters” were the first tracks to be heard on the station. Beefeaters” was Tony Blackburn’s theme tune for Daily Disc Delivery and so they were heard with ‘Flowers in the Rain.’ Roy Wood remembers clearly that Tony Blackburn scrambled for a disk to play first and it was ‘Flowers In the Rain.’ Tony Blackburn, who was the DJ on that particular day, years afterwards said. “It was just a mad panic on that morning, and I wasn’t sure if all the records had been sorted out properly, and in the right order.
The program came on and I just dived for the first record, I could lay my hands on, and it happened to be ‘Flowers In The Rain.” Roy Wood’s early songs, ‘I Can Hear the Grass Grow,’ ‘Disturbance’, ‘Night of Fear’ and the basis of ‘Flowers in the Rain,’ had all derived from a book of fairy stories and early poems. Which Wood had authored as an art student at Moseley College of Art. Later on Wood’s paintings and pastel drawings, would adorn the covers of his early solo recorded work and album covers, such as ‘Mustard’ and ‘Boulders.’
Robert ‘Bobby’ Davidson was the group’s in-house photographer and remembers the group’s early look. “The sixties were an exciting time and we absolutely thought, we were going to change the world. Tony Secunda was very controlling and the band was very young and very malleable. When I first met them, they were a great bunch of kids from Birmingham. I remember Roy Wood had a great big alarm clock, tied around his waist.”
Secunda and The Move’s trouble was inevitably exacerbated by other events earlier that heady year. With The Rolling Stones versus the establishment, specifically in concern to the much publicised drug bust at Redlands. This was the West Sussex home of Keith Richards earlier that February. At the trial in June at Chichester. both Stones were found guilty. Keith Richards was sentenced to a year in prison and fined £500. While Jagger received three months and a £200 fine. But a backlash was brewing. This was summed up in an editorial in The Times by the editor William (now Lord) Rees – Mogg. Under the headline “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?” It questioned the severity of the sentence, noting that it was “as mild a drug case, as can ever have been brought before the courts”.
The article added: “There must remain a suspicion in this case that Mr. Jagger received a more severe sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man.” The establishment was outraged further the following month. When The Times newspaper carried a full-page advertisement headed: “The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice.” Sixty-five leading lights called for changes in the law, with signatories ranging from doctors, Nobel laureate scientists and MPs to Graham Greene, David Bailey, Jonathan Miller and all four Beatles. The ad caused an uproar when it appeared and was debated in the House of Commons in the week of publication. But the following week Richards’s conviction was quashed on appeal and Jagger’s prison sentence was reduced to a conditional discharge.
So, for Secunda and The Move their timing could not have been better (or worse) to be square in line, for a right, royal establishment bashing. Secunda saw the cartoon as the perfect raunchy material for a postcard to promote ‘Flowers In The Rain.’ Over the next few days, 500 were printed and were posted and distributed to “press, media, fans and friends” of The Move. But the band themselves are completely unaware of the new promo card. (Possibly apart from Carl Wayne?) There is some ambiguity here, some people say the band knew about the card? But the band themselves say they didn’t? The Move are continuously gigging, performing numerous concerts across the UK. While the band played gigs and blazed away onstage, explosively wowing the UK audiences. The trouble was brewing…
