Peter Thorp, songwriter (01): Strangers and Roulettes

PETER THORP, songwriter
(01) From Strangers to Spark

In these articles, we focus on Peter Thorp’s song-writing and particularly the two songs that were released as a single by one Simon De Lacy on the Spark label in 1968: ‘Baby Come Back To Me’ c/w ‘Goodbye Love’.

Pre-Roulettes

Lead and rhythm guitarist Peter Thorp may not be famous as a song-writer, but his first composition does date from the pre-Roulettes era, when he co-wrote the instrumental ‘Flyover’ with then bass-player Martin Blackwell. Both Thorp and Blackwell were in The Strangers, the South London ensemble that would become Adam Faith’s backing-group The Roulettes in September 1961. This one-off is the subject of a separate article.

Roulettes songs

As a member of The Roulettes, Peter Thorp co-wrote two songs with bass-player John ‘Mod’ Rogan:
a) ‘Find Out the Truth’, b-side of their 6th EMI single ‘Hope He Breaks Your Heart’ (released May 1965);
b) ‘I Can't Think Of Anyone Else’, b-side of ‘Someone's Taken Maria Away’, the 7th single by Adam Faith with The Roulettes (released in June 1965).

Both songs can also be found on their sole LP, ‘Stakes And Chips’ (1965). Moreover, ‘I Can't Think Of Anyone Else’ is featured on the album ‘Faith Alive!’ (1965, credited to ‘Adam Faith with The Roulettes and Chris Andrews’).

Peter Thorp was equally involved in all three group compositions credited to ‘The Roulettes’: ‘Jackpot’ (b-side of ‘Track Of My Tears, March 1965), ‘Junk’ (b-side of ‘The Long Cigarette’, November 1965) and finally ‘Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’ (flip of ‘I Can’t Stop’, June 1966).

Simon De Lacy

After the demise of The Roulettes in late 1967, Peter Thorp took up song-writing again. When I first visited Peter Thorp in July 2017, he showed me a copy-book of lyrics, sheet music and demos of songs he wrote or co-wrote.

Peter Thorp: ‘Yeah, those old song-writing books… That’s what I did after The Roulettes for a while. Freddy Poser, who was also the publishing manager of Chris Andrews, ended up at Southern Music and I also signed a song-writing contract with them. I only did about four or five songs for Southern, with a couple of releases on different things… Chris Andrews wrote a lot for Adam Faith and I knew Chris quite well, as he used to live around the corner down the road in Wimbledon. We were quite close when he came on the scene. Where I lived there was a little band there I used to know quite well. We used to go the Oak Records studios in Morden - well, it ended up as Oak Records - and we did a load of demos there with him. We were all in the same sort of group of people, if you see what I mean. We were just good friends and we used to go out and drink together, as teenagers do. Chris and I were quite pally and one thing just led to another’.

Spark

At any rate, two songs that Peter Thorp placed with Southern were recorded by one Simon De Lacy and released on a brand-new UK label called Spark records on 23 February 1968: ‘Baby Come Back To Me’ c/w ‘Goodbye Love’ (cat. no. SRL 1001). In fact, the single was also released In Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Italy , but did not chart. In 2014, the A-side was released on a CD compilation issued by Grapefruit [1].

Simon Who?

But who is Simon De Lacy? Well, Simon de Lacy is not a solo artist, but a group assembled for the occasion. See part two: Peter Thorp and Simon De Lacy.

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NOTE
[1] Released in Belgium on Palette, 1968 (exact date unknown), picture sleeve. Germany: Spark, April 1968, picture sleeve. The Netherlands, Philips, 11 March 1968, picture sleeve [reference: 45cat.com]. Italy: Spark, picture sleeve, 23 February 1968 [reference: discogs.com] . All four picture sleeves are different, but the picture that houses the Philips single is the same as the one used for the sheet music printed by Brio Music in London.
Furthermore, A-side ‘Baby come Back To Me’ is available on the Various Artists compilation cd ‘Hello Everyone: Popsike Sparks From Denmark Street 1968-70’, as released by Grapefruit, cat. no. CRSEG028, 2014.

RE-RELEASES
A-side ‘Baby come Back To Me’: V.A. compilation cd ‘Hello Everyone: Popsike Sparks From Denmark Street 1968-70’, Grapefruit, cat. no. CRSEG028, 2014.
A-side ‘Baby come Back To Me’: V.A. compilation cd ‘The Electric Lemonade Acid Test’, vol. 3, Tenth Planet.
B-side ‘Goodbye My Love’, V.A. compilation cd ‘The Electric Lemonade Acid Test’, vol. 43, Tenth Planet.