Iggy Rose was one of Syd Barrett's girlfriends in 1969.
She is most famous for being the model on the Syd Barrett album: 'The Madcap Laughs'.
Nicknamed Iggy the Eskimo, it was rumoured she was part Inuit.
One day, in 1969, she disappeared out of Syd's life and was not heard of ever since.
Almost four decades later, the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit started to mess with things.
Its five years mission: to find Iggy and bring her back to the spotlights.
And guess what, with some invaluable help from many, many friends... we did...
At the end of March 2015 the Church closed its doors, although the search for new pictures and movies still continues.
Our Tumblr microblog iggyinuit.tumblr.com and its social equivalent
facebook.com/iggyinuit are still (daily) updated and really
important news will be added as a Newsflash.
Beginning 2017 Iggy Rose decided to leave social media. She died peacefully on the 13th of December 2017,
just before her seventieth birthday. Wishing you good luck, Iggy, wherever you are.
William Henry Butler (18 December 1940), also known as Billy Butler, is
a British-Canadian musician, composer, sound designer, record producer
and recording engineer.
In the early sixties William was a singer and guitarist of several South
Coast rock outfits. His own bands, The Blue Chords and The
Federals, were regularly hired to back-up visiting U.S. singers
touring Britain. William also played guitar as a side-man for local
dance orchestras where he learned to arrange and play big band jazz and
swing styles.
Gullivers People
In 1965 he joined Gullivers People, a six piece harmony group
appearing at the Tiffanys nightclub in Piccadily Circus. It was at this
club that Norman
Smith discovered and offered them a contract, not only to record as
a band, but also as session musicians for others. William Butler and
Norman Smith both had an army background and had their musical roots in
jazz and big bands, so it is no wonder they liked each other.
Gullivers People recorded at least 4 singles on Parlophone,
from 1966 till 1969, and several of them were produced by Norman Smith.
William Henry left the band in 1969. They continued to perform without
him and with regularly changing personnel till deep in the seventies.
(According to IMDB
Billy Butler also recorded music for the 1967 movie The
Sky Bike, although uncredited. BFI,
however, doesn’t include his name.)
Gullivers People.
Eternal Triangle
In the aftermath of psychedelia Butler started (or joined) Eternal
Triangle who had two singles on Decca
in 1969 and 70. Eternal Triangle, not to be confused with a Canadian
band with the same name, were Sally Kemp, Billy Butler and Bill Thacker.
Unfortunately their records sounded dated in 1969, so it was not that
unexpected that they failed to chart.
In the early seventies Bill changed place from the recording studio to
the mixing console. He became an engineer and producer, still under the
wings of Norman Smith.
In 1973 he went to Vancouver, BC to teach sound production at Capilano
University. Later he turned to TV and movie sound production, in Canada
and the USA, for over 70 films and TV series, winning an Emmy and 2 Juno
Awards.
But what does this have to do with early Pink Floyd? Read on, we'll get
there...
Pink Floyd at the Beeb.
Avant-Garde Dabbling
October 1967 was a relatively relaxed month for Pink Floyd. There
were only 8 or 9 concerts and the free time was used to record a
follow-up for The
Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. But as we know, all was not well with
Syd Barrett.
The new songs they tried to can were Vegetable
Man, Remember
A Day, Jugband
Blues and they dabbled on that for about the first three weeks,
including the ‘Salvation Army Band’ session where a disinterested
Barrett told producer Norman Smith they could play anything they wanted.
(See our article on Jugband Blues & Norman Smith at: Hurricane
over London.)
All in all a quite disappointing result as in those days you were still
supposed to record at least a song in an afternoon.
Perhaps in a move to appease the muses they visited the BBC
Radiophonic Workshop but their encounter with Delia
Derbyshire did not lead to some kind of cooperation. Delia
Derbyshire remembered that Rick Wright was aware of contemporaneous
avant-garde composer Jani
Christou and his Praxis
For 12 composition. Roger Waters however was of the opinion that
avant-garde was absolute nonsense, although he may have hidden that
opinion that particular afternoon.
Delia Derbyshire.
That same day they all took a cab to Putney to visit the studio of Peter
Zinovieff who was working on an early version of the voltage
controlled synthesizer. Apparently this was more interesting. The third
incarnation of that instrument, the VCS3,
would of course magically appear on Dark Side Of The Moon.
Nonsense or not, the Floyd had their go at avant-garde on the 20th of
October when they recorded the directionless 30 minutes of John
Latham, now available on The
Early Years set. Two other instrumentals were recorded that day: the
still unreleased Intremental (believed to be a studio version of Reaction
In G) and the surprisingly attractive In
The Beechwoods.
Set The Controls
On Monday morning, the 23rd, Pink Floyd had two studio sessions. In the
morning they recorded Untitled E66409, believed to be Paintbox.
In the evening they had their first go at Set
The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun and a demo recording that
mysteriously disappeared from the studio afterwards: Early Morning
Henry.
In David Parker’s excellent book Random Precision the
recording sheet of that particular session can be found. We learn that
‘Early Morning Henry’ only had one take, that it was a complete demo and
that it had been ‘taken by Mr. N Smith on on (a) plastic spool’.
The reason why it had been taken home by Norman Smith is simple. Early
Morning Henry was not a Pink Floyd original, but a tune written and
composed by William Henry Butler, at least that is what his family
claims.
So for now we seem to have a valid reason why Norman Smith decided to
take the spool with him.
Early Morning Henry Recording Sheet.
Norman vs Kiloh Smith
The song Early Morning Henry was mentioned in a 2009 article on the sydbarrettpinkfloyd.com
blog of our good friend and colleague Kiloh Smith. In 2013 a mysterious
comment was put on there by ‘anonymous’. It read:
The song Early Morning Henry was written by Billy Butler who was with
the studio during those years in his band Gullivers People. Norman Smith
was their recording engineer as well. I am surprised to see that Pink
Floyd recorded the song. Norman might have been shopping the song [to]
other bands, unless it is a different song entirely... but I am pretty
sure my dad wrote it. Google Gullivers People and you will find a few
obscure recordings that were also engineered by Smith.
Intriguing, is it not?
Eternal Triangle.
The Early Morning Henry Blog
Somewhere between 2013 and 2016 a blog with the name Early
Morning Henri (dead link) was found by several Sydiots and Pink
Floyd scholars who wanted to find out more about this mythical lost song.
Written (so is believed) by one of Billy Butler’s children it contained
several pages about Butler’s musical past as a member of the bands
Gullivers People and Eternal Triangle. One day, supposedly in 2017, a
new page was announced that would tell the story of Early Morning Henry,
a William Butler song, recorded by Pink Floyd during a Norman Smith
session on the 23rd October of 1967 (Pink
Floyd Trivia (dead link)).
Unfortunately the blog was set to private immediately after (and before
that particular page was published) and thus its pages can’t be
consulted any more.
Our multiple attempts to contact the webmaster have been in vain. We can
only hope that the blog will be reopened one day and that the many
secrets that hide behind this song will be revealed.
And obviously, we all want to know: where is that fucking tape!
Prock Harson.
The Prock Harson Mystery
But that is not the only enigma in William Butler’s life as a sixties
musician.
Under the pseudonym Prock Harson, Butler recorded A
Whiter Shade Of Pale in 1967. It is a shameless knock-off on the
German Cornet label, deliberately trying to confuse the record
buying public with a name that sounds vaguely familiar. It was a cheap
trick these soundalike record companies often did.
Now it needs to be said that 1967 had thirteen Whiter Shade covers in a
dozen. Here is a non exhaustive list of famous and not so famous bands
and people covering it, in 1967 alone: Alton Ellis, Bobby Johnson and
The Atoms, Dave Antony's Moods, Noel Harrison, Pro Cromagnum, The Box
Tops, The Everly Brothers, The Peter Knight Singers, The Telstars, Trudy
Pitts, Wess…
The B-side of A Whiter Shade Of Pale, I
Wanna Live, a keyboard driven freakbeat tune far better than the
A-side, is credited to J. Smith, probably from John Smith and The New
Sound. This puts Prock Harson in the Bill Wellings stable, a
famous low-budget producer for MFP (Music
For Pleasure).
The thing with these budget releases is: even when the label says that
there is a Prock Harson singing on the record, it is not always the same
Prock Harson singing, if you follow our drift. As such it is highly
uncertain that Billy Butler does the vocals on the B-side of his own
single. Probably it is one of the half dozen John Smiths instead.
A Whiter Shade Of Pale sold enough copies in Germany to make another
single under that name, but Butler wasn’t invited this time, although
his picture can be found on the sleeve. The A-side, “Bit By Bit”, was
written by Rudi Lindt, a pseudonym for Rudi
von der Dovenmühle, who was a German schlager-composer.
According to a soundalike record connoisseur the single, with “I Put A
Spell On You” on the flip side, used the hired voice of a certain Fred
E. Thompson instead (source: Prock
Harson).
Smash Hits. All Time Smash Hits.
Smash Hits & Others
Two collectors have confirmed that the Prock Harson single appeared on a
Music For Pleasure Smash
Hits album from 1967 (MFP 1194, picture above left), but without
mentioning the artist (source: Prock
Harson).
Another low-budget buff claims that Bill Butler sings on at least 4
tracks of the Smash Hits album:
Lead vocalist on both Beatles covers is in fact William (Billy) Butler,
at the time a member of the group Gullivers People, recording for EMI's
Parlophone label (with another Beatles connection - their producer was
Norman (Hurricane) Smith who had engineered several Beatles albums).
Butler also takes lead on "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and "Alternate Title".
The two Beatles covers Butler sings are When I'm 64 and All
You need Is Love, but unfortunately we couldn't find these
versions on the web. Alternate Title is Butler's cover
of a Monkees song. That these low-budget albums were successful can be
proven by the fact that the 1967 MFP Smash Hits album exists in three,
slightly different, sleeves for the UK alone, each with a different
selling price printed on its sleeve.
Update March 2019: Meanwhile a kind reader from this article has
made the above tracks available, thanks! You can find the links at the
end of this article (for as long as they stay alive).
A Whiter Shade Of Pale also landed on a couple of other MFP albums, for
instance on 48
Great Hits (1968), All-Time
Smash Hits (MFP 5010, above right) from 1970, on Million
Seller Hits (MFP 5203, left underneath), from 1971. It can also be
found on Gloria
Schlager-Volltreffer (SMGL 14 098, right underneath), a German
budget and cover versions label. Some of these albums had regional
editions, with slightly different sleeves such as the German 'Die
Bekannstesten Schlager Aller Zeiten', a copy of All-Time Smash Hits.
Million Seller Hits. Schlager Volltreffer.
See Emily Play
MFP was a low cost label that started in 1965 as a joint venture between
Hamlyn and EMI Records, with EMI providing the music. It has been
established by now that Bill Butler wasn’t afraid of a little
moonlighting and neither – so has been rumoured – was Norman Smith.
Who could have been better to record some soundalike Beatles tunes than
the man who sat behind the Beatles’ console from 1962 to 1965?
William Butler could have been on other soundalike tracks than the four
we know.
Our heart skips a beat if we think of the possibility that he, together
with Norman Smith, might have been the ones behind The Okey Pokey Band’s See
Emily Play.
But that is – of course – pure speculation. (You can read about the
different budget See Emily Play covers at: The
Rape of Emily.)
Update March 2019: unfortunately the version of A Whiter Shade of
Pale on Flower Power, from The Okey Pokey Band And Singers, is
not the Billy Butler version.
Many thanks to: Esfera04, Freqazoidiac, Jumaris CS, Peudent, TopPopper,
Waelz ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
The above article has stolen most of its biographical
information from an archived copy of the (now private) blog Early
Morning Henry, believed to be written by William Henry Butler’s daughter.
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Parker, David: Random
Precision, Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p. 103-105. Povey,
Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd, 3C Publishing,
2008, p. 68-69.
Plus, Penny
Lane from another MFP album called Hits '67 (MFP 1089), which
could be the same Mr. Butler (with hilarious out of sync trumpet overdub
at the end).
Facebook comments have been activated on each individual page (or post, or article), click on 'direct link' to get there.
If the comments don't show, please adjust the ad-block settings and/ or the tracking content filter of your browser.
