A Brief Talk w/ Wally Waller - The Pretty Things Interview

Barnehurst, Kent, was a very small part of Erith, which together with Dartford, Crayford and Bexleyheath, now form the London Borough of Bexley - it was suburbia and it seemed very unremarkable to me as a child. I was the only boy on our entire side of the family and I guess I got really spoiled, There was no musical history in my family, and none of my siblings showed any aptitude in that direction. I had two sisters, I was in the middle and there was a gap of 4 years each way. Fortunately, when I was 4, my family moved into a brand new housing project that was just being built, and the family that moved in right across the street (Mr. &a Mrs. May), had a little boy who was exactly myage!

Yep, thats right Philip and I bonded immediately, and we became bosom buddies and inseparable. Thats how the Waller/May partnership was first established, but we had no idea at the time that we were going to be musicians. Phil’s Family history was a complicated one - but I wont go into it here, suffice to say that at the age of about 10 we were separated, and no contact was possible for about 5/6 years. In that time I had gotten into music. I played the Recorder and Viola at school, and my father bought me my first guitar for my 13th birthday. When I heard artists like The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, The Coasters etc., the formal approach to music went straight out of the window!

I joined several local bands with another friend of mine who lived a few streets away (Jon Povey). We ended up in a band called Bern Elliott & The Fenmen, and in late 1963 we had a hit record with “Money”, the Berry Gordy song! Phil May and myself had hooked up again by the time we were about 16/17, but we were on different trajectories. I was studying to be an electrical engineer, but became a musician instead. Phil in the meantime had gone off to Art School where he met original Rolling Stone, Dick Taylor, and they subsequently formed he Pretty Things. It wasn’t until 1967 that Phil asked me to join The Pretty Things, and the first song we wrote together was “The Sun” - it turned out to be the first of many. “The Sun” was probably the most significant milepost along on the ‘long and winding road’ that was the ‘career of The Pretty Things’…

Not only because it was the first song that Phil (Phil May) and I ever wrote together, which was reason enough to celebrate on it’s own, but it caused a truly fundamental change of direction and emphasis. At the time of writing, I was still a member of The Fenmen, but after that first afternoon’s collaboration, Phil asked me to join The Pretty Things. Not only that, but Phil also asked me to ask my Fenmen bandmate Jon Povey to join too. And so it came to pass that Jon, and myself were infused into The Pretty Things line-up, and for the first time 3-part harmony became a common feature within the band, and our other musical influences and creativity, made possible such PT’s classics as “S. F. Sorrow” and “Parachute”, etc.