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| El Maestro. |
The Hit
Apollo 100’s “Joy” dropped the year after I was born, but the whole “souped-up classical” vibe brought back vivid memories of hearing a disco spin on Beethoven’s 5th in the late 1970s (by Walter Murphy, titled "A Fifth of Beethoven"). While both got…let’s go with surprisingly popular, nothing connected the two outside the call-back to classical works.
I’ll get to who (or what) Apollo 100 very briefly was below, but the most surprising thing about their riff on “Joy” was the fact they weren’t the first band/act to do it. As noted in Wikipedia’sslim write-up on Apollo 100, their version of the song was “a nearly note-for-note remake of the pop music arrangement by Clive Scott of ‘Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring’ as recorded by the British band Jigsaw.” In other words, a cover of another song that, in pop culture terms, didn’t make a lot of sense. Jigsaw has a bigger, better story than Apollo 100, but the bounds of this project means playing the cards I’m dealt. About that…
The Rest of the Story
“But after those two albums, Apollo 100 was history, and what became of Tom Parker after that, the Internet is not forthcoming.”
Parker got the writing credit for “Joy,” but he was just one part of Apollo 100, “a short-lived British instrumental studio-based group.” He hailed from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and bounced lower (jazz clubs) and higher (played with Eric Burdon and the New Animals) over a career that, as implied above, ended in both obscurity and Spain. Based on everything I saw, Apollo 100 was the main work of his career, a project he built with Vic Flick (guitar), Zed Jenkins (also guitar), Jim Lawless (“percussion”), Brian Odgers (bass), and, hold this name for the segue, Clem Cattini (drums).
The two albums alluded to above were Joy and Master Pieces, released in 1972 and 1973, respectively. Even after “Joy” blew up (No. 6 on Billboard), neither album sold well and, given that most of them held down regular jobs as session musicians (see below), it didn’t make much sense to stick with a limping project. As such, the pieces of Apollo 100 scattered after 1973. But a couple of the members had better days on either side of Parker’s project.
Apollo 100’s “Joy” dropped the year after I was born, but the whole “souped-up classical” vibe brought back vivid memories of hearing a disco spin on Beethoven’s 5th in the late 1970s (by Walter Murphy, titled "A Fifth of Beethoven"). While both got…let’s go with surprisingly popular, nothing connected the two outside the call-back to classical works.
I’ll get to who (or what) Apollo 100 very briefly was below, but the most surprising thing about their riff on “Joy” was the fact they weren’t the first band/act to do it. As noted in Wikipedia’sslim write-up on Apollo 100, their version of the song was “a nearly note-for-note remake of the pop music arrangement by Clive Scott of ‘Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring’ as recorded by the British band Jigsaw.” In other words, a cover of another song that, in pop culture terms, didn’t make a lot of sense. Jigsaw has a bigger, better story than Apollo 100, but the bounds of this project means playing the cards I’m dealt. About that…
The Rest of the Story
“But after those two albums, Apollo 100 was history, and what became of Tom Parker after that, the Internet is not forthcoming.”
Parker got the writing credit for “Joy,” but he was just one part of Apollo 100, “a short-lived British instrumental studio-based group.” He hailed from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and bounced lower (jazz clubs) and higher (played with Eric Burdon and the New Animals) over a career that, as implied above, ended in both obscurity and Spain. Based on everything I saw, Apollo 100 was the main work of his career, a project he built with Vic Flick (guitar), Zed Jenkins (also guitar), Jim Lawless (“percussion”), Brian Odgers (bass), and, hold this name for the segue, Clem Cattini (drums).
The two albums alluded to above were Joy and Master Pieces, released in 1972 and 1973, respectively. Even after “Joy” blew up (No. 6 on Billboard), neither album sold well and, given that most of them held down regular jobs as session musicians (see below), it didn’t make much sense to stick with a limping project. As such, the pieces of Apollo 100 scattered after 1973. But a couple of the members had better days on either side of Parker’s project.
Flick dished at least one iconic gem into global pop culture with the guitar riff for the James Bond theme - which, incidentally, he later adapted for The Beatles for the movie Help! Cattini, meanwhile, was something like the Zelig of English pop during the 1960s and 70s. A tribute site credits him for playing drums for the studio cuts on 42 British Number Ones; another source (one about Jigsaw laying the foundation for Apollo 100’s one big moment) counts 45. American audiences might not know all of them - e.g., Georgie Fame’s “Ballad of Bonnie & Clyde” or even Johnny Kidd & the Pirates’ “Shakin’ All Over,” or even Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air” (who I profiled in an earlier chapter in this series) and Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows” (profiled here) - but they definitely know several of them, e.g., The New Seekers, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,” “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks, and maybe even Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” or T.Rex’s “Get It On” or “Telegram Sam.” You’ll find a full list between that tribute site and Cattini’s Wikipedia page. Dude got around. Flick’s collection of collaborations is pretty damn big too, even if it leans a little more square (e.g., Lulu, Petula Clark, Cliff Richard, Typically Tropical, but also Paul McCartney), but they’re probably the bigger deal out of a project that was, in a final sense, Tom Parker’s baby.
And…that’s pretty much it for this one. Call it a rare one-and-done, which is something of an oddity for this project.
About the Sampler
I threw most of the songs that Cattini backed onto the sampler, but there’s still a solid dozen from Apollo 100’s catalog - though, for the record, Spotify only had 1972’s Joy and a collection of random songs titled Besame Mucho, The Great Sound of Apollo 100. That all but compelled me to include the “title track” for that one, but most of what I selected follow Parker’s original model, i.e., “popular arrangements of classical works.” Those “works” include, “Mad Mountain King “Hall of the Mountain King),” “Evil Midnight (Danse Macabre),” “Beethoven’s 9th,” a gently-scrambled take on the “William Tell Overture” and the enticingly renamed “Nutrocker Suite," which, sadly, mines the same vein.
Apollo 100 did its magic to a couple (roughly) contemporary numbers like “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” (which I can't find) and “Back in the U.S.S.R.” (ditto) and I couldn’t resist including those. A couple others made the cut because I…kind of liked them. “Reach for the Sky” was the standout, but “Libido” and “Air on a ‘G’ String” had a certain shimmy to them as well.
And that’s it for this one. Short history, short post. Till the next one…
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