If anyone forgets how experimental – and therefore weird – the 1960s were in the pop charts, there’s no need to look further than Excerpt From A Teenage Opera, which reached Number 2 in 1967.
It’s weird enough that it was the story of a local trademan and his passion for serving his village, who’s only truly appreciated after dies at the age of 82, leaving the area’s kids asking, ’Grocer Jack, Grocer Jack, is it true what mummy says, You won’t come back, oh-no-no?‘ Its effect on the careers of Steve Howe and Keith West was even wierder.
The brainchild of producer Mark Wirtz – who wrote the music for what was supposed to be a large-scale rock opera in the style of the era – the song was sung by West, who at the time was pursuing fame with Howe in their band Tomorrow.
“I knew Mark, who came up with the idea," West told Prog in 2011. "He invited me round to his place one day and played me a lot of the music he was working on. What he needed was for someone to put lyrics to the songs – that just wasn’t his thing.”
So West set about the task; and the first song he finished was Excerpt From A Teenage Opera – often known as Grocer Jack.
“Mark had given me the title of the song, and at the time having eccentric characters at the centre of songs was all the rage,” West recalled. “Maybe it was something to do with the fact that we were in an era when everyone was dropping acid!”
With Howe laying down guitar for the demo tape, West agreed to record guide vocals for an unconfirmed bigger name to do a ‘proper’ job. But that never happened. “The label, EMI, liked what I’d done,” West remembered.
“And as they already had me under contract through Tomorrow, they thought it would be a good thing for me to sing on it. I agreed – it would never amount to much, and certainly wouldn’t interfere with the band. How wrong I was!”
West was on tour with Tomorrow when the label ordered him back home to promote the single, which was starting sell in major quantities. “It just took on a life of its own,” he said. “In Germany it was even bigger than in the UK; it made it to the top of the charts.” He added: “Everywhere I went I was mobbed by girls – I could have gotten used to that lifestyle!”
In 1999 Howe reflected on the dead shopkeeper’s spirit having haunted the final months of their band. “For a while we did well off of Keith’s success – we all went out and we earned much more money than we were doing as Tomorrow,” the guitarist said.
But the fact that they played as a guitar trio was a problem. “We disappointed people by not being the sort of group that featured Keith in the way as might be thought with Grocer Jack.
“In Ireland we played the Tomorrow set with Grocer Jack. That wasn’t enough. They didn't want Tomorrow – they wanted Keith West and that kind of a singer. So they hurled money at us. It was painful – we got hit!
“That was the effect of trying to be two things at once; trying to be Tomorrow and Keith West and Tomorrow. It didn’t work. Gigs fizzled out and then we were left with not with very much.”
Wirtz – who died in 2020 – meandered elsewhere in the music industry when the Teenage Opera project wilted as the result of second single Sam failing to emulate the success of Excerpt. West followed his own route too, without regrets. “It was a good song, and I loved the experience,” he said.
