Fact #168590
When:
Short story:
America by The Nice enters the UK pop singles chart where it will peak at No21. The band's prog-rock re-interpretation of the Leonard Bernstein showtune will land them deep in controversy.
Full article:
Tony Stratton Smith (manager, The Nice) : They'd just come off as backing group to P.P. Arnold, who had quite a big hit with The First Cut Is the Deepest on Andrew Oldham's Immediate label. Keith put the band together, but Andrew didn't really think of them as a separate act. Their usefulness to him was as a back-up group. Part of the condition on which they could record was that they find management, which is how I came on the scene.
Keith was just getting into the quasi-classical thing with America and I took over just before that single. We had awful headaches about the length of that single. It was 6:23 and couldn't be edited. But Oldham - and I'll say this for him - came up with an idea. He asked what the longest hit single was and at that time it was MacArthur Park at 7:20. So he said, 'Okay, let's put on the label that it's 7:23.' And nobody else ever bothered to time it. With the band touring, it broke into the Top 20 in Britain on minimal airplay.
(Source : interview with David Fricke, Trouser Press, January 1979)
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Keith was just getting into the quasi-classical thing with America and I took over just before that single. We had awful headaches about the length of that single. It was 6:23 and couldn't be edited. But Oldham - and I'll say this for him - came up with an idea. He asked what the longest hit single was and at that time it was MacArthur Park at 7:20. So he said, 'Okay, let's put on the label that it's 7:23.' And nobody else ever bothered to time it. With the band touring, it broke into the Top 20 in Britain on minimal airplay.
(Source : interview with David Fricke, Trouser Press, January 1979)