A songwriter handed the Pretty Things a mild, slow little pop tune — and they turned it into two minutes of pure snarl that made the Rolling Stones look polite.
When Phil May described what the Pretty Things did to “Don’t Bring Me Down,” he didn’t dress it up. The song, written by a road manager named Johnnie Dee, arrived as a slow, tame little thing. “We hijacked it,” May said. What came out the other side was two minutes of leering, stomping British R&B — four descending chords hammered over and over, harmonica wailing, May half-singing and half-growling like a man with no intention of behaving. In 1964, at the height of the beat boom, it sounded genuinely dangerous.
That was the whole point of the Pretty Things. Formed in Sidcup, Kent, in 1963 and named after a Bo Diddley song, they were marketed as the band that made the Rolling Stones look clean-cut — longer hair, louder guitars, a wilder reputation. The connection wasn’t just marketing: guitarist Dick Taylor had been an original member of the Rolling Stones, playing bass in their earliest lineup before leaving to study art and then forming the Pretty Things with May. Where the Stones sharpened their menace into something radio could sell, the Pretty Things leaned into the mess.
Released on Fontana on October 16, 1964, as their second single, “Don’t Bring Me Down” became their biggest UK hit, reaching No. 10 and cracking the charts in Canada at No. 34. It was produced by Bobby Graham, who had taken over the band’s sessions after the first producer walked out over their behavior, and it captured them at their rawest — May on vocals and harmonica, Taylor’s lead guitar, Brian Pendleton on rhythm, John Stax on bass, and the famously unpredictable Viv Prince on drums. The performance you’re watching here comes from a later television appearance on the Dutch music program TopPop, the band returning years afterward to the song that first made their name.
The song Bowie couldn’t shake
Its most famous admirer made sure it outlived the era that produced it. David Bowie, who grew up watching bands like the Pretty Things, recorded “Don’t Bring Me Down” for his 1973 covers album Pin Ups, a whole record devoted to the London R&B and mod singles that shaped him as a teenager. That cover introduced the song to a generation who’d never heard the original, and it’s part of why a two-minute 1964 single by a band that never troubled the American charts still gets talked about today. The Pretty Things went on to make more ambitious music — their 1968 album S.F. Sorrow is often called the first rock opera — but “Don’t Bring Me Down” remains the moment they sounded most like exactly what they were: the loudest, scruffiest, least house-trained band in Britain.
![The Beatles – The Beatles – Eleanor Rigby (From Yellow Submarine) [Official Music Video]](https://musicvideosclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/the-beatles-the-beatles-eleanor-360x203.jpg)
