Tag: Kenny Pickett

Thank you, Dave, for this Turntable Talk. I wrote this for his series about songs with Time in the title, in the song, or about time. I like trying out new songs on the weekend, and this is a great example of mid-sixties British Rock. If you dig the Who and Kinks…you should like this one. 

Here’s a 1966  track that hits you like a kaleidoscopic brick through a plate-glass window. This is a band that I so wish would have done more things. Their lead guitarist, Eddie Phillips, was asked by Pete Townshend to join the Who as their second guitarist. They are one of those bands that slipped through the cracks.

They were formed in 1966 from a band called The Mark Four.  The Creation was from Chesthunt, 12 miles north of central London. They formed in 1963 as the Mark Four and went through different names until 1966 when they became the Creation. The Creation was sharper, weirder, and wilder than most of their peers. They had the raw power chords and the feedback fury of early Hendrix, and the pop art mindset of a band who not only wanted to be heard, they needed to be seen as well. The lead singer, Kenny Pickett, would spray paint a canvas, and someone from the road crew would set it a fire during the set…during the song Painter Man. 

This song was released in 1966. They patterned themselves after The Who and The Kinks. It had the sonic sound of The Who, the garage grit of The Kinks, and the art-school sound with later groups like The Jam to Blur. But what really made it jump off the grooves? That guitar solo really helped out. Long before Jimmy Page, Eddie Phillips, the guitar player, used a bow. Making Time was the first rock song to feature the guitar being played with a bow. Shel Talmy produced the group that also produced The Who and The Kinks.

The band broke up in 1967-1968 with some different members. The guitar player Eddie Phillips and singer Kenny Pickett started to write songs in the seventies after leaving the business for a while. They wrote Teacher, Teacher for Rockpile.  They regrouped in the 1980s and are still out there touring. 

I’ve been talking about the Who and Kinks…a member from each band played with The Creation along with a Rolling Stone. Mick Avory, the drummer for the Kinks played with the reformed band from the mid-1980s to 1993. Doug Sandom, who was replaced by Keith Moon in the Who, played with them off and on until he died in 2019. Ronnie Wood played with them in 1968 (right before they broke up) as a vocalist and guitar player. 

They only released 3 studio albums. One in 1966 called We Are Paintermen. One in 1987 called Psychedelic Rose and another one in 1996 called Power Surge. This song peaked at #49 on the UK Charts in 1966. 

Making Time