Shindig! #169 – Orange Bicycle

THE ORANGE BICYCLE exemplified the schizophrenic nature of British pop in the late ’60s like few others. During their four-year lifetime, they recorded numerous BBC sessions, almost entirely consisting of hits of the day, despite numbering supremely talented writer/arranger Wilson Malone in their ranks. None of their 10 major label singles troubled the charts, they left dozens of unreleased tracks in the vaults, and by the time their sole album belatedly appeared in 1970, the magic was gone.

ANDY MORTEN peels away the layers of this baffling, occasionally brilliant outfit.

“Orange Bicycle was committed to being a commercial band,” Malone recalled. “We played everything that was popular so we could get gigs!”  

Quite apart from the new name (“We were called Orange Bicycle because a friend of ours painted his face with wheels around his eyes and handlebars joining at the side,” Wil Malone told elvinyl. “It didn’t seem important to be honest”), ‘Hyacinth Threads’ was unlike anything the group had released before. Powered by a hammered-out harpsichord riff and played at a furious pace, powered by Malone’s military drum rolls, its multi-layered high-pitched vocals almost obscure the lyrics. (Is that “Hyacinth Threads” or “Harekrishna” in the choruses?) The single gained airplay in the UK and became an EP in France (the country’s preferred format at this time) by adding the otherwise unavailable ‘Dropping Out’ and superb ‘Competition’. The myth that ‘Hyacinth Threads’ reached #1 in France is just that: a myth. The blurb on the back cover of the EP notes the song as being their “titre No 1”; it’s merely the first track on the EP. To save future reiteration, none of The Orange Bicycle’s records enjoyed any chart action anywhere, we’re sad to report.

The quartet appeared in Halifax Evening Courier & Guardian on 7th September, clad in their lace shirts and velvet jackets and talking of “progressive pop” and having recorded “enough material for an LP, to be called The Orange Bicycle Can Sing”. “Orange Bicycle was committed to being a commercial band,” Malone told Morton Jack. “We played everything that was popular. That’s what we were, so we could get gigs. As the band developed and the music scene changed, we changed with the current musical fashion. When the fashion became the head period – or hippys as the media called them – we thought, ‘Yeah, we can do that.’” They debuted as Robb Storme & The Orange Bicycle at their regular gig at The Pilgrim in Haywards Heath, West Sussex on 30th September but continued to be regularly billed as Robb Storme & The Whispers until October 1968, which can’t have helped record sales. “Do you have the new Robb Storme & The Whispers record?” “Sorry, their last one was two years ago.”

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