YOU RARELY HEAR IT ON THE RADIO now but Excerpt From A Teenage Opera was the perfect single for the summer of 1967. The song’s central refrain – a children’s choir singing “Grocer Jack, Grocer Jack, get off your back, go into town, don’t let them down” – was everywhere, hooking the nation into one of the most ambitious British pop records ever. It was a song of lilting fairground melodies, strings, harpsichords, banjos, balalaikas, one that perfectly encapsulated the search for child-like innocence at the core of British psych. Like Sgt. Pepper, it was a psychedelic moment that appealed to everyone, hippy or straight, young or old.
Although sung by Keith West, the vocalist and songwriter behind London psych band Tomorrow, Excerpt’s true mastermind was Mark Wirtz, an Alsace-born…