Peel was still receiving correspondence about his week covering for Jakki Brambles and on this show he read a letter from Barry Warren congratulating him on his stint.* Warren said that he had last written to Peel back in the days of The Perfumed Garden to request a play of Get Me to the World on Time by The Electric Prunes. Peel hadn’t played it for Warren in 1967, and he wasn’t holding his breath in 1993, to which Peel could only reply, Better late than never, Barry….
A US top 30 hit - and only 2 places away from breaking into the UK Top 40 - in March/April 1967, Get Me to the World On Time does an excellent job of reworking the trick of a song like Got To Get You Into My Life in that every line of its lyrics could be interpreted either as a love song or a drug song.
The love song angle leans more towards the sexual than the hand holding, and it’s supported by the music which sounds at times like it’s evoking heavy breathing, throbbing heartbeats and the surge towards an orgasm. The world in this case means the sweet spot inside James Lowe’s lover, rather than Planet Earth.
If Get Me to the World on Time was a drug song, the songwriters Annette Tucker and Jill Jones chose to hide in plain sight by referencing chemical reactions, disturbed minds and shaken hormones, in a trip to the world on the other side of perception. But, so skilful is the writing that the song could be performed either at the church disco or during a full-on, freak-out orgy and would fit in either setting.
I can find no evidence of Get Me to the World on Time being hit by airplay bans or censorship, but it’s possible that the ambiguity of the lyric stopped it going as high as it should have. If so, it would be another example of the way in which the acts of others conspired to make life difficult for The Electric Prunes. Nobody seems to have been content to let them do their own thing. Although they wrote songs for their first two albums, their producer, David Hassinger, encouraged them to record original material by other writers alongside their own content. This gave them their chart hits but in December 1967, it led to the band going into the studio to record an album which would be written, arranged and produced by David Axelrod. Mass in F Minor yanked The Electric Prunes from Bo Diddley-style psychedelia to religious music, sung in Latin and Greek, albeit fed through a psychedelic pop-rock filter.** The classically trained Axelrod’s compositions were more complicated than The Electric Prunes were able to cope with, but instead of changing course, the Electric Prunes found themselves being sidelined - only 3/5 of the band played on the record; session musicians taking up the brunt of the work.
After some poorly received attempts to play tracks from the album on tour in early 1968, the original Electric Prunes lineup disbanded, but as the rights to the name were held by Hassinger, he put together a new lineup and set them up to record another album with Axelrod, Release of an Oath, which was released in November ‘68.
The Electric Prunes name was finally laid to rest in 1969 after the release of Just Good Old Rock and Roll.
30 years later, the original line-up reformed to play live and record again, releasing three albums since the turn of the Millennium. The band has continued to the present day, but in a case of history repeating itself, none of the original members are with the band anymore following James Lowe’s death in May 2025.
Video courtesy of Duophonic for Stereo Phonographs ll
*Barry had already been in touch with Peel on Wednesday 7 April.
**I listened to a bit of Mass in F Minor while writing this post, and “awkward” doesn’t even begin to describe the stylistic fit. Take your Prunes from either 1966/67 or 21st Century and it’ll keep you regular. Anything else will go right through you.
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