The Green Teens

The Green Teens
"Long Plastic Thing"
Stephen St. Swathes (Lead Vocals, Percussion), Bryan Offyce (Organ, Vocals), Mitch Mood (Lead Guitar, Backing Vocals), Aubrey Watson-Mains (Bass Guitar), John 'Skins' Simperton (Drums)

The Green Teens were British Empire Recording's attempt to create an English version of The Monkees. It was a desperate attempt that ended in failure.

BER's A&R man at the time was Gerald Putney. "The Monkees TV show premiered on NBC in September 1966. I was in Alabama at the time, negotiating a deal with The Four White Men - a local pop group made up of white supremacists. They had a single called 'The White Time Is Now' which we all thought very catchy. But the moment I saw The Monkees, I could smell money. So, on the ship back to England, I put my plans together to create a British version".

Putney sent a telegram informing his boss at BER, Sidney Putney. As soon as his ship docked at Southend, Gerald began putting the group together.

"Stephen (St. Swathes) was working as a barman at The Murky Tavern. We agreed to have drinks at another hip club, so I took him up The Tradesman's and knew I had my first man on board".

Putney's next job was to find the right organist. "Bryan (Offyce) was recommended to me by his music teacher. Bryan was proving something of a prodigy on the organ and this singled him out as a boy I wanted to meet".

The remaining members were found by auditions and word of mouth. Mitch Mood worked in a clothing shop in Chelsea called "Hunkety Parade", Skins Simperton was the best teenage drummer in London and came to the group from Fez Van Hugle's Jazz Heptet, while Aubrey Watson-Mains was Sidney Putney's nephew.

The first rehearsals went swimmingly. Says Gerald: "I seem to recall a lot of high jinx and laughter. Not a song was written, though, and that was probably where it began to go awry".

While The Monkees could call on some of the best music writers of the day like Neil Diamond, Tommy Boyce, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Mrs. Mills, Putney turned to a little known songwriter called Norman Putney to provide songs for The Green Teens.

"Norman ran an espresso bar in Seven Dials called The Four Skeins. Every Thursday night was skiffle night. Fridays was Wiffle Night and Saturdays Kafifffle - though they never caught on the way skiffle did. Norman wrote a couple of great skiffle songs - 'Train I Ride (Delayed Due To Signal Problems At Stratford)' and 'My Dad Is East End Scum'. I thought Norman was the guy for the job...He wasn't".

Norman failed to write one decent song for the group. His songs, variously called 'Ooch, Me Hooch', 'Spanner Got Lumps' and 'Johnny, Remember Where I Left My Wallet' were clearly the work of a deranged failure. "We fired Norman...well, in truth, Skins Simperton asked local hard man Cheeky Charles to give him a good going over. It was then that we struck a thin vein of gold. Bryan Offyce wrote 'Long Plastic Thing'".

Offyce takes up the story. "Um, it was just one of those things, really. We'd kind of done mostly covers up to that point and Mr. Putney wanted a sort of original song for the album. So, well, I just thought 'Hey, I suppose I could write a song'. It never crossed my mind that it would be hard! Gosh! And I came up with 'Long Plastic Thing'".

"It was appalling", recalls Putney. "But we were desperate".

Because of their failure as recording artistes, there was no interest from any television companies in Putney's plans for a Green Teens TV series. "One letter I got from Southern Television simply read 'Twat'. I thought that was bit harsh".

St. Swathes went on to form Jamhammer, a glam group, in '72. Skins Simperton, as we all know, achieved great things in Dreft, Temple & Simperton, while Mitch Mood continues to work with Offyce at Offyce Mood Musick in Denmark Street.

Aubrey Watson-Mains went on to run British Empire Recordings after it changed its name to Streetwyse and he signed several extremely violent hip hop groups in the early nineties.