Kathy Byron & The Masked Women‘Whip Me Again And Again’ c/w ‘Dog Hearts’
Released 19th March 1965. HMV POP 8957.
Kathy Byron (vcls, ocarina)
When ‘Whip Me Again And Again’ was released in early 1965, it caused a sensation.
Sixteen year old Kathy Byron (real name: Catherine Bywater) and her backing dancers Ingegard Torkelinson, Kjerstin Zettesberg and Ragnild Gulbrandsen made a memorable and shocking appearance on ‘Brian’s Youth Club Jive’, a Sunday evening programme aimed at Christian teenagers.
The very next day, the single reached number nineteen in the pop charts and stayed there for over three months.
"It was my idea, actually" claims Ned Singleton, a former in-house producer at EMI. "Kathy had this rather butch look going for her – tight black leather, cuffs, chains, tungsten skillets and all the rest. And The Masked Women helped, of course".
Kathy’s backing dancers, The Masked Women, were a trio of Swedish typists that Singleton had picked up while on holiday in Oslo. All rather voluptuous women in their thirties, they usually gyrated in the Thai style behind Byron herself. "This", claims Singleton, "was the icing on the cake for Sunday TV viewers, but in a bad way. It was bad icing. Filthy icing whipped with a spoon of mental imbalance and sugared with decadence. Kathy was tied to a wheelbarrow – don’t ask me why – while The Masked Women threw fruit at her. Melons, peaches, even some loganberries, which were quite hard to come by in those days. She had a fantastic voice – schoolgirly and coy, if you get my filthy drift".
Incredibly, her record company paid for an album to be made, the stunning ‘Soft Japanese Ropes/Hard Japanese Discipline’. Although deleted after six days due to public unrest, it remains a work of stunning, bizarre eroticism and copies have exchanged hands on eBay for £39.99, not including postage.
Kathy herself disappeared soon after the album’s release and was never heard from again.
"It was my idea, actually" claims Ned Singleton, a former in-house producer at EMI. "Kathy had this rather butch look going for her – tight black leather, cuffs, chains, tungsten skillets and all the rest. And The Masked Women helped, of course".
Kathy’s backing dancers, The Masked Women, were a trio of Swedish typists that Singleton had picked up while on holiday in Oslo. All rather voluptuous women in their thirties, they usually gyrated in the Thai style behind Byron herself. "This", claims Singleton, "was the icing on the cake for Sunday TV viewers, but in a bad way. It was bad icing. Filthy icing whipped with a spoon of mental imbalance and sugared with decadence. Kathy was tied to a wheelbarrow – don’t ask me why – while The Masked Women threw fruit at her. Melons, peaches, even some loganberries, which were quite hard to come by in those days. She had a fantastic voice – schoolgirly and coy, if you get my filthy drift".
Incredibly, her record company paid for an album to be made, the stunning ‘Soft Japanese Ropes/Hard Japanese Discipline’. Although deleted after six days due to public unrest, it remains a work of stunning, bizarre eroticism and copies have exchanged hands on eBay for £39.99, not including postage.
Kathy herself disappeared soon after the album’s release and was never heard from again.
"I have no idea what happened to her", Says Singleton. "She seemed to disappear into thin air, though I spent many happy years in a ménage-a-quatre with The Masked Women until my first heart attack. I suppose I could have looked her up in the telephone directory, but to be honest, I just couldn’t be bothered. Besides, she may have got married and changed her name. Or maybe she just didn’t have a phone. Or maybe she did have a phone but was ex-directory. Or maybe she lives abroad and looking her up in the UK would have been a waste of time. Or maybe that wasn’t her real name in the first place. Maybe she’d be out shopping when I rang or something. Or she just didn’t feel like answering the phone that day. Perhaps the phone was broken. Who knows?"
For fans of these things, the backing on ‘Whip Me Again And Again’ was by The Teenage Babies, just before they split up, although their Theremin player, Creamy Taylor, was absent from the session.
For fans of these things, the backing on ‘Whip Me Again And Again’ was by The Teenage Babies, just before they split up, although their Theremin player, Creamy Taylor, was absent from the session.
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