'The Recipe For Success' EP
RCA/Victor 1466729 Released November 12 1965
Keith Orwell (vocals), Nicholas McGuire (vegetable mandolin, harmonica), Vernon Colour (bass), Frankie Groves (drums)
From the start, inherent tensions in The Recipe were all too obvious. Keith Orwell's psychedelic Conservatism clashed with the Mod Marxist beliefs of Vernon Colour. Nicholas McGuire’s attempts to encourage the band to embrace the anti-materialistic teachings of Shri Bikram Yoga met with general disdain.
Meanwhile Frankie Groves walked his own jagged path towards self-destruction, fuelled by an addiction to addiction and mental problems derived from years of playing the drums with his head.
The band’s flame flickered brightly but all too briefly. They recorded just one song, brought together on a long deleted four track EP. On the front sleeve Keith Orwell uses a stick of celery as a microphone, Vernon Colour's bass is replaced by a side of lamb, Nichols McGuire holds a vegetable mandolin (which was a mandolin made out of vegetables) and Frankie Grove can be spotted at the back, banging his head against a watermelon.
Sessions for the EP were fraught. Booked to record three songs in one two hour session, Orwell and Colour spent the first hour arguing over where the blame lay for Britain's huge balance of trade deficit. McGuire waited patiently, tuning his vegetable mandolin, and Groves warmed up by banging his head against his knees.
As the session disintegrated around them, producer Colin McCollin was forced to wake up and take action. Entering the studio, McCollin floored Keith Orwell with a single punch. Vernon Colour immediately struck up the catchy bassline to 'Carrot and Leek' and the band completed the song in two takes, with McCollin holding the vocal mic under Keith Orwell's flattened nose as the singer lay on the studio floor.
The resulting muffled vocal proved affecting enough to catch the ears of the public. And The Recipe's only song, a trite but pleasant enough ditty in which the male character is a carrot and his girlfriend a leek, made it to the lower reaches of the pop charts.
Released as an EP to make the purchase more attractive to music fans, 'Carrot And Leek' was accompanied by three tracks of studio out-takes, including the sound of Keith Orwell being repeatedly punched by McCarroll, Nicholas McGuire tuning his vegetable mandolin (subsequently a much sought after Psych classic) and the Frankie Groves composition 'Banging My Head On My Knees'.
