JOHNNY KIDD & THE PIRATES – THE BEST OF LP – Nr MINT A1/B1 UK MONO

The Best Of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates
(EMI Records  1977  NUTM12  Mono)
Matrix No’s: A1/B1 – UK Pressing

G&L Sleeve in Nr MINT/Excellent+ condition
– a little discolouration on back cover around edges

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality)

Johnny Kidd & the Pirates were an English rock and roll group led by singer/songwriter Johnny Kidd. They scored numerous hit songs from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, including ‘Shakin’ All Over’ and ‘Please Don’t Touch’, but their musical influence far outshines their chart performance.

Their stage act was theatrical in a way which anticipated theatrical rockers of the 1970s such as Alice Cooper (while echoing that of their contemporaries Screaming Lord Sutch & the Savages) and included full pirate costumes, complete with eye-patches and cutlasses.

More importantly, and unusually for bands of the time, they had only one guitarist (not two), alongside a bassist and a drummer. Kidd did not play any instruments on stage. This was influential on the rock bands of the 1970s: Led Zeppelin had such a line-up and tapes exist of them covering many Johnny Kidd songs in rehearsal, and it was after seeing Johnny Kidd & the Pirates that the Who decided that their singer Roger Daltrey should abandon playing guitar on stage.

Tracklist