The Troggs

The Troggs earned their lasting reputation as early proto-punk figures by climbing to the summit of the charts in 1966 with the primitive “caveman rock” sound of “Wild Thing,” yet they also proved skilled at shaping power pop and ballads. At a moment when psychedelia was surging in the late 1960s, the band revived a more straightforward British Invasion style and returned to the Top Five with the flower-power ballad “Love Is All Around” in 1968. Although they enjoyed greater success in their native England than in the United States, the group produced a string of memorable, riff-driven singles between 1966 and 1968, among them “With a Girl Like You,” “Night of the Long Grass,” and the openly provocative “I Can't Control Myself.” Anchored by Reg Presley's raw, lustful vocals and responsible for writing most of their own material, the Troggs could deliver crunching energy with the best of their peers while revealing greater melodic range and invention than they are often credited with.

Emerging from the little-known British town of Andover, the Troggs connected in the mid-1960s with manager and producer Larry Page, who had earlier ties to the Kinks. Following an unsuccessful first single, they were lucky to encounter a demo of Chip Taylor's “Wild Thing,” already attempted without success by the Wild Ones. Under the Troggs' hands the song, distinguished by its gritty chords and eccentric ocarina solo, became a three-chord prehistoric force, celebrated both in the band's original hit recording and in the psychedelic reinterpretation Jimi Hendrix delivered to close his landmark performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

“Wild Thing” reached number one in the States, but the Troggs' progress there was slowed by an odd legal conflict that allowed their early releases to appear simultaneously on two separate labels. Their absence from American touring stages for several years added to the difficulty. As a result, the strong follow-ups “With a Girl Like You” and “I Can't Control Myself” achieved less than they might have. In Britain the story differed sharply: both records became major hits, although the candid desire expressed in “I Can't Control Myself” drew objections from conservative programmers worldwide.

On later ballads the Troggs softened their public image with a style that anticipated the power-ballad format. These tracks, several of which became British hits, were competent yet never matched the impact of the early singles that had defined the band's persona. “Love Is All Around,” which returned them to the American Top Ten in 1968, stood as their strongest work in this mode and marked their final major success on either side of the Atlantic.

The Troggs nevertheless continued performing and recording for decades. Their image sometimes worked against them; while hardly intellectuals, the musicians were far from simple-minded, composing most of their songs and producing albums that, though not on the level of those by the Kinks or Traffic, contained unexpected gems such as the gothic ballad “Cousin Jane” and the satirical psychedelia of “Maybe the Madman.” By 1970 their fortunes had declined. They kept issuing singles whose plainspoken directness clashed with the progressive rock then in vogue; most of these efforts failed commercially, even when the material itself held merit.

The band's reputation for lacking sophistication received an unintended boost from the notorious Troggs Tapes, a twelve-minute studio dispute recorded without the members' knowledge. The Spinal Tap-like exchanges sustained their cult following, and when punk emerged in the mid-1970s the group received overdue recognition as a formative influence on acts including the Ramones and, earlier, the MC5. They maintained a steady schedule of live dates, occasionally on punk and new-wave bills, though their sporadic later releases met with little success. In 1992 the Troggs reached their highest visibility in years when three members of R.E.M.—who had previously covered “Love Is All Around”—joined them for the comeback album Athens Andover.