All Muddled Up

Greetings from the Star Grill

Continuing my riffing on music-related themes, I've just discovered another old treasure which I picked up several years ago - an unused multiview postcard which presents five different scenes at the Maison Lyons, Marble Arch, London W1. With my recent post about the newspaper advert for the Wimpy Bars of Majorca (Cosmic Wimpy) still quite fresh in my mind, I also return to ponder on yet another one of the restaurant brands under the massive Lyons banner.

The Lyons chain were well-known for their enormous restaurants, often on four or five levels, with each floor having its own theme - an all day breakfast at the 'The Bacon & Egg', or perhaps the quartet of waitresses (known as Nippies, and pictured below) at your service at 'The Star Grill'.




It's a pity that this postcard wasn't printed in colour, and I'm not quite sure of the date, but I'd hazard a guess at sometime around the late 1950s. Anyone reading this who can help to confirm, or who can work out a more specific date from clues in the interior fixtures and fittings, or the Nippies hairstyles, please do come forward!

This postcard of Maison Lyons is also sadly not populated with any customers at all. Without the bustle of life, the place looks rather bleak and quiet, and its the sounds of Lyons that I'm especially interested in. For in their heyday, live orchestras once played almost continuously thoughout the daytime and in the evenings - though I wonder whether there were any all night long performances when several Lyons restaurants had experimented with 24 hour openings?

a striking image of a used 'Grill & Cheese' match-book cover

A stylish menu cover at The Bacon And Egg

the interior is rather egg-cellent too

Another lovely Lyons artefact is the special disc "All Muddled Up" which was released to mark the American bandleader Paul Specht and his Orchestra's invitation to perform at the Lyons Corner House restaurant in London's Coventry Street on 23rd May 1923:

note: 80 revs per minute

Photo of Specht (seated far right) and his band taken in the USA around the time of recording "All Muddled Up"

The story was taken up by the famous Variety newspaper, and their report exclaimed that Paul Specht and his band were enthusiastically received, and the restaurant was packed continuously from morning until closing hour.

Ok, lets fast forward the musical styles from Paul Specht's big shows for Lyons - and about forty six years in time, to the year 1969. Another sl-ice of the Lyons empire was its Lyons Maid ice cream, with all those tantalising ice lollies boxed-up inside the big freezers at the newsagents. One such lolly was called 'Luv', and tucked in-between the outside wrapper with its brightly coloured groovy logo, and its inner paper sleeve, was one of 40 'Pop Stars' cards. I've still got No.28 after all these years - and it's the terrific Troggs:

Pocket-sized Pop Pic pulps

An oddity from the heyday of the 1960s pop-boom is a publication called Pop Pic Library - 68 page black and white comic books whose titles were all named after 7" chart-smashing hits by the key bands of the era. But apart from an uncredited colour photo of the group on the back cover, everything within totally deviated from the actual lyrics of the songs themselves. Even the names of the band members and the songwriters were omitted.

The very first Pop Pic Library title was 'The Last Time' by The Rolling Stones - a '45' that was released in February 1965, so this dates the series to have commenced around then. The 18 x 12 cms sized comics were published by Wells Gardner, Darton & Co and printed in Redhill, Surrey - and according to the blurb that appeared below the last panel on the final pages, two titles were published on the 15th of each month.  Pop Pic Library was distributed in the UK, and were also shipped out to "Australasia, South Africa, Rhodesia, Zambia and Malawi".

The interior art was not credited, but sometimes the covers were - No.4 was by Josep Maria Miralles, a Spanish artist who drew many romance titles for the UK market during this time.

I wonder whether the bands themselves ever caught sight of these little rogue comic books that re-imagined bizarre versions of their hit songs for the price of one shilling?

Examples of Pop Pic Library rarely surface these days, and there's not much information out there about just how many issues were published, though it appears that the series ran for three years up to 1968. I've compiled a checklist of known titles - and look forward to hearing from those who can fill in the gaps...

Pop Pic Library - a partial checklist

No.1 The Last Time - The Rolling Stones
No.2 A World of our Own - The Seekers
No.3 I’m Alive – The Hollies
No.4 Set Me Free - The Kinks
No.5 Heart Full of Soul - The Yardbirds
No.6 The One in the Middle - Manfred Mann
No.7 We’ve Got to Get out of this Place - The Animals
No.8 You’ve got your Troubles - The Fortunes
No.9 I’m Down - The Beatles
No.10 Like We Used To Be - Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames
No.11 Whatcha Gonna Do About It - The Small Faces
No.12 Hark - Unit 4 Plus 2

No.13 Yesterday Man - Chris Andrews

No.14 Get Off Of My Cloud - Rolling Stones
No.15 We Can Work it Out - The Beatles
No.16 Don’t Bring me Your Heartaches - Paul & Barry Ryan
No.17 A Must to Avoid - Herman's Hermits
No.18 Keep on Running - Spencer Davis Group
No.19 You Were On My Mind - Crispian St. Peters
No.20 As Tears Go By - The Rolling Stones
No.21 A Groovy Kind of Love - The Mindbenders
No.22 Inside Looking Out - The Animals
No.23 I Can't Let Go - The Hollies

No.25 I Put a Spell on You - Alan Price Set
No.26 Pretty Flamingo - Manfred Mann
No.27 Not Responsible - Tom Jones
No.28 Sorrow - The Merseys
No.30 Paperback Writer - The Beatles
No.32 Out of Time - Chris Farlowe
No.33 All or Nothing - The Small Faces
No.35 I'm a Boy - The Who
No.36 Bend It! - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich
No.38 I Can’t Control Myself - The Troggs
No.39 Gimme Some Lovin' - The Spencer Davis Group
No.41 In the Country - Cliff Richard
No.43 Got To Get You Into My Life - Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers
No.45 On a Carousel - The Hollies
No.46 Penny Lane - The Beatles
No.49 Funny Familiar Forgotten Feelings - Tom Jones
No.50 Dedicated to the One I Love - The Mama's and the Papa's*
No.52 Silence is Golden - The Tremeloes
No.54 Okay! - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch
No.56 All You Need is Love - The Beatles
No.58 I'll Never Fall In Love Again - Tom Jones

No.59 Hole in My Shoe - Traffic

No.60 Flowers in the Rain - The Move
No.62 I Can See for Miles - The Who
No.63 Hello, Goodbye - The Beatles
No.64 Let the Heartaches Begin - Long John Baldry
No 66 Daydream Believer - The Monkees*
No.69 As You Are - The Tremeloes+

No.72 Congratulations - Cliff Richard

* So far, No's 50 and 66 are the only titles known to me by non-UK artists to have hit the Pop Pic Library charts

+ This track by The Tremeloes was actually the flipside of their 1968 hit 'Suddenly You Love Me'

front cover of Pop Pic Library No.38, a great track from 1966

it's the Troggs on the back of  'I Can't Control Myself'

interior pages of Pop Lic Library No.38, and a Route 133 bus heading to or from Liverpool Street Station

Set Me Free by The Kinks was released in May 1965. This was No.4 of the series

Kinksize up the back cover

dig the Snack-Bar sign, though these pages are perhaps the best of a poor lot within this edition