The Single Life

Aricle written for Record Collector magazine 595 (July 2026) – shared now becuase the magazine is no longer on the newstands

January 21^st  2026

Finally! I have it in my hands!  The single Two By Two by Steve Martin (The Left Banke) was released by Buddah in 1971. Its only other appearance was on the soundtrack to an obscure American movie called Hot Parts. In addition to both being rare and a great song it has one further significant attribute: it is the last single on my wants list. After 50 years of record collecting I have run out of records to buy (apart from the ones I haven’t discovered yet…). So on such a momentous occasion I have written this tribute to the 7” single and the part it has played in my life.

“The vinyl single is simply the greatest art format mankind has developed – more potent than films, literature, painting or sculpture.“ Who said that ? Me. But Johnny Marr described singles as “absolutely powerful, possibly otherworldly objects” and he should know. The 7” single was invented in 1959, but my infatuation began at a 1980’s party in North London when I put my copy of the Rolling Stones Through The Past Darkly singles compilation LP on the record player only for it to sound limp and unconvincing. The words “Mono reprocessed for stereo” on the sleeve was the clincher: I needed to locate the original singles. I didn’t stop there and eventually amassed a collection of 1400 singles, now ruthlessly edited down to about 850. I did this by kicking my completism habit. According to Discogs there are over 7,800 different Beatles’ singles: I own nine (but they are all really good).

Once I started collecting singles I realised that many of the 400 LPs I owned were in my collection because they had one great track. Exhibit A: Ron Wood’s I’ve Got My Own Album To Do.  Opening track I Can Feel The Fire is brilliant and even made it into The Faces live repertoire. The rest of the LP is ‘interesting’ but contains a track called Crotch Music. B side of the single is a version of Breathe On Me, the best track on Ron Wood’s subsequent LP Now Look. Why did I have these LPs? Because Wood was a member of two of my favourite bands, The Faces and The Rolling Stones. This desire to have everything released by a given group means that my shelves had filled up with dodgy solo LPs and compilation LP s that I never listened to. 

Today I have around 100 LPs, focused on the absolute classics. So for the Stones it’s Beggar’s Banquet to Exile On Main Street. For the Kinks it’s Face To Face to Lola. I have many singles by both groups, both because they tended to be the best tracks on other albums and because at their peak Ray Davies and Jagger/Richards were writing so many good songs that even their B-sides were fantastic, and they never made it onto a contemporary studio LP.  

Ten Singles That Shaped My life

1. Maggie May – Rod Stewart
2. The Pink Fairies  – I Saw Her Standing There
3. Virginia Plain – Roxy Music
4. Nazz – Open My Eyes
5. Pretty Vacant – Sex Pistols
6. I Am The Cosmos – Chris Bell
7. Start Me Up – Rolling Stones
8. Another Girl, Another Planet – The Only Ones
9. Who Are The Mystery Girls? – New York Dolls
10. PPK – Tall Stories

My first musical memory is watching Rod Stewart & The Faces mime to Maggie May on Top Of The Pops. Even at the age of 14 I remember thinking that they did not seem to be taking their performance very seriously. I did not know then that the seated figure miming a very unconvincing mandolin was John Peel. By the time I started going to gigs prog was rife at our school but amongst the Yes double LPs and Deep Purple bootlegs my copy of Slade Alive felt very incongruous. I saw a lot of gigs including Uriah Heap, Hatfield & The North, Roy Harper, Edgar Broughton Band and my favourites The Pink Fairies, whose belligerent attitude towards I Saw Her Standing Here was a sign of things to come. As was seeing Roxy Music on their first tour as Virginia Plain was charting– truly they looked like beings from another planet, onstage and backstage afterwards.

My student years featured a lengthy period of poverty which meant I was shopping for singles in charity shops. I found Open My Eyes by The Nazz, a sideways take on I Can’t Explain which started my enduring enthusiasm for Nuggets-type groups. The Sex Pistols played an unannounced and unasked for support slot at my college in late 1975 and I followed their gigs round London until Glen Matlock left. I bought Anarchy In The UK on the day it came out but was disappointed, thought it sounded like Hawkwind. Much better was Pretty Vacant which absolutely nailed an unruly attitude with a catchy tune (kudos to producer Chris Thomas). Then came my own band Trash who released two singles on Polydor but whose appeal was decidedly selective (see RC 569 for full Trash story)

A year in Stockholm followed. Pre-internet, the main source of information on less well-known music was independent magazines such as Zigzag, Dark Star and (my favourite) Bam Balam. Bam Balam editor Brian Hogg had mentioned a single called I Am The Cosmos by Chris Bell, released on Chris Stamey’s label Car. Bell had been half of Big Star and this was his first (only) release after leaving. A copy made it to Stockholm but I had no record player so I had to stare at the record and imagine how it would sound. When I got back to London I was not disappointed. It has a weird, mysterious sound which we now know was caused by Bell re-recording the track so much that the tape wore out. It remains my favourite single of all time. Tragically my original single cracked for no apparent reason but Stamey helpfully did a re-release in 2018.

I moved into music writing for Bucketfull Of Brains magazine. In over twenty highly enjoyable years I only interviewed one band with whom I clicked socially and that was The Only Ones, when they re-animated themselves in 2007.  I used my stash of 7” singles when I DJ’d for the band at their sold-out Shepherds Bush Empire gig: I even introduced the band and made it onto the DVD. When lockdown hit I wrote and self-published a book about their first LP, including a whole chapter on the timeless but never-a-hit single Another Girl, Another Planet (see RC 543 for an extract). My wife Wendy and I do not agree on much music, but we do agree on the Rolling Stones and I managed to get tickets right down the front at Wembley Arena in 2003 so she could experience her favourite song Start Me Up in close proximity.

April 2019 found me DJing for the reformed Mott The Hoople at Shepherd’s Bush Empire: I will always remember looking up from my decks to see Bobby Gillespie and Mick Jones boogieing in the balcony to the New York Dolls’ Who Are The Mystery Girls?.

Having made music and written about music the chance came to release music, when my friend Nick asked me to help with his Rhythm and Blues Music label (www.1960s.london). One of our first singles paired half of the Only Ones with the late Robert Palmer under the name PPK (Palmer, Perry, Kellie). The song Tall Stories was a catchy Free-like groove, recorded at Island Studios in 1978 and previously unreleased.

I will continue to search for new singles – I only discovered Ronnie Spector’s version of Try Some, Buy Some after it appeared on a list of David Bowie’s favourite songs earlier this year. That feeling when you hold a new slab of vinyl, and the milli-second before the needle hits the groove…priceless!

More Lists Based On My Singles Collection

Ten Great Kinks B sides not on an original LP

1. Polly
2. This Man He Weeps Tonight
3. I Need You
4. She’s Got Everything
5. Big Black Smoke
6. This Is Where I Belong
7. Berkeley Mews
8. Mindless Child Of Motherhood
9. Mr Pleasant
10. Sitting On My Sofa

Ten Great Stones B sides not on an original LP

1. Off The Hook
2. Play With Fire
3. Under Assistant West Coast Promotional Man
4. Child Of The Moon
5. The Singer Not The Song
6. Who’s Driving Your Plane?
7. Dandelion
8. Spider And The Fly
9. Let It Rock
10. Through The Lonely Nights

Ten Brilliant One Hit Wonders

1. This Wheel’s On Fire – Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll and the Trinity
2. Back Street Luv – Curved Air
3. Bohemian Like You – Dandy Warhols
4. Friday On My Mind – Easybeats
5. Radar Love – Golden Earring
6. Silver Machine – Hawkwind
7. Sabre Dance – Love Sculpture
8. Something In The Air – Thunderclap Newman
9. Life’s Been Good – Joe Walsh
10. Overnite Sensation – Raspberries

Ten Great Stand Alone Singles (not on an original LP)

1. Lady Friend – Byrds
2. Maybe I’m Amazed (studio version) – Faces
3. Dead End Street – Kinks
4. Anyone For Tennis – Cream
5. Your Mind And We Belong Together – Love
6. We Love You – Rolling Stones
7. Tin Soldier – Small Faces
8. Happenings Ten Years Time Ago – Yardbirds
9. The Seeker – The Who
10. Saturday Gigs – Mott The Hoople

First Single, Best Single – Debut recordings never bettered

1. Soft Machine – Love Makes Sweet Music
2. 101’ers – Keys To Your Heart
3. Adverts – One Chord Wonder
4. Wreckless Eric – Whole Wide World
5. Damned – New Rose
6. Nick Lowe – So It Goes
7. Mekons – Where Were You?
8. Pretenders – Stop Your Sobbing
9. Public Image – Public Image
10. Blitzkrieg Bop – Ramones
11. (I’m) Stranded – Saints
12. I Can’t Stand My Baby – Rezillos
13. Roxette – Dr Feelgood

Ten Singles it took me many years to find

1. Mott The Hoople – Walking With A Mountain
2. The Who – Bargain
3. Steve Martin – Two By Two
4. Amazing Journey – The Who
5. Mr Big – Free
6. Nobody’s Fool – Cold Turkey
7. All Tomorrow’s Parties – Velvet Underground
8. Truly – Ian McLagan
9. Somebody Got Murdered – Clash
10. This Wreckage – J.Geils Band

Ten fine singles only available as a 12”

1. Why D’Ya Do It? – Marianne Faithful
2. Common People – Pulp
3. You Get What You Give – Young Radicals
4. Who Shot You Dutch? Mick Farren & Wayne Kramer
5. Private Life – Pretenders
6. A Spy In The House Of Love – dB’s
7. Moving Away From The Pulsebeat  – Buzzcocks
8. Woke Up This Morning – Alabama 3
9. You Don’t Move Me – Keith Richards
10. Street Hassle – Lou Reed