Music: 'A Box of Scaffold'
A major retrospective on the satirical trio from Liverpool, thank you very much
Those three scalliwags from Liverpool known as Scaffold? Surely, you’ve heard of them! If not, you will know more than you know with the 5CD/1DVD box set Scaffold: A Box of Scaffold, a long-overdue and comprehensive collection of recordings that celebrate the trio — Mike “McGear” McCartney, Roger McGough and John Gorman — through songs, live shows and unreleased BBC Radio sessions.
Admittedly more well-known in the UK than the US, the three met up in rag tag fashion as befits their Liverpudlian heritage: first McGough as a heralded poet, then GPO engineer Gorman and within another group of performers, McCartney. While McCartney (who went by the surname of McGear to throw off the scent he was Paul’s brother) had been working as a ladies’ hairdresser, it was the merger of three distinct Merseyside talents for comedy, prose and music that gained them a real name past their dockside beginnings.
That’s not to say they turned down Brian Epstein’s offer to be their manager (they didn’t), which helped to elevate their brand of satire that had been given a platform for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and also the lampooning genius of That Was The Week That Was. Yet, with the well-placed connections, The Scaffold released their 1966 debut single “2 Day’s Monday,” a droll, dry bit of song produced by George Martin, a veteran of The Goons records (and that other band from Liverpool).
2 Day’s Monday/℗© 1966 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company/YouTube
The prospect of writing a ‘hit’ song evolved into a pop-centric version of Monty Python for 1967’s cheeky sing-a-long “Thank U Very Much,” a greeting from Mike to Paul for a gift of a Nikon camera. This turned into a much larger message — with some hidden meanings to its reference of the Aintree Iron — yet, the three managed to rack up notice in the US in 1968 and earned favor with none other than the Queen Mother.
The Scaffold – Thank U Very Much (1967)/℗© 1967 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company/YouTube
As far as the most memorable tune to come forth from the Scaffold was 1968’s “Lily the Pink.” Fashioned by the group after a well-known (read: rude) lyrical composition about a women’s medicinal ‘cure all,’ the sessions included Jack Bruce, Graham Nash and one Reginald Dwight, aka Elton John, to accentuate the vocal accompaniment.
The Scaffold – Lily the Pink/℗© 1968 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company/YouTube
Despite the pop-crossover success, what remains intact with this collection (enhanced by a 64-page booklet showcasing backstories, clippings and exclusive interviews) is the not-very-subtle stab at politics, sex and religion through their performances (captured in this compendium with Live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall) and numerous recording sessions both at EMI Studios and the BBC. Notwithstanding the ahead-of-its-time Fresh Liver from 1973 — a thoroughly strange concept, more akin to performance art than music — the Scaffold’s penultimate song from 1974 “Liverpool Lou” was a farewell to the trio’s chart success until their ‘official’ breakup in 1977.
Mike McCartney left music in 1981 to concentrate on photography. Roger McGough’s most recent poetry book is The Collected Poems 1959–2024. John Gorman reunited with McCartney and McGough at the Bristol Slapstick Festival in 2023 and then held their final get-together that same year at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool.
Photo: Mike McCartney
Scaffold: A Box of Scaffold releases April 25 on Esoteric Recordings as a 105-tracklist CD set plus DVD, including the 1969 BBC TV special Live at the Talk of the Town, a promo film for “Thank U Very Much” and a BBC TV broadcast of Music, Music, Music featuring “Lily the Pink.” You can pre-order from Cherry Red, Rough Trade, Proper Music and Amazon in the US and UK.
This is great news. Thanks for the write-up!
Really enjoyed reading this. Thank you. It reminded me that I saw them perform when the trio joined Grimms in the early 70s. A brilliant anarchic evening!