The Wurzels posing with, would you believe it, cider (Image: Supplied)
The scorching summer of 1976 is remembered by music historians as the moment punk rock exploded. But for those of us who were too young or too square to have been pogoing at the 100 Club, that heatwave was soundtracked not by the Sex Pistols or the Clash but… The Wurzels. Surely you remember the “Scrumpy and Western” novelty act whose celebrations of the earthier aspects of rural Somerset life saw them top the charts during that long, hot summer? Despite being now largely forgotten The Wurzels have a significant claim to fame. But first a potted history – and it’s quite a tale. The Wurzels were formed in the mid-sixties by Somerset native Alan “Adge” Cutler, a former cider factory worker, already pushing 40. He took the band’s name from “mangelwurzel”, a variety of sugar beets used as livestock fodder.
They released their first single Drink Up Thy Zyder in December 1966, the week before I was born – which may explain my enduring fascination with this rather odd band. The song celebrated cider and rural fecundity, detailing the love story of a couple who go on to have nine children ending “Tho’ I’m old and grey when I gets me way, I still go there [the conjugal bed] twice daily…” It became their signature tune – Bristol City still play it after rare home wins – and almost (but not quite) made the top 40. For the next decade No 45 was as good as it got. The Wurzels gigged relentlessly and recorded sporadically but to little acclaim outside the west country. But if Adge Cutler never quite managed to be a rock star in life, he managed it in death.
Tommy Banner of The Wurzels performs on the Avalon stage at Glastonbury 2008 (Image: Getty)
On the night of May 5, 1974, while approaching the Severn Bridge as he travelled home from a gig in Hereford, Cutler fell asleep at the wheel, overturning his MG sportscar on a roundabout in Chepstow. He died at the scene and in so doing followed Eddie Cochran, whose 1960 death crash was only 30 miles away, in Chippenham, as Britain’s second most famous singer to die this way – until Marc Bolan eclipsed him in Barnes in 1977.
After almost a decade without a single hit, The Wurzels might have broken up at this point but instead banjo player Pete Budd stepped up to be The Wurzels’ new frontman – and, in a shock turn of events, he led them, briefly, to unprecedented success.
The Combine Harvester, was actually a cover of a cover of a novelty record: Melanie’s 1971 rollerskate-craze-themed Brand New Key had been rewritten to celebrate farming machinery by Irish comedy act Brendan Grace before The Wurzels brought the rejig to the attention of the wider world. The song went to number one in that sizzling June, when Bjorn Borg won his first Wimbledon on hay-coloured grass, and it stayed there for two weeks.
The follow-up was also a reworked novelty record. I am a Cider Drinker was set to the tune of another novelty record, Una Paloma Blanca, which had already been a UK top ten hit twice, for its Dutch Eurodisco creator, George Baker, and then for future pop paedophile Jonathan King. The Wurzels replaced the white dove motif with a celebration of scrumpy and took the song to its highest slot yet, No 3, in September.
An early single from Adge Cutler and The Wurzels (Image: Supplied)
The follow up to Cider, Farmer Bill’s Cowman, scraped in at number 32 – and they have never troubled the top 40 since. And this leads to their historic claim to fame: if measured by the metric “months of success divided by years in existence”, The Wurzels are almost certainly the least successful act (of any act to have had any hit at all) in global music history – just six months of success in almost 60 years of gigging.
Because – remarkably – The Wurzels are still going. In fact I went to see them, just before Christmas. To my surprise, they had sold out The Garage in Highbury, north London. To my further surprise, the raucous crowd was predominantly young – most looked like they hadn’t been born until long after 1976. But still they were going mad for these old boys who were dressed like characters from a Thomas Hardy novel.
Budd and fellow veteran member Tommy Banner ran through their well-worn patter – “This next one was a number one hit… But not for us” (before a cover of The Kaiser Chiefs’ Ruby) – to wild cheering. The bar ran out of cider. The merch stall was so overrun they had no T-shirts left. It was the most warmly-received gig I have been to in years.
But despite the rapturous reception, it must require a certain drive when in your 80s to press on like this, playing small venues, after so long consigned by the wider world to what Spinal Tap described as music’s “where-are-they-now file”.
And overlooked they certainly are. Google, for example, will tell you that, since The Searchers finally retired last summer (after 68 years) the second longest running UK group, after The Rolling Stones, is The Stranglers (formed 1974). What rot – it’s the Wurzels. Surely the 50th anniversary of their golden summer will see the Wurzels finally attract some attention: the “legends” slot at Glastonbury 2027 would be fitting for these local Somerset heroes?