In April 1966, American magazine Time ran a front-page feature, captioned “You Can Walk Across It On The Grass”, that proclaimed London to be the most swinging city in the world and leader of contemporary pop culture.
The concept of Swinging London – a zeitgeist-capturing collision of the most daring fashions, the coolest actors/models, the grooviest pop music – had already been fermenting for a year or two, but Time's feature propelled it from well-kept local secret to internationally-acknowledged phenomenon. Over four hours and three CDs, ‘You Can Walk Across It On The Grass: The Boutique Sounds of Swinging London’ documents a scene that, 60 years later, still grips the public's imagination.
From the notorious Profumo affair that brought down the Government and ended the age of deference to Bobby Moore accepting a still-gleaming Jules Rimet Trophy from Queen Elizabeth in the high summer of 1966, ‘You Can Walk Across It On The Grass’ celebrates a period in which Carnaby Street and the King's Road seemed to be the centre of the universe.
Era-defining hit singles from The Kinks, The Who, Small Faces, Manfred Mann and The Troggs are joined by solo performers (Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield etc) and a plethora of groups that played their brand of R&B/soul/jazz at such clubs as The Flamingo, The Cromwellian, The Scotch of St. James and, of course, The Marquee.
In addition to various young mods-about-town (The Action, The Creation, David Bowie), we feature cheeky, kinky singles from such names as Avengers pair Honor Blackman and Patrick Macnee, Twiggy and Mandy Rice-Davies, and a clutch of instrumentals that were hits in their own right (‘I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman’) or gained popularity as TV/radio themes (The Avengers, Man In A Suitcase).
With a 48-page booklet that features some fabulous Swinging London images, ‘You Can Walk Across It On The Grass’ is a nostalgia-inducing time capsule of the original Cool Brittania era. Climb aboard for the ride but, in the words of Dave Dee and his pals, “Hold tight!”