Title Fight: "Follow Me"

Photograph of Colonel Kakudji, Congo by Eliot Elisofon, 1967

So I got excited when I realized I had three songs called "Follow Me" in my collection, particularly because all three were by fairly obscure '60s garage acts. I was primed to do a three-way garage-rock Title Fight until I realized that two of the three were actually the same song.

Different versions of the same composition are excluded from Title Fight by the official rules, so I had to choose between the two versions I had of Warren Zevon's 1966 "Follow Me", which he recorded with Violet Santangelo under the name Lyme & Cybelle - it ended up being his first minor hit. It's a great psych-pop song with some good boy-girl vocal interplay, but I went with a cover recorded by the Californians in 1967. The Californians were a small-time soft rock band from Wolverhampton, UK that mixed some psychedelic sounds into their pop singles for Decca and Fontana. Their single "The Cooks of Cake and Kindness" is the best thing they did, but their version of "Follow Me" is a lot of fun, featuring a manic harpsichord riff and great backing vocals.

So Lyme & Cybelle recorded a "Follow Me" in 1966, the Californians covered it in 1967, and, in 1968, North London's the Action recorded their own "Follow Me". By '68, the Action were no longer George Martin's pick to be the "next Beatles" after a string of failed Martin-produced singles. They weren't signed to Parlophone anymore, and the band was collapsing due to drug use and interpersonal issues. In a bid to get Polydor Records to sign them, the Action wrote and recorded a set of heavy psych-rock demos. Polydor didn't bite, and the Action split without releasing the songs - in 2002, the demos were collected and released as Rolled Gold. The songs are pretty rough, but that works in their favor in most cases, making Rolled Gold a great "lost album" from the era worth a listen. One of the best songs in the set is "Follow Me", which is built on a great riff that runs through the whole song, except for the brief solo section in the middle - it gives "Follow Me" a rolling momentum bolstered by the fact that the song doesn't really have a verse-chorus structure of any kind.

I usually like my '60s garage rock with some overtly twee-psych flourishes, but in this case the Action's "Follow Me" pretty clearly bludgeons the Californians into submission.

Winner: THE ACTION

"Follow Me" by the Action

"Follow Me" by the Californians