“the wild angels” is now a quinquagenarian (happy 50th!)

FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY, one of the quin­tes­sen­tial ’60s rock & roll sound­track al­bums to one the ’60s quin­tes­sen­tial biker ex­ploita­tion moves was re­leased. Ac­cording to Wikipedia, THE WILD ANGELS movie saw its gen­eral re­lease to Amer­ican the­aters on this day. The sound­track album of the same name was re­leased by Tower Records, an im­print of Capitol Records.

So July 20, 2016, is the fiftieth an­niver­sary of this classic movie and equally classic album!

So Happy Birthday to everyone in­volved in the making of the movie and the making of the sound­track music and album—especially Mike Curb and Davie Allan!!!

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Pro­duced and di­rected by Roger Corman for Amer­ican In­ter­na­tional Pic­tures (AIP), the movie starred Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra with Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. The movie was a suc­cess: with a budget $360,000, it took in more than $15,000,000 at the box office!

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This Spanish lan­guage poster is a much tastier—if less dramatic—design than the some­what garish de­sign on the Amer­ican poster. Need­less to say it was the cheesy Amer­ican poster that set the tone for the many posters of sim­ilar movies that followed.

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The sound­track album, THE WILD ANGELS (Tower T-5043, mono, and DT-5043, duo­phonic stereo), was a best-seller, reaching #17 on Bill­boards Top LP’s on Oc­tober 15 of that year. It set the pat­tern and the stan­dard for what seemed like an end­less string of AIP sound­track al­bums pro­duced by Mike Curb’s Side­walk Pro­duc­tions fea­turing Davie Allan & The Ar­rows in some mu­sical ca­pacity. ¹

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Peter Fonda plays a biker named Blues, and Side­walk head honcho Mike Curb and buddy Davie Allan wrote a theme song for the char­acter. Allan and his Ar­rows recored it as part of the sound­track. It’s a fuzz-toned gem that per­fectly fits the opening scene of the movie where we meet Blues and his Harley.  ²

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Seven months after the pre­mier of the movie, Tower lifted the track from the album and is­sued it as a single. Ex­cept they got the title in­cor­rect: it should be “Blues’ Theme.” The record was rea­son­able suc­cess: it peaked at #33 on Cash Box, where it spend twenty-three weeks on the Top 100. On Bill­board, it only reached #37 and spent six­teen weeks on the Hot 100. (PS: They also spelled Davie’s last name in­cor­rectly on some press­ings.) ³

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FEATURED IMAGE: The image at the top of this page was cropped from the full-sheet poster for the movie. I flipped the image around as it gives a better sense of mo­tion when you open this page up in your browser. Davie Allan has a web­site you can check out here. Fi­nally, check out “the com­plete davie allan & the ar­rows 45 discog­raphy and price guide” here on Rather Rare Records.

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FOOTNOTES:

¹   If you’re gonna be shop­ping for a copy of this album, go for the mono—record made with Capi­tol’s “Duo­phonic stereo” should be left to com­pletists col­lec­tors and aural masochists.

²   Davie Allan didn’t get his due as song­writer for more than twenty years. All the records and tapes and early CDs credit Mike Curb solely as the son’s writer.

³   Copies of Tower 295 can be found cred­ited to ‘The Ar­rows Fea­turing Davie Allen,’ ‘Davie Allan And The Ar­rows,’ and ‘The Arrows.’

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