The record
At a glance
- Artist
- The Pretty Things
- Released
- December 1965
- Album
- Second studio album
- Original tracks
- Twelve
- UK label
- Fontana TL 5280
- Original format
- Mono LP
Why it matters
The moment raw R&B starts becoming a Pretty Things writing language
Get the Picture? is neither a second version of the debut nor a premature psychedelic record. It captures The Pretty Things while their repertoire is still rooted in American blues and soul but original writing is becoming strong enough to determine half an LP.
Phil May and Dick Taylor co-write Buzz the Jerk, the title track and We’ll Play House. Can’t Stand the Pain adds producer-drummer Bobby Graham to that partnership, while Graham and May share You Don’t Believe Me.
The other six tracks are adaptations, but they are not interchangeable covers. Slim Harpo’s Rainin’ in My Heart, Jimmy Witherspoon’s I Had a Dream and Bert Berns’s Cry to Me require different balances of restraint, pleading and attack.
The twelve-song sequence is extremely compact. No original LP track reaches three minutes, so identity has to emerge through vocal grain, guitar pressure, rhythmic attack and the speed with which each arrangement reaches its centre.
The original five-person lineup remains Phil May, Dick Taylor, Brian Pendleton, John Stax and Viv Prince. That matters because Prince left near the end of 1965; later descriptions should not retrofit Skip Alan across the whole album.
The album is often encountered as an eighteen-track CD. The extra Get a Buzz, Sittin’ All Alone, Midnight to Six Man, Me Needing You, Come See Me and L.S.D. are valuable period recordings, but they alter the length and chronology of Fontana TL 5280.
The LP matters in the band’s development because originals and borrowed songs now operate at the same level of confidence. The Pretty Things no longer need a Bo Diddley title to sound recognisable.
Its transitional status is therefore productive. The record preserves the debut’s bodily danger while introducing compact pop structure that will later be stretched, orchestrated and turned psychedelic.
Britain, 1965
A second LP within the group’s first eighteen months
The Pretty Things formed in 1963 and issued their first singles in 1964. Their self-titled debut reached the British Top 10 in 1965, establishing a public image built around raw R&B, long hair and volatile performance.
Get the Picture? arrived in December 1965, only months after the debut. Fontana issued the British LP as TL 5280 in mono.
The album contains twelve tracks divided six per side and runs just under thirty minutes. Its speed reflects contemporary British LP practice as well as the band’s preference for immediate arrangements.
Viv Prince remained the album drummer but departed around the end of 1965. Skip Alan became his successor in the following phase.
The original performing lineup also includes rhythm guitarist Brian Pendleton and bassist John Stax. Both would leave before Emotions was completed.
Bobby Graham holds writing credits on You Don’t Believe Me and Can’t Stand the Pain. The title track, Buzz the Jerk and We’ll Play House are May–Taylor originals.
The LP also draws on songs associated with Slim Harpo, Jimmy Witherspoon, J.J. Jackson and Bert Berns, among others. The guide reports released writer credits rather than assuming authorship from best-known performances.
Six later period tracks were appended to the 1998/2000 compact-disc programme. Their presence explains the common 46- to 48-minute duration, which is not the original LP length.
The first lineup
The original five at the edge of a drummer change
May’s voice is the fastest route from six different writing sources to one album identity. He turns disbelief, pain, seduction and dream into variations of confrontation rather than polite interpretation.
Taylor’s guitar supplies attack but also growing arrangement discipline. Short fills, riff punctuation and chord pressure distinguish songs without requiring extended solos.
Pendleton’s rhythm guitar helps create the dense mid-range that makes the album feel louder than its short duration. His role is structural even when lead guitar attracts more attention.
Stax keeps blues-derived patterns mobile. Bass movement gives May room to delay or push phrases while preventing the compact songs from becoming rigid.
Prince’s drums make volatility precise. Stops, cymbal accents and a forceful backbeat turn the band’s unruly image into performances that can end decisively in two and a half minutes.
Graham’s presence in the writing map should not be confused with a documented album-wide performing role. The public credits here distinguish composition from the five-person band.
The originals reveal May and Taylor learning to write for these exact players. Buzz the Jerk and the title song would lose much of their character if separated from Prince’s beat and the two-guitar pressure.
The group’s treatment of outside songs is collective arranging in practice. Different composers enter, but the same rough vocal-guitar-rhythm balance makes the LP cohere.
R&B under pressure
Compressed guitars, hard vocals and growing pop shape
You Don’t Believe Me begins with accusation rather than introduction. Its quick structure and vocal insistence make disbelief the album’s opening condition.
Buzz the Jerk reduces dance, insult and riff to less than two minutes. The title sounds like a command, while the band treats rhythmic repetition as physical provocation.
Get the Picture? is equally compressed and self-aware. The group name, image and question mark meet in a song that asks whether listeners understand the stance being performed.
Can’t Stand the Pain slows the emotional clock slightly. Guitar and vocal tension allow hurt to accumulate without abandoning the album’s economy.
Rainin’ in My Heart requires more restraint. The band keeps the lament recognisable while roughening its surface through May’s vocal and the rhythm section’s weight.
We’ll Play House closes side one with domestic language that never sounds settled. The performance treats intimacy as negotiation and role-playing.
You’ll Never Do It Baby reopens with challenge. Repetition becomes accusation, and the group uses attack rather than ornament to transform the borrowed material.
I Had a Dream gives May a slower blues frame. The voice carries more space, revealing that intensity does not depend entirely on speed.
I Want Your Love restores direct demand in a short R&B form. Guitar and drums press the title forward without pretending desire is gentle.
London Town localises the LP after several American-derived songs. The performance turns the city into lived scene rather than tourist description.
Cry to Me makes vulnerability public. May keeps the invitation rough enough that comfort and desperation remain in tension.
Gonna Find Me a Substitute ends through replacement rather than reconciliation. A firm rhythm makes the threat practical, closing an album filled with unstable relationships.
Track guide
Twelve originals and adaptations in under thirty minutes
You Don’t Believe Me
Graham and May open with a credibility dispute. The arrangement reaches its accusation immediately, using May’s clipped phrasing and Taylor’s guitar responses to make mistrust physical. It introduces an album where speech rarely guarantees agreement.
Buzz the Jerk
May and Taylor compress dance command and insult into a hard rhythmic miniature. Prince’s beat and the two guitars make the title a bodily instruction. The track’s speed reveals arrangement control beneath the group’s deliberately unruly surface.
Get the Picture?
The title song turns perception into confrontation. A compact riff, vocal challenge and abrupt economy ask whether the listener understands the band’s stance. The question mark matters: recognition is demanded but never assumed.
Can’t Stand the Pain
Graham joins May and Taylor in a song that gives hurt more sustained weight. Guitar pressure accumulates around the vocal instead of simply racing forward. Pain becomes the first feeling the sequence cannot dismiss with attitude.
Rainin’ in My Heart
The Slim Harpo-associated lament lowers the temperature. May’s rough voice resists smooth melancholy, while the band preserves enough space for the song’s weather image to settle. Adaptation becomes character rather than imitation.
We’ll Play House
The first side ends with May and Taylor placing intimacy inside a game. Domestic promise sounds conditional because the rhythm remains tense and the vocal never relaxes fully. The song closes the side without resolving its distrust.
You’ll Never Do It Baby
Side two begins with repeated judgement. The band’s clipped attack turns an outside composition into a Pretty Things challenge, balancing mockery and frustration. Its directness resets the album after the comparatively restrained side-one close.
I Had a Dream
Jimmy Witherspoon’s song gives the group a slower emotional frame. May stretches phrases while bass and drums allow more air between gestures. Dream becomes a blues memory rather than the psychedelic mechanism later Pretty Things records would explore.
I Want Your Love
Desire returns as blunt demand. The short arrangement gives guitar and voice no decorative refuge, making want sound urgent and self-centred. Its economy sharpens the geographical shift that follows.
London Town
Bert Russell’s city song moves the American-derived repertoire into the band’s own urban environment. The performance is lively rather than picturesque, presenting London as movement, crowd and opportunity. For one song, place replaces romantic conflict as the main subject.
Cry to Me
Another Russell composition asks for vulnerability, but May sings the invitation with an edge that complicates consolation. The band balances soul melody with garage abrasion. Comfort is offered by someone who still sounds capable of confrontation.
Gonna Find Me a Substitute
The finale answers failed belief and unstable love with practical replacement. A decisive groove makes the threat sound actionable rather than theatrical. The record ends by moving on, not by repairing any relationship opened earlier.
Twelve encounters
Disbelief, pain, desire and urban performance
The LP is not a concept album, but disbelief connects its opening to a series of relationships built on challenge, pain and replacement.
Seeing and understanding meet in the title. Getting the picture means reading both a romantic situation and the band’s carefully cultivated public identity.
Domesticity appears as play rather than security in We’ll Play House. The phrase suggests roles that can be entered and abandoned.
Weather and dream create internal spaces within an otherwise outward album. Rainin’ in My Heart and I Had a Dream slow confrontation into reflection.
London Town provides the only explicit local geography. Its city movement contrasts with the American song traditions feeding most of the record.
Desire moves from demand to consolation and finally substitution. I Want Your Love, Cry to Me and Gonna Find Me a Substitute form three unlike relational positions.
The outside compositions are not thematic filler. Their subjects extend the May–Taylor originals’ concern with unstable communication.
The album’s brevity is expressive. Feelings arrive as immediate claims because no song has time to build an elaborate defence.
Fontana TL 5280
A mono Fontana LP before the archival expansion
Fontana issued TL 5280 as a mono LP in December 1965. The original object contains twelve tracks and runs roughly half an hour.
The title and cover image connect music with the band’s confrontational visual identity. Get the Picture? asks the buyer to read sound, clothes, faces and attitude together.
Bryan Morrison’s sleeve notes belong to the original presentation and reflect the management framework around the group’s early success. The six/six side division places We’ll Play House and Gonna Find Me a Substitute as contrasting endpoints: conditional domestic play versus declared replacement.
Expanded CDs can make the album appear eighteen tracks long. The original cover and labels define the boundary at twelve.
December 1965
December 1965: album craft without the debut’s chart peak
Fontana released Get the Picture? in Britain in December 1965 as The Pretty Things’ second studio LP.
The album did not match the debut’s number-six British chart peak. Its reputation consequently grew more through catalogue listening than through an equivalent commercial moment.
Contemporary listeners received a group still associated with raw R&B, but half of the LP now carried direct May and Taylor involvement in the writing.
The original mono presentation concentrates guitars, voice and rhythm into a dense centre. Later remastering from session tapes made the same performances easier to hear in detail without changing the album’s authorship.
The six additional period tracks include strong later singles and can dominate retrospective discussion. Their quality should not erase the specific twelve-song statement released in 1965.
The album’s later critical standing often places it among the strongest British beat and R&B LPs of its year, especially for the balance of inherited material and emerging originals.
The second album
A stronger bridge than its transitional label suggests
Get the Picture? shows the Pretty Things becoming writers before they became studio conceptualists. That stage is essential to understanding how S.F. Sorrow could later emerge from the same core.
The title track and Buzz the Jerk preserve the band’s early violence in original compositions rather than borrowed blues forms. Cry to Me and Rainin’ in My Heart demonstrate that adaptation could broaden emotional scale without domesticating May’s voice.
The album also captures the final LP phase of Viv Prince. His departure closes the most notorious original lineup even as the writing grows more controlled.
Pendleton and Stax remain central to the dense two-guitar and bass foundation. Later personnel narratives should not rush past them toward Waller and Povey.
The expanded edition is valuable because its six additions trace the move into 1966, including Midnight to Six Man and Come See Me. It is archival chronology, not the original side three.
The mono-only British release has become part of the album’s identity. Its impact depends on concentration rather than stereo spectacle.
The record’s legacy is strongest when heard as a finished second album, not merely a bridge. Twelve fast decisions create a coherent performance language of their own.
Original programme
Twelve originals before six period additions
The original album contains twelve tracks, six per side. It was issued in Britain as a mono LP. Get a Buzz and Sittin’ All Alone are additions, not original album tracks.
Midnight to Six Man, Me Needing You, Come See Me and L.S.D. also belong to the later appendix.
The original side break follows We’ll Play House. Viv Prince is the album drummer; Skip Alan belongs to the following phase. The expanded digital duration should not be reported as the length of TL 5280. Writer credits include both band originals and outside R&B or soul compositions.
A listening path
Separate authorship, then hear one performing identity
- Begin with the first four tracks as a run of original or co-written material and identify what already belongs specifically to May and Taylor.
- Compare Rainin’ in My Heart with Can’t Stand the Pain to hear adaptation and original writing address hurt differently.
- Respect the side break after We’ll Play House, then let You’ll Never Do It Baby reset the attack.
- Use I Had a Dream as the album’s slow centre before the final four tracks accelerate through desire, city, consolation and replacement.
- Stop after Gonna Find Me a Substitute for the original LP.
- Then play the six bonus tracks chronologically as a separate account of late 1965 and 1966.
- Return to the title track and ask what the band’s own writing has learned from the outside songs surrounding it.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Get the Picture? tracks, writers and review — AllMusic
- Expanded eighteen-track programme — Spotify
- Original British Fontana catalogue — 45cat album discography
- Original TL 5280 edition record — EIL archival listing
- The Pretty Things catalogue history — AllMusic
- Institutional band discography — MusicBrainz