Eoin is a regular attendee of my Thursday night quiz and is always there to ably assist his knowledgeable wife with the quiz, anyway, he said to me, “I love Python Lee Jackson’s In A Broken Dream and if you have any more background on this great song, I would love to hear it.” Well Eoin, you shall.
To set the scene for those who don’t know the song nor the act, Python Lee Jackson is a band not a person and they formed in Sydney, Australia and they had three different attempts at success. Originally formed in December 1965 by Scottish-born singer Frank Kennington and Melbourne-born drummer Mick Liber. They operated for three years and in that time, 14 different members that came and went. They split in 1968 and some members moved to the UK. Bentley had already had enough and became a journalist, but the band reformed later the same year with a line-up of David Bentley on keyboard and vocals, Dave Montgomery on drums, Mick Liber on guitar and newly recruited bass player Tony Cahill who had been a member of the Easybeats. They began playing at a couple of small clubs in London including the Vesuvio club on Tottenham Court Road where, in early 1969, they were spotted by John Peel. Peel had formed his own Dandelion record label and signed the band.
David Bentley recalled on his website, “I happened to be sitting in front of a typewriter and knocked out the lyrics to In A Broken Dream on the spot. Later that same night I hammered out the melody on an L100 Hammond organ. Once I’d finished, I realised that I didn’t want to sing my own song. I still wonder about that. Perhaps I was enjoying working on Fleet Street. Perhaps I’d become hooked on striped suits, spotty ties and regular pay packets. Either way, while I was happy to play Hammond on the track, the band would have to find someone else to handle vocal chores.
They recorded a version of In A Broken Dream which Peel produced, but no one was happy with David Bentley’s vocals including Bentley himself. Bentley, in an interview with Record Collector magazine remembered, “The session went badly at first. The band hadn’t done much playing in London. Everyone was feeling uptight and the first run-throughs of In A Broken Dream were less than promising. Radio presenter John Peel, who was producing the track for his Dandelion label, sent out for beer and we drank quite a lot of this stuff in the interests of heightened relaxation.”
David continued, “I was walking past a record shop and I heard Joe Cocker singing With A little Help From My Friends and decided that I wasn’t the right guy to sing my song. When I told the other members of the group that I wouldn’t be singing, they were very pissed off. Next thing I remember, I’m in [drummer] David Montgomery’s Chelsea flat teaching the lyrics to Rod Stewart. Rod, as always, sang well but, because the lights had been doused, he missed the last verse, repeating the first one instead, filling in at one point with a hummed mmm mmm mmm which subsequent cover versions have faithfully copied.”
Liber remembered, “When I returned to the UK from Australia in 1968, John Peel offered me a record contract after attending a gig we played at and this led to the recording of the Python Lee Jackson tapes. I also joined the Ashton, Gardner and Dyke band where I played a part in recording The Resurrection Shuffle which turned into an international hit.”
Rod Stewart gave his side of the story, “I recorded In A Broken Dream in 1970 because this friend of mine ran a sports car shop, so he said, ‘come and sing the song as a demo’ and I said, OK, what’s in it for me? He replied, ‘Well, we haven’t got any money, but I can give you a new set of carpets for your car’ I said, fair enough and that was it, all forgotten about until Maggie May became a hit in 1971 and the record company decidedly, wisely, to put that song out.” Rod’s friend was managing the band at the time.
In A Broken Dream was recorded at Youngblood Studios with producer Miki Dallon who had already produced hits for The Sorrows, Neil Christian and Don Fardon and released on Youngblood’s own label. The song tells of despair and the thought of what could have been opening with, ‘Every day I spend my time, drinkin’ wine, feelin’ fine, waitin’ here to find the sign’. Someone who used to care, as the second verse says, ‘In the days between the hours, Ivory towers, bloody flowers. Push their heads into the air, I don’t care if I ever know, there I go’. It also tells of a long forgotten relationship and looking back on it, ‘Don’t push your love too far, your wounds won’t leave a scar. Right now is where you are, In a broken dream’. It’s not clear if the relationship or if the love interest had passed away, the latter would seem more likely from the end of the second verse, ‘On the pad before my eyes, paper cries, tellin’ lies, the promises you gave from the grave of a broken heart.’
The song climbed to number three in the UK singles chart in September 1972 and charted again in 1995 via a cover version by the rock band Thunder who did it justice in a slightly less bluesy way.
In 2009, Rod released a 51-track album called the Rod Stewart Sessions 1971-88 which featured many early takes as well as some alternate versions of his well-known songs. Some he had re-recorded and In A Broken Dream was one of them and featured Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. The album never charted in the UK, so didn’t earn the songwriters a lot of money, in 2015, however, the American rapper A$AP Rocky released a single called Everyday with the full artist credit as A$AP Rocky featuring Rod Stewart, Miguel and Mark Ronson. Rocky had paid to use the In A Broken Dream sample and, although not a big hit – 56 in the UK and 97 in America – It began earning Bentley some more money in royalties.
Bentley, as well as being a journalist, wrote as a foreign correspondent, a food critic and freelanced as a travel writer. He said, “My favourite covers are by Thunder and the sensitive, introspective reading by singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams. I was tickled when Python Lee Jackson’s original version turned up on the art house film, Breaking The Waves.
The song’s producer Dallon approached Top of the Pops to help boost the sales, “But says the producer wasn’t keen on showing Python Lee Jackson on screen without Rod Stewart fronting them,” he told Record Collector. On the back of Radio Luxembourg and Radio One airplay the song began to climb the chart and when it hit the top 10, they had no choice but to relent. Dallon informed the band of their imminent appearance on the show, “We all tuned in with nervous anticipation,” Dallon continued, “Our faces dropped when Jimmy Savile announced, ‘Here is Python Lee Jackson’s In A Broken Dream, as Mick Liber’s screaming guitar opened up but to my horror accompanied by the show’s dance troupe Pan’s People who pranced around looking totally out of place. It looked bloody awful. They only played it one time – thank goodness it was enough to shoot us into the Top five.”