Andrew Hickey
speaker
2,253 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 3 Sep
Andrew Hickey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
But while it sounds like something that must have been in their repertoire since the beginning, according to the producer they didn't know the song at all before he suggested it.
Surprising enough in itself, but what's more surprising in retrospect is that the producer who suggested they record that hard R and B song was David Gates.
He was now best known for being the leader of the seventies soft rock band bread.
Writing, producing, singing, and playing all the instruments except drums on the group's number one hit, Make It With You, among other hits.
Reports differ on how much Gates contributed to the Magic Band's initial sessions, other than playing keyboards on Diddy Wa Diddy.
Some participants have Gates choosing all the material, arranging it, and rehearsing the band in the studio, while others say he had little involvement with anything and just nodded through what they were already doing.
My guess, and it is only a guess, but an informed one after reading everything I can about the group's early recordings, is that Gates was more involved in Diddy Wa Diddy and arranged that and directed the band, and less involved in the three Van Vliet originals that the group recorded in the same session.
Frying Pan Here I Am I Always Am and Diddy Wa Diddy's B side Who Do You Think You're Fooling?
The first Van Vleek composition to be released.
Gates also wrote and played slide guitar on the group's second single, recorded at the same session, Moon Child.
Gates later said of that track.
I do recall that the record company was shocked when they heard Moonchild, as it was so out there compared to what I guess they had expected from the group, which, in retrospect, is funny given where the group's music would eventually go, but is probably accurate compared to the songs Van Vliet was writing at the time.
To my ears, Moon Child sounds like a dry run for Gates' song for the monkeys, Saturday's Child.
Moonchild has a more psychedelic lyric, but the general feel of the two songs is surprisingly similar, and both are of course very different from the work Gates would become known for.
Surprisingly, Diddy Wire Diddy started to do fairly well on local radio, starting on KMEN in San Bernardino, where one of the DJs, Oliver Pudlian, born John Ravenscroft, but who had just started going by the stage name John Peel, was impressed enough by the band name to push for the record to go onto the station's playlist without having heard it.
Van Vliet and Peel would have a long, mutually beneficial relationship once Peel returned to the UK and became one of the most important DJs in British radio.
He was, in more ways than one, the British equivalent to Rodney Bingenheimer, who we talked about in the GTO's episode.
Luck wasn't in the magic band's favour though, because while the record was doing well on the West Coast and made the playlists of several important radio stations, another band on the East Coast, The Remains, who were just about to have their biggest moment of fame as one of the support acts on the Beatles final tour, released their own cover version of the song.
Releasing the two singles at the same time got both bands a certain amount of press coverage.
But it did prevent either record from becoming a hit.
Showing 181–200 of 2,253 · page 10 of 113
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