A Musical Interlude (Part 1: The 60s)
Over the years a few Doctor Who inspired songs have been released some sung by fans, others sung by cast members, some just to cash in. Here are a few of them.
The Go Go's - I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek
With the show barely a year old the first attempt to cash in with the popularity of the show for Christmas of 1964 was this piece of pure cheese by The Go Go's (Nothing to do with Belinda Carlisle or Jane Wiedlin) who hailed from Newcastle. I'm not quite sure why you would want to hang a stocking from a Dalek's toes or even if they have toes. The whole song does seem rather odd when you think that the subject of the song is a Nazi inspired killing machine.
Surprisingly (cough) this was The Go Go's only release, also surprisingly this song didn't set the record buying public alight and sunk without trace.
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The Earthlings - Landing Of The Daleks
With Dalekmania sweeping across the nation in 1965 many small record labels saw it as a chance to cash in on the craze, many of them however failed to even chart. Released in 1965 Landing Of The Daleks was one of the first of these recorded by a bunch of session musicians rather than an actual band and this was as far as I can make out was their only release. Due to government rules of the time The BBC could not play the song on the radio due it it featuring a message in morse code which translated said 'SOS The Daleks Have Landed'.
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Roberta Tovey - Who's Who
At last we reach our first cast member recording, well sort of.
Roberta Tovey was the 12 year old girl who played Susan in the two Dalek movies that came out in the mid 60s. In 1965 she released this song. Despite being one of the better songs (In the context of what you've just heard) to be released around this time I can find no record of it ever bothering the charts.
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Frazer Hines - Who's Dr Who?
In 1967 the first television cast member to try his hand at recording a Doctor Who inspired song was by Frazer Hines who played Jamie McCrimmon to the 2nd Doctor. Teaming up with successful 60s songwriting duo Barry Mason and Les Reed they released this early Pink Floyd inspired psychedelic garage fuzz wig out which was much better than it had any right to be. And yes, the song flopped. In fact Frazer Hines said himself years later that his song was the only song Mason & Reed released that ever flopped.
In a bizarre twist of fate shortly after recording Piper At The Gates Of Dawn Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd because of their interest in the music being used in Doctor Who during the 60s were given a demonstration of the new VCS3 synthesizer by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, they later went on to use it heavily in the recording of Dark Side Of The Moon.
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The Crystalites - Doctor Who
As if to prove that Doctor Who was popular not just in the UK but in other various parts of the world in 1969 we have Jamaican band The Crystalites giving us a reggae version of the theme tune which is almost totally unrecognisable from the original.
The 70s to follow soon