Reg Presley

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Reg Presley (born June 12, 1941 in Andover , England , † February 4, 2013 there ; real name Reginald Maurice Ball ) was a British singer and songwriter in the successful band The Troggs in the 1960s .

Life

Reg Presley founded the Emeralds as a school band with three other teenagers from his hometown Andover . Two members dropped out and Presley and Ronald Bullis continued with two new musicians from 1964, first as troglodytes and then as troggs . At that time he was still using his real name Reg Ball. In addition to music, he worked as a bricklayer until the band had their breakthrough in 1966 with Wild Thing . Then he got the stage name Reg Presley. In addition to being the singer of the Troggs, he wrote some of their biggest hits like With a Girl Like You and I Can't Control Myself . He also wrote Love Is All Around , which was the band's last big hit at the end of 1967. The song was covered in 1994 by the British band Wet Wet Wet for the film Four Weddings and a Funeral and, at 15 weeks at number 1, is the third most successful song in British chart history. He also played the concise ocarina solo in the band's biggest hit, Wild Thing .

When the success waned the following year, both Reg Presley and Ronnie Bond (formerly Bullis) tried each other as solo singers, but without success. At the end of the 1980s he belonged to the supergroup The Corporation , which consisted of five stars from the beat music era (besides him, Brian Poole , Mike Pender , Tony Crane and Clem Curtis ), but which only existed for a short time. The Troggs were revived again and again, but they only appeared occasionally and often changed the line-up, only Presley was always there. Until the early 1990s, new albums were also occasionally released, including a 1992 collaboration between the Troggs and members of the US band REM entitled Athens Andover , named after the two bands' places of origin.

Due to the success of Love Is All Around in 1994 as a single and film music, Reg Presley earned a share of the royalties and invested the money in researching the phenomenon of crop circles and other supernatural phenomena. He was particularly interested in UFO abductions and contacts with aliens. In 2002 he published a book about it called Wild Things They Don't Tell Us .

Reg Presley was with the Troggs until 2012. In January of this year he announced his retirement when he fell ill while performing in Germany and was subsequently diagnosed with lung cancer. He had been a chain smoker for most of his life. Presley died of the consequences on February 4, 2013 in his hometown of Andover.

Discography

Songwriter

  • With a Girl Like You (1966)
  • I Can't Control Myself (1966)
  • Give It to Me (1967)
  • Night of the Long Grass (1967)
  • Love Is All Around (1967)
  • Little Girl (1968)

Singles

  • Lucinda Lee (1969)
  • Wichita Lineman (1969)
  • Let's Pull Together / Young and Beautiful (1970)
  • 'S down to You Marianne (1973)
  • Wild Thing ( Suzi Quatro & Reg Presley, 1986)

Works

literature

  • The new rowohlt Rock Lexicon 2.0 by Siegfried Schmidt-Joos and Wolf Kampmann, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8032-1827-8 (PC DVD-ROM)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gary James' Interview With Reg Presley of The Troggs classicbands.com, accessed February 5, 2013
  2. ^ The cave rocker with the ocarina , Frankfurter Allgemeine, February 5, 2013
  3. ^ "Wild Thing": Troggs singer Reg Presley is dead , Spiegel Online, February 5, 2013
  4. ^ Reg Presley in Music Obituaries, The Telegraph, February 5, 2013
  5. ^ Reg Presley's 'Wild Things They Don't Tell Us' , BBC Home, July 2003
  6. ^ Troggs lead singer Reg Presley dies , ABC News, Feb. 5, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Presley, Reg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ball, Reginald Maurice (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British singer and songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Andover , Hampshire, England, United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH 4th February 2013
Place of death Andover , Hampshire, England, United Kingdom