The Only Ones - Biography
By Oliver Hall
The Only Ones are a London band best known for the 1978 single “Another Girl, Another Planet.” It would be misleading to call the Only Ones an English punk band and leave it at that, since their music, lyrics and senses of style and humor bear little resemblance to those of the Sex Pistols, the Clash and their hydra-headed following. As head Only One Peter Perrett told Mojo, “the New York punk bands were more like us than the English ones.” Where English punk bands rejected most of the musical vocabulary of 60s and 70s rock, the Only Ones’ instrumental proficiency and songwriting aesthetics were continuous with that tradition, from which they took as much sweetness as they did spiteful bohemianism.
Singer-guitarist-songwriter Perrett’s first band, England’s Glory, is invariably compared to Loaded-era Velvet Underground and Lou Reed’s early solo material, though Perrett has said he would prefer to be compared to his hero, Bob Dylan. Perrett started playing with guitarist John Perry in late 1975, and the following year the pair hooked up with drummer Mike Kellie, who had been playing in bands since the early 1960s—first in the VIPs, who became Art, which transformed into Spooky Tooth with the addition of Gary “Dream Weaver” Wright. One day in 1976 bassist Alan Mair, previously of 60s Scottish group the Beatstalkers, went to Manno’s Studios to audition for another band and happened upon an Only Ones rehearsal. At his website, Mair writes that he was not enthusiastic about the band at first, but soon realized that “in the two years since returning to the music industry, these were the first musicians I’d met who talked passionately about their music. Everyone else I’d met [was] only interested in how much money was involved in the gig.”
The Only Ones’ first, self-released single “Lovers of Today” (Vengeance 1977) caught the attention of the UK music press as well as influential DJ John Peel, for whom the band recorded the first of many BBC sessions in September 1977. The major label CBS, which was then eagerly acquiring punk bands, signed the Only Ones in 1978. The Only Ones had nearly finished recording their first album on their own when they signed the deal, and delivered their second single, the transcendent “Another Girl, Another Planet” (CBS 1978). Two self-produced albums followed that year, The Only Ones (CBS 1978) and Even Serpents Shine (CBS 1978). Perrett was a close friend of New York Dolls guitarist and Heartbreakers frontman Johnny Thunders, and he contributed guitar and vocals to Thunders’s classic solo album So Alone (Real 1978).
Special View (Epic 1979) is a compilation of songs from the first two albums made to promote the band outside the UK, particularly in North America. CBS insisted that the band record its third album with a producer. After abortive sessions with Joy Division producer Martin Hannett, the band recorded Baby’s Got a Gun (CBS 1980) with Colin Thurston, who had worked with David Bowie and Iggy Pop before producing the Human League and Magazine. The Only Ones began a US tour to promote Baby’s Got a Gun opening for the Who but were kicked off the bill after several dates. The Guardian reported in a 2007 interview with Perrett that, in the course of the US tour, Perrett caught hepatitis, got “caught up in a drive-by shooting,” and ran over a parking attendant with his car in Los Angeles. (Perrett later told Mojo that the attendant had grabbed him by the throat.) When a warrant was issued for Perrett’s arrest, he fled the United States and the Only Ones cancelled the remaining dates of their American tour. The band announced it was breaking up and played a handful of farewell shows in the UK in 1981.
Perrett withdrew from music after the breakup of the Only Ones and gained the reputation of a brilliant, mysterious recluse. He assembled a new band called the One in the mid-90s that released the EP Cultured Palate (Dwarf 1994) and the album Woke Up Sticky (Demon 1996) before disappearing. Only Ones compilations, radio sessions and live albums proliferated in the 80s and 90s as the band’s legend grew, among these the excellent set captured on Live (Mau Mau 1989).
Darkness & Light: The Complete BBC Recordings (Hux 2002) is a two-CD collection of the Only Ones’ excellent BBC sessions which, for some fans, surpass the performances on the band’s three albums. The four original Only Ones reunited in April 2007 for an All Tomorrow’s Parties festival curated by the Dirty Three. In an interview with Perrett about the reunion, The Guardian reported that, for Perrett, “the intervening 27 years have been largely consumed by addiction, first to heroin, then to crack.” The Only Ones have continued to perform since reuniting and are recording a new album, their first in almost three decades. The band appeared on The Jools Holland Show in 2008 performing the new song “Black Operations.” The Only Ones maintain an official website at www.theonlyones.biz.