Not the Duncan Browne!!!---A nostalgic glimpse at Duncan Browne’s Give Me Take You, ONE OF THE GREAT LOST RECORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In spite of my appearance to the contrary at the time, and knowing full well that photographic evidence exists which taken at face value might contradict what I’m about to say, I was never a hippie. I was enchanted by a lank-haired beauty who wore peasant blouses and long, flowing batik style skirts. That much is true, and among other great gifts of knowledge she gave me, there was a record. The most fanciful, melodic wash of tuneful, psychedelic pop music I’ve ever heard, and one of the great lost records of 1960’s: Duncan Browne’s Give Me Take You (Immediate 1968).

I don’t recall if I ever actually witnessed this creature tripping lightly through a glen or over some hill and dale affair, leaving a trail of rose pedals or dandelion spikes behind her, but when I play this record, I can picture it. And you know, it really makes me wonder___ what might have happened if that college boy hadn’t swooped down from the school on the hill to whisk her away from the humdrum of high school.

I was consoled by Duncan Browne. I’m not kidding. I thought Give Me Take You was better than my first drunk because the kind of dizzy it made me filled my head with dreams. I read Byron, Keats, and Shelley; I started and trashed many a poem. Still under the spell of Give Me Take You when I finally got a girlfriend for real, I told her that after we graduated we’d move to London where I’d be a tram conductor because I liked saying tram. I was so goofy with it that I mistook the triple exposed photo of Duncan Browne on the back cover for a band picture, thinking this is too much genius for just one guy. And I remember asking myself if they should not be called The Duncan Browne.

But it was the front cover that really captured me. The design was credited to Browne, his songwriting partner David Bretton (the occasionally mawkish word guy) and the mysterious Derek Burton,  and depicted a King Richard’s Faire type of situation with a young bowl-coiffed knight holding a sword and kneeling before a fairy princess whose best days have passed her by, all of it encircled by art deco style vines.  Real Arthurian chic.

Eventually I put it together that Give Me Take You was mainly the product of a singular mind, and I thought, this it, I’ve found the Holy Grail.  No, I mean it. Let’s just say the record captured my personal zeitgeist, which might be an oxymoron, but I don’t care. "Chloe in the Garden" still makes me weep. The carefully plucked melody line (by Browne on classical guitar), the strings, orchestrated by Browne but brought in at producer Andrew Loog Oldham’s (that’s right, friends) insistence, and haunting choir make Bretton’s poetry unshakable:"Now the garden takes possession/ as the light grows dim/Chloe is walking dreamlike/ it doesn’t seem like/ she’ll pass."

Browne played most of the instruments himself. The only significant session guy around was longtime Stones associate Nicky Hopkins on keyboards. His playing is spare and understated throughout. Additionally, Duncan Browne did all of the arranging as well as singing, at times doubling his voice to provide call and response choruses or multiplying his voice uncountable times to create the record’s choir effects. I can still do without "Dwarf in a Tree," but that’s a small complaint when I consider the Shakespearean richness of "The Ghost Walks," the metaphysical wordplay of "I Was, You Weren’t," and the homage to flying myths in "The Death of Neil," which features some weird backward tape looping.

With the strings, choirs and special effects, you’d think Give Me Take You might sound busy and over-produced, but Oldham and Browne blend these elements with great subtlety. Somehow it comes out sounding every bit as romantic and fanciful as Days of Future Passed, Astral Weeks, or the trippiest Incredible String Band stuff, which I do not say lightly since I consider them to be the tippity top of psychedelic Britcentric folk rock music.  

For one record though, Duncan Browne, who died from cancer at 46 in 1993, did it better than anybody.