I'm Telling You Now

"I'm Telling You Now" was written by the hit songwriter Mitch Murray and Dreamers' front-man Freddie Garrity. Mitch Murray wrote hits for a number of British groups during the '60s, most notably Gerry & The Pacemakers, Georgie Fame, and Manfred Mann. This was their only #1 hit on the US charts, although they appeared on the Top 40 in the US a few more times.

As you might guess, these lads were from Manchester, England, which puts them off to the side of the "Mersey Beat" and "Brum Beat" music movements of the '60s - however they are still sometimes considered honorary members of both "British Invasion" music waves, since they were in the general vicinity and they shared a songwriter with Gerry & The Pacemakers, after all.

The immortal Lester Bangs' essay The British Invasion is included in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, bless 'em: "...Freddie and the Dreamers, who had no masterpiece but a plentitude of talentless idiocy and enough persistence to get four albums and one film soundtrack (accompanying their now-forgotten version of A Hard Day's Night, Seaside Swingers) released in the US, plus various other LPs for which they may or may not have been given full credit and which they shared with other certifiable nonentity bands which may or may not have been even less talented than they were." Nothing stings like a good Lestering.

More from Lester: "Like Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs of "Wooly Bully" fame, Freddie and the Dreamers represented a triumph of rock as cretinous swill, and as such should be not only respected, but given their place in history." See, and you thought he didn't like them!