Making Time

Inspired by a football chant, the freakbeat classic that pioneered the violin bow and feedback in rock:“No, no, this is how it’s supposed to be!”

“I’ve always been quite happy with the band just being this little thing in the mid-60's,” says The Creation’s guitarist and main songwriter, Eddie Phillips. “We got into flower-power stuff by the end, and I always thought The Creation was a bit like a flower – we came out, bloomed and then it went.”

The band began as beat group The Mark Four, with a residency in Germany and gigs with pre-Who combo The High Numbers. Throughout these formative years, Phillips was experimenting with feedback and using a violin bow on his Gibson hollow-body to the delight of audiences and the disgust of engineers.

“I’ve always enjoyed Eddie’s playing,” says The Mark Four’s John Dalton, later to join The Kinks. “[Producer] Shel Talmy summed it up by saying ‘Eddie Phillips is the best unknown guitarist ever.’”

With their debut single, 1966’s raucous, transcendent “Making Time”, The Creation invented freakbeat, but a year later they’d split after failing to crack the UK Top 40. “They were a terrific group, and should have gone a lot further,” Talmy explains today. “If they hadn’t broken up, they could have become equal to The Who, as they were certainly as good.”