The Sweet Pills @thesweetpills - Tumblr Blog

The Sweet Pills book is out now!

#1960s women #1960s music #the sweet pills #1960s #girls with guitars #fiction #books and reading #1960s icons #1960s fashion #beautiful women

'For one week in 1967 the Sweet Pills had the number one US single and the number one album in both the US and UK.' No Way To Beehive, Chapter 28.

From the reviews: 'The Sweet Pills are the girl band that we never knew we were missing. Tim Pieraccini has installed them seamlessly into that frenetic decade and by the end of the book you could be forgiven for forgetting that they were not really there at all.'

#the sweet pills #1960s music #1960s women #1960s #girls with guitars #beautiful women #1960s fashion #fiction

Sweet Pills model Solomia Tkachivska (as herself) holding the Pills second album, Can You Take The Sweet Pills?

From an Amazon Review of the book: "If you love 1960s culture, the British music scene, or stories about friendship, ambition and creative tension, this book absolutely delivers. It has that rare quality of feeling both nostalgic and fresh at the same time."

#the sweet pills #1960s music #1960s women #beautiful women #lps

Three of The Sweet Pills albums: Spleen et Idéal (July '66), Can You Take The Sweet Pills? (July '68) and Overdose (May '70)

[Models: Solomia Tkachivska, Lizzie Bates, Jessie Bhattacharya, Abby Elizabeth, Millie-Lu Lane]

#the sweet pills #1960s music #1960s women #1960s #girls with guitars #lps

interstellar-superdrive

I love you DVDs. I love you Blu-rays. I love you vhs tapes. I love you creative menus. I love you behind the scenes extras. I love you commentary tracks. I love you actually well done restorations. I love you random prizes that come with DVDs sometimes like a small toy or stickers. I love you trailers that are burned in my mind. I love you the smell of getting a brand new dvd. I love you the sound of opening a new one. I love you the whirring sound when I put a disc in my old ass dvd player that still works. I love getting to own you forever and ever. I love you DVD sections at stores. I miss you Blockbuster. I love you libraries that have DVDs and stuff. I love you physical media.

I hate you greedy companies that don't give a damn about physical media or the audience. I hate you the 50000 different streaming services. I hate you rights expiration.

Three Beatles nerds talking about their favourite photos of the boys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WxOAIqQT-w&t=2122s

#the beatles #george harrison #paul mccartney #ringo starr #john lennon

Yeşim: [Catherine] said—and I think I remember correctly: “We are going to show these Beatles what they should be doing.”

Penny: ‘One of the things that I very quickly learned about Catherine was that she was not restricted by what seemed possible. She dreamed big—and more often than not, she made the dream into reality.'

Various shots from the Sweet Pills' photo session on July 2nd, 1968.

l-r, final picture - Audrey, Zee, Penny, Catherine, Yeşim

[Models: Lizzie Bates, Abby Elizabeth, Jessie Bhattacharya, Solomia Tkachivska, Millie-Lu Lane]

No Way To Beehive: The Story of The Sweet Pills: Amazon.co.uk: Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Lavelle, Mr David: 9781919515502: Books

#the sweet pills #1960s music #1960s women #girls with guitars #beautiful women #1960s #fiction

Zee, speaking about the 1966 US tour in support of the Beatles: ‘I got a few letters that said they came to see the Beatles but thought we was even better! Only a few, mind—but that was somethin’. And all from girls. Even had one girl from Seattle turn up on my [London] doorstep six months later, wantin’ to be a drummer!’

[Model: Abby Elizabeth]

No Way To Beehive: The Story of The Sweet Pills: Amazon.co.uk: Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Lavelle, Mr David: 9781919515502: Books

#the sweet pills #1960s music #1960s women #woc beauty #fiction

For The White Room Sessions, the Sweet Pills had decided to bring something personal each, and for Penny, the choice was not difficult. This bear was given to her by her mother, who had died only six weeks before the photo shoot.

[Model: Jessie Bhattacharya]

No Way To Beehive: The Story of The Sweet Pills: Amazon.co.uk: Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Lavelle, Mr David: 9781919515502: Books

#the sweet pills #1960s women #1960s music #teddy bear #vintage

The White Room Sessions; as a tribute to her Uncle Ronnie, Audrey sits surrounded by film books and magazines from his shop, Road To Utopia. ‘Uncle Ron…well, it’s no exaggeration to say he transformed the world for me. He had so many fascinating things to show me, so many amazing stories to tell. Looking back, obviously I can see he may not have been quite so personally involved in some of the stories as he led me to believe, but he never lied to me—just embroidered a little! That was the beginning of my love of films and music.’

[Model: Lizzie Bates]

No Way To Beehive: The Story of The Sweet Pills: Amazon.co.uk: Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Lavelle, Mr David: 9781919515502: Books

#the sweet pills #1960s women #cinema #old hollywood #1960s

The White Room Sessions, July 1968. Determined not to be a spoilsport, Cat did her best to 'rock out' for the camera...

[Model: Solomia Tkachivska]

#1960s music #the sweet pills #1960s women #girls with guitars #catherine jurieux

Yeşim Forbes-Williams, from the White Room Sessions, July 1968

Comments from former Roedean pupils: Patricia Adams: ‘Even people who didn’t much like Yeşim – and there were more than a few – would always be ready to listen to her sing.’

Barbara Hill: ‘There was always the feeling that she was grooming herself for stardom. Well, she was a star—you only had to look at her to see it. You can’t fight that kind of charisma.’

[Model: Millie-Lu Lane]

No Way To Beehive: The Story of The Sweet Pills: Amazon.co.uk: Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Lavelle, Mr David: 9781919515502: Books

#1960s music #the sweet pills #1960s women #beautiful women #1960s

61 years ago today, 22nd March 1965, The Sweet Pills (well, most of them) went to London for a meeting with Decca executive Gerald Fowles. For Fowles, Yeşim represented most of the promise of the group, and he attempted to interest her in a solo career, but Yeşim stood firm with her bandmates. 'We are a group. There are five of us. The name is The Sweet Pills. That is all we are here to discuss.'

l-r Audrey, Zee, Penny, Cat, Yeşim [Models: Lizzie Bates, Abby Elizabeth, Jessie Bhattacharya, Solomia Tkachivska, Millie-Lu Lane] No Way To Beehive: The Story of The Sweet Pills: Amazon.co.uk: Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Pieraccini, Mr Tim, Lavelle, Mr David: 9781919515502: Books

#1960s music #the sweet pills #1960s women #beautiful women #books and reading

From the White Room Session, July 2nd 1968. The Pills with some of their favourite LPs; Bob Newhart, Walker Brothers, Louis Armstrong, Mireille Mathieu, The Supremes. You can be sure Cat was responsible for Dylan's prominent place in the composition... L-r: Audrey, Penny, Zee, Cat, Yeşim.

#the sweet pills #1960s women #1960s music #lps #bob dylan #the supremes #the walker brothers #bob newhart #mireille mathieu #louis armstrong #1960s

Penny on Zee: ‘She has this way of seeing straight, of getting to the heart of something. She would come up with the most astounding things, things that were so simple and obvious after a moment’s thought, but…seemed to come right out of the blue.’

Zee: ‘Ah, Penny. She’s a sweet one. They never asked to take photos of me on my own, y’know? They kept asking for just her, and she never would. I wouldn’ta minded. Her and Yeşim—they were the ones the papers wanted. And o’ course not many of ’em saw it was really Cat they should’a been talkin’ to.’

[Models: Jessie Bhattacharya, Abby Elizabeth]

#the sweet pills #1960s music #1960s #beautiful women #female friendship

Amazon invited me to review my own book, then refused to publish...

Amazon invited me to review my own book. Twice! This is presumably because I bought two batches of author copies. And then they refused to publish because it was self-promotion. Entirely fair enough, but Marcus Markou got away with it with for Papadopolous and Sons. Anyway, here it is...

I’ve given it five stars. I certainly wouldn’t give that to everything I’ve written, but I think this is the book that comes closest to what I had in my head when I started writing. I reread it many many times in preparation for publication, and it still moved me, and excited me. Although there is virtually nothing from my own life in here, it’s a very personal book.

It’s not a book for everyone. There’s no plot, as such, no planned evolution and intensifying of obstacles—just a series of events. In that way it mirrors real life. It’s a book for people who are interested in character, in discovering other hearts and minds and watching them relate to those around them. That’s what I personally love most in stories; people in relation to each other. Group dynamics. Alliances, rivalries, moments of friction, moments of vulnerability and moments of understanding.

This is the story of five young women who went on a journey together. The journey itself has some appeal, I hope—all the glamour and sweat and complexity of the music business, enhanced by the magical aura of the 1960s—but the essence of the tale is the journey into the hearts of these characters. There were many all-female bands in the 60s, but none that had significant chart success (obviously excepting groups of vocalists—The Supremes, etc.). That seemed to me a great shame, so I tried to create a mix of young women who might plausibly overcome the barriers of sexism and tradition and stand alongside the best-remembered bands of the era. And I tried to make them real. I hope you’ll think I succeeded—and perhaps you might even wish they were real.

Thanks for reading.

#1960s music #1960s women #the sweet pills #indie author #girls with guitars

Just to celebrate the day; here The Pills are singing their early feminist anthem, 'Here We Stand'.

l-r Penny, Audrey, Yeşim, Zee, Cat.

[Models: Jessie Bhattacharya, Lizzie Bates, Millie-Lu Lane, Abby Elizabeth, Solomia Tkachivska]

#the sweet pills #international womens day #girls with guitars #1960s women #1960s

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