Duncan Browne: Give Me Take You (1968)
The 1968 cult classic Give Me Take You was birthed when producer Andrew Loog Oldham requested that Duncan Browne, formerly of failed folk rock band Lorel, record a solo record for Oldham’s Immediate Records label.
Collaborating with lyricist David Bretton, Browne crafted a baroque folk pop gem of a record, albeit not one with mass appeal.
Give Me Take You possesses a peculiarly English tint in much the same way the Kinks’ Village Greeb Preservation Society has an English flavour–but a rock record this is not.
The mood is more Nick Drake, but with a more antique sound. As for Browne’s excellent guitar work, Steve Hackett comes readily to mind. And the songwriting evokes some of Donovan’s flights of fancy.
From the first notes of the opening title track, with ethereal chamber choir, harp and woodwinds, the album creates its own sad, beautiful world and populates it with sad and beautiful characters.
On “The Ghost Walks”, sympathetic neoclassical guitar frames a portrait of an aging thespian replacing reality in his fading mind with a play of his own making.
“On the Bombsite”, the album’s unsuccessful single, places childhood games of make-believe (“we fought a war in time for tea”…“on snow white horses we rode right through our dreams”) against a backdrop of a bombsite as its lyrics hint at the inevitable impermanence of youthful innocence and imagination:
“But there came a giant I couldn’t fight, he was too strong“…“I wish that I had never left, now it’s too late”
And indeed, it was too late.
As the Immediate label collapsed, Oldham cut the sessions for the album short to save expenses. Browne was ultimately billed for 2,000 pounds to cover recording costs.
Give Me Take You remained unavailable for two decades until its first CD release, which was patched together from several vinyl sources due to the fact that the master tapes were missing at the time.
In the 2000’s the album received more suitably reverential treatment, with expanded reissues on specialty labels, mastered from tapes, not vinyl.
Listeners again have the opportunity to appraise a quietly introspective baroque folk record created by a relative unknown barely out of his teens.
See where Give Me Take You takes you.
Listen to: “Give Me, Take You”
Listen to: “The Ghost Walks”
Listen to: “On the Bombsite”
Listen to: “The Death of Neil”
Every Moment Has A Song 