This summer song brought Tony Burrows, the Zelig of Seventies pop, his sixth hit single – all with different bands.

It’s tempting to remember “summer songs” as an American phenomenon, with white-toothed golden-haired California boys and girls singing in harmony. But for every Beach Boy or Jan & Dean or Mama and Papa there’s a home-grown Sylvia or Typically Tropical. Or, in this case, The First Class.

And thereby hangs a tale.

Inevitably it involves Tony Burrows, the ubiquitous Zelig of Seventies pop, who one week in 1970 had four concurrent hit singles under four different names (and appeared on Top of the Pops with three of them).

A point each for the correct band and song title: Edison Lighthouse – Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes), The Pipkins – Gimme Dat Ding, White Plains – My Baby Loves Lovin’ and Brotherhood Of Man – United We Stand. And a bonus for his 1967 hit Let’s Go To San Francisco with The Flower Pot Men (with a pre-Deep Purple Jon Lord and Nick Simper).

Anyway, here we are in 1974 and Tony is back again.

The First Class were the studio creation of John Carter (real name John Shakespeare), who wrote this thinly disguised Beach Boys pastiche with his wife Jill and recorded it with his own vocal, attempting an American accent to emulate Brian Wilson, although he came not from California but East Sheen.

When Jonathan King picked the song up for his UK label, at the time churning out hits on a weekly basis, Carter called in his old chum Tony, who used to be in a band called The Ivy League with him in the 1960s, and another bloke called Chas Mills to re-record their own vocals.

It shot to No.13 to give King his umpteenth hit single – and Tony Burrows his sixth. But neither Burrows nor Mills had the time – or inclination – to perform live so Carter assembled a different quintet of musicians to “play” the song on Top of the Pops… none of whom had contributed a note to the song.