The Honeycombs had one of the biggest hits made by Joe Meek, Britain’s eccentric low-budget answer to America’s equally eccentric big-budget producer Phil Spector.
It was the third No.1 single he produced at his Holloway flat, which served as his DIY studio, and he recorded it at the actual audition where the band played it to him for the first time.
The band had been given the song weeks earlier by a pair of songwriters, Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who had seen them playing in a nearby Islington pub, the Mildmay Tavern in the Balls Pond Road.
The duo were impressed by the band’s lead singer, Dennis D’Ell, and especially their female drummer Anne ‘Honey’ Lantree – a novelty for a group in the early 1960s. The cameraman certainly liked her too, with her bouffant beehive, pink blouse.
It’s an absolute banger of a tune, and Lantree’s prominent drum sound was enhanced by the group stamping their feet on the staircase, where the ever-inventive Meek had fixed five microphones to the bannisters with bicycle clips – while another band member banged a tambourine directly on to another microphone.
One critic has ambitiously claimed, largely on the basis of the discordant instrumental break, that it’s the first post-punk tune. Quite a feat for a song that came out in 1964 – long before punk (let alone post-punk) had been invented.
Have I The Right topped the UK charts – surely the first time a female drummer did that – and became a million seller for The Honeycombs, who would never have another top ten single, though they came close the following year with a song called That’s The Way (featuring Lantree duetting with lead singer Dennis D’Ell).
The North London band came by the song in fortuitous circumstances at a Mod pub in the Balls Pond Road called the Mildmay Tavern, where they were performing under their previous name of The Sheratons a few weeks before that fateful audition for Joe Meek.
A pair of songwriters called Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley had seen them there before and been impressed by the group’s lead vocalist, Dennis D’Ell, and the fact that they had a female drummer, so they offered them a few of their songs.
When they played them to Meek, he was so impressed by this one that he decided to record it right there and then on the spot in his Holloway flat, where he created his own lo-fi wall of sound for previous chart toppers Telstar by The Tornados and John Leyton’s Johnny Remember Me.
It would be an exaggeration to say Ms Lantree’s success opened the door for a new wave of female drummers but Karen Carpenter once cited her as the inspiration for her to take up drumming.
She had been working in a hair salon in Hackney when the owner Martin Murray was impressed by her talent on a drum kit left there by a customer, and invited her to join his amateur band The Sheratons, in which her brother John played bass guitar.
They changed their name to The Honeycombs, after her nickname and previous profession as a hairdresser, at the suggestion of their record company, Pye.
While there are still few female drummers in bands, Lantree was a trailblazer in her day and there were two more in British bands in the same year The Honeycombs came to fame.
First came Tina Ambrose of The Ravens, who enjoyed a minor hit with I Just Wanna Hear You Say (I Love You), followed by Megan Davies of The Applejacks, a Birmingham band who had a big hit with Tell Me When.