‘Heavy Petting’ at 55: Dr. Strangely Strange Take Psych Folk Further
By the time ‘Heavy Petting’ appeared in September 1970, Dr. Strangely Strange were already slipping out of the place that had made them.
Not in any dramatic, career move kind of way, nothing that obvious. It just started to move away from what it had been. People still reach for that old line about the band “going heavy”, and although it sounds tidy, like a decision was made, it doesn’t really hold up when you listen. It’s the same band, just pushing the sound a bit further out.
Adrian Whittaker’s ‘Fitting Pieces To The Jigsaw’ helps pin down where the album really sits. By the time it reached the shops on 11 September 1970, the band were already deep into touring, doing press, and working within a more structured routine. The earlier Dublin way of doing things hadn’t disappeared, but it was no longer leading the process, and the music begins to reflect that.
“The aim was to be an electrified acoustic band”
The early Strangelies came out of the Dublin scene around The Orphanage, where musicians and artists mixed freely and songs were worked up in flats, pubs and shared places. It was just the way things happened, songs coming out of people playing together, being around each other, if you like. Whittaker places this period firmly within a wider creative circle rather than a conventional band setup. There was overlap with visual artists, poets, and other musicians, and the music developed in that environment. That’s what ‘Kip Of The Serenes’ captures. It sounds open, with ideas left to develop, and Joe Boyd’s production allowed that to remain intact. The record sat loosely alongside the British folk-psych movement, though it carried a different tone, less whimsical in places, more grounded in traditional forms even as it stretched them. That version of the band didn’t really survive once things picked up. After ‘Kip Of The Serenes’, there were more gigs, proper tours, press commitments, and a growing sense that things were moving forward whether they were ready or not. As Whittaker notes, this was a very different situation from the one that produced the debut. There was more structure and more expectation, even if some of that earlier looseness was still there. Put simply, they had to get louder. Not because they were after a different sound, but because the setting had changed. Bigger venues were opening up, louder bands were becoming the norm, and once they found themselves on bills with groups like Mott the Hoople, it became clear straight away. The old acoustic approach didn’t project in the same way.
Tim Booth doesn’t dress it up:
“The purely acoustic Strangelies were sonically a bit feeble compared to a band such as Mott the Hoople. The aim was to be an electrified acoustic band.”
That phrase does most of the work. Electrified acoustic. ‘Heavy Petting’ doesn’t turn into a rock record. It keeps the same approach to writing and arrangement, just carried with more presence.
Some of the album was shaped at Sound Techniques in London, but it really came together during the Dublin sessions. This was no longer the loose Dublin environment. Sessions had to be scheduled, … decisions made. Booth recalls it:
“Our roots were in acoustic sessions played in domestic settings, bedrooms and sometimes pubs. But after touring it was an adventure to beef up the sound while maintaining the song integrity… The exuberance of youth.”
Whittaker’s account reinforces that this was not a smooth transition. The band were adjusting to a different way of working, and the results reflect that. Some arrangements feel more settled, others still in flux. It’s a record made in the middle of that adjustment rather than after it.
“A drummer put manners on us”
Bringing in Dave Mattacks added another layer. Up to that point, rhythm had been handled fairly loosely. Mattacks didn’t take that away, but he gave it something firmer to sit on.
“A drummer put manners on us… Listening to a drummer of the calibre of Dave Mattacks was thrilling.”
You can hear the difference. The songs are held in place more firmly, even when they open out. The looseness remains, but it’s set against a clearer structure. Then there’s Gary Moore, still in his teens but already with a defined sound. His presence might have pushed things in a different direction, but it doesn’t.
“It worked very naturally with Gary Moore… It was irrelevant whether it was acoustic or electric.”
On ‘Sign On My Mind’, his playing sits within the arrangement, adding weight without altering the band’s direction.
Now to ‘Heavy Petting’ 55th Anniversary Edition, which not only revisits the album but gives a much clearer picture of how it was actually put together. The expanded edition from Think Like A Key Records reframes the album in practical terms. Rather than being a finished album reissue, it opens up the sessions around it. The set brings together rare studio outtakes, upgraded radio sessions and previously unreleased live recordings from 1970. The studio outtakes are particularly telling. You hear songs being approached in slightly different ways, with arrangements adjusted from take to take. Acoustic parts sit differently against the electric backing, instrumental sections are handled with varying emphasis, and the overall shape of a track can shift depending on how it’s played. The radio sessions pull things back further. Without the same level of studio layering, the material sits more directly. In places, it edges closer to the earlier feel of ‘Kip Of The Serenes’. The live recordings add something else again. As Whittaker notes, the band’s stage presence had a different character, more open, more theatrical, and that comes through here. The performances move more freely, sometimes extending passages, sometimes tightening them. Taken together, this material makes it difficult to hear ‘Heavy Petting’ as a settled work. It feels more like one version among several that were being worked through at the time.
So if the album feels slightly out of place, it’s because it was. Whittaker details how it arrived on Vertigo at a time when the label was pushing heavier acts, and how it ended up sitting alongside releases like ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath without a clear position of its own. There was no obvious single, and the record never quite found a clear place on the label. The visual presentation didn’t help. The band’s earlier identity gave way to something more aligned with the label’s expectations, which never quite fit.
Booth was clear on that:
“Being released with the heavy brigade was curious.”
The Irish context added another complication. As Whittaker suggests, the band didn’t sit easily within the Irish scene at the time, which left them slightly outside the usual circuits.
“What magic we had was always obvious live”
Talk to anyone who saw them at the time and the same point comes up. The records only captured part of it.
“Without doubt what magic we had was always obvious in the live performances.”
The live recordings in the new edition give a better sense of that. They’re less contained, more open, and closer to how the band actually functioned in front of an audience. Booth even suggests that ‘Kip Of The Serenes’ may have caught that side more naturally. Which leaves ‘Heavy Petting’ as something else again, a record shaped as much by circumstance as by intent.
The new restoration doesn’t alter the record, but it brings things into clearer focus.
“Yes there is more separation now and freshness sonically.”
You hear it in the detail. Parts that once sat together are easier to separate, and the arrangements come through more clearly.
“It continues what started with Heavy Petting”
‘Heavy Petting’ often gets treated as a one-off.
Booth doesn’t see it that way:
“I would think that ‘Anti-Inflammatory’ continues with what started with ‘Heavy Petting’.”
The later material, again released through Think Like A Key Records, doesn’t revisit the past directly, but it carries forward similar ideas. The balance between structure and openness, the way arrangements are handled, the approach to layering.
Seen from that angle, ‘Heavy Petting’ isn’t an outlier, it’s part of a longer line. What keeps ‘Heavy Petting’ engaging isn’t so much where it sits, but how it shifts from one idea to the next… it doesn’t settle into one approach for long. One piece moves toward a fuller sound, the next pulls things back, and the record lets those differences stand. As Whittaker shows, it makes more sense to hear it as part of a process… Touring, the move into the studio, the musicians involved, all feed into how it turned out.
Heard now, especially with the additional material alongside it, the album sits more clearly within the band’s wider story. They never quite fitted into the folk scene they were linked to, nor the heavier circuit they were briefly grouped with, and that worked in their favour. What’s left is a record that still sounds like its own thing, which is more than can be said for most of their contemporaries.
Pawle described their early performances as “an acoustic melange”, pulling together Dylan, skiffle, fragments of folk, and whatever else seemed to fit. Booth remembers audiences often unsure how to react. “They didn’t dislike it; they just didn’t know what was happening.” That reaction followed them. They played folk clubs because they were acoustic, but as Pawle put it, “our repertoire only contained snatches of folk material.” They were never fully part of that world. At the same time, they weren’t a rock band either. That in-between position, which ‘Heavy Petting’ would later reflect more clearly, was there from the beginning. Even their circle of friends underlines that sense of overlap. Both Gary Moore and Phil Lynott passed through their orbit in those early Dublin years, moving between scenes in a way that mirrored the band’s own position. As Booth recalled of Moore, “this skinny boy from Belfast… his left hand making shapes on an invisible guitar,” soon became part of their extended set-up, contributing wherever needed.
Seen in that light, ‘Heavy Petting’ doesn’t come out of nowhere. It follows directly from a group that had always worked across boundaries, never quite settling into one place, and never sounding entirely like anyone else.
Klemen Breznikar
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