The Ballad of Cherry Flavor

I'd always steered clear of Marmalade until quite recently. I think it was partly from dislike of their name, and partly from their cover of Obla-Di-Obla-Da, surely an example of Paul McCartney at his most teeth-grindingly twee.

So it was with some surprise that I discovered that their later work was melancholic, wistful and really quite special. If you don't already know it, I urge you to seek out Reflections of My Life, their 1969 number one. Its haunting description of teetering on the edge plays like a valedictory address for the sixties itself and is surely one of the most mournful singles ever to top the charts.

Their follow up single, Rainbow, ploughed a similar furrow, though with more propulsion and spirit to it, but it's Rainbow's B-side, The Ballad of Cherry Flavor (or Flavar, as it's spelt on the single) that I've pulled out here.

The song is an address to the eponymous Cherry, a 'Bunny Girl' who was dating the band's drummer Alan Whitehead at the time, destined to wait West End tables while Whitehead caroused his way around town. The song is not condemnatory, merely resigned and weary with it all. This is the way of world, it seems to say, and poor Cherry might as well accept it.

The Ballad of Cherry Flavor is an exquisite, delicate sketch that tells us so little, yet so much. I hope Cherry Flavor was okay in the end, I think she deserved better.