Precious Pop Pearls: The Story Behind David McWilliams – “The Days of Pearly Spencer”

Some songs are far ahead of their time, and slip through the cracks of the charts without ever receiving the recognition they deserve. “The Days of Pearly Spencer” by the Northern Irish singer-songwriter David McWilliams is one such song. Released in the autumn of 1967, it sold more than a million copies worldwide, topped the European charts and yet never reached the official charts in its own country. It is the story of a remarkable talent who, through circumstance, politics and bad luck, never reaped the success he deserved. And yet, more than half a century later, the song has lost none of its shine.

David McWilliams

David McWilliams was born in 1945 in Belfast and grew up in Ballymena, a small town in Northern Ireland. It was there that his musical life took root. Inspired by Sam Cooke and Buddy Holly, he learned to play guitar at a young age. His ambitions stretched beyond the local dance floor: McWilliams began writing his own songs, initially as a hobby alongside a job at a factory in Antrim.

His demos caught the attention of impresario Phil Solomon, founder of Major Minor Records, who brought him to London and paired him with arranger Mike Leander. Solomon introduced McWilliams to the Irish songwriter Dominic Behan, an environment that further sharpened his songwriting. McWilliams was naturally introverted and uncomfortable in the world of show business, more at ease in a pub in Ballymena than on a large stage. That reserved nature would hinder his commercial career, but stood in stark contrast to the openness with which his songs were written.

In the world of British pop music of those years, he stood alongside names such as Donovan and a young Cat Stevens: singer-songwriters who placed lyrical depth above glamour and blended folk and pop into something that at the time had no proper label. Contemporaries and critics compared his work to that of Bob Dylan. That the name David McWilliams never reached the level of recognition of those names beyond a small circle of admirers remains one of the greatest injustices in the history of pop music.

The Days of Pearly Spencer

The song was released on 6 October 1967 as the B-side of the single “Harlem Lady”, on the Major Minor label. The fact that the B-side would overshadow the A-side into obscurity said enough about its strength. McWilliams wrote it about a homeless man he had encountered in Ballymena. Musically, it was given a lush orchestral arrangement by Mike Leander, with a chorus that sounded as if it were being sung through a megaphone. This low-tech effect was in fact achieved by recording the vocals from a telephone box near the studio.

The lyrics documented the life of a man at the bottom of society, moving through streets of broken paving, past people who walked barefoot and looked older than their years. The song fitted into the spirit of 1967, the year of social awareness and artistic renewal, yet still sounded different. Where the spirit of the time leaned towards psychedelic colour, McWilliams chose an almost documentary-like sobriety, reinforced by a chorus that sounded like a voice from another dimension.

The song gained wide exposure through Radio Caroline, of which Solomon was a director. Double-page advertisements appeared in all major music magazines, and the front page of the New Musical Express called it the song that would blow your mind. Yet the BBC refused to play the song. Radio 1, the BBC’s new pop station, did not include it in its playlist because Solomon was also a director of Radio Caroline, the pirate station that had just been outlawed by the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act of the Wilson government.

The result was paradoxical: the song could be heard everywhere, yet sold barely anything in its home country. In France and the Netherlands, it reached number one. In Belgium, it reached number two. The song eventually sold more than a million copies worldwide. It also found an audience in Australia and New Zealand. McWilliams himself never financially benefited from that worldwide success due to mismanagement.

Marc Almond

The most influential cover version of the song comes from the English singer Marc Almond, known for his work with Soft Cell. In 1992, he released a recording, produced by Trevor Horn, for the album “Tenement Symphony”. Almond added an extra verse that he wrote himself, and that gave the song a more optimistic tone. Pearly Spencer was given a way out of his misery, an artistic choice that was not seen by everyone as an improvement, but one that did bring the song back into the spotlight. The version reached number four in the British charts and number eight in Ireland. It was an ironic turn: the song that the BBC had ignored thirty years earlier still reached the British top five thanks to a cover version.

The song had already inspired other artists. The Italian singer Caterina Caselli released an Italian version in 1968 under the title “Il Volto Della Vita”, with entirely new lyrics, which reached number four in Italy. The New Zealand band The Avengers also reached number four in their own country in December 1968. In the 1980s, a Discover version even reached number one in Belgium. The song travelled through decades, across genres and languages, without ever losing its recognisable core.

David McWilliams Vol. 2

“The Days of Pearly Spencer” appeared on McWilliams’ second album, “David McWilliams Vol. 2”, which was released on the same day as the single and reached number twenty-three in the British album chart. It was a striking achievement for a record whose accompanying single did not appear in the official charts.

Mike Leander, who had previously worked on the string arrangements for “She’s Leaving Home” by The Beatles and “As Tears Go By” by Marianne Faithfull, gave the album a sound that balanced baroque pop and folk rock. It fitted into a broader movement that emerged in 1967: a year in which “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” set the standard for the album as an art form, and in which artists such as Scott Walker demonstrated that pop music could also carry literary ambition. Within that company, McWilliams was a worthy but undervalued voice.

The three albums he released in rapid succession in 1967 and 1968 all entered the British album chart, a sign that there was indeed an audience that appreciated his work. But because the accompanying singles received little airtime in his own country, the commercial breakthrough in the United Kingdom never materialised.

Can I Get There by Candlelight?

After the success of “The Days of Pearly Spencer” on the continent, McWilliams continued to build his reputation in Europe. His single “Can I Get There by Candlelight?” from 1968 was used as the theme for a popular Dutch radio programme, which made him a familiar name in the Netherlands. He toured Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands and recorded a number of songs in Italian for the Italian market.

McWilliams continued recording and touring across Europe, sometimes together with The Dubliners. In the 1970s, he released albums on Parlophone and the Dawn label, but commercial success remained absent. In 1978, he returned to Northern Ireland, where he mainly performed in smaller venues. In 1987, he re-recorded “The Days of Pearly Spencer”, this time in a slower version with a synthetic production that paved the way for its rediscovery by Marc Almond five years later.

David McWilliams died on 8 January 2002 at the age of 56 from a heart attack. He left behind fourteen albums, an impressive body of work for someone whose name is absent from most music history books. His daughter Mandy Bingham released her own version of the song in 2017, exactly fifty years after the original release. The song lives on, not because it received the recognition it deserved at the time, but because the best songs do not concern themselves with charts, radio bans or mismanagement. They simply endure.