1966 Songs: Secret Agent Man

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You’re already singing this song. I should just end this one here and go on to the 1956 song. Happy 60th birthday to one of the great classic songs of the 60s, from one of the glaring omissions from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Secret Agent Man - Johnny Rivers Yes, from the “We’ll put Scritti Politti in first” department comes Johnny Rivers, who’s 83, retired from touring, and still not on the list of nominees for the Hall of Fame. Ah, but fear not, New Edition won the fan voting this year. Let’s talk about this song. There was a British production company called ITC, and they made a lot of programs (sorry, programmes ) in the 60s that ended up being syndicated in the US. One of them was Danger Man, starring Patrick McGoohan. In the UK, the theme song was written by Edwin Astley, who happened to have been Pete Townshend’s one-time father-in-law (father of Pete’s first wife Karen Astley). However, that didn’t make the theme song cool enough for the US syndicators, so they went looking for another theme. Enter P.F. Sloan, the man best known for writing Barry McGuire’s hit “Eve of Destruction.” The US syndication run also changed the title of the show, from Danger Man to Secret Agent Man, so there was that. (Side note: when syndicated here, they also changed the name of the series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) to My Partner the Ghost.) All of that doesn’t really matter, because we got a cool-as-all-getout song from it. And, in some of the greatest foreshadowing you can find in a song, the song contains the line, “They’ve given you a number and taken away your name.” The year after this song was released, Patrick McGoohan returned to the small screen…in the all-time classic series The Prisoner, where he was a number, not a name. Secret Agent Man Written by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri Recorded by Johnny Rivers From …And I Know You Wanna Dance!, 1966 A pretty face can hide an evil mind: