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The Pretty Things were famous and made the most of it, revelling in their image as being even wilder than the Stones and playing up the resulting media and fan hysteria for all it was worth.

The band lived together for a time in a flat in ultra-posh Belgravia, at 13 Chester Street. Brian shared a room with Viv, who was very rarely there as he spent a lot of time hanging out at the flat of singer PJ Proby. Although Phil May recalled that Brian did live there, it seems he wasn't overly happy with what used to go on: "He used to get very perturbed when we’d come back after being away for a few days and there’d be somebody in his bed, a couple in his bed, which we all thought was par for the course it was what you’d expect. You know you’d say excuse me it’s my bed and I need to go to sleep can you finish and get out. With Brian it’d be ‘I’m not sleeping in there'." Personally I would have seen Brian's point of view, but maybe it was the sort of thing, however unacceptable, that he should have expected. Phil seems to have thought that Brian, despite his guitar skills, didn't have the right temperament to be a pop star.

He recalled tensions within the band. Despite Brian's quiet demeanour he managed, probably unintentionally, to push people's buttons at times. Phil told Alan Lakey: "I remember Bryan Morrison berating us and saying you’re so mean to Pendleton, I can’t believe you are so cruel to him and he came on tour with us and in two days he had Brian up against the wall trying to strangle him. Brian would just say these things and he couldn’t bite his tongue..." it would seem that Phil and Brian were not that friendly - on almost every occasion Phil mentions Brian he refers to him as 'Pendleton' which doesn't indicate a close friendship. In his interview with Terry Coates Brian mentioned that he didn't get on that well with Phil and Viv Prince at times - but of course, as he also said, they were all so young then!

Eventually the band would move on and get their own places; Dick recalled that Brian spent a lot of time at his (Dick's) flat, which he shared with their roadie Pete Watts and a friend called Ian Stirling (who would co-write their future hit Honey I Need. A profile of individual band members in a newspaper states that Brian was living in Clapham; when Brian had visited Dick's flat Pete would drive him home which was in a street called Lavender Gardens. In the same article Brian is described as being 5'11' tall (although he looked taller!) with green eyes and blond hair, which always looked immaculate even at its longest. Fellow band members would, however, sabotage Brian's efforts to look smart by winding down the windows of their van to make sure his fine hair deliberately got messed up. Brian would find himself the object of much mickey taking by the rest of the band and the road crew for some reason, which may explain why he never introduced his girlfriend to them...

...her name was Christine and she was 18. Her birthday was exactly a week after Brian's. She was rather unflatteringly described by John Stax as one of “three mousy birds who used to hang around (the band)” but Dick Taylor remembers her as darkish-haired and quite pretty, and adds: “when the same girl and her friends started to appear at gigs and only talk to Brian, who used to disappear from the dressing room, we smelt romance in the air...but Brian was very guarded about his private life...Brian seemed to go to great lengths to keep her away from the band, probably quite understandable really.” Interestingly, the current owner of Brian and Christine's final home together in Maidstone disclosed to me that upon moving into the property she found a suitcase full of letters written by Brian to Christine during his time with the band.

With the fame came the down side: the endless touring. Brian always loved performing but he described touring as “bloody hard work” and hated the travelling side ­ it would clearly become a great strain for him. In his interview with Terry Coates he says: “It was I suppose like a normal business except that for two hours a day you were a superstar and the rest of it you weren't.” He offered no comment about seemingly endless photo sessions that also ensued which must have soon become equally as tiresome.

Although in those days singles were released every two-three months, it was nearer five months before the follow up to Rosalyn was released. Called Don't Bring Me Down, Brian's strong rhythm guitar provides a solid backbone for what was to be their only Top Ten hit. It also received a lot of attention due to its what were then considered risque lyrics. The US banned the record on the strength of the line “I laid her on the ground” - amazing when you consider not only the graphic lyrics that abound today under the protection of a “Parental Guidance Sticker”, but the fact that everyone seemed to miss Phil sing “and then to him I will be true” (followed by an unidentified chuckle).

Brian also started a fashion trend, although certainly not by any means he may have intended! One day whilst out shopping in Carnaby Street with Dick Taylor he bought a black and white striped fisherman's jersey. At the time Brian and the other band members were living at the infamous Chester Street flat. The jersey caught the eye of Brian Jones who basically nicked it and wore it while performing with the Stones on Ready Steady Go, which was seen by Brian Pendleton who pointed out that Jones was wearing a jersey just like the one he had bought, whilst apparently never realising it was the one he had bought. Brian reportedly kept saying “I wonder whatever happened to my jersey like Brian's?” Apparently he never realised it was the same jersey. After Jones' TV appearance, young men all over the UK rushed out an bought one of these jerseys, blissfully unaware that it was actually Brian Pendleton of the Pretty Things who had bought the jersey to start with and so engineered the trend; it must remain forever a “what if...” as to whether so many people would have bought it had the rightful owner worn it on television.

In fact Brian was rather unlucky with clothes! He bought several expensive silk shirts one day just before a gig and left them, still wrapped, in the dressing room, only to find when he returned that they had been stolen. Understandably he was furious!

After recording and turning down releasing Get Yourself Home as a single because it sounded too similar to Don't Bring Me Down, they had their second (and last) Top 20 hit in March 1965 with the fantastic Honey I Need, penned by Dick Taylor and others, with its powerful chord intro and crashing Viv Prince drums leading into the final chorus. This song also made its way unlike Rosalyn and Don't Bring Me Down onto the Pretties' first album released around the same time. Called The Pretty Things, it featured 10 blues covers (including the “self written” 13 Chester Street which was so blatantly a copy of Got Love If You Want It it can't really be called an original composition, plus Honey I Need and Judgment Day (credited to Bryan Morrison (the Come See Me compilation of 2004 credits Morrison and arrangement to the five band members) but actually written by James 'Snooky' Pryor. Highlights include Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut, She's Fine She's Mine (on which Brian played bass while Stax played harmonica) and Pretty Thing, all Bo Diddley numbers and all showing Brian's guitar skills. In fact, the record owes a tremendous lot to Brian's driving guitar style. It went Top 10 in the UK (in the days when only the top ten albums made the chart) and confirmed the Pretty Thing's success; although from a 'commercial' point of view things went downhill from this point, the Pretties (or Things as they were often known) would still make some great music and remain very much in the public eye, if often for the wrong reasons.

In April they played at the Blokker Festival in Holland. The first tune they played was Honey I Need, and I will always carry a lasting memory (from watching a film of the event) of Brian taking his time to make sure his acoustic guitar was correctly tuned to perform this classic. He can be heard asking one of the roadies about the controls on his amp. Once he is finally ready to play (and by this time Viv Prince is shouting at him trying to get his attention) Brian even teases the audience a little, knowing that everyone in that venue is waiting for him.

By this time Brian had somehow managed (considering the media attention the band received) to get secretly married to Christine and was a father-to-be. The wedding had taken place at a registry office early in the year. He did not inform his fellow band members of these facts. He also never told them that his family were unhappy at his choice of following a music career with the Pretty Things rather than carrying on working as an insurance clerk ­ and that his father had even asked him to change his surname because he though it would bring disrepute to the Pendleton family. Thankfully Brian didn't do this.

He did, however, kick off a brief career in the movies by being in the right place (the Savoy Hotel) at the right time when filming took place for the Bob Dylan documentary movie Don't Look Back. Brian stated in his interview with Terry Coates that he met Dylan via the Country and Western musician Derroll Adams who also appears in the film. Brian features in the scene when Donovan plays for Dylan, just before this, there is an argument involving Dylan about some broken glass. After glimpsing the back of Brian's (neatly styled!) head, we see him, smoking the inevitable cigarette, approach the doorway where Dylan and a young man are arguing, then he seems to think better of getting involved. However he is soon seen standing in a group of people trying to pacify someone. He then returns to the sofa and I believe it is Brian's voice we can hear saying “You're joking!” and sounding very much like Mick Jagger (both being from Dartford of course) when Dylan is talking about a cowboy hat. Finally Brian can be seen leaning against the door while Donovan is playing, he seems to be really getting into the music although at one point he appears to be almost nodding off; I can't help thinking he must have been stoned! Brian was quite partial to smoking a joint or two but was not apparently a user of other illegal substances. By appearing in the film by himself Brian got one over the other Pretties who often had a laugh at his expense! Ironically though, it wasn't actually released until 1967 by which time Brian had left them and they were no longer a successful chart act.

In the summer of 1965 their next single, Cry To Me, was released, admittedly a slower song than their usual frantic output but maybe released at the right time it could have been an absolute smash. Unfortunately it clearly wasn't the right time as it only just got into the Top 40...a setback commercially but the Pretties were still hot property in the notoriety stakes and their legendary tour of New Zealand confirms that fact, although they could have, should have gone to the US...

...Brian emphasises in his interview with Terry Coates his real regret that the group didn't go to the United States instead. He recalls: “That really was one of my ambitions which unfortunately was never fulfilled...I'd loved to have played there” but it would appear that co-manager Bryan Morrison wasn't sufficiently tempted by the offers placed on the table before him to tour the US ­ a terrible faux pas as he later conceded.

Instead, the Pretties headed to New Zealand with Sandie Shaw and Eden Kane. The stories of fires, water hoses and lobsters are now legend and well covered in Alan Lakey's biography so I won't repeat them here, but from Brian's point of view it appears he had a great time. “It was absolutely brilliant” he recalled. Escapades included the band getting Sandie Shaw's father to stay up drinking and playing poker all night and, at one concert, Brian, in cahoots with Viv Prince, carrying two girl singers off the stage whilst they were performing with another band! In April 2006 a new book about the band's time in New Zealand, Don't Bring Me Down...Under was published (see Thank You for more info) and I have to mention what the book says about Sandie Shaw and Brian, as it echos what I have suspected myself for some time, that Sandie's alleged physical behaviour towards Brian (she is said to have hit him when they had 'words') indicates that she had feelings for him and was attracted to him (Mike Stax, one of book's authors, describes it as "unresolved chemistry"). Sandie was just a young girl of 18 when she went on tour with a bunch of wild young men which must have been quite an experience and if the antics of Viv Prince are anything to go by, quite intimidating and trying at times!

This particular time would also be memorable for another reason. In August, Brian and Christine's baby was born, a little boy named Philip. Sadly Brian wouldn't see his son until two weeks later due to the New Zealand tour. After all the fun and games in the Southern Hemisphere, it was time to head home North to his new (and secret) family.

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