More to the point, I have been mulling over just what Budd Granoff might have meant by “whatever happens to be in the top ten at the present time." On February 1, 1964, the Beatles had their first #1 hit song in America, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”; and the Beatles and the other English bands in their wake dominated the charts for years to come. To these ears though, despite the numerous musical styles and personas that Milan undertook over the years, the British Invasion left scarcely any mark at all on his recordings. Though the record company released two singles and presumably made the usual efforts at promoting the album, the record‐buying public passed it by. Had the album been released just one year earlier, when Lou Christie nearly took one of Milan’s songs to the Top 40, it might have been a different story. CHANGES IN THE WORLD OF MILAN From the descriptions given above, it is clear that few if any of Milan’s recordings up to this point would fall into the category of “ugly things”; in fact, much of his music is quite beautiful (not that there is anything wrong with that).
In 1965 and 1966, Milan issued three more singles, this time in the name of the World of Milan. These songs represent a transition toward the garage rock sound for which he is best known, and away from Milan’s first love: the melodic American pop music that probably represented in his mind an updated continuation of the music that his father sang over the course of his career. Milan was willing to issue an album full of this kind of music in 1964, right in the teeth of the storm from Britain that swept nearly all of the American musicians from the charts, so it was probably only with the greatest reluctance that he allowed himself to move on. Additionally, there is a glaring gap in the admittedly incomplete discography that documents Milan’s efforts as a songwriter, producer and arranger for other musicians, which might be as long as three full years from the release of the American Beetles single in 1964. No one else seemed to be willing to join Milan in his pursuit of what was already viewed as hopelessly old‐fashioned pop music, and that could have been what clinched the decision for him. One track from each of the first two World of Milan singles are included on Hell Bent for Leather: “Luva Luva” – Milan really loved double word song titles – and “Follow the Sun”.