Managed by the fledgling partnership of EMI A&R man Tim Rice and gifted young arranger Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tales of Justine were a teenage psychedelic trio led by pop wunderkind David Daltrey. Regulars on the London underground circuit of 1967-68, they played at such venues as Happening 44, the Electric Garden and Middle Earth as well as organising their own “psychedelicise suburbia” freak-out in their sleepy Potters Bar hometown.
Signed by EMI in August 1967, the band issued a solitary single, ‘Albert’ b/w ‘Monday Morning’, during their eighteen-month sojourn with the label. Although it received little attention at the time, the B-side is now acknowledged as a Britpsych classic that has appeared on numerous genre anthologies, including Psychedelia at Abbey Road and the Mojo box set Acid Drops, Spacedust and Flying Saucers.
In addition to that single, Tales of Justine cut numerous high quality demos at Abbey Road that now gain their first-ever CD issue on Petals From A Sunflower, with half-a-dozen tracks being previously unissued in any format.
Taken from the newly-discovered original master tapes, these EMI recordings are joined by the semi-legendary acetate-only psychedelic nugget ‘Sitting On A Blunestone’ (recorded independently of Abbey Road for music publishers Southern Music) to provide the definitive overview of a criminally overlooked British late Sixties underground band.
The package includes a 16 page booklet with numerous previously unpublished photos and memorabilia, the full Tales of Justine story and a foreword by Sir Tim Rice
