If there’s one thing you can say about the Troggs, it’s that the ’60s rockers were pretty great at coming up with catchy tunes. Sure, “Wild Thing” was their biggest hit (not to mention one of the most popular singles of the era), but that wasn’t their only infectious anthem.
Released as a single in 1966, “With a Girl Like You” went to the top of the charts in the U.K. and blew up in Europe. And while it wasn’t as popular in the U.S. as “Wild Thing,” released earlier that year, it peaked at #29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains a critical and fan-favorite decades later.
In 2014, Paste ranked “With a Girl Like You” at #20 on their list of the “50 Best Garage Rock Songs of All Time,” with music writer Bonnie Stiernberg praising the track’s “simple romanticism,” noting, “there’s a reason this song gets a lot of play at weddings.”
Not bad for a tune written by the Troggs’ lead vocalist Reg Presley when he was just a 25-year-old bricklayer.
“I started writing on the building site when I was a bricklayer,” Presley told Stuart Maconie on BBC Radio 2, adding, “We needed songs and I was bricklaying.”
Though it was released after “Wild Thing,” the songs were recorded in the same session, according to 1,000 UK Number One Hits. As Presley explained, the part of the song that really gets stuck in your head (“ba ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba”) was inspired by the Beach Boys hit “Barbara Ann.”
“We recorded it at the same time as ‘Wild Thing’ and either of them could have been released first,” Presley recalled. “I liked the way The Beach Boys were going ‘Ba-ba-ba-Barbara Ann’ and it was lovely to do something like that in ‘With a Girl Like You.’ We nearly had a trumpet playing it, but it sounded better when we sang it.”
The Troggs didn’t have much time to make magic happen in the studio, but as it turned out, they didn’t need it.
“In 45 minutes we had to get our gear in the studio, do the two songs and get out, because it was the end of his orchestra session and he left us only 45 minutes,” Presley said.
“I mean our first album only took two and a quarter hours, how do you do that?” he continued with a laugh. “It almost takes that to play it.”
One thing’s for sure: Just a few hours in the studio ensured that Presley’s bricklaying days were over for good.
Related: 1964 Sonics Classic, From the ‘No. 1 Best Garage Rock Album of All Time,’ Is Still a Genre-Defining Hit 62 Years Later
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