Joker's Wild Radio

Jokers Wild never made an official record, but are remembered as a band that included David Gilmour before the guitarist joined Pink Floyd. From the scant evidence that does survive, it seems rather incredible that Gilmour could have made the transition. Jokers Wild did not entertain lofty artistic ambitions, but played covers of pop/rock material, often emphasizing harmonies in the style of the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys. Jokers Wild did make a privately pressed LP in London around the mid-'60s, consisting of five covers on one side, and a blank flip. A very small amount of these discs (Nicholas Schaffner's Pink Floyd bio Saucerful of Secrets says about 100, Miles & Andy Mabbett's Pink Floyd: The Visual Documentary says about 40 or 50) were made to give away to family and friends. Two of the songs, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" and "Don't Ask Me," did come out on bootleg many years later, on both a 45 and as two songs on the Syd Barrett boot Rhamadam. Even by the standards of covers by unknown British Invasion-era bands, these were derivative and unimaginative in the extreme, and in fact not even based on the original versions, but on covers of those by the Beach Boys ("Why Do Fools Fall in Love") and Manfred Mann ("Don't Ask Me"). The other songs on the LP were Chuck Berry's "Beautiful Delilah" (Jokers Wild basing their arrangement, according to Schaffner's book, on the cover by the Kinks) and the Four Seasons' "Walk Like a Man" and "Big Girls Don't Cry." By the mid-'90s, this relic was fetching offers of almost a thousand pounds. As Pink Floyd: The Visual Documentary notes, for the truly obsessed, "A tape recording of the album can be heard by personal callers to the National Sound Archive in London, quoting reference 'C-625/1'." ~ Richie Unterberger