Beverly Bivens
We Five's first single, from their debut album of the same name, was a reworked version of Sylvia Tyson's song "You Were On My Mind". It became one of the first folk-rock hits, reaching number three in the "Billboard" "Hot 100" in August 1965. Tyson (then Sylvia Fricker) says that she was unaware that her song had been covered until she heard We Five's version on a car radio while driving on Highway 101 in California. One consequence of We Five's success was that Tyson's song, which, until then, had been unavailable in sheet form, was published by Witmark of New York, with a photograph of Bivens and We Five on the cover. However, with the so-called "British invasion" at its height, We Five's recording had only limited international success, having been covered reluctantly, though successfully, in Britain by Crispian St. Peters.
Five (Tony Banks album)
Following the Cheltenham Music Festival commission, Banks secured a one-album deal with BMG. It marks his first release on the BMG label, having released his first two classical albums on Naxos Records. Banks reasoned the change down to BMG being more of a "go ahead" label with more favourable promotional effort and its enthusiasm to release it. Banks then felt encouraged by the Cheltenham Music Festival performance to take the individual parts, re-record them, and assemble them in layers similar to that of a rock-oriented album so he could "really get it right". This approach was applied for all the tracks on "Five". A series of "very definite and elaborate" demos were recorded which were then used as a template for the orchestra to play their arrangements from, and to Banks, sounded similar to the final arrangements. The piano heard on the album is what Banks had originally played on the demo recordings.