Johnny Rivers made his name covering Chuck Berry songs, which he did skillfully enough. Sometime around 1965 he could be heard singing the theme song to a TV series imported from Britain, which was called Danger Man over there, but Secret Agent here. That series, starring Patrick McGoohan, was followed by the cult classic The Prisoner, in which the Secret Agent, still played by McGoohan, was confined in The Village, as a result of his decision to leave the world of Secret Agentry for reasons never explained, either to the proprietors of the Village (that is, in fact, their chief demand of the prisoner) or to the viewer. As the wikipedia entry on the song points out, “the lyric “They’ve given you a number and taken away your name” appears to anticipate The Prisoner“, since everyone in the Village is, indeed, assigned a number and relieved of their names, McGoohan becoming “Number Six”.
The song was written by Steve Barri and P. F. Sloan, the latter of whom wrote the seminal Eve of Destruction. At least as I remember it, it took a while for the song to be released as a single after the show began playing here in the U.S.
Rivers went on to record a song called Come Home, America in 1972, which was no more than a middling hit, but for which he should be forever honored, as it was inspired by George McGovern’s acceptance speech at that year’s Democratic National Convention.
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