April 1967.

 A potted history of The Mamas & the Papas early years and quite possibly my favourite of all their songs.

Written by John Phillips, the title (which doesn’t appear in the song) was inspired by Creeque Alley (pronounced creaky), an area in the Virgin Islands that borders the docks and where John and Michelle Phillips spent a lot of time with their previous group The Journeymen. The song makes reference to other artists of the time including Zal Yanovsky and John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Roger McGuinn of The Byrds and Barry McGuire.

It gave the group a global top ten hit, reaching number four in Canada, number five in the US and here in the UK it spent eleven weeks on the charts, peaking at number nine.