| "Have I the Right?" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 West German picture sleeve | ||||
| Single by the Honeycombs | ||||
| B-side | "Please Don't Pretend Again" | |||
| Released | June 1964 | |||
| Studio | RGM Sound, London | |||
| Genre | Pop[1] | |||
| Length | 2:57 | |||
| Label | Pye (UK) Interphon (US) | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Ken Howard, Alan Blaikley[2] | |||
| Producer(s) | Joe Meek | |||
| The Honeycombs singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Official audio | ||||
| "Have I the Right?" on YouTube | ||||
"Have I the Right?" was the debut single and biggest hit of the English band the Honeycombs. It was composed by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who had made contact with the Honeycombs, a London-based group, then playing under the name of the Sheratons,[3] in the Mildmay Tavern in the Balls Pond Road in Islington, where they played a date. Howard and Blaikley were impressed by the group's lead vocalist, Dennis D'Ell, and the fact that they had a female drummer, Anne (‘Honey’) Lantree. The group were looking for material to play for an audition with record producer Joe Meek,[4] and they played the songs Howard and Blaikley had just given them. Meek decided to record one of them, "Have I the Right?", there and then. Meek himself provided the B-side, "Please Don’t Pretend Again".[5]
Music critic Tom Ewing, writing for Freaky Trigger, commented that the song "invents" post-punk, "which is to say, when I listen to the instrumental break on this record, bright guitar and sharp keyboard slicing tuneless chunks out of each other, it’s not 1964 I’m hearing."[6] It was used as the opening theme for Hold the Sunset.
- ^ Breihan, Tom (May 9, 2018). "The Number Ones: The Tornados' "Telstar"". Stereogum. Retrieved June 10, 2023.
...Meek found his calling by making strange, damaged pop songs like John Leyton's "Johnny Remember Me" and the Honeycombs' "Have I The Right"...
- ^ Rice, Jo (1982). The Guinness Book of 500 Number One Hits (1st ed.). Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Superlatives Ltd. pp. 82–4. ISBN 0-85112-250-7.
- ^ Richie Unterberger. "The Honeycombs | Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 2014-04-05.
- ^ "The JOE MEEK Page | Joe Meek: A portrait – 5. Hits and musicians". Joemeekpage.info. 2012-07-27. Retrieved 2014-04-05.
- ^ "Please don’t pretend again" is credited to ‘Meek & Lawrence’. Lawrence was one of Meek’s aliases Archived 2010-08-22 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Ewing, Tom (16 January 2005). "THE HONEYCOMBS – "Have I The Right?"". Freaky Trigger. Retrieved 13 June 2017.