While The Troggs wrote the majority of their own songs, it was one originally for another band that became their signature hit.
“Wild Thing,” which topped the U.S. Billboard Charts with the British Band’s version in July 1966, began life as a song for the American Band The Wild Ones. Written by Chip Taylor, the song, which he had been requested to write for the Wild Ones, failed to chart.
Taylor later blamed the failure of the original recording on the sound being “too poppy,” (via The Guardian). “They tried to sing it like a song. Crap, really,” vocalist Reg Presley later recalled in an interview with Classic Bands. “When I first heard it, I thought if this was done by a group with a bit of balls into it, then this could be a hit. And it was.”
Presley’s intuition was right, with the record topping the charts in the U.S. within three months of its original release. The song peaked at #3 in their home country of the UK, which, while still a respectable success, perhaps conveys the cultural domination of English rock during the British Invasion era of the mid-1960s, thanks to bands like The Troggs, as well as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
While the song wasn’t written by the band, their distorted, yet energized version of the track, led by Presley’s snarling delivery, proved a recipe worth replicating. Timeless rock musicians like Jimi Hendrix and The Runaways also covered their take on the record, later named by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, with the former’s iconic Monterey Pop Festival performance ending with Hendrix setting his guitar on fire.
“I think it’s one of the greatest rock records ever made in terms of capturing the spirit of the song,” Taylor later said of the Troggs’ version (via The Guardian’s obituary of Taylor). “It’s just a terrific record and it’s the one that Jimi Hendrix heard and went crazy for.”
Presley was still working as a bricklayer when the track first exploded onto the rock scene, now in full swing as the sixties hit its mid point. “It was like landing on the moon I reckon for the first time. The flight was incredible for us,” the late musician told Classic Bands.
“It went up the charts so quickly in England, that I was still working on the building,” he recalled. “It’s an amazing story. I was doing the Gable Inn and a painter behind me was painting the eves on another block. He had a transistor radio on the scaffold. He didn’t know who I was and ‘Wild Thing’ came on.”
“At that particular time I knew it was 44 in the charts. I was a little excited, but I didn’t know what was going to happen. “Wild Thing” came on and he shouted across to me, “If this record isn’t number one next week, I’ll eat my brush.”
This story was originally published by Men’s Journal on Jun 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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