Thanks to the tireless work of the group dedicated to scouring recordings of John Peel radio shows for musical rarities a previously unknown version of Mirror Man has been discovered.
Found on the tape of John’s show from Sunday 21st January 1968 was a good quality recording of Yellow Brick Road which seems to be from the Safe As Milk album rather than taken from the band’s first Top Gear session and is introduced by Don himself who was obviously in the studio with John. At the end of Yellow Brick Road it cuts into an astonishing version of Mirror Man !
The band were currently touring the UK and Europe for the first time to promote the soon to be issued (in the UK, anyway) Safe As Milk album on the Pye International label. As part of their tour they had recorded a four song session for John’s show although all these songs were from the Safe As Milk album.
After about six minutes John cuts into the song to say :
All in all there’s about 15 minutes of that and I forget what it’s called … Miller Man Miller Man … and that’s not released anywhere and it’s not even released in the United States yet … it’s from their forthcoming LP and I don’t know when it will be released in this country, at least six months away from now. Anyway that was beautiful and you really must go and see them tonight … [this would have been the show at The Speakeasy in London – sf]
This new found version of Mirror Man is raw and a much tighter version than the extended jam released on the Mirror Man album and it doesn’t really sound anything like it. Stylistically it sounds more like the version on Strictly Personal but before Bob Krasnow went all psych on it but obviously cannot be from Strictly Personal as that album hadn’t been recorded yet
So, where did this come from and when was it recorded ?
Presumably Don had brought an acetate of this Mirror Man recording with him but what happened to that acetate, it wasn’t one of those from John’s collection auctioned earlier in 2025 … and what about the original recording of this version ? It wasn’t amongst those released on the I Maybe Be Hungry .. CD and no mention has ever been made of it. Another song that never made it to that 1992 compilation was Korn Ring Finger but an acetate of that did surface and recordings of it soon circulated among fans.
This discovery does beg the question, were there other recordings on that acetate or was it just Mirror Man ?
Take a listen to it here … you’re in for a treat :