Bubbling Under: Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity – "This Wheel’s On Fire"

Best notify my next of kin...this wheel shall explode

Welcome to Bubbling Under. Each week, I cover a musical artist who charted outside Billboard’s Hot 100. This week: Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger, & The Trinity.

4/1/2025: I spent a good chunk of yesterday writing about an artist who was famous for five minutes a couple of years before I was born. Most of their notoriety was over a pair of really awful movies. One of these films landed them a Golden Globe that was most likely bought by their husband, a rich businessman who had also financed said film. They also pursued a brief music career. I got halfway in before realizing the whole thing was a colossal waste of time. If I didn’t care about this person, there was a chance nobody else would either.

I needed a refresh.

Before starting that particular post, I had considered writing about “This Wheel’s On Fire”. Famously, this song is best known now for being the theme to Absolutely Fabulous, a popular 90s British sitcom about two characters bordering on delusional. One, a former actress-model named Patsy Stone, reminds me a tiny bit of the subject of yesterday’s scrapped post. This was meant to be!

“This Wheel’s On Fire” was originally written by Bob Dylan and Rick Danko of The Band during songwriting sessions for what became The Band’s 1968 album Music From Big Pink. Big Pink was the nickname for the pink house said songs were written and recorded.

It’s not The Band, however, that the song is closely associated with. Musicians Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger had previously worked together in a band called Steampacket that included, among others, Long John Baldry and Rod Stewart.

After Steampacket fell apart, Driscoll and Auger continued to work together, teaming up with the band The Trinity.

Their influences were mostly R&B, jazz, and rock, as demonstrated by their first single, “Save Me”

“This Wheel’s On Fire” was their follow-up single and also their only hit.

I’d never heard The Band’s version going into this piece, and while I didn’t mind it, this is the version I am used to. It easily blows the original out of the water and is one Hell of a one-hit wonder. It’s more slowed down than The Band’s version and has more of a psychedelic feel.

“This Wheel’s On Fire” was a big hit for Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger, & The Trinity. It peaked at #5 in the UK, was Top 20 in Canada, and was also big in Europe. I’m honestly not sure why it only peaked on the Bubbling Under Charts in the States, and I’m not sure it’s worth analyzing this time around. Sometimes things just do better everywhere else.

The David Ackles-penned “Road To Cairo” was chosen as the follow-up. For whatever reason, this didn’t set the charts ablaze (ha!) quite like “This Wheel’s On Fire” had.

It’s quite good, and I’m shocked that Driscoll never made it up there alongside Dusty Springfield as one of the great Blue-Eyed Soul vocalists. She is an absolute powerhouse on this.

Auger, Driscoll, and The Trinity gained a higher profile when they had a prominent part in the Monkees’ 1969 TV special 33+1⁄3 Revolutions per Monkee.

33+1⁄3 Revolutions per Monkee marked Peter Tork’s final appearance with the group until a string of reunions, of course. The Monkees were faltering following 1968’s Head, which wasn’t appreciated at the time but is nowhere as bad as its former reputation. This special didn’t do much to revive their fortunes. I watched it while researching for this piece, and it was a bizarre mess.

Auger, Driscoll, and The Trinity were no strangers to TV specials. A few months prior, they had also appeared on the Bee Gees Idea special for German network ZDF, where they performed “Break It Up”.

Auger, Driscoll, and The Trinity opened for Led Zeppelin in May 1969 and released a few more recordings before calling it quits the following year. Their final UK single was a version of Nina Simone’s “Take Me To The Water”.

Driscoll and Auger both went on to have long musical careers in jazz. As of this writing, both are still alive. The pair did reunite once, in 1978, for an album called Encore. By this point, Driscoll had married jazz musician Keith Tippett (they remained married until he died in 2020) and is now performing as Julie Tippetts.

As Julie Tippetts, Driscoll also re-recorded “This Wheel’s On Fire” for the Absolutely Fabulous intro I posted at the top of this piece. For the Absolutely Fabulous movie in 2016, it was covered by Kylie Minogue and played over the end credits.

“This Wheel’s On Fire” has been covered by a wide variety of other acts as well. I’m closing this piece off with one of my favourites. In 1987, Siouxsie and the Banshees released a cover of “This Wheel’s On Fire” and had a Top 20 UK hit. The band were unaware it was written by Dylan and Danko prior to recording their version. They’d been fans of Driscoll’s version. Maybe that’s why I like their cover so much.

Next Week: TBA