article: The band enjoyed several hit songs through the decade, the biggest of which was their cover version of Chip Taylor's Wild Thing which topped the US Billboard chart and made Rolling Stone magazine's greatest songs list. Presley's song Love Is All Around peaked at number five in the UK charts in 1967 but was a huge hit in 1994 when Wet Wet Wet covered it for the soundtrack to the Richard Curtis film Four Weddings And a Funeral, starring Hugh Grant. Born in Andover, Hampshire, on 12 June 1941, Presley, went to Andover Secondary Modern School. When he first learned the guitar, Presley was inspired by skiffle, a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, and roots influences - popularised in the UK by artists like Lonnie Donegan In his 20s Presley began listening to blues bands from America, including Louisiana Red and Lightnin' Hopkins. Presley had been working as a brick-layer and said in a previous interview it took three months for him to be persuaded to start playing music with a colleague, Howard Ginger Mansfield. His cohort was a lead guitarist and Presley in turn borrowed a bass, before being forced to drive down to London to buy his own equipment, when he was asked to return the instrument. Their first manager owned a building company and helped them by borrowing a van to carry their equipment around. The Troggs formed in 1964 and, in 1965, Presley, Chris Britton, Pete Staples and Ronnie Bond were signed by Larry Page, a budding record producer who got lucky with a new band called the Ravens, who he re-named The Kinks. After the success of The Kinks You Really Got Me, Page listened to a tape of the Troggs singing their own cover of the song and told them to come back a year later, which they dutifully did - to the day. Lost Girl backed by The Yella In Me was released on CBS, and was regarded as a flop. According to Presley, it got a single play on Radio Luxembourg. After that, Page came across a demo of Chip Taylor's Wild Thing, which had already been unsuccessfully recorded by a band called the Wild Ones. Around the same time, Presley had begun writing his own songs. Speaking to Stuart Maconie on BBC Radio 2 in 2010, he said: "I started writing on the building site when I was a brick-layer. We needed songs and when I was brick-laying." He added: "I'd finished With A Girl Like You and... in 45 minutes we had to get our gear in the studio, do the two songs and get out, because it was the end of his orchestra session and he left us only 45 minutes." "I mean our first album only took two and a quarter hours, how do you do that?", Presley laughed. "It almost takes that to play it." Wild Thing made number one in the US and the follow-up single With A Girl Like You reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on 4 August 1966, where it
summary: Reg Presley, the lead singer of the 1960's band The Troggs, has died aged 71.