huh. I had to look all that stuff up just now. I want to say I’ve heard the Mann version before, maybe, but wouldn’t have recognized it as the same tune. Got my copy of Love’s version on one of those budget comps: “22 super hits of '66” or whatever.
Bacharach is really great, I particularly like his score for the original parody version of Casino Royale, and that first Dionne Warwick album. But somehow this tune belongs to Love now, for me.
Another musical footnote to this track from the wiki:
The guitar riff to the [Love version of the] song showed up in considerably altered form, as played by Syd Barrett on the Pink Floyd song “Interstellar Overdrive”, released on their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967).[7] The riff of “Interstellar Overdrive” originated when early Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner was trying to hum a song he couldn’t quite remember (which turned out to be “My Little Red Book”).[7]
