FAIRPORT CONVENTION - Liege & Lief

 

(CG)

The fourth album Liege and Leaf by Fairport Convention in 1969 featuring Sandy Denny is perhaps the most successful of the fusions of rock music and British folk traditions. It directly transposed songs from an English folk tradition to a rock idiom to immediate acclaim. However in some ways its successful fusion perhaps highlighted some of the major difficulties of this British genre which made this a singular or one off phenomenon within rock music.

British folk music often invoked notions of middle class “Englishness” often based on the academic propensities of folk musicologists seeking to historicise its traditions while linking it to a selective range of historical cultural texts that had recorded its oral forms. In contrast contemporary Irish, and to a lesser extent Scottish, folk music were rooted in the politics of inequalities and marginalisation that gave it an immediacy that evoked contemporary experience whether the shipyards of Glasgow or the troubles of Northern Ireland. There were more radical traditions of music fostered by the unions and working mens’ halls in England that championed the experience of working people but their voices were muted or marginalised in the mass consumption of folk music as it developed as an industry in the 1950s. This was compounded by the ways in folk traditions were policed such that, for example, Bob Dylan’s move from acoustic to electric met with fierce opposition from the Newport festival fans in 1965. In England in 1966 there was a similar defining of musical boundaries at the Manchester Free trade Hall where Dylan was famously reviled as “Judas” by a disgruntled British folk music fan. 

Seminal to the development of rock music was the utilisation of the flexible 12 bar idiom derived from African American blues music, in its rural and urban forms, mediated by the forms of rock and roll of Little Richard and Chuck Berry that challenging the racialised distribution of music in the USA. Inspired by Dylan’s shift to rock and the impetus he contributed drawn from other musical genres such as the Oklahoma derived narratives of Woodie Guthrie that challenged establishment hierarchies, British musicians looked to their own folk traditions as a resource in the development of British rock. However many of these rock musicians shaped by their middle class nostalgia of a lost rural Britain rather than the impact of a hundred years of industrialisation were constricted by the fashioning of musical tropes of an archaic England that sat uneasily with the rebellion and the progressiveness of the nascent rock genre at that historical moment. It often resulted in a fey or arch idiom with antiquated musical forms that did not fit with the 12 bar blues structure, although these works were consumed by some middle class audiences.

And yet…… Fairport Convention took this route consulting with the archives of the British Folk Society by Regents Park but also harrowed by a car crash that killed their drummer and a girlfriend. The shared trauma lends an emotional edge of loss and poignancy that re-invigorated the lyrics while the musical transpositions simplified and ruthlessly struck out the musical archaisms to offer an emotional clarity that cut to the core. 

(PS)

Do I get to bang on about how amazing 1969 was again? Well if I must… Not content with releasing one great album that year, Fairport released three. THREE! 

What We Did on Our Holidays, the wonderful Unhalfbricking and the cornerstone of British folk rock that is Liege and Lief.  

 

Replacing original vocalist Judy Dyble, Sandy Denny gave Fairport power, a clear direction and a sense of identity that was previously lacking. With a stronger voice than Judy’s, she allowed the group to have a louder, rockier sound – and thus British Folk Rock was properly born.  

 

What We Did on Our Holidays still had the tinges of the West Coast sound played through an English filter… then The Band’s seminal Music from Big Pink was released and made Fairport reassess their American leanings, as they couldn't compete with that – they had to redefine themselves and record music that was truer to their roots. Country fan Ian Matthews left to form Matthews Southern Comfort and fiddle virtuoso Dave Swarbrick took more centre stage, particularly in the traditional A Sailor’s Tale on Unhalfbricking; the twin-pronged fiddle/guitar attack of Swarb and Richard Thomson had been forged. 

 

After the tragic loss of drummer Martin Lamble in the M1 crash in May 69, the survivors collectively mourned their losses and found that they needed the band as something to cling to, a way to deal with the situation. So they ‘got it together in the country’ (Hampshire, actually) and the result was the game-changing Liege and Lief, their first album totally dedicated to British folk songs. None of your cable-sweatered, finger-in-the-ear, beardy hey nonnying here though… this is the perfect mix of rock and folk music, with beautifully searing, clear-as-a-bell vocals from Denny and lovely interplay from Swarb and Thompson.

 

The LP’s opener Come All Ye sets the electrified folk stage perfectly, like a call to a sumptuous feast; but Reynardine is arguably the standout track here, as hauntingly beautiful as the previous LP’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes. Stunning. The traditional Matty Groves starts out like a fairly standard folk number, until the mad proggish noodling comes in and it’s an absolute blast after that. Farewell, Farewell closes the side in more reflective mood with Thompson lyrics to a traditional melody.

 

The Deserter starts side 2 as a genteel waltz until the protagonist’s court martial briefly makes it a more regimented 3/4; then the Swarb tour de force that is Medley storms in, drinks all your grog and breaks up the furniture in the melee; Tam Lin has a nicely irregular 3, 3, 4, 3 time with Denny’s vocals flowing gracefully over the top; Crazy Man Michael is an original composition, but could easily be another traditional arrangement. 

The whole experience of the LP feels like an old painting in a modern frame. Inside the gatefold sleeve are pictures of long-lost folk figures such as Pace-Eggers, Morris Dancers and notable folk music historian Cecil Sharp, among others; clearly the message here is that your heritage should be remembered, even if you embrace that of others. 

 

Ashley Hutchings and Denny left soon after the album’s release (to form Steeleye Span and Fotheringay respectively) and Fairport never truly regained the magic they managed to capture; Full House from 1970 has its moments, but its predecessor is where it’s really at. Oft-copied, never equalled, Liege and Lief is majestic. And quintessentially British. 

 (JS)

This is an album of tensions, both positive and negative.On one hand the band present novelty in the form of amplified electronic music in a popular American rock style, on the other the album celebrates an interpretation of English traditional folk music, that in a sense has informed elements of the American tradition. The musicians also present a tension between individual musical virtuosity and the discipline of de-individualising their personal musical contributions to meld into the gestalt, fit for the purpose of being a commercial rock band. The third observable tension is the tension between embracing the popular as championed by the commercial charts, with the music the band enjoyed playing/ listening to. Liege and lief is often hailed as the definitive performance of the band in studio, but in reality it was a moment of individuals, suspending their individual creative egos momentarily to work together to produce a moment of beauty before rushing away from each other to try something else with lesser effect. In genre terms it is often described as the definitive English folk rock album, and can be identified to have spawned hundreds of imitators, even though there were many treading this ploughline before them and many, many after them. Whilst guest vocalist Sandy Denny gets much of the credit for the traditional folk dimension, she was supported by Hutching's academic research in Cecil Sharp House on one hand, and the raw folk that courses through the veins of Dave Swarbrick’s fiddle playing. Supported by Mattacks, Thompson and Nicol, it was an impossible alchemy not to transmute base metal into gold. The album made money but not enough to bind the band into a second album. As the band fragmented its members formed Fotheringay, The Albion band, and Steeleye Span, who continued to plough the same furrow, if in a diminished form.

 

Come all ye - A fantastic opening track, a loose rolling ramble into the possibilities of the new ensemble, the discipline to play a coherent song is barely held together, Thompson’s Nicol’s and Swabricks musical individualism is highly detectable, whilst Mattacks and Hutchings hold it all together. The overall sound as it is though is of the male musicians standing around Denny in the centre, queen of all she surveys, the lyric whilst simple, is well within her range which allows firm command. Original composition

 

Reynardine- A loose and rather over-ornamented version of the traditional Renardyne, this is an example of where the individual musicians should have been kept in check, its starts at 11 and climbs to thirteen in regards to wild improvisations, and it could do with a bit more pace in my opinion. Denny’s vocal here has become the standard interpretation, but the song would work better at say Matty groves pace, except in that it precedes Matty groves on the album. Personally it feels a tad indulgent, overly slowed down to make way for the stomper that follows. Denny voice is a bit too thin in timbre to carry this off.

 

Matty Groves- A traditional border ballad, which Denny’s vocal commands well, the band is disciplined here but the material demands a full eight minutes to spit it out. The tune is not good enough for eight minute, and the lyrical content illustrates that it is not a feminist dance classic in a traditional or a novel sense. Denny’s vocal works better here but Swarbrick is buried too deep in the mix until released by Thompson’.s mid song wig out.

Farewell, Farewell- A disciplined Thompson song, with a good focussed Denny vocal

 

The Deserter- A traditional song , which binds the band together into the classic folk band they are, Thompson, Nicols and Swarbrick in their proper place . Denny is just about perfect in this one, rising from an interesting vocalist to being an essential one.

 

"Medley"I. "The Lark in the Morning”, II. "Rakish Paddy”, III. "Foxhunter's Jig”, IV. "Toss the Feathers" -Swarbrick’s price for band membership, a proper folkie stomp that can be repeated and elongated to any length by musicians of this calibre, it's just a shame that Swarbrick is buried a bit deep in the mix.

 

Tam Linn- Another example of the traditional and rock elements bound together in perfect harmony by Denny whose vocal style works better in the staccato than in the legato style she adopted for Reynardine.  It goes on a bit and could accommodate a bit more pace towards the end. Swarbrick is subdued in the mix, and  an alternate mix could make the song much wilder and fairy like. 

 

Crazy Man Michael Orignal composition, great Denny vocal, the bands individual virtuosity is here contained and great song, despite the occasional olde English inflection. 

(MS)

    “Think about stories with reason and rhyme

    Circling through your brain

    And think about people in their season and time

    Returning again and again” (Nick Drake)

 

“Liege and Lief” is not an obscure album. In fact it may be considered the “Citizen Kane” of UK folk-rock recordings; the shining pinnacle, the benchmark for all other entries to be compared against. Curiously this in itself has made it and the band that recorded it slip into the realms of the neglected and unheard.

 

Perhaps it’s a little bit too revered to be listened to? Easy prey for Norma Waterstone’s fiddle playing daughter to once remark that there was more to the UK folk movement than “Liege & Lief”. To be fair there is more, or at least there was back then when the movement consisted of a broad coalition of emerging and overlapping styles. This album and those of the other heavyweight act Pentangle, influenced a multitude of folk-rock bands. Special mention should be made of The Trees two brilliant LP’s, the first few by Steeleye Span, Forest, Fresh Maggots and the one-off Fairport offshoot Fotheringay. But there were copious singer songwriters too, covering similar territory like John Martyn, Steve Ashley, Roy Harper, Mick Softley, Nick Drake, Al Stewart and Bridget St John. Traditionalists, Martin Carthy, The Waterstons, Anne Briggs, Shirley Collins upped their sound to a lesser or greater extent to meet the changes. Then there was the hippy end of the spectrum with the (Scottish) Incredible String Band, (Irish) Dr Strangely Strange and the poppier cross-over musings of Donovan. And of course a number of the rock bands such as Family, Jethro Tull, Traffic and Led Zepellin were also playing songs within the genre.(Sandy Denny of Fairport guests on Led Zep IV) And…there’s Comus, Dando Shaft, Heron, Mellow Candle and great stand-out songs…Shelagh McDonald’s “Dowie Den of Yarrow”, Keith Christmas’ “Forest and The Shore” and future West End chanteuse Julie Covington’s “My Silks and Fine Array” etc, etc…the list is long.

 

But the fact is the folk-rock movement never really advanced beyond this album. There were many attempts to follow the template but very few single albums so perfectly captured such an evocative and cohesive sense of mood over a 40 minute sitting. So many things coalesce around it, around the people who created it and around the time it was made.

 

The opening song “Come All Ye” with its fiddles and drums is like the triumphal march of Heralds leading an army into battle. It’s the Fairport’s “Sgt Pepper”, introducing the listener to an experience aiming “To rouse the spirit of the earth and move the rolling sky”. It’s the song to kick-off any compilation of folk music from this period. The rock element is most evident when the LP reaches Appalachian tune “Shady Grove” appended to a 17C murder ballad, re-titled “Matty Groves”. Halfway through it transforms into an instrumental jam showcase for the locked groove of fiddler Dave Swarbrick and guitarist Richard Thompson; the latter taking his improvisations into Jerry Garcia/ Jorma Kaukonen territory. In fact the riff of this tune brings to mind a touch of Jefferson Airplane’s chorus to the contemporaneous “’Volunteers”. (The summit of Thompson’s guitar ramblings would be his spell-binding “Sloth” on Fairport’s next LP)

This was the fourth release by The Fairport Convention and the culmination of an ever progressing sequence of recordings. They’d formed in a house called “Fairport” at the opposite end of the same Fortis Green Road in Muswell Hill to that of The Kinks. By 1968 the latter were creating their own somewhat more proletarian take on pastoral idyll’s with their “Village Green” album. (The pub that overlooks the still-standing house with its “Fairport” sign, has recently been renamed “The Village Green”). Fairport’s early goodtime jug-band songs and covers of contemporary Americana was a tad too respectful but once Sandy Denny joined, the band found a vocalist who was more than a match for their maturing musicianship. And they started to write quality originals. The anthemic “Meet on the Ledge”, the sweet sitar-tinged “Book Song”, brooding “Genesis Hall” and the wonderfully ominous “Autopsy”. Denny also brought a soon to be folk standard in “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” as well as broadening the palate with an encouragement to bandmates to explore traditional arrangements like “She Moved Through the Fair” and the sea-shanty psych-out of “A Sailor’s Life”.

 

On an earlier LP the magical madrigal-like “Fotheringay” always brings me back to those shivery Saturday mornings on the sofa watching those short histories about castles with jarring zoom lenses to the battlements, swelling war noises and soothing Patrick Allen-types recounting the fate of doomed kings and queens. My face pressed against the cool window panes, eyes staring out into damp northern mornings, torrential afternoons and whole weekends lost to heavy moor-mist. From the back room drifted the Clancy Brothers and Tom Paxton and on TV Toni Arthur was always chirping away with a song about a bloody frog. There was a lot of folk in the background in the early 1970’s. I would have first picked up “Liege & Lief” the only way you could back then via trips to the library on Saturday mornings, finger-tips nicked by the too tightly packed plastic sleeves in the cramped record dept. Like rose thorns hiding their sharp secret, we bled to discover unheard Beatles songs left off the bodged tape recordings fed to us by our busy father. When I finally heard the full ”White Album” it was like gaining access to a secret room in my bedroom that had always been there but one that had been hidden from me. A childhood measured in TDK C90’s.

But the firm connection to listening to folk-music for pleasure only truly emerged from my subconscious during my cathartic mid-teens. One late-night I caught a TV viewing of “The Wicker Man” introduced by a sinister looking carnival barker frothing at the mouth about the secrets he was about to unfold upon us. When the song “Corn Rigs” played over the opening credits of that old horror film it seemed to suddenly awaken all sorts of ancient thoughts lying dormant in me. Pagan horror then connected back to that musty old volume of British Folk Mythology in the glass book cabinet in the front room that I’d spend years idly poring over. I reflected on the spectacular mountains and pine forests I’d seen on those dark Scottish summers spent holidaying with the family. I even discovered that Toni Arthur had been on the fringe of the occult herself, recording a 1971 album called “Hearken to the Witches Rune”. 

 

“Liege & Lief’s” second song “Reynadine” take us deep into those sinister woods with the unsettling electric violin of Swarbrick taking us off the mossy path straight into horror. Adapted from an ancient morality tale the story shape shifted itself at the turn of the 20^th Century to tell the tale of a maiden’s seduction by a werefox. Swarbrick gives a similarly creepy performance on the Martin Carthy version of the song recorded the previous year (“Prince Heathen” LP). On the inside of the gatefold sleeve there were photos of olden ceremonies or were they in fact drawings…or were they doctored photos? It was hard to make out. And I studied that back sleeve and long considered the significance of the curious wooden head and the final line from “Tam Lin”

 

       "Oh, had I known, Tam Lin,"she said, 

"what this night I did  see

       I'd have looked him in the eyes 

and turned him to a tree"

 

“Tam Lin” is an elephantine epic that twists and turns it’s dark fairytale text between passages of West-coast influenced guitar rock jamming. It’s a very dramatic reading and one given space to unravel its mysterious story. See more of this on my post below which considers Ian McShane’s unlikely contribution to folk horror http://frombetweenthecracks.blogspot.com/2011/11/film-ballad-of-tam-lin-director-roddy.html

But the purple and cream cover of this 1969 classic shows a group compartmentalised in neat boxes, a symbolic message that their togetherness as a band was all but over. In the spring of that year a car crash had killed both the drummer and the girlfriend of Richard Thompson leaving the rest of the band deeply traumatized. Thompson’s two songs that close each side are inspired by those events one about her and one seemingly about himself. They were barely out of their teens when all this happened. The heartbreaking “Farewell Farewell” acts as a sweet counterpoint to the closing sinister neo-folk of “Crazy Man Michael” with its disconcerting - and seemingly unresolved - dying fiddle fade. It reminds me of the way Van Morrison abruptly ended his own folk-cycle “Astral Weeks”. (this LP incidentally being something of a unique mix of soul and jazz within Celtic and American folk traditions)

 

After this the band splintered with Sandy Denny going on to record a clutch of epics such as “Banks of the Nile”, “Next Time Around” and the quite spectacular multi-tracked “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” (a version of this Richard Farina song had been attempted by Fairport for the “Liege and Lief” sessions and was probably only rejected as it shares the same eerie ambiance as “Reynardine”). Not many years later Sandy Denny fell down-stairs and died. She now shares a Putney graveyard with Howard Carter, Jakob Epstein and Kerensky, a couple of miles away from the house of her parents, immortalised on the “Unhalfbricking” sleeve. Her brief career is largely unknown even to this day.

 

Like traditional arrangements, mis-transcribed, re-interpreted and then forgotten so we cultural historians wander over these overgrown paths again and again. We pore over meaning from brief magical moments of music capturing the thoughts of men and women before they’d even reached the age of 30. Music captured in old brick studios long lost to developers’ profits. ”Liege & Lief” was recorded off the Kings Road in a very different Chelsea to the one we find today. If you keep walking down Old Church Street you’ll find the former site of Sound Techniques set back from the road in an old 19C dairy. This was the creative hub of Joe Boyd’s Witchseason productions, most of the acts I’ve mentioned recorded their work here using the same pool of musicians. But like the old stories say, be careful not to stray too far from the path. When you get to the Thames your way may well be blocked by the private security guards protecting Michael Caine’s view of Battersea.  

 

“Farewell, farewell to you who would hear

You lonely travelers all”

 

SPOOKY TOOTH - Spooky Two

...for Tamantha

After a brief break I return with some further reflections on that period before the mid-1980's when the drums sounded good and Oldham market really was somewhere you wanted to go to.

To kick-start this re-vamp I have invited some disparate colleagues to contribute reviews of albums selected on rotation. One an academic who excels as a painter (CG), one an administrator who excels as a guitarist (PS) and one a sort of time-travelling gypsy who excels at... that. (JS). I've no idea where this will go but I am curious to see.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(MS)
Spooky Tooth are a somewhat neglected rock group from the late 60's Island Records stable.
They followed the same trajectory as many a band in that intense period but despite all the right connections they never really made it. 


Starting out as The VIPP's, a tough Carlisle blues-rock band, they moved to London on the back of some success in France and via notorious producer and scenester Guy Stevens, suddenly found themsleves wandering around Soho in hipsters and bells under (and in) the name of Art. 

Their lone album exists as one of the more muscular entries in the small but fabled canon of recordings that emerged from the capital in '67. The psychedelic sleeve by snappily titled designers Haphash & the Coloured Coat lead them to appear as the Heavy Metal Kids on the counter-culture jam session credited to Haphash & the Coloured Coat with the Human Host. Along the way they effectively discovered Joe Cocker, let Keith Emerson slip through their ranks and almost became Jimi Hendrix' Experience being the first band he sat in with on his arrival in the UK. With the patronage of Chris Blackwell and the entry of American Gary Wright they settled as Spooky Tooth. Their first album in 1968 being a fine addition to the progressive rock emerging from Island at the time complementing the albums of that year by the likes of Free, Jethro Tull and particularly Traffic. Music mid point where the psychedelic influences were waining in favour of a return to rootsy rock and blue-eyed soul.

Leaning on contemporay singer-song writer material from the States the band built up a reputation for sizzling live shows that showcased their increasingly tight musicianship. Another off-shoot came with their rip-it up jam behind Nirvana on that band's final and atypical Island 45 in 1969. In this year they headed up to Willesden (like many of us do) and the Olympic studios-rival Morgan (now a cut-price chemists) with Traffic producer Jimmy Miller. Here they recorded "Spooky Two", arguably their most cohesive collection but one (like their career) marred with some poor decision-making. For example the opening song "Waiting For the Wind" is something of a false start. The brooding build-up drumming and tension suggest something memorable but the whole mood collapses with a horrible transition into a monolithic riff that strangles the song's melody. Great albums don't start like this. Things pick-up a bit with the follow-up songs; one Traffic-like-lite, one gospelly/Stones and finally the momentum builds to a nailed-on classic performance in "Evil Woman". When frantic guitarist Luther Grosvenor finally explodes halfway in you're well and trully ready for it ...and does he explode! 

Side two starts slowly again but gets better with  the tracks flowing well through a range of styles, The gentle harmonica intro of "That Was Only Yesterday" launches the band into a rolling laid-back groove which contrasts nicely with the hard rock "Better by You" that follows.But like all good shows this takes you to the end on a high with the outstanding folky-rock of "Hangman Hang My Shell On A Tree". Producer Jimmy Miller was also re-making the Stones at this time and you can maybe hear echoes of "Salt of the Earth" here with the simplistic anthem-like melody ringing on after the LP's finished. The mysterious lyric blending with the (British) Island Records obsession with pastoral strumming.  Traffic probably picked this up when they set about their "John Barleycorn" opus. So in conclusion "S2" is a fine lost album and should be better known. Post-script - after this the bassist left to form Humble Pie - arguably the sort of band Spooky should have become. The remaining members then foolishly attempted a collaboration with a French electronic classical music composer. The resulting plinky- plonks were distracting, the religous lyrics wearisome but the band were in fine form and some claim it very good. But it's an album that's slipped so far between the cracks that this scribe just can't seem to reach it. 

(PS)

I wonder if 1969 hadn't been such a stellar year for British rock and roll, would this album have had more of a positive response from the British public? As it was, this kind of ended up lurking in the shadows of Abbey Road, Let it Bleed, Led Zep I & II, Tommy, 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)... OK, not that last one. 

Maybe Gary Wright's falsetto vocals were seen as gimmicky and off-putting; maybe the rushed (and largely unwanted) release of the wretched Ceremony later that year killed off any credibility that this might've accumulated. Whatever the reason, Spooky Two certainly deserved more recognition than it received and it remains for me a hidden gem in Island's eclectic and largely excellent catalogue. 

There are straight out guitar/organ rockers such as the opener Waiting for the Wind with its funky extended drum intro; the melodramatic Better By You, Better Than Me which was included on the Nice Enough To Eat Island sampler; and the sleazy-riffed Evil Woman which is timeless enough to have been used in TV adverts for a betting website, 50 years after its release. 

Elsewhere, the LP takes different turns wherever you look: Lost in My Dream alternates between suppressed tension and spaced out prog fantasy; That Was Only Yesterday has a lilting country feel, complete with wistful harmonica motif; Feelin' Bad sounds like the hangover the day after Traffic's Feelin' Alright, but when you know the night before was worth it; I've Got Enough Heartaches is in danger of sounding a touch schmaltzy at first, until the beautiful gospel vocals come in to make it something Joe Cocker would’ve been happy fronting up; Hangman Hang My Shell on a Tree fades out to close the LP with a bit of everything thrown in for good measure.

Maybe Spooky Two didn’t have enough going for it to be considered among the best LPs of the year, but considering the competition that’s hardly surprising. It certainly didn’t deserve to be overlooked quite as much as it has.

(JS)

On first impression Spooky Two( 1969) by Spooky Tooth is an album which has promise, but fails to create the next step of the culture it aspires to. The tightness of the band's rhythm and blues heritage is softened by rich organ swells. The double vocal blend of Wright and Harrison is occasionally swelled by female gospel voices. The rhthym’s are loose and the guitar work is softer, but falling short of the psychedelic jangle that typifies this period. The record hovers is a middle space between, not quite rock, not quite prog, not quite psych, and its reluctance to commit to easy categorisation confuses the listener seeking brand identity. The musicianship on display here is pleasant to hear, skilful to behold, but not sufficiently focussed to create sufficient memorable impression. 

Waitin' For The Wind

“Wind called on me

How it took me by surprise

Cause night come upon me

Creeping through the distant skies

Wind tell me what you can

'Bout the life - What I came from

A breeze blew and whispered then

In a voice rich as the sun”

This is a pleasant enough stomper, with a melodic, double vocal, on an ascending keyboard sequence, but awful monotonic chorus and unimaginative guitar solo at the end. Gives the impression that the keyboard sequence evolved from a jam between the keyboard players, and the the rhythm, guitars and lyrics were fitted around the hook. The chorus doesn’t work.

Feelin' Bad

You seek to grow a happy face

But ya' need someone for sure

To fill tomorrow's empty space

That hides behind your door

Oh yeah...

I'll bring anything you want

You know I'm here to guide you

But change your day from bad to good

Hide the tears inside you

Oh yeah...

Whimsical and melodic verse structure which ascends, followed by descending gospel chorus. Harrison’s vocal is stronger and works better, than composer’s thinner, falsetto contribution. Pleasant as it sounds it doesn’t really match the mood of the lyric. I suspect the music and lyric were composed separately and then fitted together.

I've Got Enough Heartache

Strong in a field of wheat. That's why I say, I've got enough heartaches. Tell me what you see when you look at me, yeah.

We've got a good thing, let's not lose it.

Is it right? Is it wrong when you say it won't be long?

I've got, I've got enough heartaches.

Bluesy, slightly over-cooked, gospel-led, double keyboard heartbreak balladry, with great vocal from Harrison.

Evil Woman

Woman, thought you were a blessin'

Then I caught you messin'

Evil woman

Woman! You ain't got no feelin'

You're just a dirty dealin'

Yeah!

Guitar driven bluesy stomper which works really well when Harrison sings, less well when Wright’s falsetto takes over. Again the fireworks live more in the verse than the chorus. Extended instrumental wig extends this track to 9 minutes. Time has not been as kind to Wright’s vocal interpretation particularly when he sounds a bit like the 'ol woman of the title in the later stages of the wig out. Perhaps it would be fairer to say inspired by the blues.

Lost In My Dream

And now I'm still lost

In my dream of fear

It's the end for me

Somewhere in the frost

On the seam of my mind

Waits my destiny

Don't think I've gone there today

Unusually structured song with an unpleasant sounding verse and an uplifting middle section, sounds like Harrison’s upper range, would work quite well in a Jodorowsky western like the following year's "El Topo". This one is more time-stamped into its period of composition .

That Was Only Yesterday

That was only yesterday 

But will I ever face tomorrow 

She took away what I'd had 

And returned it full of sorrow 

Loose rock ballad stomper with added blues harmonica, strong lead vocal by Harrison, and restrained blended support vocal from Wright. Almost no novelty elements, but competent work piece. I suspect this is the material which the band could play well and the formula that song writer Wright is attempting to escape from. 

Better By You, Better Than Me

Guess I'll have to change my way of living

Don't wanna really know the way I feel

Guess I'll learn to fight and kill

Tell her not to wait until

They'll find my blood upon her windowsill?

It's better by you better than me

Tight rocker about suicidal heart broken boy with strong vocal from Harrison. Achieved later notoriety later when Judas Priest covered it.

Hangman Hang My Shell On A Tree

The time's right ahead, can't you see

Cause my life's running out, out on me

I forgotten how it was, let me be

So hangman hang my shell, on a tree

Two rhythms, brass inserts, long repeated chorus and fuzzy new age nonsense lyrics repeated about two minutes too many times, great Harrison vocal , with strong Wright blend

Overall a band comfortable with the prior zeitgeist, making unconvincing, tentative steps to explore a new age and a new sound. "Lost in my dream" is probably the bravest track, but "Better by you", or "I’ve got enough heartache" is probably what the band plays best.

(CG)

The second album released by Spooky Tooth in 1969, Spooky Two, in many ways reflects the achievements of the British contemporary rock scene in 1969 after a seminal period in which various genres of rock and roll, R and B, and the blues had been mined to develop a predominantly guitar orientated music in the UK which expanded beyond the radio shaped formats of the 3 or 4 minute song. 


This paralleled similar developments in rock music in the United States which also provided some impetus into the British rock scene but also highlighted differences of approach. Although not received particularly enthusiastically at the time its track listing highlights many of the directions that rock music was to develop in the seventies and eighties. These ranged from progressive rock to sultry blues derived wailers such as Evil Woman to heavy metal pounders such as Better by You Better than Me subsequently covered by the heavy metal band Judas Priest in 1978. It also included lyrical musings of Hangman Hang my Shell on a Tree that linked to the folk scene and folk rock emerging at this time with its distinctively British take on such fusions that drew on vernacular local histories found within Britain and Ireland. In short this is an underestimated album that has hidden appeal as with its diversity at least one or two tracks will score a hit with the listener whatever their musical preferences.

JACQUES BREL - "La Belle Affaire!"

"Quand je serai vieux je serai insupportable         "When I get old I'll be unbearable
 Sauf pour mon lit et mon maigre passe                 Except to my bed and my miserable past
 Mon chien sera mort, ma barbe sera minable      My dog will be dead, my beard shabby
 Toutes mes morues m'auront laisse tomber"        And all my women will dump me"

                                                             "LA, LA, LA" - 1966

By the time he finally stepped off the stage in May 1967, Jacques Brel had pretty much reached the end of his musical voyage.

With a few notable exceptions, the songs recorded in this period would see him re-working the same lyrical obsessions he'd been ploughing since the late 50's, with only the lusher arrangements offering any real musical progression. In addition, each LP was now peppered with self-deprecating references to himself in third person, designed to send a signal to his audience in Brechtian terms that the show was nearly over. And so just as he'd abandoned the safety of his father's Brussels cardboard factory 15 years previously to become the star of the Parisian music-hall, so he decided to step off the carousel once and for all and indulge himself in something new.

A keen aviator, Brel passed his pilot's license in Switzerland and then took up the offer to launch himself into the world of celluloid, first as actor then director. These twin obsessions would dovetail to fine effect in the overhead panning shot of the Blankenburg tram trundling over the dunes, which opened his directorial debut "Franz", which premiered at Cannes in 1971. This dark melodrama starred Brel himself as a composite Brelien figure, marooned in the geographical and tragi-comic end of his own back-catalogue. The cinematography impressively captured the haunting monotony of the Belgian countryside and won plaudits from the critics as a first noble effort. But commercially the film failed to live up to his landmark break through back at the Olympia Music Hall back in 1961, when his name became the toast of toutes Paris. And so with time ticking by and dreams still to be realised, Brel added a boat to his escape plans, said goodbye to wife and daughters and set sail for a desert-island exile in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

By the middle of the decade with failing health, he found himself making regular trips back, island-hopping to Los Angeles and then onto Brussels or Orly depending on the consultation required. Accompanied by his partner, Madly, the couple played cat and mouse with the "Paris Match" paparazzi, hungry for snaps of the ailing monstre sacre. Lying low behind hotel curtains during the day, the nights were spent re-visiting old haunts such as "Chez Leon" off the Brussels Grand Place, re-living the years of triumph in the company of old cronies from his touring entourage with occasional visits from the likes of Claude Lelouch and actor Lino Ventura. And it was here that serviette scribbled doodles, risque jokes and boozy reminiscences would coagulate, re-fuelling the chansoniers fires to lay down a final testament to his lyrical obsessions. By 1977 the urgency to record them would become acute as the advancing stages of lung cancer threatened to extinguish any thoughts of a final performance.

And so it was that a final session was convened that autumn in the company of his established accompanists, Rauber, Jouannest and Azzola. The songs picked up the same familiar themes, the quartet locked into the same musical patterns. Here was a slow moving ballad, here an uptempo march with accordion fills. One track would suggest acute vulnerability only for the mood to be broken by a ribald portrait of crude misanthropy. The humour was black the sentimentality brutally honest, but underscoring every note there was something new. From the beginning his songs had meditated on the limited course of the human condition, but at that autumnal session in 1977 every single song bears the heavy presence of impending expiration.

The years of isolation at Hiva-Oa had left Brel pondering a number of unanswered questions and the death of his manager and confident, Jojo Pasquelier in 1974 precipitated a deeper contemplation of his world. From here he wrote touchingly about his friend "Jojo", imagining them re-united,"six feet under", swapping moth-eaten anecdotes and Brel even suggesting their graveyard be transformed into the heyday of their professional triumphs back at the Paris L'Olympia. This song took the male-bonding of the earlier "Jef" that bit further, focusing unashamedly on his own personal loss and the theme continues in "Voir un Ami Pleurer", which similarly pulls no punches with it's description of a friend bereft, a sight even sadder than the "towns exhausted by 50-year old children". The inevitable decline into old age permeates everything and "Viellir" describes it as a fate far worse than death itself, with that final " belle affaire" served as the only respite. The song's transcendent chorus echoing the triumphant fatalism of the earlier "La Mort" and "Le Dernier Repas".

In "Orly", Brel stands in the shadows watching a young couple violently disengage from each other; the girl finally engulfed by a monstrous bourgeois crowd of onlookers "nibbling" at her as though she were fruit. In this song Brel seems to be saying that their long cold journey into old age is only beginning. In "Avec Elegance", one of a brace of songs recorded at the same time, he remarks how men at 50 know they should leave for the provinces, simply through looking into the indifferent eyes of the beautiful women they encounter on city streets. To retire, to be put out to grass, "to be desperate but with elegance".  Another song inexplicably left off the album, "Sans Exigences" describes the winding down of a relationship in desperate yet noble terms to the touching accompaniment of an unusually minimal and skeletal harpsichord. Each verse conjuring up the de-escalation of passion and the resignation of trust.

Possibly in the interests of balance, though more likely designed to reinforce his bravura stage persona, Brel off-set these honest statements of decline with a slew of minor, up-tempo songs that pitted his "characters" against the old enemy; women. Sounding like a bastard soundtrack to Fellini's contemporaneous "La Citta Della Donna", the songs unbalanced the album and lead to renewed criticism of the author's barely disguised misogyny. In "Les Ramparts Des Varsovie" this is joined by a dash of homophobia, whilst in "Les F...", Brel gives himself over to quite earnest racial self-loathing. In this song his hitherto merely hinted at disdain for Flemish nationalism is made explicit against a highly ironic disco backing. The song with it's infamous accusation of his fellow countrymen being "Nazis during the wars and Catholics in between" leaves no margin for misinterpretation or ambiguity by a final line in which the author states, "And if your cowardly brothers don't protest, too bad for them, me I stick to my guns, signing off, Jacques Brel!". The song would lead to anti-Brel graffitti along the Brussels railway sidings and polarise the affections of his local fan-base. But in this unforgiving final performance Brel was taking no prisoners.

If women and his homeland get a raw deal, then it was matched by a refreshed onslaught against another ancient foe; organised religion. Throughout the LP, Brel makes it clear time and time again that he had no intention to make peace with his maker. If a feeling of bittersweet loss is the mood of the un-issued war memory "Mai 40", then the air is thick with anarchy for the LP's opening song "Jaures". This song, a rare political tribute to the anti-militarist leader of the French left, assassinated in 1914, at the outbreak of a war made with "priests blessings", explicitly outlines Brel's despair in religion. In asking why Jaures was killed, Brel seems to be addressing "Le Bon Dieu" Himself, and in the song of the same name he finds the answer, declaring him to be no maker of miracles, but something better, "You are a man!" Just a man.

Brel the man passed away in October 1978, 12 months and 8 days after recording the album's closing tribute to his island hideaway. In 1961 he'd celebrated the dream of "Un Ile", "out in the open sea of hope, where men would not be afraid". By 1977, the island described in "

Les Marquises" is one of eerie menace and stultifying disorientation, where seasons don't exist and time stands still. But by this time Brel was done with romance and as the last words he would sing declare;

"Veux-tu que je te dise gemir n'est pas de mise    "I tell you what, whining isn't the thing to do
  Aux Marquises"                                                          In the Marquises"

The World of JOHN CAMERON

JC. Hard at it.

One of the many back-room Johnnies that pulled the strings for a string of front-room favourites, John Cameron's name keeps cropping up in my record collection. As a result I feel compelled to honour the range of his arrangements and at the same time purge myself from listening to him again and again and again. I hope this draws a line under it.

By way of introduction I am including one of the TV shows he was responsible for and one that in my opinion never really added up. And  I mean literally. You had these impressive opening titles where all sorts of stuff was going on but because it was only on for 30 minutes there was never enough time for anything to actually happen. I constantly felt shortchanged. All through my youth.

DONOVAN, "standing by The Everyman digging the rigging in my (his) sail...", encountered JC and installed him as his musical director from whence he oversaw a truly inspired evolution from folkie to what (in the books) is officially called  psychedelic minstrel. Much lyrical waxing ensued against the sound of harpsichords and the big-chinned Dylanist was never the same again. Cameron took Don through the changes, with the pair briefly relocating New Orleans to St Albans with a series of swinging jazztastic odes hammered out in the company of regular sidemen Spike Heatley, Candy Carr and The Hipster himself Harold McNair. Try "Preachin Love" for proof. It's like Georgie Fame but in a slightly fey Scottish brogue.

Meanwhile somewhere under Greek Street the Canadian chanteuse JULIE FELIX was hitting the same string bass notes, her "Saturday Night" restyle of "Young Girl Blues" coming out a very worthy cover and Cameron followed her onto the BBC for the duration of a TV show. In this canon mention must be made of PETER SARSTEDT's "Step Into The Candlelight" and a particularly forgotten progressive folkie of the same bent TIM HOLLIER. His LPs have some very big Cameron arrangements such as the sweeping "In The Light of Sadness".

Hanging round the BBC (in an entirely work based capacity I must stress) Cameron must have bumped into southern belle BOBBIE GENTRY, as he ended up acting as her MD for her criminally wiped shows. (I mean what were they doing at the BBC in those days....?)

Pinching her distinctive Chickasaw County Sound he turned "On a Monday" by JIMMY CAMPBELL into some sort of my woman done-like gone-like, mersey delta blues. (Fans of this singer will not need to be reminded of The 23rd Turnoff's monumental "Michaelangelo"). The phenomenon of Donovan inspired a couple (?) of tribute albums recorded by VIC LEWIS at the arse-end of the 60's and Cameron turns up arranging Vic's spectacular take on Macca's "Blackbird". It's interesting to hear the MIKE SAMMES SINGERS sending the bird in a distinctly mid-Atlantic direction.

For the PICADILLY LINE Cameron is in restrained form. The sleeve of their album suggests full-on Toy-town psych but it's actually very measured, softly swinging folk- baroque (shit I've used all by labels!). "On the Third Stroke" sounds like something off a Simon & Garfunkel album, which is no bad thing. But Cameron was a man of many parts and word should be made of his northern soul credentials with his work with The Flirtations and one-offs like the Cam arranged "Look at the Lights Go Out" by HOPSCOTCH, a band previously called The Scots of St James (a play on words on the club The Scotch of St James ....a popular club in St James with a Scotch theme - I think they ended up as Marmalade, a breakfast condiment).

And then there's "No More" by American singer JON HENDRICKS, previously of the Lambert, Hendricks & Ross scat group and "Twisted" fame. He was in London at the time working with Ronnie Scott who was also acting as sideman for the former singer Scott Walker, Hendricks appears as a guest on an April 1969 edition of Scott's TV Show. (And we wondered once opon a time why the saving of these shows was low down the BBC priorities...). LIONEL BART's progressive 1968 LP doesn't so much divide opinion as draw together an overwhelming consensus that the song "May a Man Be Merry" is the only thing worth listening to on it! (file next to JC's soundtrack to the Peter O'Toole vehicle, "The Ruling Class". But only if you want).
In this period Cameron oversaw Melanie's second LP and her soundtrack to the Tom Bell vehicle "All The Right Noises" as well as sessions with ex-Manfred and budding Brit-actor Paul Jones. ALAN DAVID was another with thespian credentials appearing in "Gonks Go Beat" and the TV Show "Gadzooks Its All Happening" (no not exactly The Cottesloe, was he?). He didn't seem to have any other credits after this. "Oh What a Naughty Man" is a decidedly camp affair with more than a touch of late 60's Bowie about it. (The b-side "I've Got to Know" is a spot-on Barry Ryan impersonation by the way for those who are interested. And for those who are VERY interested there's a good cover version of it on Petula Clark's "C'est La Refrain De Ma Chanson" LP.).

I suppose I should mention JC's work on singles by Gloria Hunniford and Freddie Garrity in this particular part of the appraisal but I won't. Of far greater interest is John Cameron's masterwork from 1968, "Run the Length of Your Wildness" by well-connected American singer KATHE GREEN. Enclosed within a creepy Hammer Horror-inspired sleeve, JC comes as close as anyone to recreating Jim Webb's weirdly wonderful arrangements for the Richard Harris LP's. Indeed it was the man they called Hoarse who inspired Green's album title. Songs like the title track and "Primrose Hill" pack a heavy emotional punch with JC given free-reign to belt out almost Wagnerian soundscapes. Balancing this are more wistful titles such as the meticulously arranged and sung "Ring of String".

The album also has a great version of one of Cameron's best known compositions, "If I'd Ever Thought You'd Change Your Mind", a song covered by many singers of the day including the eternally undervalued CILLA BLACK. (there's also a very nice Gil Evans-type jazz version of this by the mystic Californian trumpeter Maynard Ferguson). Welsh wanna-be-Cilla SAMANTHA JONES did a rousing version of JC's other famous song "Sweet Inspiration" which is well worth a spin even if her vocal does get a little over exposed amongst Mark Wirtz's ersatz parping horns.

Cameron's big hit was however in the company of the Collective Consciousness Society - CCS - and their big band reworking of "Whole Lotta Love"which left a deep impression on many British childhoods as the theme to BBC's "Top of the Pops" (It's not the easiest thing to listen to these days I might add...) From their first LP the "Waiting Song" is a particularly fine showcase for the cream of British jazz that resided in this band's line-up. No Alexis Korner on it either.  LESLEY DUNCAN's career flitted between session work (I think she's on much of the above songs I've wittered on about) and obscure singles. "Love Song" is her most famous song but this was the original version with its use of atmospheric street sounds. This is one of those VERY London songs - up there with the stuff off Drake's "Bryter Layter" and that Murray Head LP where he goes off his trolley - "Nigel Lived".

Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" is in my opinion given it's most evocative  interpretation by FRANCOISE HARDY. This wins over the French version by the the erotic pronunciation of the word:
 "o-rang-es" near the start.
One wet Sunday afternoon at The Belgrade Hotel in Oldham, I handed over a fiver for "Les Grandes Success" LP and the veteran Brummie record dealer cooed back at me, "Oooh Francoise!". In a split second, and much to my chagrin, the crowning peak of this man's entire adolescence had been eternally forced upon my consciousness.

Growing up with exposure to the Bam Caruso "Rubble " series I came across a couple of acts with Cameron arrangements, both good examples of how ill-defined much of the music we call/called psychedelic really is. Both THE KALEIDOSCOPE's "Black Fjord" and WORLD OF OZ's "Like a Tear" are very difficult to pin-point. The consistent element is the imaginative arrangements, the former bombastically epic, the latter incalculably subtle.

Over the North Sea The Tages were the most Beatle-like of the Swedish bands and by the end of the 60's they had become BLOND (I mean they already were but they changed there name to BLOND). They drafted JC in to give them a revamp and ended up recording the "If I Ever Thought You'd Change..."song. They also recorded something of an epic called "The Lilac Years" which seems to be about the immigration of Scandinavians to America. It's all very BIG and ends up with a slightly unexpected crumhorn solo.

What else...what else...well there is of course the work he produced under his own name. In the mid-60's he knocked out a couple of LPs "Cover Lover" and "Warm & gentle" which were fairly bog standard easy comps of popular tunes, a bit like the work of Sounds Orchestral and other John Schroeder produced concoctions.
In fact it is JC on JS's "Dolly Catcher" LP which spawned the memorable "Explosive Corrosive Joseph" amongst others. Of greater worth is the classic "Troublemaker" LP with Harold and co all in place. (PS - it's quite popular in clubs). The other stuff has been leaked out by that other Johnny, Mr Trunk with the soundtracks to "Kes" and "Psychomania".

Elsewhere his Library work can be found on the internet (this). These LPs were recorded for commercial purposes and there is a LOT OF IT. Bonne chance to the man who wants to track it all down. However some of it is top notch with the KPM series spawning things like "Liquid Sunshine" and the Sound Gallery-famed "Half Forgotten Daydreams"

Any road I'm done. I'll leave you with this:

PETE TOWNSHEND - 1968: A year between the cracks

It's worth quoting in full:

"They're the scruffiest bunch of Poms that ever milked money from this country's kids...they took nearly 8000 teenagers for $2.60 to $3.60 each. All the kids got for their money was an ear-splitting cacophony that was neither musical nor funny...They did more to harm the British image in a few days than Harold Wilson or Edward Heath could do in ten years. I'm ashamed to have come from the same country as these unwashed, foul-mouthed, booze swilling no-hopers. Britain can have them"

The Truth, Paul Rodgers

(New Zealand  tabloid  - 6th Feb 1968)

And so ended The Who's tour of the Antipodes; a two week slalom of long-haul flights, harassed air hostesses, rotten P.A's and lots of tinned beer. Two years on they'd be touring opera houses for the crowned heads of Europe, riding high on the back of a critically acclaimed magnum opus that would make them millionaires.

In between all this was 1968.

Fluck & King's design classic

The December 1967 release of the remarkable post-modern masterpiece "The Who Sell Out" turned out to be a dead-end. In fact it happened in Pete Townshend's head when the taster single "I Can See For Miles" failed to sell. "I spat on the British record buyer" is the oft-quoted remark that draws a line under this period. Townshend had leapt forward as far as anyone could in bringing the audio-visual concepts of management to fruition, but the lack of commercial success compounded some significant inner turmoil. The summer had taken its toll with the guitarist personally scarred by a number of nightmarish mid-flight incidents whilst touring the States. After their performance at Monterey he tripped badly all the way home on his first and last experience with STP, whilst an emergency landing on a foam covered runway at Rhode Island would flashback in an unexpected direction.

"I say without reservation, we ain't getting much higher"

At the start of the New Year the band put down a rag-bag selection of songs destined for a motley sequence of releases over the course of the next 40-odd years. The uncharacteristically sober, "Faith in Something Bigger" hinted at the post-acid comedown that had lead Townshend towards spiritual rejuvenation in Indian guru Meher Baba. At the same time a more explicit expression of his self-reflection was to be found in the dramatic "Glow Girl"; a fiery re-incarnation horror story complete with a pop-art plane-crash guitar solo no less. The guitarist was edging towards something here. Some sort of statement. The rejected promo artwork is a classic of the time pop-collage, with Sitting Bull, Henry Kissinger and Tor Johnson from "Plan 9 From Outer Space", all heading towards their maker.

"The sun is shining, but not for me...the sun is shining BUT NOT FOR MEEE"

Back home in his studio in Belgravia, Pete demoed a song rooted  in the English winter. "Melancholia" would erupt into life in the hands of the band later on in the year, but in the author's original recording we hear a crazed scientist pottering about in his lab. The home-made drums and treated vocals lurch against the anarchic tempo like neurones bouncing across a traumatised cerebral cortex. This was the sound of a straining lurch into the abyss. It's bloody good but Townshend clearly didn't  know where HIS band were heading.

Studio time in L.A squeezed between an inter-state Spring tour produced "Call Me Lightning", a remarkable throwback to an earlier Who (a return to a lost Who?). "Little Billy" was no less interesting and confusing, commissioned as it was by the American Cancer Society. On stage at the Fillmore East in April Townshend explained it as;

"A song about someone that doesn't smoke and doesn't die of obesity, even though he is very fat - and ends up looking after all the children of the people that died of cancer"

At the same concert the band delivered a blistering extended version of "Relax" from "The Who Sell Out" whilst "Shakin' All Over" and "My Generation" formed a blueprint for the improvised soloing that would become the band's hallmark in the years to come. Recorded a day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Townshend marked the occasion by replacing his usual conclusion of "You are forgiven" at the end of  "A Quick One" with a mind-numbingly inappropriate throwaway that encapsulated the band's wild sense of naivity and exhuberance abroad:

"That certain person that shot that certain person - is forgiven"

Back home in the midst of a tour of University Hall's, the humour was restored to a somewhat more benign if bizarre tone when the band decided to issue a calculated if ill-fated stab at the charts. In retrospect the release of running mates The Small Faces' "Lazy Sunday" in April was perhaps not coincidental in the decision to let loose "Dogs" with all it's cockney ooh-la-la. The Track Records promotional material did little to help it sell but today we can but glory in the song's sheer mind numbing irreverence. And listen to those harmonies at the end!

Back in a variety of studios the band continued to accumulate songs. At Track headquarters in Soho, manager Kit Lambert was intent on collecting these sods and odds into an LP intended for a July release to coincide with the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Exactly why "Who's For Tennis?" would have been an appropriate move based as it was on a very lame title joke has been lost in time. However it reveals the dire straits the band were in and firmly explains where The Who were in the rock firmament. If it had been released it would have been a fittingly perverse addition to the band's recent career moves, that it wasn't released, marks the point where the band's fortunes were irrevocably altered.

As the Summer of '68 slipped into Autumn, Pete found himself focussing on something altogether more substantial and with Lambert egging him on, the band began work on a batch of new songs assembling under the working title of "The Deaf, Dumb and Blind Boy". Unbeknown to them, the sessions at IBC, Portland Place would occupy the better part of the next 8 months.

To bridge the gap, the band resurrected the Bo Diddley-inspired "Magic Bus", a non-performing US-only single which in sound resurrected another echo of the lost Who. In fact so low down was this piece in Townshend's ambitions, he'd given the song away 12 months previously to a hopelessly obscure act appropriately called The Pudding. Their version flopped too.

On the 7th October (the day of this scribe's birth no less), the band flew to Bremen to publicise the song on the German "Top of The Pops", "Beat Club". But in a clear sign that management had lost track of their target audience, the Track promotional machine cranked up with wildly misplaced overkill.

What was it about this song? In America the song had titled an outrageous rip-off of an LP called "Magic Bus: The Who on Tour". Released to look like a live album the record was in fact a dodgy compilation of b-sides and singles. The band raged against it's release yet there they were on the 9th October aboard a vintage bus which followed a circular route from Shepherd's Bus to Holborn via Oxford Street and Trafalgar Square. On board were a baby elephant, a parrot and two dolly birds who would go onto infamy later on that month when they posed nude for the Track Records-Dave King designed, "Electric Ladyland" sleeve. A week later the whole lot of 'em repeated the same journey!

LOOK there they are!

In November the band joined a package tour across the provinces which climaxed in a performance at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool where the audience were treated to an eight man super-group of Who and Small Faces. For the latter group there would be only another month before their implosion and though it had seemed inevitable for Townshend's bemused charges, The Who MkII were actually about to crank it up to full throttle.

In December they appeared in a TV studio in Wembley as members of the The Rolling Stones "Rock'n'Roll Circus" extravaganza. Designed to triumph where the Beatles '67 "Magical Mystery Tour" had merely baffled, the whole thing eventually collapsed when the Stones forgot to bring the house down. In the re-issued film bleary-eyed punters dressed like extras from "The Prisoner" make desperate efforts to whip themselves into a frenzy as Mick and the boys finally hit the stage. But Wembley at 6am in the morning is a cruel place to be and there is nothing more painful than watching a band perform their set AT their audience. The Stones were approaching their creative peak but they hadn't got under the skin of their material yet, and compared to the other acts they simply didn't seem hungry enough.

But none of them were hungrier than The Who and this performance above all demonstrates the strides the band had made on stage by the relentless touring that year. One legend persists that Jagger (or manager Allen Klein) attempted to sell the whole thing back to the band as "The Who's Rock'n'Roll Circus". Whatever the truth, posterity records that suddenly the bass boomed like never before, the vocals swaggered with greater conviction, the drums rolled like exploding grenades and Pete slashed at his guitar with almost devotional violence.