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History 1960-68 | 1968-76 | 1976-80 | 1980-92 | 1992-2008
Photography. Roy Hammans
Poster art by Paul Shuttleworth.
Down at the Kursaal. Photography Jane Root. L2R David Hatfield, GD, Vic Collins, Richie Bull, Paul Shuttleworth, Will Birch.
What possessed me to wear a beard? Laziness! Photography Adrian Boot(?)
Here are some links to people or sites mentioned in the text.
The Summer of Love had passed Southend by - it was still the fiefdom of the Ultra-right Conservatives Paul Channon (Mr. Guinness) and Sir Stephen McAdden, so it wasn't exactly going to San Francisco. After converting to the blues and the Grateful Dead, my immediate circle of friends included Martin "Squirrel" Aubrey, his beautiful, if slightly off-the-wall wife, Jinni and others. Martin became a very close friend - in future years he was to be an invaluable member of the Hot Rods entourage. Jinni was a very good hairdresser - she and her friend, Helen, opened the hippest hairdressing salon in Southend, "Grateful Heads" where my locks were often coiffed (I still had the obligatory long lank greasy hair). She introduced me to the wonders of henna.
As I've already mentioned, I'd managed to get a place at Brentwood College of Education which kept me out of trouble for a couple of years. It was here that I first met Ed Hollis. He was trying out various careers to see which fitted. At the time it seemed to be "Those without a desire to work in an office, teach". We both loved music and became friends. Other friends, notably David Bryant and John Power, made sure that it was an enjoyable time for all of us. I even managed to qualify! Brentwood C of E had one aspect of notoriety - pissed off with their idea of student entertainment (Trad. Jazz bands) I persuaded the authorities to let me run a gig one Saturday. It featured an appearance by the fledgling Dr. Feelgood. Lee, Wilko, Sparko and Figure dutifully turned up to play to twenty people (in two years time they were to grace the front cover of the NME), after a sublime set by Surly Bird.
Added footnote: I have it on good authority (ie by someone who actually remembers what happened, David Bryant), that he and I were co-conspirators in the quest to get rock music into Brentwood CofE, in which case I stand corrected. We did both get put on report - I think I spent three years on report of some kind there.
Surly Bird was the band that featured Paul Shuttleworth, Will Birch, David Murdock, Stewart Cook and myself. We would support many of the big bands at the local Tech. College, or the Cricketers Inn. Occasionally we would get a gig at the Dagenham Roundhouse, or the Kings Head in Romford.
I've been contacted by a guy who supported Surly Bird in those days, one Phil Johns. He found the poster for Surly Bird, Cow Pie (Paul Shuttleworth's original Country Rock band), High Country (whose nucleus was, I believe, the Morris Boys) and, of course Phil and his band. He has reminded me of one or two people that I've totally forgotten about (some of them deservedly so), but I'll rack the brains a bit more about this period of my history. Phil did loan me his cherished 330 for a set once, where my old Tele had suffered string breakage. I'm much obliged to him because we weren't rich enough for spare guitars in those days.
The early seventies in Southend saw the schism of local tastes in music. There were the Anglophiles, whose taste was pomposity itself - the prog. Rock of Yes, ELP, Genesis, Soft Machine and the Canterbury school, and the rest of us, who had been entranced by the Grateful Dead, the Airplane, the MC5, the Allman Brothers and Little Feat. There was a third wave - the Feelgoods were true to their RnB roots and continued to pump out John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy et al. That WAS the start of the new wave, and it surfaced in the pubs of London with Ducks de Luxe, Ian Dury (Kilburns), the Brinsleys and Chilli Willi and his Peppers.
The Feelgoods had opened up a floodgate in the U.K. The kids wanted to dance again, not sit back and applaud fifteen-minute drum solos in 7/8 time. The pub basements were sweaty, crowded and alive; Top of the Pops was crammed with Saturday Night Disco. One Thursday night in 74, at the Blue Boar Hotel on Victoria Ave, a new band played in public for the first time. The Kursaal Flyers, Southend's answer to the Flying Burrito Bros, played a couple of sets of Country Rock. The line-up of Paul Shuttleworth, Richie Bull, David Hatfield, Vic Collins, Will Birch and myself cranked out I'm a Believer, Willin', Six days on the road, and other country faves.
I had been playing in a band that had reached the final of the Melody Maker Rock contest, the infamous Eddie & the Blizzards.. The line-up was Barrie Martin, who had graduated from drumming to guitar, Andy Farrell on bass, Phil Aldridge on drums and myself. We played the hard rocking boogie of the Allman Bros and Johnnie Winters, with a touch of Boz Scaggs. When the Kursaals started to get work in London, championed by the Feelgoods, it became too hard to concentrate on both bands, so I said goodbye to the Blizzards.
Two weeks into the Kursaals first London residency at the Kensington Hotel, a rat-arsed Frankie Miller and Henry McCullough accosted us. They wanted to jam, but were unable to achieve verticality. I wasn't about to entrust my Strat to the pissed-up Paddy and told him to shove his head down the bog to sober up first, which he declined to do. (I met Henry McCullough years later, in Northern Ireland, doing a guest set by the Hot Rods at the Agent's wedding reception. He was still pissed and still obnoxious, taking exception to the fact that he wasn't the biggest star there. After 30 mins of screaming feedback, I think someone introduced him to a bourbon intravenous drip, which, at least, allowed the guests some relief from the noise.)
The Kursaals played a Sunday night residency at the Newlands Tavern, Peckham. One week, a couple of girls in ra-ra skirts and Japanese schoolgirl socks demonstrated to the audience that the Art of Jive was still alive. With our tongues dragging on the floor, we finished the set. Next week, we played "Yellow sox" to great acclaim, but, sadly, without our Jive Bunnies in attendance.
The Kursaals were attracting some attention from the Rock Press. We had been adopted by Paul Conroy, an agent, and came to the attention of Jonathan King. Although we were slightly too old for his normal target audience, I think he was taken with Will's pop knowledge, (possibly his boyish charm?) and signed the Kursaals to UK Records as a replacement for 10cc. This was heaven for the Ks. Having quit our jobs and turned professional, we were surviving on 15 squids a week, living at home, and travelling the motorways of the UK. I'd just achieved fully-qualified Teacher status at Belfairs school, so it was an immediate pay cut of some 300%. Many times during the preceding months, I'd got out of the van at 8am after an all-night drive home from Newcastle or some such, and tried to remember how to teach Science to unwilling pupils. I think I used to bribe the class to keep quiet by giving them ciggies, while I grabbed 40 winks. They all deserve an unmitigated apology.
Someone had found a record producer (Huw Murphy), who was entrusted with the job of making the Kursaals first hit record. I think he had a track record, of sorts, with the GT Moore band. Booked into somewhere in the wilds of Kent, owned by genetic mutants whose brains had been rotted by consumption of home-brewed methanol, we tried our best to make "Chocs Away", our pun-intentional debut album. This was the first recording studio we had been in. Our only previous encounter with tape machines was when Surly Bird had attracted the attention of Peter Meaden, one-time manager of the Who, so we had no idea of how to make a record. The result was a tragedy. The Press found it difficult to find anything good to say about it, and it bombed. By chance, a BBC documentary producer, Mark Kidell, was about to make a program about "Life on the Road" with a touring band, for Arena, or some such. There were a few decent shots of the band on stage at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse, and some shots of arseholes in our Transit van, but that was about all.
We were criss-crossing the UK when a chance came to tour with a version of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Sneeky Pete Kleinow and Chris Etheridge were the only familiar Burritos, but Gene Parsons (Byrds), Gib Gilbeau and Joel Scott Hill were roped in for a money-earning tour of Europe.
I've been informed by the manager of Joel Scott Hill that he, Chris Etheridge and Gram Parsons WERE the original FBBs, but, when someone says the FBBs they, generally mean the one with Sneeky Pete Kleinow. I apologise to JSH however, and wish him good fortune.
The Kursaals were quite popular in Holland, but hadn't tried the rest of the continent yet. We got the gig for the simple reason that we were cheap, and would supply road crew, PA and back-line. Opening night at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw saw a ramshackle 1kW system, with rudimentary foldback, presented to the Burritos. The shit hit the (understandable) fan, especially when the front-of-house sound was to be mixed by Stewart Cooke, our driver. Robert (Meatie) Harding and Colin Tuck comprised the only road crew, and they, as always, worked themselves into the ground to get the shows to happen.
I was contacted recently by Mike Lawson, boyfriend of Stewart's sister, Hilary. He was an addition to the road crew for this tour and he writes reminding me of incidents which I had totally forgotten. I'll add a bit more about this at a later date.
The Burritos did good venues, however, and it was a bit of a shock after the Tour to get back to our normal size Club venues.
By this time, a second album was requested by UK records, and Jonathan King himself was to produce. The studio was a cheap fleapit in the wilds of the Cotswolds called Chipping Norton. It had been used by the Bay City Rollers, so hordes of ten year olds would congregate, hoping to catch a glimpse of Les's underwear. They were very disappointed by the Kursaal Flyers. Will and I had assembled a bunch of songs that seemed satisfactory, but eclectic, ranging from an Eagles rip-off "Ugly Guys" to a cod-reggae "Hypochondriac". Two weeks was allotted for the construction of one, or more, hit singles. Now Jonathan had not heard any of the possible songs, but we were still sent on to the studio. Jonathan made fleeting visits rather than produce. Even with assistance from Bob Andrews and Brinsley Schwarz, the resulting "Great Artiste" album lacked any drive - there were definitely potential hit songs there, but the final result was not all it might have been. Jonathan went ape-shit - he decided that, although he was forced by urgent financial need to release the album, a re-recording, with a decent producer, of "Cruising for Love" was necessary in order to get the elusive Hit.. Mike Batt showed an interest Now Mike was, and is, a very talented producer, arranger and artist, even if it was only the Wombles. I'm afraid that he and I didn't see eye to eye about many things, especially his approach to music - all he wanted was to work with a singer who would give him a performance. The rest of us could go play with ourselves and keep out of his way.
I made some caustic comments in a later press interview, where I allowed my emotions to get the better of me. I still think that I was right, in terms of the Kursaals consequently being regarded as a comedy act. The most telling memory that most people have of the Ks is that they appeared on TOTP with a bunch of washing machines and the machines stole the show! But that's getting a bit too previous - back to the story.
An English tour with the up-and-coming Eddie & the Hot Rods found me hanging out with Ed Hollis and the boys. I was quite taken with their youthful enthusiasm.
Jonathan King decided that the Kursaals were not going to happen, so he sold us to CBS, saddling us with a BIG DEBT. The immediate requirement for CBS was a HIT SINGLE. We were told that we had six weeks to come up with the next album, and it had better contain a Single. At a derelict hotel, wall-to-wall with reeking guard dog shit, and in a mini-heat wave, we started rehearsing. Will had given me some lyric sheets. One, "Little does she know", became a hit. The album, the "Golden Mile", wasn't in the same ballpark, having the band's choice as the followup single as “Radio Romance”, a sickly twee song that would have given "Brotherhood of Man" diabetes! . The Golden Mile tour was my last with the band in that incarnation. Afterwards I got a call from Paul Conroy, telling me that my services were no longer required.
I've just discovered some press from those days, when I was interviewed after the sacking. I let the band, Conroy and Mike Batt have a good earful as I vented my spleen. To be honest, I was getting cheesed off with the loss of rock and country from the repertoire, to the extent that the Ks seemed to be aiming full-tilt for the MOR market and my opinions were to be tolerated but ignored. In the interests of veracity, I will copy some of the select pieces to a new “Press Cuttings” page.
Time was right for a change; Ed Hollis had mentioned a job with the Hot Rods, so I gave him a call.