1970 was a year of debut albums for many progressive music bands. In this review we will cover three bands, all releasing their first efforts that year.
Atomic Rooster – Atomic Roooster and Death Walks Behind You
Atomic Rooster started when two members of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, while on tour of the US in June 1969, found the world of Arthur Brown too… crazy. Keyboard player Vincent Crane and drummer Carl Palmer decided to pack it up and return to the UK and form their own band. Palmer remembers the origin of the band’s name: “One evening in New York we went out together to this girl’s apartment. Vincent was taking too much acid and this girl was going to explain how bad it was and that he should stop taking it. The person she chose to talk about was the bass player in this group called Rhinoceros, who had taken a lot of chemical substances and called himself ‘the atomic rooster’. When we got back to England I said to Vincent, ‘Why don’t we call our band the Atomic Rooster?’”
Looking for a bass player, they contacted Brian Jones, then freshly ousted from the Rolling Stones, as well as Noel Redding and Ric Grech. When their overtures were declined they started auditioning other musicians. They finally settled on the unknown bassist and vocalist Nick Graham. Vincent Crane told Zigzag magazine in November of 1969: ”We did about two weeks of auditions and got some of the worst people I’d heard in my life, to such an extent that I thought we were never going to find anybody. Then at practically the last audition Nick Graham came along and just sang one number, played a bit of flute, and we thought ‘Yeh that must be the one’. We hadn’t even heard him play bass. He happened to be very good on bass, a sort of bonus.”
The trio’s debut album, Atomic Roooster, was released in February 1970. Crane, whose background included classical music studies, jazz and blues, wrote most of the songs on the album. Palmer had nothing but praise for the gifted musician: “There were only two keyboard players in England at the time: Keith Emerson and Vincent Crane. And Brian Auger, maybe. Vincent had a great keyboard sound, and was an incredible arranger. He wasn’t an incredible ‘solo’ player but he was a very good writer. His musical knowledge and vocabulary was very broad.”
The band went through a drastic lineup change in 1970 when two thirds of the original trio left. First to depart was Nick Graham, who soon joined the band Skin Alley. Crane and Palmer recruited guitarist and vocalist John Cann from the band Andromeda, but only a few weeks later Palmer was lured into joining a more lucrative trio. Earlier in the year Greg Lake and Keith Emerson reached out to Carl Palmer with the idea of forming a progressive rock trio. At the time he turned the offer down, but the duo was insistent. He was invited again by the management of King Crimson under the guise of recording with Robert Fripp. The drummer elaborates: “Vincent thought I was going off to do a session with Bob Fripp, which is what I thought, but it was just a trick to get me down there, because I’d said in some interview that I thought Fripp was good. I was also looking at going further into classical adaptations. Vincent had all the musical knowledge to go into that stuff, but Emerson had already started doing it so it kind of enticed me musically.” Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s debut album, released later in 1970, is covered in episode no. 2 in this article series.
Replacing a drummer of Carl Palmer’s caliber was no easy task. After the band had a three month stint with Ric Parnell, son of big band jazz leader Jack Parnell, they settled on Paul Hammond who was pulled from a support band called The Farm. Bass lines were now played by Vincent Crane on pedals, as he did with Arthur Brown. Roadie Donal Gallagher (brother of famed guitarist Rory) recalls those pedals: “The bass pedals sounded fantastic. In those days bass players used to go through equipment that practically farted. But with the pedals it was like a direct injection. It was as if there was a bass player on the stage – this huge, clean, heavy sound.”
Crane was quite satisfied with the lineup of the band at the end of 1970. He told Melody Maker in September: ”We are lucky in having two lead instruments, and playing the bass lines on the pedals and with my left hand I can play exactly the lines I want. We were playing at a club the other day and when we finished our set a guy came up to me and asked who was playing the bass. He suggested maybe we had someone behind the cabinets. That was a real compliment.” The same month he pointed out another improvement to Beat Instrumental magazine, reflecting on John Cann’s songwriting contributions: “I think it’s better to share the writing rather than take it all on yourself. I mean, you might not be feeling inspired for a couple of months – which isn’t uncommon – and if you’re the only writer, what does the group do while you’re waiting for inspiration to return?”
The group’s second album, Death Walks Behind You, was released at the end of 1970 and is considered one of their best. The album’s cover featured a drawing by William Blake of Nebuchadnezzar, created in 1795, depicting the ruler who lost his mind and was reduced to animalistic madness. John Cann, who came up with the idea for the cover, had to seek permission from the Tate Gallery to reproduce the famous art work.
John Du Cann: guitars, lead vocals, bass
Vincent Crane: Hammond organ, backing vocals, piano, keyboard bass
Paul Hammond: drums, percussion
Curved Air – Air Conditioning
The next band was unique for having a front woman, a rarity at the time within that niche of British progressive music. The origins of Curved Air began with the band Sisyphus, with multi-instrumentalist Francis Monkman and bassist Rob Martin, who were joined by drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa and violin player-extraordinaire Darryl Way. Years later Way recalled his first meeting with Monkman during a visit to a music store in pursuit of an electric pick up for his violin in the late 1960s, an innovative device for its time: “Francis Monkman happened to be in the shop and he heard this great big noise coming from a tiny violin and he was very impressed. He was at the Royal Academy of Music and I was at the Royal College of Music and so that’s how we got together.” Monkman and Way both came from a classical training background, but were enamored with the thriving experimental rock music of that era. Way remembers: “We were all inspired by the music that was happening around us, at that time there was The Nice with Keith Emerson and he was obviously leaning towards classical music, and King Crimson with Robert Fripp … there was a feeling amongst us crossover musicians that we had that little window of opportunity to get involved in popular and rock music, and that was the liberating thing for us.” The combination of classical and rock would become a trademark of Curved Air’s music.
In 1969, on a request from Galt McDermott (who wrote the music for the musical Hair), they became the pit band for the play Who The Murderer Was. Looking for a front woman, they heard a member in the cast of Hair and asked her to join the band. Enter Sonja Kristina into the Curved Air universe. Prior to her part in Hair, Kristina used to sing in folk clubs around London: “I was a real hippie with bare feet, and I was out all night playing guitar at squat parties and just living a hippie bohemian sort of existence.” The group picked up an interesting name, influenced by a modern classical composition called Rainbow in Curved Air by minimalist composer Terry Riley. Monkman participated in the London premiere of Riley’s best known composition, In C.
The band included multiple songwriting talents, with Monkman and violinist Darryl Way writing the music, and lyrics penned by Sonja Kristina, who recalled: “There were some tunes that were only half-formed, so I could help to mold them. Others just needed words. So I dug deep into my psyche to come up with the lines. But the music was so atmospheric, it really was a pleasure to do it.”
Curved Air’s debut album Air Conditioning was recorded in the main studio of Island Records’ famous Basing Street studios. It was released in November 1970 and included the single It Happened Today. The album featured one of the first vinyl picture discs, created by the band’s manager Mark Hanau who was influenced by Art Nouveau. Kristina remembers: “Mark had been a photographer and was really creative. I remember that, as part of our live show at the time, we had a strobe light mounted on a spinning replica of the front cover album art; it had this amazing psychedelic effect. Especially if you were tripping, as a lot of people were at our gigs.”
A favorite track from the album is Vivaldi, quickly becoming a staple of their live performances. In a period when progressive rock bands loved performing the classical repertoire, this remains one of the wildest and best known arrangements of a classical piece. It is a showcase tune for Darryl Way, who said this about Vivaldi (the composer): “He was introduced to me when I was very young and I fell in love with his music – long before ‘The Four Seasons’ became as popular as it is today. ‘Vivaldi’ was my homage to him.”
Sonja Kristina – lead vocals
Darryl Way – violin, backing vocals
Francis Monkman – guitars, keyboards
Rob Martin – bass
Florian Pilkington-Miksa – drums
Hawkwind – self-titled debut
Hawkwind is likely one of the first bands that come to mind when the term space rock pops up. After forming in 1969 under the name Hawkwind Zoo, the group shortened its name to Hawkwind on the advice of Radio DJ John Peel, enlisted ex-The Pretty Things guitarist Dick Taylor as producer, and entered Trident Studios in London to record their self-titled debut album. By that time they got a major boost to their sound with the addition of two roadies: sax player Nik Turner and Dik Mik. The latter was responsible for the ‘space’ element of their music, turning knobs on various electronic gizmos that produced all kinds of ethereal noises.
The band, none of its members with highly developed organizational skills, got more professional after they signed with manager Douglas Smith. Guitar player Mick Slattery, who left just before the recording of their debut album, remembers: “Suddenly, there were a lot of gigs, new equipment, and things really started to take off quickly. It was probably Doug Smith getting involved that gave us a kick-up-the-arse!” Song structures and composition were not high on the list: ”We’d get an intro, maybe a verse or two but then go off and perhaps come back to the beginning or go into something completely different – it was still undisciplined.”
Things changed when Dick Taylor joined as producer. He remembers his first impression after watching Hawkwind playing live at All Saints Hall as, “A fearsome racket – absolutely brilliant”. It was no easy task to bring their intense improvisational energy into the confines of a recording studio. At first Taylor tried to use standard recording techniques, but to no avail. Nik Turner told Melody Maker: “We tried double tracking and laying down separate parts, but it was so sterile that we ended up just playing live. Doing two or three takes of each number and picking up the best after a little polish was added here and there.” Multiple takes of the same songs sounded quite different from each other. Bassist John Harrison remembers differently but with the same sentiment: “We cut the album in one take. A second take would have been almost a different album.”
All in all, the band managed to record a full album worth of material in a short period of time. The result was their self-titled debut, released in August 1970. The album’s sleeve notes include some interesting introductions by the band members, a brief insight into the Hawkwind world at the time:
Well I’ve been busking for about ten years on and off. Still doing it (Dave Brock).
My background is jazz and dance bands (John A. Harrison).
Been trying to get the bread together for my own equipment for as long as I can remember (still am), worked as a salesman and on building sites for a while (Huw Lloyd-Langton).
My first job was working in a scrap yard, with ample opportunity for totting (Terry Ollis).
I just dig freaking about on saxophones (Nik Turner).
And my favorite:
I was just about to hit the road for India when I joined. I’ve got practically no musical knowledge but I figure if you let it become your whole trip, where your involvement is total, you can do anything you like and do it well (Dik Mik).
The beautiful front and back cover illustrations are by artist Arthur Rhodes. This is the only album cover featuring his art that I know of.
In their review of the album, Melody Maker mentioned a favorite track: “Seeing It as You Really Are is a lesson in electronic music itself. Any group thinking of using weird sounds should listen to this album, it’s tremendous.”
Dave Brock – lead vocals, 6 and 12-string guitar, harmonica, percussion
Nik Turner – alto saxophone, vocals, percussion
Huw Lloyd-Langton – lead guitar
John A. Harrison – bass guitar
Terry Ollis – drums
Dik Mik (Michael Davies) – electronics
Sources:
Atomic Rooster self-titled debut, 2004 CD release booklet liner notes by Colin Harper
Atomic Rooster Death Walks Behind You, 2004 CD release booklet liner notes by Colin Harper
Leave a Reply