Chaos: Down at the Club

John Bromley was a nearly man of Sixties pop. His Manchester-based band played hard-to-get with Mickie Most, with the result that the producer signed Herman's Hermits instead. In 1969 he brought out an album of his McCartneyesque songs, Sing, on which he was backed by the band Les Fleurs de Lys.

The Riff, quotes a now-vanished Facebook post of his about his success as a songwriter for other artists:

English songwriter John Bromley has written over 200 works with over 60 recorded and performed worldwide by major artists such as Shirley Bassey, Sacha Distel, Petula Clark, Richard Harris, Paul Anka ... John Farnham, Jackie De Shannon and the Ace Kefford Stand.

I can't find any well-known songs that he wrote though.

But Bromley did get on Top of the Pops and into the lower reaches of the UK singles chart with Down at the Club. He explains its genesis for It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine:

I took on a part-time role as a tape operator at Advision Studios in Gosfield Street, London. After finishing a late-night recording session with John Anderson’s prog-rock band Yes in 1973, recording engineer Martin Rushent and I recorded a glam rock song called Down at The Club for fun with the free studio time. 

We spent the entire night playing and overdubbing and multi-tracking keyboards, drums, bass, guitars, and vocals, with Martin singing the main vocal. His voice was pretty deep, and because we wanted the vocal to sound like a younger singer, we slowed down the backing track and recorded his vocal at three-quarter speed. 

When we did the final mixdown at full speed, his voice sounded like the singer we wanted on the record, and after the final mixdown, what had initially been a bit of fun sounded pretty commercial!

I took the recording to Warner Brothers A&R man Martin Wyatt the next day, and he loved it. He asked who the band was, and I just made a name up on the spot. The non-existent band became a ghost band called Chaos. We got a £1,000 advance from Warner Brothers A&R, and the track was released as a single by Polydor.

The single got a lot of play from Radio 1 and Radio Luxembourg, and quite unexpectedly and unbelievably, I took a call from the producer of Top of the Pops asking if Chaos was available to appear on TOTP in next week’s show. It was a brilliant opportunity but not without a few problems, the first being there wasn’t actually a band...

We cobbled together a bunch of musician friends and co-opted Tony Head as the frontman, deciding to use the master tape to mime to when the show was recorded. (We got away with it.) After the show was broadcast, the single scraped into the UK Top 50 but didn’t get any higher.

Down at the Club is very 1973 - you can hear Slade, Gary Glitter and Wizzard in there. But maybe, as with the last-named and The Glitter Band, it was a song about rock and roll more than it was a rock and roll song. Still, many worse singles made the charts that year.

Wizzard: Rock 'N' Roll Winter (Loony's Tune)

The year 1973 was good to Wizzard. They released a succession of great singles – Ball Park Incident, See My Baby Jive, Angel Fingers (the latter two both topped the UK charts) – and took part in an epic battle to be the Christmas number 1 with Slade.

This, their next single, should have been been out just after that battle had been lost, so that I listened to it while doing my homework by candlelight during the three-day week. But their new label, Warner Bros, didn't release it until 19 April 1974. 

Despite this lack of seasonality, it reached number 6 and still sounds good today. Everyone now recognises Roy Wood as an insufficiently recognised genius.

After Rock 'N' Roll Winter it was all downhill for Wizzard. The size of the band, and Wood's perfectionism in the studio, meant they were expensive to run, and members began to drift away to other work to pay the bills. Wizzard split in 1975.

"Loony's Tune"? Wikipedia explains:

The song is dedicated to Roy Wood's girlfriend at the time Lynsey de Paul (aka Loony, from Spike Milligan's nickname for her, Looney de Small) with lyrics such as "Almost every song I dream of in the end, I could dedicate to you my lovely friend" and "But now your friendly music keeps me warm each night".

Roy Wood's love life was the subject of another memorable song: Northern Lights by Renaissance. Wikipedia quotes the singer Annie Haslam as saying:

The song is about leaving the Northern Lights of England ... and Roy Wood behind, when I was working over in the US.

Wizzard: Ball Park Incident

I feel no shame at having liked Wizzard when I was 13. They made great singles, Roy Wood is a genius and they were the continuation of The Move by other means.

The Wonder Stuff: The Size of a Cow

Let's start with the trivia. Miles Hunt, the guitarist and songwriter in The Wonder Stuff is the nephew of Bill Hunt, a horn player who followed Roy Wood through The Move, ELO and Wizzard.

And The Wonder Stuff shared those bands's West Midland heritage, coming out of Stourport at the same time as Pop Will Eat Itself. Members of both bands had already played together in once called From Eden.

The Wonder Stuff album everyone bought was Construction for the Modern Idiot, the last the band released before splitting in 1993 - they were to reform a few years later. But their best-loved single was this, and it comes from the earlier Never Loved Elvis.

Wikipedia quotes praise for The Size of a Cow:

Record Mirror made "The Size of a Cow" its single of the week upon release, with Peter Stanton's review describing the song as "a rampant jingly-jangly-organ affair that trips at a happier than happy pace".

Reviewing Never Loved Elvis in Vox, Keith Cameron described the song and "Caught In My Shadow" as "paragons of pop virtue", noting "huge melodic sweeps, artfully clever lyrics and nagging hummability".

Music & Media linked the song to contemporaneous singles by the Milltown Brothers, R.E.M. and Susanna Hoffs in what they heralded "the return of the classic pop tune".

Writing in 2017, Jon Bryan of Backseat Mafia described "The Size of a Cow" as "the equal, if not better, than almost any other guitar-pop song of the 90s".

Talk of "the return on the classic pop tune" puts you in mind of Britpop, and The Size of a Cow feels like an earthier, beerier essay in that genre. Most important of all, it still sounds good.

The Move: California Man

This is The Move at the end of their career, when their chief movers were Roy Wood, who wrote California Man, and Jeff Lynne. Those two were, at the same time. also the founders of the Electric Light Orchestra, who became better known as ELO.

Roy Wood became disenchanted with the Electric Light Orchestra project, whose idea was to combine rock with classical instruments, because it proved difficult to balance the different instruments in live performances.

He went on to found Wizzard, so perhaps it's not surprising that California Man, with its rock and roll pastiche and comic staging, sounds most like one of that band's singles.

Wizzard faded after a stellar 1973, but the ELO seemed to go on for ever. Their singles were radio friendly but as the late Simon Titley once remarked, the problem with Jeff Lynne's music was that it all sounded like Jeff Lynne.

Royal Choral Society: The Shepherds' FarewellWizzard: I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day

In the old days, in the Sixties, you didn't get chocolates in Advent calendars: you just got little pictures - a ball, a trumpet or some other possible Christmas gift.

But on Christmas Eve you had double doors to open, and they always revealed a nativity scene.

So I 've made today's window double-sized and chosen two pieces of Christmas music.

First, the sublime Shepherds' Farewell from Berlioz's 1854 oratorio L'enfance du Christ. This comes from the second act as the Holy Family prepare to leave for Egypt.

That's above.

And below you will find what should have been the Christmas number 1 in 1973. Wizzard, however, lost to Slade in a sort of civil war of Birmingham rock.

Though it's fashionable to say you like Slade now, I have never forgiven them and never will.

Still, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And I hope you've enjoyed this Advent calendar as much as I've enjoyed putting it together.

ABBA: Ring Ring

I remember when ABBA started to play Waterloo at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. My mother and I looked at one another: you didn't get proper pop songs on Eurovision.

Ring Ring was their follow up in the UK, but reached only number 32. (Waterloo had topped the charts.)

When they won Eurovision, ABBA credited Wizzard, and See My Baby Jive in particular, as an influence. I think you can hear a bit of Wizzard in the saxophone here too.

Then came I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, which again failed to trouble the top 30. It wasn't until SOS, which made number 6 in October of 1975, that they had a follow-up hit to Waterloo in the UK.

All of which confirms my memory that ABBA were by no means an overnight sensation. It took them 18 months to have a second big hit in the UK,

For years you had to pretend to hate ABBA to satisfy what Alexei Sayle calls the imaginary cool people in your head. My theory is that everyone always loved them.

Heinz and Wilko Johnson

I've been collecting unlikely pairings of musicians who feel like they come from completely different eras. And here's the latest.

Heinz Burt, protégé of the pioneering record producer Joe Meek and bass player with The Tornados, who had an era-defining hit with Telstar, and Wilko Johnson from Doctor Feelgood.

Burt - or just Heinz, as he was always billed - is the singer and Johnson is the long-haired guitarist nearest him when you see them in wide shot.

This video comes from The London Rock and Roll Show, which was held at Wembley Stadium in August 1972. This was the concert at which Roy Wood launched his new band Wizzard.

Without his hair dyed a startling blond and with sideburns, Heinz appears to be harking back to an era just before the one in which he found brief fame. The Tornados, and Meek's acts in general, looked forward, not back to the Fifites.

You can see the other unlikely pairings I have found in my post on Paul Rodgers and Bruce Thomas.

Wizzard: Angel Fingers

To think there was a time when I was embarrassed that Wizzard had been my favourite band when I was 13.

Angel Fingers completed a run of three singles, after Ballpark Incident and See My Baby Jive, that most other bands could only dream of.

But then Roy Wood is a genius. Abba took See My Baby Jive when they wrote Waterloo.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: “You're out of touch my Blaby, My poor old-fashioned Blaby"

This is why I enjoy working for Lord Bonkers: here is a hitherto unsuspected episode in the history of Leicestershire and the history of popular music laid bare.

And if you'd heard the stories the old boy tells me about Blaby in those days, you'd know that was the right expression.

Thursday

When cultural historians turn to the British pop scene it is Merseybeat and my own Rutbeat that dominate their writings. There is, however, another movement that should be given its due: Blaby Beat. Yes, this unassuming Leicestershire town has left its mark on musical history. 

James Taylor, for instance, was so taken with the place that he moved there and became known as ‘Sweet Blaby James.’ He was following a trail blazed by Bobby Vee who, though he was unable to stay for long, urged his listeners ever after to ‘Take Good Care of My Blaby.’ 

Whether The Supremes ever visited Leicestershire I know not, but their song ‘Blaby Love’ was careful to namecheck what was rapidly become the hottest and the coolest town in the world. Nor were they alone. One thinks of The Beach Boys (‘Don’t Worry Blaby’), The Rubettes (‘Sugar Blaby Love’), Wizzard (‘See My Blaby Jive’), Vanilla Ice (‘Ice Ice Blaby’), Bread (‘Blaby I’m-a Want You’), George McRae (‘Rock Your Blaby’) and Britney Spears (‘Hit Me Blaby One More Time’).

For a while it was a boomtown. The Beatles’ ‘Blaby You’re a Rich Man’ was taken as a cynical comment on the phenomenon and one I had some sympathy with, having seen Melton Mowbray after the Pork Pie Bubble of the 1890s burst. 

Ultimately, however, the Conservative-run council in Blaby proved a poor fit with the counter-culture and rigorous enforcement of its by-laws saw the end of the town’s pop fame. Bob Dylan’s ‘It's All Over Now, Blaby Blue’ served as the requiem for an era, and my old friends the Rolling Stones sang: “You're out of touch my Blaby/My poor old-fashioned Blaby/I said Blaby, Blaby, Blaby, you're out of time.”

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers Diary...

• He's looking down on us and not saying a word about it
• Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Og
• "Sir Percy Alleline is a fine upstanding fellow"

New Zealand council ends contract with wizard after two decades of service

Thanks to Christchurch city council, the Guardian wins Headline of the Day and puts me in mind of the Monty Python sketch about about the pantomime horse employed in a merchant bank.

I can't find that online, so instead here's Wizzard.

How Wizzard got their revenge on Slade in 1973

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Christmas 1973 saw the ultimate battle over what would be the number one single and Slade defeated my favourites Wizzard.

But Wizzard got their revenge.

Here is their keyboard player Bill Hunt in the Guardian long ago:

Of course, Slade got the Christmas No 1 and we were No 2, but when we did it on Top Of The Pops there was a staged custard pie fight. While Slade were on, one of our drummers sneaked into the audience and hit Noddy full in the face with one. If you see the video, you’ll notice that Noddy doesn’t appear again after that, so we got our own back for not being No 1.

Sadly I cannot find the video online, but let's not question the legend.

Wizzard: See My Baby Jive

Posting a snippet about The Move the other day put me in mind of Roy Wood and his later band Wizzard.

I used to be a little embarrassed that I had liked them so much when I was 13, but no more.

Because Roy Wood is a genius and the first three Wizzard singles - Ballpark Incident, See My Baby Jive, Angel Fingers (the last two topped that charts - were superb.

So here is the second of them with no embarrassment at all. Viewing the video today, with its teddy boys and gorillas, I can see the influence of the Bonzos,

Later. Sorry about the lack of teddy boys and gorillas: I had to change the video.

5 January 1974: One of the best top tens in British chart history?

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It was in 1974, when I turned 14, that I was most interested in the singles charts. I collected them from Record Mirror and really cared about which record would be the next number 1.

Almost ever since, I have been quick to say it was a thin year for music and claim that I sensed it even then.

There may be some truth in that claim - I did, just, remember the glory days of the 1960s. Certainly, I rushed out to buy Substitute when The Who re-released in 1976 because it was so much better than anything else in the charts.

But today I saw a post by Alwyn Turner on Lion & Unicorn that claims:

if we go back 45 years, to 5 January 1974, we find one of the best top tens in British chart history.

So let's go back to the glory days of blogging, when bloggers discussed posts by other bloggers, and see if he is right.

1. Slade: Merry Xmas Everybody

I didn't like Slade in 1973 and I don't like them now, even though Noddy Holder was inspired to go into music by Steve Winwood and the Spencer Davis Group.

Maybe there is a bit of snobbery here - a leftover from the brief middle-class period of my childhood that had ended the year before, but there is something vulgar about them. Certainly, they seemed to attract all the worst kids at school.

Merry Xmas Everybody is a period piece, best listened to with a tin of Quality Street (they used to be bigger) and the Christmas double-issue TV Times.

2. The New Seekers: You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me

You young people won't have hard of them, but The New Seekers were chart players in those days. By now they were in danger of sounding a little dated - I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing had been right on the mark back in 1971.

Alwyn Turner says You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me is "a kind of 1930s pastiche", and that is about right.

3. Gary Glitter: I Love You Love Me Love

Leave aside, if you can, the fact that he is a raving pervert, Glitter was just not very good. Mentioning rock and roll in every lyric does not make you a rock and roller.

4. Wizzard: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

Still no great record, but Wizzard were some band. I used to feel guilty that I had liked, them, but one you learn about the Birmingham music scene and grasp that they were a natural development from The Move, you feel different.

And as Alwyn says, they had previously had a run of great singles: Ball Park Incident, See My Baby Jive,Angel Fingers.

5. Alvin Stardust: My Coo-Ca-Choo

This one was played for what months on Radio Luxembourg (listened to under the covers when your Mum thought you were asleep) before the BBC took it up and it became a hit.

Great record? Maybe not, but these are great memories.

6. Marie Osmond: Paper Roses

I hated the Osmonds in all their varieties, though Donny seems a nice guy today. As Alwyn points out, this is the only American record in this top 10.

7. Leo Sayer: The Show Must Go On

Now you are talking. He may be remembered as irredeemably naff, but Sayer's first appearance on Top of the Pops, singing this song in a clown's costume had an extraordinary impact.

Sadly that recording is now lost, but it is one of my great TV pop memories, up there with ABBA at Eurovision and my first sight of the Spice Girls..

8. David Essex: Lamplight

Alwyn is rightly appreciative of this one too. As I wrote of Essex's first previous as a teens' heartthrob Rock On:

It's not that this is a very good record: it's that it is far better than it needed to be.

9. Mott the Hoople: Roll Away the Stone

A very good band and a very good song. Sometimes Ian Hunter's voice, with its hint of Johnny Rotten, let's you see what was to come.

10. Roxy Music: Street Life

I can remember not liking Roxy Music - too grown up, too sexy - but by 1974 I think I had learnt to like them. And this is a great track.


So, one of the best top tens in British chart history? Maybe not, but it was much better than I expected.

And if you turned it on its head, making Roxy Music number 1 and Slade number 10, it would be even better.

Richard Osman reruns 1973 and this time the good guys win

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Richard Osman is running a World Cup of Christmas Songs on his Twitter account.

One of the quarter finals pitted Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade and I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day by Wizzard.

It was like 1973 all over again, as these were the two songs that competed for the Christmas number one that year.

In those days I was a Wizzard fan and very much wanted them to beat Slade. But they didn't and it was Merry Christmas Everybody that topped the chart.

I used to feel embarrassed that I had liked Wizzard. But now I realise that they evolved out of The Move and that Roy Wood is a kind of genius.

Slade, by contrast, are still embarrassing and I am proud that I never liked them.

The good news is that Wizzard won the quarter final, scoring 54 per cent of the vote.

I feel history has vindicated me.

Roy Wood: Forever

I used to be ashamed that Wizzard had been my favourite band in 1973. But the more I have learnt about music history, the less ashamed I have begun.

Alex Petridis wrote about Roy Wood, the band's founder, this week:

His influence has occasionally seeped into subsequent pop in some peculiar ways – not least the fact that Glen Matlock claimed the opening guitar riff of God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols was based on the Duane Eddy-inspired twang of Fire Brigade – but you never hear Wood’s name dropped as an inspiration by a hip new band. 

The heritage rock mags never run grand retrospective features, tracing his career from the Move, through the formation of ELO to Wizzard and his extraordinary, maverick solo albums, Boulders and Mustard, in the 1970s. He is seldom placed on a par with all the other revered idiosyncratic pop craftsmen, which is exactly where he belongs.

Forever was a solo single replaced by Wood in 1973, when it made number 8 in the charts.

Petridis described it as "a solo hit that imagined what it would be like if Neil Sedaka had joined the Beach Boys with beautiful results".

The results were beautiful, but I recall from the time that Forever was chiefly a homage to Del Shannon.

Wizzard: Ballpark Incident

I am back to blogging, and the first thing to do is post a music video.

Market Harborough is full of posters for a Roy Wood concert which is a good reason to pay tribute to Wizzard. I had the misfortune to get interested in the charts in 1973. It was the height of glam rock and things got worse after that.

Still Wizzard have lasted better than most (to be honest, any) bands of that era. Ballpark Incident was the first of a succession of great singles that relied upon a pastiche of earlier rock styles. Despite what the caption says, it dates from late 1972. Do enjoy the inventive abuse of Steve Wright in the Youtube comments.

At the same time as Wizzard was enjoying chart success, the band's moving spirit, Roy Wood, was issuing solo albums on which he played all the instruments, including the single Forever, which was a sort of Del Shannon pastiche.

I may have to go to that concert.