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Post by hollowmoor on Jul 21, 2011 20:19:25 GMT
Evening all, Does anyone know much about the band 'Clouds'? They were signed to Chrysalis in 68/69 and managed by Terry Ellis and even toured the US extensively with Tull in America in 1970. It seems their fortunes dwindled as Tull became big with Terry Ellis devoting his time to Tull. Anyway, the band still exists and I've recently been in contact with keyboard player Billy Ritchie whilst trying to track down some photos of Tull for the Aqualung project. I've had some nice mails from Billy including some interesting anecdotes about their time touring with Tull which I'll post shortly. Interesting to note that John Burns engineered their final album 'Watercolour Days' at Morgan studios in June 1970 on a break from touring with Jethro. Here's a link to their official website: www.cloudsmusic.com/ and a new anthology release of their complete works is available from Amazon.co.uk: www.amazon.co.uk/Above-Our-Heads-Clouds-66-71/dp/B0045DO99Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311279521&sr=8-1
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Post by maddogfagin on Jul 22, 2011 7:49:43 GMT
Evening all, Does anyone know much about the band 'Clouds'? They were signed to Chrysalis in 68/69 and managed by Terry Ellis and even toured the US extensively with Tull in America in 1970. It seems their fortunes dwindled as Tull became big with Terry Ellis devoting his time to Tull. Anyway, the band still exists and I've recently been in contact with keyboard player Billy Ritchie whilst trying to track down some photos of Tull for the Aqualung project. I've had some nice mails from Billy including some interesting anecdotes about their time touring with Tull which I'll post shortly. Interesting to note that John Burns engineered their final album 'Watercolour Days' at Morgan studios in June 1970 on a break from touring with Jethro. Here's a link to their official website: www.cloudsmusic.com/ and a new anthology release of their complete works is available from Amazon.co.uk: www.amazon.co.uk/Above-Our-Heads-Clouds-66-71/dp/B0045DO99Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311279521&sr=8-1There was a link between their drummer and Tull I seem to remember. Can't for the life of me recall what it was but if anyone knows, please post. Thanks for the links hollowmoor, I'll have a good read at the weekend.
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Post by nonrabbit on Jul 22, 2011 8:36:57 GMT
Miss Marple will be on the case - after she gets work out the way
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Post by hollowmoor on Jul 26, 2011 15:21:22 GMT
Here's some of Billy Ritchie's recollections of the early days of Chrysalis and Tull as recounted to me in a recent mail:
I have lots of memories of the early days with the guys from Jethro. To begin with, the Ellis-Wright agency (pre-Chrysalis) managed two groups. Chris (Wright) had Ten Years After and Terry (Ellis) had us. They were good days. Though the company was small, it was committed to us, and Terry and I were actually friends as much as business associates. That all began to change when Jethro started to take off. But prior to that, the guys were just an agency band, being booked under various names, and we were all pals.
Ian (Anderson) was living in a bedsit in Kentish Town where our roadie (Pepe) also lived. I remember hearing Ian practice the flute – endless ‘Serenade to a Cuckoo’ and a few baroque things that he later incorporated into the act. Eventually he started to play one flute number on stage, gradually adding more as he went along.The band supported us on quite a few gigs, and often they would come to the Marquee with us and carry the equipment in so they could have free entrance to the club.
The Reading festival seems to have been a turning point, though I still say that they didn’t go down all that well, just OK. The trick was that the journalists loved writing about Ian and his antics. We had the opposite reaction, we went down a bomb with the crowd, but all the Melody Maker said was that 'Clouds created a minor sensation'. In hindsight, we weren't interesting enough to look at, we were rather dumb that way, unlike Ian.
I suppose we were a bit jealous when they started to take off, but we all remained good friends, and we were also pleased for them too. It was only as time went by that we realised Terry wasn’t doing his job for us because of concentrating on Jethro. That’s when we got annoyed, but at Terry, not the guys. One advantage of them becoming ‘big’ was that we toured the UK and the USA supporting them (!). For us, it was a reprise of our time with (Brian) Epstein and (Robert) Stigwood (NEMS) when the Bee-Gees did the same thing to us. Again, no faults of the two bands, who were all good guys, but a bit of a sickener for us, especially when the states gigs had gone so well. It was all thrown away because Terry’s ego wouldn’t allow anyone else to look after us when he couldn’t do it himself.
Ian was, of course, actually very conservative and straight-laced, in complete contrast to his stage persona, but he was his own man ok, and did make me laugh when we stayed at the top Hilton hotels etc, and they insisted on us wearing ties to dinner, Ian would turn up in exactly the same ragged stage clothes but with a shoelace or something just as silly wrapped round his neck, also wearing a mischievous grin as he sat at the table and studied the restaurant manager’s apoplexy with friendly bemusement.
I remember ‘This Was’ as we were at some of the sessions in Sound Techniques studios in Chelsea. Harry (Hughes) our drummer played something on ‘Benefit’ (which to me was one of the best Tull albums). I personally never thought the band as a unit was ever as good again without Mick, and certainly much diminished in quality with the loss of Clive and Glenn. Sadly, the original band weren't experienced enough at recording to make 'This Was' as good as it could have been, whereas the later band lineups knew all about recording and didn't worry so much about musical expression on stage, there it was more about the 'show' not the music. It doesn’t show so much on the records – Ian is a thorough guy, and anything he turned his hand to would be bound to be at least interesting – but for me, the magic was gone due to that loss of freedom of expression, solo channelled through Ian’s very talented but over-controlled arrangements and skeleton riffs.
One thing Terry did tell me was that Ian’s idea for ‘Living in the Past’ came from that very line in my song ‘Scrapbook’. I still don’t really know how true that was, it might just have been a coincidence, and it’s possible that Terry was just trying to massage my ego. Then again, given the proximity of both groups, it must also be possible that the line did produce the spark for Ian’s song, that’s the way these things often work, and Ian certainly had heard ‘Scrapbook’ backwards. Ian was always very generous to me, and I remember all the guys very warmly. I never got to know Martin (Barre) or John (Evan) as well as the original guys, though I did drink and tour extensively with both those guys too of course. I also knew David (Dee) Palmer very well, he worked with us on all three albums and did a fantastic job.
One of the funnier anecdotes about ‘The Clouds Scrapbook’ was that when it came out, the other two Chrysalis groups, Jethro and TYA were listening to it together, we weren’t there. As the track ‘I’ll Go Girl’ played, Glenn burst out laughing and said “F&%king hell, I thought Billy Ritchie could play better guitar than that!” TYA sat stony-faced, for as they well knew, the guitarist on the track was Alvin Lee, not myself. Alvin was a great blues and rock guitarist, but as he said in explanation after the recording “Everytime I went to play something, a chord changed”.
It was all in the spirit of friendly rivalry, though I think Jethro and ourselves were much more friendly with each other than Jethro and TYA, who to be fair, were both big groups, wary of each other, but eclipsing us easily by this time. I certainly don’t begrudge the guys their success, I just wish the original band had stayed together longer.
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Post by maddogfagin on Jul 26, 2011 17:46:27 GMT
Here's some of Billy Ritchie's recollections of the early days of Chrysalis and Tull as recounted to me in a recent mail: I have lots of memories of the early days with the guys from Jethro. To begin with, the Ellis-Wright agency (pre-Chrysalis) managed two groups. Chris (Wright) had Ten Years After and Terry (Ellis) had us. They were good days. Though the company was small, it was committed to us, and Terry and I were actually friends as much as business associates. That all began to change when Jethro started to take off. But prior to that, the guys were just an agency band, being booked under various names, and we were all pals.
Ian (Anderson) was living in a bedsit in Kentish Town where our roadie (Pepe) also lived. I remember hearing Ian practice the flute – endless ‘Serenade to a Cuckoo’ and a few baroque things that he later incorporated into the act. Eventually he started to play one flute number on stage, gradually adding more as he went along.The band supported us on quite a few gigs, and often they would come to the Marquee with us and carry the equipment in so they could have free entrance to the club.
The Reading festival seems to have been a turning point, though I still say that they didn’t go down all that well, just OK. The trick was that the journalists loved writing about Ian and his antics. We had the opposite reaction, we went down a bomb with the crowd, but all the Melody Maker said was that 'Clouds created a minor sensation'. In hindsight, we weren't interesting enough to look at, we were rather dumb that way, unlike Ian.
I suppose we were a bit jealous when they started to take off, but we all remained good friends, and we were also pleased for them too. It was only as time went by that we realised Terry wasn’t doing his job for us because of concentrating on Jethro. That’s when we got annoyed, but at Terry, not the guys. One advantage of them becoming ‘big’ was that we toured the UK and the USA supporting them (!). For us, it was a reprise of our time with (Brian) Epstein and (Robert) Stigwood (NEMS) when the Bee-Gees did the same thing to us. Again, no faults of the two bands, who were all good guys, but a bit of a sickener for us, especially when the states gigs had gone so well. It was all thrown away because Terry’s ego wouldn’t allow anyone else to look after us when he couldn’t do it himself.
Ian was, of course, actually very conservative and straight-laced, in complete contrast to his stage persona, but he was his own man ok, and did make me laugh when we stayed at the top Hilton hotels etc, and they insisted on us wearing ties to dinner, Ian would turn up in exactly the same ragged stage clothes but with a shoelace or something just as silly wrapped round his neck, also wearing a mischievous grin as he sat at the table and studied the restaurant manager’s apoplexy with friendly bemusement.
I remember ‘This Was’ as we were at some of the sessions in Sound Techniques studios in Chelsea. Harry (Hughes) our drummer played something on ‘Benefit’ (which to me was one of the best Tull albums). I personally never thought the band as a unit was ever as good again without Mick, and certainly much diminished in quality with the loss of Clive and Glenn. Sadly, the original band weren't experienced enough at recording to make 'This Was' as good as it could have been, whereas the later band lineups knew all about recording and didn't worry so much about musical expression on stage, there it was more about the 'show' not the music. It doesn’t show so much on the records – Ian is a thorough guy, and anything he turned his hand to would be bound to be at least interesting – but for me, the magic was gone due to that loss of freedom of expression, solo channelled through Ian’s very talented but over-controlled arrangements and skeleton riffs.
One thing Terry did tell me was that Ian’s idea for ‘Living in the Past’ came from that very line in my song ‘Scrapbook’. I still don’t really know how true that was, it might just have been a coincidence, and it’s possible that Terry was just trying to massage my ego. Then again, given the proximity of both groups, it must also be possible that the line did produce the spark for Ian’s song, that’s the way these things often work, and Ian certainly had heard ‘Scrapbook’ backwards. Ian was always very generous to me, and I remember all the guys very warmly. I never got to know Martin (Barre) or John (Evan) as well as the original guys, though I did drink and tour extensively with both those guys too of course. I also knew David (Dee) Palmer very well, he worked with us on all three albums and did a fantastic job.
One of the funnier anecdotes about ‘The Clouds Scrapbook’ was that when it came out, the other two Chrysalis groups, Jethro and TYA were listening to it together, we weren’t there. As the track ‘I’ll Go Girl’ played, Glenn burst out laughing and said “F&%king hell, I thought Billy Ritchie could play better guitar than that!” TYA sat stony-faced, for as they well knew, the guitarist on the track was Alvin Lee, not myself. Alvin was a great blues and rock guitarist, but as he said in explanation after the recording “Everytime I went to play something, a chord changed”.
It was all in the spirit of friendly rivalry, though I think Jethro and ourselves were much more friendly with each other than Jethro and TYA, who to be fair, were both big groups, wary of each other, but eclipsing us easily by this time. I certainly don’t begrudge the guys their success, I just wish the original band had stayed together longer. Thanks for posting hollowmoor.
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Post by maddogfagin on Jun 20, 2018 6:55:39 GMT
www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/aidan-smith-the-greatest-scottish-band-you-have-never-heard-of-1-4756366Aidan Smith: The greatest Scottish band you have never heard ofAIDAN SMITH Published: 07:14 Updated: 13:08 Tuesday 19 June 2018 Aidan Smith on the ‘three thistle and haggis voiced bairns’ who changed the course of pop history before vanishing If you’re anybody in Scottish pop – the great and the good and the Bay City Rollers – then you should find your name on the door at an august Edinburgh hall this Friday and maybe one of your plectrums in a display cabinet. The National Museum of Scotland’s big summer-long exhibition will chart the history of jock ’n’ roll from 1950s trailblazer Lonnie Donegan through to the hot new skiffle of Young Fathers, and I’m really looking forward to it. But at the same time I’m getting nervous for one of our old bands, now no more, but arguably the most influential to emerge from these shores and certainly the unluckiest. They never had a hit record and yet an entire musical movement owes them a huge debt. David Bowie, a friend and champion, once wrote an impassioned letter intending to raise their profile in which he hailed them as “thistle-and-haggis-voiced bairns”. They’re the greatest Scottish band you’ve never heard of. And sadly it would be all too typical if they were to be missed by the retrospective show. I should say that I don’t know they definitely will be. You hope the museum has looked under every stone and in all the remainder racks. But when I got in touch with the band’s keyboard player yesterday he knew nothing of the exhibition and hadn’t been contacted by the curators. Billy Ritchie, Ian Ellis and Harry Hughes seem destined to forever wander lonely as Clouds. If you know this band at all it’s as Clouds, although a discerning few may remember them under their original name, 1-2-3. The supergroups Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and King Crimson definitely know them because they laid the foundation stones for the progressive rock with which that triumvirate would conquer the world. And you thought our national football team could tell tragic tales… I love the story of Clouds, not least for the poignancy and the masochism. Young Ritchie in the South Lanarkshire village of Forth (most famous resident before him: 7ft 3ins George Gracie, Scotland’s tallest man) might have chosen a different path in life if his parents hadn’t rescued a piano being thrown out by neighbours. “The war had not long ended. Anything that was free you took,” he recalled. And, who knows, maybe Keith Emerson of ELP and Rick Wakeman of Yes might not have stood at their keyboards, and attempted such bold arrangements, if they hadn’t seen Ritchie and his pals at London’s Marquee Club in 1967. Prog-rock eventually became about triple albums, a juggernaut for each musician with his name on the roof and spectacular shows on ice. It was lambasted by the punk-rockers as self-indulgent and pretentious and fell seriously out of fashion, although Johnny Rotten and others would later admit they secretly liked its ambition and complexity and these days Kanye West samples it. As 1-2-3, our trio secured a residency at the Marquee and future prog royalty came to watch and make notes. Six years ago for sister paper Scotland on Sunday, I got Ritchie, Ellis and Hughes to reform for the afternoon and describe how they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. “You might find this hard to credit because he became such a big star but David Bowie used to hang around trying to impress us,” Ritchie told me. “We’d just been signed by [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein and David thought we were the next big thing, as did we.” Hughes remembered how the then David Jones – who as an unknown the band introduced to Jimi Hendrix – would help them lug their gear into the Marquee along with Ian Anderson, another who would eventually leave 1-2-3 behind and find fame with Jethro Tull, and a fellow Scot who will surely feature in the museum show. Typical of 1-2-3, Ritchie took a Bowie song not yet released, I Dig Everything, chopped up the verses and stuck Bach’s Fugue in C Minor in the middle. Bowie loved it and, irked by some audience conservatism, gushed to Record Mirror about “three thistle-and-haggis-voiced bairns who had the audacity to face a mob of self-opinionated hippies with a brand of unique pop music which, because of its intolerance of mediocrity, floated as would a Hogarth cartoon in the Beano”. But the fates were against our heroes. Within months of taking them under his wing, Epstein died. His successor, Robert Stigwood, had just signed the Bee Gees and was preoccupied with them. Then came Terry Ellis who was preoccupied with Jethro Tull. The latter proposed the change of name to Clouds which Ritchie hated (“In a Scottish accent it’s Clowns”) and, bizarrely, sent them on a variety tour of northern clubs with jugglers and fire-eaters. By the time they got back to London, elements of their act had been nicked by their rivals. Ritchie acknowledges that Scottish dourness held them back. When everyone was experimenting with synthesisers, he doggedly stuck to the organ. While Clouds sneered at showmanship, it obviously worked for Emerson who jammed knives in his keyboards and Anderson who played the flute one-legged in a codpiece. Ritchie acknowledges that his contemporaries’ great musicianship was going to make them stars anyway, but it would have been nice if they’d credited his band with being as inspirational as they obviously were. So there you have it: a song of what might have been, in many complex parts. Ritchie, now 74, was so grateful for me having dug up his old combo he’s been sending a Christmas card every year. Now he turns up in the occasional rock documentary and a new compilation album is on the way. Keep watching the skies and you might still see Clouds, and maybe on Friday there will be one hovering over the museum.
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