By Michael Watts
Phonograph Record Magazine, November 1971, pp. 7-8
AN OUTLINE OF THE BAND — In Their Own Time
There’s an old British maxim that occasionally finds its way into autograph books. It’s called, for want of a better title, the Seven P’s, and it goes: Patient Plodding Persistently Practised Produces Permanent Prosperity.
Family are British so they’re well into the Seven P’s. They have been patiently plodding since 1966, in fact, when the British underground sprang up around UFO, the club in London’s Tottenham Court Road. Permanent prosperity? Well, they are still going too, which is more than you can say for most ’66 underground bands. And recently they have had a single reach #4 on the English charts. The record’s called “In My Own Time,” and that’s exactly how they like to do things.
The truth is that by both musical and commercial standards the band rates among the best that Britain has produced since the emergence of The Beatles. In the past five years they have put out five albums (including a compilation of old cuts and remixes, “Old Songs, New Songs”) which have all made the charts, and had three top 30 singles, while on gigs they seldom go out for less than $6,000, which puts them in the same financial category as The Who and Traffic.
First U.S. Tour ’69 — They have not taken off in the States for reasons of a tragi-comic nature. On the first tour in ’69 they played the Fillmore East and Bill Graham threw a tantrum when a mike stand flung by lead singer Roger Chapman narrowly missed him. He didn’t understand that Chapman normally throws objects around when he is performing. Then again, the day before the Fillmore gig, which was their first American date, Rick Grech, the bass player who had been with them since they began in the Midlands city of Leicester, announced that he had been asked by Eric Clapton to join Blind Faith. Although he played the Fillmore, he quickly left to be replaced at short notice by John Weider, formerly of the Animals, who had to rush to New York from L.A. where he had been doing session work. In fact, Weider, who is essentially a violinist and acoustic guitarist, had to literally bone up on the bass within a few days.
When Roger Chapman lost his voice, because of unfamiliarity with the air conditioning in his hotel, and then his passport too, because of unfamiliarity with the habits of some New York girls, everybody was writing that tour off.
More Problems — The second one a year later in February went better, but the stream of hassles continued to occur. For one thing, their record company, Warner-Reprise, seemed determined to connect them with that other Family, the Charles Manson one. In the words of their manager, Tony Gourvish, they felt they had been let down. So much so, in fact, that connections with Warner-Reprise in the States have now been severed, although the European contract still holds.
According to Gourvish, their major drawback to success in the States was the mishandling by their first manager, John Gilbert, who was the producer behind “Alfie.” Before they went to America he had put out two billboards on Sunset Strip advertising “Music In A Doll’s House”: “His supposition was that if he went heavy on advertising everyone in the country would go Family mad, and then he could take the band over and name the price. It was a major error.”
Chapman on Gilbert: “By rights, if he’d been any sort of manager we’d have come home as soon as he knew Rick was leaving. What manager in his right mind keeps his band in the States a week after they’ve been there and before they do a gig, and finding the bass player is leaving picks one up and rehearses on the road? That must’ve been the thing that clinched it for us.”
The albums — Watts on the catalogue: The first album was “a cross between Chicago blues and soul with a mess of psychedelia thrown in to conform to the times.” The second, Family Entertainment, “was a step forward in musicianship, but there’s an edge of disappointment to it.” Watts called the Grech composition How Hi The Li “the absolute nadir of that album.” A Song For Me — “was ten times better. With the arrival of Poli Palmer, a former drummer with the Blossom Toes and Deep Feeling … the musical direction crystallised.” Anyway — “is an extension of this direction. It’s more sophisticated in every sense than their previous efforts … Part Of The Load is simply one of the best road songs that’s been written — its jerky rhythm, pullulating like a piston, exactly communicates that sense of moving from one gig to another.”
Chapman on stage — “In performance Chapman projects an excitement the equal of any rock vocalist today. He lacks the graceful sexuality of Jagger, or the theatrical humour of an Elton John, but his particular quality is just as valid. He is compelling because an air of caged animality comes across the spotlights.” Chapman’s own self-description: “A few years ago I used to be ‘a right Herbert’ — I can communicate with Herberts now because I was really well into it at one time. Really, I suppose getting into the scene was the best thing I ever did in me life, because I was bound to end up doing porridge, doing time in the nick.”
Chapman on Winwood comparisons — Early influences: The Coasters, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Ray Charles, then Muddy Waters and Fred McDowell. “A lot of people used to reckon I copied Winwood, and although I appreciated Steve as a singer — which you have to because he’s good — it really pissed me off that they should think I copied him. They couldn’t see that Winwood was influenced by the same people I am. He was really into Hooker, Charles and Muddy Waters then, and so was I.”
Watts adds: “It’s possible that Marc Bolan may have been influenced in vocal tone by Chapman.” Chapman on the vibrato: “The vibrato has just come out more. I mean, I had it when I was 15. I had to use my imagination a lot more, because I had to sing a song I had never heard anybody sing before. I couldn’t really sing it like Ray Charles.”
On not becoming arena rock — “One of the main arguments why we’re not like Jethro Tull or Led Zeppelin and Ten Years After is because they’ve been playing their music like that for the past three or four years. We haven’t. We’ve done something new all the while. That’s as far as they can get musically. We’ve always put the accent on music instead of the commercial side of the band.”
On the USA — “Boston was a good gig for us. They seem to be really into us there, probably more than anywhere else in the States. We sold more albums in Boston than in the rest of America, I think. But I really don’t think they were prepared for us. We blew their heads off in one way or another. They really didn’t expect what came on the stage. When we played in the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, they didn’t really know us. Those audiences wondered what the fucking hell was happening.”