At The BBC

Main sleeve essay accompanying the Madfish 8-CD box set Family — At The BBC (SMAXBX1032, December 2018). Dave Ling’s career-overview-with-BBC-focus, abridged from a longer Classic Rock Issue #177 piece.

Back in the days when radio airplay was still a near-priceless commodity, Family forged a highly beneficial relationship with the British Broadcasting Corporation. Of course, here in their homeland of the United Kingdom the band would notch a handful of Top 30 hits including No Mule’s Fool, In My Own Time, Strange Band and Burlesque, but to borrow the vernacular of the day, they were infinitely better known as an “albums band.”

A group such as Family could hold their own for three-and-a-half minutes on Top Of The Pops, but with a wealth of far more meaningful things to say, their relationship with the BBC — who also produced the far more adult The Old Grey Whistle Test — was to prove absolutely crucial.

“Auntie Beeb may have her faults, but she always supported and broadcast music from outside the mainstream,” Poli Palmer comments. “The BBC has a fantastic archive of jazz and blues artists from an earlier age, as well rock and prog shows from the 1960s that have survived. John Peel and John Walters probably had a soft spot for Family, as we seemed to do their shows a lot of times. The Maida Vale Studios were great for trying new material out, or showing the listeners how the recorded tunes sounded live — a free demo studio!”

Palmer adds: “However, I always enjoyed the live sessions — a coterie of avid fans in a small, cosy theatre, with John Peel’s laconic introductions.”

This eight-disc package documents the years of November 1967 to May 1973, a golden half-decade timeframe during which a variety of line-ups laid down sessions or performed live in front of invited audiences for the benefit of Auntie Beeb’s microphones.

Until a change in policy in 1988, British radio was ruled by something called “Needle Time,” which dictated that only a certain number of hours of album-sourced music could be aired. The rule was created by the Musicians’ Union and Phonographic Performance Limited. A way of circumnavigating the issue was for artists to perform sessions. This was a win-win scenario for the Beeb, resulting in countless hours of unique audio material, and also for artists who were granted a high-profile platform to test out unreleased songs or record other oddities.

Few bands were selected to perform as many as 24 BBC radio sessions. Put it this way: the doorman at the Paris Theatre in London’s Lower Regent Street probably got to know the band by their Christian names.

This fact can be partially explained by Family’s popularity among the station’s deejays and tastemakers. And yet many of the company’s most valuable moments in time were wiped within six months of being broadcast, a cost-cutting practice intended to recycle tape. Luckily, out there in radio land an army of fans had their fingers paused above the “record” button of their bedroom hi-fi. Many of this collection’s outtakes were rescued in such a manner, whilst some survived as “transcription” discs — special LPs of programmes designed for overseas listeners. Deejays such as the late, great John Peel would later admit to hiding certain session tapes from the hands of over-eager engineers set upon wiping them.

The anthology you hold includes 20 tracks never officially released before, including the fabled Top Gear broadcasts from November 1967 and April 1968. We should be grateful that they are now preserved for posterity.

In keeping with the spirit of the era, Family were at their best onstage. They were prone to stretching out and straying away from the arrangements heard on their records. Depending on the night, certain songs would be extended whilst others were tightened up. With a voice every bit as remarkable as his stage presence, frontman Roger Chapman was and remains a master showman, displaying an intuitively close rapport with the band’s audiences — unpredictable, provocative and entertaining. No two Family shows were quite the same.

Recorded at Studio 1 in London’s Shepherd’s Bush, Family performed their final session for John Peel and the Corporation on May 8, 1973. Until now it has consisted of three tracks — Boom Bang, Buffet Tea For Two and Check Out (all lifted from It’s Only A Movie) — though to the amazement of all the band’s archivists a fourth offering, Sweet Desiree, was discovered during the compilation stages of this set. Regrettably, Brian Matthew‘s voiceover seemed to say it all: “Sad to say that could possibly be the last ever live studio performance by Family.”

Family’s in-concert swansong took place at Leicester Polytechnic on October 13, 1973. The last show of a sold-out UK tour, it was followed by a massive party at the local Holiday Inn. Among the attendees were Deep Purple’s Jon Lord and folk singer Ralph McTell, John Peel and “Whispering” Bob Harris, the Leicester City footballers Frank Worthington and Lenny Glover, plus various record company staff, friends and hangers-on, including semi-clothed ladies. Fuelled by a lagoon of alcohol and various recreational substances, the hotel’s management tried to call a halt at 5.30am after a raft of complaints. Exacting their revenge, the Holiday Inn staged a fire drill half an hour later. It was that kind of a night.

After those lean decades these were great times to be a fan of Family, a theory confirmed by Snapper Music‘s incredible 14-disc box-set Once Upon A Time, which won the Storm Thorgerson Grand Design award at the 2013 Progressive Music Awards.

So there we have it, a typically wilful end to the career of an obstinate yet prodigiously gifted band. Family, it’s been an absolute pleasure to know you.

And now it’s time to enjoy these treasures from the BBC vaults. Grab the headphones, dim the lights and prepare to lose yourself in something special.

— Dave Ling, Classic Rock magazine, London, August 2018. (With grateful thanks to an in-depth story on Family that appeared in Issue #177 of Classic Rock, quotes used by permission.)

Methodological introduction to the Madfish 8-CD box set Family — At The BBC — Andy Neil’s framing of how BBC radio-session tapes were originally produced, used and (often) wiped, with the technical chain of transcription discs, second-domestic-use payments, and Bernie Andrews’ off-the-shelf reel preservations explained.

The BBC would contract artists to record a session for a radio show such as Top Gear on a certain date. The band then recorded a handful of tracks at one of the BBC studios (Maida Vale, Broadcasting House, etc.). All of the songs would be used in a single Top Gear programme with one or two occasionally being carried over to a future programme. Once the initial broadcast had occurred, to get more usage out of the tape the Beeb might take a few of the recorded tracks and put them into other Radio 1 weekday programmes such as The Johnnie Walker Show or Dave Lee Travis’. (The artist would get an additional payment for each of these separate domestic uses.)

From the tapes, in time the BBC would select roughly fifty percent of the songs recorded for inclusion in a radio show called Top Of The Pops — a show not broadcast in Britain, but for overseas use in British Commonwealth countries who signed up to the Beeb’s Transcription Service for a nominal annual fee. These overseas radio stations (including the NZBC) would get sent distinctive yellow and green BBC transcription discs featuring Top Of The Pops. At around 45 mins long and featuring some of the BBC session tracks (originally recorded for Top Gear et al), these now had new introductions from Brian Matthew, the host. This is why sometimes there are two versions of a BBC performance of a song — one featuring John Peel or Pete Drummond doing the links, and one with Brian Matthew which was preserved on vinyl disc, hence perfect audio quality. The former was often inferior as it had been taped off air by fans.

In several cases, the session tracks separated for use on the TOTP radio show exist without the links on disc — like a pre-production master. Then there are the existing reels that were kept by BBC staffers like Bernie Andrews (who took them away before a BBC clerk could wipe them for reuse — or cannibalised them for the TOTP discs). These are gold dust as usually they are the show as nature intended with all the songs present and nothing destroyed.

— Andy Neil, August 2018.

Curator’s note from compiler Ian Crockett (the same Crockett who concept-and-compiled the Snapper 14-disc Once Upon A Time box set in 2013) accompanying the Madfish 8-CD box set Family — At The BBC.

As Dave Ling mentions later in his liner notes, few bands were selected to perform as many as the 24 BBC radio sessions Family clocked up between 1968 and 1973. So here we have, together for the first time, an 8-disc collection of as many of them as we could pool together from the BBC archives, including twenty tracks that have not been released on CD or vinyl before, along with a selection of great images across their career from esteemed photographers and talented amateurs alike. (Every effort has been made to contact the copyright owners — and obtain high resolution files; not always possible — of the images used in this book.) Listed in the credits is as much information as we could muster. There are, inevitably, a few gaps.

Owing to the age and rarity of these recordings, sound distortion is audible on certain sessions. It was sometimes difficult to make clean tape transfers as it depended on the source, which is why some introductions and endings of certain songs end abruptly. We decided to leave in certain incomplete songs, feeling collectors and fans would prefer to have something rather than nothing. We hope you enjoy it all.

Stop for the traffic — here comes the grin.

— Ian Crockett, September 2018.