1968 brought Family’s recorded identity into focus. The Mk II lineup—Roger Chapman, Charlie Whitney, Ric Grech, Jim King and Rob Townsend—balanced a dense British club and college diary with BBC sessions and early television and continental appearances.
“Me My Friend” / “Hey Mr. Policeman” arrived on 5 July, followed by the debut LP Music in a Doll’s House on 19 July. Produced principally by Dave Mason, with Jimmy Miller’s work retained on two tracks, the album reached UK No. 35 and established the band beyond the underground circuit. “Second Generation Woman” / “Hometown” followed on 8 November while sessions for Family Entertainment were already under way.
January 196811 events
1
Monday
Hatchett's Playground
The Family
67 A Piccadilly, Mayfair, London W1, England
Night 1 of 6 — Family's Hatchett's Playground residency opens on Monday, New Year's Day 1968.
Family's first regular London residency — six consecutive nights at Hatchett's Playground (67 Piccadilly, Mayfair, ℡ Mayfair 2001), Monday 1 – Saturday 6 January 1968. Three sets nightly at 10:30 p.m., 11:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. The Melody Maker advert billed the run as Family's "first appearance" at the club — "the newest, grooviest group will be exploding way-out sound nightly" — and listed openers as Big Pete Lancaster and The Upsetters through the first weekend, with New Year's Eve running 8 p.m.–3 a.m. Hatchett's was open from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. every night, advertising soundstand music, original food and drink, three dance arenas, Green Park as nearest Underground, and easy parking.
See also the five following nights of the residency:
- Tue 2 Jan (Night 2)
- Wed 3 Jan (Night 3)
- Thu 4 Jan (Night 4)
- Fri 5 Jan (Night 5)
- Sat 6 Jan (Night 6)
2
Tuesday
Hatchett's Playground
The Family
Mayfair, England
Night 2 of 6 — Family's week-long Hatchett's Playground residency running Monday 1 January through Saturday 6 January 1968. Three sets nightly at 10:30 p.m., 11:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. Hatchett's — at 67a Piccadilly, Mayfair — was the upstairs supper-club wing of the Hatchett's Restaurant / Piccadilly Club complex, a glassed-in dance floor booked by publicist David Apps as a showcase for the label-circuit underground acts. The six-night opener of 1968 put the Mk II line-up (Chapman / Whitney / Grech / King / Townsend) in front of a London-industry audience night after night, with a Music In A Doll's House test-pressing circulating ahead of the July release.
3
Wednesday
Hatchett's Playground
The Family
Mayfair, England
Night 3 of 6 — Wednesday at Hatchett's Playground. By mid-week the three-sets-nightly schedule was wearing on the band: the 1:30 a.m. set closed after 2 a.m. and the Mayfair audience turned over heavily between the early and late sets. Melody Maker caught one of the week's performances (see the Jan 1968 MM coverage) and flagged the band as 'poised for the underground breakthrough.' See 2 January for the full Hatchett's residency context.
4
Thursday
Hatchett's Playground
The Family
Mayfair, England
Night 4 of 6 — Thursday at Hatchett's Playground. The mid-residency point, with the band settling into a consistent three-sets-nightly rotation. The late 1:30 a.m. set was the most-watched of the three by the industry-contact audience — Apps's after-hours supper-club policy drew A&R people who wouldn't stay for the earlier sets. See 2 January for the full residency context.
5
Friday
Hatchett's Playground
The Family
Mayfair, England
Night 5 of 6 — Friday at Hatchett's Playground. The week's biggest turnover night: London's Friday club-diary pulled industry watchers from four or five after-hours venues through Hatchett's across the 10:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. window. See 2 January for the full residency context.
6
Saturday
Hatchett's Playground
The Family
Mayfair, England
Night 6 of 6 — Saturday, the closing night of the Hatchett's Playground residency. One of the most-watched showcase slots in the 1968 London club diary; the six-night run had put Family in front of the Reprise (US-side) and Liberty A&R staffs and the Melody Maker / NME / Record Mirror gig-column editors, setting up the summer Music In A Doll's House release and the post-LP Marquee residency. See 2 January for full residency context.
100 Chalk Farm Road, Chalk Farm, London NW1, England
+ The Move, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Fleetwood Mac, Louise, Spider, Geranium Pond, Paper Blitz Tissue
Family appeared on an undergraduate charity 'Rag Nite' all-nighter at the New Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, one of several London benefit bills they played that winter while still finishing up Music in a Doll's House at Olympic. The gig placed them alongside the usual underground-club acts of the moment and marked one of their earliest Roundhouse appearances, a venue they would return to repeatedly during the year.
Brunel University fundraiser, 9 p.m.–7 a.m.; £1 admission. Hand-drawn poster lists Family, printed ticket does not—suggests late addition.
TV Broadcast
Saturday · 20 January 1968
Bouton Rouge (ORTF-2)
Paris, France
Family's first documented continental television exposure. ORTF filmed the band at London's Speakeasy Club for Bouton Rouge.
INA notice CPF86617413 identifies a single Family performance but does not identify the song title. Titles previously attached to this airing — You Gonna Wreck My Life and A Song for Me — therefore remain unconfirmed and have been removed from the setlist pending direct inspection of the archive tape.
The 38:59 episode was broadcast on ORTF's second channel at 18:29:30. Josette Barellis is credited as the journalist for Family and Jean-Paul Thomas as director. Further footage from the Speakeasy session appeared on Bouton Rouge on 3 and 10 February and in Seize Millions de Jeunes on 21 March 1968.
+ The Pattern People, The Times, Wall City Jazzmen
Quaintways was a Chester institution — a multi-storey Northgate Street building combining a street-level hairdressing salon with a first-floor ballroom that became one of the north-west's key rock-and-progressive stops outside Liverpool and Manchester through the late 1960s and 1970s. By January 1968 it was pulling in London-booked touring acts alongside Chester and Merseyside locals; Family's appearance sits inside the ballroom's transition from its mid-decade beat-club roots into the underground-rock phase that would continue until the venue shut in the early 1980s. The Pattern People, The Times and the long-running Chester trad-jazz outfit Wall City Jazzmen (named for the Roman walls) opened.
Another Bouton Rouge transmission drawn from Family's Speakeasy Club session. Family appeared in a Disque rouge segment performing the song catalogued by INA as My Friend.
INA notice CPF86617414 records a 47:30 episode broadcast on ORTF's second channel at 18:16:00. Josette Barellis is credited as journalist for Family and Jean-Paul Thomas as director. The programme is digitised at INA.
Family cut their first BBC session of the year at the Paris Cinema on Lower Regent Street on 5 February, for Kenny Everett and Dave Cash's Symonds on Sunday programme. It was first broadcast a week later on 12 February 1968. No BBC transcription of the session appears to survive — it is one of eleven of the band's twenty-five BBC sessions that are counted lost.
Broadcast: 12 February 1968. Songs: 'Winter' · 'Me My Friend' · 'See Through Windows'. The band's second BBC session. The full session was officially released on BBC Radio Volume 1 – 1968-1969 and the At The BBC box set.
Family returned in a Disque rouge segment filmed at London's Speakeasy Club. INA notice CPF86617412 identifies the song as My Friend, the same title used for the 3 February broadcast. The archive descriptions do not establish whether this was a repeat of the same performance or a different take from the session.
The 43:30 episode was broadcast on ORTF's second channel at 18:16:30 and has been digitised by INA. Jean-Paul Thomas directed the Speakeasy material.
'Art Ball Goes Hollywood', University of Leicester, Rainbow Suite (above Co-op House)
Leicester, Leicestershire, England
+ Cream, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Wynder K. Frogg, Freddie Mack Show
The 'Art Ball Goes Hollywood' at the Rainbow Suite above Co-op House — the University of Leicester Students' Union's annual spring fundraiser. Family appeared on a weekend bill that ran deep into the London underground circuit: Cream, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Wynder K. Frog, and the Freddie Mack Show — a five-act package that made this probably the biggest single-night bill Family had appeared on in their hometown to date. Cream were at this point on their Disraeli Gears / Wheels of Fire UK-chart run; Arthur Brown's Fire was three months away from hitting UK #1 in August. The SU's Hollywood-themed decoration and late-running bar made the Rainbow Suite (which normally carried a jazz residency) the prestige University venue of the February calendar.
March 19687 events
Press
Friday · 1 March 1968
Press
Saturday · 2 March 1968
14
Thursday
Middle Earth
43 King Street, Covent Garden, London WC2, England
+ Picadilly Line, The Attack, Doc K's Blues Band, Pete Brown's Poetry Band
Middle Earth — the basement at 43 King Street that had inherited the 'London's leading underground club' mantle from UFO the previous autumn — was by now the de facto home room of the new progressive and blues-rock circuit, running late-night bills that combined rock bands with poetry, light shows and film. Tonight's five-act line-up — Piccadilly Line, The Attack, Doc K's Blues Band and Pete Brown's Poetry Band beneath Family — catches the club's hybrid format exactly: benefit nights for International Times, Release and other counterculture causes ran a regular part of the programme.
15
Friday
Middle Earth
43 King Street, Covent Garden, London WC2, England
+ New Nadir, Green Ginger
A 15 March Middle Earth bill pairing Family with New Nadir and Green Ginger appears in later records, but has not yet been matched to a period advertisement. The date is retained as a likely booking.
16
Saturday
Sixty Nine Club @ Royal York Hotel
67 George Street, Ryde, Isle of Wight, England
+ The Cherokees
The Royal York was a Modern Movement hotel completed 1938 (J.B. Harrison & H.P. Gilkes) on 67 George Street, refurbished and reopened in 1967; the 69 Club took its name from the upstairs function room's relaunch year. Despite the island's small population the club ran a noticeably ambitious booking policy through its short life — Pink Floyd, The Who, The Nice, Moody Blues, Geno Washington, Gene Vincent and later Black Sabbath all played the first-floor room. The Cherokees — a Leeds-rooted beat group with a minor 1964 hit Seven Daffodils — opened, and would support Pink Floyd at the same venue the following January.
TV Broadcast
Thursday · 21 March 1968
Seize Millions de Jeunes (ORTF-2) — London special
Paris, France
Family appeared in Londres, ville ouverte, a London-focused edition of ORTF's youth magazine Seize Millions de Jeunes. Their performance was filmed in a London club and begins at approximately 22:05 in the 30:18 programme.
INA notice CPF86651399 describes Family as performing one song but does not identify its title. The titles previously attached to this entry — A Song for Me and You Gonna Wreck My Life — cannot be confirmed from the catalogue record and have been removed pending direct inspection of the tape.
The programme was broadcast on ORTF's second channel at 20:08:30. Directors: Josette Barellis and Michel Le Bayon. The recording is digitised at INA.
Family appearance on the West German TV news-magazine Deutschlandspiegel. The surviving footage captures Family in Mk II line-up early in their UK breakthrough year.
43 King Street, Covent Garden, London WC2, England
By April the Middle Earth King Street bills were leaning heavily toward the new British progressive-blues scene — Tyrannosaurus Rex, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After and The Nice all played the basement that spring, typically on weekend all-nighters with Jack Bracelin / Five Acre Lights projections and poetry-plus-film inserts. Family's Saturday booking fell three weeks after their previous King Street date and two weeks before the first Music In A Doll's House preview BBC session.
Melody Maker, 6 April 1968 — Middle Earth advert: Family + The People Show + Gunn + Museum.
Middle Earth April 1968 calendar listing — Family on Saturday 6 April, between John Mayall (30 March) and Arlo Guthrie (12 April).
11
Thursday
Brave New World @ Papa Joe's Speakeasy
The Family
Eastney Road, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
"Brave New World" was a short-lived Portsmouth underground club opened Saturday 16 December 1967 by promoter Rikki Farr (Apache Promotions) — son of boxing commentator Tommy Farr and a central figure in the emerging south-coast and Isle of Wight festival scene. The room was the Eastney Road ballroom Farr had taken over from the former Birdcage circuit. Farr and DJ Erroll Bruce ran a deliberately eclectic booking policy: Family's residency sat alongside dates by Ten Years After, Amboy Dukes, The Herd, Blossom Toes, Chris Farlowe, Tubby Hayes, Jimmy James, James & Bobby Purify, P.P. Arnold, Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger, Spooky Tooth and Humphrey Lyttelton with Elkie Brooks.
Week 1 of the five-Thursday residency (11 / 18 / 25 April; 2 / 9 May). The club was rebranded "The Pack" when Farr closed the Brave New World operation in late September 1968; by which point Family would be voted No. 1 "Visitor" band in the local Portsmouth Evening News end-of-year poll.
Radio Session
Tuesday · 16 April 1968
BBC Top Gear (Studio 1)
201 Piccadilly, London SW1, England
Broadcast: 21 April 1968. Songs: 'See Through Windows' · 'Hey Mr. Policeman' · '3 x Time' · 'Old Songs New Songs'. An album-preview set for John Peel's Top Gear. This session remains officially unreleased, and the master tapes are believed to have been wiped from the BBC archives.
100 West End Lane, West Hampstead, London NW6, England
Klooks Kleek opened 11 January 1961 on the first floor of the Railway Hotel, 100 West End Lane, West Hampstead — directly opposite Decca's West Hampstead studios, a fluke of geography that made the venue a factory for British blues-boom live recordings (John Mayall's Diary of a Band, Zoot Money, Graham Bond and, a month after this Family date, Ten Years After's Undead on 14 May 1968). Dick Jordan on bookings, Geoff Williams on admin; red-velvet walls, carpeted floors, plywood-on-crates stage, capacity around 300, and no sound board or soundcheck — bands plugged in and played.
18
Thursday
Brave New World @ Papa Joe's Speakeasy
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Brave New World residency, Week 2 of 5 — second Thursday at Papa Joe's Speakeasy on Eastney Road, Portsmouth. The five-week Thursday-night residency (see the 11 April opening night) was part of the south-coast ballroom summer-build for the Music In A Doll's House release, with promoter Don Read cycling Family through regional-club residencies to warm up a touring audience ahead of the July LP drop.
20
Saturday
76 Club
76 High Street, Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England
The 76 Club opened 1 December 1961 above what had been the Mocambo Snack Bar at 76 High Street, under promoter Gordon Band. Small-capacity and owner-run, the basement-bar room had a name-driven booking policy that over its two-decade life brought AC/DC, Motörhead, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Suzi Quatro, Dire Straits and — most infamously — the Sex Pistols through Burton-upon-Trent; the Pistols' December 1976 "Anarchy" tour date later yielded the bootleg Live at the 76 Club. Family's Saturday booking fell as Doll's House sessions were winding up at Olympic.
25
Thursday
Brave New World @ Papa Joe's Speakeasy
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Brave New World residency, Week 3 of 5 — third Thursday at Papa Joe's. By the mid-residency point the Portsmouth crowd was filling the basement reliably; the room's 450 capacity put Thursday attendance above the standard south-coast mid-week draw. The 11 April opening-night entry gives the venue and residency context.
26
Friday
Rutherford College of Technology
Ellison Place, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England
Rutherford College — founded 1894 as Rutherford Memorial College — occupied the new Ellison Building (City Architect George Kenyon) on Ellison Place, and in 1969 would be amalgamated with the Municipal College of Commerce and the College of Art & Industrial Design to form Newcastle Polytechnic (today's Northumbria University). In April 1968 its student-body social committee was typical of the UK college-circuit bookings Family was cultivating that spring — a mid-size engineering / technology-college dance promoted out of a student-union budget.
May 19685 events
2
Thursday
Brave New World @ Papa Joe's Speakeasy
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Brave New World residency, Week 4 of 5 — fourth Thursday at Papa Joe's. A week out from the final 9 May residency date, the build pattern was on track: five straight Thursdays had brought the Portsmouth audience through enough song-cycles of new Chapman / Whitney material to preview the Music In A Doll's House programme. The 11 April opening-night entry gives the wider residency context.
7
Tuesday
1° Festival Internazionale di Musica Pop, Piper Club
Via Tagliamento 9, Rome, Italy
+ The Byrds, Grapefruit
Family closed the 1° Festival Internazionale di Musica Pop in Rome — Europe's would-be answer to Monterey, brainchild of Americans Jerry and Patricia Fife, run from Saturday 4 May to Tuesday 7 May 1968. The first three nights had been at the Palazzo dello Sport in EUR district (the 20,000-capacity 1960 Olympics arena); promotion was almost nonexistent, the European hippie pilgrimage never materialised, and average attendance was 800–1,000 per night. The lineup was nevertheless astonishing — Donovan, Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger Trinity, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Captain Beefheart, Traffic, Ten Years After, Fairport Convention, Pink Floyd (one of David Gilmour's earliest sets after Syd Barrett's exit), The Nice, The Move, The Byrds. Monday night ended in chaos when The Move's pyrotechnics drew tear gas from Roman police, who shut the Palazzo overnight.
Tuesday 7 May — the closing night — was relocated to the 600-capacity Piper Club, Alberigo Crocetta's 1965 beat temple at Via Tagliamento 9 in the Coppedè quarter. Grapefruit opened, Family played before midnight (with Music In A Doll's House still two months from release, the Roman audience heard an effectively-unreleased album), and The Byrds' new Gram Parsons / Doug Dillard line-up closed — that Byrds set later bootlegged as Live At Piper Club. The wider 1968 Sessantotto context — Rome simmering from the Valle Giulia clash of 1 March and the ongoing Sapienza occupation — sealed the festival's collapse as much as the pyrotechnics did. Rob Townsend's summary stuck: "It was a bit of a farce in the end." No tape or footage of Family's Piper set is known to survive.
9
Thursday
Brave New World @ Papa Joe's Speakeasy
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Brave New World residency, Week 5 of 5 — final Thursday of the Portsmouth run. The closing night of the five-week Papa Joe's residency, and the last south-coast summer-build date before the band moved into the BBC Top Gear recording rota and the July LP release. The 11 April opening-night entry gives the full residency context.
10
Friday
Middle Earth
The Family
43 King Street, Covent Garden, London WC2, England
+ The Action, Junior's Eyes
A classic Middle Earth Mod-to-underground bill. The Action — by then produced by George Martin and in transition toward their next incarnation as Mighty Baby — were King Street regulars, and Junior's Eyes — Mick Wayne's short-lived band that would back David Bowie on Space Oddity the following year — were similarly tied to the club's scene. Friday all-nighters ran 10.30 pm to dawn, admission around 12s 6d to 15s for members.
Middle Earth advert promoting the 10 May Family booking as the 'NEXT WEEK' lead, with Captain Beefheart (3 May) and Fairport Convention (4 May) running the current weekend.
Middle Earth May 1968 full-month programme — Family + The Action on Friday 10 May, with The Byrds the following night.
25
Saturday
Langwith College, University of York
York, North Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ The Soft Machine; Fairport Convention; My Dear Watson
Family shared the St John’s and Langwith College Summer Ball with the Soft Machine, Fairport Convention and My Dear Watson. The all-night university bill ran from 8:30 p.m. to 2 a.m., with films, late transport, a bar extension and buffet.
June 19685 events
11
Tuesday
Marquee Club
90 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1, England
+ Granny's Intentions
Family headlined John Gee's Marquee on Tuesday 11 June 1968, supported by Irish psychedelic-pop act Granny's Intentions — the Dublin-formed band whose Never an Everyday Thing Deram single had surfaced that spring. The Marquee's Tuesday-night slot had become one of the band's regular footholds in central London that spring, with Family now two weeks out from the Music In A Doll's House 24 June LP release date on Reprise.
21
Friday
'A Midsummer Night's Dream' Pop Festival, Burton Constable HallAll-nighter
The Family
Skirlaugh, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band (head), The Move, Marmalade, Fairport Convention, Spooky Tooth, Savoy Brown, Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, Tramline, Baron Richthofen's Rock 'n' Roll Circus, The Angel Pavement, The Mandrakes, C. J. Morris & The Reaction
Family appeared at the Midsummer Night's Dream all-nighter held in the grounds of Burton Constable Hall near Kingston-upon-Hull, a sprawling bill that took in Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band, The Move, Marmalade, Fairport Convention, Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, Spooky Tooth, Tramline, Savoy Brown, Baron Richtofen's Rock 'n' Roll Circus, C.G. Morris, The Angel Pavement and The Mandrakes. The mix of soul, psych and pop drew a large crowd to the Hall's parkland and proved one of the band's first high-profile festival-scale exposures; the event was never repeated, although Burton Constable would host the Humberside Pop Festival in 1970.
22
Saturday
'The First Holiness Kitschgarden for the Liberation of Love and Peace in Colours!!!', Houtrusthallen
Houtrustweg 12, Den Haag, South Holland, Netherlands
+ The Move, Pink Floyd, The Who, Cream, Traffic, Small Faces, Moody Blues, East of Eden, Soft Machine
The First Holiness Kitschgarden for the Liberation of Love and Peace in Colours!!! at the Houtrusthallen, Houtrustweg 12, Den Haag — an enormous package-bill Dutch festival with Family on day two alongside The Move, Pink Floyd, The Who, Cream, Traffic, Small Faces, Moody Blues, East of Eden and Soft Machine. One of the most remarkable lineups Family ever appeared on — effectively the full roster of British psychedelic / prog-rock acts in one room. A Warwick University arts-festival handbill also lists Family for 22–23 June — a likely pencilled-in booking they dropped to honour the Dutch festival.
TV Broadcast
Friday · 28 June 1968
Theater Bellevue — Rood, Wit & Blauw (Dutch TV)
Spuistraat 146-148, Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Family travelled to the Netherlands at the end of June to play Theater Bellevue in Amsterdam for a filmed broadcast of the Dutch music programme Rood Wit & Blauw, their first documented appearance on Dutch television.
Pre-recorded for Dutch TV show Rood, Wit & Blauw (probably aired 3 Jul 68). No tape survives, but still photos show the band fully miked — probably pushing the new single 'Me My Friend'.
Broadcast vs. taping date — source filenames for the surviving screencaps are dated 3 July 1968, which is the most likely air-date. The 28 June date on this event originates from the archival record and may actually be the recording (taping) date at Theater Bellevue, Amsterdam, with the programme airing the following week. Flagged for further research.
43 King Street, Covent Garden, London WC2, England
+ Will Spoor Mime Troupe, Champion Jack Dupree, Little Women
Back in London the following night, Family headlined Middle Earth with mime act The Will Spoor Mime Troupe in support. By this stage Middle Earth — the large basement at 43 King Street that had inherited the mantle of 'London's major underground club' from UFO the previous summer — had become a comfortable home room for the band.
Middle Earth June–July 1968 programme — Family + The Will Spoor Mime Troupe on Saturday 29 June.
Woburn Abbey Estate, Woburn, Bedfordshire, England
+ Jimi Hendrix Experience (headliner)
Family played the Saturday bill of the Duke of Bedford's two-day Woburn Music Festival, sandwiched between Geno Washington and The Jimi Hendrix Experience before an announced crowd of around 14,000 — by some margin the largest audience Family had yet played to. The weekend bill also carried Tyrannosaurus Rex, Pentangle, Alexis Korner, Donovan, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Champion Jack Dupree.
Set ran c. 40 minutes — 'Me My Friend' · 'Old Songs New Songs' · 'You Gonna Wreck My Life' · 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' · 'Hey Mr. Policeman' · 'Observations From A Hill' · 'Peace of Mind' — and Townsend later remembered the slot as a breakthrough: "The organiser's attitude was you can't really follow Geno because he'll have the crowd going. We did and absolutely ripped the place apart." Roger Dopson's later sleeve essay called the set one of the Doll's House coming-out gigs: "appearing at the Woburn Festival, going on immediately before Hendrix and successfully pacifying a previously impatient crowd."
A 29-minute ¼-inch Ampex two-track soundboard reel of Family's set sold at Christie's for £48,050 on 10 July 2008. Nothing has ever been released or heard publicly. Hendrix's set from the festival was issued by Dagger Records as Live at Woburn in July 2009. The festival made over £20,000 profit for the Duke of Bedford. (See Press Archive: The Family Story — Part One by Roger Dopson, See For Miles SEECD 100H, 1998.)
“Family splendid at Woburn. They get better and better. Can commercial success be far away?”
— Hugh Dalton, The Scene
9
Tuesday
Marquee Club
90 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1, England
+ The Beatstalkers
John Gee's Marquee Tuesdays were a development slot where Gee paired a rising headliner with a support act he wanted trade-press and agency bookers to see. The Scottish group The Beatstalkers opened. The Marquee itself — National Jazz Federation-owned, roughly 700 capacity, pillared and unventilated — would be the London club Family used as a weekly proving-ground through the rest of 1968.
10
Wednesday
Toby Jug
The Family
1 Hook Rise South, Tolworth, Surrey, England
The Toby Jug was a 1934 Charles Holden-designed roadhouse on the new Kingston Bypass (A3) at 1 Hook Rise South, Tolworth, that pivoted decisively to music in March 1968 when the Toby Jug Blues Club launched in its small back room. Over the next four years the tiny space — stage perhaps a foot high with just enough room for four musicians and a kit — showcased Fleetwood Mac (already regulars by the time Family played in July), Led Zeppelin (16 April 1969), Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, the Yardbirds, Jethro Tull and a still-unbilled Genesis, and famously hosted the first live performance of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona on 10 February 1972. The pub was demolished in the early 2000s.
Radio Session
Thursday · 11 July 1968
BBC Symonds on Sunday (Paris Cinema)
London SW1, England
Broadcast: 22 July 1968. Songs: 'Hey Mr. Policeman' · 'Me My Friend' · 'Processions' · 'Emotions'. A fourth session for the BBC, recorded just after the landmark Woburn festival appearance. This session remains officially unreleased, and the master tapes are believed to have been wiped.
Opening night of the six-date Tim Hardin UK tour — Melody Maker billed it as 'Tim Hardin / Family' with the promo flagging Family's slot as 'The First British Concert of Family.' The full run: tonight RAH, De Montfort Hall Leicester (18 July), Sophia Gardens Cardiff (19 July), Victoria Hall / Leeds Town Hall (20 July), Free Trade Hall Manchester (26 July), Sunderland Empire (28 July). Hardin was suffering from pleurisy throughout the tour and famously fell asleep onstage tonight; across the northern dates local reviewers increasingly treated Family as the night's main event.
Family had brought a six-piece brass section to the RAH stage — "resplendent in white bandjackets, who obviously enjoyed themselves as they pumped out a full, hearty sound," per Rick Sanders's September Beat Instrumental write-up — and Whitney's double-necked guitar "rang out across the Albert Hall with stunning effect." Sanders also flagged the Ric Grech electric-violin drone-crossplay alongside King's sax, mouth-organ and whistle — the first serious critical portrait of the Mk II band's full live arsenal. On Chapman: "He strains the vibrato almost to breaking point, chanting in powerful anguish one minute, whispering and subdued the next, all the time jack-knifing his thin body to and fro. He brings real drama to singing." Sanders's verdict, written two months later with Music in a Doll's House now on shelves: "The Family's first really important show… several critics were so impressed with their performance that they rate Family above Hardin." (See Press Archive: It's All In The Family — Rick Sanders, Beat Instrumental, September 1968.)
“Several critics were so impressed with their performance that they rate Family above Hardin — who was, admittedly, not at his best. [The] sound of John Whitney's double-necked guitar…rang out across the Albert Hall with stunning effect. For this concert they brought in a six-piece brass section, resplendent in white band-jackets, who obviously enjoyed themselves as they pumped out a full, hearty sound.”
— Rick Sanders, Beat Instrumental, September 1968
17
Wednesday
South Parade Pier
The Family
Southsea Promenade, Southsea, Hampshire, England
+ Traffic, Spooky Tooth, DJ John Peel
A Rikki Farr / Apache Promotions open-air end-of-pier show, John Peel on the microphone, Traffic and Spooky Tooth in support — part of the same Portsmouth underground circuit Farr had been running at Brave New World. South Parade Pier had been a Portsmouth live-entertainment pier since 1879, still a going concert concern six years before the 1974 fire during Tommy's filming. Tickets 10 shillings, the town's Light Emporium crew handling visuals. The Portsmouth Evening News called it a 'success of [this] experimental show which attracted a gate of 2,500' despite the pier's own lights being left on, which defeated most of the light-show.
18
Thursday
De Montfort Hall
Granville Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, England
+ Tim Hardin (headliner)
De Montfort Hall opened 21 July 1913 on the edge of Victoria Park as Leicester's first purpose-built concert hall, and by the late 1960s was a first-tier provincial touring room that had hosted Sinatra, Nat King Cole, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. For Family — their original lineup forged in Leicester pubs — this was a hometown date on Hardin's first UK tour, and the night is catalogued in Bruce Pegg's definitive Goin' Down De Mont concert list.
Sophia Gardens Pavilion was a 2,500-seat hall built for the 1951 Festival of Britain and adapted, curiously, from a surplus wartime aircraft hangar relocated from Stormy Down aerodrome; it had served as the boxing and wrestling venue at the 1958 British Empire & Commonwealth Games before settling in as Cardiff's principal pop-concert room through the 1960s. Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, The Who and Johnny Cash had all played. The pavilion's roof collapsed under heavy snow on 9 January 1982 and the building was demolished.
The Victoria Hall is the central concert room of Cuthbert Brodrick's Grade I-listed Leeds Town Hall (opened 1858), with a 6,600-pipe organ and a formal orchestral layout that made it Leeds's principal municipal concert venue through the 1960s. The 1968 season was weighted toward the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and touring classical programmes, which made the Family / Hardin package — booked by an outside promoter into a hall that rarely took rock — conspicuously unusual for the city, where the rock-student room of choice was becoming the Leeds University Refectory a mile away.
26
Friday
Free Trade Hall
Peter Street, Manchester, Lancashire, England
+ Tim Hardin (headliner)
The Free Trade Hall — rebuilt 1951–56 after WWII bomb damage, on the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre — was one of the UK's most prestigious 1960s touring rock rooms, and the location of Bob Dylan's 17 May 1966 "Judas" heckle during his electric set with The Hawks. Family stepped onto a stage that had already taken the Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix and Cream through the decade. The hall closed to live music in the late 1990s and has since been converted to a hotel.
Press
Saturday · 27 July 1968
Leidse Courant (Leiden, Netherlands)
Dutch regional press coverage of Family in the Leidse Courant — early Dutch press attention coinciding with the band's mid-1968 European push around the Music In A Doll's House release.
27
Saturday
Hyde Park
Traffic
Cockpit / Cumberland Gate corner, Hyde Park, London, Greater London, England
+ The Pretty Things, Fairport Convention, Family
Second of Blackhill Enterprises' summer 1968 Hyde Park Free Concerts — the open-air format pioneered by Andrew King and Peter Jenner on 29 June with Pink Floyd / Tyrannosaurus Rex / Jethro Tull / Roy Harper. Four-act afternoon bill at the Cockpit / Cumberland Gate corner of the park: Traffic (returning from their late-1967 split / regrouping), The Pretty Things, Fairport Convention, and Family in Mk II form (Chapman / Whitney / Townsend / Jim King / Ric Grech).
Family's Music in a Doll's House had been released eight days earlier, on 19 July and the band were on the album's promotional run when the Hyde Park slot landed. The NOW! magazine spread captured a wide-frame Family-in-action shot — King, Chapman, Grech and Townsend working a wooden stage with a large crowd banked behind, the only known Mk II Hyde Park photograph yet surfaced.
The Hyde Park free-concert format would continue across 1968–71 with Blackhill running the bookings; Family would return to the format on the Rolling Stones / Brian Jones memorial concert (5 July 1969) and again with the Plastic Ono Band / John Lennon concert later that year.
NOW! Underground Blues Progressive Pop magazine — Family at the Hyde Park Free Concert, 27 July 1968. Caption: 'FAMILY in action: (from left) Jim King, Roger Chapman, Ric Grech and Rob Townsend.'
28
Sunday
Empire Theatre
High Street West, Sunderland, County Durham, England
+ Tim Hardin (headliner)
The Sunderland Empire opened as the Empire Palace in July 1907 and, after being bought by Sunderland Council in 1960, remained the North East's largest theatre (c. 2,000 seats) for the rest of the decade — staging a rolling mix of variety, plays and occasional touring rock one-nighters. Tonight's Hardin / Family package was a standard Sunday-night package booking, and closed out the six-date run that had opened twelve days earlier at the Royal Albert Hall.
Radio Session
Monday · 29 July 1968
BBC Top Gear (Studio 1)
201 Piccadilly, London SW1, England
Broadcast: 04 August 1968. Songs: 'Processions' · 'The Weaver's Answer' (early version) · 'Me My Friend' · '3 x Time' · 'Old Songs New Songs'. The band's fifth BBC session, featuring the debut of what would become their signature anthem, 'The Weaver's Answer'. This session remains officially unreleased.
A Summertime Blues Festival advert pairs Family with John McCoy's Tramline for a Friday night at The Candlelight, Scarborough (8:30 p.m.–1 a.m., admission 7/6), with “Next Friday The Dynamic Jimmy Cliff” trailed below. The undated advert most likely belongs to August 1968, during the same northern promotional run that led to McCoy's Tees Pop '68 festival on 31 August.
3
Saturday
Middle Earth at the Roundhouse
100 Chalk Farm Road, London, Greater London, England
+ Spooky Tooth, Blonde On Blonde, Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments
Family are reported on a Roundhouse bill with Spooky Tooth, Blonde on Blonde and Pete Brown’s Battered Ornaments. The line-up has not yet been confirmed in a period listing, but it fits Middle Earth’s move from its King Street basement to larger all-night shows at the Roundhouse.
100 Chalk Farm Road, Chalk Farm, London NW1, England
+ The Action/Azoth, Deviants, Eclection, Junior's Eyes, East Of Eden, DJ John Peel, Plastic Dream Machine, Moon & Sunlight, All-Star Jam
Family appeared on a twelve-hour 'Freakshow' all-nighter at the Roundhouse in aid of Community Charities, with a bill that ran Action, The Deviants, Eclection, Junior's Eyes, East of Eden, Plastic Dream Machine, Moon, Sunlights and a 'Giant All Star Jam Session', compered and DJ'd by John Peel. Doors opened at 9:30 p.m.. By this point Doll's House had been out three weeks and was climbing the chart; the band were one of the draws of the night.
An English group on an American label who are highly confident of their creative powers, which they prove with a Dave Mason produced selection of toyland 'n' soul compositions — as near as a label you can get with such an original team.— Melody Maker, August 1968
16
Friday
Mayfair Ballroom
The Family
Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England
+ The Alan Bown Set
Mecca's Mayfair Ballroom had opened on Newgate Street in September 1961 as a 1,500-capacity oblong dance hall with the stage running along one long wall — Newcastle's marquee rock room for the rest of the decade. Family's booking came as The Alan Bown Set's single 'We Can Help You' was climbing the UK chart (it entered on 24 August 1968), and fell inside a Mayfair summer programme that would culminate seven weeks later in Led Zeppelin's first-ever UK performance on Friday 4 October, billed as 'The Yardbirds feat. Jimmy Page.'
24
Saturday
Free Concert, Hyde Park
London W2, England
+ Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Fairport Convention, Deviants, Roy Harper, Eclection, and more
Family closed a ten-band bill at a Free Concert in Hyde Park — a Blackhill Enterprises-organised free afternoon alongside Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Fairport Convention, the Deviants, Roy Harper and Eclection among others. Family's setlist for the opening three songs survives on an audience tape: 'See Through Windows' / 'Voyage' / 'The Breeze' into 'A Song For Me' (one year early — the track would not appear on disc until the January 1970 LP) and 'Old Songs New Songs' — a mix of Music In A Doll's House material, live-circuit staples and in-progress new writing for what would become Family Entertainment.
Dopson's framing positions this as a coming-of-age moment: "playing to 10,000 punters at Hyde Park's first major free gig, alongside Ten Years After, Fleetwood Mac, and Fairport Convention." It was one of the trio of Doll's House launch gigs Family used to consolidate their summer-1968 UK profile alongside Woburn (6 July) and the Tim Hardin / Royal Albert Hall date. (See Press Archive: The Family Story — Part One by Roger Dopson, See For Miles CD reissue SEECD 100H, 1998.)
“Chapman just went for it, giving everything physically for the crowd. I think he fell off stage at one point. Roy Harper came on stage and shouted 'FAMILY' and the audience erupted. I remember beautiful hippie girls with their long flowing hair and flowered dresses 'idiot dancing' to 'Old Songs, New Songs'.”
— Charlie Whitney & eyewitness Graham Howard
25
Sunday
CANCELLED 'Magical Mystery Tour' all-dayer, Middle Earth at the RoundhouseCancelled
London NW1, England
+ Incredible String Band, Traffic, Bonzo Dog Band, Pretty Things, Free, Fairport, Deviants, Blossom Toes, Blonde On Blonde
Cancelled — the 'Magical Mystery Tour' all-dayer at Middle Earth / the Roundhouse (Camden) was pulled by Camden Council at 48 hours' notice on fire-safety grounds after the venue's capacity licence was challenged. The intended bill was extraordinary: Family + Incredible String Band, Traffic, Bonzo Dog Band, Pretty Things, Free, Fairport Convention, the Deviants, Blossom Toes, Blonde on Blonde — the kind of multi-act underground festival bill that Middle Earth's operator Dave Howson was pushing through the late summer 1968 calendar before the Roundhouse's licensing difficulties accumulated.
31
Saturday
'Tees Pop '68' Festival, Eston Recreation Ground
The Family
Trunk Road, Eston, North Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ Traffic, Bonzo Dog Band, Ben E. King, Alan Bown!, Amboy Dukes, Joe Cocker, Savoy Brown, Tramline, Fantastics, Rivers Invitation, compère Long John Baldry
Tees Pop '68 was a one-day outdoor festival promoted by a then-nineteen-year-old John McCoy, who mortgaged the gamble personally and later said he only booked Joe Cocker because he had seen him on Top of the Pops days earlier. For a £1 ticket on a muddy recreation ground known locally as "Baffs" the bill drew Traffic (with Steve Winwood), the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Ben E. King, the Alan Bown Set, Family, the Amboy Dukes, Joe Cocker's Grease Band, Savoy Brown, Tramline, Rivers Invitation and The Fantastics, with Long John Baldry compèring — an astonishing line-up for a first-time provincial promoter that the Teesside press has since branded "Teesside's forgotten festival". McCoy drew only around 2,000 paying customers and lost money on the night but kept promoting in the region for the next five decades.
September 196811 events
"He strains the vibrato almost to breaking point, chanting in powerful anguish one minute, whispering and subdued the next, all the time jack-knifing his thin body to and fro. He brings real drama to singing."— Rick Sanders, *Beat Instrumental*, 1 September 1968 — on Chapman's performance at the 16 July 1968 Royal Albert Hall / Tim Hardin opening night
'Bank Holiday Bluesology' Festival, Chateau Impney Hotel grounds
The Family
Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire, England
+ The Move, Fleetwood Mac, Duster Bennett, Freddie Mac Show, Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds, Wynder K. Frog, Geno Washington & Ram Jam Band, Cliff Bennett, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Jasper Stubbs, Passion Forest, The Breakthrough, Skip Bifferty
Bank Holiday 'Bluesology' Festival at the Chateau Impney Hotel grounds, Droitwich Spa — a two-night package with Family on night two. Family played two sets (8:20 p.m. and 11:35 p.m.) on a deep R&B / soul bill: The Move, Fleetwood Mac, Duster Bennett, the Freddie Mack Show, Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds, Wynder K. Frog, Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band, Cliff Bennett, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Jasper Stubbs, Passion Forest, The Breakthrough, and Skip Bifferty. Eyewitness Ian Hill (later of Judas Priest) recalls Chapman whirl-lashing his microphone stand and Whitney coaxing controlled feedback by walking around the stage in a circle during 'See Through Windows' — an early documented instance of the Chapman / Whitney stage-showmanship that would become the band's live signature.
Radio Session
Tuesday · 3 September 1968
BBC Saturday Club (Playhouse Theatre)
London WC2, England
Broadcast: 07 September 1968. Songs: 'See Through Windows' · 'The Weaver's Answer' (early version) · 'The Breeze'. Taped for the long-running Saturday Club programme; the other guest on the broadcast was entertainer Roy Castle. This session remains officially unreleased, and the master tapes are believed to have been wiped from the BBC archives.
20 Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, London NW3, England
+ Junior's Eyes
The Country Club — a first-floor function room at 210A Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, just up the road from Chalk Farm tube — booked blues and progressive acts from 1968 onwards, smaller and less famous than the nearby Roundhouse but seriously programmed: Free, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple and the early Yes all played the room that year. Junior's Eyes continued the Middle Earth / Country Club cross-pollination of the spring.
7
Saturday
Mothers
High Street, Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Mothers had opened as a rebranded Carlton Ballroom above a furniture store at 272 High Street, Erdington, on 9 August 1968 — so Family's booking caught the room in its first four weeks of trading. Run by John Singer, John "Spud" Taylor and Phil Myatt, programmed by a Peel-era underground sensibility, the club closed 3 January 1971 after some 400-plus bookings; Billboard readers voted it the world's No. 1 rock venue for 1969, and Pink Floyd would record the live half of Ummagumma there the following April.
Another Tuesday-night headliner in Gee's developing-bands slot, with East of Eden opening — a natural pairing for Family's saxophone-and-violin-heavy attack.
18
Wednesday
Eel Pie Island Hotel
Twickenham, Middlesex, England
+ Downliner's Sect, Transcendental Aurora, DJ Jeff Dexter
The Eel Pie Island Hotel, reached by a footbridge from the Twickenham embankment, had been a British R&B landmark since Arthur Chisnall's late-1950s bookings of Cyril Davies, the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. By September 1968 the licence had moved on from Chisnall and the hotel was being programmed toward the emerging underground scene — Jeff Dexter DJ'ing, the Downliners Sect still on the roster from the original R&B era, Transcendental Aurora opening, the first-floor ballroom with its sprung dance-floor running at around 500 capacity in famously dilapidated surroundings. The hotel burned down in 1971.
28
Saturday
Alex Disco (Alexander Rooms)
New Street, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England
+ DJ Kazoon
The Alexandra Rooms — 'Alex Disco' to locals — was a low-ceilinged civic suite on New Street, Salisbury with a small dance-floor and bar, effectively the only Salisbury room capable of booking touring rock acts of any scale in the late 1960s. Ten Years After played the club on 21 September 1968, a week before this Family date; Uriah Heep and a rolling schedule of name psychedelic and blues acts rotated through the 1968–70 diary. DJ Kazoon covered between sets.
29
Sunday
Essener Songtage '68, Grugahalle
Grugapark 35, Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany
+ Frank Zappa & Mothers, Blossom Toes, Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger, Tim Buckley, The Fugs, Alexis Korner, and more
Family closed the five-day Internationale Essener Songtage ("International Essen Song Days") in West Germany — eleven months before Woodstock and routinely described as Europe's first major rock-pop-underground festival. The event ran across multiple Essen venues from Wednesday 25 to Sunday 29 September 1968, drawing some 40,000 attendees across 40 events, 200 musicians from ten countries. The driving forces were Krautrock cheerleader Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, Bernd Witthüser (business), Martin Degenhardt (artistic) and a young Henryk M. Broder on the press desk; Frank Zappa sat on the festival "Braintrust" advisory panel.
The bill collided agit-prop Liedermacher (Franz Josef Degenhardt, Wolfgang Neuss, Hanns Dieter Hüsch, Wolf Biermann), free jazz (Peter Brötzmann, Gunter Hampel), anglo-underground (The Fugs, Julie Driscoll / Brian Auger, Alexis Korner, Tim Buckley), nascent Krautrock (Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream, Guru Guru) and the American visit-of-honour, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, whose Saturday Grugahalle set drew 11,000 and famously disintegrated when SDS-aligned students — furious at Zappa's refusal to denounce capitalism from the stage — pelted the band with cucumbers, squashes, eggs and cherry bombs.
Family — Chapman / Whitney / King / Grech / Townsend, fresh off the July release of Music in a Doll's House — took the Grugahalle stage on the closing Sunday at 2:30 p.m., sharing the day's marathon programme with Peter Brötzmann Gruppe, The Fugs, Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, Tangerine Dream and others. The Essen programme would feed directly into the 1970 Essener Pop & Blues Festival and the emergence of German free-form progressive touring circuits; the 1968 edition is the subject of a 2008 book, Zappa, Zoff und Zwischentöne (Mahnert & Stürmer, Klartext Verlag), still the standard reference.
UCL's Union Great Hall in the Bloomsbury main campus was a standard 1960s gallery-fringed university room used for Ents bookings by the Union entertainments committee — typically Saturday nights, typically with a warm-up support and a headliner billed through the London agency circuit. Proteus opened (biographical material on the band could not be independently corroborated).
8
Tuesday
Klooks Kleek, Railway Hotel
100 West End Lane, West Hampstead, London NW6, England
+ Sleepy
Klooks Kleek was in its last ten weeks of jazz programming by the time Family returned — the final jazz session (organist Jimmy McGriff) took place 29 October, after which the Tuesday R&B diary was dominated by rock bookings until the club's closure on 28 January 1970. Decca's studios directly over the road continued to run tape on the room: in the fortnight after Family's date the stage was taken by Savoy Brown, Ten Years After and Zoot Money. Sleepy opened tonight.
10
Thursday
Students' Intro Ball, Pavilion Ballroom
Westover Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, England
+ Chicken Shack, Just Us
Bournemouth / Poole Technical College's Students' Union ran a string of Rag and Intro Balls at the Bournemouth Pavilion from 1967 onwards, and Family's 'Students' Intro Ball' fell in a 1968 programme that also included Sounds Incorporated (26 Jan), Simon Dupree (26 Jul), the Pretty Things (2 Aug) and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich (9 Aug). A scheduled Roy Orbison date on 14 September had been cancelled weeks earlier after news of the fire that killed two of his sons reached the theatre. Chicken Shack and Just Us supported.
The Pavilion — opened March 1929 by the Duke of Gloucester — housed a large ballroom at the rear above the pier approach on Westover Road, for decades one of the largest on the south coast.
15
Tuesday
Royal Albert Hall
Kensington Gore, London SW7, England
+ Joe Cocker & Grease Band, Taste, Blonde On Blonde, Georgie Fame, Spencer Davis Group, Jethro Tull, July, Roy Harper, Spooky Tooth, Julie Felix, more
Family made their Royal Albert Hall debut on 15 October as part of a folk-blues benefit in aid of Czech students wishing to remain in Britain following the Soviet invasion that August. The roster, compered by John Peel and Mike Raven, also included Julie Felix, Blonde on Blonde, Georgie Fame, Jethro Tull, July, Roy Harper, Spooky Tooth, Alan Price, Gerry Shore, Joe Cocker, Piers Hayman and Spencer Davis. For a band barely three months on from their first LP, a Royal Albert Hall slot on a Peel-fronted bill was a clear marker of their new standing.
Folk/Blues charity concert in aid of Czech students wishing to remain in Britain. Promoted by the World University Service, National Union of Students and United Nations Students Association. Compered by DJs John Peel and Mike Raven. According to one attendee, the hall was about one sixth full, possibly due to poor advertising of the event, and Family 'were as good as they always were live.'
17
Thursday
Mayfair Ballroom
Newgate Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England
+ The Moth
A confirmed 17 October Mayfair booking, with Family headlining and local support act The Moth — an earlier Claude-era note mistakenly transcribed the support as 'The Move', conflating the small Leicester-orbit outfit with the Birmingham chart band. This was Family's second Newcastle Mayfair appearance inside nine weeks — the Ridley Place room running its mid-week R&B residency through the autumn of 1968, with the band testing new Family Entertainment material alongside the Music In A Doll's House set. The short Evening Chronicle advertising of the day billed Family with no further support detail beyond The Moth opener; promoter Bobby Thompson was still running the Mayfair's book on what had been the Club A Go Go's diary before that room's May 1968 closure.
22
Tuesday
Marquee Club
90 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1, England
+ Love Sculpture
Love Sculpture — the Cardiff-rooted trio fronted by Dave Edmunds — were on the cusp of breaking nationally with their Peel-championed speed-demon recasting of Khachaturian's 'Sabre Dance', which they would record that autumn and release in November 1968. A Tuesday-night Marquee support in the week of the 'Sabre Dance' BBC session was the kind of bill John Gee actively curated.
25
Friday
Granby HallsAll-nighter
Welford Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, England
+ The Who, Joe Cocker & Grease Band, Yes, Spring, Legay
A six-act hometown extravaganza at the 1915-built army drill hall between Welford Road and Leicester Royal Infirmary — The Who headlining, with Family, Joe Cocker & the Grease Band, Spring, Leicester prog-leaning locals Legay (later to mutate into Gypsy) and Killing Floor beneath them. The Who's own gig archive confirms the date; the surviving flier catalogues the full running order. Granby Halls served through the century as exhibition space, roller-skating rink, wrestling venue and large-scale concert hall until its demolition in October 2000.
20 Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, London NW3, England
Back at the 210A Haverstock Hill first-floor room a fortnight after the Junior's Eyes bill. By late October Family's Music In A Doll's House material — including The Breeze and Peace Of Mind — was locked into the live set, and Grech's violin was increasingly the band's visual signature. The Sunday-night bookings drew a mixed Hampstead / Camden underground audience; Joe Cocker & The Grease Band played the same room later the same week on the back of their chart-bound With A Little Help From My Friends single.
Radio Session
Thursday · 31 October 1968
BBC Radio One Club (Paris Cinema)
London SW1, England
Family recorded a session at the BBC Paris Cinema on 31 October for Radio One Club, the Radio 1 weekday live-audience programme, first broadcast on 3 December 1968.
Broadcast: 03 December 1968. Songs: 'Observations From A Hill' · 'The Weaver's Answer' · 'How-Hi-The-Li' · 'Dim' · 'Second Generation Woman'. The band's seventh BBC session. Unfortunately, the master tape for this broadcast was wiped and no copy is known to survive.
A live Radio One Club broadcast from the Paris Cinema on Friday 1 November; material from this appearance was later included on official BBC releases.
Broadcast: Live at 12:00 noon. Set: 'The Weaver's Answer' · 'Second Generation Woman' · 'The Breeze' · 'Observations From A Hill' · 'Peace Of Mind'. The band's eighth BBC appearance was a live lunchtime concert broadcast directly from the Paris Cinema. The set has been preserved via an off-air tape recording.
In “London: Här angår popen alla”, published in Dagens Nyheter on 3 November 1968, Ludvig Rasmusson places Family among the most interesting bands he heard in London. He praises their multi-instrumental versatility, classical influences, lyrics and distinctive sound. A group photograph is captioned with Roger Chapman, Jim King, Ric Grech, John Whitney and Rob Townsend.
This is early Swedish press coverage, not an established first newspaper mention. The feature does not identify the date or venue where Rasmusson heard Family, so its publication date is not a concert date.
Related archive clippings. The separately collected items below are headed “Popmusiken”. They are distinct from the page-57 feature and its captioned Family group photograph.
Related Popmusiken clipping from existing archive holdings; not the page-57 feature.
Related Popmusiken picture block, distinct from the Family group photograph on archive page 57.
Family recorded a second Top Gear session at BBC Studio 1 on 11 November; it was first broadcast on 24 November 1968 and repeated on 5 January 1969. The tracks, later released in various forms on BBC Radio Volume 1 1968–69 and the 2018 Family at the BBC box, were 'Second Generation Woman', 'Observations From A Hill', 'Dim', 'Hometown' and 'How-Hi-The-Li'. 'Hometown' only survived on a privately held transcription disc and did not air until the 5 January 1969 repeat.
Family featured on Make It My Place, a BBC-2 interior-design programme broadcast at 19:00. The show followed designers redecorating the band's shared house on Lots Road, Chelsea, with focus on Ric Grech's room (designed by Julie Hodgess); rehearsal footage at the house and the band performing 'The Breeze' on stage at the Speakeasy Club are intercut with the home-improvement narrative. Family's only musical contribution to the episode was 'The Breeze' from Music in a Doll's House. Episode six of the series, never rebroadcast, exists in the BBC archive.
Radio Times: 'The family with a design problem in tonight's programme is The Family pop group; five young bachelors from Leicester who were filmed after they came to London recently. Since then they have produced their first LP, and appeared at the Albert Hall. They moved into an unpromising terraced house in S.W.10 facing a factory and close to a power station. Each wanted his own bedsitter. This evening, Julie Hodgess designs a room for Ric Grech.'
Disc and Music Echo preview (9 November 1968): 'The English group Family are on TV next Wednesday — on a BBC-2 programme about house-designing! But the Family do play, so it's well worth seeing.' — the trade press's wry take on Family's improbable appearance on an arts-and-lifestyle slot rather than the rock-and-pop programmes the record was supposed to be promoting.
Family at the Cambridge University Students' Union with Principal Edwards Magic Theatre in support — part of a string of Oxbridge / student bookings that autumn. Principal Edwards — the Exeter University-formed band — were at this point unsigned but with a strong student following that mirrored Family's own arc three years before; they would sign to Dandelion the following year. Cambridge SU's Entertainments committee was programming the November weekend slots to the same agency rota (George Webb / Terry King) that fed the Marquee's Tuesday-night calendar.
16
Saturday
London School of Economics
Houghton Street, London WC2, England
LSE's Students' Union ran regular Saturday dances from its Old Theatre / Three Tuns complex off Houghton Street; through 1967–69 the SU entertainments programme booked Cream, Pink Floyd, Hendrix and Family among many others. Family's LSE booking placed them inside one of London's most active student-union circuits, and fell one night after their Cambridge University SU date the previous evening.
17
Sunday
Mothers
High Street, Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Family played Mothers in Erdington, the legendary Birmingham underground club above an old furniture store on Erdington High Street that had opened only that August (9 August 1968) under promoters John Singer, John 'Spud' Taylor and Phil Myatt. Mothers would remain a frequent booking for the band until the club closed on 3 January 1971.
19
Tuesday
Klooks Kleek, Railway Hotel
100 West End Lane, West Hampstead, London NW6, England
By mid-November Klooks's long-running jazz policy was in its final three weeks, and Tuesdays had become an almost-fully rock programme. Family were by now a repeat booking in the slot — their third appearance at the West Hampstead room in seven months — and the West End Lane Railway Hotel kept the red-velvet walls, plywood stage and plug-in-and-play approach that had defined it since 1961.
21
Thursday
New Cellar Club
Thomas Street, South Shields, Northumberland, England
The New Cellar had opened 2 December 1966 as a purpose-built, three-storey, £50,000 dance club for the 18–25 age group on Thomas Street, South Shields, owned by Stan Henry of the Bailey Organisation. Cream played opening night; Hendrix appeared 1 February 1967 (tickets 6s); other bookings over the following two years included Alexis Korner, Soft Machine, Long John Baldry, Rory Gallagher, Chicken Shack, The Nice and Family. By the end of 1968 the club was pivoting toward a straight discotheque under the Chelsea Cat rebrand, making Family's November date one of the last rock bookings of the original Cellar era.
26
Tuesday
Fishmonger's Arms
Wood Green, London N22, England
The Fishmongers Arms was an 1855 public house at the top of Wood Green High Road; the music venue operated out of Bourne Hall, a separate dance hall at the rear of the pub, built in the 1920s, which in the 1940s had housed the Wood Green Jazz Club. By 1968 Bourne Hall had become one of north London's most active small-hall rock rooms: Jethro Tull played the pub in April and October 1968, Pink Floyd on 8 November (and again in January 1969 as a Hendrix-cancellation replacement), Yes in December, and Led Zeppelin less than a month after Family on 20 December 1968. A contemporary account describes the hall as "a small wooden hall, with a stage a foot high and barely enough for four people and a drum kit."
29
Friday
New Marquee
81 Great George Street, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ The Amazing Friendly Apple
The New Marquee was a short-lived Leeds club opened by promoter Peter Brent on 81 Great George Street near Leeds General Infirmary, unrelated to the London Marquee operation beyond the borrowed name. The Amazing Friendly Apple — a Morgan Blue Town-label psych act whose 1968 single 'Happyness' was then on local play — were the kind of aspiring London-signed support Brent used to dress out his Friday bills. The club was gone within a couple of years; its premises long since absorbed into the medical-quarter redevelopment that grew around the Infirmary.
Family is new. They are recognized not so much as just another pop sound, but as a valid art form in much the same way as artists admired by Family — Traffic, Dylan and Joe Cocker.
You think of Family and it's introverted, it's knowing too much and not being hassled by it. It's indifference and closeness, it's sex and the honor of men. It's some evil and somebody holding everything together. It's power and money and humor. It's loyalty and the only thing worth holding out for after the camp and the image are put to rest in unknown hours. Family is the beginning and the end.— CashBox advertisement for Music In A Doll's House, 30 November 1968
A final Tuesday-night Marquee headliner of the year in the Gee development slot Family had occupied on and off since early summer. The Village, a Peterborough-based six-piece who would release a 1969 single on the Chapter One label, were a regular Marquee support through late 1968 — they would re-appear as Family's openers at Hornsey Wood Tavern two Fridays later.
4
Wednesday
Manchester College of Commerce
Manchester, Lancashire, England
+ Alexis Korner
Melody Maker's 14 December 1968 issue caught the night: 'Manchester's College of Commerce was packed out on 4 December for Family and Alexis Korner — along with a light show, two scantily-clad maidens.' Korner was deep into his solo club-circuit phase that year — he had just recorded A New Generation of Blues with Danny Thompson, Terry Cox and Ray Warleigh — and was playing small student-union rooms almost continuously across the autumn.
7
Saturday
Polytechnic of Central London
Little Titchfield Street, London W1, England
+ The Village
The Polytechnic of Central London (the present-day University of Westminster) ran Saturday-night Students' Union dances at the Little Titchfield Street site off Great Portland Street. As with most Poly bookings of the period, independently surviving press coverage is thin; the University of Westminster Archive and the SU newspaper back issues are the natural verification routes. The Village supported — a second Family / Village pairing in four nights.
Radio Session
Monday · 9 December 1968
BBC David Symonds Show (Playhouse Theatre)
Northumberland Avenue, London WC2, England
BBC David Symonds Show session at the Playhouse Theatre, Northumberland Avenue. Setlist: 1. 'How-Hi-The-Li' / 2. 'Second Generation Woman' / 3. 'Observations From A Hill' / 4. 'Dim' — a four-track broadcast-session performance on Symonds' afternoon BBC Radio 1 programme, recorded for later transmission. A significant pre-Family Entertainment broadcast: 'Second Generation Woman' and 'Observations From A Hill' would anchor the LP when it appeared the following March. The Symonds show was at this point one of Radio 1's key daytime outlets for the new album-oriented pop / progressive bands, alongside Peel's Top Gear.
The Royal Albert Hall Christmas show was the Ossie Clark and Alice Pollock Christmas Party 1968, a Save the Children Fund benefit tied to the Quorum designers' King's Road fashion world — a signal of how far Family's profile had travelled in six months. The 15 December Alamy press photograph (models Jayne Hodge and Amanda Lear in the event's costumes, shot against the hall) names the bill as Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Family, with proceeds to Save the Children.
20
Friday
'Bluesville '68', Hornsey Wood TavernLate
376 Seven Sisters Road, London N4, England
+ The Village
Family played the Bluesville '68 late-night blues club, which had relocated in October from Manor House to the Hornsey Wood Tavern on Seven Sisters Road. The Village were in support. Bluesville — shortly to be renamed 'Bluesville '69' — would play host to Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After and Rory Gallagher in the months that followed.
24
Tuesday
Mothers
High Street, Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
+ The Action
By Christmas Eve the 272 High Street room was four months old and well into what Peel would later describe as its run as 'the best club in Britain.'
TV Broadcast
Saturday · 28 December 1968
ORTF-1 Samedi et Compagnie — 'Point Chaud' segment
Paris, Maison de la Radio studios, France
Family closed 1968 with a Point Chaud musical segment in Albert Raisner's ORTF-1 variety programme Samedi et Compagnie. The band mimed Old Songs New Songs, reportedly taped earlier in December in Paris to promote the French Reprise single (RV 20190). The Mk II line-up was Roger Chapman, Charlie Whitney, Jim King, Rob Townsend and Ric Grech.
INA notice CPF92017168 records the Family segment within the Saturday-afternoon programme, broadcast on the first channel at 17:36:44. The performance begins at approximately 18:10 in the programme and has been digitised by INA.
It was a great period, people coming by all the time. I remember once storming into Chapman's room at about four in the morning to ask him to turn the music down. I had some old pyjamas on — not very rock'n'roll — and there were half The Byrds in there playing away. So I sort of muttered, 'Great lads,' and crept away.— Rob Townsend, 'Faulty Towers', MOJO, August 1996
Reader comments — 1968 (2)
Memories, corrections, and additions for 1968. Add yours below.
C
chris h16 Dec 2020
I have a couple of gigs in 1968 that I certainly attended that are not on your excellent list, that maybe you could add;
1 14 Sept 1968 Tamworth Staffs Scene ’68 Barbecue Foseco Sports and Social Club.Confirmation of this gig,plus a copy of the advert is available online if you google’ Tamworth Bands History 1960-1990. The gig was in a tent and was a short one. Some guy shouted at the DJ ‘to shut up and get on with it’. Chappo just looked on and said nothing,how times soon changed.
2 I am less certain of the date for the second gig but I think it was Saturday 9 Nov the venue ‘Velvet Underground’ (would you believe) Victoria Restaurant Chesterfield. I could be wrong on the date but I recall it was only a few days before I saw Family at Mothers Club and I saw both gigs on 17 Nov and 24 Dec, so if not in November it would be in Dec.It was definite a Saturday night What I recall from the Chesterfield gig is the power went halfway through the opener ‘See Through Windows’ and the band left the stage and started again with ‘The Weaver’s Answer’.
Reader comments — 1968 (2)
Memories, corrections, and additions for 1968. Add yours below.
I have a couple of gigs in 1968 that I certainly attended that are not on your excellent list, that maybe you could add;
1 14 Sept 1968 Tamworth Staffs Scene ’68 Barbecue Foseco Sports and Social Club.Confirmation of this gig,plus a copy of the advert is available online if you google’ Tamworth Bands History 1960-1990. The gig was in a tent and was a short one. Some guy shouted at the DJ ‘to shut up and get on with it’. Chappo just looked on and said nothing,how times soon changed.
2 I am less certain of the date for the second gig but I think it was Saturday 9 Nov the venue ‘Velvet Underground’ (would you believe) Victoria Restaurant Chesterfield. I could be wrong on the date but I recall it was only a few days before I saw Family at Mothers Club and I saw both gigs on 17 Nov and 24 Dec, so if not in November it would be in Dec.It was definite a Saturday night What I recall from the Chesterfield gig is the power went halfway through the opener ‘See Through Windows’ and the band left the stage and started again with ‘The Weaver’s Answer’.
https://fmttmboro.com/index.php?attachments/img_20221026_140032-jpg.46486/
is this them, I think there was a MOR pop band called THE Family who did the cabaret/nightclub circuit