1969 took Family to a commercial peak while changing two-fifths of the lineup. Family Entertainment appeared on 14 March and reached UK No. 6. The first American tour followed in April, including the notorious Fillmore East episode; during that trip Ric Grech left for Blind Faith and John Weider took over bass and violin. The available evidence supports an April handover but not a single defensible last/first-gig date.
The standalone “No Mule’s Fool” / “Good Friend of Mine” single appeared on 3 October as Reprise RS 27001 and became Family’s first UK chart single. Jim King left later in the year and Poli Palmer joined during November, bringing vibraphone, flute and keyboards into the arrangements being completed for A Song for Me.
January 196911 events
Press
Saturday · 4 January 1969
Melody Maker
Melody Maker coverage of Family — issue dated 4 January 1969 — bridging the Music In A Doll's House hit-album cycle and the imminent Family Entertainment (March 1969) release.
6
Monday
Bay Hotel
1–3 Roker Promenade, Roker, Sunderland, County Durham, England
This was a historic gig for local promoter Geoff Docherty. His two original business associates lost their nerve and backed out, leaving Docherty as the sole promoter to shoulder the massive £150 booking fee for Family entirely by himself. The massive financial gamble paid off. Tickets priced at six shillings completely sold out, packing the seaside ballroom with enthusiastic fans and effectively launching Docherty's legendary career promoting rock in the Northeast. When Family returned to Sunderland later that year (August 1969) at a venue Docherty audaciously rebranded as "Fillmore North," they performed to over 2,000 people—a nearly tenfold increase from this January show.
11
Saturday
Sheffield University Students' Union
Western Bank, Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Sheffield Union's 1968–70 ents programme ran out of the 1963 Gollins, Melvin, Ward & Partners Union building on Western Bank, with a paired Lower Refectory / Top Refectory that gave promoters the choice of disco-plus-support or full-concert configuration. Saturday-night bookings through the year carried Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After and Fleetwood Mac, with £150–£200 guarantees typical; tonight's date opens what would become a near-monthly Family booking pattern through 1969 and 1970.
17
Friday
Brunel University Rag-Week Ball, Royal Albert Hall
Kensington Gore, London SW7, England
+ Georgie Fame, Ten Years After, Principal Edwards Magic Theatre; compère John Peel
Pink Floyd was originally scheduled to headline this massive student carnival event but was forced to cancel at the last minute. The revised lineup of Georgie Fame, Ten Years After, and Family was compered by legendary broadcaster John Peel. Peel was also running his own Dandelion record label, which happened to be the home of the evening's opening act, Principal Edwards Magic Theatre. Opening act Principal Edwards Magic Theatre was not a standard rock band, but rather a massive 14-person multimedia performance art troupe that integrated dedicated poets, dancers, and bespoke sound and lighting technicians into their set.
18
Saturday
Houldsworth Hall, Memorial Hall
90 Deansgate (Memorial Hall, Albert Square), Manchester, Lancashire, England
+ Roy Harper, Bridget St John
Twin-show Saturday at the Houldsworth Hall — 6.15 pm and 8.30 pm, each ticketed separately on the Manchester promoter double-door model. Family headlined over Roy Harper and Bridget St John. The hall was a 550-seat first-floor concert-and-lecture room inside the Memorial Hall on 90 Deansgate (Thomas Worthington, 1866), endowed by cotton magnate Sir William Houldsworth. By the late 1960s it carried a hybrid programme of Hallé rehearsals, Northern School of Music concerts and — from 1968 — a rock-and-folk strand organised first by Don Read's Red Bus agency and later by John Squire's Grass Eye collective.
24
Friday
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall, London SW1, England
The ICA had moved into Nash House in spring 1968 under Michael Kustow and from its first year programmed live rock and experimental music in the Nash / Theatre Room alongside the gallery exhibitions, framing Family, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, the Third Ear Band and AMM as part of an "experimental arts laboratory" rather than commercial pop. Capacity of the Nash Room was a few hundred, the setting closer to a hybrid of gallery and basement club.
25
Saturday
Lanchester Arts Festival '69, Lanchester College of Technology
Cook Street, Coventry, Warwickshire, England
+ Eclection
Family shared the bill with the pioneering folk-rock ensemble Eclection. This gig highlights the closed-door networking of collegiate festivals; Eclection's multi-instrumentalist John "Poli" Palmer would eventually leave his group to officially join Family by the end of 1969 following the tragic departure of Jim King.
26
Sunday
City Hall
Blackett Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England
+ Gun, Bonzo Dog Band
A specimen of late-60s package-booking logic: proto-metal trio Gun (Race With the Devil), the Bonzo Dog Band's Dadaist absurdists, and Family's progressive-blues headliner on one ticket. Newcastle City Hall — Fred Rennison's 1927 civic auditorium, 2,100 seated, attached to the City Baths — was by 1969 the dominant 2,000-cap Tyneside touring stop, programmed on a mix of Kennedy Street Enterprises (Ivan Birchall) hires and Arthur Howes-booked colleges-and-cities tours.
27
Monday
City Hall
Barker's Pool, Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ The Nice
E. Vincent Harris's 1932 Portland-stone neoclassical Sheffield City Hall on Barker's Pool — Oval Hall seats 2,271. Programmed by Sheffield Corporation and outside touring promoters on a hybrid dance-plus-concert schedule. The Nice were touring Ars Longa Vita Brevis and took top billing; Family opened on the back of a contract-rider reality — a 2,000-seat hall needed a guaranteed draw. The strict seated floor configuration would become a recurring 1969–70 complaint: Chapman's stage act worked only when the audience could stand.
30
Thursday
Red Lion Hotel
High Road, Leytonstone, London E11, England
The Red Lion is a deep-set Victorian coaching pub (1891 rebuild on a site going back to 1670) at 640 High Road, Leytonstone, whose first-floor function room was, through 1968–69, one of East London's more respected blues-rock rooms: Led Zeppelin played the building in December 1968 (reportedly billed as the New Yardbirds), and the Thursday rotation across 1969 carried Taste, Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack and Free. The ballroom is intact and re-opened 2025 after a £750k refurbishment.
31
Friday
King's College
Strand, London WC2, England
+ Blonde On Blonde
A regular stop on the London undergraduate circuit — KCLSU's Ents Committee worked out of the Macadam Building on the Strand alongside LSE, Imperial, UC and Regent Street Polytechnic. Blonde on Blonde, fresh out of the personnel shuffle that had brought in new front-man David Thomas to replace Ralph Denyer, were ahead of their second LP Rebirth in support.
February 196913 events
1
Saturday
Alex Disco (Alexander Rooms)
New Street, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England
The Alexander Rooms occupied an upstairs suite in central Salisbury and were, through the late 1960s, the only room in the city that could take a London-booked rock act; the "Alex Disco" branding grew out of a weekend-DJ residency that sat alongside the occasional live booking. Period Salisbury Journal adverts bill the nights as "Tonite at the Alex"; the Wessex agency circuit (Aldershot / Andover / Salisbury / Bournemouth) handled most of the year's rock dates.
6
Thursday
Newcastle City Hall
Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England
+ Moby Grape, The Nice, Eclection, Group Therapy
Newcastle City Hall, Northumberland Road — the 2,100-capacity civic concert hall that had replaced Club A'Gogo as the Tyneside rock room after the A'Gogo's 1968 closure. The Evening Chronicle's same-day preview ('Underground sound') caught the band at the crossover point from Middle Earth to provincial concert-hall touring: "Family are a group whose amazing versatility has thrust them into the forefront of the musical business in no time at all. Between them the group play at least 16 different instruments and four of the five sing. The group hail from Leicester and have figured prominently on the London 'underground' scene until recently when they emerged into the light to prove that they can play music for 'straight' pop lovers as well as the 'in crowd.'" Chapman was described in the piece as "the tall, wild figure of singer Roger Chapman, aged 26" — a line that would become a template for the Tyneside press's Family coverage through the year.
The Polytechnic — trading as the Polytechnic of Regent Street since 1891, and the alma mater of Pink Floyd's Waters, Mason and Wright, who first played as a band in its Little Theatre — was by 1969 a standard undergraduate rock booking, the large hall taking 400-plus standing. Tonight's Family / Who pairing ran as an early-evening show that let both bands double-book across London; Family moved straight on to Middle Earth's Roundhouse all-nighter.
8
Saturday
Middle Earth at the Roundhouse (all-nighter)All-nighter
100 Chalk Farm Road, Chalk Farm, London NW1, England
+ Egg, Arcadium, Steamhammer
This massive all-nighter, running from 10:30 p.m. until dawn, marked the very last show for the legendary "Middle Earth" club before it permanently closed its doors. The venue's famous "Explosive Spectrum" light show was provided by the club's house lighting team from Canvey Island, Essex, projecting mind-bending visual psychedelia behind Family, Egg, Arcadium, and Steamhammer.
Middle Earth-at-the-Roundhouse advert — Saturday 8 February 1969, Family + The Egg.
15
Saturday
Manchester University Students' Union
Oxford Road, Manchester, Lancashire, England
Saturday-night Ents ran out of the Main Debating Hall in the Steve Biko Building (opened 1957, extended 1964). Contracting documents quoted in the band's biographies show a £200 guarantee for this night — above college-circuit norm — consistent with the buying power the same committee deployed to pull in Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Led Zeppelin across 1968–70.
16
Sunday
Mothers
High Street, Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Mothers opened 9 August 1968 on the first floor above Burton's menswear (later a furniture shop) at 272 High Street, Erdington, in a former ballroom called the Carlton Club, run by John "Spud" Taylor, John Singer and promoter Phil Myatt with John Peel a regular DJ. Capacity about 500 standing, stage two feet high, audience on the floor or on rickety chairs. Billboard would vote it best rock venue in the world at year-end; the room's short life (it closed 3 January 1971) produced Pink Floyd's Ummagumma side (27 April 1969), Soft Machine's Facelift on Third (11 January 1970) and parts of Family's own Anyway in 1970. Across the year it takes three Family Sunday bookings (16 Feb, 24 Aug, 12 Oct).
18
Tuesday
Klooks Kleek, Railway Hotel
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 — Dick Jordan on bookings (day job: film cameraman), Geoff Williams on admin — and sat directly opposite Decca's West Hampstead studios, so that a slab of the British blues boom's live recordings came out of the building (John Mayall's Diary of a Band, Zoot Money, Graham Bond, Ten Years After's Undead on 14 May 1968). Capacity around 300 standing; stage a plywood-on-beer-crates affair against one wall; no soundboard, no soundcheck. The club would close 28 January 1970 with a final Keef Hartley set.
19
Wednesday
Dome Concert Hall
Church Street, Brighton, East Sussex, England
+ Bonzo Dog Band, Free
Brighton Corporation's early strategy of programming progressive rock alongside the long-standing orchestral seasons, realised in a Family / Bonzo Dog Band / Free triple. The Dome itself — William Porden's 1803–08 riding house and stables for the future George IV, converted to a concert hall in 1867 — had been given a 1934–35 Art Deco redesign by Robert Atkinson, producing the 1,800-seat oval auditorium under the domed ceiling still in use.
21
Friday
Top Rank Suite
Watford, Hertfordshire, England
+ Blossom Toes
Blossom Toes in support — biographically instructive. The Giorgio Gomelsky-managed group had recently added vibes-and-flute player John 'Poli' Palmer, the same musician who would join Family eight months later via a short detour through Eclection. The Top Rank Suite was part of Rank Organisation's post-war ballroom expansion, booked largely from head office with local promoter overlays, sharing the diary with Rank's resident dance orchestra.
24
Monday
Lanchester Arts Festival, Lanchester College of Technology
Cook Street, Coventry, Warwickshire, England
+ John Peel, Pentangle, Jeff Beck, Eclection, Duster Bennett, Champion Jack Dupree, Liverpool Scene, Jo-Ann Kelly, Simon & Steve, Sydney Carter, Davy Graham, Ron Geesin
The Lanchester Arts Festival at Lanchester College of Technology on Cook Street, Coventry — one of the first-wave student-union arts festivals that in February 1969 ran an ambitious three-day programme. Family appeared alongside John Peel (compère and DJ), Pentangle, Jeff Beck (in his post-Truth band phase with Rod Stewart on vocals), Eclection, Duster Bennett, Champion Jack Dupree, the Liverpool Scene, Jo-Ann Kelly, the folk duo Simon & Steve, hymn-writer Sydney Carter, folk guitarist Davy Graham and avant-garde composer Ron Geesin. An early documented instance of the 'arts festival' pairing of rock, folk, blues and experimental programming that would become a hallmark of the late-60s college circuit.
27
Thursday
Locarno (Corn Exchange)
The Square, Old Town, Swindon, Wiltshire, England
The Swindon Corn Exchange on The Square (George Hinxman, 1866; neoclassical) had been reused in succession as magistrates' court, roller-skating rink and cinema before the post-war Mecca takeover rebranded it a Locarno. In 1969 it sat inside the West Country Mecca circuit alongside Bristol Top Rank and Bath Pavilion, capacity roughly 1,500, with a standard Mon-Thu dance programme on which touring rock acts were slotted as weekday specials. Grade II; destroyed by fire February 2023.
28
Friday
'Bluesville '69', Hornsey Wood TavernLate
376 Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park, London N4, England
Bluesville had been evicted from the Manor House ballroom on 27 September 1968 and, a week later, re-opened in the small back function room of the Hornsey Wood Tavern, 376 Seven Sisters Road, renaming itself "Bluesville '69" for the new calendar year. The room was barely big enough for John Bonham's kit when Led Zeppelin played there on 7 March 1969; other 1969 bookings included Fleetwood Mac, The Nice, Ten Years After, Taste and Jethro Tull. The pub was later demolished, the site absorbed into the Alexandra Bar building.
March 196914 events
Radio Session
Monday · 3 March 1969
BBC Symonds on Sunday (Studio 2, Aeolian Hall)
London W1, England
Broadcast: 09 March 1969. Songs: 'Holding the Compass' · 'Processions' · 'How-Hi-The-Li'. The full session was officially released on BBC Radio Volume 1 – 1968-1969 and the At The BBC box set.
100 West End Lane, West Hampstead, London NW6, England
Second Klooks Tuesday of the year (see 18 February). Jordan's spring 1969 diary carried a heavy progressive / blues-rock rotation — Family, John Mayall, Taste, Edgar Broughton — interleaved with early Led Zeppelin and the last Graham Bond residencies.
Radio Session
Wednesday · 5 March 1969
BBC Radio One Club — live from Paris Cinema
Lower Regent Street, London SW1, England
Radio One Club was the BBC's early-1969 teatime pop-magazine programme, broadcast live from the Paris Cinema on Lower Regent Street — a 350-seat theatre-turned-studio that housed most of Radio 1's live-concert broadcasts across the late 1960s. Family's 5 March session is not preserved — no recording has been located in the BBC Sound Archive or in private-collector circulation — so only the listings-paper billing survives. The Paris Cinema sessions were broadcast Mondays through Fridays at 1 p.m. live, with Dave Cash or Keith Skues on presenting duty across the week's rotation.
Queen's Road, Clifton, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England
Anson Rooms sit on the third floor of Bristol SU's 1965 Richmond Building (A. Ralph Brentnall) above the main refectory, named for first senior treasurer Charles Anson; the 800-capacity double-height hall was through 1968 onwards one of the West Country's most important college rock rooms, with £150–£175 Ents fees typical. Bowie, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin (15 March 1969, a week after tonight's Family date), Fleetwood Mac and Genesis all passed through.
10
Monday
King's Hall, Romford Market
Market Place, Romford, Essex, England
The King's Head was an ancient coaching inn on Market Place, Romford, traceable to at least 1772; the pub's upstairs function suite traded — in contemporary music-press adverts — as "King's Hall, Romford Market", and both names legitimately point at the same room. In 1969 the first-floor ballroom was one of the busier Essex rock venues, with Ten Years After (12 May), Rory Gallagher / Taste (30 June and 22 November) and King Crimson (11 August, advertised as "Kings Hall Romford Market") all on the same circuit that brought Family there five times across the year (10 Mar, 16 Jun, 8 Sep, 1 Dec, 8 Dec). The pub was demolished in the early 1970s; a replacement King's Head opened on Mercury Gardens in 1971.
Radio Session
Tuesday · 11 March 1969
BBC Top Gear (Playhouse Theatre)
London WC2, England
Broadcast: 30 March 1969. Songs: 'Love Is a Sleeper' · 'I Sing 'Em the Way I Feel' · 'A Song for Me' · 'Bring It On Home'. A session for John Peel featuring a rare Jim King lead vocal on the Sonny Boy Williamson classic 'Bring It On Home'. The complete session was included on the At The BBC box set. First three from transcription discs, last from off-air. Session repeated 27 Apr 69.
The 100 Club — Robert Feldman's Swing Club when it opened 24 October 1942 in the Mack's restaurant basement at 100 Oxford Street, renamed in 1964 when Roger Horton took over the lease — was in 1969 still primarily a trad-jazz and blues room (Humphrey Lyttelton's residency, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley), but Horton was increasingly yielding Friday and Saturday nights to his own progressive-rock bookings. Capacity around 350–400 standing. The Village supported.
Prince Consort Road, South Kensington, London SW7, England
+ Smile
Performing in the Concert Hall to a packed crowd of around 700 students, Family were supported by a college house band called Smile — whose guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor would, a year on, recruit a new singer and rename themselves Queen. According to a glowing review in the student newspaper The Felix (20 March), Family opened the show with 'The Weaver's Answer' — fast becoming their standard, atmosphere-building set opener — and closed with two songs still unreleased at the time. The Felix called the gig "one of the best live performances I have ever seen."
“At I.C. hop last Saturday Ents. presented their star attraction of the term — The Family. About 700 people packed into the Concert Hall to see one of the best live performance I have ever seen. All except their final numbers were taken from their two L.P.s, the majority from Family Entertainment. The group started with what is becoming their standard opener: 'The Weaver's Answer'. This number created an atmosphere which they were to maintain throughout the evening, an atmosphere based on the surging and unbelievable voice of Roger Chapman combined with the wide range of musical talent expressed by the other members of the group.”
— The Felix, 20 March 1969
16
Sunday
Mothers
High Street, Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
+ Taste
Return to John Tout's Mothers on High Street, Erdington — Birmingham's pre-eminent underground venue of the period, in its third-year programme of Sunday-night R&B / progressive sessions. Support Taste — Rory Gallagher's three-piece blues-rock group, whose debut Polydor LP had arrived the week before, April release pending. A strong co-bill: both bands were on the Music in a Doll's House / Taste post-debut-LP touring cycle, with Gallagher's playing beginning to attract the London press attention that would make Taste a major festival draw by Isle of Wight in August.
Melody Maker issue dated 22 March 1969 — both a Family Entertainment album review and a separate Family feature in the same issue, coinciding with the album's release week.
20 Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, London NW3, England
An upstairs room above a combined ballroom-and-restaurant at 210A Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, the Country Club was through 1967–72 one of the most important small-capacity rooms on the London underground circuit. Pink Floyd, Soft Machine (whose well-circulated 13 April 1969 bootleg was taped there), Pretty Things, Jimi Hendrix and Fairport Convention all played weekend residencies; Getty press photos from the period describe "more than 400 fans" packed in. The club ran Friday / Saturday / Sunday only, a different act each night.
April 196918 events
What happened with that was, we went along again with what John Gilbert had in mind, using Glyn Johns who is a fantastic producer... What needled us most about it really was that we put all the tracks down and then we had three or four gigs up north, so we clambered into the truck and off we went. When we came back the album was done, they'd gone into the studio and mixed everything without us — and that really wasn't right. Why hadn't they waited until we'd got back? We were actually really happy with the finished album, but that incident drove a wedge between us and it was never the same after that. We started getting very insular... This was a serious nail in the coffin, because we didn't want to be controlled at all after that. Then we went to America and had that huge farce of a tour.— Roger Chapman, Oldie-Markt c.1990 (reprinted Art into Dust, August 2008)
Recording Session
Unverified record
circa April 1969
Record Plant
21 W 44th St, New York NY, USA
Roger Chapman is reported to have contributed backing vocals, alongside Andy Fairweather-Low, to the New York re-recording of Jimi Hendrix's “Stone Free.” The track was released much later, but the available evidence does not establish that Chapman's contribution was recorded specifically on 7 April. The claim is retained as an unverified April 1969 recording card.
Unfortunately he didn't leave right at the start, which is when he should have fucking left. He obviously knew, and so did Gilbert, before we got to America. They didn't let us know though until the day before we were supposed to open at the Fillmore East. Which we played, and where we died. Ten Years After were top of the bill, we were second and the Nice were at the bottom — and it was a disaster. We were not on form at all. For all the timing John Gilbert had perfected before this with the albums and putting things together, he couldn't have timed anything as badly as this. The start of our first American tour, and bang! There goes Ric Grech.— Roger Chapman on Ric Grech leaving, Oldie-Markt c.1990
FAMILY Mk III
circa April 1969
The lineup changes
Roger Chapman — vocals, tenor saxophone, harmonica, percussion
Jim King — tenor and soprano saxophones, harmonica, vocals, tin whistle, piano
Rob Townsend — drums, percussion
John “Charlie” Whitney — guitars, keyboards, mellotron, sitar
John Weider — bass, violin, guitars
Ric Grech disclosed during Family's April 1969 US tour that he was leaving for Blind Faith. John Weider, then based in California and recommended through Peter Grant, was brought in to complete the tour and became Family's next bassist and violinist. Sources establish the April handover but do not securely identify a single concert as both Grech's last full set and Weider's first, so the lineup card uses month precision.
Family fly to New York to begin a two-month American tour, announced by Melody Maker in the weeks prior: "Family fly to New York on April 5 for a two-month American tour. They open the tour at New York's Fillmore East for a two-day engagement on April 9 and 10. They then appear in major American cities including Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis and Chicago."
The lineup landing at JFK is the Mk II band: Roger Chapman, John "Charlie" Whitney, Jim King, Ric Grech and Rob Townsend. The announced itinerary proceeds as billed through the first fortnight — Fillmore East (9–10 April, with The Nice and Ten Years After), Boston Tea Party (11–13 April, with Sweetwater), Steve Paul's Scene NYC (14–17 April), and a two-night stand at Detroit's Grande Ballroom (25–26 April, with Canned Heat; the 26th added The Stooges). A planned Toronto date at the Rock Pile on 19 April was cancelled.
The tour then collapses. Ric Grech — who had in fact notified the band the day before the Fillmore East opening that he was leaving for Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood's new supergroup Blind Faith (Chapman: "They didn't tell us until the day before we opened at the Fillmore East, where we died.") — plays his last Family gig at the Grande Ballroom on 26 April and flies back to London for rehearsals. Chapman begins losing his voice. A passport / visa issue surfaces. And the often-retold Bill Graham mic-stand incident at the Fillmore East had already soured the promoter on the band.
The Minneapolis and Chicago dates announced in the Melody Maker itinerary appear to have been scrubbed — Kinetic Playground Chicago ran Grateful Dead / Velvet Underground / SRC (25–27 April), Albert King / Aum (2–3 May) and John Lee Hooker / Big Mama Thornton (9–10 May) with no Family night, and the Labor Temple Minneapolis (the only comparable room at the time — the Depot wouldn't open until 1970) ran Grateful Dead on 27 April and had no other rock slot through mid-May. John Weider, recommended by Peter Grant, flew in from Los Angeles to take over on bass; the patched-up Mk III Family made a few NYC-area appearances and returned to the Boston Tea Party on 9–11 May before limping back to Britain weeks ahead of schedule.
9
Wednesday
Fillmore East
105 Second Ave, New York NY, USA
+ The Nice, Ten Years After
Family's US concert debut, and the first night of what The Guardian's 18 March preview had billed as 'an American tour on March 28 at Fillmore East… end[ing] eight weeks later at Fillmore West.' (The opening was actually 12 days later than Cannon's preview suggested.) The bill sat Family second between Ten Years After on top and The Nice opening — Bill Graham's signature spring 1969 British-progressive triple.
Bill Graham had opened the Fillmore East on 8 March 1968 in the former Commodore / Loew's Commodore Theatre at Second Avenue and East 6th — a 1926 Yiddish vaudeville hall, capacity 2,654, the East Coast's most important rock theatre by the time Family arrived. Joshua White's Joshua Light Show ran on the 25-foot rear-projection screen; Friday and Saturday bills played 8:00 and 11:30 pm sets.
The second show that weekend ended with the incident that defined Family's relationship with the American industry. Per Michael Watts in Phonograph Record Magazine (November 1971): "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." Compounding it: Ric Grech had told the band the day before opening that he'd accepted Eric Clapton's invitation to join Blind Faith (Chapman to Top Pops months later: "They didn't tell us until the day before we opened at the Fillmore East, where we died"); Chapman lost his voice mid-tour to unfamiliar US air conditioning, then his passport too, "because of unfamiliarity with the habits of some New York girls," Watts added. John Weider flew in from LA to take over on bass.
Whitney, three years on, gave Family's own account of the commercial fallout in Jerry Gilbert's Sounds 'Talk-In': "Roger threw his mike off the side and Bill Graham happened to be standing there and he didn't… Then he sort of put the word around about us and that was it. American Reprise gave us the elbow then because they had put some money into us for the first tour but the second tour they didn't put any money in for at all." Graham's anger had travelled across the US promoter / label network — and effectively closed the door on the American market for the rest of Family's career.
“I just made one of my numbers with the microphone stand, when Bill Graham appeared to see the last part of the show. Obviously he was shocked when he saw how I dealt with the microphone... So he ran down the corridor and pulled down all of our posters. From what I can gather, towards the end of the set I flung a mic stand down and he was standing at the side of the stage, and it just missed him... I think it just frightened the shit out of him... then what with the audience reaction and the state of the band, he just went haywire... Which we did with me not daring to move an inch on the stage. That was when our manager went home — thanks a lot, John!”
— Roger Chapman, Oldie-Markt c.1990
10
Thursday
Fillmore East
105 Second Ave, New York NY, USA
+ The Nice, Ten Years After
Second night of Family's two-night Fillmore East engagement at 105 Second Avenue, New York — Bill Graham's converted 2,700-seat former-Yiddish-theatre on the Lower East Side — supporting The Nice and Ten Years After (see 9 April for venue context). The Chapman mic-stand incident that defined Ed Ochs's negative Billboard review landed during this weekend run, the magazine's column framing the on-stage swing as erratic rather than charged.
“The day before the Fillmore East gig, Ric Grech — who we knew had been knocking around with Clapton — told us he'd been asked to join Blind Faith. Ric was paranoid. We'd been friends for years and he didn't want to let the band down. I had to virtually prop him up against the amps he was so paranoiac about leaving everybody in the lurch, and at the same time not wanting to turn down Clapton.”
— Tony Gourvish, Rolling Stone, 1971
TV Broadcast
Friday · 11 April 1969
'How Late It Is' (BBC-1)
Lime Grove, London, England
Family appeared on BBC1's late-night review show How Late It Is on Friday 11 April 1969 at 10:50 p.m., alongside Jon Hiseman's Colosseum and Dudley Moore.
The band performed Dim with a live vocal over a pre-recorded Family Entertainment backing track. Extreme close-ups and quick cuts make this some of the earliest surviving Family television footage.
Most of the series was wiped by the BBC. Family's performance survives through a 16 mm copy made by BBC engineer Bob Pratt and was later rebroadcast in Sounds of the Sixties. The 2018 Family at the BBC release dates the clip to 21 March, while the contemporary programme listing places Family in the 11 April edition; this timeline follows the documented transmission listing.
First of three Tea Party nights (11–13 April) on the Weider-bookings debut US run. The Tea Party had opened 20 January 1967 in a former synagogue-turned-movie-theatre at 53 Berkeley Street in the South End, run by Don Law Jr. after the Ray Riepen / Steve Nelson founding period, capacity about 850 on a Fillmore-style Fri/Sat two-show / Sunday single-early model. Through 1968–69 it defined American breaks for London bands — Jeff Beck Group, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin's US debut in January 1969 — and Family's three-night stand (plus the 9–11 May Weider-era return) fits the room's template exactly. Sweetwater supported.
12
Saturday
Boston Tea Party
53 Berkeley St, Boston MA, USA
+ Sweetwater
Second night of the three-night Boston Tea Party stand at 53 Berkeley Street (see 11 April for venue context). Support Sweetwater — the LA folk-rock sextet whose eponymous Reprise LP had surfaced the previous summer; their singer Nancy Nevins would be badly injured in a car crash eight months later.
Third and closing night of the Boston Tea Party stand (see 11 April for venue context).
Kevin Kelly in The Boston Globe (Sunday edition, 15 March 1970, reviewing the full run in retrospect): Family "combine the folk roots of Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band with the hard rock of Jethro Tull and the Small Faces … Chapman's voice is a bagpipe drone pushed to the edge of control, hurling tambourine and microphone stand at the floor when a lyric demands it."
14
Monday
Steve Paul's Scene
301 W 46th St, New York NY, USA
+ Raven
Steve Paul's basement at 301 West 46th had opened in 1964 as a deliberately industry-facing room — the club where music-press, label reps and fellow musicians came to see bands before the Fillmore. Capacity around 300, stage at floor level. Hendrix, Tiny Tim, The Doors and Zappa were Paul regulars through 1967–69; by April 1969 Paul was also bankrolling his own Johnny Winter management deal (Progressive Blues Experiment licensed to Columbia for a reported $600,000). A Billboard reviewer covering the four-night engagement filed the famous "the difference in Family was striking… where they had been loose they were together" notice.
“The difference in Family was striking. Where the group had been loose, they were together. Where they had been languid, they were sharp. Where they were unsure, they were comfortable. The Reprise artists displayed the high degree of musicianship that had raised expectations for their first U.S. tour. They were especially good in driving material, such as 'The Weaver's Answer' and 'Observations From A Hill.' Among the strong points were the strange, strong, tremulous voice of Roger Chapman, Rob Townsend on drums, Jim King on saxophone and recorder, Ric Grech on violin and bass guitar and John Whitney on lead guitar.”
— Fred Kirby, Billboard Magazine
15
Tuesday
Steve Paul's Scene
301 W 46th St, New York NY, USA
+ Raven
Night 2 of Family's four-night Steve Paul's Scene residency at 301 West 46th Street, New York — the West 46th Street basement that had hosted Hendrix's Scene jam sessions since 1967 and was the after-hours industry hub of 1968-69 New York. Support house-band Raven (see 14 April for residency context).
16
Wednesday
Steve Paul's Scene
301 West 46th Street, New York, NY, USA
+ Raven
Night 3 of the four-night Scene residency. The small room's 300-capacity floor meant the industry audience rotated heavily between nights — Reprise A&R, underground press and downtown rock royalty drifted through the week. See 14 April for full context.
17
Thursday
Steve Paul's Scene
301 West 46th Street, New York, NY, USA
+ Raven
Night 4 / closing night of the Scene residency. The four-night stand put Family in the tightest possible New York industry spotlight across their first US tour — Reprise's label push was built around the Scene presence as much as the Fillmore East bookings. See 14 April.
CANCELLED — Chapman's passport was stolen during the tour, preventing the band from crossing the Canadian border to play this scheduled gig at The Rock Pile (888 Yonge Street, Toronto) with Howlin' Wolf. One of the tour's cumulative setbacks: the Tea Party / Fillmore East / Scene dates had gone well, but the Rock Pile cancellation, plus the Ochs Billboard review and the forthcoming Jim King departure after the 9 May Tea Party return, framed the first US tour as more troubled than its major-venue slots suggested.
Gothic rock shocks... felt at Fillmore East Wednesday. The Family, with all the woes of an embryonic rock group still getting together in a neighborhood garage on Saturday mornings, nevertheless brought to the Fillmore the erratic and frightening voice of Roger Chapman. Shrill as a bagpipe and trembling like the eerie vibrato of an Irish folk chant, Chapman's penetrating wail in 'Tapestry of Life' threatened the safety and security of every timid soul. Unfortunately the quintet soon tumbled into ineptitude, adding insult to injury as Chapman slapped, kicked and finally heaved the microphone stand in pretentious fit of showmanship.— Ed Ochs, Billboard, 19 April 1969 — "Nice & Ten Years Heavies — But Family Weighs Out" (review of Fillmore East, 9-10 April 1969)
25
Friday
Grande Ballroom
8952 Grand River Ave, Detroit MI, USA
+ Canned Heat
First of two Grande Ballroom nights; Grech's penultimate Family gig (see 26 April for his last). The Grande was a 1928 Charles N. Agree-designed second-floor dance hall at 8952 Grand River Avenue, reopened as a rock ballroom by Detroit schoolteacher Russ Gibb on 7 October 1966 after the Fillmore Auditorium model, capacity roughly 1,500. John Sinclair's MC5 played their long residency here; The Stooges' first live appearances happened in the room; Pink Floyd, The Who (whose Tommy US debut followed 9–11 May) and most of the British blues-rock wave passed through. Canned Heat topped.
“I was staying with some friends in Laurel Canyon, and Peter Grant phoned me and said, 'You've got a plane ticket coming tomorrow morning, and you're going to be in Detroit by tomorrow night.' So I said, 'Well, Pete, I know you always put a good gig on, but who am I going to play with?' He wouldn't tell me... I got to Detroit, and Tony Gourvich met me at the airport and told me that the group was Family. Of course, I said I didn't know the group, and then I got to the hotel and met all the guys, and the next night I was on the stage playing 'Weaver's Answer' and 'Observations' and all that! That first gig in Detroit was with Blue Cheer, who were so loud it was horrible, and Ric and I were on stage playing both together so that I could learn the parts. That went on for five days until we got to New York, and then Ric went off to join Blind Faith, and I stayed with Family.”
— John Weider, ZigZag #42, June 1974
26
Saturday
Grande Ballroom
8952 Grand River Ave, Detroit MI, USA
+ The Stooges
Ric Grech's last note as a member of Family was played on the Grande's stage tonight. Within the first week of May, John Weider — negotiated out of the Animals' fading management orbit — had been installed as replacement. Grech's path forward was a private-plane flight back to London, straight into the Blind Faith rehearsals that would carry him through the June Hyde Park debut with Clapton, Baker and Winwood and into the American tour that followed.
Canned Heat topped the Detroit bill; The Stooges were in support — Iggy Pop's first Family-adjacent stage sighting, on one of the Stooges' earliest out-of-Michigan shows ahead of their August debut LP. (Venue context at 25 April.)
The difference in Family was striking. Where the group had been loose, they were together. Where they had been languid, they were sharp. Where they were unsure, they were comfortable. The Reprise artists displayed the high degree of musicianship that had raised expectations for their first U.S. tour. They were especially good in driving material, such as 'The Weaver's Answer' and 'Observations From A Hill.' Among the strong points were the strange, strong, tremulous voice of Roger Chapman, Rob Townsend on drums, Jim King on saxophone and recorder, Ric Grech on violin and bass guitar and John Whitney on lead guitar.— Fred Kirby, Billboard, 26 April 1969 (review of Steve Paul's Scene, New York, 14-17 April 1969)
May 19696 events
9
Friday
Boston Tea Party
53 Berkeley Street, Boston MA, USA
+ Poco
Three-night return engagement at the Tea Party — and the first US dates with John Weider in the lineup after Grech's departure at the Grande Ballroom on 26 April. Weider had spent the two intervening weeks learning Grech's bass lines on the fly during the closing Detroit and Cleveland dates; the 9–11 May Boston run is effectively the Mk III lineup's American establishment, three-night format (Fri / Sat two-show plus Sunday early) in Don Law Jr.'s South End room. Support: Poco, mid-tour on the country-rock circuit that had started with Pickin' Up the Pieces only months earlier. (Venue context at 11 April.)
10
Saturday
Boston Tea Party
53 Berkeley Street, Boston MA, USA
+ Poco
Night 2 of 3 at the Boston Tea Party (see 9 May for the first Weider-era booking context) — the first of three documented 1969 returns to Boston with John Weider now on bass. Support Poco — Richie Furay and Jim Messina's post-Buffalo Springfield country-rock outfit, whose Pickin' Up the Pieces Epic LP had arrived that month.
TV Broadcast
Saturday · 10 May 1969
Colour Me Pop (Studio TC8, BBC Television Centre)
Wood Lane, London W12, England
Back in London, the BBC broadcast a live-in-studio set featuring "The Weaver's Answer," "Observations From A Hill" "How-Hi-The-Li" "Processions" and "A Song for Me" Sadly, the video tape was wiped with the rest of the series, though the audio survives today via an off-air recording.
Night 3 / closing night of the Tea Party residency, and the final US date of the first Weider-era tour. Support Poco again, closing out what had been a difficult but pivotal first US run for the new four-piece lineup that had debuted at the 9 May date. Jim King would be out of the band within three months, his performances already suffering through the tour; the US trip is often cited in interviews as the pressure that tipped the balance toward his eventual departure.
17
Saturday
Marquee Club
90 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1, England
The Marquee had been at 90 Wardour Street since its 13 March 1964 move from Oxford Street; the 700-capacity low-ceilinged room was managed by John Gee — a former accountant and jazz journalist — who programmed it as a five-nights-a-week mix of trad-jazz, R&B, progressive rock and occasional folk across his entire 1964–70 tenure. Gee's "progressive night" rota gave Family, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, Yes and King Crimson a rotating Tuesday / Saturday booking shape. No alcohol licence until 1970 (hence the adjacent La Chasse Club at 100 Wardour Street, run by Jack Barrie). Tonight's is the Marquee re-entry after the chaotic end of the US trip and the first London show with Weider in the bassist's chair.
25
Sunday
Benefit for Fairport Convention, Roundhouse
100 Chalk Farm Road, London NW1, England
+ Pretty Things, Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, Blossom Toes, Jack Moore, Eclection, Mick Fleetwood & friends, Mimi & Mouse, Deviants, John Fahey, Al Stewart
The Martin Lamble / Jeannie Franklyn benefit at the Roundhouse — a rock-community response to the M1 crash of 12 May that had killed Fairport Convention's drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson's partner, the American clothes designer Jeannie Franklyn, on the band's return leg from a Mothers Birmingham gig. The bill was one of the strongest London underground assemblies of the year: Family alongside Pink Floyd, The Pretty Things, Soft Machine, Blossom Toes and the Deviants — organised through Joe Boyd (Fairport's Witchseason producer) and the Blackhill Enterprises office, with proceeds going to Lamble and Franklyn's families. Fairport themselves were unable to perform; they would not return to the road until the end of the summer with Unhalfbricking already in the shops.
June 196911 events
c.
June
Bluesville Grimsby / Grimsby Jazz Club (Gilbey Memorial Hall)
Freeman Street, Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England
Free benefit concert at Bluesville Grimsby / Grimsby Jazz Club — the north-east Lincolnshire outpost of the same Bluesville circuit that ran at the Hornsey Wood Tavern and Welwyn Cherry Tree through 1969, staged at the Gilbey Memorial Hall on Freeman Street.
Chapman gave Top Pops an extended memoir of the club, explaining why Family had agreed to the unpaid date: 'The Club was formed about ten years ago. As you know, Grimsby is pretty dead, but some of the young people decided they wanted to play and listen to jazz so they founded the club. They started playing just for the sheer pleasure it gave them… After all this the same people are still running it, but they are losing money and the building is going to be demolished in less than a year, which is sad. So we're doing a free concert there to help them out because we have always enjoyed playing there. I respect people who do things like that and they gave all the young people in Grimsby a place where they could go and just enjoy good music.'
“I respect people who do things like that and they gave all the young people in Grimsby a place where they could go and just enjoy good music. That kind of thing is like the youth club scene where the kids should be left alone to look after themselves.”
— Roger Chapman, Top Pops, 19 July 1969
6
Friday
'Midnight Court', Lyceum TheatreLate
Wellington Street, Strand, London WC2, England
+ Brian Auger & Trinity, Andromeda, Screw, Cooper
'Midnight Court' was the Lyceum's Sunday-late-night rock residency, launched in late 1968 as the underground's adopted successor to Middle Earth. Through 1969 the room carried Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Yes, Soft Machine, Procol Harum, The Nice and Jeff Beck on rotation, with John Peel as the regular compère. Format: 11 pm – 3 am, single ticket for the all-nighter, Mecca house DJ between acts. The Lyceum itself — Bertie Crewe, 1904, on Wellington Street — had been Mecca-operated since its 1951 conversion from theatre to ballroom, capacity around 2,000. Brian Auger's Trinity, Andromeda, Screw and Cooper filled out the bill beneath Family's headliner slot.
10
Tuesday
Cherry TreeLate
College Way, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England
The Cherry Tree was a large purpose-built Welwyn Garden City pub opened 1932 as part of the Ebenezer Howard / Louis de Soissons garden-city scheme, its substantial function room designed for the town's "community pub" model. In 1969 that room hosted a short-lived offshoot of the Bluesville circuit branded "Bluesville '69 Club", running a Tuesday-night rock residency on the same booking wheel as the Hornsey Wood Tavern; Led Zeppelin (8 April 1969), Chicken Shack (with Christine Perfect), Rory Gallagher's Taste and Family all appeared that year. Admission 7/6d.
11
Wednesday
Free Concert, Midsummer Common
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
+ David Bowie, Strawbs, Audience, Third Ear Band, Screw, Liverpool Scene, Mandrake Paddle Steamer, Reflection
Family played the Cambridge Midsummer Pop Festival — a four-day (8–11 June) open-air programme on Midsummer Common organised by the Cambridge Arts Lab, one of the earliest large-scale free festivals in the UK and a model for the Hyde Park and Beckenham free concerts of the following weeks. The bill was unusually wide: John Peel compering, King Crimson (in the months before the Court LP release), Brian Auger Trinity, Third Ear Band, Roy Harper — and an acoustic 15-minute set from David Bowie at 3:15 p.m. on the 11th, seven months out from the Space Oddity release that would change his trajectory. (Bowie's later 'Memory of a Free Festival', recorded that September, commemorated his own Beckenham Free Festival on 16 August 1969 — not the Cambridge event, though the two were close relations in the 1969 free-festival template.) A festival-goer remembered standing beside the stage during Family's set and staring straight up at Rob Townsend's drum stool.
13
Friday
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston Park Road, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
+ Principal Edwards Magic Theatre
Family shared the bill with Principal Edwards Magic Theatre. The two acts had previously played together at the Royal Albert Hall in January; PEMT was a massive 14-person psychedelic performance art collective (featuring poets, dancers, and light technicians) who lived in a commune and were heavily championed by DJ John Peel.
16
Monday
King's Hall, Romford Market
Market Place, Romford, Essex, England
Second of the year's five Romford bookings at the King's Hall, Romford Market — Monday-night rock at the market-square pub venue (venue context at 10 March). The first-half-1969 Romford pattern was effectively a monthly cadence that would continue into the winter with the 8 September, 1 December and 8 December returns.
17
Tuesday
Marquee Club
90 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1, England
+ Grail
Tuesday-night Marquee return — a month after the 17 May single-headline slot, Family back at the Wardour Street room for John Gee's regular Tuesday R&B programme. Support Grail — the Cumbrian progressive quartet also managed by John Gilbert — were a regular on the Gee rotation through the summer of 1969, appearing across several Family bookings.
21
Saturday
University of Hull Students' Union
Cottingham Road, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ Steam Coffin
The 1950s Hull Union building off Cottingham Road — Mandela Hall / Main Hall capacity roughly 500 standing — was booked by an elected Ents Committee from union funds; the 1968–69 rota carried Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Chicken Shack alongside Family. Local support Steam Coffin were a Hull five-piece in the same psychedelic-rock mould as fellow Humberside outfit the Rats (Mick Ronson's pre-Bowie group).
23
Monday
Pavilion
North Parade Road, Bath, Somerset, England
Bath Pavilion opened 1910 (A.J. Taylor), a sprung-floor ballroom capacity roughly 1,000 standing — the West Country's most important non-Bristol rock booking through 1968–70, programmed locally, with Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin (31 August 1969), Deep Purple, Yes and Tyrannosaurus Rex all appearing. The municipal diary dovetailed rock nights (usually Mondays / mid-week) with wrestling, dance bands and tea dances.
28
Saturday
Sheffield University Students' Union
Western Bank, Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ East of Eden
Second 1969 Sheffield Union date (first was 11 January). East of Eden in support — the London-formed jazz-and-Celtic-folk-inflected progressive quintet whose Mercator Projected had just dropped on Deram — would share bills repeatedly with Family through the autumn university circuit.
29
Sunday
Argus Butterfly
York Road, Peterlee, County Durham, England
The Argus Butterfly was a pub in the new town of Peterlee (designated 1948 as part of the post-war County Durham coalfield resettlement), with an unusually small sawdust-floored function room that — through the late 1960s — pulled in a disproportionate share of the touring rock circuit. Led Zeppelin had played 20 January 1969 (their third-ever UK club date as Led Zeppelin); Deep Purple passed through; Family's booking sat inside the same end-of-a-long-haul-route economics that made Geoff Docherty's Sunderland and the Rex at Whitley Bay viable. Capacity perhaps 200 at a push; Peterlee memoirs remember amplification at genuinely dangerous levels inside the tiny room.
July 196916 events
c.
July
Showboat Social Club
Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, England
A Top Pops article dated 19 July 1969 mentions a recent Family appearance at Middlesbrough's Showboat Social Club. The show most likely fell in late June or early July, before the band headed south for the mid-month Penzance dates.
+ Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention; compère John Peel
Family opened the inaugural week of Roy Guest's Pop Proms at the Royal Albert Hall — the Wednesday slot in a 29 June – 5 July programme that paired the folk and progressive scenes in the Albert Hall's first extended rock booking since the 1966 cancellation of the experimental Sunday concerts. The 1 July Guardian (Cannon) laid out Guest's concept: 'Guest had the idea of booking the Albert Hall for a week, as many performers as he could get, and giving the event a name and a premise that would be annual.' Co-headliner Incredible String Band. Fairport Convention had been billed but withdrew after the May van crash that killed drummer Martin Lamble. Tickets 5/– to 25/–. Poster: 'First London Gala Pop Festival 1969.'
5
Saturday
Hyde ParkAfternoon
The Cockpit, London W2, England
+ The Rolling Stones (headline), Family, Third Ear Band, Alexis Korner's New Church, Battered Ornaments, King Crimson, Screw
Family opened for The Rolling Stones at the Blackhill Enterprises free concert in Hyde Park — their highest-profile UK festival slot to date, and a concert that doubled as a memorial for Brian Jones, who had died two days earlier. Estimates of the crowd ran from 250,000 to 500,000. Keith Altham (later the band's publicist) remembered Family as "absolutely superb and the best thing on by a mile. They outplayed everyone on the bill." One less-charitable reviewer described Chapman's vocals as "a mix of a strangled goat and an elderly parson having a seizure." Mid-set the PA broke down entirely, forcing Rob Townsend into an unplanned extended drum solo — something he hardly ever did on stage. Family didn't stick around for the Stones' historic Jones-tribute set; they had a second gig booked the same evening at the Dagenham Roundhouse (see companion card), and drove straight across London to play it.
“Family proved themselves musically far better than the Stones or anyone else playing, particularly on their 'How-Hi-The-Li' and 'Dim'.”
— Hugh Nolan, Disc & Music Echo, 12 July 1969
5
Saturday
The Village (ex-Roundhouse)Evening
Lodge Avenue, Dagenham, Essex, England
The Dagenham Roundhouse was a 1936 brick-built roadhouse pub at the Lodge Avenue / Porters Avenue triangle, on what was then the A1153. Its rectangular Lodge Avenue function wing was launched as the "Village Blues Club" by promoter Andy Townsend in early 1969; within a few months it had become one of the most important rock rooms in East London, and the 1969–75 bookings list runs through Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Deep Purple, T. Rex and Queen. Family played their Saturday-evening Village set straight off the afternoon Hyde Park bill supporting the Rolling Stones — leaving before the Stones' Brian Jones tribute — and drove directly across London.
7
Monday
Cooks Ferry Inn
Angel Road, Edmonton, London N18, England
A Thames-side roadhouse pub on the old North Circular at Edmonton, Cook's Ferry Inn was named for the horse-ferry crossing that had run at the site from the 17th century. Harry Randall — brother of trad-jazz trumpeter Freddy Randall — opened a jazz club in the pub's rear hall in 1947; by the mid-1960s the "Blueopera R&B Club" at Cook's Ferry was the leading blues venue in North London (John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, Memphis Slim, Screamin' Jay Hawkins had all played). The 1968–69 bookings carried Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin (31 March 1969) and Family on the same circuit; the pub was demolished in the 1970s when the North Circular was widened.
15
Tuesday
Klooks Kleek, Railway Hotel
100 West End Lane, West Hampstead, London NW6, England
Third 1969 Klooks Tuesday (venue history at 18 February) — Dick Jordan's West Hampstead R&B cellar in the Railway Hotel function room at 100 West End Lane. A fortnight after the Hyde Park Stones-support slot, the band were back on the club's plywood-on-beer-crates stage in a 300-capacity room — a reminder of how Family's live book still ran through small clubs alongside the festival-circuit bookings.
Albert Road, Southsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
The King's Theatre, Southsea — Frank Matcham for John W. Boughton of the Portsmouth Theatres Company, opened 30 September 1907, capacity around 1,600 across three tiers, Grade II-listed since 1976 — spent most of its life as a weekly-rep and variety house; by the late 1960s touring rock promoters were routinely hiring it on dark Saturdays (The Beatles had played in 1963).
Roker Promenade, Sunderland, County Durham, England
Family returned to the seafront Bay Hotel for promoter Geoff Docherty. However, the band's popularity had skyrocketed so much since their first 150-capacity gig there in January that Docherty was in the process of moving his operations to the much larger 3,000-capacity Sunderland Locarno—which he would soon rebrand as "Fillmore North".
24
Thursday
Van Dike Club
Exmouth Road, Devonport, Plymouth, Devon, England
The Van Dike Club opened in the former Exmouth Hall at Devonport in 1966 under Peter Van Dike (real name Peter Osborn), his singer wife June Marlow and their teenage children Greg and Julie; capacity about 700 standing, twice-weekly rock-and-blues policy (Mondays and Thursdays), and a family-run hospitality that made it a favoured stop for touring acts — the Van Dikes famously fed visiting bands in their own house above the club. Across 1968–70 Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Free, Taste, Jethro Tull and Family all played. The club closed October 1972.
25
Friday
Town Hall
Castle Street, Torquay, Devon, England
+ Top supporting blues and underground groups
Family headlined the 25 July instalment of Torquay Town Hall’s “Underground 69” Friday series, advertised with the Music in a Doll’s House tagline. The night ran from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m., with a late bar and pass-outs; adjacent weeks featured Brian Auger Trinity, John Peel with the Keef Hartley Band, Chicken Shack and Thunderclap Newman.
26
Saturday
Civic Hall
Queensway, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England
+ Eclection
Another Poli Palmer adjacency before the October move: Eclection in support had recently added the vibes-and-flute player who would join Family in early October. The Dunstable Civic Hall (also known as Queensway Hall) opened 1966 as a Dunstable Borough Council multi-purpose venue on the Queensway new-town roundabout, capacity approximately 1,500 standing with a raised proscenium stage. Late-1960s programming paired dance-band nights with John Peel-compered rock evenings taken on by external promoters; Pink Floyd would play the same hall on 26 November 1969, Andy Dunkley DJ'ing. The Civic Hall was demolished in 2000 for an Asda supermarket.
28
Monday
Van Dike Club
Exmouth Road, Devonport, Plymouth, Devon, England
Second Van Dike Club booking of the week at the Exmouth Road, Devonport room (see 24 July for venue context) — Robert Smith's Plymouth naval-district R&B cellar. Two Van Dike nights inside a week was a standard south-west package for a touring weekend; Smith's booking diary typically paired touring acts with a Thursday-Sunday cluster to amortise the Plymouth travel.
Late July 1969 — exact day tbc. Broadcast: 03 August 1969. Songs: 'Drowned in Wine' · 'Wheels' · 'No Mule's Fool' · 'The Cat and the Rat'. The first session to feature the Mk IV lineup with Poli Palmer. The full session was released on BBC Radio Volume 1 – 1968-1969 and the At The BBC box set.
Repeats: Top Gear (01 Nov 69), Christmas Top Gear (27 Dec 69 – 'Cat & Rat' only), John Peel (22 Sep 75), Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show (20 Apr 79), BBC 6 Music Live Hour (08 Aug 10, 27 Feb 11, 13 Jan 13).
Monday-and-Tuesday two-night stand at the Marquee. The Monday carried Gee's standard "double-show" 6:45 / 9:30 format — the Marquee-specific monetisation that let the room turn over two separate ticketed audiences in one evening, and which would be used again on the 7 October return.
5
Tuesday
Marquee Club
90 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1, England
+ Samson
Tuesday-night Marquee return, second of the two-night Marquee stand that week. Support Samson — a short-lived late-60s London psychedelic quartet unrelated to the later Paul Samson NWOBHM band of the same name. The Marquee calendar's summer programme saw Family back in Wardour Street every fortnight or so, the room now a reliable fall-back between festival / student weekend dates.
10
Sunday
9th National Jazz, Blues & Pop Festival, Plumpton Racecourse
Plumpton, East Sussex, England
Family closed Sunday night at the 9th National Jazz, Blues & Pop Festival at Plumpton Racecourse — the festival's first time out of London. Organiser Brian Somerville estimated 50,000–60,000 attendance across the three days. The Sunday-final bill ran Family alongside Pink Floyd, The Who, Soft Machine, Bonzo Dog Band, Pentangle, Blodwyn Pig and — in what the Sussex Express called 'perhaps the most unusual and polished performance any open-air National Jazz and Blues Festival could boast' — The Nice backed by Joseph Egar's 40-piece orchestra closing the festival with Bach and Sibelius over the well-worn Plumpton turfs. (Stray period detail: the cast of Hair, booked for the Sunday afternoon, had 'on this occasion been forbidden to strip.')
Family's set "completely brought down the house," drawing an unprecedented thirty-minute encore — Mitch Howard's Beat Instrumental review of the gig was titled "New Lease of Life for Family." Chapman later: "The organisers said it was the best reception any band received in ten years of festivals." Family earned a guaranteed fee of £350 for the day, a sum on the festival exceeded only by The Who.
“The organisers said it was the best reception any band received in ten years of festivals.”
— Roger Chapman
15
Friday
Lyceum Theatre 'Midnight Court'Late
Wellington Street, Strand, London WC2, England
+ Circus, Grail, Sam Gopal
A second 'Midnight Court' Lyceum booking on the Strand, supported by Circus, Grail and Sam Gopal — the Ladbroke Grove psychedelic outfit that at this point still carried Ian Fraser 'Lemmy' Kilmister on guitar and vocals, four years before he would join Hawkwind and a decade before Motörhead. The Sam Gopal lineup this summer had just released the Escalator LP on Stable Records; the Lyceum slot put Lemmy on a Family bill for the only documented occasion in either act's calendar.
London, Aug. 19 – London based pop group Family (not to be confused with Family Dog or Family Dogg) is contesting claims being made by two firms over alleged breaches of management, recording and composing agreements. Twilight Artists Management, which contends it was appointed sole agent for the group in 1968, is seeking $61,000. Dukes Lodge Enterprises charges that each member of the group assigned it copyright in all compositions made during the five years starting July, 1967, and is claiming $83,000. An injunction is also sought to stop the combo making any more recordings until the matter is settled.— Billboard Magazine, 20 August 1969
MANAGEMENT CHANGE
Tuesday · 19 August 1969
Billboard reports Family contesting John Gilbert's legal claims for breach of contract, following his dismissal. Gilbert had bought his way in with £170,000 of Reprise money and wanted to steer the band towards the US market — a territory where, despite their American label deal, they had failed to break through. Tony Gourvish, previously Family's day-to-day buttress, took over as manager. Chapman: "We all went round to his new house in Barnes, knocked on the door and just told him."
“We were nervous about some things then, it probably took us some time to tell Gilbert, but all we knew he'd trusted us badly so that was it.”
— Roger Chapman
22
Friday
Locarno Ballroom
Holmeside, Sunderland, County Durham, England
+ Grail, Bridget St John
Returning to Sunderland to play for promoter Geoff Docherty, Family was upgraded from the small Bay Hotel they had played in January to the massive 3,000-capacity Locarno Ballroom, which Docherty had audaciously rebranded as "Fillmore North." The band performed to over 2,000 enthusiastic fans, representing a staggering, tenfold increase in their audience size compared to their gig in the same town just seven months prior. They were supported by Grail and acoustic folk singer Bridget St John.
24
Sunday
Mothers
High Street, Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Second of the year's three Mothers Sundays (venue history at 16 February). The Sunday rotation by late summer 1969 was carrying Pink Floyd (the two April / May dates that would be taped for Ummagumma), Fairport Convention, Chicken Shack and King Crimson alongside the Family booking.
30
Saturday
Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down
Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England
+ The Who, Moody Blues, Fat Mattress, Joe Cocker, Marsha Hunt & White Trash, Free, Pretty Things, Blodwyn Pig, Gypsy, Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Blonde On Blonde, King Crimson
Family played the second night of the first Isle of Wight festival at Wootton Creek, to a reported 150,000 audience — the pre-Dylan curtain-raiser bill of what would become the weekend of Bob Dylan's first UK appearance since 1966. Melody Maker's Chris Welch and Tony Wilson reported the band had "scored significant successes" alongside Blodwyn Pig, with Welch singling out Chapman's "shamanic charge" during 'The Weaver's Answer.' A Leicester contingent travelled down, their ticket applications covered by the Leicester Mercury.
Family's submission to the official festival programme — in place of the usual band-bio copy — read: "We sometimes imagine ourselves to be a tree. Our roots are firmly set amongst us, the trunk resembles our progress and development and the branches are our directions. At the ends lie the fruits where they are to be taken by the people."
Rob Townsend on the scale of the thing: "Somehow we got into the press enclosure, even though we didn't have passes. We were right at the front of the stage, and wouldn't move… On the day of our performance it was the sheer number of people that was amazing. Seeing Moonie [Keith Moon] play so close up was an incredible memory."
“We saw The Who, who were incredible, The Moody Blues, Free and Marsha Hunt. Somehow we got into the press enclosure, even though we didn't have passes. We were right at the front of the stage, and wouldn't move. And everyone was anxiously waiting for Bob Dylan. It was a really big thing at the time but as it happens we were slightly disappointed. On the day of our performance it was the sheer number of people that was amazing. Seeing Moonie play so close up was an incredible memory.”
— Rob Townsend
September 19696 events
8
Monday
King's Hall, Romford Market
Market Place, Romford, Essex, England
Third of the year's five Romford bookings — another Monday-night King's Hall return (venue context at 10 March). The first-week-of-September date was part of an East End / Essex club run picking up after the Isle of Wight Festival weekend.
12
Friday
Mayfair Ballroom
Newgate Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England
+ Idle Race
Family / Idle Race / Downtown Faction / Gin House — a four-act Friday bill on the Mayfair's 'progressive Fridays' circuit, per the Sunday Sun 7 September advert; 12/6 tickets from Fenwicks, Windows, Disque and the Mayfair box office. Idle Race — the Birmingham band Jeff Lynne had just left for the Move — were on the same Chrysalis college-and-ballroom circuit as Family; Downtown Faction and Gin House were local North-East support acts.
The Mayfair Ballroom had opened 28 December 1961 on Newgate Street as a flagship Mecca-circuit dance hall in the post-war ballroom expansion — oblong auditorium taking around 2,000 standing, wrap-around first-floor balcony. The 'progressive Fridays' booking from 1968 onwards (via Ivan Birchall of Kennedy Street Enterprises, then local promoter Roger Richardson) made it the principal Tyneside rock room; Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull all played. Weekly Friday rock night ran until the hall's 1999 demolition.
15
Monday
Royal Festival Hall
Belvedere Road, London SE1, England
The 'An Evening of Family Entertainment' concept had been John Gilbert's final big London set-piece for the band — staged as an eccentric vaudeville night, booking plate-spinner Olly Grey and whip-cracking strip artist Rex Roper between Family's two sets, presented by Blackhill Enterprises Ltd. By the evening itself Gilbert had been dismissed as manager four weeks earlier (19 August — see separate milestone), but the eccentric programming stuck; Chapman later called it 'a damp squib' and added 'something we didn't learn from cos we tried something similar for Anyway.'
Monday 8 pm, tickets 25/– (Stalls, Red Side, Gangway 3, Row/Seat 16A, Level 4, Door 4). Ticket stub reproduced in Pete Feenstra's Once Upon A Time box-set book.
Melody Maker Pop Awards
Wednesday · 17 September 1969
Melody Maker Pop Awards
Family received recognition at the annual Melody Maker Pop Awards — the industry trade-paper poll whose prestigious ceremony that year was held at the Waldorf Hotel in London. The MM poll tracked both critics' and readers' voting; the 1969 ceremony recognised Family alongside winners in the brightest-hope and live-performance categories, a visible endorsement by the British music press ahead of the November Mk III lineup shift and the forthcoming A Song For Me sessions.
26
Friday
Pavilion Gardens
St John's Road, Buxton, Derbyshire, England
+ Fleetwood Mac, East of Eden, Edgar Broughton Band, Glass Menagerie, Spirit of John Morgan, Grisby Dyke; compère John Peel
A John Peel-compered Derbyshire 'underground night' with Fleetwood Mac headlining and Family second — the September template for the year's package all-nighters. 8 pm Friday 26 Sept through to 7.30 am Saturday 27 Sept, bar extension 5 am, barbecue through the small hours. Spirit of John Morgan, Edgar Broughton, Glass Menagerie, East of Eden and Grisby Dyke filled the rest of the card. Promoted by BRUFC (Buxton Rugby Union Football Club) out of 32 Crowstones, Buxton — tickets 25/– advance at the club, 30/– at the door. Peel's review of the Family set — 'Roger's hands fluttered like lunatic semaphore flags' — became one of the year's most-quoted one-liners.
Buxton's Pavilion Gardens had opened 11 September 1871 to an Edward Milner design (Crystal Palace) as a cast-iron-and-glass pleasure-garden complex; the Octagon concert hall was added by R.R. Duke in 1876, holding approximately 1,000 as a ballroom. Late-1960s programming ran a hybrid of orchestral seasons and promoter-hired rock all-nighters. Grade II-listed.
“Roger's hands fluttered like lunatic semaphore flags in a tempest and his voice rasped and shook through the pavilion. They played a half hour of 'Who Will Sing A Song For Me' [sic]. John's violin solo was superb. In fact they did nothing that wasn't superb.”
— John Peel
LSE Union's Saturday rock programme — run out of the Old Theatre / Shaw Library / Three Tuns bar by an Ents Committee that doubled as a radical political hub (the LSE '68 sit-ins had originated in the same building) — was one of the busiest and best-funded on the London university circuit through 1968–71, fees in the £150–£250 bracket. Grail supported.
7
Tuesday
Marquee Club
90 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1, England
+ Stone the Crows, Emily Muff
Another Gee double-show Tuesday — 6.45 and 9.30 pm. Stone the Crows, fronted by Maggie Bell, had been put together that summer out of the wreckage of the Glasgow band Power (Les Harvey, Maggie Bell, Jim Dewar, James Dewar, Colin Allen); tonight was one of their earliest London gigs. Emily Muff — the Kathy Bushnell / Janet Dourif duo, named by Family themselves and informally managed from inside the Family camp — would shadow the band across a cluster of autumn bills (7 Oct Marquee, 16 Nov Fairfield, 18 Dec Worthing, 22 Dec Brighton, 31 Dec Marquee NYE).
10
Friday
University of Salford — 'A Night of Family Entertainment'
The Crescent, Salford, Lancashire, England
+ Climax Chicago Blues Band, Third Ear Band, Entire Sioux Nation dancing troupe, Killing Floor, Famous Jug Band, Edison's Phonograph, Manchester Road, Nova Express light show
Billed as 'A Night of Family Entertainment', this eclectic university show featured a wildly diverse lineup including the Climax Chicago Blues Band, Third Ear Band, Killing Floor, the Nova Express light show, and the "Entire Sioux Nation dancing troupe."
12
Sunday
Mothers
High Street, Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Third and last 1969 Mothers Sunday at High Street, Erdington (venue history at 16 February). John Tout's Birmingham R&B / progressive Sunday programme had run Family three times in eight months — a measure of how central Mothers was to the band's regional presence through the year.
14
Tuesday
Klooks Kleek, Railway Hotel
100 West End Lane, West Hampstead, London NW6, England
+ Egg
Fourth and last 1969 Klooks Tuesday (venue history 18 February) — and one of Family's last Klooks bookings ever, as the club would close on 28 January 1970. Egg — the Dave Stewart / Mont Campbell / Clive Brooks post-Uriel Canterbury trio, also managed by Chrysalis — opened.
16
Thursday
Royal Philharmonic Hall
Hope Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
+ Third Ear Band, Bridget St John
'The Magic Village presents FAMILY' — per the Liverpool Echo same-day advert, the show was promoted by Roger Eagle's Magic Village operation, the Manchester underground club Eagle ran from 1968 (Cromford Court, King Street) out to occasional out-of-town promotions like this Liverpool booking. Eagle — the former Twisted Wheel booker whose ear defined the northern soul and northern blues circuits — was one of the 1969 UK scene's most consistent British-progressive bookers.
Third Ear Band and Bridget St John in support; tickets 7/6 through 15/6 from the Philharmonic or usual agents. Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall, completed 1939 (Herbert Rowse) after the original 1849 hall burned down in 1933, is the 1,800-seat auditorium of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra — formally the Royal Philharmonic Hall after the RLPO's 1957 royal charter. Rock bookings began only in the mid-1960s (The Beatles played their last scheduled Liverpool concert there on 5 December 1965), and by 1969 the hall ran an occasional strand of progressive and folk shows between orchestral seasons. Grade II-listed.
18
Saturday
Locarno Ballroom
Holmeside, Sunderland, County Durham, England
+ Man
Returning to Sunderland for promoter Geoff Docherty, Family was supported by the Welsh rock band Man. (While some contemporary advertisements incorrectly listed the gig for Friday the 17th, a review in the Sunderland Echo confirmed the show took place on Saturday).
+ Steppenwolf, Spirit of John Morgan, Van der Graaf Generator, Griffin
Sunday late-night Lyceum bill supporting Steppenwolf's first UK tour — and one of the earliest post-reformation shows by Peter Hammill's Van der Graaf Generator with David Jackson and Nic Potter newly aboard. Spirit of John Morgan and Griffin filled the rest. (Lyceum / Midnight Court venue history at 6 June.)
20
Monday
Civic Hall
Queensway, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England
+ Hardin & York
Second 1969 Dunstable booking (venue history 26 July). Hardin & York in support — Eddie Hardin (organ / vocals) and Peter York (drums), fresh out of the Spencer Davis Group — were touring as a two-piece, a format rare enough to draw press-coverage attention on its own.
21
Tuesday
Ilford Palais de Danse
High Road, Ilford, Essex, England
The Ilford Palais de Danse opened in 1925 after the conversion of the 1911 Premier Electric Theatre cinema into a Mecca Dancing ballroom; the façade was rebuilt in 1959 and rebranded simply "Palais Dancehall". Mecca kept the room on through the 1960s as a hybrid ballroom-and-rock venue — Jimmy Savile famously served as its resident DJ / manager from 1955 — with The Who, the Kinks, Small Faces and Bill Haley all on the 1960s bookings list; capacity around 1,500 standing. The Palais was on the south side of High Road, just east of Riches Road, and was demolished in 2008.
24
Friday
Van Dike Club
Exmouth Road, Devonport, Plymouth, Devon, England
Second 1969 Van Dike visit at Exmouth Road, Devonport (venue history at 24 July). A single-night return rather than the July two-night package — the band's Plymouth booking was now on monthly-or-so cadence rather than the summer's weekend clusters.
30
Thursday
Rex Hotel
Links Road, Whitley Bay, Northumberland, England
+ Raw Spirit
Thursday rock night at Whitley Bay — 7.30 to 11.30 pm, Family with local North-East heavy progressive quintet Raw Spirit in support. Evening Chronicle (24 October) advert: advance tickets 12/6 from Rex & Disque in Whitley Bay or Windows, Fenwicks & Disque in Newcastle, pay-at-door option held, bar, late transport back to Newcastle after the show.
The Rex — a late-Victorian seafront hotel on Links Road / The Promenade, built c. 1900 as part of Whitley Bay's rapid growth after the Tyneside Metropolitan Railway came through — had been running rock nights in its first-floor function room and ground-floor Regency Bar from 1967 onwards, one of the North-East coastal circuit rooms alongside Geoff Docherty's Bay Hotel / Locarno at Sunderland and the Whitley Bay Empress. Capacity perhaps 400 in the function room.
November 196911 events
1
Saturday
The Village (Roundhouse)
Lodge Avenue, Dagenham, Essex, England
Family's originally scheduled gig for Saturday, November 1 at The Village in Dagenham was forced to be cancelled due to the sudden illness of a band member. They managed to successfully reschedule the date for Tuesday, November 18. The Dagenham Roundhouse was a pub originally built in 1936. By 1969, the venue had established the "Village Blues Club" and had quickly gained a massive reputation as East London's premier rock music venue, hosting acts like Led Zeppelin and Queen.
UNCONFIRMED — This date was likely cancelled due to sudden sickness of one of the band members and rescheduled for 18 Nov.
FAMILY Mk IV
circa November 1969
The lineup changes
Roger Chapman — vocals, harmonica, percussion
John “Charlie” Whitney — guitars, keyboards
Rob Townsend — drums, percussion
John Weider — bass, violin, guitars, vocals
Poli Palmer — flute, piano, vibes, synthesizers
Jim King left Family in late 1969 and Poli Palmer, formerly of Eclection, took his place during November. Palmer joined while A Song for Me was being completed, bringing vibraphone, flute and keyboards to arrangements originally conceived around King's reeds and harmonica. The surviving evidence supports a November transition but not the former card's exact claim that King's last appearance and Palmer's first full gig occurred at the same Bristol concert.
2
Sunday
Colston Hall
Colston Street, Bristol, Gloucestershire
The Mk III→Mk IV handover in public: Bristol's first full Family concert with Poli Palmer in Jim King's chair — vibes, flute and occasional piano replacing saxophone and flute (the November 1969 lineup milestone gives the formal handover context). Billed as a 'Contemporary Song Festival' — Al Stewart in support (Sunday 2 November, 7.30 pm, tickets 16/– to 6/–, per South Wales Argus 24 October advert). The same week's Colston diary placed Family inside a markedly catholic run — Bournemouth Symphony on the 29th, the American Folk Blues & Gospel Festival '69 (Albert King / John Lee Hooker / Otis Spann / Champion Jack Dupree) on the 31st, John Mayall on the 4th, the Rotterdam Philharmonic on the 5th.
Six weeks later the Leicester Chronicle's year-end Pete Barraclough retrospective (26 December) photographed the new Mk IV lineup with the caption 'John Whitney and newcomer, Polly Palmer' — the home-town press's first formal acknowledgement that the Mk IV was the new settled Family.
YES and Blossom Toes in support at Newcastle City Hall — per the Sunday Sun 9 November advert: 'City Hall, Friday, 14th November, at 8 p.m. only. FAMILY and guests YES • BLOSSOM TOES. Tickets 8/6, 10/6, 12/6, 15/- from City Hall Booking Office.' An extraordinary undercard at this stage of Yes's career — Peter Banks and Tony Kaye still in the lineup, Yes the debut LP five months old, Time and a Word then in recording at Advision. Blossom Toes' inclusion is biographically doubly-meaningful: their former vibraphone and flute player John 'Poli' Palmer — who had briefly detoured through Eclection after leaving the Toes — had formally joined Family twelve days earlier at Colston Hall (see 2 November). Newcastle City Hall on Northumberland Road (venue context at 26 January).
16
Sunday
Fairfield Halls
Park Lane, Croydon, Surrey, England
+ Emily Muff
First Mk IV London appearance, two weeks after the Bristol handover. Fairfield Halls (Robert Atkinson & Partners, opened 2 November 1962) grouped the 1,800-seat Concert Hall, the Ashcroft Theatre and an art gallery into a single Croydon Corporation civic complex; by 1969 the hall was a regular outer-London rock stop, competing with the Lyceum, the Rainbow and the Royal Albert Hall for touring acts wanting a 1,500+ room. Emily Muff supported — a pairing that would repeat through the autumn. (The hall reopened 2019 after refurbishment.)
18
Tuesday
The Village (Roundhouse)
Lodge Avenue, Dagenham, Essex, England
Family's originally scheduled gig for Saturday, November 1 at The Village in Dagenham was forced to be cancelled due to the sudden illness of a band member. They managed to successfully reschedule the date for Tuesday, November 18. The Dagenham Roundhouse was a pub originally built in 1936. By 1969, the venue had established the "Village Blues Club" and had quickly gained a massive reputation as East London's premier rock music venue, hosting acts like Led Zeppelin and Queen.
20
Thursday
Halle Münsterland
Albersloher Weg 32, Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany
+ Chicken Shack
One of the larger rock dates on the West German circuit. The Halle Münsterland on Albersloher Weg, south-east of central Münster, could take up to 7,000 for concerts in its Halle Nord — a 1946-founded fair-and-congress complex rebuilt and expanded through the 1960s. Fritz Rau / Lippmann+Rau's Supershow tours routinely routed British blues-and-progressive acts through the hall through the late 1960s: Hendrix played 14 January 1969; tonight's Family / Chicken Shack pairing fits the same Rau-booking template. (The venue has long been confused in English-language press with the acoustically similar but unrelated Münsterlandhalle — the canonical German name is Halle Münsterland.)
22
Saturday
Brøndby Pop Club
Copenhagen, Denmark
Brøndbyhallen — the Brøndby municipal sports hall in Brøndbyvester, opened 1967 — was the home of the short-lived but influential Popklubben / "Brøndby Pop-Club" weekly rock night through 1968–70, promoted by Karl Emil Knudsen and his Sonet / Storyville label circle. DR filmed several Popklubben evenings and the pan-Nordic spin-off The Beat Goes On II; the Family clip of No Mule's Fool taped tonight broadcast in April 1970.
Rigoletto was a Jönköping dance-and-concert hall on the Swedish folkparker summer-and-winter pop circuit — the same nationwide network that had carried Hendrix, Cream, the Kinks and Pink Floyd to Sweden across 1967–69. Capacity in the low thousands; a late-autumn indoor extension of the summer folkpark programme with EMA Telstar handling UK-band routing from Stockholm. Peps & Blues Quality — a Malmö blues band built around Peps Persson, one of Sweden's best-known blues vocalists — supported.
December 196920 events
1
Monday
King's Hall, Romford Market
Market Place, Romford, Essex, England
Fourth of the year's five Romford bookings at the King's Hall (venue context at 10 March). Monday nights — the pub's standard rock slot — were by now an almost-monthly cadence for the band, the winter rotation continuing through to the 8 December fifth booking a week later.
2
Tuesday
The Place
Bryan Street, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England
The Place opened in 1962 on Bryan Street in Hanley as a ballroom-nightclub run by John and Ken Taylor, capacity roughly 500; by the late 1960s it had become one of the key North-Midlands rock rooms, carrying Pink Floyd, Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, with a parallel Northern Soul night ("Golden Torch"-style) out of the same building. The Taylors sold the club in 1969 and within a year it had become the Regency Ballroom.
4
Thursday
De Montfort Hall
Granville Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, England
A rare Leicester homecoming at Granville Road — the Mk IV lineup's first full De Montfort Hall appearance, billed in the Leicester Chronicle (28 November, P.B.) as "one of their rare 'home' appearances." The same preview documented the scale of the autumn's turnover: Grech gone to Blind Faith in April, and "a fortnight ago sax and flutist Jim King split from the band so that he could study music seriously" — placing King's formal departure at roughly 14 November, a fortnight after his last Colston Hall gig. Emily Muff supported.
The next day's Leicester Mercury review (J.M., 'FAMILY AT TIMES TOO INVENTIVE') opened: "The prophets came home last night. And they were honoured." The review dwelt at length on Palmer's fit ("Family has found a valuable replacement for Jim King in John 'Polly' Palmer, who came from Eclection. He used the vibes to produce refreshing smooth, solos, encouraging light and shade in Rob Townsend's drumming") and on the Chapman stage performance — "while Chapman remains relatively still the arms explore the stage; the hands crash together, point at the audience, the roof and mind imaginary shapes before the hands grab a microphone stand and hurl it… Not for nothing does Roger Chapman carry a large supply of new tambourines."
The headline detail, though, was Grech's unscheduled return: "Ric walked into the hall last night unexpectedly and joined Family for a final number. Ric played amplified violin. Ex-Animal John Weider played amplified violin. Ric played phrases, John played phrases, but at times their inventiveness overreached itself." Grech, then seven months into Blind Faith, walking on unannounced to play twin-violin with his successor — one of the single most evocative Mk III-to-Mk IV transition moments documented in the Family literature.
By the 26 December Chronicle retrospective — Pete Barraclough's full-page year-end prediction 'LEICESTER FAMILY FORECAST TOP POP SOUND OF THE 70's' — the homecoming had been retrofitted into the decade-closing narrative: Family were 'the group that should pursue the greatest attention in the 70's' and had 'the potential to become one of our top groups of the 70s.' The piece's photograph was the first formal Leicester press portrait of the new Mk IV lineup, captioned with the period's characteristic 'newcomer, Polly Palmer' framing.
TV Broadcast
Friday · 5 December 1969
Doebidoe (AVRO-TV)
Hilversum, Netherlands
A listings-based Family booking for the Dutch AVRO pop programme Doebidoe, reportedly featuring a mimed performance of Observations from a Hill. No recording of this episode is currently known to survive, so the appearance remains unconfirmed by footage.
+ Edgar Broughton Band, Atomic Rooster, Zoot Money, East of Eden, Spirit of John Morgan, Steamhammer
Late-night bill inside Mecca's 'Midnight Rave / Midnight Rag Rave' strand at the Lyceum (venue history 6 June). The Nov–Dec 1969 rotation of the all-nighter caught Atomic Rooster's earliest London shows — Vincent Crane's post-Crazy World of Arthur Brown trio had only formed in August. Edgar Broughton Band, Zoot Money, East of Eden, Spirit of John Morgan and Steamhammer filled the rest.
Second 1969 Manchester University Union booking at Oxford Road (venue history 15 February). By this point the Mk III five-piece with Poli Palmer had been playing together for just over a month — the 2 November Croydon date had been the debut, and the December student circuit pushed the new lineup through a demanding mid-size-hall book-tour to bed in Palmer's keyboards / vibes contributions alongside Weider's violin.
7
Sunday
Bradford University
Richmond Road, Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
This university gig was famously reviewed for the Yorkshire Post by a young student reporter named Mark Knopfler, who would go on to form the massive rock band Dire Straits. Knopfler's review provides crucial historical confirmation of a major lineup change, explicitly noting: "Family with their new member 'Polly' [Poli Palmer] on vibes, flute and piano were quite outstanding." Palmer had been officially drafted into the band in late 1969 to replace Jim King, and was actively redefining the band's live sound.
“Family with their new member 'Polly' [sic] on vibes, flute and piano were quite outstanding. Singer Roger Chapman seems happier than usual – so did everyone else come to that. Rob Townsend on his distinctive yellow drum kit charged along, a real little powerhouse, and certainly one of the finest drummers. Bass player John Weider proved again that he is an excellent guitarist and in another lengthy duologue with Townsend, showed off his skill on violin.”
— Mark Knopfler, Yorkshire Post
8
Monday
King's Hall, Romford Market
Market Place, Romford, Essex, England
Fifth and final 1969 Romford booking — the closing King's Hall Monday night of the year (venue context at 10 March). The five-date annual total was one of Family's highest single-venue annual residencies anywhere outside the Marquee and Klooks Kleek.
9
Tuesday
Civic Hall
North Street, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England
+ Georgie Fame, Barclay James Harvest
A triple that caught the Civic Hall's eclectic late-60s booking policy precisely: veteran R&B organist Georgie Fame, a Barclay James Harvest in the very first months of their Harvest-label life, and Family headlining — hired for the night by Wolverhampton Polytechnic's Students' Union. The Wolverhampton Civic Hall itself had been completed 12 May 1938 to a Lyons & Israel classical / Art Deco design, opened by the Earl of Dartmouth; the council-owned main auditorium took up to 3,000 standing, paired with the adjoining Wulfrun Hall.
10
Wednesday
Reading University
Whiteknights Park, Reading, Berkshire, England
Reading's Whiteknights campus opened in stages from 1957; by 1969 its Students' Union held most live-music bookings in the Palmer Building or Meadow Suite, capacity around 600. Ents Committee bookings in 1969 included Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin (13 March) and Jethro Tull, with SU fees typically £150–£200. Family's slot fell on the Wednesday between 9 December Wolverhampton and 12 December Hull.
12
Friday
University of Hull
Cottingham Road, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
Second 1969 Hull University booking at Cottingham Road (venue history 21 June). The December student-ents round was sandwiched inside the first tranche of A Song For Me sessions at Olympic Studios, the new Mk III lineup running split-weekdays between studio work and weekend touring.
14
Sunday
Argus Butterfly
York Road, Peterlee, County Durham, England
+ Axtree Junction
Return to Peterlee's sawdust-floor Argus Butterfly — the County Durham pub-club at the heart of the new-town circuit run by promoter Geoff Docherty. Supported by local band Axtree Junction, whose vocalist Bob Barton would go on to front Beckett — the Sunderland hard-rock outfit Docherty would also manage through the early 1970s. A small-room booking of the kind Family still slotted into between the A Song For Me sessions at Olympic Studios, even as the Family Entertainment and live reputation put them on 2,000-capacity civic halls elsewhere in the country.
18
Thursday
Worthing Pier Pavilion
Marine Parade, Worthing, West Sussex, England
+ Emily Muff, Trees
Worthing Pier's Southern Pavilion — an Art Deco building at the seaward end of the pier, rebuilt 1935 (A. Mazzocchi, under A.D. Alfree of Worthing Corporation) after the 1933 fire. Through the 1960s the Pavilion ballroom (capacity roughly 700) hosted summer-season shows and regular off-season beat / rock nights programmed by the Corporation and external promoters. Trees — the London-based acid-folk quintet with Celia Humphris's vocals — and Emily Muff supported.
19
Friday
Royal Albert Hall — Shelter benefit
Kensington Gore, London SW7, England
+ Graham Bond, Sam Apple Pie; compère John Peel
The Royal Albert Hall Christmas Benefit — a Save the Children Fund / Shelter-linked Kings Road fashion-world tie-in, proceeds earmarked for the homelessness-focused side of the 1969 charity circuit. Family appeared alongside Bonzo Dog Band as headlining co-bill, plus Graham Bond, Sam Apple Pie and Roger Ruskin Spear; John Peel compèred. The RAH had not yet been closed to rock bookings after the trouble at the 1971 Frank Zappa gig; the Shelter benefit was one of the genteel-cause rock evenings the Hall's management still accepted.
Two years on, Whitney gave Jerry Gilbert a first-hand account of why the band had stopped playing the Royal Albert Hall, anchored in this Shelter charity date: "No we hadn't actually been banned, but they didn't like us much because we played a gig there — a charity gig for Shelter — and they pulled the plug out on us and the audience couldn't believe it, and it took them 45 minutes to clear the hall. So after that we thought, well let's play somewhere else." Whitney noted he doubted Family would play the hall again — "it's a pity because, did you see the Band? The sound was amazing." (See Press Archive: In The Talk-In — Charlie Whitney by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 15 January 1972.)
“Pandemonium broke out at a pop concert in the Royal Albert Hall last night when the Family pop group had its electricity switched off.”
— Daily Express, 20 December 1969
20
Saturday
King George's Hall
Northgate Street, Blackburn, Lancashire, England
+ Quintessence, Grisby Dike
King George's Hall — opened 25 October 1921 as a memorial to George V (Briggs, Wolstenholme & Thornley), Grade II-listed, main auditorium seating approximately 1,850, owned and operated by Blackburn Corporation. By December 1969 the Hall was taking a growing share of touring rock dates in an East Lancashire triangle with Burnley and Preston. Quintessence — the Notting Hill-commune raga-rock sextet whose In Blissful Company had just appeared on Island — and Manchester blues-rock quartet Grisby Dyke supported.
22
Monday
Brighton Dome
Church Street, Brighton, East Sussex, England
+ Emily Muff
Second 1969 Brighton Dome date (venue history at 19 February). The Brighton Corporation's Dome — the Royal Pavilion's Indian-designed former riding-school converted for civic concert use — regularly fielded a pre-Christmas rock bill alongside the seasonal orchestral programme. Support Emily Muff — the Bristol-area blues-rock trio who had been working the Family-camp autumn rotation alongside dates at Eel Pie Island and the Ewell Technical College.
23
Tuesday
Victoria Ballroom
High Street, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England
The Victoria Ballroom was an upstairs dance-hall on Chesterfield's Church Way / High Street block, part of the East Midlands late-60s beat-club circuit that also carried Family into Sheffield City Hall and Buxton Pavilion Gardens. Locally remembered alongside the Top Rank Chesterfield and the town's working-men's club circuit; capacity modest (perhaps 500).
End-of-year Marquee bash — an annual fixture since at least 1966, typically run in partnership with Jack Barrie's upstairs La Chasse Club. Audience (Howard Werth's London quartet, whose self-titled Polydor debut had just appeared and who would move to Tony Stratton-Smith's Charisma in 1970 for House on the Hill), Skin Alley (Bob James / Thomas Crimble, CBS) and Emily Muff beneath Family's headline. The Marquee's longtime 'Coloured Reign' light show — house-lighting crew under George Pappas and Gerry Cott — closed out the year.
Tonight capped what had been, by any measure, the busiest year in Family's career to that point — 141 logged events across the UK, the USA, West Germany, Denmark and Sweden.
Pete Barraclough framed the year's trajectory for Leicester Chronicle readers the day after Boxing Day (26 December), the last Family feature of the decade: 'Family really are the group that should pursue the greatest attention in the 70's. They have the potential to become one of our top groups of the 70s.' Above the headline 'LEICESTER FAMILY FORECAST TOP POP SOUND OF THE 70's', the Mk IV lineup photograph was reproduced with the mis-spelled caption 'Roger Chapman, Ron Townsend and Johnny Weider; bottom, John Whitney and newcomer, Polly Palmer' — the 'Ron Townsend' typo a recurring period-press slip.
Date unknown · 19691 event
We'd get fifty percent of the audience going, 'Fucking crazy,' and fifty percent yelling, 'Boo! Fuck off.' We used to get other bands we played with asking how we ever thought to do material like that, and we'd just have to say, 'I dunno — we just rehearsed them in Jim King's flat.' And that's all it was. We never plotted any of it. It just came to us naturally. The funny thing was, you'd see the same band a year later, and they would be at it as well! But some people just couldn't make us out. We had so many people firmly against us that we just knew we were doing something right.— Roger Chapman, interview (Oldie-Markt, c.1990)
When we got back from America, we'd basically been abandoned by him over there, and one day the four of us got on a bus and went over to his house and told him we didn't want to work with him any more. Gilbert was a very clever man, very astute, but his own ego had got in the way. His whole pride was that he wanted to produce a band that happened, and once we had this flop in America then it was a serious blow to his ego. And that was the end of it. From there we sort of went round in circles a bit. Jim King then left and we did Song For Me.— Roger Chapman on the Gilbert fallout, Oldie-Markt c.1990
Jim was ill and getting worse by the minute. There's no polite way to say this — basically he was going fucking mad. It was really hard work. He was sort of a genius, the sort of geezer that decided he wanted to play the saxophone and two weeks later he'd be playing it on stage. Great singer, great harmonica player, a great sense of feel and soul — but he just went mental. Which is a shame, because he was a big influence on the band... it just gets to the point where you want to get rid of him... Anyway, he went — I think I've only seen him once since, and he didn't look very well then. I think he's had a lot of problems through the years.— Roger Chapman on Jim King leaving, Oldie-Markt c.1990
Memories, corrections, and additions for 1969. Add yours below.
A
Andy Taylor21 Apr 2018
Thought you might like another date to add. On Thursday 18th December Family played Worthing Pier Pavilion supported by Emily Muff and Trees. I was 15 and it was my first ever gig. I became a fan for life!
Was the 21st June 1969 gig at Hull University the one where the group’s van broke down, didn’t arrive, and so Family used the support act’s kit plus odd instruments borrowed from students?
Reader comments — 1969 (3)
Memories, corrections, and additions for 1969. Add yours below.
Thought you might like another date to add. On Thursday 18th December Family played Worthing Pier Pavilion supported by Emily Muff and Trees. I was 15 and it was my first ever gig. I became a fan for life!
Was the 21st June 1969 gig at Hull University the one where the group’s van broke down, didn’t arrive, and so Family used the support act’s kit plus odd instruments borrowed from students?
I haven’t stopped by in a while. Love the annotated list of concerts, Roger!