1971 opened with the Weider/Palmer lineup touring behind Anyway. The budget compilation Old Songs New Songs appeared in March, and “In My Own Time” / “Seasons” followed on 2 July, becoming Family’s biggest UK single at No. 4.
John Weider left during the summer and John Wetton’s first documented Mk V appearance came at Roots Hall, Southend, on 24 July. Wetton’s bass, keyboards and vocal harmonies reshaped the group for Fearless, released on 29 October. The year’s diary also includes Glastonbury Fayre, continental festivals, Top of the Pops and the BBC concert recording that later circulated as BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert.
January 19716 events
2
Saturday
The Village (Roundhouse)
Lodge Avenue, Dagenham, Essex, England
Opening Saturday of the year at the Grade II–listed round-plan Blomfield pub (1936) on Lodge Avenue — the Village Blues Club's home since 1969 under John Lutnor, capacity ~500 with the main bar cleared on rock nights. Warm-up before the continental sweep through Paris, Elbeuf and Brussels.
4
Monday
Stepmothers (ex-Mothers) — The Belfry
Lichfield Road, Wishaw, Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, England
+ Fairfield Parlour
"Stepmothers" was the short-lived successor to Mothers, the legendary Erdington club (All Saints Parish Hall, 80 High Street) that had closed its doors on 3 January 1971 after nearly three years of booking every major British progressive act. Promoter John "Spencer" Taylor reopened at The Belfry — the Lichfield Road hotel and golf complex at Wishaw, Sutton Coldfield — for a handful of Monday nights in January / February 1971 under the jokey "Stepmothers" branding, with Family the highest-profile act to play the new room. Peter Daltrey's (Kaleidoscope / Fairfield Parlour) beer-crates-and-boards recollection is consistent with a temporary stage in a hotel function room. The Stepmothers experiment didn't take, and The Belfry reverted to wedding-and-conference use (and would later host four Ryder Cups).
“When Mothers club closed they opened at a new venue rather cleverly called Stepmothers. The gig supporting Family was nothing special. I think I remember hearing Roger Chapman singing and feeling it was a very odd voice. The only mention is that the stage was falling apart as we played as it was constructed from beer crates with boards on top.”
— Peter Daltrey, Fairfield Parlour
10
Sunday
L'Olympia
28 boulevard des Capucines, Paris, France
Coquatrix-era 1,996-seat music-hall, the standard Paris date for touring British rock. Filmed by Michel Lancelot's Pop 2 team (ORTF 2ᵉ chaîne, successor to Bouton Rouge), broadcast 16 Jan; backstage Chapman interview shot the same night. Olympia's in-house rig had been used the previous January to tape the 8–10 Jan 1970 Paris Underground Music Festival — the Opération 666 master tape that would loop through Swiss TV a year later.
Rue Salvador Allende, Elbeuf, Seine-Maritime, France
Dethan & Rives's 1892 wooden circus-theatre, ~1,200 capacity on mixed stalls/gallery, booked into Action et Culture's "Quinzaine de pop et de jazz" series. Paris-Normandie's 1 Jan and 13 Jan 1971 editions carried the announcement copy (Family, sole act).
TV Broadcast
Saturday · 16 January 1971
Pop Deux (ORTF 2, France)
Paris, France
ORTF's second channel aired the Olympia Paris concert footage on 16 January as part of Pop 2 (often billed Pop Deux), the successor to Bouton Rouge. The broadcast carried 'Holding the Compass', 'Part of the Load' and 'Good News – Bad News' plus the backstage interview filmed at the venue on 10 January.
INA notice CPF86653670 logs the episode at 40:15, broadcast 17:37:00 on the 2ᵉ chaîne. Réalisateur Michel Hermant, producteur Maurice Dumay, présentateur Patrice Blanc-Francard. The interviewer for the band-and-Chapman backstage segments is Philippe Constantin, the music journalist — the interview was conducted in English and dubbed for French broadcast (the INA notice marks it trad off). One Chapman quote logged in the notice: his stated admiration for Ray Charles as a foundational influence. The remainder of the episode runs ~30 minutes of Frank Zappa / Mothers of Invention at the Gaumont Palace 15 December 1970, with George Duke on organ and Jean-Luc Ponty arriving on the third piece. Framing device: Blanc-Francard introduces from a Paris bridge in baba-cool style, with a péniche at a lock and a comic-book bonjour c'est pop deux speech-bubble.
Horta's 1928 art-deco Grande Salle Henry Le Bœuf, ~2,200 seats — Belgium's Paris-Olympia. Not listed in Bozar's own season archive, which suggests a Belgian rock-promoter sub-lease (Make It Rock / Johan Vanden Eede was operating that model in 1971). The April 1971 BRT/RTB Pop Shop TV special was almost certainly filmed off this same Belgian visit.
Le Peuple, 6 January 1971 — Palais des Beaux-Arts (Bozar) advert: 'Dans le cadre du Festival POP au Palais des Beaux-Arts — LE GROUPE « FAMILY » — Le dimanche 17 janvier à 20h30.'
February 197113 events
5
Friday
Mayfair Ballroom
Newgate Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear, England
+ Dada
Support: Dada. Mecca's 1961 oblong-floored 2,000-capacity Tyneside ballroom with its infamous revolving stage. Dada — the Elkie Brooks / Robert Palmer 12-piece pre-Vinegar Joe band on Atco — were touring the UK behind their self-titled LP; they'd split by summer, with Brooks and Palmer forming Vinegar Joe immediately after.
Backing-tape session reproduced on the surviving tape box (photographed in Pete Feenstra's "Once Upon A Time" book, p.93). Tracklist logged on the label: Song For Lots, Good Friend Of Mine (crossed out), Sat'day Morning (aka "Title For Trouble"), Today, Holding The Compass, Strange Band — a mix of Old Songs New Songs reworked material, Strange Band EP content, and one working-title song that doesn't appear in the finished catalogue. Engineer credits not fully legible.
12
Friday
De Doelen
Kruisstraat 2, Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands
Kraaijvanger's 1966 Grote Zaal (~2,200) plus 600-seat recital hall. Berry Visser's Mojo Concerts had booked Family on a three-night Dutch sweep — Rotterdam (12), Amsterdam Concertgebouw (13), Groningen Harmonie (14). Only Rotterdam ran: Poli Palmer's custom-built vibraphone broke in transit and he refused a stock replacement. Visser took the Concertgebouw stage the next night to apologise. Estimated loss on the cancelled two dates: 8,000 guilders. Chapman's account of the broken vibes and the band's early return to England is preserved in the Jerry Gilbert Sounds interview of 27 February 1971 — the following day's cancelled Concertgebouw entry preserves the quoted passage.
13
Saturday
ConcertgebouwCancelled
Van Baerlestraat 98, Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Van Gendt's 1888 neoclassical 2,040-seat home of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra — emphatically not a rock-circuit hall, which made the booking significant in the first place and the cancellation headline-level news. Het Parool and de Volkskrant carried it. Cancellation came ~24 hours before curtain.
Chapman to Jerry Gilbert in Sounds (27 February 1971) explained the Dutch-weekend retreat: "We've been doing tours of France, Belgium, Germany and then Holland last weekend, although we had to come back early because the vibes broke down. We tried to fix them for the Saturday gig but couldn't, and they wouldn't believe that we wouldn't go on and blow. It was a shame because there were some really nice audiences, but at the same time I'm glad that we did come back." The Saturday of the Dutch weekend lines up with this Concertgebouw date; per Chapman the band "will be returning to fulfil that gig in due course." (See Press Archive: Roger Chapman — finally Family come together.)
14
Sunday
De HarmonieCancelled
Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat 26, Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
1856 society building running as a 1,200-cap rock-and-student room on Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat. Nieuwsblad van het Noorden had advertised the date as 13 Feb; actual booking was Sunday 14 Feb. Cancelled alongside Amsterdam (see 12 Feb).
Tour context — Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 27 February 1971: Chapman told Gilbert the Dutch weekend (12–14 February) ran into a breakdown of the vibes during the run — "We tried to fix them for the Saturday gig but couldn't" at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw on 13 February. The band returned to England early and the Saturday gig went unplayed. (See Press Archive: Roger Chapman — finally Family come together.)
16
Tuesday
Caird Hall
City Square, Dundee, Angus, Scotland
Thomson's 1923 neoclassical 2,280-seat city-concert hall on City Square. Band chronologies typically print "18 Feb"; the Caird Hall gig-log gives 16 Feb, which fits a Tuesday stop between the Newcastle Mayfair (Fri 5 Feb) and Green's Playhouse (Fri 19 Feb).
19
Friday
Green's Playhouse
126 Renfield Street, Glasgow, Scotland
Green & Son's 1927 super-cinema on Renfield Street — 4,368-seat main auditorium, Europe's largest cinema on opening and one of the two or three biggest hard-rock rooms in the UK at this date. Last bill as a cinema ran June 1973; reopened as the Apollo under Frank Lynch 5 September 1973.
20
Saturday
Empire Theatre
13–29 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland
Milburn Brothers' 1928 rebuild of Matcham's 1892 Empire Palace (lost to the 1911 Lafayette fire), ~2,900 seats on Nicolson Street. Scottish-leg closer. Audience tape (Part of the Load · Drowned in Wine · The Weaver's Answer · Wheels · Strange Band) is from this night.
22
Monday
Music Hall
Union Street, Aberdeen, Scotland
Simpson's 1820 neoclassical 1,200-seat civic concert room on Union Street. Northern routing stop on the Scottish-led package.
24
Wednesday
Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
Hope Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Rowse's 1939 streamline-moderne rebuild of the 1849 original on Hope Street, ~1,700 seats, home of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Rock bookings at the Phil were Roy Adams's — the mid-size Liverpool date between the 3,500-seat Stadium and the Cavern. Family return 5 November on the Fearless tour.
TV Broadcast
Saturday · 27 February 1971
Pop Hot — Opération Underground Music 666 (TSR, Suisse Romande)
Télévision Suisse Romande's Pop Hot broadcast footage from the 8–10 January 1970 Paris Underground Music Festival, also billed Opération Underground Music 666. This is a 1971 transmission of material filmed thirteen months earlier, not a new Family performance.
"No matter what anyone might think, it's the first time we've really been a full band together. We know each other's music now and we can do things more naturally without thinking about them."— Roger Chapman to Jerry Gilbert, *Sounds*, 27 February 1971 — on the Mk III lineup 18 months after Poli Palmer joined
Tengbom's 1926 blue-neoclassical Stora Salen (~1,780 seats) on Hötorget 8, home of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the annual Nobel ceremony. The Konserthuset archive confirms the booking at 8 p.m. but marks "Program saknas" — programme missing. The archive entry does not supply a programme or running order.
Contemporary confirmation. DN’s 20 February preview explicitly announces 2 March, and its 27 February listing advertises 20:00. Henrik Salander’s next-day review, “Glimtar av Family”, confirms the performance in a roughly two-thirds-full hall. His assessment is mixed: he acknowledges good music but finds stretches dull and below the band’s best. He singles out John Weider and Poli Palmer’s violin/flute interplay and Palmer’s flute on Drowned in Wine. The article includes a Roger Chapman photograph. These sources establish one named song and an unnamed duet, not a complete setlist.
The 1936-built multi-purpose round hall on Sortebrødre Torv (Blackfriars Square) in central Odense — Funen's principal indoor sports / exhibition venue, with a side-trade in big-room pop and rock from the late 1960s onwards. Hosted The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Yardbirds and Cliff Richard before its rock-circuit run; Louis Armstrong before that. Led Zeppelin would follow Family in here on 4 May 1971, eight weeks after this booking. The hall stood until 1978, when it was demolished. No Family-specific Danish-press review of the Odense gig has yet surfaced.
Ole Hagen's 1958–59 Modernist complex on Falkoner Allé. The Falkoner Teatret room (later renamed Falkonersalen) ran ~2,000 proscenium seats — Copenhagen's main mid-size rock-touring room of the early 1970s. Yes had played the same room six weeks earlier (25 January 1971); Black Sabbath followed six weeks later (18 April 1971); Pink Floyd took the stage twice in autumn (23 and 25 September 1971). The complex was substantially re-clad in 1987 and the original 1971 interior was further reconfigured under the subsequent Scandic / Radisson Falkoner hotel-conference conversion, so the room Family played no longer exists in its 1971 form.
10
Wednesday
Stakladen, Aarhus University
Nordre Ringgade 3, Aarhus, Denmark
C. F. Møller's 1964 "Stack-Barn" cafeteria-and-concert-hall at the heart of Aarhus University's Studenternes Hus — the primary Jutland student-rock venue of the decade, capacity ~800. The room's distinctive high wooden trusses ("the stack") allowed audience members to climb up for sightlines, a practice already established by 1971: Aarhuus Stiftstidende's review of this Family concert reports that "a large part of the 800 present had placed themselves on the beams". A Family / Roger Chapman on-stage photograph is preserved in the Aarhus University history archive (auhist.au.dk), captioned to this date.
Radio Session
Tuesday · 16 March 1971
BBC Maida Vale Studios (Studio 4)
Delaware Road, London W9, England
Four-song session for BBC Radio 1's Sounds of the Seventies, produced by John Walters and John Muir and presented by Bob Harris — Strange Band, Hometown, Processions/No Mule's Fool, Part Of The Load, Lives And Ladies. Recorded at BBC Maida Vale Studio 4 (Delaware Road, W9), the Radio 1 rock-session studio through the early 1970s and home of the Peel / Harris / Top Gear session tradition. First broadcast on Radio 1 later in the month. The Programme As Broadcast log and Ken Garner's In Session Tonight both place the session at Maida Vale 4 — not at 201 Piccadilly (a separate BBC premises, demolished 1998) and not at Television Centre, Shepherd's Bush (BBC-1 / BBC-2 TV production only).
+ Curved Air, Osibisa, Wild Wally's Rock & Roll Show
Support: Curved Air, Osibisa, Wild Wally's Rock & Roll Show. Vincent Harris's 1957 ~1,500-seat campus hall on Stocker Road, home of the Rag Ball. Curved Air had Second Album (Warner Bros.) six months old; Osibisa's self-titled MCA debut was out the previous month. Wild Wally's was a pre-rock revue / DJ double-act that filed onto the bigger campus packages. Advertised 8 p.m., £1 advance / £1.10 on the door.
20
Saturday
Stockport Technical College
Davenport, Stockport, Cheshire, England
Wellington Road South. The SRC-booked 20 Mar audience recording (Part of the Load · Drowned in Wine · Wheels · Holding the Compass · Good News – Bad News · A Song for Me) is one of the best-surviving Mk IV live documents.
Support: Soft Machine, Yes, Man. Poelzig & Ermisch's 1935 9,000-capacity Messe arena, by 1971 the largest indoor venue in West Berlin. Packaged by Fritz Rau and Horst Lippmann (Lippmann+Rau, West Germany's biggest rock promoter of the period). Family footage apparently drawn from this performance survives in the 16 April 1971 SFB Studio III broadcast. Steven Reisler's review in the 2 April Berlin Observer — the US-military base newspaper — is a rare English-language morning-after. Demolished 2011.
“The lights dimmed once again and 'Family' appeared, bringing with it Anacin headache number 23. Improperly employing the electric xylophone, 'Family' sounded disjointed, disoriented and uniformly bad. The group must not have been familiar with the discerning nature of Berlin audiences, for their screech owl vocals were incessantly hooted and whistled.”
— Steven Reisler, Berlin Observer, 2 April 1971
TV Broadcast
Tuesday · 30 March 1971
UFA-Dabei (West German cinema newsreel)
Family captured on the West German cinema-newsreel UFA-Dabei in the 'Daughter Of The Fireplace' segment. Mk IV / Weider line-up. The footage survives in an offline private archive.
First documented broadcast of the 24-minute Family special made as an ORTF–RTB coproduction and shown in Belgium as Pop Shop. Adrian Maben directed and Michèle Arnaud produced for ORTF.
The same master was broadcast in France as Stop Pop on 24 April 1971 and repeated by RTB on 11 July 1971 and 6 April 1972. INA holds the programme as notice CPF09005525.
This is a modest, honest record — alive, without excess. Roger Chapman literally erupts every phrase, one after another. Family is a group that has found its direction — their sincerity contrasts with the more polished poses of contemporaries like Free and Cat Stevens.— J.–L. L., Feuille d'Avis de Lausanne (Sono column), 3–4 April 1971 — reviewing Anyway
3
Saturday
The Village (Roundhouse)
Lodge Avenue, Dagenham, Essex, England
Return Saturday, four months after the 2 January opener. Venue history in the 2 January entry.
5
Monday
Civic Hall
Queensway, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England
1966 council-built 1,500-capacity multi-purpose hall on Queensway, run by local promoter Ron Smith's "Roundabout" operation. Led Zeppelin had played it 23 June 1969 (their lowest-billed post-Yardbirds gig); the Ziggy-era Bowie Spiders and Genesis would both pass through in 1972. Monday-night routing between the Dagenham Saturday and the Italian week.
The footage is held in the German television archives. Although the archive identification points to the Deutschlandhalle concert, the surviving excerpt itself does not establish the filming location or whether the complete set was recorded or remains in the archive.
Afternoon and evening double-header. Brasini & Fasolo's 1916 neo-Gothic ~1,500-seat Esquiline theatre at Via Merulana 244, the Roman rock room of choice 1969–c.1975, promoted in Italy by Ciao 2001 and the Piper Club. Double-header was standard for 1971 Rome rock shows — tickets 1,000–3,000 lire, two full sets with a student matinée. The 17 April audience recording (Part of the Load · Drowned in Wine · Good News Bad News · Processions/No Mule's Fool · The Weaver's Answer · A Song for Me · Strange Band) is the key live document of the Italian run.
1961 ellipsoidal 5,000-capacity indoor arena on Piazza Stuparich, mostly basketball and boxing — the principal large-cap Milan rock room of the early 1970s. Three-tier pricing (1,000 lire galleria / 2,000 gradinata / 3,000 platea) drew complaints in the Milan dailies. Closed 2018 for refurbishment, reopened as the Allianz Cloud 2019.
“They were fantastic. We live for live music, we can not do without. We need continuous contact with our audience. It is he who inspires our music.”
— Roger Chapman, Milan, 18 April 1971
23
Friday
Trent Polytechnic
Shakespeare Street, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England
1843 Arkwright Building on Shakespeare Street — rock bookings from 1970 onward were SRC events in the Byron Lecture Theatre or the Newton / Arkwright halls.
TV Broadcast
Saturday · 24 April 1971
Stop Pop
French broadcast of the 24-minute Family special first shown by Belgian RTB as Pop Shop on 1 April 1971. INA notice CPF09005525 records the ORTF–RTB coproduction at 24:00, broadcast on the second channel at 18:20:30. Adrian Maben directed and Michèle Arnaud produced for ORTF.
The programme was later repeated by RTB on 11 July 1971 and 6 April 1972. It has been digitised by INA and was officially issued in edited form on Family — Masters from the Vaults in 2003.
160 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Family's first appearance in the Mountford Hall, the main concert room of the Liverpool Guild of Students — the largest stage of the Guild building, opened in 1966 as a third-phase extension to Charles Herbert Reilly's 1911 students' union. The room had quickly become Liverpool's pre-eminent university rock booking, and Family's date sits at the head of a remarkable spring run there: The Byrds (8 May), Led Zeppelin (10 May) and The Who (14 May) all followed within a fortnight.
May 19715 events
1
Saturday
'Camden Festival '71', Roundhouse
100 Chalk Farm Road, Chalk Farm, London NW1, England
+ Sam Apple Pie, America
Family headlined the closing night of NEMS / Peter Bowyer's Camden Festival '71, the seven-night run at the Roundhouse (25 April – 1 May) that had also featured Deep Purple, Faces, Yes, East of Eden and the Bonzo Dog Band, alongside screenings of Monterey Pop, Let It Be and the Clapton / Led Zeppelin Supershow. America — then still the London-based US air-force trio they had been since the late '60s, six months out from the UK release of A Horse With No Name on 12 November 1971 — opened. Sam Apple Pie were a year past Dave Charles's departure and Malcolm Morley's defection to Help Yourself, working without a current LP cycle.
9
Sunday
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, England
+ Roy Harper, Third Ear Band
Family at Wivenhoe Park, Kenneth Capon and Architects Co-Partnership's Brutalist campus then six years into its phased construction — the gig in the Lecture Theatre Block, the 1965 Capon teaching building that did duty as the Students' Union concert space (Pink Floyd had played the same room on 12 February). Roy Harper's Stormcock (Harvest) was that month's release; Third Ear Band, also on Harvest, were a year off Music from Macbeth. The two-Harvest-acts-plus-headliner package points to an EMI-adjacent agency assembling the bill.
28
Friday
Musikhalle Kleiner Saal
Johannes-Brahms-Platz, Hamburg, West Germany
Haller and Meerwein's 1908 Musikhalle (renamed Laeiszhalle 2005) — the 640-seat Kleiner Saal, an indoor seated warm-up ahead of the weekend's two Rhine and Harz open-airs.
29
Saturday
'Open Air Monster Concert 1971', Rheininsel
Speyer, West Germany
+ Brian Auger's Oblivion Express, Kraftwerk, For Ever More
Family headlined the inaugural rock open-air on the wooded Rhine peninsula, four months before Marek Lieberberg and Marcel Avram would return to the same site for the 1st British Rock Meeting on 4–5 September. Around 3,000 attended (advance tickets 6 DM, 9 DM on the door) for an eight-hour bill running 16:00–24:00. Kraftwerk played in their fleeting Florian Schneider / Michael Rother / Klaus Dinger trio configuration — Hütter had stepped out to finish his architecture degree, and Rother and Dinger would secede in July to form Neu!. T. Rex had been on the original poster but did not appear. The set included Part of the Load (Anyway, 1970). Weider's last German appearance with Family; he would leave the band in June.
"Family-Sänger Roger Chapman sei für sie das Highlight bei diesem Festival gewesen." — Reinhard Burck, Die Rheinpfalz, 17 March 2017.
30
Sunday
'Freedom Progressive Electronic Rock Festival', Kalkrösecke
Werner "Wenne" Liebig's three-day Pentecost open-air at the Kalkrösecke meadow on the northern edge of the Harz, the second annual rock festival run by the Beat Club Langelsheim proprietor and the largest to that point in southern Lower Saxony, drew an estimated 30,000 across the weekend (29–31 May). Family's Sunday-night set shared the bill with a first-wave Krautrock inventory (Can, Frumpy, Eloy, Murphy Blend, Mythos) and a heavy-British contingent (Status Quo, Steamhammer, the Faces, Ashton Gardner & Dyke). Berlin's Mythos had opened the whole festival at 18:00 Friday; Colosseum and Eloy followed on Monday. Speyer → Langelsheim back-to-back is roughly 540 km, requiring an overnight convoy.
June 19713 events
5
Saturday
Watford College of Technology
Hempstead Road, Watford, Hertfordshire, England
+ Tea And Symphony, Good Habit
Saturday-night SU booking at the Hempstead Road campus, the further-education college whose dances drew London-adjacent acts. Tea and Symphony — the Birmingham progressive-folk trio (Bob Daw, James Langston, Nigel Phillips) on Jim Simpson's Big Bear Management roster alongside Black Sabbath, Bakerloo and Locomotive — were touring behind the seven-month-old Jo Sago (Harvest, November 1970), Tony Cox's conceptual second album. Cox had produced Family's own Anyway the year before — an in-circle producer reuse.
13
Sunday
Festival International de Jazz, Montreux Casino
Montreux, Switzerland
+ Tony Williams' Lifetime
Sunday-night slot at Claude Nobs's 5th Montreux Jazz Festival (11–20 June) at the original lakeshore Casino de Montreux — the 19th-century building that had less than six months left: a flare gun at Frank Zappa's 4 December concert was about to send it up in smoke and immortalise the moment in Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water. The night after Aretha Franklin's celebrated 12 June Casino set.
Family followed Tony Williams' Lifetime, then in its 1971 sextet configuration — Tony Williams (drums), Larry Young / Khalid Yasin (organ), Ted Dunbar (guitar), Juini Booth (bass), Warren Smith and Don Alias (percussion). McLaughlin had left the Lifetime between Turn It Over (1970) and Ego (1971); Bruce, who'd played on Turn It Over, was not in the touring band.
The RTS / TSR Suisse-romande cameras filmed the Family set; at least Holding the Compass and A Song for Me were broadcast on Pop Hot on 11 December 1971 and 19 February 1972. The surviving RTS master is one of the more important Mk IV documents.
"Another standing ovation on June 13 for Britain's Family with Roger Chapman freaking so extravagantly that at one time he got his mike lead entangled with the overhead TV lights … Despite some opening trouble with the sound system, Family really took the audience by storm during their 80-minute act and had them clapping in time right from the beginning. A long version of 'A Song for Me' tore the place apart and had Chapman scat-singing in a wild duel with the microphone. 'Beggar's Answer' was offered as an encore and 'Family' went off to a tumultuous applause." — Mike Hennessey, Billboard, 26 June 1971. Hennessey was less moved by the Lifetime support: "The British group had followed a highly abstract and percussive 70-minute set by the Tony Williams Lifetime … Despite the complexity and sometimes painful repetitiveness of the music, the audience gave the band a highly enthusiastic reception."
A French-language Suisse-romande review (signed F.A.B.) reversed the angle — bemoaning that one of the great late-60s jazz-rock fusion outfits was now warming up a rock band — but agreed the Montreux audience was firmly on Family's side.
Set fragments preserved: A Song for Me (long version, scat duel with the microphone), Beggar's Answer (encore), Family (closer).
21
Monday
'Glastonbury Fayre', Worthy Farm
Pilton, Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England
+ Fairport Convention, Traffic, David Bowie, Hawkwind, Quintessence, Melanie, Gong, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come
Summer-solstice free festival convened by Andrew Kerr and Arabella Churchill at Michael Eavis's Worthy Farm, 20–24 June — the first Glastonbury with Bill Harkin's pyramid stage, a one-tenth replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza built from Kwikstage scaffolding, 300 sheets of expanded metal and plastic sheeting, sited over a blind spring close to the Glastonbury Abbey / Stonehenge ley line. Attendance ~12,000; admission free.
Nicolas Roeg and Peter Neal filmed the festival for David Puttnam's 1972 Glastonbury Fayre cinema release; Family's Drowned in Wine — Weider's violin, Palmer's keyboards — is the band's contribution to the film. (David Bowie played at dawn, but his management refused permission for film footage; he survives only on the soundtrack.)
Weider's last festival appearance with Family. He was in Stud within weeks; John Wetton was announced as his replacement in Melody Maker on 10 July 1971.
"I just wanted to play more guitar really, and Stud was the right vehicle for me to do so." — John Weider.
Family (and Al Kooper) both ruled out playing the Royal Albert Hall for their autumn 1971 British tours. The hall charged £1,000 hire, cut the power for over-runs, and had — in the band's view — poor sound; Family had even offered to pre-pay the £60 per half-hour over-run fee. Chapman's published statement in Disc (3 July 1971) said the band would prefer the Royal Festival Hall or Queen Elizabeth Hall where "the atmosphere is better." The autumn tour kicked off at De Montfort Hall Leicester on 1 November — the same evening 'In My Own Time' appeared on Top of the Pops.
The grievance dated back to a 1969 charity gig for Shelter when the hall had pulled the plug mid-set. Chapman to Jerry Gilbert in Sounds (27 February 1971) had already been "adamant that the group will never play that venue again, and spoke at length (with frequent use of four-letter expletives) of the trials and tribulations of that particular gig" — the same piece flagging Family as one-time "bad boys of rock" after the Albert Hall fiasco. Whitney, asked by Gilbert ten months later (Sounds 'Talk-In', 15 January 1972) whether the band had actually been banned: "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. I doubt whether we'll play there again but it's a pity because… did you see the Band? The sound was amazing."
“People don't get their money's worth when they go to see a rock group there. Besides being really bad for sound, they charge groups £1,000 to hire the place and then turn the power off on you. We've even offered to pay the £60 for every half-hour we go over time in advance and they've still pulled the switch. We'd much rather play the Festival Hall or the Queen Elizabeth where the atmosphere is better.”
— Roger Chapman, Disc, 3 July 1971
TV Broadcast
Thursday · 1 July 1971
Top of the Pops (BBC-1)
White City, West London, England
Weider's last TV with Family. Pre-recorded plug for In My Own Time one day ahead of UK release; the same tape repeated on the 22 July edition when the single had climbed to No. 30. By the 22 July airing Weider was out.
For their 19th BBC session, Family visited Studio 1 in Shepherd's Bush to record for Sounds of the Seventies. The taping occurred during a transitional phase between bassists, showcasing a unique four-piece lineup. They recorded four songs, including both sides of their new hit single, 'In My Own Time' and 'Seasons', alongside the tracks 'Burning Bridges' and 'Save Some For Thee'. The session was first broadcast on 17 July 1971, and was later repeated on BBC 6 Music's Live Hour on 13 June 2013. The complete recording survives and is available on BBC Radio Volume 2 – 1971–73.
People don't get their money's worth when they go to see a rock group there. Besides being really bad for sound, they charge groups £1,000 to hire the place and then turn the power off on you. We've even offered to pay the £60 for every half-hour we go over time in advance — and they've still pulled the switch. We'd much rather play the Festival Hall or the Queen Elizabeth, where the atmosphere is better.— Roger Chapman on Family's self-imposed Royal Albert Hall ban, Disc & Music Echo, July 1971
TV Broadcast
Sunday · 11 July 1971
Pop Shop (BRT/RTB) — second reissue
Brussels, Belgium
RTB repeat of the 24-minute Family special first shown as Pop Shop on 1 April 1971 and in France as Stop Pop on 24 April. The Pop Shop chronicle at memoire60-70.be identifies this transmission as a second showing. A further RTB repeat followed on 6 April 1972.
Stereo copy tape prepared for Warner (US label) at 15 IPS, engineers George Chkiantz and Anton. Tracklist: 1. Song For Lots 2. Today ("wrong version" noted on label) 3. Hung Up Down 4. Weaver's Answer 5. Hometown 6. Good Friend Of Mine. Tape box reproduced in Feenstra's box-set book (p.93) — appears to be the master copy compiled for Warner's US release of Old Songs New Songs.
Coach crash near Watford Gap. Family were en route to attend — not to play — the Lincoln Folk Festival at Tupholme Manor Park (23–25 July 1971). Ex-bassist John Weider was on the Lincoln bill; Family had travelled up to catch his new band's set. Road manager Harvey Baker was hospitalised in the crash. The band made it to Southend the same evening for the Roots Hall show (see 24 July) — John Wetton's debut with Family.
Support: Colosseum, Fairport Convention, Uriah Heep, Atomic Rooster. Presumed the last gig with Weider — the "Kinetic Sound Festival" at Southend United's football ground on Victoria Avenue (2,400 all-seater Roots Hall, 1971 capacity ~10,000 with terraces). One of the strongest one-day UK rock festivals of 1971. The band arrived late: Family had driven up from attending the Lincoln Folk Festival and road manager Harvey Baker had been hospitalised in a coach crash near Watford Gap earlier that same day.
FAMILY Mk V
Saturday · 24 July 1971
The lineup changes
Roger Chapman — vocals, percussion
John 'Charlie' Whitney — guitars
Rob Townsend — drums, percussion
Poli Palmer — flute, piano, vibes, synthesizers
John Wetton — bass, vocals, guitar, piano, violin
John Weider left the band, returning from the US and later joining Stud (formed by ex-Taste members). John Wetton — session musician for the previous few months — replaced him on bass, adding vocal harmonies and keyboards. First Mk V gig: Roots Hall Stadium, Southend-on-Sea (24 July 1971).
Whitney and Chapman on the reset — to Roy Hollingworth in Melody Maker (c. 30 October 1971): Whitney framed the pre-Wetton Family as "moving, but stagnating," and admitted — with Hollingworth — that one reason for the stagnation was that the band "had been relying on [Weider] too much." Chapman on the knock-on realisation once Weider left: "Things like that can become invisible — until the crunch, when it all becomes so obvious. Before you know it even a fairly good album becomes dull." The Wetton arrival changed the equation inside a week — audition at Olympic on the Friday, recording Fearless with the band on the Monday. A student-magazine warning to social secretaries at the time had even tagged Family as a "liability" and a £1,000-per-night loss-risk; Whitney and Chapman took the description on the chin.
Fan Club announcement — Lee Whiting's Family Fan Club newsletter (Sep/Oct 1971) officially announced Wetton's arrival: "Family now have a new bass guitarist. He's called John Wetton, is 22 and came to the group from America where he was doing session work. He plays bass and acoustic guitar, piano and also sings." Notable biographical detail — Wetton had been working US studio sessions in the months before the Family call, a fact less well-documented in the later prog-rock press that focused on his post-Family King Crimson trajectory. (See Press Archive: Family Fan Club Newsletter — September/October 1971.)
UK press confirmation — a weekly UK 'POP SNIPPETS' column (c. late July / early August 1971) carried the announcement: "Family this week signed their replacement for John Weider — Derbyshire-born John Wetton, 22, who will play bass guitar, piano and share vocals." This is the earliest documented UK newspaper confirmation of the Wetton signing, landing the same week Dutch press was already reporting confusion about Family's upcoming Jazz Bilzen appearance on 20 August.
“John Wetton joined us after about three weeks in the studio and started overdubbing his stuff. It was really excellent because he was very objective about what we'd done so far. He turned things upside-down and was a very inventive player.”
— Roger Chapman, Art Into Dust interview (Jay Strange)
August 19715 events
When I'm on stage and singing, I live out all the frustrations of everyday life. Off stage I'm a completely different person. I think I was quite a loser back then... I just started with blues and rhythm and it became everything for me. I'm no fortune-teller. Everyone has their wishes and ideas, and maybe one day each of us will go our own way. But for now, Family stays as it is, and I hope we can carry on just like before.— Roger Chapman, Popfoto (Germany), August 1971 — 'Roger Chapman: Treibende Kraft der Family'
BBC Television Centre, White City, London, England
John Wetton's first known television appearance with Family. The band performed In My Own Time, listed at No. 11 on the programme's chart. The familiar double-neck-guitar staging was now performed by Charlie Whitney and John Wetton.
A further Top of the Pops appearance followed on 26 August, when the record was at No. 5. Neither broadcast is currently known to survive; still photographs remain.
+ Banzaï, Spoon, Arkham, Tomahawk Blues Band, Supersister, Dave Kelly, Colosseum
Support: Colosseum, Supersister, Dave Kelly, Tomahawk Blues Band, Arkham, Spoon, Banzaï. Jaak Vrancken's Bilzen festival — founded 1965 jazz, broadened through the late '60s to rock-and-folk — ran Fri–Sat–Sun on the Tabaart fairground outside the Limburg town with ~15,000 overall. Family opened Friday 20 August — Wetton's first full festival appearance, described in contemporary and later accounts as a "shaky debut." Tribune de Lausanne / Le Matin (5 September 1971) nevertheless reported that Family "ont confirmé leur maîtrise musicale." Studio work on Fearless was already well advanced by this point, with Wetton overdubbing bass onto tracks cut at the 2 July Top Gear transitional session.
Dutch press preview (c. August 1971) — 'Pop en jazz gescheiden' (Pop and jazz separated): A Dutch-language preview in a Belgian or Dutch newspaper announced the 20–22 August festival and flagged Family's appearance as uncertain: "Family is also on the programme for Bilzen, but whether the English group will actually come is still the question. The group has been cancelling concerts lately, because their organist/pianist/vibraphonist 'John Whitney' had had enough of travelling and left Family. And no good replacement has been found." The journalist got the name wrong — 'John Whitney' was the guitarist and still in the band; the person matching that description (organ/piano/vibes) was John Weider, who had departed in late July 1971. The article therefore captures real contemporaneous uncertainty about whether the new Mk V line-up with Wetton (signed that same week per the UK press) would make the Belgian booking. The preview also outlined the new festival policy: moved off the old site to a 4-hectare countryside location after a fire-station build, quality-over-quantity programming (5–8 acts per day down from 10), and nightly Louis Armstrong tributes (Armstrong had died 6 July 1971). Full pop bill alongside Family: Elton John, Chicken Shack, Faces (with Rod Stewart), Jimmy Heath; jazz weekend featured Gato Barbieri, Peter Brötzmann, Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin and Jack Bruce bridging both programmes.
De Standaard, 23 August 1971 — Jazz-Bilzen Festival post-event report.
28
Saturday
'Festival Of A Thousand Heads', Southcroft ParkCancelled
Glasgow Road, Rutherglen, Lanarkshire, Scotland
Planned as a 12-hour marathon with Thin Lizzy, Van der Graaf Generator, Caravan, The Pretty Things, Roy Harper. Lanark County magistrates pulled the licence in early August on anticipated-nuisance grounds.
'Sensational British Superstar Festival', Wiener Stadthalle – Halle D
Vogelweidplatz 14, Vienna, Austria
+ Ashton Gardner & Dyke, Deep Purple, Faces, Fairport Convention, Juicy Lucy, Mick Abrahams Band, Osibisa, Rory Gallagher, The Groundhogs, Jerusalem, Hardin & York
Support: Deep Purple, Faces, Fairport Convention, Juicy Lucy, Ashton Gardner & Dyke, Rory Gallagher, The Groundhogs, Mick Abrahams Band, Osibisa, Jerusalem, Hardin & York. Roland Rainer's 1958 Vienna indoor arena; Halle D was the 2,000-capacity auditorium used for touring rock. Packaged by Marcel Avram and Marek Lieberberg's Frankfurt MAMA Concerts (founded 1970) as the Vienna leg of a twin-city weekender with Speyer. The ~55-minute Family audience tape (In My Own Time · Part of the Load · Drowned in Wine · The Weaver's Answer · Holding the Compass · Good News – Bad News · A Song for Me) is the best-surviving early-Wetton live document.
'1st British Rock Meeting Festival', Rheinhalbinsel
Speyer, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany
+ Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Rod Stewart & The Faces, Fleetwood Mac, Rory Gallagher, Beggars Opera, East of Eden
Support: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Rod Stewart & The Faces, Fleetwood Mac, Rory Gallagher, Beggars Opera, East of Eden. Sunday half of the MAMA weekender — same Rhine-island site as the 29 May forerunner. ~25,000 fans at a 20 DM ticket (city had licensed 10,000). Inadequate toilets and traffic chaos did not prevent the police reporting a "disciplined crowd" in the wash-up. Avram and Lieberberg's first big Woodstock / Isle-of-Wight imitation, and the template for the Nürnberg 1972 British Rock Meeting that would draw 150,000+.
Planned Iceland date — unconfirmed. Lee Whiting's Family Fan Club newsletter (Sep/Oct 1971) listed "12th Iceland" in the September itinerary alongside Vienna / Heidelberg / Hamburg / Bremen / Hanover / Torquay / Plymouth dates. No venue specified, and no UK music-press corroboration of a Family Iceland date in September 1971 has surfaced — likely a Whiting-newsletter typo for Ireland, though the period's documented Irish dates centre on the RTÉ studios and the Arcadia Ballroom Bray rather than mid-September. (See Press Archive: Family Fan Club Newsletter — September/October 1971.)
13
Monday
Royal Festival Hall
Belvedere Road, London SE1, England
Matthew / Martin's 1951 Festival of Britain concert hall on the South Bank, 2,704 seats. With the Royal Albert Hall ban in force, the RFH was the London high-prestige choice of 1971 — essentially Family's flagship London show before the October Fearless release, two years on from the 15 September 1969 RFH appearance.
16
Thursday
Bremen (venue TBC)
Bremen, Germany
Per Fan Club itinerary — per Lee Whiting's Family Fan Club Newsletter (Sep/Oct 1971): "Bremen" listed in the September continental itinerary between Vienna (4 Sep), Heidelberg (5 Sep), Hamburg TV (15 Sep), Hamburg concert (18 Sep), with Torquay (24 Sep) following. Venue not specified in the newsletter. Recovery candidate from regional German music press listings for the week. (See Press Archive: Family Fan Club Newsletter — September/October 1971.)
18
Saturday
British–German Pop Meeting, Ernst-Merck-Halle
Jungiusstraße 13, Hamburg, West Germany
+ East of Eden, Stud, Medicine Head, A.R. & Machines
Support: East of Eden, Stud, Medicine Head, A.R. & Machines. The 1957 7,000-capacity Ernst-Merck-Halle on Jungiusstraße — Hamburg's Deutschlandhalle equivalent. Gunther Kieser's poster for the one-day "British-German Pop Meeting" — bold typography, photographic collage — is an iconic period piece. Stud — Weider's new band — were on the bill with Family, the first shared-bill event since the Mk IV / Mk V split. A circulating audience tape documents the Family set: In My Own Time · Part of the Load · Drowned in Wine · Holding the Compass · Good News – Bad News.
Melody Maker's annual Pop Poll, published 18 September 1971, placed Roger Chapman 3rd in the British male singers category — Family's highest individual recognition from the UK music press to date. The poll appeared just a week before the band's 13 September Royal Festival Hall date and the October release of Fearless.
19
Sunday
Hanover (venue TBC)
Hanover, Germany
Per Fan Club itinerary — per Lee Whiting's Family Fan Club Newsletter (Sep/Oct 1971): "Hanover" listed in the September continental itinerary between Vienna (4 Sep), Heidelberg (5 Sep), Hamburg TV (15 Sep), Hamburg concert (18 Sep), with Torquay (24 Sep) following. Venue not specified in the newsletter. Recovery candidate from regional German music press listings for the week. (See Press Archive: Family Fan Club Newsletter — September/October 1971.)
24
Friday
Torquay Town Hall
Castle Circus, Torquay, Devon, England
1912 civic hall on Castle Circus, ~1,000 seats, booked under the London Marquee Organisation's out-of-town nights (same arrangement as 14 August 1970's "Marquee Club at Torquay Town Hall").
TV Broadcast
Saturday · 25 September 1971
Beat-Club (Radio Bremen)
Bremen, West Germany
Family appeared in Beat-Club episode 71, broadcast by Radio Bremen on 25 September 1971, performing Holding the Compass. The programme survives in the Radio Bremen archive.
A performance of Part of the Load was also recorded during the session but was not included in the original broadcast; it has subsequently appeared in Beat-Club archive listings and releases.
Support: Curtiss Maldoon. Trevor Hill's converted former Grand Hotel at Exmouth Road, Devonport, ~400 capacity — the West Country's most adventurously booked rock club (Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Free, Genesis, Yes, Tull, Mott). Curtiss Maldoon — the Robert Plant-adjacent acoustic duo on Regal Zonophone — were filling a support spot two months after their US tour with Led Zeppelin.
Family are among the young English representatives of pop music occupying a very special place. Their spirit of fraternity rather than the family in the literal sense situates the band at the crossroads between rock and jazz — alongside Tony Williams' Lifetime and Larry Coryell.— Radio-TV / Je vois tout (Switzerland), 30 September 1971 — Montreux Jazz Festival feature
October 19716 events
TV Broadcast
Friday · 8 October 1971
Hits à Go-Go (SRG/DRS)
Family performed In My Own Time on the Swiss German-language programme Hits à Go-Go, broadcast from Hamburg on 8 October 1971. The surviving footage shows the band without Rob Townsend and with an unidentified drummer.
The clip survives in the SRG/DRS archive and was rebroadcast on Einsfestival in 2014.
1967 purpose-built congress-and-concert centre at Chasséveld 15, 2,500-cap main auditorium — the dominant mid-size rock-touring venue of the Dutch south, booked by Mojo in Rotterdam and Paul Acket in The Hague. Led Zeppelin would play it 27 May 1972; Pink Floyd 11 November 1971 on Meddle. The 23 October audience recording — Wetton bass lines in place — runs to ten songs: In My Own Time · Part of the Load · Spanish Tide · Drowned in Wine · Holding the Compass · Blind · Take Your Partners · Good News – Bad News · A Song for Me · The Weaver's Answer. Demolished 2006 for the Chassé Park redevelopment.
Support: Solution. 1901 municipal 700-seat proscenium theatre at Haspelsestraat 15 in the Dutch-Limburg border town; the "jeugdfestival" packaged the bill. Solution — the Dutch jazz-rock-progressive quintet (Barlage / Ennes / Waterman) — had their self-titled debut out on Catfish and would release Divergence before year-end. Limburgsch Dagblad carried the ad, 8 p.m. curtain.
"I started to get a flash on the old Coasters vocals. The new Family vocal team came into being — the Golden Gate Quartet, as I call it. It sounds like four well-boozed barbers singing gospel. That's not really all that ludicrous either. I reckon those barber shop quartets were doing the white version of gospel."— Roger Chapman to Roy Hollingworth, *Melody Maker*, c. 30 October 1971 — on the *Fearless* vocal arrangements
Granville Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter, Ladbroke Horns. Harrison / Brand's 1913 council-owned 3,500-cap civic concert hall on Granville Road — Family's Leicester home room via Whitney. Tour kick-off, same evening as an In My Own Time ToTP repeat airing. The four-man Ladbroke Horns — named for the Ladbroke Grove area of W10 — joined for Save Some For Thee and stayed for most of the set. Leicester Daily Mercury (2 November 1971) called the opener "shaky but built momentum."
Chapman on the tour ahead — to Roy Hollingworth in Melody Maker (c. 30 October 1971), days before the De Montfort opener: "We've missed playing a lot. We've done five gigs in the last three months. The first couple were knee tremblers with John and all that. We did the old stuff. Now it's the new. We've got to impress the new listeners — recruited from the single." Tonight's Leicester opener was Wetton's proper British-tour debut — the Mk V four-piece rolling out the Fearless material two nights after the LP's Friday 29 October UK release.
"A lot of people used to reckon I copied Winwood, and although I appreciated Steve as a singer — which you have to because he's good — it really pissed me off that they should think I copied him. They couldn't see that Winwood was influenced by the same people I am. He was really into Hooker, Charles and Muddy Waters then, and so was I."— Roger Chapman to Michael Watts, *Phonograph Record Magazine*, November 1971
Barker's Pool, Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Second date of the Fearless UK tour, 24 hours on from the Leicester opener. Vincent Harris's 1932 Sheffield City Hall on Barker's Pool — 2,271-seat Oval Hall plus the 500-seat Memorial Hall below — was the flagship rock-touring room of South Yorkshire through the 1970s, hosting Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull and every major British rock package of the era. Gerry Beckley / Dewey Bunnell / Dan Peek's 45-minute America set would have opened the bill — their A Horse With No Name was ten days from UK release but had been road-tested through the Camden Festival (1 May) and the autumn college-circuit; Jeff Dexter DJed between sets. The Save Some For Thee mid-set arrangement with the four-man Ladbroke Horns became the tour's signature brass feature, though whether the horns travelled to Sheffield (they were confirmed at 1 November Leicester, 5 November Liverpool and 13 November Newcastle) is unrecorded.
TV Broadcast
Tuesday · 2 November 1971
The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC-2)
BBC Television Centre, London, England
Family appeared in the seventh edition of The Old Grey Whistle Test, presented by Richard Williams and Ian Whitcomb. The band performed Spanish Tide and Between Blue and Me.
Both performances survive in the BBC archive and were officially released in the 2018 Family at the BBC set.
Bridge Street, Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Lockwood & Mawson's 1853 1,500-seat civic concert hall on Bridge Street — one of the oldest purpose-built concert halls in the UK still in use. Led Zeppelin had played it 19 February 1971; the Ziggy tour would open there February 1972.
5
Friday
Philharmonic Hall
Hope Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
+ America, Ladbroke Horns
Support: America, Ladbroke Horns. Return to the Phil after 24 February (venue history there). Brass-section night — the Ladbroke Horns joined for Save Some For Thee.
7
Sunday
Fairfield Hall
Park Lane, Croydon, Surrey, England
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Atkinson's 1962 Concert Hall (1,802 seats) and Ashcroft Theatre (750) on Park Lane. Closed 2016–20, reopened 2024. Dick Meadows's review in Sounds (13 November 1971) is a period-classic: "Family were bedeviled by amplification problems … 'Is this PA ever going to work tonight then?' … Poli Palmer shone through it all." Meadows singled out "strategically aimed missiles" — Chapman's tambourine-and-mic-stand tactics — as the show's recovery mechanism.
“Family were bedeviled by amplification problems... 'Is this PA ever going to work tonight then,' singer Roger Chapman asked in despair midway through their set... Twice he hurled the mike off the stage in anguish before eventually beating a tambourine to death against same. The versatility and importance of Poli Palmer shone through it all, particularly as he bopped about happily between keyboards, vibes, flute and hand drums.”
— Dick Meadows, Sounds, 13 November 1971
Radio Session
Monday · 8 November 1971
BBC Bob Harris Show
Shepherd's Bush, London, England
Returning to the Bob Harris Show at the BBC's Shepherd's Bush studios, the band recorded their first radio session with new bassist John Wetton. The performance featured two songs from their new album Fearless: 'Children' and 'Between Blue And Me'. The session was broadcast two weeks later on 22 November 1971. The complete recording is preserved and has been officially released on both BBC Radio Volume 2 – 1971–73 and the comprehensive At The BBC box set.
Support: America, Ladbroke Horns. Dyer / Nealon Tanner's 1867 building rebuilt after the 1951 fire on Colston Street, 2,075 seats. Renamed Bristol Beacon in 2020.
Ladbroke Horns joined Family on stage at this date — per Lee Whiting's Family Fan Club Newsletter (Nov/Dec 1971): "At Bristol, Manchester and Newcastle the Ladbrook Horns will be playing with the group." The Horns had appeared on Fearless across tracks like Save Some For Thee; the three dates on this tour were the only Fearless-tour shows where the full brass arrangement was carried live. Supports: America and Jeff Dexter.
12
Friday
Birmingham Town Hall
Victoria Square, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Hansom & Welch's 1834 Greek-revival 1,100-seat classical concert hall on Victoria Square — the civic Birmingham date (distinct from the Odeon / Mayfair rock circuit). Birmingham Post (13 November 1971) on the show: "the exploratory nature often means that it strays over the border into the field of jazz … the high degree of musicianship in the group which is often overshadowed by Chapman."
“The exploratory nature often means that it strays over the border into the field of jazz. Last night's programme reflected the high degree of musicianship in the group which is often overshadowed by Chapman.”
— The Birmingham Post, 13 November 1971
13
Saturday
Newcastle City Hall
Northumberland Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter, Ladbroke Horns. Cackett & Burns Dick's 1928 2,135-seat civic on Northumberland Road — the flagship North-East concert hall of the 1970s.
Ladbroke Horns joined Family on stage at this date — per Lee Whiting's Family Fan Club Newsletter (Nov/Dec 1971): "At Bristol, Manchester and Newcastle the Ladbrook Horns will be playing with the group." The Horns had appeared on Fearless across tracks like Save Some For Thee; the three dates on this tour were the only Fearless-tour shows where the full brass arrangement was carried live. Supports: America and Jeff Dexter.
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Mason's 1890 Edwardian Guildhall, Blitz-gutted 10 January 1941; E. Berry Webber's stripped-classical rebuild opened 8 June 1959, 2,000-seat Main Hall. Deep Purple, Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd were all in the book.
17
Wednesday
Brighton Dome
Church Street, Brighton, East Sussex, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Porden / Atkinson's 1805 stable-block of the Prince Regent's Pavilion, converted 1934 by Atkinson into a 1,700-seat concert hall with a well-regarded rock acoustic.
20
Saturday
ABC Cinema
Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Weedon / Foster's 1955 Ferensway ABC, 2,500 seats — the ABC-circuit chain-cinema routing that was standard Saturday-night work for early-'70s UK rock packages before the chains abandoned rock mid-decade.
21
Sunday
ABC Cinema
High Street, Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Glen's 1935 ABC (originally the Globe) on High Street, 2,290 seats. The Beatles played it 22 November 1963, the day after JFK. Closed 1974, eventually reopened after restoration as the Globe in 2021.
23
Tuesday
Free Trade Hall
Peter Street, Manchester, Lancashire, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. Walters's 1856 Palazzo 2,500-seat Hallé home on Peter Street — the defining Manchester rock room of the 1970s (Dylan's "Judas!" 1966; Ziggy 1972; Zeppelin 1973). The 2004 Radisson conversion gutted the auditorium; only the façade survives.
Ladbroke Horns joined Family on stage at this date — per Lee Whiting's Family Fan Club Newsletter (Nov/Dec 1971): "At Bristol, Manchester and Newcastle the Ladbrook Horns will be playing with the group." The Horns had appeared on Fearless across tracks like Save Some For Thee; the three dates on this tour were the only Fearless-tour shows where the full brass arrangement was carried live. Supports: America and Jeff Dexter.
24
Wednesday
The Stadium
St Paul's Square, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
+ America, Jeff Dexter
Support: America, Jeff Dexter. 1931 boxing arena on Love Lane / St Paul's Square, 3,500 capacity — Liverpool's premier large-cap rock room under Roy Adams. Led Zeppelin had played it 26 March; Deep Purple 22 September; The Who 22 November (two days before Family). Closed 1987, demolished 1991.
26
Friday
Rainbow Theatre
232 Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park, London N4, England
+ Terry Reid, America
Support: Terry Reid, America. Edward A. Stone's 1930 Moorish-fantasy Astoria, 3,040 seats at 232 Seven Sisters Road — just over three weeks into Brian Hyland and Tony Smith's rock-programming takeover (opened 4 November with The Who). Terry Reid — the Peter Grant-managed singer-guitarist who'd famously turned down Led Zeppelin, with River just out on Atlantic — opened, with America in the middle slot. Family's first Rainbow and the band's biggest London gig of 1971.
29
Monday
Top Rank Suite
The Kingsway, Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales
Rank Organisation's Top Rank Suite chain on The Kingsway, ~1,500 capacity, a Monday-night rock stop in the Welsh circuit.
30
Tuesday
Capitol Theatre
Queen Street, Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales
1921 super-cinema / live theatre on Queen Street, 3,158 seats — the biggest rock-cinema date in Cardiff until the building's 1978 demolition for the Capitol Shopping Centre. A Family standby through the late '60s and into the mid-'70s.
December 19716 events
1
Wednesday
Winter Gardens
Exeter Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, England
+ Help Yourself
Support: Help Yourself. 1875 / rebuilt-1936 civic concert room on Exeter Road, ~1,500 seats — the Bournemouth Symphony's home hall until its 2002 closure and 2006 demolition. Help Yourself — Dave Charles / Malcolm Morley's Liberty-signed country-rock contemporaries of Man — were in the middle of their Strange Affair run.
3
Friday
McEwan Hall
Bristo Square, Edinburgh, Scotland
+ Spirogyra
Support: Spirogyra. Rowand Anderson's 1897 Italian-Renaissance graduation hall on Bristo Square, ~1,000 seats — donated by William McEwan MP of McEwan's Lager. Spirogyra — Martin Cockerham's Bolton / Canterbury folk-rock trio on B&C, with St. Radigunds and Old Boot Wine both out — were a natural student-circuit support.
9
Thursday
'Christmas Ball', Winter Gardens
Blackpool, Lancashire, England
+ Help Yourself, Innocent Child
Support: Help Yourself, Innocent Child. Church Street glass-and-iron pleasure palace — Empress Ballroom (3,000), Opera House (2,980), Pavilion Theatre (1,400). Blackpool College SU's Christmas Ball, 8 p.m. curtain.
TV Broadcast
Saturday · 11 December 1971
Pop Hot — Montreux 1971 (TSR / Télévision Suisse Romande)
Montreux, Switzerland
TSR's Pop Hot broadcast material from Family's 13 June 1971 Montreux performance. The surviving programme material includes Holding the Compass and A Song for Me. Further selections from the Montreux recording were scheduled in Pop Hot during February and March 1972.
“Family is extraordinary solidarity, a way of living together — a community of thought and action. One cannot compare Roger Chapman's voice or the musical sense of his companions with anyone else.”
— Journal d'Yverdon et du Nord Vaudois, 11 December 1971
Radio Session
Thursday · 16 December 1971
BBC In Concert (Playhouse Theatre)
London, England
Family's first BBC In Concert. Jeff Griffin's In Concert 45-minute Radio 1 stereo show at the 440-seat Paris Cinema basement venue on Lower Regent Street, recorded before an invited audience. Six songs circulate from an off-air: Spanish Tide · Part of the Load · Drowned in Wine · Take Your Partners · A Song for Me · The Weaver's Answer. The BBC transcription master is held at the BBC Sound Archive.
North Street, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England
Lyons Israel Ellis's 1938 Art Deco 3,000-cap municipal hall on North Street — the flagship Wolverhampton rock room of the 1970s. Led Zeppelin had played it 18 January. Monday-night close of the year on the road.
Date unknown · 19713 events
We were working as a three-piece, without a bass player... and then Ken [John] Wetton came in later, after we'd put most of the tracks down, and overdubbed the bass. Most of my time in the studio was spent on the phone talking to the manager or the lawyer about the bloody contracts.— Roger Chapman & John Wetton, reflecting on the Fearless sessions — the material was written and recorded before Wetton had even joined the band
Reader comments — 1971 (1)
Memories, corrections, and additions for 1971. Add yours below.
Swansea Top Rank gig seems to be missing,possibly 29Nov 1971.