1972

British Family programme/footage (RÚV, Iceland)

Morgunblaðið reports that RÚV “recently” aired a British television programme about Family, paired with a Jack Bruce feature. The column says the Family segment was recorded “when John Weider was still in the band” — therefore before December 1971 — so this was probably imported footage rather than an RÚV production. A likely source is a repurposed PopShop piece: the Swedish programme Spotlight is known to have used that material, and RÚV may well have shown the same clip. This now seems more plausible than Granada’s Doing Their Thing (1970); there is no known record of Granada licensing that footage abroad. The precise source remains unconfirmed. Approximate transmission: late January 1972.

Family vs Pink Floyd

Announced in Lee Whiting's Family Fan Club Newsletter (Jan/Feb 1972): "11th Family v. Pink Floyd footballmatch (Results to be announced later)." A one-off between the two bands, fitting the early-1970s rock-band-against-rock-band kickaround tradition (the Pink Floyd / Strawbs matches are the best-documented; Family vs Floyd is less widely reported). The result was not preserved in the subsequent March/April newsletter — possibly buried, or the match rained off. (See Press Archive: Family Fan Club Newsletter — January/February 1972.)

Jerry Gilbert's Sounds intro (15 Jan 1972) set the scene a few days after the match: Whitney had "just returned to his Notting Hill home after a stint in the north of England. The following day he was going back as far as his home town of Leicester for the big match. Sammels, he thought, was well worth the £100,000 Filbert Street boss Jimmy Bloomfield had paid for him. The following Tuesday Whitney intended returning to London to play for a Family XI who had been challenged by a Pink Floyd XI at a North London venue, viewing the fact that the Floyd had supposedly been out training for the past month with a certain amount of trepidation." Gilbert added the match rule that gives the event its flavour: "Nor was it one of these matches in which the players could rely on the roadies to maintain the good name of the group — for it had been made compulsory for all members of the respective groups to partake in our English sport." (See Press Archive: In The Talk-In — Charlie Whitney by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 15 January 1972.)

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Rockenstock (ORTF, France)

The first episode of Rockenstock — a new ORTF rock-magazine strand that bumped Family up to a 1ère chaîne 22:55:00 slot for the show's launch. INA notice CPF86651297 catalogues the broadcast at 30:00 duration. Réalisateur Gilles Daude, producteur Pierre Lattès — the same Pierre Lattès who had presented Bouton Rouge in 1967–68, including Family's January and February 1968 appearances, now returning to French TV's rock-on-prime-time lineage in a producer role.

Family's set was filmed at Olympic Studios, Barnes, London — Children / In My Own Time / one improvised piece, plus an interview with Chapman as the band's leader. The remainder of the episode carries Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Black-and-white copy held at INA, digitised.

BBC Sounds of the Seventies (Pete Drummond), Maida Vale 5

Recorded at BBC Maida Vale 5 (Delaware Road — the 1909 skating rink converted 1934) for producer John Walters; five tracks — Between Blue and Me, Children, Spanish Tide, Blind, Holding the Compass — first aired Thursday 27 January on Radio 1. The BBC transcription tape is currently untraced; off-air listener captures surfaced on the 2021 Madfish Family At The BBC box (FREUDCD157).

Planned North American Tour

United Artists had projected a US support run for Fearless for winter 1971–72; the cancellation (visa delays, insurance disputes, and the UA booking office's post-Ed-Bicknell disarray are all cited in secondary accounts, none with a surviving primary source) left the LP — UAS-5562, shipped 10 March 1972 — to peak at Billboard #177 with no live promotion.

Ed Ward, who had dismissed Chapman on A Song for Me as "an electric goat," conceded in Creem (April 1972): "A good, strong album, loaded with some of the most intense, high-energy British rock and roll being made these days."

Télé-Midi ’72 (ORTF / Première Chaîne), Maison de la Radio

Daniele Gilbert's daily Télé-Midi 72 lunchtime variety strand — broadcast 12:31 on the 1ère chaîne ORTF from Maison de la Radio at 116 avenue du Président-Kennedy, Paris. Family performed a full studio mime of Spanish Tide — the Fearless track (Reprise K 54003, October 1971) — to the album backing in front of the studio audience.

INA's notice CAF05025201 logs this as a parent extract from the larger Télé-Midi 72 news bulletin (parent CAF05025197) under the titre du sujet "Présentation Family Group (5 musiciens)". The 45-second figure on the INA notice reflects the catalogued intro / présentation segment, not the full performance — the surviving recording captures the complete Spanish Tide mime.

Mk V five-piece on camera: Chapman / Whitney / Wetton / Townsend / Palmer — Wetton's last few months in the band before the July 1972 King Crimson move.

Pop Hot — Montreux Part 2 (TSR, Suisse Romande)

A further Pop Hot broadcast using Family's 13 June 1971 Montreux performance, including Holding the Compass and a 16-minute A Song for Me. Michel Dami produced and Alain Morisod presented.

The footage survives in the SSR/RTS archive and was commercially released by Madfish in the 2013 set Once Upon a Time (Family Live).

Spotlight (Swedish TV2)

Spotlight was a Swedish TV2 pop programme. Dagens Nyheter scheduled the 27 February 1972 edition for 20:30, marked for colour, with the next programme at 21:00. This establishes a scheduled half-hour slot, not a measured episode runtime or a transmission log. A separate 23 February notice places Ted Gärdestad in that Sunday’s edition; neither newspaper item names Family.

Family footage. Family Bandstand holds a screener supplied by Swedish television. The collection identifies Family’s segment as a re-edit of the 1971 Pop Shop / Stop Pop footage, featuring Processions / No Mule’s Fool and The Weaver’s Answer. This identification comes from the collection, not the DN listings. The site’s 9:11 video is the Family clip, not the whole scheduled edition. The screener’s slate, original recording date and filming location were not re-examined during the newspaper research.

Programme context. Spotlight launched on 26 September 1971, initially announced as ten Sunday half-hours, combining acquired overseas music films with Swedish-made segments. DN credits Leif Aldal and Bo Rehnberg, assisted by Ulla Bella Gemicke and Maud Berggren, for the launch. That general format does not independently identify the origin of Family’s film or imply that Family filmed in Stockholm.

DN television listing, 27 February 1972, p.55 · Ted Gärdestad notice, 23 February, p.16 · Programme launch, 26 September 1971, p.20.

Fearless (LP, United Artists UAS-5562)

Shipped on or around 10 March; charting from the Billboard week-ending 8 April. Peaked at #177, seven weeks on the 200 — Family's first US chart entry.

Richard Gold in Rolling Stone: "One of the boldest things to come from England in recent months. The band's roots are steeped in the rough folkways of the British Isles."

“One of the boldest things to come from England in recent months. The band's roots are steeped in the rough folkways of the British Isles.” — Richard Gold, Rolling Stone

Pop Hot (TSR)

Further Family segment on TSR's Pop Hot, a Buddy Miles / Family double-bill broadcast (per Feuille d'avis de Lausanne, 25 March). Footage derived from the 13 June 1971 Montreux Casino set.

Pop Shop (BRT/RTB) — rebroadcast

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 programme had also been repeated by RTB on 11 July 1971.

Family news

A June 1972 Disc report says the band has ended a two-week holiday and returned to Olympic Studios, Barnes, to mix Bandstand with George Chkiantz — and that drummer Rob Townsend has become a father, wife Carol giving birth to a son in London that week. The Chkiantz / Olympic sessions ran May–August 1972.

BBC Bob Harris Show — Bandstand preview

Harris's Sunday-night Sounds of the Seventies Radio 1 slot previewed six Bandstand-era songs — Broken Nose, Ready to Go, Dark Eyes, Burlesque, My Friend the Sun, Coronation. The Family archive flags this as the "22nd BBC session" with a broadcast date of Monday 23 October 1972; tonight's entry is the on-air premiere of excerpts rather than the recording date (held as "summer 1972, exact TBC").

The lineup changes — Harlesden rehearsal

Best-documented date for Jim Cregan's formal induction (ex-Stud, ex-Blossom Toes). Michael Putland photographed the rehearsal session at Harlesden — the first images of the new line-up. Cregan's first public gig comes two days later at Torquay Town Hall; some secondary accounts push the changeover as late as September, but the 17 July / 19 July bracket is supported by both Putland's dated contact sheets and the regional press for the West Country dates.

Boucher on Cregan's impact — by the time Caroline Boucher caught the band mid-US-tour for Disc (c. November 1972, 'Family at Peace'), the Cregan era was visibly reinvigorating the band. Chapman to Boucher: "Jim is doing us the world of good, we're playing well, really stretching ourselves out." Whitney: "The whole band is nice to work with." The Mk VI lineup's first US tour — the Elton John support run — settled any lingering question about Cregan's fit: "The inevitable turbulent patch when there have been personnel changes in a band seems far behind them," Boucher wrote. "New bassist Jim Cregan, who replaced John Wetton when he left to join King Crimson, is turning out to be mighty fine."

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North American Tour with Elton John begins

In the autumn of 1972, Family embarked on their most extensive — and challenging — tour of North America. Invited personally by Elton John, then at the peak of his fame supporting the monumental Honky Château album, the tour exposed Family's eccentric, aggressive style to tens of thousands of pop fans, leading to wildly unpredictable reactions. Approximately 35 dates from September through late November 1972.

Mid-tour temperature — Caroline Boucher in Disc (c. November 1972, 'Family at Peace'). Boucher reached Chapman by phone in early-morning Oklahoma (the 1-3 November Stillwater / Tulsa / Oklahoma City mini-run — see companion cards): "We're getting people calling out for things in some really little towns like Wichita. But in the bigger towns we seem to be quite well known, nothing like Elton John of course, but I mean if there's 15,000 in the audience then 2,000 have heard of us and come to see us, which is a start, isn't it?" Chapman praised Elton's touring party — "The whole band is nice to work with. I don't think any of us knew too much about Elton before we came here but now it's like a mutual admiration thing" — and flagged a post-tour return plan: "We plan to return to America in February — or we'll lose everything that we've gained here. But we'll do a British tour." The February return would not materialise; the January 1973 British Bandstand tour (see companion cards) would take priority instead, and Palmer's post-tour departure after the 26 November St Petersburg closer would reshape the band again.

“In the big cities we went down well with Elton John's fans, but not everywhere. You're in the middle of fucking nowhere, and you're still in a 15,000 capacity venue, and they wouldn't be so keen on us then. But it was a really great tour and didn't do the band any harm at all. We played places in Texas and down South where there was just no reaction. We would play, finish, and there would be silence. The audience would just have their mouths open, just looking at Roger thinking, What is this? The only clapping in this huge stadium would be the guys doing the PA.” — Roger Chapman, 'Faulty Towers', MOJO, August 1996

Top of the Pops (BBC-1)

Family performed Burlesque on Top of the Pops, broadcast while the single was at No. 30 on the programme's chart. The band were touring North America and playing Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens that evening, so the studio performance had been recorded before transmission.

The episode was presented by Jimmy Savile. The Family performance is missing from the BBC archive.

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New Theatre — first show without Poli Palmer

Roger Chapman — vocals, tenor saxophone, harmonica, percussion
John “Charlie” Whitney — guitars, keyboards
Rob Townsend — drums, percussion
Jim Cregan — bass, guitars, vocals
Tony Ashton — piano, Hammond organ, vocals

Poli Palmer left Family after the autumn North-American tour. Tony Ashton initially stood in on keyboards; Sounds of 9 December 1972 reported that Palmer had quit the previous week and reviewed the 2 December New Theatre, Oxford show as Family's “first gig without Poli Palmer.” The review said Ashton had only about six hours of rehearsal, while the paper's news report described four days before the following Brighton date. At that point no decision had been made about permanence, but Ashton stayed for the final album and farewell year. The Oxford evidence replaces the former unsupported 26 November handover date.

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