Edgar Broughton Band – ‘Gone Blue – The BBC Sessions’ (2024)
Prefer a voyage to a mere excursion? This trip is for you. It might surprise that a best-seller of EMI’s Harvest label, dedicated to alternative not mainstream music, was in the English counterculture’s vanguard (Edgar Broughton Band, Hawkwind, Pink Fairies/Deviants) with songwriter Edgar rightly seeing them as the more melodic of the triad.
As a fearsome foursome or triathlon trio their sound was always full-on sonic attack taking no prisoners going further than the required distance. Never emasculated flower power but anarchic rebels against the establishment’s social and political injustices years before Punk, they rockingly extended thought and feeling.
Their debut was also the label’s first single (‘Evil’/’Death Of An Electric Citizen’) in 1969 (Europe only) soon followed by a first LP ‘Wasa Wasa’ including both songs. Rob Broughton (who prefers to use his middle name Edgar) on guitar and vocals (often called a blend of Captain Beefheart meets Howlin’ Wolf, almost a distant echo of Arthur Brown/Van Morrison), brother Steve Broughton (1950-2022) on drums, Arthur Grant bass/vocals, plus Vic Unitt (Pretty Things) on rhythm guitar (only the first 4 songs without him), moved from sleepy Warwick to Notting Hill Gate around the corner from Blackhill Enterprises, most of whose roster (Kevin Ayers, Roy Harper, Pink Floyd) signed for Harvest and performed in their famous free Hyde Park concerts. Edgar Broughton Band also at Glastonbury when akin to the historical Fayres with a Pyramid stage before sharks swarmed. Blackhill’s Peter Jenner produced their first three albums at Abbey Road, interviewing them in his Blackhill Bullshit.
Their very hip (“Don’t cut your hair you’ll spoil your image”), supportive parents Joyce and Dennis drove the fledgling blues band after gigs to the famed Blue Boar Café for another early networking, once having John Mayall crash at their home. John Peel said the senior Broughtons also roadyed and brewed tea back-stage, the DJ liking Mrs. Broughton’s roadside soup! Blues were only part of their taste when first briefly using it in their name, though Steve and Arthur were more into Soul. Combined with shared rock tastes, these melded into a distinctive signature sound fusing true rock ‘n’ holler as a powerhouse of psychedelia on five Harvest studio LPs and six singles then other labels until 40 years ago.
A new box from Cherry Red/Esoteric features examples selected (but not all) from their surviving BBC recordings from 1969-73, the Harvest years, mostly John Peel’s shows but also what sounds like Alan Freeman or the World Service that used transcription discs, fortunately because the BBC care as little for their wiped archives as for truth which they whitewash over as we all know. In the press Peel warmly noted their rare ethical socio-political songs and lifestyle in the music business. A recent Dutch press release for the special guest of Focus, saw Edgar as a “fire and brimstone preacher,” which he probably smiled at.
Coinciding with the month of first LP sessions in January ’69, their radio bow is here with a pair of acid-rockers: ‘Why Can’t Somebody Love Me’ plus an unreleased ‘For What You Are About To Receive.’ At the year’s end they did a gig at Abbey Road studios, unreleased until the CD era except for a single of their Fugs-influenced chant ‘Out Demons Out’ (here on the third CD’s ‘In Concert’) with ‘Momma’s Reward’ (‘Keep Those Freaks A Rolling’), reaching #39 (33 wrongly in the booklet) for 5 weeks befuddling BBC’s Juke Box Jury hosted by David Jacobs.
A couple of months later ‘Up Yours!’ (string-arranged by David Bedford) satirised the General Election backed with Officer Dan featured with ‘There’s No Vibration But Wait’ from the second album, ‘Sing Brother Sing’ which reached the top 20 fuelled by tabloid press notice. Arrests, fines, witness defending, strike support etched their agit songs and lifestyle. A tabloid’s bigot said the band is popular in Germany so they should stay there and not return to where they’re unwanted. At the Aachen Open Air Festival, Edgar stopped the concert to point out police surveillance, the crowd went over chanting ‘Out Demons Out.’ Police left after ten minutes and stopped beating people. Once David Bowie joined them onstage to chant it, resulting in a lifetime ban from the venue (Dome, Brighton). Edgar recently said that EMI didn’t realize that the band were preparing the suits for those Sex Pistols breaking out up the road.
Unitt returned from the Pretty Things’ ‘Parachute’ for the Broughton Band’s September 1970 broadcast, the non-album ‘Freedom’ (first disc’s longest track) and a buzzing ‘House Of Turnabout’ on places and people from their eponymous LP (also called the meat album due to its Hipgnosis cover) that hit #28 in two weeks of June ’71. Edgar later told Terrascope that the label was honest but mean, they paid small royalties but not advances (just as well as musicians spend years paying them back, like a bank). Another perverse gesture to EMI was the single ‘Apache Dropout,’ a fusion of the Shadows and Captain Beefheart as probably the first ever mash-up 45 which still peaked during 5 weeks at #33, stymied by a postal strike when sales data from record shops weren’t sent. A rollicking cut is here ‘In Concert’ with its Apache-fled live title ‘Drop Out Boogie.’
The LP was soon followed by a non-album double-A single ‘Hotel Room’ / ‘Call Me A Liar,’ which should be on every jukebox worth the name. It seems the singer’s feeling about his place in life but can touch everybody: “Old man, young man, tired woman, raise your soul in the centre of life”. It was even homespun Tony Blackburn’s record of the week each morning while at pains to distance himself from their ideology. An Italian website likened it to “a dazed ballad worthy of Syd Barrett” but why not Lennon? Another called it almost “a theme from an imaginary modern western”. It should have been the era’s anthem.
It’s here in another memorable take with the pre-grunge Momma’s Reward (Top Gear July ’71). The album sold well in Europe, especially Germany, and they moved not there but to Devon while leaving Blackhill for NEMS (linked to WWA) who were literally gangsters linked to the infamous Krays. Others who regretted the move included Medicine Head, Stray, Groundhogs and Black Sabbath who took them to court and won. Four songs here were written for fourth album ‘Inside Out’ (1972) and span two Sounds Of The Seventies airings February-June 1972. Among others are a heavy-as-a-bum-rap ‘Call Me A Liar’ directed at the judge, a hand-clapping warning about pollution and paranoia (‘Poppy’), a plaintive live-fave ‘Chilly Morning Mama’ (“…just say I live between both sides of the road”), an angry protest at not-guilty prisoners (I Got Mad) and a pair with the most “sexy” Beefhearty lyrics they ever did (‘The Rake’ and title track, blues on magic mushrooms that was on a between-album EP).
The last two in July 1973 are from follow-up ‘Oora’ the next year: the beautiful ballad ‘Green Lights’ reminds a little of the songwriter’s taste for Pearls Before Swine (“I love ‘Balaklava’”), a classic freak folk album of 1968, while ‘Slow Down’ is premature-by-years Punk fuzzed up with bass and drum middle breaks. Some here are among their best-ever when all are good, no doubt because radio and live remove weaker songs though fillers were very rare in their repertoire. I don’t agree with carpers about relevance: it is music from the time but (so far) for every time. Is blues only for sharecroppers, Beatles for screaming schoolgirls, Mozart for those in wigs? Music is music of course.
After the 17 track first disc is an early 1971 Paris Theatre show in Lower Regent Street for Sunday’s ‘In Concert,’ which was wiped but survives from the overseas network. It excludes ‘Poppy’ but that’s forensically retrieved incredibly from a very rare Top Of The Pops export version. There must have been no support as the concert is almost an hour and among their best. An 11-minute ‘Freedom’ has extra lyrics than its B-side of ‘Apache Dropout,’ which is also extended to over 13 minutes with underrated solos and audience chanting responses. ‘The Birth’ from the third album is alongside a 10-minute What Is A Woman For? in dreamy mode.
Their last Harvest album ‘Oora,’ started at Morgan in Willesden and finished at the newly opened Manor Studios near Oxford owned by Branson, was probably the most ambitious. Just prior was an ‘In Concert’ (May ’72) compered by Andy Dunkley who often DJed at the Roundhouse including the famed Greasy Truckers Party with Hawkwind that I attended, but very amusing intros by Edgar render him almost redundant. Nine songs from the post-debut albums are on CD 3 in the UK mono version (bootlegged on vinyl back in the day but never this full and loud) of which ‘Out Demons Out’ was excluded for the stereo overseas broadcast (CD4 here) with a different mix balance and run-out times, the last track cuts almost 5 minutes of audience frenzy starting ‘Out Demons Out’ themselves before the band rejoins for the unaired encore. Both formats really cook showing their visceral live energy as one of the most electrifying bands ever at their peak.
Side By Side with prescient lyrics and 90s style guitar decades early, with an unlisted ‘Sister Angela’ (a short epistle to a nun), opens for a swirling, stomping, indeed mesmerizing ‘Call Me A Liar’ written after a free festival in Redcar where a fight broke out with the police. The studio version was on a famous budget sampler (the Harvest Bag 1971) but here with solos from them all sharp as a King-size Rizla a la Grateful Dead. Poppy is a sing-along about pollution and the plastic people out having a picnic, The Rake is adorned with a bit of acid slide, while a 15 minute ‘It’s Not You’ is a truly thought-provoking hallucinogenic stomp (“Talk about the prisoner that’s everyone I know / Let’s all pray it isn’t you”). Out Demons Out is a thundering tribal exorcism in voodoo beat that is the entire period ethos in a micro bottle or tab, taking you back to where people said hi and peace in the street to each other on a sunny or rainy day.
The last album’s failure to chart led to friction between label and management, so they left EMI and Victor Unitt left the band. ‘Bandages’ (1975), ‘Live Hits Harder’ (1978), ‘Parlez Vous English’ (1979) and ‘Superchip’ (1982) were their last until solo albums supplemented by numerous archive and live collections in recent years. In fact, on the one-time community youth worker’s current solo ‘The Sound Don’t Come’ is about Mick Farren who died onstage not so long ago. Often charged back then with “civil disorder,” fights including vandalism (Keele University’s audience—namesake of the Ohio college where students were shot by the National Guard—were handed paint by the band which they used on the venue) and free benefit gigs for worthy causes held the torch for the Punk movement years later. Graffiti references still can be glimpsed around the country. Painting-like imagery, stories, anthems, slogans, apathy-attacks of advice, love ballads, maybe even prayer are bundled up in a musical incendiary device designed to shatter safety glass and concrete.
This boxset is superbly remastered original BBC tapes and claims 32 unreleased tracks of what was a people’s band sharing the interests and opinions of their audience. Career-spanning recordings (like their live shows) highlight complex issues encompassing that time and still influences today. Edgar Broughton’s view in the excellent booklet that his “little messages…may not have been articulate but were certainly passionate” sidesteps that their relevance is as appropriate today as then, and that is some legacy. There’s no hype here, no ego posturing, only a timeless communique for and from the people embracing their very DNA in legendary music of its own. Without it, (the) time would be poorer.
Brian R. Banks
Edgar Broughton Band – ‘Gone Blue – The BBC Sessions’ (Esoteric Recordings, 2024)
Edgar Broughton Band | Interview | “Audience participation was a major contributor to the energy our gigs generated”
Thanks for sharing. Another interesting archival release, I particularly love ones from that great era.
A nice overview of this recent set,but also of the first stage of their career,with their Beefheartian growling,punky bluesy swampy vibes,mixed with British humour,political posturing and British freak rock that morphed from the earlier electric blues revival but also the “wasted”harder psychedelic ventures that cropped up in 1969,by the likes of Andromeda,Sam Gopal,The Deviants/Mick Farren,Open Mind,Locomotive,Little Free Rock etc and the bands that called Ladbroke Grove their communal home like Quintessence & Hawkwind,though the music was indeed different!!
EBB were anarchic,and the only UK band i can find that come remotely close at the time to their anti establishment/anti government/Pro Undeground stance was The Deviants,as BOTH certainly had that pre punk vibe and attitude with a raw sound,particularly on those first 2 albums Wasa Wasa(69) & Sing Brother Sing(70)featuring those Captain Beefheart growls and vocal,along with a scuzzy distorted raw guitar sound!
For their self titled album they added strings to their less raw menu on this their best album in my opinion,which DID add something new to their sound,but possibly lessened their anarchic proto punk vibes.
Whoever decided it was a good idea to add strings to their sound was a brave soul,as i could imagine the “heads”at the time feeling it was a softening of their recorded sound and a possible record company interference to make EBB more accessible to the masses,but none the less over 50 years later it DOES enhance their sound and proved to be a canny decision!!In truth elsewhere on this album their Beefheartian scuzzed up proto punk freak vibes were still flying high!!
As i said,its my favourite album of theirs.
Of course,they never abandoned their anarchic,freak rock underground vibes with their following albums,up to 72,when things changed for the band and they entered a new phase and a new label!
EBB certainly were an integral part of that period of the late 60s into the early 70s were the harder,rougher,tougher sounds,with harder political and social commentary from bands was becoming common,like from Third World War ,but was also a time when harder drugs come into the British”undeground”scene, which reflected upon some of the more “real”darker ,starker and rougher sounds permeating from the British “underground”music scene.
Where the original British psychedelic”underground” scene from 66 into 67 was a mainly London centred Middle Class Art College and above type of scene and indeed had a softer more whimsical studio effects type of approach,by 1969,harder,darker,groups appeared,some very much in a more “real” working class less whimsical approach and sound like Third World War and indeed Edgar Broughton Band as examples,gone where childhood fantasies,victoriana,whimsical otherwordly storytelling being replaced by anarchic, real life ,anti authority sentiments with lyrical content that “average joe” could relate to,and this hard,tough,sound became the “new”in thing for many bands,and Edgar Broughton Band were indeed a very important part of this evolution in British music & indeed the British”underground” of the late 60s and early 70s!!
Thank you for such an insightful comment. I completely agree. A truly incredible band.