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We obviously believed, when ‘Move
In’ was rocking up the charts, that things would go
well from then on, which they did, for a while.
The day the record entered the chart, I was at home in
bed, suffering from the dreaded ‘flu’. We were
due to open a record shop in Romford that day, along with
the Spencer Davis Group, Pentangle and a jazz drummer
‘Philly Jo Jones’. I certainly hadn’t
planned to attend the opening, feeling as bad as I did,
but when you’ve been managed by Brian Epstein,
produced by Andrew Oldham, then managed by Robert
Stigwood and Brian Epstein together, and still couldn’t
buy a ‘hit’, it starts to weigh a little heavy
on your mind, and I wasn’t going to miss any of
this, now that we’d done it at last.
I remember someone hammering on my front door to come in.
That’s when I discovered that we’d ‘stormed’
into the chart, and along with the ‘airplay’
the record was getting, everybody said that this was the
one!!!
This all seemed to have happened because, we had signed
to a new
record label ‘R.C.A’, with a new manager (he’ll
remain nameless), a new ‘producer’, Chris
Andrews and of course our new name!
The name was suggested by our manager, at a meeting we
were having at our his office. At first we thought he must
be joking, “Harmony what??? What’s that
supposed to mean?”
Other names were tossed around, but Harmony Grass it was.
We had nothing to lose. If the record didn’t become
a hit, then we’d just carry on under our old name as
usual, but that didn’t happen, so the Castaways
‘died’ that day in the managers office. |
Pentangle, Spencer Davis, Pete York,
‘Philly’ Jo Jones and Tony Rivers,
opening record store, Romford, Essex,
January 1969.
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| In true ‘Castaways’ tradition,
things didn’t go smoothly for us, and we paid the
price for a very costly, change of rules, by the
people who ran the record charts. That was the week that
they had decided to change the way the information was
gathered to work out how many records had been sold. ‘Move
In’ had entered the top 50, around 46 or something
like that, having sold quite a few records that week, the
following week, sales had increased and we stormed
into the Top Thirty for the very first time!
The next week, we almost doubled the sales and we were
told that we would be in the Top 20.
However, the ‘change of rules’ kicked in and
instead of being in the top 20, we only went to number 24,
in the new ‘official’ chart, having outsold the
previous week. This was ‘bad’ news, when your
record suddenly stops going ‘up’ they tend to
not play it so often, and that means, people aren’t
hearing your record so often, and are probably buying the
ones they are hearing . Just our luck!
We couldn’t complain about the radio plays we’d
had up to then, because the record was on every radio
show. Remember that there were no commercial stations,
not even ‘local’ BBC, all there was, was the
main BBC station, I think it was Radio One.
Publisher Cyril Shane found ’Move In A Little
Closer Baby’ and when we heard it we knew it was a
great song.
Recording the track was fairly straight forward. We
recorded it at Chappells studio, just off Bond St.
Mayfair, in London..
The orchestra was arranged by Johnny Arthey, and I
arranged the backing vocals, which as usual with us, was
a major part of the song.
Chris Andrews was the official producer.
In the orchestra, which augmented us, was Clem
Cattini, on drums(again), whom I’d known for some
years.
It eventually took 5 attempts, and 5 different vocal
arrangements, to come up with the one I finally was happy
with.
The ‘producer’ wasn’t around for any of
the other vocal sessions for this record. I think he was
busy working as ‘Chris Andrews’ in Germany or
somewhere. I took charge of the re-recordings and the
‘mixing’ sessions.
The record was released in November I believe, and took
quite a while, and a lot of running round ‘plugging’
the record, doing personal appearances, and plenty
of ‘live’ gigs, before the sales started to
pick up. It wasn’t until January that we suddenly
stormed the top 30.
Our big moment finally came, and we got the call we were
all waiting for, from Top Of The Pops. This was an
absolute must if you were to have a ‘hit’
record. Typically, when our big chance came, we
were in Germany, doing their TV equivalent to ‘TOTP's’,
‘Beat Room’.
This I believe was recorded on Wednesday in Bremen, with
‘TOTP’ going out ‘live’ on Thursdays,
in those days.
We all got up early on Thursday morning, for the short
journey to the ‘airport’, and the all important
flight to London for our ‘big moment.
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Nowhere to 23, in the charts!
Then 2 weeks at No.20
having sold more records than the previous weeks!
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The trouble was, it had ‘snowed’
overnight, (and I mean SNOWED). The airport was
closed until further notice, and so we sat around for
ages cursing our luck, while our manager made call after
call, remember there were no mobile phones back then, to
Colin Charman at the BBC, (the producer of ‘TOTP’)
to try and keep us on the show. We’d been given a
deadline to get to London by, and if we didn’t make
it, then he would use our spot, to play a pre recorded
segment by someone else! I think that deadline went, and
more phone calls to London ensued, we were still on the
show. Then we heard that the airport at Hamburg was due
to re-open, a decision was made, a few strings were
pulled, and we were off to Hamburg, on the treacherous
Autobahns, in thick snow, although it wasn’t
snowing, by this time, thank god!
On arrival in Hamburg, there were still no flights
leaving and we really thought, that’s it, we’ve
blown it. But finally the airport opened and we
boarded a flight to London!
It must have been around 6pm German time(1 hour ahead)
with about a one hour flight to London, because I
remember arriving at Heathrow, at about 6pm local time, (Top
Of The Pops went out ‘live’ at 7.30 pm), not
waiting for our luggage, running through the terminal
carrying guitars etc, passport checks, customs hall, I
think we got out of the terminal at about 6.45pm, jumped
in the first taxi we saw, slight problem being that
someone else was just about to jump in. They changed
their mind when we all got in. We eventually reached
Shepherds Bush by just about 7pm, ran into the BBC,
expecting to be told that we too late to appear on the
show, but they unbelievably, had kept our spot open. 7.15
pm and we were in make-up, no run through on camera, we
were third on I think, walked out on our stage, laughing
at what we’d been through to get there, someone told
us where to stand, suddenly pointed at us, red light on
and so were we, 7.40pm!!!
We were only miming to the record, so it wasn’t a
problem, but we went on in the clothes we’d been
wearing all day.
Then they changed the system and we only went to No.24 in
the ‘official chart’, despite having sold
almost twice as many records as the previous week, and
had appeared on ‘TOTP’, we did make into
the Top 20 in the other ‘un-official’ charts.
What a groovy day!!!
continue
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