Household have been one of many nice cult bands of the late 60s and early 70s. Spanning the worlds of rock, prog and blues, the notched up a string of hits earlier than imploding earlier than they ever really turned large. In 2012, forward of their reunion the next yr, Basic Rock sat spoke to the surviving members of the band to look again on a narrative of missed alternatives and thwarted ambitio.n.
Within the barely surreal world of Household, it appears nearly becoming to begin their story on the finish: October 13, 1973, the Vacation Inn, Leicester, a couple of hours after the band’s final ever present at Leicester Polytechnic.
It was a giant send-off, the grand finale, the final gig of a sold-out UK tour, in entrance of a partisan dwelling viewers. It was good, says Roger Chapman, the band’s irrepressible lead singer. “Actually good.” However the after-show celebration that night time on the Vacation Inn? “Nicely,” he laughs – which he does heartily and infrequently – “that was even higher.”
Jon Lord was there. As was Ralph McTell, ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris, John Peel; everybody from the band’s file firm; footballers Frank Worthington and Lenny Glover from Leicester Metropolis; an assortment of nubile younger women. There was beer, wine, Champagne, unlawful substances; darkish corners and dodgy behaviour. It was that form of night time.
Because the celebration spilled over into the pool space, a person appeared, carrying deep-sea diving gear. He leapt into the pool and began throwing bubble bathtub round. The buffet desk ended up within the deep finish. There was a meals combat. A few dozen rubber geese floated from the pool into the resort foyer on a wave of bubbles, debauchery and extra. The enjoyable and chaos went on all night time. Rob Townsend, Household’s drummer, left early when somebody tried to throw his pregnant spouse into the pool.
It was like a wild, end-of-term celebration, Bob Harris remembers, “involving rising nudity and basic celebration. The celebration was finally introduced
to a halt by resort administration at round 5.30am, after many complaints.”
At 6am, employees on the Vacation Inn determined to stage a full hearth drill. It was their revenge, says Chapman. “I can’t say I blame ’em,” he laughs. “However that was what it was like again then. We went for it. We have been by no means the form of band to do issues by halves. We by no means did.”
A clever man as soon as mentioned that the highway of extra results in the palace of knowledge. Which is the place, right now, you discover Roger ‘Chappo’ Chapman. He’s a curmudgeonly previous bugger. And that’s not us being uncharacteristically unkind, that’s him being characteristically blunt.
“My bother,” he says, lengthy fingers scratching a stubbly chin, “is that I get the hump. At all times been the identical. We might be enjoying someplace, and the whole lot will probably be going effectively, after which I’ll hear some arsehole shout one thing from the group and that’ll be it, I’ll be on one. Or possibly the lighting man will do one thing fallacious, and that’ll set me off. I get mardy. It’s not a form of rock star extra, I’ve at all times been prefer it. It’s simply the way in which I’m. Too late to vary it now.”
Chapman turned 70 this yr. He fairly loved it. “I’ve solely ever felt barely twitchy about my age as soon as, after I was round 55, 56, and so many individuals mentioned: ‘Oooh, quickly be the large six-o, eh?’ that I used to be bloody relieved after I did lastly attain 60.”
He appears effectively. Higher than he deserves to look, being trustworthy, for a person who has lived the life he has. The debauchery stopped a very long time in the past. He stop smoking 20 years in the past. He stopped smoking weed after struggling a psychotic breakdown throughout a press convention in a Paris resort room within the 70s.
“My physique simply gave up,” he recollects, “proper in the midst of an interview with 4 or 5 journalists. I feel they thought it was all a part of my factor, you already know, this bizarre act, the enigmatic English rock singer. It wasn’t. I bear in mind sinking additional and additional down in my chair, after which not with the ability to stand up.”
He ought to have been despatched dwelling to relaxation, the tour cancelled. As an alternative, he performed the present that night time. The remainder of the band have been by no means instructed.
Again then, he says, there wasn’t a lot he didn’t do. Dope, acid, velocity, cocaine, heroin, tablets, uppers, downers, it was no massive deal. Everybody did it. You have been thought of a bit unusual in case you didn’t.
“I used to be fortunate, although,” he says. “I might flip my again on it on the way in which that others couldn’t. I did medication, sure, however I did them recreationally. I noticed what it did to others, good buddies, folks I knew who couldn’t cease, and I do know I’ve been very lucky.”
The story of Household is one involving other-worldly musical creativity, extra, a cussed insistence on doing issues their very own method, and industrial under-achievement. This stuff could, or could not, have been linked. “I’ve no regrets,” Chapman says bluntly. “We did issues our method.”
It’s the story of a working-class band who have been engaged on constructing websites in Leicester in the future, and attending swanky London events with Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon the following.
“We moved from Leicester to a home behind the Kings Street in Chelsea. I bear in mind going out for dinner one night time to an Italian restaurant on the Fulham Street with actor Ben Carruthers [whose son, Dijon, went on to play drums in Megadeth]. He was in The Soiled Dozen, a giant movie on the time. He took one thing from his pocket and popped it in our champagne. ‘Right here you go,’ he mentioned. ‘This could liven issues up a bit.’ That was my first acid journey. Did I prefer it? I will need to have carried out – I did it many times.”
Born in Leicester in 1942, Chapman was raised by his grandparents. His dad left when he was two, his mum died when he was 13. Roger and his elder brother Tony have been out and in of care. It was robust. Rock’n’roll, he says, saved him out of bother.
He left college at 15. He instructed the careers advisor he wished to go to artwork faculty to check portray. As an alternative they discovered him a job portray on constructing websites. At night time, he sang within the native golf equipment. Individuals instructed him he was good, that he might actually sing. “It is best to be part of a band,” they mentioned. So he did.
He joined The Xciters, who had a shy, younger bass participant referred to as Ric Grech. Grech, whose Ukranian father had settled in Leicester after the conflict, was an introverted however extremely gifted musician who’d swapped violin (he was classically skilled) for the bass guitar after listening to The Beatles.
Grech left The Xciters to hitch The Farinas, Leicester’s premier rock’n’roll band, led by sensible younger guitar participant John ‘Charlie’ Whitney, and multi-instrumentalist Jim King, who additionally sang. When King switched from singing to harmonica and sax, the band wanted a brand new singer. Grech took them to a constructing website in Leicester.
“I bear in mind them coming to the location and asking me to hitch. I mentioned sure right away,” says Chapman. “I’d seen them. Everybody knew of The Farinas. They have been an aesthetic band.”
The Farinas turned the Roaring Sixties, decked out in questionable double-breasted fits. “God solely is aware of what we have been considering,” says Chapman. “We appeared dreadful.” US impresario Kim Fowley, who recorded an early demo by them, favored the look, insisting they appeared like The Household – a reference to the Chicago mobsters of the Twenties.
With the mobster fits quickly ditched, they turned Household. “I fucking hated it,” Chapman says. “I believed it was an terrible identify for a band. I did for a very long time.”
Household signed a administration cope with John Gilbert, son of film-maker Lewis Gilbert, who had directed Michael Caine in Alfie. Gilbert had ambition, drive and a powerful contacts checklist, however not what you may name the band’s greatest pursuits at coronary heart.
In early ’68 they moved from Leicester to London, ditching drummer Harry Overnall and bringing in fellow Leicester lad Rob Townsend.
At 19, Townsend was the newborn of the band. Nicknamed the Grapefruit Child (“I performed in pubs with bands, underage, and I couldn’t drink. I had grapefruit juice”), he eschewed the rock’n’roll way of life: “I do know that interval is usually thought to be a time of medicine and partying, but it surely wasn’t for me. I feel I had a joint as soon as, and I used to be sick all over the place, in order that was just about it for me.”
Household signed a file cope with Warner Bros offshoot Reprise, and the band members shared a home behind the Kings Street. The administration deal they signed ensured John Gilbert acquired 50 per cent of Household’s songwriting royalties from their first two albums. He nonetheless does to at the present time.
“Don’t get me began on that,” Chapman growls. “There’s a clause within the deal that claims he will get half the royalties ‘in perpetuity’.”
They wouldn’t have identified what that meant again then – if certainly they ever learn it. Then, rock musicians paid scant consideration to the paperwork. It was all in regards to the music, man, and the vibes and the medication and the events and the chicks. Late-60s swinging London was a great time and place to be in an up-and-coming rock band.
“We’d keep in all day, smoking joints and writing songs, then we’d exit to a membership, or some celebration, get again at 5am, sleep all day, stand up, after which do it over again. We have been simply youngsters from the provinces. We’d seen nothing prefer it. It was sensible. We had the time of our lives.”
The band’s first album, Music In A Doll’s Home, launched in July 1968, was an bold and generally difficult hear, elevated by Chapman’s excessive, bleating vibrato. “This man’s voice might kill small sport at 100 yards,” mentioned one reviewer.
However it wasn’t simply the vocals that set Household aside. It was Whitney’s tasteful guitar enjoying, Grech’s spectacular bass and violin work, and Jim King’s all-round musical dexterity. Townsend nailed all of it collectively together with his distinctive drumming. Individually, they have been good. Collectively, like all nice bands, they have been greater than the sum of their spectacular components.
Produced by Site visitors guitarist Dave Mason and engineered by Eddie Kramer at Olympic Studios in Barnes, south-west London, Doll’s Home reached No.35 within the UK. Brimming with horns, Mellotron, violins, studio results, other-worldly sounds and, on one observe, the Tubby Hayes Orchestra, Household’s first album is the sound of the acid-drenched underground; 5 males pushing on the musical boundaries of the period, experimenting, generally nailing it, generally not, however daring to be completely different.
Critics mentioned Household have been progressive. And but whereas the music was adventurous, it was by no means intellectual. “You possibly can by no means name us pretentious. We have been a rock’n’roll band,” says Chapman.
“A rock’n’roll band that loved to experiment.
“It was an unbelievable interval of musical creativity, actually. We have been bursting with concepts. I bear in mind we’d sit in the home we shared, and Charlie would decide up a guitar, strum a couple of chords, and I’d write the lyrics and the melody, after which Jim King would are available and take it elsewhere. And we’d write two, three songs a day like that.”
In addition to vocals, on Doll’s Home Chapman is credited with tenor saxophone. It was a lie, he admits.
“I couldn’t play the saxophone. I had one, and Jim tried to show me, however I couldn’t play it. Jim picked one up and, I swear to God, he discovered it in two weeks. I might parp out a couple of notes, however it could be a deceive say I might play it. I put it on the ground as soon as throughout a rehearsal, and one of many PA audio system fell over and crushed it. The band have been like: ‘Oh, Rog, your sax.’ However secretly I used to be relieved as a result of it meant I wouldn’t must play it once more.”
Seven months after Doll’s Home got here Household Leisure. Unusually for a second album, there was no stress, says Chapman. “If there was, we didn’t really feel it. We have been simply churning it out.”
Wanting again, he says this era was the high-water mark of the band. Throughout an interview in 1969, John Lennon singled out Household.
“Musically,” Lennon mentioned, “they’re about essentially the most attention-grabbing band on the market.”
He was proper. “For 18 months or so we have been simply couldn’t go fallacious,” Chapman says. They have been writing sensible songs, and wooing audiences with their manic reside performances. It was magical, and easy. “We took it without any consideration, as if it could at all times be like that.” It wasn’t.
Their second album was a extra simple affair than their debut. However it wasn’t meant to be. They have been hoodwinked by their supervisor, says Chapman.
“We’d completed the album and we have been on tour up north someplace, so, in our absence, John Gilbert and producer Glyn Johns [Beatles/Stones/Led Zep] blended the album. We hated it. The songs on there are good, but it surely all sounds a bit too clean, a bit too ‘secure’.”
A bit too – whisper it – industrial. And Household have been nothing if not wilfully uncommercial.
“We launched a single, In My Personal Time, after which we wouldn’t play it reside as a result of we thought that was promoting out. We didn’t even put it on an album. We by no means favored enjoying [much later] our hottest tune, Burlesque, as a result of we thought we have been being too industrial.” Silly, he says. Brainless. “However there you go. If it was a mistake, not less than it was ours, no person else’s.”
Ric Grech particularly was peeved on the clean sound of the second album. “I bear in mind him nagging at me in regards to the bass on one tune, and my vocals drowning him out. ‘Bloody hell, Ric,’ I mentioned, ‘it’s not my fault. I used to be on tour in Leeds with you when it was blended.’”
Household Leisure reached No.6. Album opener The Weaver’s Reply, a shifting lament about an previous man nearing the top of his life, turned the band’s signature tune.
Household have been constructing a formidable fame, particularly for his or her dynamic reside performances. Later it could assist them get massive gigs like supporting the Stones in Hyde Park in 1969, and on the Isle of Wight Competition invoice the identical yr and in 1970.
By early ’69 the thrill had unfold to the States. Dates have been booked there, starting with a run of huge exhibits on the Fillmore East in New York, organized by big-shot US promoter Invoice Graham.
April 8, 1969 ought to have marked the start of a wonderful new chapter for Household. As an alternative it was a catastrophe, says Chapman.
“We have been in a resort in New York resort, simply by Central Park, and I bear in mind John Gilbert and Ric Grech deep in dialog within the foyer,” the singer recollects.
Gilbert introduced that Ric had one thing he wished to say. Grech mentioned he was leaving the band. Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Steve Winwood have been forming a brand new group and so they wished him as their bass participant. And, in equity, who would have been in a position to flip down a suggestion like that?
“They’d identified for weeks. However we have been instructed on the day we have been enjoying our first gig in New York!” Chapman exclaims, the exasperation nonetheless evident in his voice 40 years later.
Household have been an exciting reside band. “I’m happy with the albums we did, however we at all times struggled to seize the true essence of the band, the way in which we sounded on stage,” says Chapman, who would whip the viewers right into a frenzy together with his manic shape-throwing and trashing quite a few tambourines in opposition to his mic stand.
That first night time on the Fillmore, nevertheless, was terrible. “Ric was so pissed, so stoned, that he might barely arise. He was holding himself up on his bass amp for many of the gig,” says Chapman.
The singer was livid, and hurled his mic stand throughout the stage – to the facet the place Invoice Graham stood watching. “I didn’t goal it at him,” he says. “It wasn’t deliberate. I used to be simply on one.” However Graham took large umbrage, marching around the venue tearing down Household posters and chastising the band for his or her lack of professionalism.
Chapman was made to complete the tour together with his palms by his facet; no tambourine, no theatrics, no character. “It was horrible,” he says.
Later that week the band had all their tools stolen. Chapman misplaced his passport en path to Canada, which meant all of the Canadian exhibits needed to be pulled. His visa was revoked. The whole lot that might go fallacious did go fallacious. Having set out with excessive hopes, they returned to England early, and with no bass participant.
“Our card was marked after that,” he says. Success within the US at all times eluded them. “I put all of it right down to that first present and tour.”
Again dwelling, the present needed to go on, and it was the start of a relentless spherical of musical chairs for Household. John Weider, previously of The Animals, was introduced in on bass and violin to exchange Grech, and so they returned to Olympic to file their subsequent album.
Earlier than work even commenced, Jim King was proven the door for “erratic behaviour” – a typical Sixties euphemism for drug issues. “You need to bear in mind, Jim was at all times a bit left-field, sensible however eccentric,” says Chapman. “No matter substances you’re taking – and I’d guess that, for a very long time, Ric and I have been most likely the worst – then you definitely go your personal method. By that point, let’s simply say that Jim gave the impression to be additional out on a limb than the remainder of us.”
In got here John Palmer on keyboards, synthesiser, flute and vibes. First, although, he wanted a brand new identify. “They refused to name me John, there have been too many Johns within the band,” says Palmer. “So that they referred to as me Poli. I didn’t prefer it, however what are you able to do? You may’t decide your personal nickname, are you able to?”
He’s been Poli ever since. “I feel solely my financial institution supervisor calls me John.” And apart from, he says, it might have been worse. “When John Wetton joined two years later, they came upon his center identify was Ken, in order that was it: Ken. He bloody hated that.”
Components for the brand new album that had been written for King’s sax have been rewritten for Palmer’s flute. It gave Household a special dimension, an sudden new path. The album, A Track For Me, produced by the band this time, reached No.4 within the UK.
However the hole between the band’s two driving forces – Chapman and Whitney – was starting to widen. “I used to be smoking weed, he was ingesting whisky,” says Chapman. “The 2 issues didn’t actually go collectively.” Whitney was now writing extra reflective, acoustic-style numbers with Weider. “I favored what they have been doing, but it surely was too straight, too Joni Mitchell – and never Household.”
Anyway, Household’s fourth album, with one reside facet recorded at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls, and one studio facet, was launched in 1970. Total, it was underwhelming. “I bear in mind the recording tools arrived at Croydon at 7pm that night time,” says Palmer. “Mics have been swiftly taped right here and there. It was carried out on an previous eight-track – bass and violin on one observe. It was rushed. And I feel you’ll be able to inform.”
With the revolving door marked ‘personnel’ persevering with to show, out went Weider and in got here John ‘Ken’ Wetton, simply because the band have been recording their fifth album, Fearless.
“John [Wetton] was a great man, and a tremendous bass participant,” says Chapman. “He was a great affect, I feel, on the band. He took us in a special path once more.” Wetton lasted only a yr, earlier than he left to hitch King Crimson.
Bandstand, launched in 1972, was a return to kind for Household. Nonetheless far much less experimental than the band’s early work, tune for tune it was considered one of their most constant data. It additionally gave Household their final, and best-known, hit single, Burlesque.
After Wetton, Household’s subsequent bass participant was Jim Cregan, from tender rock band Stud. He was a guitarist, however he was becoming a member of on bass – some extent that appeared to elude him at first, drummer Rob Townsend remembers.
“We provided him the job, and he mentioned sure instantly. ‘It’s bass, although,’ we mentioned, ‘not guitar.’ There was a pause, which was him realising it wasn’t what he thought it was. Then he mentioned no. He rang again later that day and mentioned: ‘Go on then, I’ll do it – so long as you train me to play bass.’”
He mastered it very quickly. “He was good,” says Townsend. “Not significantly flashy like Wetton or Ric, however rock stable.”
Bandstand was additionally Poli Palmer’s final album with Household. Right this moment it’s nonetheless considered one of his favourites. “Among the preparations on there are good,” he says. “However I do bear in mind we couldn’t consider a reputation for it, we didn’t have an thought. Ultimately our supervisor considered the identify. That had by no means occurred earlier than. I simply thought it was form of symbolic of the state we have been in – a bit drained, creatively exhausted.”
Within the autumn of 1972 Household started a US tour, supporting Elton John. This was the place the band started to disintegrate, says Townsend. Elton not often had a day without work. They performed night time after night time, travelling large distances from one state to a different. They performed to 1,000,000 folks in lower than two months. It was a tricky tour. The viewers response was blended.
Household did effectively within the extra urbane east and west coast areas, however in different places it was a special story. “They simply didn’t get us within the Midwest,” Palmer remembers. “It was tremendous in New York and LA and San Francisco. In all places else – and that’s a giant space – we have been met with a form of quiet bemusement.”
The camaraderie was completely different, too. “The band had modified,” says Townsend. “It wasn’t these seemingly lads from Leicester any extra, residing in the identical home. It was extra of a enterprise.”
Shortly after the Elton John tour had completed, Palmer turned the most recent band member to take the exit door. “It was time to go,” he says. “Household have been an intense band. By that point, I feel, we’d run out of depth.”
In got here keyboard participant Tony Ashton, beforehand of Ashton, Gardner And Dyke, who’d had a High 3 hit with The Resurrection Shuffle. By now Household was a shadow of its former self, and on its final legs. They launched yet one more album, It’s Solely A Film, in ’73, which acquired lukewarm critiques, earlier than succumbing to the inevitable.
“It was my favorite Household album,” says Townsend. “I do know folks speak about Doll’s Home, however Doll’s Home, to me, seems like 1967; It’s Solely A Film, I feel, is extra timeless. Tony Ashton had are available and he was a piss-head, principally, however an amazing fun-time bloke to have round. We had fun. I loved recording it. A few the earlier albums, they have been so laborious to file, however we did this so shortly and simply. The stress was off.”
It’s Solely A Film wasn’t nice field workplace and in October 1973 Household break up. “I feel we’d simply all had sufficient,” says Roger Chapman. “We have been drained, a bit stale. It wasn’t as artistic because it as soon as was. There have been these little niggles and arguments, too. I don’t have many regrets about my time in Household however considered one of them is that we by no means actually had any rows. No massive, fucking clear-the-air shout-outs, which I feel would have been higher for us.” As an alternative, he says, there was simply lingering resentment.
Chapman and Whitney went on to kind Streetwalkers, with guitarist/vocalist Bobby Tench and a few former King Crimson males, amongst others. Between 1974 and 1977, and with a lot of line-up modifications, Streetwalkers launched six albums. Right this moment, that widening hole between Chapman and Whitney, who had as soon as fashioned a potent songwriting partnership that was pivotal in Household’s early profession, is so massive that the 2 should not even shut. “We don’t converse,” says Chapman. “We talk by electronic mail, possibly twice a yr. He lives in Greece. There’s nothing extra to say… “We didn’t fall out. Not likely. However… it’s difficult.”
Whitney went on to kind Axis Level and nation band Los Racketeeros. Poli Palmer performed in Chapman’s solo band and labored with Pete Townshend, Linda Lewis and others. Rob Townsend turned down the prospect to hitch Marc Bolan’s band and as a substitute performed drums with Medication Head. Right this moment he performs with The Blues Band and The Manfreds.
After Household, John Weider performed on a lot of data, and has launched a number of solo albums. Jim Cregan performed with Steve Harley/Cockney Insurgent earlier than discovering massive success for a few years as bandleader, co-producer and co-writer for Rod Stewart. And you already know about John Wetton’s adventures in Asia.
Nobody had heard a lot from Jim King since he left Household. He handed away in February 2012. Additionally now not with us is Tony Ashton, who died of most cancers in 2001. And Chapman? He’s nonetheless doing it. In fact. “I hold saying I’m going to retire,” he says, “and I imply it, too. I’m not simply saying it. However then so long as I hold waking up at 4am with a tune in my head, I assume I nonetheless have to hold on.”
This characteristic initially appeared in Basic Rock 177 (October 2012)
