Issue #171 – The Herd
Psych-pop idols THE HERD were responsible for a string of unforgettable singles in the late ’60s including ‘From the Underworld’ and ‘I Don’t Want Our Loving To Die’, but behind the hits lay a frustrated jazz-rock band, career-derailing business woes and a set of clashing personalities.
HUW THOMAS travels back to Swinging London with in the company of founder member and organ whizz Andy Bown
Bown says that he and Frampton were “pretty pissed off” about Howard and Blaikley’s tight grip on their output “because we thought we wrote great songs. Actually, of course, we didn’t.” Evidence to the contrary can be found on Paradise Lost, a full-length Herd album rushed out in January 1968. It contains six band originals in a mish-mash of styles; there’s the head-bopping piano pop of ‘On My Way Home’, legitimate jazz moments in ‘On Your Own’ and lengthy instrumental ‘Impressions Of Oliver’ (named for Oliver Nelson) and even a gospel workout, ‘Fare Thee Well’, written by drummer Andrew Steele. The pillowy ‘She Loves Me She Loves Me Not’, a favourite of Bown’s, sounds a little like Caravan 12 months early. The most striking of the album’s tracks, however, must be the Howard-Blaikley contribution ‘Something Strange’, about a man leaving his girlfriend whilst on holiday and having a gay experience (“He takes a stroll in the jasmine scented night, gay voices beckon to some new delight.”) The songwriters, both gay, had hinted at such themes in their songs before: ‘Have I The Right?’, their number one for The Honeycombs, evokes the jeopardy of same-sex love in ’60s Britain and many of their Dave Dee hits trade on camp desperation. ‘Something Strange’, however, was their boldest ever lyric, and not played for laughs. Speaking to Record Mirror in ’68, Bown described it outright as “about a bisexual boy” and “the problems involved when he first finds out about himself”. Today, he points out, “I would have been told exactly what to say. It’s all bollocks.”
Sales for the album were poor and Gary Taylor took to the pages of Melody Maker to call it premature. “We are still a very new group trying to prove ourselves, and not enough people knew about us to spend a few bob on an LP,” he opined. Taylor also had a bee in his bonnet about the focus on Frampton, telling fans, “There are three other guys as well.” Bown and Frampton were writing heaps of topsy-turvy originals at this time, among them ‘Mother’s Blue Eyed Angel’, ‘Laugh And Dance and Sing’ and ‘I Lied To Auntie May’ (released by Decca hopefuls The Neat Change in July ’68), but all were held back. The next Herd A-side would be yet another Howard-Blaikley contrivance, a bubbly rock-ska mutant titled ‘I Don’t Want Our Loving To Die’. It was, Bown says, “quality pop”, and more representative of The Herd’s real sound than the previous singles: “It was nice to actually get the chance to play on it! I did recorder, organ, bass… all sorts of things.”
‘I Don’t Want Our Loving To Die’ was The Herd’s biggest hit, making #5 in the UK and intensifying their draw as a live act. The band weren’t seeing a lot of the benefit, however. “Our wages went up from 12 pounds a week to 15 pounds a week,” Bown says. “We were working five or six nights a week. We were being fucking stuffed.” Frampton was embarrassed about his earnings and, when he met with Jonathan King for dinner in Soho, the impresario helped him calculate the money missing. The Herd were unsure exactly who was screwing them over, so they decided the best course of action would be to disentangle themselves from everyone. As summer ’68 approached, the band repudiated their contracts with Fontana, Howard and Blaikley, Steve Rowland and business manager Ronnie Oppenheimer. A full clean-out. It was a ballsy move, complicated by a writ from Howard and Blaikley, but it meant freedom. Friends in the record industry would now be hard to find. Bown, even today, isn’t certain where the money went. “Who knows? We’re talking gallons of milk spilt under the bridge.”
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