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Ptolemaic Terrascope Article Nr 2

The following article is kindly provided by the Excellent Ptolemaic Terrascope. [I got Phil McMullen's blessing to publish it.] The interview with Peter Daltrey was published in 1993s Winter-issue.

Continuing on from last issue's interview with Peter Daltrey in which he gave us the low-down on the Sidekicks and Kaleidoscope, we now pick up the story from the point where the band changed their name once again and created their own small piece of history as...
Fairfield Parlour

PT: David Symonds became Fairfield Parlour's manager; would you say he had an immediate impact on the band and your career?

The first thing David did was to go to Fontana and tell them to tear up the contract, we just weren't interested in continuing like that. He wanted a better deal for us, and that's what we got. This happened to coincide with the creation of the Vertigo label. Fontana/Philips/Phonogram were more concerned with poppier sorts of music, and Vertigo was to be their 'progressive' label. So we got signed to Vertigo, and with better terms.
He also did it on a tape-lease deal so that the record company didn't say, "Right, you're going in to make a record, we would say we were going to make a record and we'll sell you the rights of the tape but the copyright to the tape remains with the band. He also created a deal whereby Ed and I and Dave had our own music publishing company which we called 'Our Songs Limited'.
So virtually within a few weeks Dave had done so much for us that we couldn't believe it. He'd laid out a lot of money on equipment, and had done some deals with an equipment firm in Birmingham whereby they gave us some stuff purely because they'd get publicity out of it. So we were able to throw out all the old boxes we'd been playing through and were actually practicing on some damn good equipment, plus we now had a proper van to drive about in.

You were also telling me earlier about some film that Symonds got you involved in?

That's right, that was one of the most amazing things he did for us. He got us this deal to write the music for a film called 'Eye Witness'. Ed wrote the incidental music which we all performed at Elstree studios and the band did the title song, which Ed and I had written. The thing was, the record really should have been released as Fairfield Parlour's first single. I think it was a great pity that it was never released - it's not available on record anywhere, although the film's out on video.
['Eye Witness'; an ITC film released in 1970 was a whodunit starring Mark Lester, Lionel Jeffries, and Susan George. Directed by John Hough and produced by Irving Allen it also included music by Van Der Graaf Generator.]

Why didn't it get released?

Mainly because we came up with a song which we thought at the time was better, or at least was equally good. Our music had changed - it had matured, it wasn't so fanciful for a start, which was much better. The Kaleidoscope lyrics were flowery, purple in the extreme - a lot of my writing at the time was! Looking back at some of the lyrics I have tucked away, does make one cringe a little, it was pretty adolescent, but with Fairfield Parlour we were growing up fast.
We had received a lot of very hard knocks, but it wasn't just a game now - it was our living. We were young men in our early twenties and this was the way we earned our money. It was our career and we had to make a go of it, we had to be more businesslike and Dave certainly gave us a businesslike attitude. He was a good leader and it was he who chose 'Bordeaux Rosé' out of all the new songs that Ed and I had played. The only thing he suggested was that a verse be rewritten, which we did, and that made the song much stronger.

'Bordeaux Rosé' was released in April 1970 - a new decade, a new single and a new name for the band; was it a success?

I was an immediate 'turntable hit, yeah - all the radio stations were playing it. And in May Dave actually managed to get us onto 'Top of The Pops' to perform it, we waited with bated breath for the charts the following week to see if we'd made it in there, but we weren’t. And never were. The reason again can only have been poor distribution. Although Vertigo was a new label it was still using the Philips / Fontana distribution system, and as we'd already seen it wasn't working for us.

I take you were gigging heavily to promote the thing though?

Yeah, we were playing all over Britain - colleges, universities, clubs and pubs - and we put on a really good show. We'd knocked out all the mad stuff and being really professional about it. Ed had taught me a few chords and I bought an electric clavichord and vamped away on that on stage. Steve had taught himself the flute, which augmented our sound very effectively. Ed was using 12-string acoustic guitars and of course on 'Bordeaux Rosé' there is a sitar on there as well. Ed could virtually play anything.

Was there much material which you played live but didn't get round to recording?

There was one called 'I Pray For Rain' which I remember very well, a great live song very much in the mood of the material that would later emerge on the album. We never recorded that, and I don't know why. There was also a song called 'Face' which was still being played from Kaleidoscope days. and that always went well. Particularly at Mothers club in Birmingham, we loved playing there and they always used to demand about ten encores.

Were you already recording the material for your first album by this time?

Well, the thing was Ed and I had been asked to write songs for a new version of Lionel Bart's 'Fings Ain't What They Used To Be', a very successful show in the 1950s. I believe some nutcase had come up with the idea of having new songs for the show, which was ridiculous really - but we came up with two or three songs. Then we came offstage at 'Mothers one night, the 12th June 1970, and Danny collapsed on the floor screaming and shaking, trembling from head to foot and covered in sweat. He was in dreadful pain, and an ambulance came and rushed him into hospital. We thought we'd lost him, quite frankly.
It turned out that when he was born he had a nerve trapped in his spine... anyway, he had to have an immediate operation. He still has a two foot scar down his back from where they opened him up to put it right.

So the band was out of action effectively?

That's right, and the worst part of it was that we had a session booked at the end of June to record 'Just another Day', which was one of the songs that Ed and I had written for the 'Fings...' show. Dave however had a masterplan and the fact was we had to get another single out, so we went into the studio with Graeme Edge and Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues.I think Mike Pinder was also there - can't really remember. Elton John was on piano.

And together you recorded 'Just Another Day'?

Yeah, but unfortunately we had just got the electric clavichord and in the production it tends to come to the fore just a little too much. The tempo change is also disastrous and when it was released I don't think it got more than about two plays on the radio, which was terrible considering the success with 'Bordeaux Rosé'. The release of the first LP was delayed because of Dan's accident, but in fact again Dave thought it ought to go out because of the disaster we had with 'Just Another Day'.

Tell us something about the 'Fairfield Parlour' album 'From Home To Home'; when was it recorded for example?

That was in August of 1970. 'Aries' is semi-autobiographical, Whitey was a friend of mine. Before I joined the band I was in a gang... we used to roam around, and we found this old motorbike. Evans and Mad John got the bike going and Whitey went out on it one day and was killed. 'In My Box' was I think a song from Kaleidoscope days and it should never have been included on the album because it's certainly not good enough. '(I Remember) Sunnyside Circus' was another Kaleidoscope song that we actually tried to record in August 1967, but it eventually surfaced on a Fairfield LP two years later. 'By Your Bedside' on the other hand was very typical of the new Fairfield Parlour music, 'Chalk On The Wall' was sung through a Hammond Leslie speakercabinet, that's what gives the effect on the voice. And 'Soldier Of The Flesh' is a song we used to play on stage a lot, a damn good song that. Always went down well.

You played the Isle of Wight Festival that year I believe?

That was one of Dave's major coups. Not only did he get us on the bill, but he did a deal whereby we'd write and record an official theme song for the festival. Dan was back in action on two walking sticks and we went into the studio to record one of my favorite tracks - 'Let The World Wash In', a song of which I'm really proud. We were using a new instrument that Dave had found; a little Hohner wind instrument with a keyboard, but we took the mouthpiece off it and linked it up to an electrical unit, and that's what gives the very deep bass notes towards the end of the song. I was eventually released under the name 'I Luv Wight' and I'm not sure anybody realized it was us at the time...
Unfortunately the DJ who happened to be there at the festival didn't like the record for some reason, so he decide not to play it. It was played on the radio a few times and in spite of that and the incredible reviews it received, it wasn't a hit. We were actually the first band on at the festival, we were allocated a 45 minute spot so rehearsed for about a month beforehand to get the set absolutely perfect. Then just as we were walking up the steps towards the stage, the DJ - the same one, he seemed to be running the event - rushed over and told us they were running late so we only had 20 minutes to play. We had to virtually cut our set in half! We did OK actually, although being the first band on you cant' expect to make much of an impression. It was a fantastic experience though, a wonderful memory.

You were also telling me earlier that the band was almost wiped out an a road accident a couple of weeks afterwards; what's the story behind that?

Yeah, that was on the M1 during September of 1970. The 16th, actually. The lorry that was in front of us decided to stop to pick up a hitch-hiker, but unfortunately he didn't bother to signal that he was going to stop and we smashed straight into the back of it. Our ton or so of equipment shot forward, the windscreen flew out and... the most vivid memory I have is of Steve holding a lolly stick - the lolly that was on it had flown forward into the back of the lorry and he was left holding the stick.
Luckily we were all OK thank goodness. In fact we played a college gig that night. Old troupers!

Presumably then the band got quickly back to writing and recording, gigging and what-have-you?

Right, well I'd noticed that the batch of songs which Ed and I had been working on had a sort of theme running through them. If you put them in a certain order there was a certain sort of mood, an idea that ran through them. A bit obscure perhaps but I could see something there and so I suggested to Ed that we put a batch of songs together to form a story. I could write a novel to go with it and we could make an album and put that out with the novel, which had never been done before. Ed flipped, and everyone else seemed to love the idea.
So away we went, put these songs together and I wrote a novel to go with it. In January 1971 we appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in London supporting Pentangle. In the afternoon we had a run-through that was absolutely perfect. Dave had hired a mountain of equipment. We were all very pleased with ourselves and went off at tea-time, confident that the evening show was going to be great.

From the way your luck had been going I imagine you're now going to tell me that the evening show wasn't all it might have been...

Well the first band went on and came off, and we went on - and nothing happened! You couldn't hear a sound! Someone, we were convinced, had been in after we'd rehearsed and altered all the levels on Dave’s mixing console. For ten minutes we were unable to get a sound out of our instruments. Dave was on his hands and knees, desperately trying to find the right plug for the right hole and the audience started to slow hand-clap us - it was an absolute disaster!
We managed to get some sound out in the end but our set was cut down to about twenty minutes, and although we tried our damnedest we couldn't win the audience over.

Going back to the songs you'd been writing and rehearsing, was this the material that was intended for the 'White Faced Lady' album?

Right, well this particular time is very important in the history of the band because this is where things start to get really mixed up. We went to Mike Pinder's house in Esher, he'd just built a studio in the back garden and we'd recorded the song 'The Match Seller' there in January 1971, just after the Albert Hall debacle. That was the first session on the double album but it wasn't a track that we kept because the quality wasn't good enough, we had to re-record it later. The sessions wen right through to the end of May 1971. It was a tense time, we were all concerned with the fact that we had to come up with something good.

Fairfield Parlour 1971

So would it be fair to say that Fairfield Parlour's career seemed to going the same way as Kaleidoscope's had before it?

In so far as we were making good records and getting good reviews and success always seemed to be out of reach. It was very frustrating, we were all under a great deal of pressure and tempers were getting frayed. But we overcame that simply because we felt that the music we were producing was the best we'd ever done.

So what happened with the second album, because it was to be many years before that eventually saw the light of day?

Well a guy called Olaf Wyper had taken over at Vertigo and Dave told him about the double LP. Olaf said, "Don't leave it with Vertigo because they won't do it justice. I'm leaving to go to RCA, so when you've finished the album come to me there and RCA will give you a better deal and distribution." Well we took the album to Olaf at RCA and he said he wouldn't pay for it, told us we were asking too much. Dave told us not to worry, that we'd take it elsewhere... but of course we never did. We'd lost the Vertigo contract and now we couldn't get another one. Dave suggested that we go to Europe to play the US Airforce bases, but Ed and I said no, and the band broke up.

Was that the end of the road for Fairfield Parlour then?

Fairfield Parlour 1972

We did get back together in May 1972 to do a one-off German concert, and later that year we went into a studio and recorded the Beatles' 'All Together Now'. That was a big mistake. We also recorded another song called 'Baby Stay For Tonight'. Then in 1974 I went to RCA in New York to try and interest them in the double album, but they wanted a single - it was the same old story.

Didn't 'Bordeaux Rosé' get re-issued around this time?

That was in 1976. It came out with 'Baby Stay For Tonight' on the 'b' side. There was a lot of talk of all sorts of fantastic things, making new albums, getting back together again and doing shows; but it all came to nothing. And the guy who arranged the re-release of 'Bordeaux Rosé', a guy called David Williams, ran off with every penny from the record - we didn't get a penny out of it.

The next I heard of the band was when Kaleidoscope's 'Tangerine Dream' and 'Faintly Blowing' albums were reissued on the '5 Hours Back' label in 1987.

That's right, it generated a new interest in the band. We got together for some wonderful boozy meetings and we had a lovely summer that year, twenty years after the first wonderful summer! It was good to know that new generations had discovered our music and were now listening to it and enjoying it. All that effort, all that heartache, all those broken dreams - it too two decades of oblivion to be discovered! No overnight success. The two albums sold really well; in fact 'Tangerine Dream' actually got into the top thirty indie album chart.

But the revival didn't stop there...

No, it was amazing. Suddenly, labels were ringing us asking for material! We realized that now we could release the double album 'White Faced Lady'. Jon Storey from 'Bucketfull of Brains' and the two Alans from Imaginary made us an offer which we accepted, but Dave fell out with them over the mastering. The album eventually came out on our own label through PWC, but they went bust within a month and it was taken on by UFO.

You were obviously pleased that it was released at last?

Pleased!! I was over the moon. That album meant so much to me.

You got some stick over the cover design, thought?

I couldn't give a damn. I was asked to design the cover and given about ten days to send photos and finished designs to the company. I'd never done anything like it before. But I got it together and Phil Smee took it through to the printing. I stand by my design...

After 'From Home To Home' was also released on CD there were rumors of a new album -what happened there?

Yes, Ed and I would have loved to have gone straight back into the studio. We had some songs ready, but the band members were spread across two or three hundred miles of Southern England and getting together to rehearse was impossible. We did actually manage to record 'Bordeaux Rosé' and were very pleased with the result.

Dream On Cover

So nothing new until the release of your solo album 'Dream On' last summer. How did that come about?

I started writing songs with a local keyboard player and although the results were OK, they weren't suitable for me. So, one day I woke up on the road to Damascus and realized I didn't have to wait for anyone - I could do it myself. So far almost two years I sweated blood to learn how to use the new methods of playing and recording, I then kept going until I had twelve songs that I felt were representative of how I felt today - much older, much wiser, more optimistic than ever before.

What's the future, if any, for Kaleidoscope?

Well, Ed and I still want to get back into the studio. We'll be writing together again, and if I get my way we'll release a new Kaleidoscope album - but don't hold your breath!
Peter Daltrey 1996

As for re-issues, several companies have approached us to put together a collection of early demos, out-takes and rarities - we have all the Fairfield Parlour A and B sides, including the 'I Luv Wight' tracks and 'Eye Witness', that would make an excellent CD collection. I'm also working on my next solo project. So there's life in the old dog yet!

Interview transcription: Pescott Acme Transcription Services, Ink
Additional writing & direction by Peter Daltrey(thanks Peter!)
Production by McMuff
© Ptolemaic Terrascope,October 1993.

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