The triumphant return continues!![size=14][/size]
Stackridge - Something About The Beatles
T. Rex, the Kinks ... Stackridge? Return of unsung band that started it all offDays of cider and flares evoked as eccentric rockers, make comeback 38 years on.
Saturday May 31, 2008
The Guardian
It was September 19 1970, the day after Jimi Hendrix died: on a dairy farm in Somerset a motley band of West Country musicians were tuning their instruments.
Stackridge, as they called themselves, looked out at a gaggle of hippies and curious locals who had paid £1 each for a ticket for the music fair, which included free milk. Then, with a folksy tune and the words, "Goodbye the fire has stopped burning," Stackridge made history, inaugurating what was to become the biggest greenfield music event in the world.
Almost four decades after they played the first song at the first ever Glastonbury festival, the flared trousers have gone, as has most of the hair, but in a musical turnaround that critics failed to predict (or, for the most part, notice) Stackridge are back.
The springboard for their return will be Sunday afternoon's performance on Glastonbury's acoustic stage.
"We're pleased to have been asked, and we'll do our best," said bass guitarist Crun Walters. "It's nice to be given the opportunity at our ripe old age."
Huddled in a recording studio near Bath this week, the band, who regrouped several months ago, recreated that first song for the Guardian. Teatime, which remains part of their repertoire, was performed with a gusto that suggests they are hungry to return to the limelight. Memories of the original performance were hazy, but they were, they all agreed, "great days". There was talk of hippies with medallions of hash around their necks, and confrontations with gatecrashing farmworkers wielding cider kegs.
The remnants of an earlier group called Griptyght Thynn got together in 1969 under the name Stackridge Lemon. Managed by their friend Mike Tobin, they included Walters, Andy Davis and James Warren, who took care of guitar and vocals, a flautist who also sung, Michael "Mutter" Slater, and the drummer, Billy "Sparkle" Blake.
The local lads, all in their early 20s, rehearsed in Davis's parents' front room in Yatton, Somerset. A year later Stackridge had lost the Lemon from their name but gained enough notoriety to be a supporting act at the small musical event. Eager to impress, they turned up early and, the Kinks having pulled out, were asked to open the festival by Worthy Farm's enterprising owner, Michael Eavis, who still runs the Glastonbury festival today.
By their own admission, they were overshadowed by bigger acts such as Al Stewart, Keith Christmas and T. Rex, whose frontman Marc Bolan arrived in a Buick covered in suede.
Over the next six years Stackridge released five albums with songs such as Dangerous Bacon, The Road to Venezuela and Fish in a Glass. But they never really made it big and in 1976 the band split. The years since have brought mixed fortunes for the band members. Davis and Warren took on principal parts in pop group the Korgis, Slater played rock 'n' roll with Dorset bands, while Walters turned his guitar to jazz in local pubs. They officially got back together last year under their old manager, Tobin, with selected additional musicians, and released a back catalogue of their hits on Angel-Air Records. Now joined by musicians born decades after their Glastonbury moment, Stackridge are recording a new album to be released in mid-summer.
Like all musical comebacks, there is an imperfection. Blake never again touched a drumstick after the band split, although he is making a film about Stackridge's comeback. But the remaining band feels that, 40 years on, they have the maturity to meet the success that eluded them when "egos" got in the way. "We've had a long intervening period when we've learned a lot about ourselves," said Warren. "We're more committed now."
