Stackridge

Stackridge emerged toward the end of 1969 as one of the most distinctive rock outfits shaped by the British Invasion era. While Andy Davis and Jim “Crun” Walter were still working together in Bristol’s blues outfit Griptight Thynne, Davis began looking for additional musicians. Mike Tobin, soon to become the band’s first manager, brought Davis together with Mike “Mutter” Slater, who had been performing in the folk duo Mick & Mutter. James Warren responded to a newspaper advertisement, quickly established rapport with Davis, and the pair started composing material jointly. Billy Bent arrived while they were shaping “Dora the Female Explorer,” offered the use of his home studio for rehearsals, and accepted their invitation to play drums. At that time Mike Evans was performing violin with Bristol’s traditional groups the Westlanders and the Moonshiners. On the occasion of Davis’s twenty-first birthday the musicians were gathered in a pub when Evans entered; recognizing him slightly, Davis extended an invitation to join, with Walter concurring that violin would enrich the ensemble. Around the same period Walter floated the latest eccentric name, Stackridge Lemon, which was promptly abbreviated to Stackridge.

Early performances remained infrequent, prompting Walter’s departure. After Tobin relocated to London and secured steadier engagements, the group honed its wide-ranging, playful repertoire around Bristol, drawing on stated touchstones that ranged from Zappa and the Beach Boys through Flanders & Swann, Syd Barrett, Igor Stravinsky, the Marx Brothers, and J. S. Bach, with particular weight given to the Beatles’ 1965–1966 work. Their eclectic stage attire, Slater’s lively and humorous stage commentary (including his use of dustbin lids as percussion), Warren’s digressive spoken introductions (which paralleled Peter Gabriel’s contemporaneous experiments with Genesis), and the rare presence of both flute and violin within a rock context helped cultivate a devoted audience.

The band signed with MCA and, under Fritz Fryer’s production, tracked their debut album Stackridge in spring 1971, sharing engineer Martin Birch with Deep Purple. Warren contributed four solo compositions and three collaborations with Davis, confirming his position as primary lyricist. The record featured the exuberant “Dora the Female Explorer,” “Percy the Penguin” (their earliest animal lament), and an extended twelve-minute rendition of the stage staple “Slark,” a creature that lifts the narrator from his car and carries him “beyond the fields we know.” Walter returned on bass, freeing Warren to concentrate on guitar while Davis continued alternating between guitar and keyboards.

Following two singles drawn from the first album—one a shortened “Slark,” the other the live instrumental favorite “Purple Spaceships Over Yatton”—and a tour supporting Wishbone Ash, the sextet entered the studio again in August 1972 to cut Friendliness, widely regarded as their definitive statement. The sessions consumed seventy hours of off-peak time plus thirty hours of mixing. Warren supplied five songs (including the two-part title track), Slater contributed a piano instrumental, three pieces came from Walter and Davis (among them “Syracuse the Elephant” and “Keep on Clucking,” anticipating animal-rights themes by roughly a decade), and the album opened with the galloping instrumental “Lummy Days.” Although MCA issued the record in the United States, promotion was nonexistent. Despite modest sales, Stackridge had outgrown the “novelty” label, producing, in Chas Keep’s 1996 assessment, “A sort of children’s favorites with attitude; a compendium of tuneful melodies performed without the now dated excesses of [their] contemporaries.” After Friendliness appeared in November 1972 the band toured with the Pigsty Hill Orchestra and released the February 1973 single “Do the Stanley” backed with “C’est la Vie.” Despite its catchy, sing-along character, disc jockeys overlooked the A-side, and BBC management limited its airplay because of a reference to the Queen. From 1971 onward, however, Radio 1 and the BBC routinely captured Stackridge in session and concert, as they did with numerous rock and pop acts; several of those recordings surfaced on CD in the 1990s.

Preparation for a third album brought unexpected assistance when George Martin’s son played Friendliness for his father; colleagues at Air Studios had already urged Martin to collaborate with the group. Initially hesitant, Martin listened to demo tapes and agreed to produce what became The Man in the Bowler Hat, the band’s most commercially successful and widely recognized release. Chas Keep later noted that Martin refined melodic and rhythmic details (particularly vocal harmonies), oversaw orchestration, and even played piano on “Humiliation.” Andy Mackay of Roxy Music added saxophone to “Dangerous Bacon,” a buoyant nod to the Beatles. The track was passed over for the lead single in favor of “The Galloping Gaucho,” a sharp satire of glitter rock and the pretensions of “being cool.” That choice, however, reinforced the public view of Stackridge as an eccentric, rural dancehall-styled troupe—warm when audiences sought detachment, intricate when simplicity was prized, and illuminating when opacity was fashionable. The album contained some of the strongest hybrid rock music of its era. Most lyrics were credited collectively under the improbable pseudonym Smegmakovitch, while primary compositional duties fell to Davis, Slater, and Warren in that sequence. The remarkable instrumental closer “God Speed the Plough” is attributed to Wabadaw Sleeve, again a collective effort. Despite the display of musicianship and imagination, the record’s commercial underperformance contributed to the eventual breakup.

Observing Martin’s methods, Slater rejected the notion of faithfully recreating the album onstage and concluded that the band was merely toying with music. Seeking formal study rather than commercial entanglement, he departed. Billy Sparkle also left, later serving for several years as Martin’s personal assistant and pursuing photography professionally. Davis’s restlessness was briefly eased by the addition of Keith Gemmell (ex-Audience) on saxophone, flute, and clarinet and Rod Bowkett on keyboards, permitting Davis to move to drums. This configuration toured through the winter of 1973–1974 with new material alongside selections from The Man in the Bowler Hat, which finally appeared in February 1974. Within months Warren and Walter were asked to leave. Gordon Haskell, who had sung and played bass on King Crimson’s Lizard, joined briefly before departing amicably, leaving behind the song “(No One’s More Important Than) The Earthworm.” Paul Karas took his place. Bowkett wrote several striking instrumentals, and both he and Gemmell steered the music toward jazzier territory. Evans, long an outsider, also exited, leaving Davis in sole command. Roy Morgan joined on drums, returning Davis to guitar. Consequently a markedly altered Stackridge recorded Extravaganza for Elton John’s Rocket Records in late 1974. Issued in January 1975, the album offered strong songs (“The Volunteer,” “Spin ’Round the Room,” “Earthworm,” and “Happy in the Lord”) and witty instrumentals (“Who’s That Up There with Bill Stokes?” and “Pocket Billiards”), yet the original spirit had vanished.

In 1975 Bowkett yielded to Dave Lawson (ex-Greenslade) and Pete Van Hooke replaced Morgan. Slater had returned somewhat earlier, allowing Gemmell to concentrate on saxophone and clarinet and restoring Davis to vocal duties. Walter was invited back to replace Karas on bass. This final lineup produced Mr. Mick, the group’s sole genuine concept album, released in March 1976. The issued version diverged sharply from the tapes Stackridge delivered; Davis later recalled, twenty years on, that “Rocket hacked the tapes to pieces, rendered the whole thing unintelligible, and precipitated the band’s demise.” Concert reviewers were equally unenthusiastic, finding the narrative (delivered by Slater) confusing or missing the earlier exuberance, or both. Although the record included a superb reading of the Beatles’ “Hold Me Tight,” two notable Slater instrumentals (“The Slater’s Waltz” and “Coniston Water”), and further strong Walter–Davis material, Stackridge disbanded.

Do the Stanley, a 1976 retrospective, collected non-album tracks, the live fiddle showcase “Let There Be Lids,” and several signature album cuts. Stackridge’s fusion of incisive yet empathetic lyrics with intricate yet melodic lines, innovative production, and taut arrangements helped open pathways for later pop-rock acts: Queen, 10cc, and Sparks in the 1970s; Split Enz, Squeeze, They Might Be Giants, and Prefab Sprout in the 1980s; and Barenaked Ladies, Trashcan Sinatras, the Bats, and Divine Comedy in the 1990s. Davis and Warren resurfaced in mainstream music in 1979 as the Korgis. They finally attained the singles success that had eluded them in Stackridge with “If I Had You” from the debut album The Korgis (number 13 U.K.) and especially “Everyone’s Got to Learn Sometime” (number five U.K., number 18 U.S.) from the follow-up Dumb Waiters. After two further albums, Sticky George and This World’s for Everyone, passed unnoticed, the pair separated again. Davis issued the solo album Clevedon Pier in 1989 and remained active through 1998 both performing—with the Andy Davis Band (whose limited-edition self-titled CD appeared in 1994) and the trio Los Caballeros alongside Stuart Gordon (Korgis) and Peter Allerhand—and producing. Warren released a solo album in 1986 but was seldom heard from musically for many years.

Interest revived with the 1992 release of Stackridge: BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert. By 1997 the entire catalog had reached CD, including the second BBC live set Radio 1 Sessions. Warren and Walter, observing both the reissues and growing online enthusiasm, concluded the moment might be right for a return. Warren assembled a four-track demo, Stackridge: More, in late 1998, comprising three songs he wrote or co-wrote plus one by longtime friend Roger Cook, recorded with Andy West. According to Mike Evans’s wife Jennie, now the band’s business manager, Warren contacted every original member with the invitation to “do it again.” Slater, Sparkle, and Davis declined for assorted reasons, yet Evans, who had continued performing folk music after leaving Stackridge, rejoined. A new full-length album, first slated as Sex and Flags, was scheduled for spring 1999; the reconstituted group accepted the folk-stage opening slot at that year’s Glastonbury Festival. The album ultimately appeared later in 1999 under the title Something for the Weekend (with the Sex and Flags name reserved for later use).

A management dispute ended the reunion in 2000, sending the musicians their separate ways once more. After a series of performances as James Warren & Friends—featuring Crun Walter, keyboardist Glenn Tommey, and violinist Sarah Mitchell—Warren again raised the possibility of reviving Stackridge. This time he persuaded two additional founders, Andy Cresswell-Davis and Mutter Slater, to participate; their return as composers, instrumentalists, and lead vocalists, together with Warren and Walter, restored the band—later expanded by violinist Rachel Hall and drummer Eddie John—to something close to its classic configuration. Sex and Flags (2003) contained six tracks drawn from privately pressed demos originally issued as Stackridge Lemon, supplemented by material from Something for the Weekend. Not until 2007 did the group tour consistently, culminating in a 2008 appearance at Glastonbury thirty-eight years after opening the festival. Buoyed by enthusiastic multi-generational audiences, Stackridge began work on a new album with producer Chris Hughes. A Victory for Common Sense, released in July 2009, became the first album to feature all four principal composers since The Man in the Bowler Hat in 1973.