Biography
Originally operating as the Raiders, the lineup of Gary Le Port on lead guitar, Jimmy Rayther on rhythm guitar, Pete Johnson on bass and Tony White on drums featured vocalist Robert Farrent, who performed under the stage name Bobby Shafto. In 1960 the group, still including Rod Stewart, auditioned for Joe Meek inside a north London church hall, where the producer was searching for an instrumental outfit to cut his composition “Night Of the Vampire.” Yielding to Meek’s directive, they parted company with Stewart, adopted the name the Moontrekkers and cut the track for Parlophone Records; the single spent a solitary week at number 50 on the UK Top 50 and earned a BBC ban on account of its added effects, among them a creaking coffin lid and wailing wind. A follow-up Parlophone release, “There’s Something At The Bottom Of The Well,” failed to register on the charts, prompting Johnson and White to depart for the Aristocats; Rayther also exited, leaving Le Port to front a revised Moontrekkers lineup that issued the 1963 Decca Records single “Moondust,” which climbed into Sweden’s Top 10. The original members reconvened in 1991 to perform at several Joe Meek memorial concerts and subsequently accepted a series of semi-professional engagements.