Produced by Man & Vic Maile at Rockfield, Chipping Norton & Olympic Studios May/July 1973
Recorded live at The Roundhouse, London. June 24th 1973 by Vic Maile with The Pye Mobile.
Vocal accompaniment on "C'mon" by The Gwalia Male Choir.
Special thanks to Vic Maile for his patience. Anton Matthews for his engineering. Andrew Lauder for his faith. Len Brown and his gang for getting us to say what we meant to say and not what he said we meant. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Also to Nektar for coming to England. This album is dedicated to The Human Race and our Captain, Barrie Marshall.
Art direction and photography inside: Pierre Tubbs
Front photography: Ruan O'Laughran.
Designed and model made by Art Direction.
Unfortunately, this is in fact the only live album Man released in the states, which is surprising as almost all the studio albums got some form of American release. However, more than a few copies of 'Live at the Padget Room', 'Christmas at the Patti' 'Maximum Darkness' and 'All's Well That Ends Well' did make it onto American record shelves as imports. Man's popularity in the states would have been greatly increased if their live material had be more readily available.
The fact that Man didn't manage that on their first and only official double album, 'Back Into The Future', is because they sensibly divided it into a studio and a live platter. And since they were a group that stretched out live to produce improvisation of an often commendable quality, it was hardly an exercise in 'soaking the punter', especially at a budget price of £3.10s Od. Up until that time, the only live material made available was a couple of 'various-artist' compilations, plus a limited edition LP recorded at the Padget Rooms Penarth. All had been excellent, but had featured a radically different band to the one that assembled at the Roundhouse on 24th June 1973 to addd an album's worth of live music to six previously recorded studio songs.
Guitarist-vocalist Mickey Jones, ever-present since 1968, headed a group featuring drummer Terry Williams (a 1970 recruit), bassist-vocalist Will Youatt (1972) and keyboardist-vocalist Phil Ryan (also 1972). Bothe the latter had played on 'Be Good To Yourself At Least Once A Day', Man's seminal release of that year (now available on BGOCD14), but the fifth member to feature on that waxing, guitarist Clive John, had since left to plough his own idiosyncratic solo furrow.
His departure left a gap that, after a three-week tour of Germany as a fourpiece, was filled by Alan 'Tweke' Lewis, a teenage prodigy who'd done time with Jethro Tull offshoot Wild Turkey. Arriving too late to feature on the first side of this set he overdubbed guitar on 'Ain't Their Fight' before packing his axe and heading for the Roundhouse.
Side One's quartet of concise (for Man) tracks kicked off with 'A Night In Dad's Bag', developed from a guitar figure Mickey had been experimenting with. 'I was playing around with a riff in 15/8 time, and before we knew it we had a song'. Will added the lyrics.
As if to counterbalance the guitar-heavy drive of 'Dad's Bag (Baghdad - get it?), Phil Ryan brought his arsenal of electric piano, Hammond organ and Moog Satellite synthesiser to bear on the next track, 'Just For You', a thank-you to the band's fans for their support through bad times and good. 'I'm not very satisfied with the mix,' he says today. 'The production ideas were very loose. We were left very much to our own devices, so you had everyone pitching in . . . one consequence was that there was no real specific direction or production policy.' That may be so, but the overall result across the album (for the listener, if not all the participants) is both diverse and satisfying.
The title track is a Will Youatt composition - surprising, perhaps since he's omitted from the communal writing credit. That was due to a song publishing deal from which he was trying to extricate himself at the time: in 1994, we can give credit where it's due! 'Having got the title from Mickey,' he recalls, 'I came up with the verse and choruses and worked them into a finished song.' When Man re-formed in 1983 after a seven-year hiatus, this song (which had yet to be played by any line-up) was revived due to its highly appropriate title, but since Will was no longer a band member was sung - after a fashion - by Martin Ace.
The original version, though, has all the atmosphere the title suggests, and the elaborate gatefold sleeve design was intended to reflect the lyric. The track became a German-only single, for which it was backed by another Will-warbled number, 'Don't Go Away'. For this tune, the composer played a 12-string Jumbo acoustic guitar, leaving drummer Terry Williams to scour Rockfield studios for suitably subtle percussion. 'We wanted the sound of bongos,' he recalls. 'I didn't have any, but knew a man who did, and he was Pick Withers - of Dire Straits fame. Small world, eh?'
Side Two of the album flashed back to 'Be Good To Yourself' with its two extended tracks. And that was no coincidence, because 'Ain't Their Fight' had started life at those sessions but was left off, says Mickey, 'because we'd got our quota'. Totally recorded at Chipping Norton (all the other backing tracks were cut at Rockfield and overdubbed elsewhere), 'Ain't Their Fight' was made for stage performance; it had been played prior to recording by the Clive John-era Man (for which he would swop his guitar for Will's bass) and Youatt later resurrected it for his band Alkatraz.
the lyrics are heartfelt. 'I was living in this communal house in Laugharne,' Will explains 'and one day while I was out it was raided. I arrived back and was hauled off by the police . . . Anyhow, the others kept saying I'd be alright, but I had this phrase going around in my head . . . "It's okay for you lot, it ain't your fight . . ." The song's all about that.'
'Never Say Nups To Nepalese' is titled after the herbal substances the band's followers would bring into the dressing room for their heroes' pre- and post-gig delectation. Musically speaking, it's a Phil Ryan instrumental split into two at Will Youatt's suggestion by a couple of simple vocal lines: 'Someone to see you, someone to see me.' It's the composer's personal favourite from the album 'because among all the madness it's got a sort of tidiness. What you've got to remember is that what appeared to be anarchic from the fans' point of view was just us being f***ing untogether!'
And so to the live performances. The use of the Gwalia Male Choir stemmed from the previous year's successful choir-augmented outdoor concert supporting Frank Zappa at the Surrey Oval cricket ground. They warmed up with their own track, 'Sospan Fach'. before adding swelling vocal support to 'C'mon', proving that Welsh vocal tradition can blend with rock in a wholly natural way. Man's roots were in the Sixties close-harmony act the Bystanders, so vocals had always meant more than to many 'blowing' bands of the era. Listening to this, it's hard to believe it was only Tweke Lewis's third gig with the band.
The final track, extending across the whole of the fourth side, was 'Jam Up Jelly Tight' - no relation to the Tommy Roe song of that name but, as the subtitle 'Oh No Not Again' suggested, a reprise of Man's 'greatest riff', 'Spunk Rock'. Almost totally improvised, save for the familiar two-guitar climax, it remains a highpoint of recorded Man music - and, if as Lewis claims, 'It was by no means the best we played,' then the mind can only boggle.
At least one further track, 'Bananas', was recorded on the night, and later released over two sides of a 7-inch EP in November 1976 after Man had ended their long association with United Artists and signed to MCA. Sadly, space doesn't allow its inclusion here - but even though this CD may have cost you a little more that £3.10s Od you have to admit it still represents great value
Finally, the cover design, which has always been something of a talking point for fans. The costumes were hired from Brunel's Theatre Costume Agency, and tracks were made for Taplow near Maidenhead, Berkshire. The idea, said Will, was to 'combine a Victorian Bank Holiday effect - everyone dressed up in their Sunday best for a trip to the seaside - with a futuristic effect of some railway lines all warped and twisted disappearing into some distant horizon. I thought it'd make a nice contrast.'
Needless to say, things didn't work out exactly to plan, as Mickey recalls. 'We turned up at the station, which was all derelict. We used the old waiting rooms to change - the boys in one room, the girls in the other. The station is on the Wales to Paddington main line, so every 15 minutes an express would come thundering through. I think passengers thought they were going through some sort of time warp!
Because of all the trains, the session took longer than anticipated, so a model was built for the inside sleeve with Tweke Lewis (in bowler) and Man's personal manager Philip Foster 'looking like Laurel and Hardy,' according to Will. For the record, the cast list for the outside reads as follows: Angie Davis, Will Youatt, Plug's daughter, Howard 'Plug' Davis (tour manager), Ella Ryan, Phil Ryan, Linda Williams, Mickey Jones, Terry Williams, Jenny Jones, Noel Ryan, Pam Ryan and Jeff Hooper (sound engineer).
At Number 23, 'Back Into The Future' was Man's first chart album - but Phil Ryan believes it could and should have done better.
'I think it was a petrol crisis at the time and they couldn't press any records; there were no recordings in the shops.' Within three months of its release the band had split, Jones and Williams retaining the Man name but Ryan and Youatt continuing (under the Neutrons banner) the spacy, adventurous musical policy of which this album is an impressive manifesto.
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PO Box 49, Bordon, Hampshire GU35 OAF, England
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