Malcolm About three years ago ... or looking back on it all ... Oh dear ... I can't do this kind of thing on the phone ... yes ... oh! ... today, I suppose, I mean, they want it today ... what shall we do ... We can't do it on the phone ... That isn't very much to go on ... That isn't going to let anybody know how we met each other ... John No, they can't.
The John in this conversation is John Eichler, our landlord, scapegoat, hideout and crutch. He writes film scripts.
Taking the easy way out again
Micky's idea at the start ... Deke sings and wrote the words ... Micky does the solo in the middle Deke at the end ... Jenny Marshall (who's beautiful) joins us all in the backing vocals. Ken plays bass.
The Thunder & Lightning Kid
From a novel by Deke ... Screenplay by Malcolm ... Malcolm sings it and Deke & Micky join him on the harmonies ... Malcolm & Deke wrote the words ... Deke plays the piano solo in the mddle and Micky sings a line and does the solo at the end. Ken plays bass. Malcolm plays guitar.
California Silks & Satins
Malcolm and Deke sing it ... with everybody in on the Harmonies ... Deke wrote the words ... Micky plays the solos ... Terry plays all the bells and things ... The Whaley Guild plays the perfect bass line.
Deke Let's go home ... I've got to lie down.
Kerosene
Micky and Deke did the music and Deke wrote the words ... Micky sings them and Malcolm sings a line ... Deke plays the solos in the middle, one with Malcolm and Micky does the one on the end. Ken plays bass.
Scotch Corner Is the story of what happened at a Transport Cafe at Scotch Corner. We met a man who looked like a turtle and he was going to the lake District to commit Suicide. Micky's original idea. Malcolm and Deke wrote the words ... Deke very heavily into Shirley MacLaine at the time. Deke does the solo in the middle with Mickey doing another one higher up at about a million watts and Micky does the one at the end ... Deke & Micky sing it ... with everybody in on the harmonies. Ken plays dancing bass.
The end
Micky and Deke did the music ... Terry banged gongs and Ken played a mad bass line.
Micky Jones Guitar and singing.
Malcolm Morley Plays piano and some guitar and sings.
Ken Whaley Plays bass.
Terry Williams Plays drums, sings and does all the effects.
Deke Leonard Plays guitar and some piano and sings.
Later still ...
Malcolm It was a good tour, that Swiss one, the kind of experience where you meet people that you know instinctively that you're going to be close to for a long time. All of us in Help Yourself had never heard of Man's music and I can remember hoping that I was going to like them and I was not disappointed.
Deke You're satisfied with far too little, that's your trouble Malcolm.
Malcolm Every night after we had done our set I used to sit by the side of the stage watching and listening to some of the best live music I had heard in a long time. To me it had that indefinable thing that all the best music I've heard has had. Feel, Soul, Spirit ... whatever you want to call it, so from the music to the friendships that were sealed and have stuck (I live in the same house as Mad Deke Leonard and dancing Ken Whaley and Terry most of the time) and all the changes we've all been through we have somehow arrived at this band and at this point all I can say is I'm glad to be making music with Micky Jones, Terry Williams, Deke Leonard and ken Whaley ... Thank you and good night mate.
Deke We in the Man Band felt the same way watching the Helps (And I live in the same house as Mad Malcolm Morley and dancing Ken Whaley and Terry most of the time). It's a lovely band to be in. It's a warm feeling to know that during the times when you fall to bits there's always someone to help you stick the pieces back together again ... Thank you and Goodnight mate.
Some Dedications
To Max and Jackie Morgan for his food and the shape of her body
To Kingsley 'No aerial photographs please' Ward for building a Welsh 24 track studio especially for us.
To Martin Morgan and Pete Trident ... Well done boys and to Judy Red Flag.
To the High Tide Restaurant for their fish.
To Bernard & Sue for the lend of their castle.
To Foster for doing absolutely nothing.
To Hunter S. and his Attorney for their sanity.
To Dave Charles for being the most efficient generator in the world.
To Kermit Murdock, Luke Askey, Richard Treece and Charles Deirkop.
To Papa Nes and Stanley Kawolski.
To All past and future Manbands and all who sail in her.
To our ladies.
To everybody who helped at the office, at UA and everywhere else.
To Andrew for his ice cool ear at the mixing.
To Keith for the Parmesan Cheese ... It tasted sweet ... very sweet ... very very sweet.
That's all.
In ten hours' time we'll be getting on a plane to America. We've sat up for hours trying to get these liner notes legible for those people who have to read them. We've been really fighting our slow hippie scrawl. This is the best we can get at this moment. We're going to bed now because tomorrow we take on the might of the USA. What's left of us will then make the next album in a few months' time. I hope everybody will still be around then and in one piece.
Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics ... which one are you ...
Take care of yourselves,
Love
The Manband.
Final Curtain
Produced by Roy Thomas Baker
at Morgan Studios, Willesden
Engineer: Martin Levan
and at Trident Studios, Wardour Street
Engineer: Peter Kelsey
During February 1974
Front and back cover photography by Keith Morris.
Inside photography by David Redfern International.
Design: Art Direction/Pierre Tubbs
For news, information etc., regarding the Man Band contact Box AHA, United Artists Records, 37/41 Mortimer Street, London W.1.
Special thanks to Patrick Moore.
All tracks composed by Jones/Leonard/Morley/Whaley/Williams except 'California Silks and Satins' by Leonard/Morley.
All published by Man Music.
Taking your shoes away
Walking on broken glass
Taking up high way straight
Hanging inside your carass
Where can we get by dawn
Washing in morning ice
Drinking the hero's wine
Seeing in stranger's eyes
*You're the one who we can hunt
Just like I began to start
When you're here he'll never put you down
Why I know that you're the land
Who will never clear our mind
Oh round and round with everyone in town
Letting too fast to seat
Running since with those feet
Talking too fast you hear
Feeling your body's squeak
La, la, la, la, la, la
Taking the easy way out
La, la, la, la, la, la
Taking the easy way out
(*repeat)
2. THE THUNDER AND LIGHTNING KID
There's my bill now I'm all on rum
There's my pills gonna hae some fun
But there's no smoking kill that weed
No man saw about me, watch me bleed
*Cool winds blowing, sky is filled upon
Looks like things are turn the real wheel
Christ is Jesus, I need sombody here
Like men crushing down the road
Jesus can be out this home
Freedom just a war to me
Shere with blind hours let me be
(* repeat)
Looks like somebody else
Cut his hair and shaved his beard
Woo Jesus woo
Woo trying my heart
Well I don't need trouble
Let's keep it clear
I see you in double
Where's the kick
The fuzz that I'm lying around the floor
I can't strees scene what I just saw
(* repeat)
Looks like somebody else
Kick him down to long out bar
Always do that walk at hard
Seems there is a mystery
Like I found in the light man's kick
(* repeat)
3. CALIFORNIA SILKS AND SATINS
California silks in silence
Russling in my ears
Clutching softly at my laughter
Touching every tear
Turn him slowly, turn in slowly
Somebody said somebody saw you laughing
California whisky rainbow
Help me got to sleep
Thirteen hundred silver dollars
Steal but never keep
(* repeat)
California rose and sunrise
Bending till you break
(All because of drunk and sleeping
Sleep until you wake
(* repeat)
4. FOUR DAY LOUISE
Why I told you before
My love is falling into your hand
And a woman will crawl is so big
That I just can't understand
That woman, ugly way, in my hands
Doing each day to dream
And leaving me feeling zero
We do wanna heart
To have a good feeling for him
That woman's that free way
Will heart ends dream
Four day Louise
If someone everyone knows
She's so easily peace
I believe that everything's gone
(* repeat)
She's a good lookin' woman
With a lot to loose
The loving's feed of fragile heart
Read what you loose
The old man said
She's worn, she's old
The young man said
She's young and she's cold
She needs a piece of everyone
To fill a hungry hollows
The hours finer and never
Don't show a crumpled soul
Her angry craws of jealousy
Keep tearing us apart
And me I'm in the kerosene
To so good buring heart
She has a horror in opening door
To you
She has a horror in opening door
To you
She has a horror in opening door
The silence scream
A rolling stream
A voice of queen
Keep you up all dream
Until you've gone
3. SCOTCH CORNER
*See them in the road house
Drifting out of sight
And taking voice of happiest days
Wounded through the night
**Some dig the silence
Somewhere to hide
Some take the chances
To single sight
This man look like a turtle
That life had worn to bits
His eyes were full of wisdom
For his mind was full of shit
God gave him nothing
Just let it die
The pockets are empty
Something inside
It's good to see a human
Too glad to be afraid
Between the nights efficient
And truck with steady rate
All lips are scarlet
All hair is tied
My love has sorrow
I know she tried
Remember sons of poverty
That turns the frame for friends
That can't be heard by
Anyone at all
Come take us angles
Who care them all
God made us care us
Two hearts of gold
(*, ** repeat)
Ever-present guitarist/vocalist Mickey Jones and drummer Terry Williams had been rejoined by former Man mainman Deke Leonard who brought with him two members of his solo band, Iceberg -- keyboardist/vocalist Malcolm Morley and bassist Ken Whaley. Both had earlier been members of Help Yourself, United Artists lablemates who had acquired a cult following without actually breaking through commercially. 'Rhinos Winso and Lunatics' was to be Man's bid to make that all-important leap to sales success -- and the engagement of studio hotshot Roy Thomas Baker, who'd already produced Queen's first two albums, was a clear statement of intent.
For Micky Jones, 'Not having ever worked with Ken and Malcolm before it was a totally new thing for me. Fortunately, it worked out to be one of my favourite Man albums.'
He recalls it being label boss Andrew Lauder's idea to get a name producer. Notoriously stubborn to outside attempts at direction, Man had been odds-on to clash with their newly acquired mentor, but differences of opinion, Jones recalls, were 'just the usual ones, not a lot. For me, it went remarkably smoothly'. Guitar partner Deke Leonard concurs. 'I think Baker did a really good job, we're not the easiest band in the world to produce but I thought he was great. He was quite a buoyant character, nothing we said seemed to get to him.'
The album, Leonard continues, 'was written recorded and mixed in three weeks. We went down to Clearwell Castle to rehearse it and learned all the songs in a week. Charles Shaar Murray came down to do an interview for New Musical Express. Then we went straight into Morgan Studios with Roy Baker, recorded it in a week and mixed it in the third week.'
For Ken Whaley, 'Rhinos' was 'all very exciting. It felt like we were really on the verge of "big time". I'd only done two albums then, and had never really enjoyed it. But this was very encouraging and constructive. I was very impressed, too, with Deke and Micky's professionalism: their ability to do complex, multi-layered guitar overdubs amazed me.'
The opening track 'Taking The Easy Way Out' added 'Again' since a totally different ballad appeared on Leonard's 'Kamikaze' album. It was also a single though relectantly, he insists. 'We never liked releasing singles, whether that was for good or ill. UA suggested it, we grudgingly agreed and they grudgingly released it!' Though unsucessful on 45, the song has a place in folklore as being 'the song John Lennon liked the best: when (San Francisco DJ) Phil Charles played him a couple of Man tracks, that was the one that Lennon liked. I was quite chuffed about that.' Lennon was even mooted as producer of Man's next album, but despite a devious lobbying campaign nothing came of it.
The band liked 'Thunder and Lightning Kid' enough to choose it for their 'best of collection, 'Perfect Timing'. It owes much of its funky feel to Morley (who sings it) swopping instruments and picking up the guitar. 'It was fun to play,' agrees keyboardist Leonard. 'It had a great groove. Micky does a great solo and the end, with that drum fill Terry does with Micky, is one of those little moments that send a shiver down my spine.'
All tracks on 'Rhinos' were credited to the band, except for one: 'California Silks and Satins' written by Morley and Leonard 'one Christmas in Barnes' while staying with Help Yourself manager (and future Hope & Anchor landlord) John Eichler. 'We wrote it sitting round the table. When we got down to rehearsals Malcolm and I played it, and everybody seemed to like it.' Terry Williams' bells seem somehow appropriately seasonal.
'Four Day Louise' is a song the 'Rhinos On The Road' tour programme suggested 'we'll probably play for the next twenty nine years' -- needless to say, they didn't, although some superb versions were played before it fell from the live set. In studio for, it brought the first side to a close. Side Two, in those days of vinyl albums, consissted of a short instrumental intro, an outro and two much longer pieces -- very much closer to the traditional Man mould.
'Kerosene' is Micky Jones' favourite track, and another that made the 'best of'. In fact, he liked it so much he palyed it in the early days of his solo career after Man split at the end of 1976, and it featured in the band's repertoire on their re-formation seven years later. Perhaps more than any other single song, it justifies Micky's verdict that 'With this album we were heading toward American AOR, though that's a horrible thing to say.' A touch of Queen in those layered harmonies, perhaps, Mr Baker -- and Freddie would surely have loved singing about 'a whore who would open the door' . . .
The album's climactic closer, 'Scotch Corner' was broadcast before release as a Radio 1 session under the provisional title 'God Gave Us Turtles'. It's a powerful tale of rejection, though Deke insists 'not a true story as such' -- and, perhaps more ambitiously than any other 'Rhinos' track, fused Man's past reputation for instrumental blowing with harmonies and hooks.
'Like anything, you can start basing it on something and the song takes you in its own direction. We were in Scotch Corner (motorway services) driving back from Scotland, and we stopped for toast. A guy came in who had one of those collars that seem to be ten sizes too big and one of those scrawny necks poking out of the top. He was about 70 or 80 I suppose, getting on a bit, and he just looked like a turtle.
Thereafter Hollywood takes over. 'When you're searching for that lyric you'll use absolutely anything. You go in a room and you knock up songs and you come out with stuff you didn't have when you went it.
'There was that film with Frank Sinatra, Shirley Maclaine and Dean Martin (Some Came Running, 1958) which ends with Maclaine being shot in a fairground. They're like gamblers, and the last scene she dies in front of Sinatra to save his life when somebody's trying to shoot him. I wound some sort of description of her into it.' So when you hear yourself singing along to 'Her lips are scarlet . . .', you now know who you're going on about!
So much for the music -- but as with every Man album since time began, the title and the cover had stories of their own to tell. The gatefold featured an African family regarding a poster of 'Man Live at the Mombassa Hippodrome'. Micky finally made it to Kenya 14 years later backing Asian rock'n'roll revivalist Peter Singh. . . . but this was strictly a set up. 'Pierre Tubbs, the designer, knew a fashion photographer who was going out to do a shoot; he came up with the idea and gave the guy some posters. The guy was in Mombassa, stuck them up on that shed and took some photos of them.'
As for the sleeve proper, it wasn't one of the band's communal homesteads as most fans fondly believed, but somewhere in south London. 'The guy had mad a papier maché rhino which was in a shed,' reveals Micky Jones. 'I don't know how Pierre got to know about it but we all ended up there with this rhino: it was too big to get out! We decided to take everything that we owned, any little mementos that we treasured, and that was it. We filled the shed up and sat around.' These details may be difficult to pick out on a CD-sized picture, but they include Nektar and Iceberg posters, Bo Diddley, Quicksilver and Elvis albums, a stand-up cutout of WG Grace, a model sailing ship, a jar of Horlicks, a hookah and a rubber plant.
Turn the sleeve over and you don't need to be Poirot to conclude that murder most foul has been committed. 'There was a pistol and I was playing with it. Some wag, it may or may not have been me, said "Let's put a bit of ketchup on Micky's forehead and have him lying on the floor . . ."' Deke Leonard, guilty as charged!
A sixth Man appears with his back to the camera: that's John Eichler. 'Keith Morris, the sleeve photographer, wanted some large object in the mddle of the bottom area of the thing and he used John . . . he was quite the man for the job. I quite like the fact that John's on an album cover,' Deke concludes 'because we always mention him anyway . . .'
The title 'Rhinos Winos And Lunatics' came from the Leonard pen, 'the first title I suggested. I wrote 'em all down -- it happens every album -- and it was at the top of the list. We went through pages of suggestions and came back to that.'
The album was promoted not only in Britain but the States, spiritual home of Man music. 'The first time in America was the usual eye-opener,' recalls Deke. 'We got smashed, we got laid, we got into trouble: the usual stuff. I've no idea how the album sold there, but we had a favourable reaction from everyone: "Wooh! Where do you guys come from -- Denmark?"'
On their return home, the band found themselves one member down when Malcolm Morley defected, suitcase in hand. According to Ken Whaley, 'It was a major change in that the band became harder and more rock'n'roll, I guess, and I think we missed his melodic input -- I did, anyway -- and keyboard textures.'
They returned to the studio, and the result was 'Slow Motion' effectively the twin of 'Rhinos' and now available again on BGOCD209.
Dedicated and digitally equipped Man fans can pick up the continuing story there. But if this remains the only Man CD you ever purchase than you can consider yourself in good company: it came second on the Welsh Connection fanzine's readers pool. With some thirty original albums including bootlegs and radio sessions to choose from, there are clearly plenty of lunatics abroad -- congratulations for joining them!
Michael Heatley
For Man information, send SAE/IRC to PO Box 49, Bordon, Hampshire GU35 0AF, England
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