Their
first single, 'Night Of Fear' (released on 2 December 1966), had reached
Number 2 in the British charts by January. The following month, it was
included in a select group of records condemned in no uncertain terms by
a Sunday newspaper - the News Of The World - in a special series entitled
'Pop Stars And Drugs': 'Night Of Fear', claimed the paper, was clearly
about an LSD trip. And the Move were in no hurry to dispute this interpretation.
The five original members of the group had all played
with local bands during the years of the beat boom of the early Sixties.
Despite the successes of other provincial groups in the early Sixties,
Birmingham's bands seemed to lag behind in the race to become national
stars. According to Roy Wood, the reason was that Birmingham audiences
- at the time, considerably wealthier than their cousins in Liverpool or
Newcastle - were mainly to be found on the supper-club circuit where they
expected to hear note-for-note copies of the chart hits of the day rather
than original new material or versions of old or obscure rock'n'roll or
R&B numbers. By 1965, only the Rockin' Berries, the Spencer Davis Group
and the Moody Blues had broken out of the Midlands into the national circuit
- groups like the Redcaps, Carl Wayne and the Vikings and Mike Sheridan
and the Nightriders remained in the shadows.
Despite
appearing regularly on a children's TV show called 'Five O'Clock club',
by late 1965 singer Mike Sheridan and the Nightriders' guitarist, Roy Wood,
both felt that the group was in a rut. Sheridan left to go solo on the
cabaret circuit, while Roy Wood joined forces with a number of musicians
from other small-time Birmingham groups in a general reshuffle which earned
the newly-emerging ensemble their name - the Move.
Carl Wayne brought Chris ('Ace') Kefford with him from Carl Wayne and the Vikings. Kefford - known as 'the singing skull' because of his gaunt looks - played bass. The pedigree of drummer Bev Bevan included a stint with Denny Laine and the Diplomats (Laine's gig prior to joining the Moody Blues) and guitarist Trevor Burton came over from Danny King's Mayfair Set.
Wood
provided the Move with all their hits. His style had always been eclectic,
with influences ranging from country music through hymns, Fifties rock'n'roll
and ballads to classical music and the Beatles. His burning ambition was
to be successful and he had the skill to provide the material with which
to make that happen. As the Move went through their early phases - Mod,
art-pop, flower-power and psychedelia - Roy Wood wrote songs to match.
By the time the Summer of Love arrived on British shores, the Move had latched on to psychedelia in a big way. Their second single, 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow', was released just in time for summer and perfectly complemented the group's new flower-power image: all velvet and brocade and back-combed hair. But by this time what had started as outrage was rapidly becoming orthodox, lightweight pop. Having initially signed with Decca's newly-formed 'progressive' label, Deram, they moved to EMI after the release of 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow'. EMI was at the time the largest record company in the world and signing with them was, in a real sense, a mark that the group had achieved a modicum of respectability.
The Move were assigned to the recently revived Regal Zonophone label (which had been successful throughout the Thirties and Forties before folding in the Fifties) and their 'Flowers In The Rain' was the relaunched label's first release. As part of the publicity campaign for the record, Secunda and the group issued a somewhat risqu6 postcard bearing a scurrilous representation of the then British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, naked in a bath tub. Wilson - a man particularly sensitive about his own public image - immediately took the Move to court and won an injunction preventing the use of this material.
It was all undeniably trivial, but once again the group found themselves in the headlines, featuring as 'the naughty boys' of pop. It was to be the last time. If the need to achieve success had once dictated this sort of image to the Move, the need to sustain it ensured that, from late 1967 on, outrageousness would be transformed into harmless eccentricity.
With 'Flowers In The Rain' all but forgotten about, the
group entered 1968 with no real notion of their direction. Fashion had
moved on and left the Move without anything resembling a developed sense
of their own strengths and weaknesses. The result was internal dissent,
several months of patchy success with records of variable quality and the
eventual departure of a number of key figures from the ranks of the group.
At the beginning of the next year they managed their first UK Number 1 hit with 'Blackberry Way', more-or-less a revamp of 'Flowers In The Rain' but with a much denser, more symphonic sound that incorporated Wood's favourite instrument, the cello. It seemed time to try to establish themselves in America, but dissent and dissatisfaction were brewing among the members.
The previous April, Ace Kefford had left to pursue his own career and Trevor Burton had switched to bass. But now Burton himself departed to form a group - Balls with Denny Laine, who had just left the Moody Blues; he was replaced by Rick Price, another alumnus of the Birmingham scene. In an echo of Mike Sheridan's earlier decision, Carl Wayne left to go into cabaret - seeking a more ‘mature' audience. Jeff Lynne, who had replaced Roy Wood in the Nightriders and overseen their transformation into cult favourites the Idle Race, was brought in to replace Wayne as a singer-guitarist.
Musically,
this period revealed curious swings. 'Curly' (Number 12 in the summer of
1969) was a slight love song with a recorder lick for its hook. 'Brontosaurus'
(Number 7 the following spring)- which saw Wood finally become the group's
frontman in a painted face with multi-coloured hair and garish coat - was
a lurching, heavy-metal version of a parody of every early Sixties dance-craze
song. 'When Alice Comes Back To The Farm' was virtually a remake with different
words. It flopped and the group finally seemed to have lost direction completely.
The
Move - Price, Lynne, Bevan and Wood - made one brief tour of America in
1971 before retiring from live performance in order to develop the Wood-Lynne
project, which soon became known as the Electric Light Orchestra. Price
left to make a solo album and form yet another Birmingham band, Mongrel.
Bev Bevan agreed to stay but opened a record shop in Birmingham to satisfy
his own interests. The Move released one final single, 'California Man',
which reached Number 7 in May 1972 and gained their only American hit with
its B-side, 'Do Ya', which went to Number 93 in November. It became a cult
record in the US, however, and entered the stage repertoire of Todd Rundgren.
In the summer of 1972, the Electric Light Orchestra launched itself upon the world with '10538 Overture' - the sort of homage to Beethoven that the Move had only flirted with before. The record peaked at Number 9 in the UK, but Wood had already lost interest in the project and left to form Wizzard with Rick Price, Hugh McDowell (cello), Nick Pentelow (sax), Mike Burney (sax), Bill Hunt (keyboards and French horn), Keith Smart and Charlie Grima (both drums). Wizzard aimed themselves straight at the teen market, recording commercial pop with successful results. They had two UK Number 1 hits in 1973 with 'See My Baby Jive' and 'Angel Fingers' as well as a Number 4 Christmas hit with `I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday', a record that left the Top Ten just as a Roy Wood solo single, 'Forever', was entering.
Although Wizzard's chart success continued throughout 1974, by the beginning of the following year Wood had moved on yet again to pursue a solo career. But despite his continuing talent for penning commercial pop fare, his output became increasingly irregular and while ELO prospered, selling millions of singles and albums around the world, Wood's star went into decline.
Article written by Gary Herman.
Captions for pictures (from top to bottom)
1. Cover from Issue 60 of "The History Of Rock", published in 1983.
2. Model Liz Wilson provides the main body of text for a Move contract. Roy Wood signs, producer Denny Cordell (left), Tony Secunda (second from left) and Carl Wayne observe.
3. The Move perform on TV.
4. The Move took up where Mod ended.
5. The Move's early stage performances featured acts of destruction such as the trashing of TV sets. Singer Carl Wayne transformed himself from Sixties axe-man to Seventies cabaret artist (inset).
6. In 1967, the Move changed their image, swapping gangster suits for flower-power garb.
7. In the early Seventies, the group were trimmed down to a trio; from left Jeff Lynne, Bev Bevan and Wood.