IF EVER THEREWAS A BAND THIAT should have set the world ablaze it was Fire. Their debut single, 'Father's Name Is Dad', found them standing on the shoulders of giants. They shared a label with The Rolling Stones and were part of The Beatles' mighty Apple Empire. But despite more than their fail' share of great songs, success eluded them. However, thanks to a timeless single and album, The Magic Shoemaker, the band has achieved cult status among those with an ear for classic late '60S rock. In December 2007, Fire reformed to play their rock fairytale for the first time in 37 years. A live recording of these shows has recently been issued on CD and, to celebrate its release, Shindig! spoke with Dave and Bob to get the inside story.
Dave Lambert, singer, guitarist and songwriter with Fire, was immersed in a world of music from an early age. "I was brought up in a house where music was always playing," he explains. "I was also brought up to go to the variety theatre every Friday. So from a very young age I was drawn into a love of theatre. My dad said I just used to sit and stare into the orchestra pit, which is probably when 1 first decided what I wanted to be." It wasn't long before he formed his first skiffle group, but it was the swirl of the pipes and beat of the drums that caught his imagination. "Two of my uncles were top Scottish pipe band drummers. They would teach me by rote really, because I used to sit and listen to them play at the lunch table with knives and forks, so 1 would pick up all the basics."
Lambert joined The Boys Brigade where he played snare drum and met future Fire drummer, Bob Voice. At the same time he was introduced to rock 'n' roll by his elder sister. While she was swooning over Cliff Richard, her younger brother discovered Eddie Cochran. "He still remains a big influence on me now. I've always considered him to be the father of what we now call rock," he says.
An interest in rock 'n' roll inevitably led to the blues. Working backwards, Lambert discovered Howlin' Wolf and Leadbelly. "One of the early things I [heard] was the Smokestack Lightning EP, which I got hold of, and has some tracks I still adore now. And then I got into Leadbelly, and that again has remained with me." He formed his first band, The Hangmen, at school with two friends. The first of several three-piece bands, it was followed by The Syndicate; later renamed The Chains.
Three-piece bands were a novelty at the time, they still are, but for Lambert they offered far greater musical freedom. "If 1 felt like changing the mood I could do it immediately," he explains, "I didn't have anybody else providing harmonic structures that I had to stay within so 1 could wonder off if I wanted. And also I like the sound of guitar, bass and drums."
By the summer of 1966 Lambert and Voice had become fully fledged Mods. "We were of that stuff that Quadrophenia was made of," reminisces Bob Voice. "The Who was the band that really made me want to go out and buy a drum kit. We were going out on our scooters, going down to The Ricky Tick or The Crawdaddy and places like that. We'd turn up at these incredible clubs, where we'd watch bands like The Graham Bond Organisation. Those sorts of bands were really the ones that steered us a bit, and that's why Dave was sitting at home playing his guitar. That's where our interests were."
With regular gigs and a growing repertoire of original songs the band soon acquired its first manager, Ray Hammond. Ajunior reporter on The Middlesex Chronicle, he reviewed one of their gigs and was so impressed he offered to manage them. However, the band was desperate to break out of the local West London scene and soon changed manage¬ment in what they believed to be a move for the better. The band was in the habit of recording demos at R G Jones Studios, where they were spotted by Derek Savage and John Turner. ''They knew some people at Decca and got us introduced to Tony Clarke, the producer," recalls Voice. With the possibility of a record contact and national exposure they signed with Savage and Turner.
Clarke was invited to watch them rehearse at the George and Devonshire pub on the Chiswick roundabout. It was a nerve-racking experience, but Clarke loved 'Father's Name Is Dad' and booked them into the studio. "In those days, for Decca, you had to make a demo, which was actually a master, an A and B-side," Lambert explains, "and they used to have a meeting, I think it was on Thursdays and they'd sit round this table. People like Dick Rowe, would sit round this table aud then at about 5 o'clock you heard your fate. The phone rang. I was at Heathrow working, and my manager John said, they want you. So we had a record contract." Bob Voice remembers it as the most excitiug thing that had ever happened to him. "It was something beyond my wildest dreams," he says. "You've got to remember I was 17 working in a
garage, getting my fingers dirty every day and hating every minute of it, and Dave was likewise running his scooter round Heathrow Airport. Suddenly for the bigwigs at Decca to say we really like you boys and we're going to make a record', is something that's almost impossible to describe."
They might have secured a recording contract, but persuading Decca to issue a record proved frustrating. It wasn't that Decca wasn't interested, but for some reason it wouldn't commit to putting anything on vinyl. "The ridiculous thing was they wanted to sign me and the band but they didn't want to release 'Father's Name Is Dad'. We couldn't understand it. Tony Clarke knew what he was talking about and he was a bit bemused by it all too. So we spent the next two or three months in and out of the studios at Decca recording other songs of mine, which were constantly being rejected by Decca," says a still perplexed Lambert.
With a Decca record contract in the bag, the band turned professional. Lambert recalls the exact day: ist January 1968. At the same time The Beatles were hatching plans for their raft of companies that soon would be known the world over as Apple Corps. As luck would have it the band's managers made contact with Mike Berry, who'd recently started working at Apple Publishing, and invited him down to a show at The Drum in Penge. Berry loved 'Father's Name Is Dad' and arranged for the band to meet Terry Doran and discuss a contract at Apple's Baker Street office. "He invited me to go up to Apple, which I did," recalls Lambert, "and they said right we'll publish all your stuff which means 'Father's Name Is Dad' and 'Treacle Toffee World' are ours and they will be released."
Apple was big news at the time and Fire should have benefited from the reflected glory. But despite being favoured by The Beatles, another group, Grapefruit, seemed to get most of the publicity. But that didn't detract from the sheer thrill of it all. "It was so exciting. 1 was shaking the first time 1 went up there, shaking with excitement." Lambert recalls. "It was an absolute thrill just to be there, the pinnacle of the business in those days, the epicentre. Everything revolved around The Beatles, the whole business. And just to be there was enough for me. I
The first thing Apple did was pressure Decca into releasing 'Father's Name Is Dad', which it had been sitting on for some time. No sooner had Decca issued the single than Apple intervened and demanded changes to the recording. A quick trip back into the studio to add additional guitar and vocals and the single was perfected. Despite getting heavy rotation on the Kenny Everett and John Peel shows, 'Father's Name Is Dad' wasn't the hit it deserved to be. With the equally brilliant 'Treacle Toffee World' on the B-side it's among the very best examples of the art of the 45 rpm single. However, their next release was an unmitigated disaster, which the band completely disowned.
Mike Berry suggested they record a song he'd written called 'Round The Gum Tree'. Despite having plenty of original material, Berry, Clarke and their managers insisted they record it. "We were talked into making that record," laments Voice. "The producers were looking for a hit and they couldn't care less how they got it, and 1 can't believe that we actually went into the studio and played that. We were persuaded that our record company might drop us if we didn't get a hit and this was the best way to get a hit." 40 years on and it still hurts. "My managers wrote the B¬side and Mike Berry wrote the A-side. How on earth that happened I just don't know," says Lambert. "I can remember those sessions, feeling a little disillusioned already and feeling embarrassed to be honest. I played and sang on the A-side and the B¬side when I should have just refused to have anything to do with it. It was such rubbish."
With the release of 'Round The Gum Tree' the band sacked its management and quit Decca. They continued gigging with other up and coming bands like Pink Floyd and were regulars at Middle Earth but as far as the band was concerned it was time to
start again. They'd moved on from the poppy, mod sounds of their debut single and were exploring a more progressive trail. "The band was very much alive," recalls Lambert, "but we were a band that wasn't doing bubble gum music, we'd left that. When we got the acceptance of 'Father's Name Is Dad' and realised that that was a direction we could solidly follow then I had all the confidence in the world in what I was writing then and I was writing a complete stage act for the band."
Lambert's confidence was given another boost when he was approached by the band's previous manager, Ray Hammond. Hammond had recently formed a production company and knowing the band was going through a rough spot asked if they'd like to join him. "He just came to me one day," recalls Lambert, and said, "Look I'm putting together a tender for a record that's going to be leased to major companies and I've very much like to add your Shoemaker idea to the file.' Of course that's exactly what I wanted to hear by that time, somebody actually backing what we wanted to do". No sooner had the ink dried on their new contact than Fire booked onto Polydor Studios to record demos for The Magic Shoemaker.
The band's next move was to book into Pye's Marble Arch studio, where they began an intense period of recording. Voice recalls they decided to work at night because, "We were very self-indulgent, and we recorded at night because we wanted to. It was enormous fun. We got Dave Cousins and Paul Brett in and a couple of mates in to play on different bits." The band had progressed considerably since recording 'Father's Name Is Dad' and this was no better reflected than in Lambert's writing. "What I was trying to write was just a set of character studies, that's all I was trying to do.But when I wrote 'Magic Shoes', which was only supposed to be a whimsical song, that was going to be the beginning and end of it, then my mind started to go to a musical fairytale" he explains.
This time nothing was left to chance, and the album was planned like a military exercise. "I think it worked better because we had the concentrated time to get down to rehearsals and work each song out and how the narrative worked and how it all flowed within itself," recalls Voice. "Lots of records these days are made in the edit, but this was made in the conception".
Without any interference from outside forces, the band shone. The Magic Shoemaker is a triumph. It was progressive without being "prog" and had just enough psychedelic fairy¬dust to make it compelling. While it recalls the work of late period Beatles, Kinks and Small Faces it was resolutely original and like all great albums devoid of cliches. But perhaps it was too original; when it was issued it suffered a fate similar to the band's previous singles. "Pye didn't really get behind it," says Lambert. "They placed a couple of adverts, but record companies didu't really do that in those days."
Recording the album had taken its toll on Lambert both physically and mentally and he was in no mood to promote it without record company backing. "Honestly, I think I was just exhausted and I couldn't see a way forward," he says, "and I thought the album's not selling so what more can I do. I can't do any more. I think that's how I felt. It was sad because I felt that I was letting Bob and Dick down. I attempted to form another line-up to see whether maybe with a fresh line-up it might come back to life, but no. My heart just wasn't in it." Fire limped on for a while but soon parted. "It was kind of an amicable drifting apart. We were struggling to find a new identity for Fire, Paul Brett came in as a second guitarist in an effort to give the band some fresh momentum, but that didn't happen" recalls Voice.
Lambert may have been frustrated with the way things were going but he hadn't completely given up on the band. A new Fire rose phoenix like from the ashes. "Dave went off and put together a new Fire format with Dermis on drums and Pete Skully, who would soon become his brother-in-law, on bass," recalls Voice. "I started working with Paul Brett doing the folk clubs. I was playing percussion and he was playing acoustic guitar, and as that started to pick up and gain momentum I ran Dick up because we needed a bass player. And then we brought a flutist in, Mickey Higginbottom, and we went out as a four-piece soft rock band." The new Fire didn't last and it wasn't long before Lambert joined his former band mates on the folk circuit. For a while Lambert teamed up with Dave Cousins and then toured as MC and support with Mungo Jerry, then in the process of splitting. Joining forces with ex-members of Mungo Jerry he formed The King Earl Boogie Band before being asked to joiu The Strawbs.
Sometime in 2007, Dave, Bob and Dick got together for drinks with their original manager. "Our recent coming together came out of the fact that we were having a reunion supper one night with Ray Hammond, our old manager, at The Groucho a year and a half ago. I think it was Dick who said why don't we get together aud do a gig again? I said it's all very well for you guys ... I haven't played in 30 years. I think the red wine got to me in the end and I foolishly agreed to it" explains Voice. This chance remark led to two reuniou shows in December '07 where the band played The Magic Shoemaker in its entirety for the first time ever. Both shows were recorded and the resulting live album has recently been issued by Angel Air Records.
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