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KALEIDOSCOPE

1967 was the start of the Tambourine Days -- but too soon, too soon. We`ll look back from that broken window much later. I`ve found the secret of time-travel: I close my eyes. The yellow mini with the blacked-out windows. Janet`s blue velvet coat, her Pre-Raphaelite hair. The Kings Road. The elegant back streets of Chelsea. The Stones strolling with their Oscar Wilde locks blowing in the wind. The Who cruising by in a lengthy limousine. The sun on the Serpentine, the hushed whispering of ancient, verdant trees. The growl of traffic far away in Kensington. The purple shade of Biba. The Egyptian shadows of Granny Takes a Trip. The gypsy booths of the Kensington antique market -- will we step from here into oceans or deserts? My head is on fire or is that music I hear coming out of your mouth.

The Royal Albert Hall crawls like a cumbersome tortoise into the shimmering glades of Kensington Gardens. They`re changing the guards at Buckingham Palace. The Stanhope Place studios: inside the Titanic, the rush of waves beyond, the massive silence within. The desk is lit with stars -- we`re going home to heaven... On the 24th February 1967 we had our first recording session as Kaleidoscope at Philips` Stanhope Place studio just a giant leap for mankind from Marble Arch. Although nervous, entering this mysterious, subterranean dimly-lit cavern, we knew that we could not allow anything to go wrong. We recorded `Holiday Maker` and `Kaleidoscope.` Unlike every recording session we`d ever had before -- in egg-box dives -- we were not disappointed with the results. In fact we were stunned by the clarity of the results, fascinated by the recording process and pleased to find that the engineers were friendly and co-operative. Dick produced, obviously aware of the beating of our novice hearts, allowing us time to settle down, to accustom ourselves to the cathedral studio. A memorable day indeed. We experienced for the very first time that dream-like state as we stepped from the cocoon-twilight of the studio into the outside world -- like travellers returning from a voyage of discovery. You blink and find yourself back in the real world where life goes on. Difficult to explain; you should have been there.

Although there was much going on behind the scenes, our next recording session wasn`t until the end of April. Dick wanted to hear some new songs. We played him, `The Murder of Lewis Tollani,` but he balked slightly at this unusual offering. We spent the day recording, `Mr.Small, the watch-repairer man,` a song about Ed`s dad who mended watches in a tiny workroom under the stairs at their house in Acton. We also recorded, `Move,` a song that always went down well on stage, but did not transfer so well to tape. This was our first indication that our louder, heavier songs would have difficulty finding their way onto our albums. Although crowd-pleasers, the recording process had trouble accommodating the high decibels of a simulated live performance. No doubt different today, but back then the engineers were always suggesting tactfully that we might like to try it again at a lower level; this killed the dynamics of the song. The metamorphosis of a narcissus. One of the pleasures on the road to fame is being photographed. The ego is massaged and pampered: someone wants to take your photograph; and someone else wants to look at it! On a more basic, less dramatic level, it is the securing of an atom of immortality. I can`t deny it: I want to live forever. Perhaps not in this mortal bag of chemicals, but certainly in the ether, certainly in the wise stars.



On Monday (we`d all taken a day off work) 15th May 1967 we went for our first photo session at Dezo Hoffman`s famous studio in Gerrard Street. At this stage fashions hadn`t quite reached the first intimations of gypsy-psychedelia. We dressed in smart jackets and frilly-fronted shirts, with dark trousers and our genuine `Annello and Davide` Beatle boots. We ended up looking rather prim and proper, even uncomfortable, in awkward poses. Edwardian tofts. May 22nd 1967 found your heroes playing live to a roomful of hardened hacks at Philips` head office. Boy, were we nervous! We were later introduced to Alistair Taylor, Brian Epstein`s right-hand man at NEMS. We played him a couple of songs and he commented that we were one year nearer the Beatles than the Bee Gees. It was gradually dawning on us through rumour and whisper, that Philips thought highly of the band and there were plans afoot to launch us with all guns blazing. The press got this first look at us and, in subsequent reports, told their readers to look out for us. It was becoming difficult to sleep at night! It was always planned that `Holiday Maker` should be our first single; this the choice of the Tin-Pan Alley man, Dave Carey. But once Dick heard `Flight from Ashiya` he was determined that would be the single and no amount of groaning from on high could sway him from this course. Perhaps a word or two is required to explain why we were suddenly writing songs such as `Ashiya` and `Lewis Tollani.` The days of `Please stay, don`t go` and `You`re not mine` were gone forever.

It was high and blue: we were In the Room of Percussion. Ed`s bedroom at the top of three flights of narrow, shadowed stairs. June had seen a ghost. We`d messed with a oija-board: there was a Welsh couple living in the loft. They were two hundred years old and dead. Ed had a huge Chinese paper shade inside of which he`d fitted a blue 40watt bulb. The mystic light that permeated with difficulty every corner of the small room was almost breathable: it got inside you; we levitated together. We also drank the cheapest gut-rot Bull`s Blood and this probably had more to answer for than the writer-brothers bonding. I would give Ed batches of lyrics. I wrote all the time and so Ed would get a dozen sheets of neatly typed lyrics. Over a period of weeks he would sift through what must have mostly been dross to find the ones he could work with. I`d get a call: "I`ve got some songs. Bring some Blood." We`d start the evening with a Chinese meal at a local restaurant. The crab and sweet corn soup was so delicious we`d have quite happily had a couple of bowls of that and left. And the lychees. We would go back to Ed`s parents` house. Mr.P would be in his tiny room where time literally stood still. "Hulloooo, Peeete!!" An impressive, tall man with a chiselled, Slavic face, Mr.P wore glasses with a magnifier over one lens. This served to make one eye huge and all-seeing. The spirits came out. Tiny glasses of fire. In the kitchen Mrs.P would be working at the table, dwarfed by a mountain of trousers. The needle would be flying. "Oh, you boys...!" she would grumble affectionately, shaking her tiny head in mock dispair. Lovely people -- gone forever -- but living for eternity in the minds of those who remember them. And Fred, the old black Spaniel: overweight, over-sexed and over here. Well, over there, actually, pushing up daisies in paradise. We`d pass a dozen or so of Ed`s many sisters as we climbed the stairs to his room. Once inside Ed would become a nervous wreck, worried about revealing his creations. We`d sit on the bed and Ed` would eventually play me the new songs, accompanying himself on guitar or on the piano that we`d manhandled up to his room on his birthday. Ed had a good voice and would set the standard for many songs that would later become my vocal responsibility. It was thrilling to hear a lyric that I`d written weeks or months before taking on musical flesh and bone and turning into a song. I was rarely disappointed.

Now the real drinking would begin. I once came round with my head stuck between the bed and the wall. All I could hear was a distant, uncontrollable laughter. Sometimes we`d walk the cool streets just to try to sober up. We stood before a statue of Jesus outside a local church, but ran away in terror when we saw it move. It was on one such night, probably slightly later in the year, that we first heard John`s, `Lucy in the sky with diamonds.` We stood in the two AM darkness clutching a transistor tuned to Luxembourg as John`s disembodied, magic voice drifted from the radio like so much star-dust. A revelation, a revolution. By this time our own writing had changed.

Blame it on the brothers Bee Gee. I`d bought a copy of `Horizontal.` `Lemons never do forget.` But it was the single, `New York Mining Disaster 1941,` that made us sit up and listen. `Lewis Tollani` was written as a direct result of hearing that song. My parents had a book on their shelf called, `Flight from Ashiya,` and this gave me the inspiration for that lyric about a group of people in a plane about to crash. As I realised that we no longer had to write about love all the time, the new style lyrics also inspired Ed to move away from the accepted song structures. Everything was becoming more complex, more interesting. Obviously we were influenced by everything around us, but I refute the charge that we were climbing on a bandwagon. No creative person who lived through those times could remain unaffected by the music, the clothes, the drug culture, A Clockwork Orange, the moon landings, the assassination of Kennedy, black and white television, the challenge to religion, Vietnam, Ohio, Paris, Manson, the Beatles, Ready Steady Go, Harold Wilson, cheap booze, cheap foreign holidays, UFOs and God. Bandwagon? The world was a bandwagon. If you weren`t there, shut up. So we played Dick `Flight from Ashiya` and he said, "We`re going into the studio."



The session, on July 12th -- just one month after having my tonsils removed -- was exhilarating. Dick came up with some ground-breaking ideas like the storming piano introduction and the speeded up, Oriental voices. The seven hour session produced one our most enduring tracks. A most peculiar occurrence followed eight days later. While Dick, who was now working so closely with us that he was a surrogate manager, was away on holiday, the band played an audition at the Marquee for Robert Masters of NEMS. After we`d played Masters offered Ed and I a contract with NEMS to front a new band that they were putting together. The stage show would feature high tec effects such as perfumes and scents being wafted into the audience during live performances. Drunk and intrigued we agreed provisionally, but wanted to discuss it with Dick. When he returned Dick advised us in guarded terms not to consider the offer. He told us we were invited to the following month`s Philips` sales conference at the London Hilton where we would be informed of a development. At the conference we were interviewed in front of the gathered sales force by Alan Freeman and `Ashiya` was played. It was then announced that our one year contract was being extended to five years and that we would begin recording our first album the following week. It was stated that we would be promoted as one of the company`s `major recording artists` and that our first single would be in a full colour sleeve.



Fontana Press Release: It must be obvious to all but the very simple-minded that any artiste or group that is signed up by a record company and music publishing firm for as long as five years must be quite something. Add to that the fact that the record company is launching their first record with a massive campaign that includes printing 10,000 full-colour sleeves for the disc, and then following it up with an LP and you`ve got some idea of the enthusiasm Fontana Records have for Kaleidoscope.

FLIGHT FROM ASHIYA




The sessions for the album began on 7th August and went through to the 8th September. In fact, on 14th August we cut `Faintly Blowing` and the following day recorded a version of `I remember Sunny-side Circus.` The previous week we had a photographic session in Kensington where the cover shot was taken, the famous `Hippies-cooking-in-a-baking-foil-tent` shot that would follow us down the decades. These were magical days.

At the end of August we signed a three year agency deal with the Noel-Gay company. Dick became our Recording Manager and Co-Personal Manager with Richard Armitage. On Friday 15th September `Flight from Ashiya,` our first single was released.



Record Mirror: Strong debut performance from a group with something different to say.

Melody Maker: An interesting example of their future work. It`s early days to say they will have a hit.

Tit-Bits: Philips` chief, Leslie Gould said: "This is the group we`ve been searching so long for."

Evening Standard: Sgt.Pepper has a lot to answer for. A dull song about an airplane flight with atmospheric warbling. Let`s hope their album isn`t so pretentious.

Rave: Paul McCartney heard their disc and asked when he could meet them. Mick Jagger was very impressed with the voices and ideas. They are described as "today`s people and tomorrow`s geniuses."



At the end of September we attended the opening of a boutique in Victoria and, as can be seen from the photograph, all over-dressed for the occasion. There now began the first of what would be countless `live` appearances on radio programmes for the BBC. At the time the Musicians Union insisted that radio stations play a minimum amount of music using live musicians; this to protect their members` interests. In fact, we never did join the union ourselves, but were greatly helped by this antiquated ruling. We would arrive at a BBC studio with our backing tapes and often simply overdub a lead vocal. This is what we preferred as the results when we recorded the song live were atrocious. The studios were steam-driven, the producers were old- school-tie Sanatogen types with about as much knowledge of modern music as a left-handed house brick. This situation improved somewhat as the years went by, but those first recordings are an embarrassment. Listen, for instance, to the BBC tracks on the Footprint bootlegs. On second thoughts, don`t give those thieving bastards any more money. Although `Ashiya` got good airplay, it failed to take off up the charts. Everyone was disappointed, but the prospect of our first album about to be released put a bandage on the wound. But after the build up and some hype for the single it was a major setback. We were contacted by fans and approached on the road and told that they had been unable to buy the single. This was our first taste of the poor distribution that would affect us over the coming years. Phil Smee calls it `The Great Vinyl Shortage of the Sixties.` Very dramatic; very damaging. One of our first outings under the new banner was to Paris to appear on a live TV show. Those frogs. We entered the studio to find ourselves in the midst of unorganised chaos. They complained about our frilly white shirts; too white for colour transmission. Suddenly we were dragged on set and we realised the show was on air. A group of guests sat on a sofa smirking at a tasty young girl; someone threw their arm in our direction and we grinned. Then everyone began wandering around; we were off air. In fact we had to wait for hours for the real show. Ed fell over a cello and then we mimed expertly to the single and then we were in the street, in a taxi, in a plane and off home before you could say, `J`taime.`

On a six date promotional tour we met up a couple of times with Jeff Lynne`s protopunk outfit, the Idle Race. Our first live gig after this was at Reading University and the following week our first album was released. Don`t ask me where the name came from because I don`t remember. We came up with the name, but you tell me when that other shower were born; did they nick the monicker?



Record Mirror:Wasn`t sure whether `Tangerine Dream` was the title of the record or the name of the group.

Disc & Music Echo:Could be labelled pretentious, but worth an intent listen

The Jazz & Folk-Blues Society:Most impressive. If there is such a thing as British justice this group will be a top-liner.

NME 2-12-67 letter from John Abbey: Kaleidoscope are sweeter than Pink Floyd, not so bitter as the Beatles and have more talent.

Melody Maker:Heavily influenced by Tolkien.

Rick Sanders, Intro:A masterpiece! Quality like this just can`t go unnoticed. Every track would make a better single than 90% of the present Top Thirty.

It sends a shiver down my spine when I look at the gig list and see that some of our first live shows were at Leicester University and out at their Scraptoft campus. Exactly thirty years later my wife and I would return, visiting two of our children, Oliver and Faye, both taking degree courses at this same university. Who says we`re not dangling from the stars like puppets?

By the time the album came out we were already talking to Dick about a choice of song for the next single. Dick loved Julie. Fontana/Philips was still buzzing around our little honey-pot and Dick had no problems getting us into the main studio any time he fancied a session. We had the songs, that`s what turned him on. At the end of January 1968, just four days after `A Dream for Julie` was released, we went into a demo studio to cut some tapes for Dick and the publishers. So many new songs coming through they wanted tapes to listen to and select tracks for recording. It was these tapes that three decades later I hoped someone could find. The addition of some of these tracks to the compilation would have given fans some unreleased material. Sadly, the tapes could not be found. Some of the titles even have me guessing:`Untitled,` `The Turtle still lives` and `The Fantastic Farm.` This last song I do remember as being about five or six minutes long with lots of tempo changes. It was one of our favourites at the time, now lost forever.



NME:`A Dream for Julie` sounds like a cross between Dave Dee and The Who! Catchy tune.

Record Mirror:Their inventiveness deserves full success.

Melody Maker:Good London vocals. I won`t insult them by calling them psychedelic, but they seem to be an experimental group left over from that curious phase of pop history with something new to say.

`Julie` got herself a good airing on the Radio. Now that Radio One was well established there was a good chance that our singles would be played regularly. You no longer had to listen to your favourite music through the sea mist of the pirates or coming to you phased from Luxembourg. However, the charts still eluded us. Compensation came in the form of steady sales of the album. So good, in fact, that our biggest fan, Dick, had been given the green light for more recording sessions. We were in and out of the Stanhope Place studios every month. Dick and Dave Carey had already pigeon- holed `If you so wish` or `Black Fiord` as contenders for the next single. Just one month after the release of `Julie` we were meeting John Cameron to discuss the orchestral arrangements for the next single. John came highly recommended and as he`d worked with Donovan he could do no wrong in my eyes. Needless to say we were very pleased with the results. Other musicians -- strings, woodwind, percussion, guitars -- sat in on the sessions. I would stand in the vocal booth singing into a dead microphone so that the MU members would think this was a live recording. After they`d clocked off we`d go back in and do overdubs and the vocals. However, a couple of months later we happened to play Dick a song called, `Jenny Artichoke` and all the plans went out the window. The song was inspired by Donovan`s, `Jennifer Juniper,` and was a conscious effort to write something commercial. It went further in this direction than we liked, but if it meant getting a hit we were willing to sell at least part of our souls.

After a fun-filled few days in Switzerland appearing at the Montreaux TV festival with the Who, Arthur Brown and Fairport Convention, we went into the studio to knock off `Jenny.` There was just one problem: we were broke. The Noel-Gay agency failed to provide us with enough live work to keep us in readies. Some clubs, like the Mistral in Beckenham, we returned to regularly, but still times were tight. There was nothing else for it: we went back to work, albeit part- time. Meanwhile, Philips/Fontana were very excited about `Jenny.`



Record Mirror: Very catchy. A surprise name to see among the chart tips, but I`ve the utmost confidence in these imaginative boys. More directly commercial. I defy you to let it pass without notice.

NME: Slap-happy calypso influence with a finger-clicking shuffle rhythm.

Record Retailer: One of the most under-rated groups on the scene. Fast-paced, very commercial. Has grow-on-you appeal. Could make it big!

As soon as the single was released in September the radio stations play-listed it. It was saturation point. There was some ruling in place that a record could only be played so many times in a day; with `Jenny` they stretched the rules. You could walk down the street and hear people whistling it! Fame at last! Well, not quite -- in fact, not at all. Played to death for many weeks, the single still failed to chart. Everyone involved was frustrated and disappointed. But -- as before -- we all now concentrated on the next project: the new album. Dick was confident that it would throw up a new single. If by now you`ve studied the gig list you will have noticed one name cropping up frequently: David Symonds.

Dave was a successful DJ at Radio One, with a long, distinguished broadcasting career behind him. He loved the band from day one and we all enjoyed being interviewed by him on his show and downing pints of frothy brown stuff together. Dave was famous for having championed the Moody Blues after they returned from the outer reaches of the pop desert in a new incarnation as mystical, progressive gurus. In October we met up with Dave and the Moodies for a chat about our future. Dave had sensed that we were straying from our artistic path and felt a talk with another band who had toyed with oblivion might get us back on course. But we were beginning to feel some pressure from Fontana to keep on Commercial Road, to jettison the whimsy. And we were not ready to question the wisdom of the giant record company suits. Dave assured us he`d be willing to help if we needed it.



Light relief came in the form of a memorable few days in Holland in November. We trundled across Europe in our trusty Transit, frozen to our seats in sub-zero temperatures, the like of which none of us had experienced before. We supported Country Joe and the Fish at the Amsterdam Concert Hall. Unfortunately, the hall`s acoustics were crippling, with an echoed delay of several seconds. We struggled manfully, but the set was something of a disaster. We drove through the night to the De Heuvel Club in Rotterdam, a hippie dive packed to the sweaty ceiling of its cellar with, well, sweaty hippies all travelling courtesy of Acid Airways. We performed after consuming a couple of bottles of buckshee vodka and the crowd responded as well as they were able, convinced that we were fellow flyers. When we returned to Blighty Dick threatened to play us the tape of the show that had been broadcast on Dutch radio. He was not a happy bunny. If that tape ever surfaces I`m off.

Someone took their eye off the ball at this point. `If you so wish` should have been the next single -- as had been planned. Or `Faintly Blowing` from the soon to be released album. But Dick chose `Do it again for Jeffrey` on the strength of its chorus. We were happy with that, but in retrospect it should have been Dave Carey`s choice of `If you so wish.` Now this is where so many people start getting their knickers in the proverbial twist over the fact that `Jeffrey` mainly features session men. (Did you realise that the Byrds` classic, `Mr.Tambourine Man` was recorded by session men with McGuinn!!?) It was a big session with lots of brass and so we came up against the union rules again. So we had other guitarists and percussion players in the studio. Ed`s in there somewhere and I am of course. So what`s the big deal? It was happening all the time and still does. Its the end result that matters. I like `Jeffrey` except for the twee vocal delivery. The song has lots of power and more oomph than some of our tracks.



Record Mirror: Well performed. Much more direct.

Record Retailer: One of the most genuinely talented groups in the business. Jangling, yet gentle -- and the chorus really is very commercial indeed. Probably their best bet single yet. Good lyrics; not too way out.

NME: Glowing harmonies, steady beat and a humable tune.

Melody Maker: A strong group one rarely sees about. Less fairytale, more guts.



But, of course, the bloody thing still failed to chart and left the new album, Faintly Blowing without a vanguard. Now Fontana did get stroppy. We`d had our chances. We`d blown it. It was Tin Pan Alley time! We were virtually ordered into the studio to record two `sure-fire` hits by hack writers. We hated the songs, were too despondent to say no -- but once in the studio recording, for the first time, songs by other writers, we threw in the towel. After six gruelling hours the session was abandoned. We`d seen the writing on that big white wall.

On the 4th August we went to Decca for a meeting with the Moody Blues and their manager, Tony Clark -- but it was to our old friend, David Symonds, that we finally turned. Our last appearance as Kaleidoscope was on 21st August 1968 when we recorded yet another radio session at the BBC Maida Vale studios.

The following weekend we changed our name to Fairfield Parlour.



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