Pub rock, the English roots rock movement of the early ’70s, would never have earned a cult following if it wasn’t for Brinsley Schwarz. Initially, Brinsley Schwarz was a rambling, neo-psychedelic folk-rock band that borrowed heavily from Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Grateful Dead.
Following a disastrous publicity stunt to promote its debut album, the band went into seclusion outside of London and developed a laid-back, rootsy sound inspired by Eggs Over Easy, an American band that had been playing a mixture of originals and covers in English pubs. Following their conversion to pub rock, the Brinsleys ditched their pretensions of stardom and became a down to earth, self-effacing rock & roll band. Between 1971 and 1974, Brinsley Schwarz toured England innumerable times…
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…playing pubs across the country. Along the way, they established a circuit for similar bands like Dr. Feelgood and Ducks Deluxe to follow. Though the group was nominally guitarist Brinsley Schwarz’s band, bassist/lead vocalist Nick Lowe provided the bulk of the group’s songs. Lowe developed a distinctive songwriting voice – conversational, melodic, offbeat, and funny – and the band was infused with his skewed sense of humor. Despite strong reviews and a dedicated fan base, the Brinsleys never managed to escape cult status, yet they influenced a legion of other artists, creating an underground, back-to-basics movement that laid the foundation for punk rock.
Brinsley Schwarz didn’t plan to start a grassroots movement — the bandmembers wanted to be stars. Lowe and Schwarz had already spent several years in Kippington Lodge, a Tunbridge Wells-based guitar pop group that released five singles on Parlophone during the mid-’60s to no success. By 1968, the members of Kippington Lodge were beginning to feel restless with their straight-ahead pop/rock and were eager to explore psychedelia. Keyboardist Bob Andrews joined the band later that year and drummer Billy Rankin came aboard in the fall of 1969. By that time, Kippington Lodge had completely revamped its musical style, evolving into a folk-rock band with psychedelic pretensions and appropriately changing its name to Brinsley Schwarz after the group’s lead guitarist. Ironically, it was around this time that Lowe became the band’s lead singer and primary songwriter.
Within a few months, Brinsley Schwarz had come to the attention of Dave Robinson, a fledging rock & roll manager who had founded the Famepushers Agency. Robinson developed a complex scheme to elevate Brinsley Schwarz to stardom. According to his plan, the Brinsleys would play an opening set for Van Morrison at the Fillmore East in New York in the spring of 1970, and he would fly all of the leading rock journalists to America to review the show. Late in 1969, Brinsley Schwarz signed a record contract with United Artists, and the band financed the publicity stunt with its advance. The group planned to leave a few days before the show in order to rehearse, but the Brinsleys were denied visas on a technicality. They were finally given visas on the morning of the show, and arrived in New York hours before the concert. Back in Britain, the journalists ran into trouble, as their plane developed a mechanical fault, delaying the flight for four hours. When the journalists arrived at the Fillmore 18 hours later, they were either drunk or hung over. When Brinsley Schwarz finally hit the stage, the band gave a competent but underwhelming performance, setting the stage for a flood of scathing reviews for both the concert and the eponymously titled debut album, which appeared weeks after the showcase.
1970 Brinsley Schwarz
Brinsley Schwarz’s eponymous debut is the stuff of rock legend because it is the punch line to a great story. It arrived after a disastrous publicity blitz, where the band’s management arranged for prominent British journalists to cross the ocean to hear the Brinsleys’ showcase performance at the Fillmore East. In a series of mishaps that would shame Spinal Tap, the band arrived in New York hours before their show and the journalists, who dipped heavily into the courtesy bar when their plane nearly crashed, arrived minutes before the concert. The press was underwhelmed to say the least and savaged the band and the record. Listening to Brinsley Schwarz, it’s easy to see why they weren’t turned on by the Brinsleys: this is a bizarre, naïve blend of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dylan & the Band, and Buffalo Springfield, with a heavy dose of early Yes. It’s filled with awkward steps and bad judgments, fueled by the group’s romanticized view of Californian hippies. Consequently, it’s hard not to cringe or chuckle by their hippie affectations, whether it’s the lyrics (“she was my lady/had no plans to make her my wife”) or the a cappella folk-rock harmonies that come out of nowhere on “Lady Constant” (it doesn’t help that they sing “colored serpent coiled around your waist”) or the bongo solo that ends “Shining Brightly.” But, amidst all this hippie posturing, there some weird touches, like the multi-octave chromatic guitar break on “Hymn to Me” or the heavy prog jam of “What Do You Suggest?” and “Ballad of a Has-Been Beauty Queen” that illustrate how English the Brinsleys still were at this stage. All of this adds up to a debut that’s decidedly uneven and unsure, but in retrospect, it’s easy for sympathetic listeners to be charmed by their eccentricities.
01 Hymn To Me
02 Shining Brightly
03 Rock And Roll Women
04 Lady Constant
05 What Do You Suggest?
06 Mayfly
07 Ballad Of A Has Been Beauty Queen
1970 Despite It All
Brinsley Schwarz was hit hard by the terrible performance of their debut, so they rented a communal house and concentrated on becoming a real, organic band. They also recorded a second album swiftly, releasing Despite It All by the end of 1970. As soon as the folksy, fiddle-driven “Country Girl” amiably ambles out of the gates, the difference between the two records is apparent. They tried this kind of rootsy country-rock before, but it sounded awkward. Here, it rings true, not just because the songwriting is stronger, but because the band knows what they’re doing, adding real grit and passion to the performances. Despite It All benefits from this looser playing, and for a while, it sounds like the group accomplished everything it wanted to do, since the first three songs are all early Nick Lowe masterpieces – “Country Girl,” the fine ballad “The Slow One” and the flat-out terrific “Funk Angel,” which is the first real flowering of his gifts as a pop tunesmith and sly humorist. After this, the record doesn’t go off the rails, but it slowly loses its momentum, deteriorating to pleasant aping of CSN and Band plus the prog-inflected jams that were the bane of their debut. Some of this works – “Love Song” is a sweet tune, “Ebury Down” has a campfire charm – but when it ends with the drawn-out “Old Jarrow” (which does boast the timeless question “why don’t you financially back her?” in its refrain) it’s clear that the group is still in the process of finding of its voice. Their stumbles are brought into perspective by those three wonderful songs that begin the album, which not only make the record, but prove that the group does indeed have greatness in them.
01 Country Girl
02 The Slow One
03 Funk Angel
04 Piece Of Home
05 Love Song
06 Star Ship
07 Ebury Down
08 Old Jarrow
1971 Silver Pistol
Silver Pistol isn’t the definitive pub rock album, but it is the first great record to surface from the scene. Like much of the first wave of pub rock, Silver Pistol is quiet, laid-backm and low-key — with its warm, rustic sound and a gentleness that infuses even the rockers, this is the closest to the Band that the Brinsleys got. There are some major differences, most of them coming from Nick Lowe. That’s not to denigrate new guitarist/songwriter Ian Gomm, since his four numbers (particularly “Dry Land” and “Range War”) reveal a fine songwriter with a keen sense of melody and a knack for synthesizing country, rock, and folk into something distinctive, but Lowe really hits his stride with this record. This is in to some degree due to the influence of Jim Ford, a renegade American roots-rocker who Brinsley Schwarz backed on an unreleased and subsequently lost 1971 album. The group covers two of his songs, “Niki Hoeke Speedway” and “Ju Ju Man,” on Silver Pistol, and these numbers reveal the appealingly off-kilter sense of humor and pop hooks that would form the foundation of Lowe’s style. Those sensibilities are just beginning to creep into his songwriting on Silver Pistol, on the Beatles-meets-Band “Unknown Number,” the lovely “Nightingale,” the wonderful pop tune “The Last Time I Was Fooled,” and the epic “Silver Pistol.” His other two songs are sturdy country-rock numbers a notch below Gomm’s best on the record, but still very good, and it all adds up to an endearing low-key roots rock album that doesn’t just find Brinsley Schwarz coming into their own, it stands as one of the most appealing records of its kind.
01 Dry Land
02 Merry Go Round
03 One More Day
04 Nightingale
05 Silver Pistol
06 The Last Time I Was Fooled
07 Unknown Number
08 Range War
09 Egypt
10 Nicki Hoeke Speedway
11 Ju Ju Man
12 Rockin’ Chair
1972 Nervous On The Road
Silver Pistol wrote the blueprint for Brinsley Schwarz’s pub rock, but Nervous on the Road perfected the group’s sound, helping Brinsley to become the definitive pub rock band in the process. Nervous on the Road has a fuller, more detailed production than its predecessor, as well as a looser feeling — even with the smooth production, it sounds like the band was captured on a good night at the Tally Ho. But what really makes the record is its excellent selection of songs, almost all of which were written by Nick Lowe. “Happy Doing What We’re Doing,” “Surrender to the Rhythm,” and “Nervous on the Road” are all great rock & roll songs about rock & roll, spiked with an off-kilter sense of humor. “Don’t Lose Your Grip on Love” is Lowe’s first great ballad, while Ian Gomm’s “It’s Been So Long” is one of his best songs. And the covers of “I Like It Like That” and “Home in My Hand” are wonderful pub rockers, giving the album the feeling of an excellent concert. Nevertheless, what makes Nervous on the Road such a fine record is the combination of empathetic performances, unpredictable songwriting, and charming unpretentiousness, all of which help make the album one of the great forgotten rock & roll records.
01 It’s Been So Long
02 Happy Doing What We’re Doing
03 Surrender To The Rhythm
04 Don’t Lose Your Grip On Love
05 Nervous On The Road (But Can’t Stay At Home)
06 Feel A Little Funky
07 I Like It Like That
08 Brand New You, Brand New Me
09 Home In My Hand
10 Why, Why, Why, Why, Why
1973 Please Don’t Ever Change
Released in 1973 as Brinsley Schwarz was busy touring and recording the follow-up to Nervous on the Road, Please Don’t Ever Change is a collection of singles, live cuts, and radio sessions from the early ’70s. The odds-and-sods nature of the record actually works in its favor, since it accentuates the group’s ramshackle nature. Sure, there’s a fair amount of filler on the record — their ill-advised reggae excursion “The Version (Hypocrite)” is simply mystifying — but unevenness was part of the Brinsleys’ charm, and the simply enjoyable cuts make the best tracks feel like classics. And some of them are definitive Brinsley cuts. “I Worry (‘Bout You Baby)” is a revamped R&B number, the live “Home in My Hand” speeds along with a relentless energy, the cover of Goffin/King’s “Don’t Ever Change” indicates Nick Lowe’s latent pop roots, “Down in Mexico” is a hysterical travelogue, and “Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)” is among the classic pub rock singles, distilling the essence of pub rock into one piledriving song.
01 Hooked On Love
02 Why Do We Hurt The One We Love?
03 I Worry (‘Bout You Baby)
04 Don’t Ever Change
05 Home In My Land (Live)
06 Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)
07 I Won’t Make It Without You
08 Down In Mexico
09 Speedoo
10 The Version (Hypocrite)