Studio G's The Beat Group

The fifth Licorice Soul release, brought to you by Vinyl Vulture in conjunction with blaxploitation.com, features two psychedelic Hammond gems drawn from the vaults of the proudly independent UK library label Studio G. LSD005 is credited to the mysterious combo, Studio G's The Beat Group, and serves up 'Hi, Bird' and 'Movin', both of which originally appeared on a promotional EP in 1967, circulated only in tiny quantities to British film and television production companies. As Studio G's production strategy moved tentatively onto the album format in 1970, these tracks were recycled and appeared with others from separate sessions with different bands on the infamous and highly collectable 'Beat Group' promotional album, LPSG1001.

As sublime a pair of freakbeat dancefloor movers as ever was committed to tape by British library musicians, these tracks feature the arranger and organist Mike Lease, nowadays a highly respected and in-demand traditional musician and fiddle player, but who, during the Summer Of Love, was regularly to be found sat at the organ stool during a session for a prospective pop hit or jamming along with the rock and pop glitterati of the day.

After several near misses and close calls with fickle fame and fortune, Mike moved away from the rock music scene in the early 1970's, but was kind enough to take us back to those heady days and reveal the story behind this pair of wondrous cuts…

Vinyl Vulture:Can you tell us how you first became involved in music?

Mike Lease:When I was in South Wales before going to London, I formed what must have been one of the first R&B bands there, and eventually I decided that we couldn't do a lot down there and I tried to persuade them all to take a chance and go to London, but no-one else would take it. We were in a rural area, trying to play Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and people would come up to us and say 'do you know any Beatles'? We'd say, nah, we don't do that junk…but we were only kidding!

VV:What was it that started you off on that kind of pathway?

ML:I heard Ray Charles when I was thirteen and it just blew me away, so I came by that route. I got into a few local rock & roll bands because there wasn't anything else and I eventually persuaded some of the members of these bands in the Abergeveny and Monmouth area to make up and R&B band. But when it came to going to London I went without them. I had a sister there working as a teacher, and so I stayed with her for a couple of months before I found myself a bedsit. Initially I was playing acoustic piano around places like The Troubadour; café type Bohemian nightspots, and then I teamed up with a girl who I met quite by chance, who was a fantastic singer…I cant remember her maiden name, it was Eastern European and I kept forgetting it, but eventually she became Beverley Martin when she married John Martin later on. She was the best white blues singer I'd ever heard. We used to do little gigs with me playing piano and her singing. When I met her she was with a jug band and I bumped into her at a place called the Geoconda on Denmark Street. We'd hang around there as a way of picking up work and sessions.

VV:How did you come by your first organ?

ML:My first organ was a Farfisa, an Italian thing that was fairly cheap, although it was a fortune to me at the time. I was playing piano and when the money wasn't coming in I was thinking, oh hell…then I got a copy of Melody Maker and there was an advertisement; they didn't give their name, but they said stuff like; band going places, blah, blah, blah…need organist. It was very fateful really, because there had been a bit of controversy in the Melody Maker for several weeks between Mick Jagger and a band called The Zephyrs. In an interview Jagger made a throwaway remark about pop bands, and rubbish like The Zephyrs being on the radio. Then there was four or five weeks of controversy with Zephyrs fans going for him and Jagger eating humble pie and so on. So, when I phoned up about this band I had this strange feeling that I knew who they organist might be, and I was dreading it…there was an awful sense of destiny about it. They said to come along to this music shop for the auditions…what's the name of the band, I said…oh, The Zephyrs, they said…oooooh shit, I thought! But I was so desperate and poor, not knowing anything about signing on and social security, I went along to the audition and they offered me the job straight away. They were an old rock & roll band who had been going for some time and Peter Gauge, the guitarist, decided to leave and they got an organ in instead of the second guitar.

VV:Some of The Zephyrs' 45's are worth a bob or two; are you on any of them?

ML:I was with them for about six months and we did three singles during that time.

VV:Any hits?

ML:We had a minor hit with one called 'She's Lost You'.

VV:Did you make it onto things like Ready Steady Go?

ML:We did, actually! We were on there and we met Jerry Lee Lewis. It was the first time he'd been back in the country since he was thrown out in the fifties. He invited us to join in a radio broadcast he was doing and it was really nice to play behind him. We did a couple of films with The Zephyrs as well and he was in one of those.

VV:Was that Be My Guest, with David Hemmingway?

ML:Yes, and it was quite funny, because Steve Marriott was in that as a child actor as well. I got on very well with him. A couple of months after that I'd left The Zephyrs, and I was contemplating my next move. Steve Marriott phoned me up and said he wanted to see me, saying that since the film he'd been learning to play the guitar. I sort of choked in my laughter, saying, yeah, fine…he said he was going to form a band and that he wanted me to play organ in it. I said, look, you've only been playing a few months, be realistic, you're not going to be taken seriously by anybody, so stop joking around. No, seriously, he says, I've even got a name for it…The Small Faces…I said, nah…come back in a year's time, I'm a serious musician!!! Now there's also a postscript to this story too; after that I got offered this job in Spain with a French psychopath called Teddy Ray. He came over and picked a few players out and I flew to Barcelona airport and was met there and we had contracts for one hundred quid a week, and he didn't pay us. So basically, it ended up in a big fight he smashed up all of our equipment and we were left stuck there without work permits and with the unions after us and everything. So I was there, contemplating my fate and somebody came along, on the Hippy trail to Morocco, and they and a Melody Maker. I asked to see it as I'd been so out of touch; I opened it to the charts page and straight in at number one was 'Wadcha Gonna Do About It', by The Small Faces…I think that was the sickest point of my rock & roll life!!!

VV:Did he perhaps come back to you before they got Ian McLagan in?

ML:No, but I did meet him again years later when I was recording at Barnes studios with Freedom. It had several big studios in it and The Stones were there, The Small Faces were there and we were there all at the same time. I saw him and he saw me; he said, I know you don't I? But he was absolutely out of his head at the time and it was all 'far out man', and all that stuff. We just hello and that was that.

VV:What happened after your trip to Spain?

ML:Before I'd gone to Spain I'd teamed up with a guy called Phil Stephens and we'd decided to do some songwriting together as well as the odd gig and session. So I started that up again straight away and we had a contract with Coda Music, which was owned by Essex Music. Then I joined a West Indian Ska outfit and we used to do the whole West Indian circuit in London and we'd play from eight till twelve in a pub upstairs, and then everything would shut down and you'd play through until dawn in the room downstairs, all for the princely sum thirty five shillings! They were really good workouts. One of the guys who turned up on the Studio G recordings was there, Colin Pincott, who I'd got to know in my Zephyrs days, who was a tremendous guitarist…he played with Ramon and His Contrast R&B Band!!! Ramon the singer was a really cool dude, constantly with a big reefer in his mouth, but he always sang a quarter pitch sharp.

VV:Didn't you do some orchestrations for The Move around this time?

ML:Yes, I used to do quite a bit of work for Denny Cordell [Founder of the groundbreaking Deram imprint for Decca], and I remember being somewhat shocked when the review came out in the Melody Maker, and all of my string orchestrations were attributed to Tony Visconti. So I phoned them up about it, and they said that was what it said on the sleeve!

VV:How did you get into arranging-were you classically trained?

ML:I'd learned piano of course, and I'd taken that through to grade seven before I succumbed to R&B, so although I hadn't formally learned arranging I sort of knew what to do. Around this time I didn't have a piano, so I used to do all of the arrangements in my head; I'd sit there singing the parts to myself; no tape recorder or anything. I'd sweat through the night on them and hope they would sound like they were supposed to in the studio the following day! I bought a book; How To Arrange…basically it told you all of the transposing keys for the instruments, so I tutored myself on this.

VV:How did you get your first arranging work?

ML:That would have been with Denny Cordell; I was on a session and there was this weird looking guy with long hair and a fleece coat, doing strange things like stuffing drums full of things, so I gathered that he might be the producer, but nobody said anything and he hadn't organised the session, so he really intrigued me, as he was so unlike the stereotype suited A&R men doing standard fast as you can sessions; this guy was so obviously doing things differently. So we got chatting and he asked me if I did arrangements. So out of sheer bravado I said, yeah, of course…so he asked me to come in on a session. Denny wasn't a musician, but he was coming at it laterally; always experimenting and always 100% in it; sessions would go on all night.

VV:How did you come across John Gale?

ML:There was a house around the Bayswater Road and Jonathan Western [future Freedom Svengali] owned this five-story house and John Gale used to rent the top floor from him every now and then to do his music library stuff. It was very odd as John had been a military bandleader and it was totally incongruous with this house full of layabouts stoned out of their heads and all these weirdoes on acid coming in day and night. The studio he used was my bedroom, as I didn't have anywhere to stay. Me and my girlfriend would be woken up at two or three in the morning because they'd have to do a Radio Caroline jingle or something! I was trying to teach myself guitar at the time and I was up there strumming away and John Gale came in one time, shoved a microphone in front of me for a few seconds, and gave me a fiver for the recording! John was very kind to me, as he used to live in Ealing and had a big grand piano and he gave me his keys to go along and practice whenever I wanted to. Both John and his then wife were very kind to me and I'm deeply appreciative of that.

VV:So one day he asked you to get a band together for the Beat Group session?

ML:I'd gone home to visit my parents back in Wales for a while when I wasn't working and the phone went one morning and it was John. He said he'd booked Advision studios for that night and the people who were going to do some stuff for him had let him down and he had no material or musicians. You always try to take things on as it might mean extra work, so I said leave it with me; I had to write six tunes and book all of the musicians. So I phoned up some contacts in London and wrote all of the songs on the train from Newport to Paddington; just ditties off the top of my head, and I rolled up for the session and we did it straight off.

VV:How was the actual session?

ML:It went well; very professional; job done. There was a bit of pressure as we only had a three-hour session to do it and mix it. Most of the tracks are first or second takes. In retrospect the only thing i'd change was that I had forgotten to write the guitar an octave higher on one of the tracks.

VV:Why did you not then form a band with those same guys if the sound was good?

ML:Well, I'd already been in bands with each of those guys; Pete the drummer had been with me in Spain, Don had been one of the guy who when I first arrived in London I tried to get and R&B band going with, and also one with Beverly Martin, which also had John McLaughlin in it, but that never got off the ground. I think we were all doing other things like sessions or whatever.

VV:Do you remember how much the session paid?

ML:I got more than everyone else, being the arranger, and I think it was thirty quid, plus maybe a fiver for the train fair! It was a fortune in those days really.

VV:Have you ever noticed the tracks springing up anywhere?

ML:It was in an advert for peanuts early on, and recently Channel Four used one in a big fill for one of their shows. Also it's been on American TV. Every now and then an unexpected flurry of royalties comes in.

VV:Did you move straight into Freedom after that?

ML:More or less; that was with Bobby Harrison and Ray Royer from Procol Harum. They had this huge dispute after 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' came out and I think they had been sacked, as Gary Brooker wanted to get some of his mates in from his previous band. I think they thought that they could still trade on the association with Procol Harum and they formed Freedom and got a contract for this Dino De Lorentis film straight away. At that time I was kind of turning my back on the rock world, but they persuaded me back in.

VV:Was this venture a success?

ML:I stayed with them to do the film and a few gigs, but I got fairly disenchanted with it early on. The place was so awash with drugs at that time, and everyone was busy destroying themselves. You were surrounded by a lot of underworld characters, posing as road managers or whatever.

VV:Did you turn your back on it completely after that?

ML:No, I did some work for Labi Siffri, who was a friend at the time, and I produced and played on his first demos. That would have been the last thing I did in London before I came beack to Wales. I saw him later, after he'd had a couple of hits, when he was playing in Cardiff and he offered me the job of leading his band, but it wasn't quite right, so I turned it down. I cringe when I remember some of the things I turned down; Denny Laine, Matthews Southern Comfort…its one long commercial disaster, my pop music history!!!

VV:How did your musical path go after those days?

ML:I studied Flamenco guitar, and then the lute and studied the sitar with an Indian master for a while, and I formed a jazz-rock band, which was very good, but we didn't make it because of one thing or another. Finally, I took up the fiddle, and I started getting work with it as soon as I started. I had to keep practicing at it to bluff my way through those early gigs. I've done a bit of film music since then and other things, but mainly I've been playing the fiddle professionally for about twenty-two years, as well as teaching music.

VV:Do you have any aspirations to return to the rock world?

ML:No; I teach it, as that's what the kids want to do, but I'm too old for all of that myself now.

VV:Do any of your pupils know of your illustrious past?

ML:Now and again one will come in and say that they found something about me on the internet. They ask me who I played with, so I say, well…Jimmy Page, and their ears perk up, and then I say Hendrix, and I'm regarded as God after that! I was very friendly with Mitch as we used to do a lot of sessions together and I just did one gig with him and Jimi. At that time new clubs were starting up every week and they'd have a live band to launch it and we did one as a five piece just before Hey Joe came out.

VV:Did you do many pop sessions in those early years?

ML:Quite a few. I couldn't really afford to turn work down. Don't think I was ever on a big hit, but there was plenty that should have been, but were never released. One in particular with Beverley Martin, called 'Picking Up The Sunshine', which would have been number one for sure had it ever come out. It should have been the second ever Deram single, but they released her doing a Randy Newman song instead. It had Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Nicky Thompson, John Renbone and myself on it, and it was a monster of a track. I could probably think of a few minor hits, but it's all a bit murky! Once I had my own single released as a singer songwriter; in those days you had to do a demo first and Tony Hatch, no less, came across it and said he wanted to record whoever it was who was singing on this demo! So we went in and he produced this single, with John McLaughlin on guitar, I remember, which, apart from getting a fair amount of play on Radio Scotland, didn't get anywhere. After that I was headhunted by Parlophone as an A&R man. So I went in for an interview, whilst being assured the job was mine, and one of the high-ups in the interview asked me what I'd do with this band…and he put on a demo that sounded like The Bachelors…really gruesome! So I told him exactly what the best thing to do with it was!!! Of course, then didn't offer me the job after that!

VV:Are your memories of those days fond ones, overall?

ML:A bit mixed really. I did occasionally play stuff that I enjoyed, but those never seemed to open up. It was better than working for a living!!!

VV:You can't put it much better than that! Many thanks for some splendid tales, Mike.

For more information about Studio G Music Consultants and Publishers, go to their website: www.studiog.co.uk

To find out more and to grab a load of LSD005 featuring Studio G's The Beat Group; 'Hi, Bird' / 'Movin' just follow this link to link to www.licoricesoul.com