The Move were one of the
leading British rock bands of the 1960s from Birmingham
, England
.
They
scored nine Top 20 UK singles in five years,
but were among the most popular British bands not to find any
success in the United
States
.
Although bassist-vocalist
Chris "Ace"
Kefford was the original leader, for most of their career The
Move was led by
guitarist,
singer and
songwriter
Roy Wood. He composed all the group's UK
singles and, from 1968, also sang lead vocals on many songs,
although
Carl Wayne was the main lead
singer up to 1970.
The group evolved from several mid 1960s Birmingham based groups,
including Carl Wayne and the Vikings, the Nightriders and the
Mayfair Set. The group's name referred to the move various members
of these bands made to form the group. Beside Wood, the original
five-piece line-up of The Move in 1965 was drummer
Bev Bevan, bassist Kefford, vocalist Carl Wayne
and guitarists Roy Wood and
Trevor
Burton. The final line-up of 1972 was the trio of Wood, Bevan
and
Jeff Lynne, who along with Wood,
facilitated the group's transition into the
Electric Light Orchestra.
History
Formation and early career
The Move was formed in December 1965 and played their first shows
in early 1966. The original intentions of Burton, Kefford, and
Wood, were to start a group from among Birmingham's best musicians,
along similar lines to
The Who. The three
played together at
jam sessions at
Birmingham's Cedar Club, and invited Wayne and Bevan to join their
new group.
After a debut at the Belfry Hotel in Stourbridge
and further bookings around the Birmingham area,
Moody Blues manager Tony Secunda offered to manage them. At
the time, the Move mainly played covers of
American west coast groups
such as
The Byrds together with
Motown and
rock 'n' roll
songs. Although Carl Wayne handled most of the lead vocals, all the
band members shared harmonies and each were allowed at least one
lead vocal per show.
Secunda
got them a weekly residency at London
's Marquee Club
in 1966, where they appeared dressed in gangster
regalia. Their early career was marked by a series of
publicity stunts, high-profile media events and outrageous stage
antics masterminded by Secunda; these included Wayne taking an axe
to television sets, Cadillacs, busts of
Adolf Hitler and Rhodesian leader
Ian Smith. Secunda also persuaded Wood to begin
writing songs for the band.
They secured a production contract with independent
record producer Denny Cordell, but this was turned into a
media event by Secunda, who arranged for the band to sign their
contracts on the back of a topless female
model. Wood wrote their first single,
"
Night of Fear", a #2 hit in the
UK Singles Chart in January 1967,
which began the Move's practice of
musical quotation (in this case, the
1812 Overture by
Tchaikovsky). Their second single,
"
I Can Hear the Grass
Grow", was another major hit, reaching #5 in the UK.
In April 1967,
NME reported that The
Move had offered a £200 reward for the recovery of the master tapes
of ten songs intended for their debut album.
The tapes were stolen
from their agent's car when it was parked in Denmark Street
, London.
Legal issues
Their third single "
Flowers in the
Rain" was the first track played on
BBC
Radio 1 when it began broadcasting on 30 September 1967,
introduced by
Tony Blackburn. The
single, which reached #2, was less guitar-oriented than their
previous two singles, and featured a
woodwind and
string arrangement by
record
producer,
Tony Visconti. The track
was released on the relaunched
Regal Zonophone label.
The promotional campaign for the single generated controversy and
had repercussions for Wood and the group - without consulting the
band, Secunda produced a cartoon postcard showing the
Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom,
Harold Wilson, in
bed with his secretary,
Marcia Williams. Wilson
sued The Move for
libel and the group
lost the court case and had to pay all costs, with all
royalties earned by the song, which otherwise
would have belonged to composer Wood, being awarded to
charities of Wilson's choice. The
ruling, much to Wood's chagrin, remained in force even after
Wilson's death in 1995.
For their fourth single, the group had planned to release "
Cherry Blossom Clinic", a lighthearted
song about the fantasies of a patient in a mental institution,
backed by the satirical "Vote For Me". However, The Move had been
unnerved by their court experiences; they and the record label felt
it unwise to pursue such a potentially controversial idea, so the
single was shelved. "Vote For Me" remained unreleased until it
began to appear on retrospective collections from 1997 onwards
while "Cherry Blossom Clinic" became one of the tracks on their
first
LP, also called
The Move.
As a direct consequence of the lawsuit, The Move fired Secunda and
hired
Don Arden, who had himself recently
been fired as manager of the
Small
Faces. In a 2000 interview, Wayne noted that there had always
been a major split within the group about Secunda's tactics:
"[Secunda] had the animals who would do what he wanted to do in
Trevor, Ace, and me - the fiery part of the stage act. I think Roy
would obviously qualify this himself, but I believe he was slightly
embarrassed by the image and the stunts - but the rest of us
weren't ... We were always willing to be Secunda puppets".
In November and December 1967 the group took part in another
package tour around the UK, playing two shows a night over sixteen
days as part of an all-star bill that included
The Jimi Hendrix Experience,
Pink Floyd,
The
Nice,
Eire Apparent, Outer Limits,
Amen Corner and the then
BBC Radio 1 DJ, Pete
Drummond.
Continued success
In March 1968 The Move returned to the charts with "
Fire Brigade", another UK Top 3 hit, and
the first on which Wood sang lead vocal. But a few weeks later,
around the time of the LP's release, Kefford was let go from the
band due to increasing personal problems. He formed his own
shortlived group, the Ace Kefford Stand, with
Cozy Powell on drums. After this, he pursued a
solo career and The Move became a four-piece, with Burton switching
to bass.
It was also during this line-up transition that the band first
invited Lynne, a friend of Wood's, to join. He declined at the
time, as he was still working toward success in his current band
The Idle Race, another Birmingham
based group. The Move were on the
bill at
the inaugral
Isle of Wight
Festival on 31 August 1968.
In mid 1968 their fifth single "
Wild
Tiger Woman", a song acknowledging the group's love of
Jimi Hendrix (Wood and Burton sang backing
vocals on "You Got Me Floatin'", on
The Jimi Hendrix Experience's
second album,
Axis: Bold as
Love), sold poorly and failed to make the UK chart. The
Move responded with their most commercial song to date, "
Blackberry Way" (co-produced by
Jimmy Miller), which topped the UK chart in
February 1969.
Richard Tandy played
keyboards on "Blackberry Way"
and joined the band for a time playing keyboards live, switching to
bass when Burton was briefly sidelined with a shoulder injury. Upon
Burton's recovery, Tandy departed to join The Uglys.
This new, more
pop-oriented musical
direction was the last straw for the increasingly disenchanted
Burton, who wanted to work in a more
hard
rock/
blues oriented style, and he left the
group after an altercation on stage one evening with Bevan. At
around this time it was rumoured in the music press that
Hank Marvin of the recently disbanded
Shadows had been invited to join The Move. Some
years later Wayne said that this was nothing more than a publicity
stunt; however, Marvin himself, in an article in
Melody Maker in 1973 and elsewhere, has
maintained that he was definitely approached by Wood and invited to
join The Move, but declined because The Move's schedule was too
hectic for him. Burton was ultimately replaced in 1969 by
Rick Price, another veteran of several
Birmingham rock groups.
Both Kefford and Burton struggled commercially after leaving The
Move. Kefford recorded a solo album in 1968 after his departure,
but it remained unreleased until 2003 when it appeared as
Ace
The Face. Burton played bass with yet another Birmingham
group,
The Steve Gibbons
Band, and later fronted his own blues group as lead
guitarist.
In October
1969 the band made their only concert appearances in the US with
two opening shows for The Stooges in
Detroit
and one other show in Los Angeles
. When neither their US record company nor
promoters showed any more interest, the remaining proposed tour
dates were cancelled and the group returned home.
During this period Arden sold The Move's management contract to
Peter Walsh. Walsh, who specialized in cabaret acts, began booking
the band into cabaret-style venues, which further increased the
tension between Wayne and Wood.
1970's
Shazam continued The
Move's practice of musical quotation and of elaborately re-arranged
versions of other performer's songs. "Hello Susie" (a Wood
composition), which was a Top 5 hit for Amen Corner in 1969, quoted
Booker T. Jones' and
Eddie
Floyd's "Big Bird", and the album included a cover of a
Tom Paxton song, "
The Last Thing on My Mind". It
also included a slightly slower, extended remake of "Cherry Blossom
Clinic", which finished with an extended quotation from
Johann Sebastian Bach's, "Joy".
According to a interview in 2000, Wayne had devised a plan to
revive The Move's fortunes by bringing Burton and Kefford back in.
Well aware that Wood was intent on setting up his new orchestral
rock project (which eventually became ELO), he suggested that Wood
could concentrate on performing with his new band while continuing
to write songs for The Move. However his suggestion was bluntly
rejected by Wood, Bevan and Price, the other three members, so
Wayne finally quit the group in January 1970. He subsequently
worked in a variety of musical ventures and appeared on television
and radio. In 2000 he replaced
Allan Clarke as lead singer of
The Hollies and performed with them as
lead singer until his death from
cancer in
2004.
New directions
Upon Wayne's departure, The Move jettisoned Walsh as manager and
returned to Arden. Lynne joined, enthused by Wood's ELO idea, as
Wood realized that he needed a second composer in the band to
relieve the pressure on himself, and the band toured the UK with
Arden's other major client,
Black
Sabbath. From this period came their third album
Looking On (1970), with all songs composed
by Wood, except for two by Lynne and one Bevan-penned track,
"Turkish Tram Conductor Blues". The album included a #7 hit, Wood's
"
Brontosaurus", which was
the band's last recording for Regal Zonophone. The second single
from the album, "
When
Alice Comes Back to the Farm," failed to chart.
During the lengthy recording sessions for the next album, which
included continuous overdubbing of new instruments by Wood and
Lynne, Price left in December 1970 to pursue other projects,
including the band Mongrel, although he later rejoined Wood in
Wizzard and the shortlived
Wizzo Band. He went to work in musical
management, and also formed the duo Price and Lee with his wife,
Dianne Lee, formerly of the
duo,
Peters and Lee.
The remaining three members - Wood, Lynne and Bevan - completed the
final Move LP,
Message from
the Country (1971). Wood's "Ben Crawley Steel Company"
featured a Bevan lead vocal that was modelled on
Johnny Cash, while Bevan's "Don't Mess Me Up"
(sung by Wood) paid homage to
Elvis
Presley, complete with fake
Jordanaires. In 2005 Bevan referred to this
album as his least favorite from The Move.
The album was followed by two more Wood-penned hit singles,
"
Tonight" and "
Chinatown". For several television
appearances behind these songs, The Move added two musicians who
became members of the group after its transition into ELO: Bill
Hunt (horns, winds, piano) and Richard Tandy (guitar, bass).
Final movements
As the release of the first Electric Light Orchestra album drew
near, The Move released what turned out to be a farewell
disc, a
maxi
single in 1972 consisting of "
California Man", "
Ella James" (from
Message) and "
Do Ya". "California Man", a #7 UK hit,
featured
baritone saxophones, a
double bass, and a riff borrowed from
George Gershwin, was an affectionate
tribute to
Jerry Lee Lewis (the
double bass had "Killer", Lewis' nickname, written on it) with
Lynne and Wood trading verses and lines. Meanwhile, Lynne's "Do Ya"
became the Move's best known song in the US; it was only Move song
to reach the US
Billboard Hot 100
chart at #93. However, the Electric
Light Orchestra's remake of "Do Ya", recorded after Wood's
departure, was a significant US hit in 1977.
With the release of the album
The Electric Light
Orchestra, The Move completed its transition into
ELO.
Wood released a solo album in 1973,
Boulders, and went on to front the
glam rock band Wizzard, while Lynne and
Bevan kept touring and finally achieved success with ELO.
Message from the Country was
remastered and released on the original labels, Harvest in the UK in 2005 and Capitol
in the US in
2006.
Although never as popular in the United States as they were in
their native country, the Move were a seminal pop/rock group of the
era, and are often cited as one of the main progenitors of
power pop.
Todd
Rundgren recorded a version of "Do Ya" with his group
Utopia on their album
Another Live,
Cheap
Trick recorded a version of "California Man" on their
Heaven Tonight album, whilst
Glen Matlock of the
Sex Pistols admitted that one of the guitar
riffs on "
God Save
The Queen" was inspired by that on "Fire Brigade".
In 1997, "Feel Too Good" was featured on the
soundtrack of the
film,
Boogie Nights, and in 2006
"Do Ya" was featured on a US
television advertisement; giving
The Move an overdue burst of success in America, which had eluded
them during their existence.
Resurrection
In 2004, after the death of Wayne, Bevan formed The Bev Bevan Band,
soon renamed as Bev Bevan's Move (without any other past members)
to capitalize on The Move's continuing reputation and belated
success. Bevan recruited bassist Phil Tree and former
ELO Part II colleagues, guitarist
Phil Bates and keyboard player Neil Lockwood, to
play a set comprising mostly The Move classics on tour. Wood
expressed extreme displeasure at this development.
Former Move guitarist Burton joined the band on occasion during
2006 and joined permanently in 2007. Bates departed in July 2007 to
rejoin ELO Part II, now renamed
The
Orchestra and was replaced with Gordon Healer. The Autumn 2007
tour was billed as 'The Move featuring Trevor Burton and Bev
Bevan'.
Discography
(
NOTE: Despite their lack of American success,
most singles and albums were issued in the US except for those
marked **)
Studio albums
Selected compilation albums
- Split Ends (1972) (US compilation)
- The Best of the Move (1974)**
- Great Move!: The Best of the Move (1992) (US
compilation)
- The BBC Sessions (1995)**
- Movements: 30th Anniversary Anthology (2008)**
Singles
Line-up history
| 1965 - 1968 |
- Carl Wayne: vocals
- Roy Wood: guitar, vocals
- Trevor Burton: guitar, vocals
- Chris 'Ace' Kefford: bass
- Bev Bevan: drums, vocals
|
| 1968 - 1969 |
- Carl Wayne: vocals
- Roy Wood: guitar, vocals
- Trevor Burton: bass, guitar, vocals
- Bev Bevan: drums, vocals
|
| 1969 |
- Carl Wayne: vocals
- Roy Wood: guitar, vocals
- Trevor Burton: bass, guitar, vocals
- Bev Bevan: drums, vocals
- Richard Tandy: keyboards, bass
|
| 1969 - 1970 |
- Roy Wood: guitar, vocals
- Jeff Lynne: guitar, piano
- Rick Price: bass
- Bev Bevan: drums, vocals
|
| 1971 - 1972 |
- Roy Wood: guitar, vocals
- Jeff Lynne: guitar, piano, vocals
- Richard Tandy: bass, guitar
- Bill Hunt: woodwind, horns, keyboards
- Bev Bevan: drums, vocals
|
| 2004 - 2007 |
- Phil Bates: guitar, vocals
- Trevor Burton: guitar, vocals
- Neil Lockwood: keyboards, vocals
- Phil Tree: bass, vocals
- Bev Bevan: drums
|
| 2007 - present |
- Phil Tree: bass, vocals
- Trevor Burton: guitar, vocals
- Neil Lockwood: keyboards, vocals
- Gordon Healer: guitar, vocals
- Bev Bevan: drums
|
Power pop
Writing for
Allmusic, John Dougan described
the genre's origins:
The musical sourcepoint for nearly all power-pop is
The Beatles. Virtually all stylistic
appropriations begin with them: distinctive harmony singing, strong melodic lines, unforgettable
guitar riffs, lyrics about boys and girls in love; they created the
model that other power-poppers copied for the next couple of
decades. Other profound influences include The
Who, The Kinks, and The Move, bands whose aggressive melodies and loud
distorted guitars put the "power" in power-pop.
Cover versions
"I Can Hear the Grass Grow"
"California Man"
- A cover of "California Man" was
released by Cheap Trick on their 1978 album Heaven
Tonight. It features a quick snippet from "Brontosaurus" in
the middle section. Nancy Sinatra also
covered "California Man".
"Brontosaurus"
- "Brontosaurus" was later recorded by Cheap Trick and released
in 1997 as a 7 inch vinyl single by Sub
Pop Records. It was also included as a bonus CD single along
with their 1997 album Cheap
Trick.
Other songs
- "Fire Brigade" was released as a single by The Fortunes in the United States in 1968, in a
vain attempt to compete with the original; neither version made the
US charts.
- Amen Corner's cover of "Hello
Susie" was a 1969 #4 UK hit for them, billed as "Hello Suzie".
- "Do Ya" has been recorded by Utopia and Ace
Frehley.
- "Flowers in the Rain" has been recorded by Nancy Sinatra and
The Kaiser Chiefs.
- "Blackberry Way" has been recorded in Italian by Equipe 84 with the title "Tutta
Mia La Città".
- "Ella James" was recorded by The Nashville Teens in 1971.
- Cheap Trick released a live version of The Move track, "Down on
the Bay", on their 1996 box set,
Sex, America, Cheap
Trick.
See also
References
- Brumbeat: The Move. Retrieved 11 November 2009.
- Carl Wayne, 2000 interview, The Move Online.
Retrieved November 2006.
- Sydbarrettpinkfloyd.com
- Carl Wayne 2000 interview, The Move Online.
Retrieved November 2006
- Roy Wood's Statement Re: "The Move"
- Mojo magazine, 2007
- Bev Bevan interview with Johnnie Walker, BBC Radio 2, 20
September 2007
- Allmusic Essay Power Pop John Dougan
External links
psychedelic act, the
Blues Magoos on their third LP, Basic Blues Magoos
(1968).
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