Alehouse

The band was originally formed in August 1973, by guitarists Dave Gregory (who was playing in a local country & western band then) and Larry "Mole" Williams, a CaIne resident who'd been with a band called Skin Deep before that. They brought in Skin Deep's bass player, Tony Green, and Tony McCondach on drums (at their first rehearsal, at CaIne town hall, he turned up without his drums). After Rod came in they did their first gig at the Brunel Rooms in Swindon, in February 1974, "playing anything we could get away with that featured twin guitars, bass, drums, and a vocalist, Beck Bogart and Appice were one of the bands big in our legend", Dave Gregory recalls. (Louis)

After the Magic Muscle reunion it was back to Alehouse for me (Rod), carrying on doing our gigs which by that time were starting to get a bit funky. We d gotten some tapes through to EMI and they sent a chap called Tony Wilson up town (he now calls himself Anthony H Wilson and has his own TV show, "The Other Side of Midnight" an arts programme) and he liked us. He came to a couple of our gigs. We had a good relationship, I liked him too; still like him, as a matter of fact. He had us come up to London to go into the Shepherd's Bush BBC studios. We were in the studio next door to where they made "Doctor Who" soundtracks, the Radiophonic Workshop) and we cut a double a-sided single which was going to be released on Harvest (if I'm not mistaken the titles were "Magic Moon" and "Funky Junk" and all this happened in November 1975, L.). Now we came hack to Calne and carried on doing our gigs and we started to have things in the papers like "pop group's recording venture " and we got a piece in the New Musical Express and there were various things about 'group seeks disc success" And it was 1975, so for me it was ten years after The Pack, the tenth anniversary and I'd had a hit single in '65. After being through so many weird adventures since, to come back and have another hit single in 1975 would have been sort of I don't know, decadent but great, you know. So I figured that this would be good fun.
But time went on and we kept phoning the record company: "What's happening to the single?" "Oh, the chap that was overseeing the project has gone away on holiday and he hasn't come back" This went on for about six weeks and we actually entered 1976, and then we realised that Tony Wilson had absconded: he'd gone to Manchester to start the whole Factory scene up there, Joy Division and all that, that's what he left EMI for (he's become the manager of New Order since) but he left Alehouse adrift on a raft without a paddle. I mean, we did loads of gigs. We carried on but a load of steam had gone out of the band and we finally split up in the spring of 1976.