In The Clinic

Thus a new year came but Rod was without a band and things started happening that did not portend any good: to make things even worse he was caught by a sideswipe of "Operation Julie", a large-scale drug bust project to track down and eradicate the last of the great seventies LSD-networks, in February 1978 and was charged on eight counts for the possession of miscellaneous items of a fairly psychedelic nature. Not in the least deterred by his having been arrested without warrant and having been served not one but two statements of charges (they wouldn't fit onto one page only) Rodney J. went on to contravene sections 1 and 7 of the Theft Act of 1968 by willfully and wantonly stealing two police caps and one police inspector's cap badge in June 1978, resulting in him being put under probation for two years in August. As if all this wasn't enough, later in the year Rod's father passed away, making 1978 truly his annul horribilis, as they would put it in royal circles.

RR: "After the police drugs bust and my father's death in '78 I was virtually on a non-stop crash-course into oblivion; the inevitable seventies-rocker-takes-dive-into- drug/alcohol-abuse-degradation. Basically, I was in a mess. A few cronies had been tagging along with me since the summer of '77 on what I insisted on calling a 'perma-binge" (non-stop short-life-long party) during which time I was permanently dangerously drunk and often fixing up anything that could be intravenously injected. Even so, I still insisted on making music (albeit in a non-pro' sort of way) and I always had some local band or other going. My drinking pals and I had formed an experimental band of sorts, playing my stuff that was called In The Clinic. We (meaning Rod, Nigel Easton and Hugh Kirkbride) were working on some of my songs in the basement of Dominion House (here in Calne).