Fortunately, this all changed when I met Dave 'Bats'. He had not only heard of them but also possessed some rare tapes of their earlier recordings and an album titled Markley - A Group, which we presumed was a later solo-album by Bob Markley. Dave had apparently got interested in them after hearing The Pop Art Toasters (New Zealand super group led by Martin Phillipps of The Chills) cover of 'I Won't Hurt You'.

My own 'relationship' with the group started 30 years ago when I was playing in Italy with The Doc Thomas Group / Shakedown Sound. One blazing summer day in the town of Bologna I was lazily flicking through the LPs in Standz (like Woolworth's) looking for anything interesting - I'd previously discovered Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, The Doors, Love and a few others while over there. When I came across this orange and blue swirling wild psychedelic sleeve bearing the squiggly lettering West Coast Pop Art Experimental band - Part 1 - I took an instant shine to it! On closer scrutiny I found a small pebble on the sleeve emblazoned with the words "Help I'm A Rock" - very small. Already being into Zappa's early stuff I thought 'Hello, Hello' (just like The Sopwith Camel) this looks a bit special. On turning the sleeve over I was disappointed to find virtually no information - just nine small, and sort of pointless psychedelic photos - in which you could see nothing - but which took up three-quarters of the space. There were small titles and meager sleeve notes - giving nothing away. The producers were Bob Markley and Jimmy Brown - neither name meant anything to me at that time. Being desperately poor I didn't know whether to risk buying it. What if it turned out to be like Herb Alpert? I would have wasted a day's food allowance! After much deliberation the two things that swayed me were the 'Help I'm A Rock' - even Herb Alpert doing that couldn't be bad. The other was the fact that it was roughly half the price of most other albums on sale. It was reduced to the equivalent of £1 (about 1,500 lire I think). On the way back to our "hotel" I began to feel distinctly peckish - and began to wonder if I had bungled - badly! In my room I had a vile, grey, plastic portable record-player - not so much '"lo-fi" as "no-fi", but it did have detachable speakers which I was able to place strategically for optimum stereo effect - which proved to be crucial for the W.C.P.A.E.B. As soon as I played the opening track - the wistful 'Shifting Sands' I knew I'd stumbled across something very special. A plaintive ballad in A minor, echoed sad fuzz guitar - open space, great recording quality, but what really grabbed me by 'the beales' was the voice. I'd never heard a voice like it at that time. Most of the West Coast groups had powerful, loud, rock singers - The Doors, Moby Grape, Steppenwolf, Jefferson Airplane etc. This voice was nothing like that - it was gentle, eggshell thin, almost brittle, very young but with an emotional quality and a worldliness that was uncanny and could deliver lyrics in an understated but extremely powerful way. It's still my favourite voice. On the second track 'I Won't Hurt You' I was literally blown away. There was this incredible voice again this time right up-front almost whispering over a minimal backing of one muffled acoustic guitar and a beat - which apparently is a heartbeat (eerie). The opening lines "I've lost all my pride - I've been through Paradise and out the other side" - and he sounded like he had! The bell-like simplistic stereo guitars in the break are a stroke of genius - then back to the muffled last verse - the contrast in wonderful. One point about this song and it occurs in several of their others is the way the lyrics don't quite scan correctly - it's almost like they've tried to fit too many words into a fixed number of bars - it can't be done - but they do it - and it sounds brilliant! I do like writers who mess around with vocal phrasing and do things "wrong" - like Warren Zevon - he sometimes just misses a line out - and you think "What the hell went wrong there"? then he comes in again - great. After the first two tracks I thought that it was going to be a quiet, gentle album - then I played '1906' and 'Help, I'm A Rock'. The former a most strangely constructed song -up-tempo with a stabbing guitar chord sequence - spoken lyric over it - Bizarre - it talks about sadism, freaks, blind hunchbacks and dwarves - "Hear my master's ugly voice -see the teeth marks on my leash - only freaks know all the answers - I don't feel well". All very pleasant! A good one for The Osmonds to cover. Funnily enough Michael Lloyd later went on to produce The Osmonds!! The tremolo guitar solo is Eastern influenced with each note strangely played on each beat - this guy is inventive (and loony). 'Help I'm A Rock' is just mental, drug crazed mayhem - but apparently they didn't do drugs! Musically the track is a "tight mess"if that can mean anything - a "clever mess" too - good riff and tempo changes with the constantly repeated line"Help I'm A Rock" - spoken by teeny pebbles, medium-sized stones to bloody great boulders -the definitive version - I loved it. I get people asking me what it is when I play it in the DINOSAW MARKET EXPERIENCE - I tell them - then flog it to them! Last track on side one 'Will You Walk With Me' is back to the gentler side of the band. Almost like a Medieval folk song - haunting and pure with acoustic guitar, string quartet, glock and a tambourine - great voice again....It's gentle beauty makes one "go all funny". You can imagine King Arthur singing it to Guinevere (or Mike Tyson singing it to Wayne Sleep). Side Two opens with 'Transparent Day' - this is the killer track - should have opened the album - it's impossible to describe this song - but I'll try! Exhilarating, bursting with joy, euphoric, a beautiful song evoking the summer, a love song. This should have been a single - it should have been "a fuckin'number one" as Reg Presley would say -and so would I! Byrds-ish (but better) jangling guitar intro leading into a vibrant verse with that voice and answering backing voices- great sympathetic lyrics - great stereo -Extremely brave switching in the mix - cutting the backing "aaa-hhh'"s in half - they had no option in those days with the lack of spare tracks - but it works - sounds berserk (FAB)! The classical harpsichord solo is another stroke of genius - it makes Mozart look like Lt. Pigeon (and Beethoven look like Sid Vicious). 'Leiyla' is the next song - and they've pulled it off yet again. Almost a Bo Diddely beat - to me this is a young feller-me-lad telling his girl how wonderful she is while his schizophrenic dark, inner-self rages on in the background about what he'd really like to do to her if he can get her hands on her - if his nlcor-self succeeds in his romantic overtures! The music reflects this schizophrenia perfectly-exploding into fuzz guitar feedback from which emerges like a phoenix from the ashes a beautiful acoustic guitar piece which holds it's own for about 12 bars before being obliterated by the vile, lecherous fuzz feedback guitar as it snakes it's way back to the final verse - by now the ranting beastly voice has taken over, and the poor young feller-me-lad is barely audible - brilliant, brilliant stuff.'Here's Where You Belong' is the calm after the storm - very Byrds, medium-pacer - Melodic jangly riffs, lovely chords and that voice. A P.F. Sloan song - beautifully executed - great harms. 'If You Want This Love' - Another haunting minor key ballad simple A Minor, D Minor, E 7th song. The extra bit of magic on this one comes in the two middle-eights when the tempo suddenly unexpectedly doubles which allows the guitarist to launch into a fast, short, country Telecaster-type solo at frantic pace - the second time, however, he switches the country solo for a wild fuzz break - short but powerful - which finishes with a low bent note - which sounds like the application of "brakes" - bringing the song back to normal tempo for it's conclusion. How do they do it? Masterful? 'Scuse Me Miss Rose'. A speedy three chord rocker - a very melodic song about a bloke telling Miss Rose that it's time he was leaving to go on the road and live a little - Doesn't want to get tied down. More great, wild lead guitar this guy is bloody good - classy too - he can play like Jerry Miller (from "the old Grape") if he chooses but he also possesses a very gentle, melodic and accurate style - he plays great notes - at the right time! 'High Coin' introduced by a spoken voice - saying "Part one, The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band". This is their theme which recurs in different forms throughout their albums - nice idea. This is another example of the guitarist's ability - eat your heart out John Fahey! -I love this little epitaph. Melodic tune - whistle-able but cool. You can't get it out of your bounce.

Anyway back to 1967. After I'd played the album a couple of times I excitedly ran to find the rest of the band to tell them about what I'd discovered. By the next day Buffin (later drummer in Mott The Hoople) and Mick Ralphs (later guitarist in Mott The Hoople) had both gone out and bought the album - and we were doing virtually all of it onstage - including 'The Rock'. 'Transparent Day' was always being requested. In fact there is a version of it that we half finished and had forgotten about for 29 years, until it was unearthed in the vaults at Rockfield Studios, Monmouth, recently. 
It will be released with other "rarities" on a new Mott The Hoople box set next year - we were amazed that we recorded it (as "Silence") - unfortunately, our version is SHITE!

Another related story that comes to mind is the time we were performing 'Scuse Me Miss Rose' at Coleford Community Centre in The Forest Of Dean in 1967, when the entire audience tried to kill us! We had just returned from the summer in Italy sporting deep suntans and wild Italian fashions - including floral, brightly coloured mini-pullovers and pink bell-bottoms and shoes - We also had big bouffanted hair - back combed and lacquered - in retrospect The Forest Of Dean in 1967 was not really the place to mince around in this type of attire! The girl's seemed fascinated by our image (we looked foreign) but the men (mostly neolithic) were NOT impressed - in fact, it was just too much for them to bear - they just gaped open-mouthed to start with - in disbelief at this bunch of poofs who had the audacity to eye up their birds! Anyway, after a few songs a huge punch-up erupted between the five of us and about 100 of thorn. Luckily, Stan Tippins (who was our singer and later Mott The Hoople tour manager, and now helps in the DINOSAW MARKET EXPERIENCE), and Verden Allen (Mott The Hoople organist) were extremely hard and flattened about 30 of these cavemen before they knew what had happened! Ralphur, Buffin and myself continued playing 'Scuse Me Miss Rose' in the vague hope that it would quell the fighting - it didn't. Things got worse and we had to stop to try and protect our new Marshall amps. It was mayhem. We had no escape route because the rooms off the stage were all locked - some of the local bands we knew had come to watch us, but when the going got tough, they locked themselves in the dressing rooms in fear! Finally, the police arrived, hundreds of them from all over Gloucestershire and reinforcements. We finally left, with a police escort, in a Brooke Bond Tea Van borrowed from Charles and Kingsley Ward (Rockfield). Kingsley, when in a gleeful mood (which he often was / is), had painted a six foot high white "V" sign across the back doors of the van, which taunted and goaded the beaten cavemen as they were held back by police as we drove down the bumpy track away from them. They were almost driven to insanity by this final defiant gesture from us, bleeding, bruised, beaten and humiliated by five poofs from Ross! We were unscathed and triumphant, but we never returned to The Forest Of Dean. So as you can see "'Scuse Me Miss Rose' has a special significance for me!

Before I move on from Part One, I just want to say that it is, as you've probably realised, one of my favourite all-time records. It's got the lot - Great songs, the feel, the playing, the sound and production AND that voice. The ridiculous thing is that I still don't know who it belongs to - after 30 years!

The other albums are excellent too - although Part One is the best for me as an overall concept.
When I got back from Italy I ordered Parts 2 and 3 from One Stop Records in Soho (as imports). I picked up Part 4 in the States on the first Mott The Hoople tour. The lack of ANY information on these albums was most frustrating and led me to draw my own conclusions from the available names and photographs, about who was in the band and "who did what". The name "Bob Markley" cropped up most - as writer/ producer so I assumed he was also the singer, guitarist, keyboards etc. In the photographs there were only three people, which seemed odd to me, as it sounded like a "full" group of five or six members. I also assumed that Shaun and Dan Harris (brothers) would be bass and drums. I've generally accepted that as the situation for 30 years as there has never been any news to the contrary.

I acquired Parts 1 and 2 on one CD, then Parts 3 and 4 on another a year or so ago - still no sleeve notes or info. Disappointing. Then more recently I got the early stuff on CD (Volume One that "Bats" had played me) (Sundazed - thank you). Apart from the music being fascinating - to see where it all started there are extensive sleeve notes - at last. These totally blew away 30 years of pre-conceived ideas and shocked me to the core. My "hero" Bob Markley, it seems, did NOTHING except fund the group and impose a stranglehold on it - forcing his name and photograph on the albums - even though he could neither sing or play an instrument! It appears the other guys met him through an old friend of mine - Kim Fowley. Markley was loaded, his father had oil wells in Oklahoma and he was a qualified lawyer. He was 15 years older than the group (32-33) but he wanted to be in a band so he offered to help finance them if he could "be in them". The most shocking thing, however, is that there was a guy called Michael Lloyd - who'd never had so much as a mention, who, along with the Harris brothers was the backbone of the group. Perhaps it's Michael who possesses that great voice. I feel sort of cheated - so Michael Lloyd must be furious. He apparently played guitar along with Dan and wrote a song! I was quite sad when I got to read all this, but in a way, it's another twist in the story, of the W.C.P.A.E.B - It would have been too simple to find out they were three mates that grew up together and everything was nice! Anyway, I'm still trying to find out more about them - as I think more and more people are starting to - I always reckoned they were ahead of their time. The Internet will help to push out more information and the re-release of their albums should generate more interest.

I was in a warehouse recently and saw a stack of 300 or so of their CDs. The store man told me they'd all be sold within two days, "they always sell" he added. So maybe they will be heard by the masses after all! There has been talk of a reformation, but I don't think it would be a good idea. You can't turn back the clock, as I keep telling people who want Mott The Hoople to re form.

Well there is still a lot more I could write about this brilliant band but I'll do that later -perhaps with reviews of their other albums.

Finally, I would like to say that The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band is, to me, the saddest story in the history of rock. This group should have been HUGE. Talent-wise they were up there with the Bontlos, Byrds, Beach Boys etc. They had it all and were a bottomless pit of ideas. No other band with this kind of ability has remained TOTALLY unknown. They had a rough deal in one way and another but it was obviously not their destiny to bo successful!. PITY!.