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Stavely Makepeace
Some bands are born with greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them, but Stavely Makepeace went for a third option and knocked up their own greatness in their front room using reel to reel tape recorders and anything they could find to hand!
It was 1968, and two old friends were reunited when Rob Woodward who had been singing with sensation Shel Naylor and part of The Pretty Flamingos, travelled down to London with heavy reel to reel tape recorder in tow and linked up with Nigel Fletcher. Rob played Nigel some of his ideas and they discovered they were travelling in the same direction musically. Rob a gifted musician was keen to experiment with music, much akin to the genius that was Joe Meek, whose creativity with sound was legendary. Nigel Fletcher takes up the story,” It all sounded so fantastic that I couldn’t refuse! Within a few weeks, we were caught up in a frenzy of activity working day and night trying to achieve what seemed the impossible. We recruited Coventry musicians Don Ker and Pete Fisher and thus was formed the nucleus of the ‘scrap iron’ sound of Stavely Makepeace. Soon after we were joined by the urbane Mr Steve Tayton and the line up was complete. Like our mentor Joe Meek we broke all the rules of studio recording, and that small front room in Kingsway where we set up our recording studio was never idle. Our motto became “If it sounds right it is right””.
Recording in the front room of the Woodward house in Kingsway. They began their epic journey in sound and learning on the way. The first single released through Pyramid Records in 1969 was “(I Wanna Love You Like A) Mad Dog”, it caused a minor stir, not least for the publicity stunt of sticking postage stamps to the records label to compensate for the rather short (32 seconds long) B-side. Despite the initial interest it failed to se the charts alight. So a second single was released the lovably bizarre “Edna (Let Me Sing My Beautiful Song)” complete with yodelling and falsetto vocals. The guys performed it on Top Of The Pops, with Steve Johnson replacing Pete Fisher on bass. The song would also showcase the mini–piano sound, that would become such a trademark for them (it entailed recording a piano at half speed, then speeding it up to create a manic honky tonk sound). Its release coincided with an upsurge of Coventry artists that summer. With the likes of Indian Summer, Don Fardon, The Brotherhood Of Man featuring Johnny Goodison and Stavely all doing their best to promote The Coventry Sound. Radio One was divided over “Edna” though, some loved it, and others hated it, either way it was unique and it made it into the Record Mirror top 50 (though not the official charts).
They followed it up in 1970 with “Smokey Mountain Rhythm Revue”, earning a spot on the children’s pop TV show Lift Off. If the lack of success of this single was uneventful the B-side was to have an impact on them that would change their lives. The B-side was an instrumental entitled Rampant On the Range, It featured the mini piano sound again, but this time as the lead instrument. A spark of an idea flashed between Woodward & Fletcher, and Lieutenant Pigeon the off-shoot novelty wing of The Stavely Makepeace corporation was formed. Meanwhile, back at Cape Kingsway, Makepeace had released the singles “Give Me That Pistol” and “Walking Through The Blue Grass” uneventful apart from the fact the latter was covered by the bands Red Fox and Slow Dog. The success that ‘Pigeon’ was having had a positive effect on ‘Makepeace’, who tracked parallel careers and their new label Spark were more that happy to release “Slippery Rock 70’s” and “Prima Donna” with the former being released as Mouldy Old Dough was sitting at number one in the chart! Slippery Rock 70’s incidentally can currently be found on the very interesting Glam rock compilation CD entitled Velvet Tinmine. 1973 saw them on Decca’s (their label with Pigeon) progressive label Deram releasing “Cajun Band” and “Runaround Sue” (with great vocals from Rob in my opinion the best version of this song ever).
There would be a break of nearly 3 years before Stavely Makepeace would release another single (on another label) that being “Baby Blue Eyes” on Unigram, another non-charter. Things looked better with the intervention of Nigel’s friend Don Powell (Slade’s drummer of course). They released a pair of singles “No Regrets” and “Coconut Shuffle”on Barn Record. Owned by Slade’s manager – the late Chas Chandler. Once again two more original songs went a begging (“Coconut Shuffle” would also be released as a remix in 1980 under the name The Bounty Hunters; get it?) Their last two singles were to be “Songs Of Yesterday” in 1980 and “Just Tell her Fred Said Goodbye” in 1983. A compilation of the best of Stavely Makepeace was released summer 2004 entitled “The Scrap Iron Rhythm Revue”, those not familiar with their music would do well to sample the delights of this unique and forward thinking band, you have a treat to come. The guys tried their hand at many types of music (Rock N Roll, Novelty, Country, Bluegrass and even the recorded sound of the mighty Deltic locomotive) even some naughty innuendo songs with yet another offshoot band Heavy Cochran. Yet whatever they did you can bet they had fun doing it, long live the memory of Stavely Makepeace a really unique experience. I will leave the last words to Nigel Fletcher. “We kept Stavely Makepeace alive as a recording unit during those Lieutenant Pigeon years but now we felt it was time to resume where we’d left off. For a further 5 years we soldiered on but Stavely Makepeace never became the huge success we’d all dreamed about. At the end of 1983, after a total of 13 singles and as many heartbreaks, we finally wound the band down. We remained based in Coventry throughout. It’s a great city and ideally placed to reach all the other major cities in the country. Sadly, at the time of writing, only three of us remain here. That’s Don Ker, Rob and myself but we might soon have to drag Steve Johnson back from Blackburn and Steve Tayton back from France. This is because RPM Records released 22 of the best of our tracks on a compilation CD. Stavely Makepeace lives on”!
Stavely Makepeace trivia
You can hear Pete Chambers on Bob Brolly’s Friday Show every fortnight from 3.00 p.m. on BBC WM: Coventry & Warwickshire 94.8 103.7 & 104.