Upp

Band Personnel:
Andy Clark: keyboards, vocals
Stephen Amazing: bass
Jim Copley: drums
+ Jeff Beck: guitar
+ David Bunce: guitar

The mystery train of rock music can churn down any number of fascinating side tracks. Connections are made, then abandoned. Accidents can happen…including more than a few cataclysmic train wrecks. (Blind Faith, anyone?) A perfect example of the detour phenomenon is the “accidental” band Upp (often spelled with all-caps, and not to be confused with Irish prog-rockers Fruupp).

This particular music profile was marginally more difficult to write than usual, as there’s scant material on Upp, and my discovery of them was an accident in itself. But Upp is interesting if for no other reason than its Spinal Tap-styled antecedents, and its significant connection to someone who, to many listeners’ ears (including the author’s), was the greatest guitar practitioner in rock. So, for that reason…let’s take Upp their short story.

Upp begins with keyboardist Andy Clark (not to be confused with Be-Bop Deluxe keyboardist Simon Andy Clark). Clark was in the 1966-68 incarnation of heavy-psych band Sam Gopal Dream, along with tabla player Gopal, guitarist Mick Hutchinson, and journeyman bassist Pete Sears. No recordings exist, but the group assisted sundry acid trips in the major London underground clubs of the day, and played at the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream and Christmas on Earth Continued extravaganzas. [A later Gopal lineup made the collectible stoner LP, Escalator (1969), featuring infamous Lemmy.]

Clark, Hutchinson, and Sears then formed the short-lived ensemble Vamp with crazed drummer Viv Prince (ex-Pretty Things). Vamp released one single, “Floatin'” / “Thinkin’ Too Much” (1968).

Clark and Hutchinson then formed Clark-Hutchinson with Stephen Field (bass, aka Stephen Amazing) and Del Coverly (drums). They managed three minor albums, the first of which, A=MH² (1969), is praised by prog junkies for its extended raga workouts (while critic Richie Unterberger called it “the sort of thing you might hear blasting away…in the background of drug orgies in some low-rent psychsploitation flicks.”)

Having little success with music, Clark turned to pumping gas (petrol) for a living. But in 1973 he was given a limo ride by a roadie for David Bowie, during which he somehow finagled studio time where Bowie recorded. He and Amazing began casually rehearsing soul-jazz numbers with new drummer Jim Copley, calling themselves 3-Upp, then just Upp. This period coincided with Bowie’s ballyhooed farewell gig as “Ziggy Stardust” at Hammersmith Odeon on July 3, 1973. One featured guest at this show was guitarist Jeff Beck.

The story goes that Beck visited Bowie’s CBS studio, then overheard Upp rehearsing down the hall. He kicked open their rehearsal room door, at which the band, open-mouthed, abruptly stopped playing. “Please carry on! I love it, I love it!” raved Beck, according to drummer Copley. What followed was six months-worth of Upp jamming with Beck, resulting in two albums for Epic/CBS, the first with the legend himself as producer (though, oddly, he’s not credited anywhere). He also used Upp as his backing band for BBC broadcasts. All this was warmup to his seminal George Martin-produced fusion LP, Blow by Blow (1975).

It’s tempting of course to claim that, without Upp, Beck would never have embraced instrumental fusion like he did – musical stylings that he pursued until his death in 2023. Fact is, he’d already toyed with fusion with the Jeff Beck Group. Also, Beck himself claimed in interviews that drummer Billy Cobham‘s 1973 Spectrum album was the impetus for turning him away from vocal-heavy, bluesy hard rock and closer to jazz. (His hiring of Martin was spurred by Martin’s production of fusion giant Mahavishnu Orchestra‘s Apocalypse LP). Significantly, he didn’t enlist Upp for Blow by Blow, instead utilizing Max Middleton (keyboards), Phil Chen (bass), and Richard Bailey (drums).

L to R: Bunce, Amazing, Copley, Clark

But what of the music of Upp and This Way Upp? Well, the first album is pleasant after a few beers, maybe for a party, or for “background noise in some low-rent porn flick,” and overlooking some clumsy changes and fadeouts, and Clark’s English lad-trying-to-sound-like-Curtis Mayfield-and-Wilson Pickett vocals. Beck’s guitar is, naturally, the big draw. He’s politely restrained here, offering breathing room to the others, and Amazing earns his pseudonym with some hyperkinetic bass (see link below). Funk-jazz is the operative word, and much of this slight LP sounds like rehearsal material for “Constipated Duck,” a lesser song on Blow by Blow. Best cut is the tender “Jeff’s One,” written by Beck and Clark, with a Beck solo that’s the epitome of taste.

The eye-catching Magritte-inspired cover is by CBS Records staff designers Roslav Szaybo and Les May.

This Way Upp has a slicker, L.A. sound and seems aimed at the disco market. But it has more liveliness than the debut, with tighter playing, singing, and arrangements. Maybe it’s because Beck didn’t produce. (Upp was his only attempt at producing someone other than himself.) His guitar graces only two songs, though his playing is as impeccable as ever. (One David Bunce is main guitarist, and L.A. session saxophonist Tom Scott guests.) Best song: “Dance Your Troubles Away,” with both Beck and Scott.

***

It goes without saying, if you’re a Jeff Beck man, you want these two albums. Even without his involvement, though, this white-boy funk does have its moments. And if you do manage to locate these curios, please tell Discogs, or whomever, that longitudes sent you. (No, Pete doesn’t get a commission.)

Andy Clark reunited with Sam Gopal in the 1990s, recorded four albums with him, and as far as I know is still around. Jim Copley did session work after Upp, but died of leukemia in 2017. And if various music-related threads can be trusted, Stephen Field/Amazing, like so many musicians of old, had some personal struggles. Presumably, he’s now Upp there…jamming once more with Copley and Beck.

(R.I.P. Rob “Marty DiBergi” Reiner, and thanks for your films and activism.)

Singles:
“Never Gonna Turn Your Love Away” (1976)
“Dance Your Troubles Away” (1976)

Albums:
Upp (1975)
This Way Upp (1976)

Compilations:
Get Down in the Dirt: The Complete Upp (2004, CD only)
Upp/This Way Upp (2017, CD only)

Forest

We embraced the rich melodic structures of traditional song and synthesized these with fresh musical forms to create a world of dreams, surrealism, Nature, stories and love, very much in keeping with the spirit of that age – Adrian Welham of Forest

Band Personnel:
Martin Welham: 12-string guitar, 6-string guitar, piano, organ, harmonium, pipes, percussion, vocals
Adrian “Hadrian” Welham: guitar, mandolin, organ, harmonica, pipes, cello, harpsichord, harmonium, percussion, vocals
Derek “Dez” Allenby: mandolin, harmonica, harmonium, pipes, percussion, vocals
+ Dave Panton: viola, oboe, saxophone
+ Dave Stubbs: bass

In my last music article I profiled Dr. Strangely Strange, a group that had followed an acoustic folk path blazed by the great Scottish duo, Incredible String Band (ISB). But there were others. One of them is a very unusual outfit called Forest.

NOTE: not to sound like an old fart, but if you’re a young person reading, this article deals with actual people making original music on real instruments in an acoustic capacity. The band profiled here were flesh-and-blood humans who used no digitized buttons, commands, Artificial Intelligence, or “sampling” to create their sounds, and they used no machines other than during the recording process. I don’t say this out of sarcasm. I just feel that times have changed, and music in turn has changed, and it is important to be aware of certain facts.

Like the Strangelies, Forest was a threesome with only two albums on its résumé (though the Strangelies managed two reunion LPs). Both are highly collectible. Both, also, are so attuned to the spirit of their time, they could never have been released outside a window in recorded history of maybe five or six golden years.

Brothers Martin and Adrian Welham and Dez Allenby came from the fishing port of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England. Teenagers in 1966, they played folk clubs in nearby Walesby as Foresters of Walesby, shortening the name after moving to larger Birmingham two years later. Initially, they were strongly influenced by American music and traditional English folkies like The Watersons and The Young Tradition, the last-named of whom they were friends with. But the abstract, dreamlike explorations of ISB and, of course, later Beatles, pulled them in a more psychedelic direction, though one less genial than either of those groups. Venerable BBC radio host John Peel (with whom they lodged briefly) promoted them on three BBC sessions, and “Whispering Bob” Harris on three shows. Peel may have even helped them sign with Peter Jenner and Andrew King of Blackhill Enterprises (whose first signing had been Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd).

Blackhill then arranged an album contract with Malcolm Jones‘s fledgling EMI subsidiary, Harvest Records, home of Floyd, solo Barrett, Barclay James Harvest, Kevin Ayers, Roy Harper, Edgar Broughton Band, and other progressive rock acts of a curious ilk. Aside from maybe Syd, Forest was the most curious.

First release was the single “Searching for Shadows,” followed by an eponymous LP. In his liner notes to the album, Peel describes the songs as being “full of sunshine, leaves and running water.” Like ISB and the Strangelies, the music is all-acoustic, with offkey harmonizing and exotic, raggedy instrumentation. If the Strangelies’ music is appropriate for a harvest festival, Forest sound like they chose a denser locale in which to record…an old-growth forest, perhaps. All is burnished by a casual mixing job, which some might argue enhances the music’s charm. The listener cocks his head with “These are either schoolboys horsing around, or they have a key to a door (leading to the “forest” of the subconscious?) that only a few even know about.” For me, they come closer to the latter.

Although the band earned a few gigs due to Forest, the LP shifted a meagre 10,000 copies. So the group did the logical thing: they made their follow-up even more Gothic.

The Guardian included Full Circle in its list of “1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die,” one of only 14 from the year 1970. I’ve been dismissive of subjective lists and inductions by anonymous humans. But I’m guessing The Guardian‘s credibility factor exceeds that of certain rock music halls-of-fame, arriving as it were without the internal politics, not to mention self-aggrandizing New York and L.A. entertainment executives in sharp-looking suits.

Full Circle glows with simple, childlike wonder. The music is weird, but accessible, the songs filled with a baroque and elegant macabre reminiscent of Poe or The Turn of the Screw. “Graveyard” (Adrian Welham) has a simple arrangement with guitar, pipes, cello, and flute, and concerns a specter’s visit to a graveyard and subsequent stumbling on a corpse that could very well be its own. “Hawk the Hawker” (Dez Allenby) has a country vibe, with fiddle and pedal steel guitar, except this “Hawk” fellow isn’t a jilted lover (or medieval falconer) but the band’s friendly “supplier.” The crème de la crème is Martin Welham’s “The Midnight Hanging of a Runaway Serf,” a tune pushing close to progressive rock. The title describes the story. It’s a stunner.

Both Forest and Full Circle feature will-o’-the-wisp sleeve illustrations by a mysterious woman named Joan Melville. To discuss artwork (indicative of the song lyrics), the group met with her in her rural cottage while sitting in the nude and indulging in tea and meditation.

A familiar tale followed the release of Full Circle. Extroverted glam rock was supplanting the kind of cerebral hippie-folk that Forest did so well, and the record did not do well. Discouraged, Allenby quit to attend school. The brothers Welham pulled in two new members and soldiered on, completing a tour of Holland that included a well-received appearance at the 1971 Pinkpop Festival alongside Fleetwood Mac and Focus. They then notched their last Beeb session with Peel. But no more studio recordings were released. The band folded in 1972. Peel is reported to have said that, of a multitude of bands that at various times crashed at his home, Forest is the only group he liked as people.

Today, Martin Welham and his son Tom make up the acid-folk band The Story. Allenby has released one album independently as Southernwood with his wife Cathy. Adrian Welham’s whereabouts are unknown. He was last sighted in the Southern Carpathians managing a sleigh ride business catering to tourists.

Single:
“Searching for Shadows” / “Mirror of Life” (1969)

Original Albums:
Forest (1969)
Full Circle (1970)

Live:
BBC Concert (1989) (France only)

Compilation:
Forest/Full Circle (1996) (CD only)