BRINSLEY SCHWARZ
He gave his name to the band that pub-rocked the pre-punk ’70s, diced with hubris, and asked, What’s So Funny ’Bout Peace, Love And Understanding? Now he’s back.
FORMED FROM the ashes of late ’60s pop triers Kippington Lodge, Brinsley Schwarz found infamy when an April 1970 PR stunt went spectacularly awry. A plan to send the UK music press to see them triumph at New York’s Fillmore East collapsed in a farrago of visa skullduggery, plastered journos and the band arriving at the venue five minutes before showtime.
“I was extremely nervous,” says Brinsley Schwarz, the guitarist who gave the band its name. “The positive thing was seeing Van Morrison, who was on after us and was blindingly good. We realised that we really weren’t, and we had to get a whole lot better.”
This they did, and posterity owes the band – Schwarz, Nick Lowe (voice and bass), Bob Andrews (keyboards) and Billy Rankin (drums) – more than this cautionary yarn. Living communally in Northwood, Middlesex, they’d move away from the CSN harmonies and West Coast moves of 1970’s self-titled debut, and gravitate to the Americana of The Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers, refracted through a particularly English lens.
It all ran counter to the emerging progressive and heavy rock scenes, but the Brinsleys looked bound for greatness. They were the first band to play live on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1971, appeared at the first Glastonbury Festival and did benefits including the Greasy Truckers Party at The Roundhouse in 1972. “I thought we were ahead of our time,” says rhythm guitarist Ian Gomm, who joined after the Fillmore East event. “We’d played the opening night of the Hard Rock Cafe in London in 1971. Paul and Linda McCartney were in the audience, and they liked it so much we supported Wings on two UK tours.”
Yet a breakthrough eluded them. Instead, their tight, subtle brand of rock’n’roll placed them in the vanguard of the London pub rock scene. “We needed to be close up to the audience, hot and sweaty,” says Schwarz. Looking back, it’s hard to understand how 1974’s wondrous 45 (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding – covered by Springsteen and Costello among others – wasn’t a global Number 1. “We never seemed to be able to make a record that sounded like what we had in our heads,” says Schwarz, “or how we sounded live.” Though offered a deal with Island, the weary group threw in the towel in 1975. Gomm and Lowe embarked on solo careers, while Andrews and Schwarz joined Graham Parker & The Rumour, cutting five LPs including 1979’s triumph
Squeezing Out Sparks. From 1983, Schwarz played with Parker in a duo, and had a parallel career as a guitar technician, which became full-time after he found himself physically unable to board planes in 1990. More recently, Gomm instigated Brinsleys archive recordings including recent sessions/ live comp Last
Orders!. “That’s all I’ve got left,” says Gomm. “My job as band archivist is over.”
In 2011, Parker and The Rumour reunited and, with the help of keyboardist James Hallawell, Schwarz cut 2016’s solo debut
Unexpected. Now, new LP Tangled is ready to go. “It just developed,” he says. “Suddenly I was writing songs. If it hadn’t been for Covid I’d have got a band together and done gigs.” Billed as Brinsley Schwarz?
“I know! I can’t do anything about that though…”
Tangled is out on Fretsore in September. Last Orders! is out on Mega Dodo.
“We needed to be close to the audience, hot and sweaty.”
BRINSLEY SCHWARZ