Egg Prense

 

COUNTDOWN TO EGGSTASY

(NME - 15 March 1975)

HO, HO, WHAT A YOLK ! EGG WON'T LIKE THAT

“There were four of us then. the group was Uriel. We played five nights a week at Ryde Castle Hotel” (Mont Campbell.)

Uriel were Hugo Martin Montgomery Campbell (bass), Clive Brooks (drums), Steve Hillage (guitar) and Dave Stewart (keyboards). You can also add a roadie named Alf Gascoyne if you like, for he certainly played his part in the trials and tribulations of the band that later became known an Egg. Brooks, now drummer with the Groundhogs, remembers: “When we first ventured out on the rood, it was just like the beginning of the Stardust film. We were all kipping in the back of the van. We went straight down to the Isle of Wight and stayed there for six weeks.”

The time was the late '60s and the word being thrown around the record companies was “underground”. Uriel filled the bill neatly enough. They decided to go professional, and soon were to be found rehearsing in Soho's Studio 19 where some people from a small label called Zel heard them. Alf recalls: “They said they were from a young record company that was just starting up and asked us to make an album. We did the whole thing in just nine hours and got about £200 in payment - side one had something called "Queen Street Gang" on it, while the reverse featured a couple or jams.” That £200 was hardly enough to keep the band solvent and, anyway, Steve Hillage went off to university, which happened to he the University of Kent - which, in turn, meant Canterbury, Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine and the start of another story.

In the meantime, a couple of guys from the London underground Middle Earth club invested enough in the band for Dave Stewart to buy a new organ, but promptly lost out when Egg - for the band assumed their new identity about this time - met Pat Boland who was deejaying at Klook's Kleek. “He was a sort of talent scout for Decca. He went to the people there and told them that he had a great band but they'd got no equipment, no van, no money. ‘Give 'em £3,000, he said, and they'll sign up.’ Decca were still kicking themselves for turning down the Beatles, so they gave us £2,500 and we spent every penny on new equipment. It was so easy - we should have really asked for £5,000, we'd have probably got it.”

They probably would have. Decca were mooting a new “progressive” label called Nova, and signing new names by the doze... Sunforest, Black Cat Bones, Aardvark, Elastic Band, Pacific Drill, Galliard. The resulting album, just called “Egg,” appeared on Nova issue 14. In their efforts to be a thinking man's band, the trio over-reached themselves: a lot of the album was pretentious and bore titles like “The Song Of McGillicudie The Pusillanimous”, “Symphony No 2” and “Fugue In D”.

Most of the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of Mont Campbell, who contributed nearly all the material. Campbell is the odd man out with Egg — although the very existence of the unit revolved around him. A fine musician but an extremist. And when it came to music he indulged in similar excesses. Says Stewart: “Mont did all the stuff on that first album and it had a pretentious feel - it was all in 1/8, 100/8 and all that sort or thing. But we had to take ourselves seriously in those days because nobody else would!”

Life at Decca proved hard - Egg claim the company were just into the Rolling Stones and Tom Jones level. Even so, they got some excellent radio play and worthwhile gigs. They even made a second album for Decca. And the album, called “The Polite Force,” was a beauty. Commencing with “A Visit to Newport Hospital,” Campbell's song about Uriel's first I.O.W. gigs, the aggro with skinheads etc., the first side moves on to “Contrasong” and thence to “Boilk”, a strange freaky affair, full of weird electronic noise, stereo drum effects and even a little Bach played in Hammer horror fashion.

The whole of side two was a kind of suite known as “Long Piece No. 3” which mixed freeform experimentation with martial grandeur, managing to suggest both jazz and classical influences. Again it was something of a tour-de-force for Campbell who played bass, organ, piano and French horn during its course, Stewart proving himself to be one of the most forward-looking keyboardmen in rock with his contribution, and Brooks doing all that was asked of him.

Somewhere along the way there was also a Deram single of "Seven Is A Jolly Good Time", but that was just about the end of Egg's term with Decca. The New York Times might well claim that Dave Stewart was as good an organist as Keith Emerson and Brian Auger rolled into one, but gradually the gigs ran out and Egg decided to call it it day in August 1972.

Stewart went on to join Khan for a while, that renewing his relationship with Steve Hillage. Then he joined Hatfield and the North — where he is now. But wherever he gigged with Hatfield, people kept coming up and asking about a third Egg album, which some assumed had been completed prior to the split - and Clive Brooks was encountering a similar reaction on Groundhogs dates. Mont Campbell suggested that they ask if anyone was interested in putting out an album of a live set they'd recorded for the 'Top Gear' show... but Stewart talked Virgin into financing a brand new album by Egg.

And so it was that the trio got together again for a brief stay at Worthing's Saturn studios, sometime last August. “The record is basically the one we'd have made if we hadn't broken up,” claims Stewart. “Three tracks - 'Enneagram', 'Germ Patrol' and 'Wring Out the Ground' were planned tor the original album. 'Prelude' had been rehearsed briefly, but we hadn't done 'Nearch' because it wasn't entirely our sort of thing and had an oboe and other stuff on it.” Steve Hillage turned up one night and dubbed some guitar on 'Wring Out', thus resurrecting the original Uriel line-up once again.

Incredibly, considering a tight budget, the lack of preparation and Campbell's disenchantment with the world of rock (he's currently at the Royal College of Music studying French horn and composition), "The Civil Surface" has turned out to be Egg's best album and certainly their most accessible. Virgin have put it out on their mid-price Caroline label and it's possible that it'll win Egg more fans than when they were a working band.

Fred Dellar