The Untold Story Of The Transfer

Flowers Within the Rain: The Untold Story of The Transfer by Jim McCarthy

Wymer Publishing | 412 pages

Revealed eighth November 2024

Steve Morgan opinions Flowers In The Rain, a guide aiming to present Brummie heroes The Transfer their rightful spot among the many Sixties vanguard.

Rock historical past is a stitch-up. Retold, repressed, repackaged, pressured down the throats of the devoted on the heritage altar, or WH Smith’s journal part if you happen to choose. The identical acts revolve: a rock’n’roll rotisserie, deathless Sixties smiles staring out from the racks, a tease for the untold ‘inside story’ another time. And so it goes.

However there’s one band you’ll by no means discover on the quilt or hardly ever the topic of any retro chat, not less than apart from the reply to the query: ‘Which band had the primary file performed on Radio 1?’ Regardless of 5 Prime Ten hits between 1966’s Evening of Concern and 1969’s mournful chart-topper Blackberry Approach – together with aforementioned pop-trivia quiz reply Flowers In The Rain – earlier than they slowly morphed into ELO, Birmingham’s The Transfer are an afterthought every time The Greats are mentioned.

It’s of a bit with the overall narrative that surrounds the second metropolis – so acquainted are its denizens with being the bride, they often shrug and get on with it, Bab. Bridesmaids is extra apt to explain historical past’s remedy of The Transfer, advised right here in forensic element and with some vitality by Jim McCarthy.

It’s a madcap saga of a madcap age, relayed with poignancy and surprise and chock filled with characters worthy of any rock band cleaning soap opera. At occasions, you end up musing whether or not parts of The Transfer’s story impressed This Is Spinal Faucet, not least the loopy world of the band’s first supervisor, impresario and all-round free cannon Tony Secunda, whose weird, incident-packed 55 years are a biopic within the making. Therein, as McCarthy intimates, lay a part of The Transfer’s downside; Secunda’s want to generate headlines by means of publicity stunts successfully derailed the prospect of a easy experience to the stardom loved by others. Parallels with Malcolm MacLaren’s ‘money from chaos’ strategy to managing the Intercourse Pistols are startling, ditto the swift implosions of each bands (every additionally coated Eddie Cochran’s One thing Else).

A sequence of promotional postcards for The Transfer’s third single Flowers In The Rain, launched in August 1967, featured a crude cartoon picture suggesting that Prime Minister Harold Wilson was having an affair with secretary Marcia Falkender. The next, high-profile Excessive Court docket libel trial, after one in every of these playing cards was pushed by means of the door of 10 Downing Avenue, got here sizzling on the heels of the Stones’ drugs-bust trigger célèbre. The court docket discovered for Wilson and dominated that every one royalties in perpetuity be paid to charities of Wilson’s alternative – a tidy sum contemplating the file reached no.2.

The eyes of the institution had been now firmly fastened on a band ill-equipped for the fallout. By late 1969, the unique five-piece was slowly unravelling, issues hardly helped by a gruelling US tour (shades of Spinal Faucet once more), driving 3,000 miles from coast to coast in three weeks. With the departure of lead vocalist Carl Wayne in 1970 following the second album Shazam, solely Roy Wooden and Bev Bevan remained. Jeff Lynne’s arrival for the ultimate album, 1971’s Message From The Nation, successfully presaged the tip and rebirth as ELO.

If McCarthy’s idiosyncratic model can come off extra as a fan than a biographer, you’ll be able to’t assist however admire the enterprise. He was, er, moved, to write down the guide from a way of concern that the band’s dues have gone unpaid – you’ll be able to virtually sense his disappointment when the journey is over. Overlook the obsessive element and parts of repetition, nevertheless, and also you’re in for an amazing behind-the-scenes on the museum take a look at a vibrant time and place in English popular culture.

All of the dramatis personae – and there are a lot – are given their due. The notoriously singular Don Arden, who adopted Secunda as supervisor, will get an honest look-in, and McCarthy is even-handed all through. That mentioned, a normal disdain for Pink Floyd, with whom The Transfer felt a jarring tradition conflict, is abundantly clear – it wasn’t all peace and love. The place McCarthy shines is within the evocation of a nascent Midlands Mod and soul scene by which the 5 lads who grew to become The Transfer – Carl Wayne, Chris ‘Ace’ Kefford, Trevor Burton, Bev Bevan and Roy Wooden – coalesced, crossing paths with amongst others, a younger Robert Plant, John Bonham and diverse members of Black Sabbath in Birmingham’s smoky nightspots, notably the Cedar Membership and the Plaza.

Working-class lads barely out of their teenagers, however already veterans of melody, their polished harmonies had been backed with an incendiary, proto-punk presence to match The Who. Early indications of the trail forward noticed them banned from their eight-month Thursday evening Marquee residency in November 1966 – following Townshend and co – due to Wayne’s penchant for destroying TVs and beheading effigies of Hitler and Rhodesian PM Ian Smith with an axe – after which setting fireplace to the stage, simply in case.

A wealthy tapestry of characters interweaves all through, with anecdotes aplenty on – and from – the nice and the nice. Apart from particulars of Wooden and Bevan’s subsequent journeys with ELO and the previous’s with Wizzard, there’s some touching post-fame stuff on the remainder of the band; the battles of Kefford, whose life within the quick lane led to his departure early in 1968, are dealt with with heat and sensitivity.

The prolonged appendices are a treasure trove, a rabbit gap of live shows, tv appearances, releases and diverse solo initiatives. As a labour of affection, it’s Herculean. McCarthy additionally secured the companies of Paul Weller and Glen Matlock to supply glad arms with respective foreword and afterwords, and if a tighter, extra judiciously edited learn would possibly promote extra copies, as the primary stab at any guide on the band, we needs to be grateful it exists. They might make {a magazine} cowl but…

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Discover the guide right here

Steve Morgan is a contract author with far too many information and ‘total stuff’ for his accomplice’s liking.