The day after we became a four piece, we began recording our third album at Morgan Studios in Willesden London with Ben Findon and Mike Myers producing, and shortly afterwards we employed our first independant publicist. His name was Max Clifford, who we had known for some time as he had been sharing an office with our manager Brian Longley.

In October 1977 we embarked on a theatre tour of the U.K.and on the way to one of these dates in Halifax, our car broke down on the M1 motorway. We struggled to a service station and managed to hire a Transit van with no seats. We had a a terrible journey sitting on the floor of the Transit and arrived at the theatre just in time for the show. Our manager Brian said that as we had such an awful day travelling he had arranged a car to take us straight back to the hotel when we came off stage and before the audience had left. We finished the show and rushed straight off stage in our white suits, out of the theatre and piled into the car. We slammed the doors and Dominic shouted to the driver "Go,Go,Go!". The driver turned round and with a puzzled look on his face said "What are you doing? I am waiting for my wife." By this time the audience were leaving the theatre as we sheepishly got out of the car to find Brian pointing to the car behind and saying "It's that one"

In October we did our first major tour of Holland performing in large theatres and stadiums, every single we released in Holland went straight to the Top 10 and we were really getting established. On our return from Holland I went to see my brother in his new band. He had joined New Zealand Band "SPLIT ENZ" which already had Malcolm Green (who played with Nigel and myself in "OCTOPUS".) on drums. It was a strange move for Nigel as "SPLIT ENZ" were very theatrical and wore bizarre clothes and makeup, (come to think of it a bit like Guys n' Dolls). They were a great band and shortly afterwards relocated to Australia where they had phenominal success both there and in America. They had one hit record in this country, "I GOT YOU" reached the British charts in 1981.Nigel joined the band on the same day as Neil Finn who went on to international fame in "CROWDED HOUSE".

We finished off 1977 with our first visit to the far east. Thailand. We arrived at Bankok Airport on 7th December to be greeted by 500 screaming fans. The promoter Chai, had mounted a major promotion campaign before we arrived and the reception was amazing. All of our record material had been released and the fans new all of our songs. Unfortunately record royalties were minimal as Thailand's record industry at that time was almost entirely pirate cassettes. You could buy any major album on cassette for under a pound. We had a great tour playing mainly in large hotel's, and the audiences were wild.

(click to enlarge plus more photos)

1977. Continued