In January 1970 we had a meeting with our record boss Larry Page who agreed that we should make an album. We played him some of Nigel's songs and he agreed we should go ahead and record an album of our own original material, and we spent the next few months in Radio Luxemburg's Recording Studios in Hertford Street, Mayfair.

In February 1970 we were booked to perform on Portugese Television. This was the first time Nigel and I had ever been abroad and we travelled with another Penny Farthing artist called Samantha Jones. They treated us like royalty in Portugal and when we went out people stopped and stared and called us "Beatles" because of our long hair. On our return we carried on recording songs that Nigel had written and one of them "THE RIVER" was chosen as our next single. It was a very basic rock track that had some of it's inspiration from "Canned Heat". The rcord was released on 1st May 1970 and received blanket coverage on Radio Luxemburg. We had a few plays on Radio 1 and the record sold quite well, but again it did not make the charts.

On 16th May 1970 we were booked to appear at a pop festival in Germany, and travelled to Dusseldorf on a chartered flight with all the bands and their equipment. On the plane with us were "STATUS QUO" "LOVE SCULPTURE" (Dave Edmunds), "HUMBLE PIE" (Steve Marriott & Peter Frampton" AND "GINGER BAKERS AIRFORCE". We were told that the equipment was being supplied which turned out not to be the case and we ended up borrowing Status Quo's gear. Needless to say with all those bands involved it was a riotous couple of days.

In June it was all change in the band again. Brian Glasscock had been offered a job with Cliff Bennett's Band "TOEFAT", who were just about to start a tour of the USA with Derek and the Dominos (Eric Clapton), and he had decided to take it. It was a great shame as Brian was a brilliant drummer the best one I have ever played with, but we parted on good terms. He married an American girl and went to live in the USA and in the 80s had success with "THE MOTELS". Brian's brother John was the bass player with "JETHRO TULL" and he, sadly, is no longer with us.

Rick had been unsettled for some time so after a discussion it was agreed that he would leave the band. It was crisis time, "OCTOPUS" now consisted of myself and my brother Nigel, and one half recorded album. We felt we would be better suited with a keyboard play rather than replace Rick with another guitarist, and we knew who we wanted. John Cook was playing with local band "THE MIXED BAG" he played a rather unique Wirlitzer organ and was a great player. John was quite happy to turn fully professional and he agreed to join us. After auditioning what seemed like a thousand drummers we finally settled on Malcolm Green who lived in Southgate North London.

We performed our first gig with the new lineup at "THE DOLPHIN HOTEL" Botley near Southampton on 17th July 1970. John Cook brought a new dimension to the band with his playing and songwriting, and we were soon back in the studio recording songs that John had either written himself or co-written with Nigel. Some of the songs were quite complex in their arrangement as the influence of "YES" took a hold. We used to perform two pieces from the "PEER GYNT SUITE" by Greig, which was very popular when we performed it on stage, but try as we might we couldn't succesfully record it. This is a live version from 1971.

In November we discovered that "The River" had been a top ten hit in Italy and we ended the year doing a television appearance in Pisa on New Years Eve.

(click on photo to enlarge .Plus more photos)

Octopus 2.