Formed: London, England, UK
Band Bio / Discography
NOTE: For a full band bio click on the images for the CD reissue of Handsome.
Graeme Douglas (Eddie & The Hot Rods): Ian Dury was kind of the crossover. He was like the pub changing into the harder… It's difficult because pub rock kind of went from GT Moore & The Reggae Guitars' 'Starry Eyed And Laughing' to, 'em, y'know, Kilburn & The High Roads, and Nick Lowe and the Brinsleys. [The Kilburns] weren't very good live; live they were a bit bitty. I mean the first Naughty Rhythms Tour when you had [the] Kilburns doing, sort of, they were sort of close to Small Faces doing the English sound. I think I only saw them once or twice, and it was obvious Ian was the one. Y'know, it was Ian and "a band". They played obviously well but Ian hadn't developed his music. He didn't meet up with Chaz Jankel. When he formed the Blockheads, obviously, he found somebody who could put music to what he was putting out. So Kilburns, yeah, bit lightweight. In fact most of the pub rock bands were a bit lightweight, all they had going for them was they played three minute songs. So hard trying to nod your head to 7/8 drum solos.
Kilburn & the High Roads were a popular live band on the London pub circuit of the early-to-mid 70's which didn't really deliver on vinyl, and were easily overtaken on the scene by Dr Feelgood, who crucially did deliver. Not that they were very similar bands at all: Dr Feelgood (and the other pub rockers) were basically doing 50's rock 'n' roll/r'n'b with more aggression and speed; the Kilburns' influences were much wider and more pronounced, incorporating reggae and musical hall styles as well as rock 'n' roll. It was perhaps this absence of a single "sound" that prevented them from making it. Not even mass national exposure on a support slot with The Who, on their Quadrophenia tour of late 1973, could be turned to their advantage.
By the time they got around to recording a single they had been positively spoiled by rave reviews, and their lead singer Ian Dury had been marked out as one of the most charismatic and original men in rock, described by NME as "like a modern [Gene] Vincent with maybe a mix of Beefheart's growl and a touch of Bryan Ferry's mannered delivery". Unfortunately they had bad luck with labels: they nearly signed to CBS but didn't, and the label they signed to on the rebound (Raft) went bust, and the label after that just didn't market them properly. Little wonder they disbanded in 1975, just prior to the release of their debut album.
The founding members of Kilburn and the High Roads were Dury (vocals), Ed Speight (guitar) and Russell Hardy (piano). At the time of their formation in 1970 Dury was teaching in Canterbury. The band went through many musicians in its short life span, with one of the first to go being Speight, who was replaced in 1971 by one of Ian's students, Keith Lucas, who had previously played with Pentagon, Frosty Jodphur and C-Stream. The other most notable musicians which passed through the ranks over the next four years included another of Ian's students, Humphrey Ocean, who played un-amplified electric guitar, ace saxophonist Davey Payne, drummer David Newton Rohoman (who was both black and crippled) and bassist Charlie Sinclair (a "midget"who was less than five feet tall).
Keith Lucas (aka Nick Cash, later 999): I was at Canterbury College of art "studying" fine art, painting. Ian Dury came to Canterbury College to teach painting. He was my tutor. We got Kilburn and the Highroads together for an end of term dance at the art school. From the great reaction we received we went on to do lots of gigs eventually turning professional. It was a great experience all round and the guys in the band were very diverse musically and also in other ways. I learned a lot highlights were playing the length and breadth of the UK and supporting The Who, who were touring to promote Quadrophenia.
An early demo notwithstanding, the band's first studio sessions were in February to March 1974, for an album which was to have been released by Raft, a Warner Bros subsidiary, after a deal with CBS had fallen through. Nothing came of this alliance, although the results were eventually released by Warner Bros in 1978 as Wotabunch! to cash in on Dury's solo success. Hearing of Warner's plan to release these sessions in '78, Dury suggested that he and the Blockheads re-record them. Warner refused, figuring that a follow-up to a Top Five album that had been in the charts a year was not a going concern! They released it as was, which is a shame. The Blockheads would definitely have done greater justice to the material: too much of it is hampered by Dury's hesitant, over-stylised vocals: he clearly wanted to be black at the point in his career.
What this meant was that their debut proper was a single, Rough Kids, which came out on Dawn Records in November 1974. The A-Side impressed a young Glen Matlock but both sides are enjoyable mid-speed rave-ups. Having said that, I still think the definitive version of the A-Side was the one on Wreckless Eric's debut album. The flipside was one of Dury's first (and best) "list" songs, 'Billy Bentley (Promenades Himself In London)'. 'Billy Bentley' in particular serves as a handy blueprint for Dury's subsequent career with the Blockheads, with its tough, exaggerated Mockney vocals. The group followed this with another single, a gentle, melancholy ballad entitled Crippled With Nerves, which came out in February '75 and sold as well as the first single i.e. not at all.
Mark Perry (Alternative TV): The Kilburns, in the studio they were crap. I think they just didn't work. I saw them live only once and I don't remember much about it, I must admit. I'm a person – say it in hushed tones – I've never liked Ian Dury. I've sort of given him the odd nod but I've just found after a while it's so corny, all that. I think 'New Boots And Panties!!' sort of works. I had a row with him once. I said something stupid and he threatened to beat me up or something, in the Roxy.
June 1975 saw the release of the groups' debut album, Handsome, which included no less than nine new versions of songs from the unreleased debut, among them yet another version of 'Rough Kids'. Even more idiosyncratic than the debut single, much of 'Handsome' is closer to Noel Coward than Dr Feelgood, with tinkling pianos and light reggae touches, as well as some country and boogie. Dury still seems unsure of what to do with his voice, as for the most part he still sounds like he wished he was Jamiacan. The unmistakable Dury wordplay and cleverness is there on 'Pam's Moods', ‘Crippled With Nerves' and ‘The Roadette Song', but a lot of it is tame and it sounds very much like a product of the mid-70's rather than a prototype for punk or new wave. Only two cuts – the Stax-ish ‘Upminster Kid' and ‘Father' (featuring the immortal couplet "Into the kitchen mother, the kettle's got an ‘ard-on/You can't call that dripping, it hasn't got no lard on") – hint at what he could do when fully unleashed. You should not, hoeever, believe I don;t like this LP. I do, and I listen to it fairly often. It could have been better, though.
Keith Lucas (aka Nick Cash, later 999): Handsome was a result of being signed to Pye records and was recorded at Apple studios (the Beatles old studio in Saville Row, London), Air Studios, and also Olympic studios in Barnes. The recordings were made under a very intense atmosphere - but aren't they all when you care about what you are doing? It was the first album I ever worked on and it was a good learning curve.
At the time of the LP' release, though, the band had already split, having played their final show that May, supporting Dr Hook at the Hammersmith Odeon, and Lucas having sold the band's P.A.
Keith Lucas (as related in Will Birch's book Ian Dury: The Definitive Biography): Ian threatened to break my legs. I told him to fuck off or I'd call the police. I reminded Ian that my uncle was the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I also reminded Ian that everything was equal, but he said he was the singer and wanted all the money and I shouldn't have taken any of it. They were still threatening to break my legs if I didn't hand the money over. Maggie, my girlfriend, had gone downstairs and called the police. Ian started saying, "So we can expect a visit from the police then, can we?" I said, "Of course you fucking can, get the fuck out of it".
To help promote the newly-released LP, Dury enlisted various members of the last incarnation of the High Roads - Rod Melvin, Charlie Sinclair and drummer Malcolm Mortimer - with some others and and made a couple of TV appearances on The London Weekend Show. None of which helped the LP, which sunk without a trace. A new band, Ian And The Kilburns surfaced, in late '75, with Ed Speight back on guitar, and played various pub gigs throughout London until Summer 1976, playing their last show in June at Walthamstow Academy Hall with two new upcoming bands: The Stranglers and the Sex Pistols. Towards the end of the band's life, a certain Chaz Jankel had joined on guitar, and it was Jankel who played a major role in Dury's subsequent solo success.
Lucas eventually re-named himself Nick Cash Lucas and formed 999.
DISCOGRAPHY
Singles / Albums
| Rough Kids (7", 1974) |
Crippled With Nerves (7", 1975) |
Handsome (LP, 1975) |
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Extraneous Releases |
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| The Best Of (7", 1977) |
Billy Bentley (7", 1978) |
Wotabunch! (LP, 1978) |
Upminster Kids (10", 1983) |
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Bootlegs |
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| The Pub Ska EP (7", 2010) |
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Various Artists
Has It Dawned On You? UK LP 1975 (Dawn): Rough Kids / Upminster Kid
Midnight Hustle UK LP 1978 (K-tel): Billy Bentley
Rock Heroes UK 2xLP 1978 (Pickwick): Pam's Mood [sic]
Pub Rock: Paving The Way For Punk US CD 1998 (Beloved Recordings): Rough Kids
Punk. UK 2xCD 2001 (Columbia): Rough Kids
