 THE BEAST In the heart of the heartless ‘80s when music culture’s embrace of artifice and the ornamental, and ‘ironic’ materialism was all but total; by the time narcissistic androgyny had become the boring norm and guitar playing was the function of making tinkling melodic swashes to decorate the swathes of preset synthesisers and sequenced drums that postured as the ‘music’ of the decade I had a hankering to play some meaty manly riffs. I felt an urgent need to rediscover the thrill of blues based hypnotic repetition at high volume and electric guitars pushing vintage valves to the limit. In the legendary Benwell Road studios, under the auspices of mad professor Jon Hall and his ‘Kissing the Pink’ cohorts I spent some days of delirious fun, making up classic rock riffs and recording tracks where every sound was pushed to the limit of audio sensation. This was done in a spirit of improvised and spontaneous energy with no particular place to go. Wee Stevie Doherty, friend and acolyte, (who went on to become our manager) snuck the resulting tracks out of the studio and passed them on to John Bryce in the A & R department of CBS. John played them at the weekly departmental meeting and Muff Winwood, then head honcho, turned it up so loud in such excitement that the speakers were blown out. And the rest is history! … well, very nearly. A band was formed to play the tracks and named Smell Funky Beast (after a visit to the Yaks in London Zoo). Six months or so of high level music business courtship followed and fairly regular gigs but when CBS became Sony we, along with all budding projects, got axed – we never signed our six album deal. Like dominoes, the interested majors fell away and we were left with a dodgy indy outfit from Sheffield, Native Records (where’s our money Kevin?). A shoddy and hurriedly produced album was recorded and abortively released - despite an unpaid studio bill - by a label that was going under. Under 1000 albums were pressed and fewer distributed; the dodgy label boss refused to release the rights to the album despite prolific interest from US labels. We sank like a ‘led balloon!’ … So twenty years went by as rust gathered on my strat strings. One day – inevitably - myself and the trusty right-hand man of the band, bass player extraordinaire, ‘Beanz’ (Steven Rudden) had a ‘Blues Brothers’ moment. He called me or I called him and one of us said simply without preamble “I think it’s time!” We had originally comprised of myself on lead guitar and vocals, Beanz on bass, ‘Chess’ (Michael) Chesters on drums (awesomely heavy!), Glenn Farr (a brilliant, if a little Van Halenesque American) on second guitar and we had a trio of female backing vocalists, Nora, Tiu and Sue. In our brief history Chess left and was replaced by Santos De Castro, Glenn was replaced, after his return to the States, by the brilliant, if undisciplined Anthony Elvin on wiffle guitar Santos left and was replaced by Tony, who only played one gig with us before we split finally. So… the problem was who should Beanz and I include for the band’s resurrection? We decided to keep it minimal and streamlined as a power rock three piece, reducing and simplifying our search to finding only a drummer. Santos was discussed and contacted but we never came to any arrangements. Throughout my long and undistinguished career as a musician I have been sustained by the friendship, encouragement, faith and support of John Grant, former drummer of The Dipsticks, the band that enrolled me as lead guitarist at the tender age of 17 when I was first squatting in Camden Town back in the dark distant 1970s. John, if left to his own devices, is a typical overactive Geminian, his busy and highly accomplished drumming style suited more to jazz than rock in its purest form (or so I thought!) so it didn’t immediately occur to me to recruit him for the new Beast. However, friendship prevailed over common sense and after a few not entirely convincing rehearsals, he got it, his inner beast was released and his drumming became an inspiration to us and himself, adding flourishes and colour to our playing that we have never previously had as well as providing the steam engine drumming at the heart of the Beast and our signature grooves. The Beast was back and like rock ‘n roll, we are here to stay. Bring it on!!! Toby Nuttall January 2010 Please click on banner link below to visit The Beast's ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP page
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