During the ‘60’s beat boom many bands were content with taking their cue from the Beatles or the Stones,
but Tony Rivers and the Castaways drew from American acts like the Beach Boys and harmony outfit,
the Four Freshmen. As the sixties progressed,
Tony enthusiastically picked up on the American harmony-pop influences such as,
the Association, Harpers Bazarre, The Peppermint Trolley Company and
Spanky and Our Gang, turning the Castaways into the UK's foremost ‘soft rock’ outfit.
Kieron Tyler (Record Collector 2001).
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Harmony Grass
came into existence in September or October ’68,
mainly because the name we’d had for many years,
Tony Rivers and the Castaways, had earned us a great
reputation, as a ‘live’ band, but apart from a
few visits to the low end of the ‘Top 40’,
hadn’t helped us to get the ‘big one’.
We started to think that maybe the name was holding us
back.
The first record we
released under the new name ‘Harmony Grass’,
was a hit! Sadly, this spelled the end for ‘old’
name, but this record received the one thing the
‘Castaways’ records had never had, and
that was serious airplay!!
Every station (and there weren’t many in those days)
was playing the record and suddenly we’d made the
charts, and were on ‘Top Of The Pops’ and all
the other TV shows, and even recorded our own show, in
the ‘Colour Me Pop’ TV series.
The record was ‘Move In A Little Closer Baby’.
In reality, we were still the Castaways, except that when
we made the record, there was a different face (Tony
Ferguson) on lead guitar, instead of Tony Harding. He
wasn’t around for long though.
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Tony Ferguson
lead guitarist, and a very
good one. He was a serious musician (too serious
for us) more than a harmony singer/entertainer, and it
became obvious he wasn’t right for us. When ‘H’
came back, it felt a lot better. ‘Fergie’ did
come back into the picture after I left the band in 1971.
They’d decided to change their name to ‘Grass’(in
retrospect, not a great idea) and started to go ‘heavy’
musically. Eventually they became Capability Brown,
were signed to Tony Stratton-Smith, made a couple of
albums, and started to get a pretty good reputation, but
no real success and slowly disappeared. The British
public had never really got round to appreciating ‘harmony’
music in a big way, so ‘harmony’ music with
‘heavy’ guitars was probably asking a bit too
much at that time I think. Could be they were ahead of their time, I mean ‘Yes’
seemed to make it work eventually, and of course the
‘Eagles’ did quite well.
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Tony Ferguson
lead guitar
and low vocals
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Bill Castle
was a Castaway for only a short
time before the name changed to Harmony Grass, and so
didn’t have the years of struggling, to get a hit,
that most of us had gone through. His first record that
he played on was a hit!
It’s worth pointing out, that we played on all
our records, even when accompanied by an orchestra,
AND RHYTHM SECTION, this wasn’t always the
case in those days, some bands didn’t have a choice.
Bill was the latest in the line, of ‘singing
drummers’ from Essex, to join our ranks. He was
around for a while, until he bought a house in Devon, and
eventually went into business down there.
A tall handsome bloke who the girls loved.
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Bill Castle,
drums and vocals
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Brian Hudson
returned (again). All the
drummers we used, had to be able to sing, and Brian was
very good. He wasn’t on the single but played and
sang on most of the tracks on the album. He was so keen
to join the Castaways back in ‘65/6, that he even
agreed to work for nothing for a while. He always had a
great attitude, and was a good harmony singer, and he
loved doing it. Brian was probably the best in the line
of singing drummers from Essex to work with us, he was
also the last.
He’s married to ex -Nolan Sister, Linda.
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Brian Hudson
drums and vocals
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Tom Marshall
played rhythm
or lead guitar, and piano, and had quite a high range
vocally. He was always a really nice bloke. Was married
to Sheila the keyboard player from Episode Six, at one
time. Many years later, Tom joined ‘Bucks Fizz’
on piano/gtr, and unfortunately, was in the band, when
their coach crashed, in the North of England,
sometime in the early to mid 80’s (I think).
He was badly injured, but pulled through. Some years
later I booked him on 2nd piano, as part of the ‘Oh
Boy Band’ backing Cliff Richard at ‘the
Event’, at Wembley Stadium in 1989.
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Tom Marshall
guitar, piano and vocals
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Kenny Rowe
high vocals, and former bass
player with ‘Steve Marriotts Moments’ Ken was
out front with me on stage, and was a very important
member of both Harmony Grass and before that, of course,
TR & the Castaways. It’s Kens voice you hear
hitting the high notes on everything, an essential part
of our vocal sound.
It wasn’t a smooth, Brian Wilson sort of
falsetto/high voice, in fact he looked like he was going
to burst when he hit those notes. He also looked like he
was trying to take off, with his arms flailing everywhere.
Ken actually has a really nice, sweet voice when he sings
normally, but with us it was all systems go, take no
prisoners!
He was also my writing partner on the odd song.
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Kenny Rowe
‘high’ vocals.
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Ray Brown
bass, just listen to those bass
lines, and sound.
He was the ‘original’ from the days of ‘the
Cutaways’. Along with me, he’d survived road
crashes, (he went through the windscreen), changes in
members, managers coming and going, roadies coming and
going, but that ‘fantastic’ bass sound could
always be relied on.
I think John Entwhistle from the Who got his sound from
Ray.
Back in the early sixties, we used to meet up with ‘the
High Numbers’(the Who), at Jim Marshall’s
shop on Uxbridge Rd. Ray told him he got his
sound, by ‘boiling’ (I’m serious!)
his bass strings in a saucepan, to get that ’twanging
piano’ sound.( It also saved money, quite important
in those days!) Take a listen to ‘My Generation’!
These days Ray is 20 stone weakling, with a zip in his
chest (from a quad heart bypass), to match the one on
his head. (From the time he went through the
windscreen of the ‘Castaways’ van, back in
December 1964.) Ray, and I, survived the crash, and
everything the ‘music biz’ could throw at us,
so I don’t suppose a little heart problem, was
likely to get him!
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Ray Brown,
bass
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Tony ‘H’ Harding
was on one of his
‘many’ periods of absence from the band, when
we became Harmony Grass. He was always leaving, either to
join the Parachute Regiment or the Submarine Corps, or
to form his own 60 voice choir, to perform his ‘Four
Freshmen’ type vocal arrangements. He’d then
come back, and we’d carry on as before!
‘H’ was responsible for the vocal arrangement
of ‘Tom Dooley’ on the album (based on
the Freshmen version).
It didn’t take long for him to return to us though,
once he’d heard about the hit!
We were happy to have him back, he’d played his part
over the years as a regular, and very important , though
intermittent, Castaway, it’s a pity he wasn’t
on the recording of the single. He’s on just about
everything else on the album.
It’s him singing the lead vocal on ‘I
Think Of You’ on ‘This Is Us’, and a few
years earlier was the lead voice on ‘Charade’
by Tr/C’s.
‘H’ as he was known, was also a really good
guitar player, had a great bass voice, and was an ace
harmony singer. If anyone has heard the a capella version
of, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, that I,
along with my son Anthony, Mick Clarke, did for Gerard
Kenney, well, ‘H’ sings the bass voice on that.
‘H’ also sings on a Cliff Richard track from
the album, ‘I’m Nearly Famous’. I’d
lost my voice after one of the sessions for the album. We
were halfway through ‘It’s No Use Pretending’,
when the session ended for the day. The next day I couldn’t
sing so I got ‘H’ to go and do my bit for me,
he’s in the backing vocals, near the end of the song.
Continued
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Tony ‘H’ Harding
lead guitar and bass vocals.
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