Biog
“Without doubt, it was The Beatles, the Stones and The Move in that order in England.”
Tony Secunda - Manager & Svengali, The Move 1966-1968
And without doubt, The Who and The Kinks might have something to say about that gleefully partisan assessment. But the truth of the matter – as Paul Weller, The Fall’s Mark E Smith, The Ramones, Motorhead, the Sex Pistols and countless rock’n’roll miscreants know full well – The Move were the last late, great 60s band. During their heyday in 1967 and ’68, they notched up more hits than the Stones, Who, Kinks and Small Faces. Beyond the charts, The Move got more interesting still. It’s well known that their 1967 hit, ‘Flowers In The Rain’, was the record chosen to launch BBC Radio 1. A little more hush-hush, though, was their calamitous law court encounter with Prime Minister Harold Wilson over the single’s promotional campaign. Only now is the truth beginning to emerge...
It was David Bowie that prompted The Move to form late in 1965. Performing as Davy Jones at Birmingham’s legendary Cedar Club in 1965, he met and encouraged two young musicians Ace Kefford and Trevor Burton to form their own group. Soon after, the duo invited Roy Wood, Carl Wayne and Bev Bevan to join and complete the original Move line-up. A year later, their debut single ‘Night Of Fear’ hit No.2, the first of nine Top 10 hits notched up over the next five years. As the 70s began, the original line-up fragmented until only Wood and Bevan, plus later Move member Jeff Lynne, remained. The trio celebrated a final Top 10 hit with ‘California Man’ in 1972 before developing the group into the Electric Light Orchestra and even greater success.
If peerless psych-era pop was their forte on record, on stage The Move transformed into rock’n’roll demons, demolishing televisions, effigies of political leaders, instruments and stages with an axe, chopping cars to pieces and inciting riots that The Who would have been proud of. So shocking were The Move live that the group were banned from every theatre in the UK, a decade before the Sex Pistols’ punk rock antics. Away from the controversy and violence, The Move’s run of hit singles continued apace: ‘Night Of Fear’, ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’, ‘Flowers In The Rain’, ‘Fire Brigade’ and the remarkable January 1969 chart-topper ‘Blackberry Way’.
But there was a huge price to pay. During a tour with The Jimi Hendrix Experience and The Pink Floyd to promote The Move’s self-titled debut album, bassist Ace Kefford experienced the beginnings of severe depression, resulting in a suicide attempt that drove him out of the group and blighted his life for over 30 years. Manager Tony Secunda bowed out, as did Trevor Burton, after a violent on-stage brawl with drummer Bev Bevan. Tensions between Roy Wood, the band’s songwriter, and Carl Wayne, ostensibly the front-man, intensified.
That came to a head after The Move's second album, ‘Shazam’, described by Rolling Stone magazine as “a masterpiece” but issued with little aplomb due to the departure of Wayne early in 1970 to pursue a solo career. Forced to take over the lead role, Wood adopted tribal face paint and wild back-combed hair to promote a new single, ‘Brontosaurus’, a key pre-Glam Rock moment (and one noticed by Kiss and others…). ‘Looking On’ released later that year, was the first album of all-Move compositions and included ‘Feel Too Good’, used in the movie ‘Boogie Nights’. The first to feature singer, songwriter and guitarist Jeff Lynne, ‘Looking On’ marked the final stage of The Move’s career, for by now both Lynne and Wood were focusing their songwriting energies on a parallel band project, the Electric Light Orchestra. Despite that, their swansong set, 1971’s ‘Message From The Country’, is often regarded as their best album. After a Roy Wood-penned three-hit sprint to the finishing line, with ‘Tonight’, ‘Chinatown’ and ‘California Man’, and Jeff Lynne's ‘Do Ya’ giving the band its sole US success, The Move quietly slipped out of view during 1972, giving way to ELO and Roy Wood’s new glam revival band Wizzard and subsequent solo career.