Small Faces and The Bee Gees. Quite a few record labels showed an interest in picking up the Irish quintet based on their fearsome live renown, which was spreading by word of mouth amongst the rock elite. Granny’s soon found a home at Deram, a subsidiary of Decca Records, which was well known as a forward- looking imprint of serious potential, home of The Move and Procol Harum among others. After signing the group Deram wasted no time in sending Granny’s Intentions into the studio with Moody Blues producer Tony Clarke, who emphasised the need to write some original material. Focussing their collective energies the displaced Limerick lads came up with the A-side of their first record, a veiled rumination on the struggles and tribulations of a young rock band, told through the story of a fictional character called David Millar.


Singer Johnny Duhan recalls the gestation of the song clearly. “I went off to Hyde Park and came up with the chorus: ‘If you’re stuck you’d better give up and go back to work’ – which was based on a character from a band I ran into who was quitting the music scene after failing to get the big break we were enjoying. Then Johnny Hockedy and John Ryan came on board and added the many other musical variations that the song took on, including the idea of making Mr Millar a failed poet rather than a failed musician. It’s quite a convoluted mix of styles.”


Many bands’ first efforts at writing and recording are often their best, when the lifetime of experiences and the bristling energies of youth converge to create something spontaneous and fresh (even though in this case some of the musician’s lifetimes had not yet stretched beyond 20 years). A case can be made that Granny’s Intentions never bettered debut single ‘The Story Of David’ which was released in Britain and Ireland in November ’67. A sumptuous organ-driven psychedelic nugget, it showcased for the first time on vinyl the vocal prowess of Johnny Duhan, incredibly resonant and soulful for someone who had yet to celebrate his 18th birthday. The group should have returned to Ireland in December dressed in their finest Carnaby Street gear with a chart hit under their belts, but Deram failed to promote the single adequately. An ad was taken out inNME, reviews were favourable, some radio play was secured, but that extra push required to turn the single into a success was lacking. At home there was a lot of good feeling towards the returning émigrés, and their domestic popularity was recognised with an appearance on the massively popular and influential television programme The Late Late Show, and a cover feature in the best- selling TV listings magazine The RTÉ Guide. Irish fans voted them the second best beat group of ’67 in Spotlight’s annual poll.


By the time Granny’s Intentions first 7” had come out, original member Cha Harren had left. The singer was the only one of the five with a wife and child, and the attendant responsibilities, coupled with a realisation that the presence of two vocalists was hindering the band’s development, sadly forced him to quit the group he had helped


36


establish. After a two week stint in Germany at the start of ’68 Deram sent the group back into the studio to record a follow-up. A new producer was drafted in, the more avuncular and approachable Wayne Bickerton, who had played bass in The Pete Best Four. Bickerton handed Granny’s Intentions a song that he had co-written with Tony Waddington, fellow member of the ex-Beatle’s band. ‘Julie Don’t Love Me Anymore’, a song that betrayed hints of Procol Harum’s swirling psych sound, was weak in comparison to Granny’s self-written debut, and many in the group were distinctly unhappy with it. The single went nowhere.


After two failed 7” releases the relationship between band and record label was starting to strain. The kinship within the group was also coming under increasing pressure. Johnny Hockedy and Johnny Duhan were sharing a dingy flat in London away from


“We were young, foolish,


frightened, hungry and drugged-out”


their band mates, and without the glue of founding member Cha Harren to hold things together the affinity between the two primary songwriters, Duhan and Ryan, had worn thin. Granny’s continued to maintain a high profile and some internal stability by playing support to The Nice, Marmalade, Family and Skip Bifferty at The Marquee Club, but unfortunately the free availability of chemical substances on the London rock scene was not conducive to patching up any petty rifts caused by personality clashes. “A lot of drugs were being consumed and confusion was rife,” says Duhan with some bitterness. “The writing was on the wall, but it was melting in a hallucinogenic haze. I was lost. I later developed a real hatred of hash and drugs in general. One of my favourite lines by the poet Robert Lowell is ‘Every drug that numbs, alerts another nerve to pain.’ ”


Regular trips back to Ireland continued throughout ’68, where Granny’s Intentions could always be sure of a hero’s welcome. On March the 14th they headlined a stellar show at The National Stadium in Dublin, which brought together the cream of the Irish rock and folk worlds under one roof. On the bill that night were Belfast blues power trio The Method; ex-beat group musician and rising folk-pop star Jon Ledingham; progressive psych bands The Orange Machine and Skid Row; perennial pop favourites The Vampires and celebrated folk trio Sweeney’s Men, who were a couple of months away from recording their influential debut album.


Pulled along by the mercurial musical currents of the late ’60s, a discernable folk influence began to seep into Granny’s work, with songs by Bob Dylan and Tim Hardin finding their way into the set amongst the soul standards and newly-birthed originals.


An appearance on Irish television in August, performing songs by The Who, Frank Zappa and Tomorrow, caused outrage among some viewers, who were offended by the group’s outlandish attire and unconventional sounds. Having being exposed to the exciting social and cultural explosion happening across the water, Granny’s Intentions were dismayed to find out that Ireland was still a very conservative place.


The group were back in the TV studio later that autumn, recording a slot on brand new Irish pop series, Like Now. They appeared on the eclectic show alongside middle-of-the-road Irish showbands The Dixies and The Riviera, as well as English pop outfit Grapefruit. This heightened exposure was about to coincide with the only commercial triumph of the group’s lifetime. Having seen two psychedelic rock songs fare poorly over the previous 12 months Deram decided it was time to make an unabashed play for the top of the charts, and foisted upon Granny’s Intentions the fussily- arranged, string-laden Wayne Bickerton tune, ‘Never An Everyday Thing’. Fans in Ireland and England must have thought they were hearing a different group with an identical name when they dropped the needle on the record, confronted as they were with parping horns, a melodramatic orchestral arrangement and trite lyrics about finding that special love. Some people grumbled that it resembled teen- pop sensations of the moment, Love Affair. Worse still, others complained that it sounded just like a showband...


“It was a real go for the mainstream,” remembers John Ryan. “It was just a pop record. We were actually in the studio and we got a phone call saying Wayne Fontana was recording it, who was quite a big name. The session nearly got scrapped. The songwriters sold it to three people [and the singles] all came out in the same week.”


With its radio friendly sound, ‘Never An Everyday Thing’ scored a peak chart position of #7 in Ireland. But in spite of some positive noises emanating fromNMEabout the new record, and a more concerted effort at promotion this time from Deram, the simultaneous release of three different versions of ‘Never An Everyday Thing’ ensured that no-one would bring the song into the British hit parade. Over the course of an uncertain few months the group went through some more line-up changes, some fed up with the direction their career was going, others poached by bands guaranteeing a steadier wage (but a less adventurous set list) back home. Only keyboard player John Ryan, singer Johnny Duhan and guitarist Johnny Hockedy remained. Unhappy with the slick commercialism of their last single, the three- man Granny’s Intentions changed their sound once again and set about recording their one and only full-length album.


By ’68 some participants in the US music scene had grown tired of the flash and indulgence of the psychedelic scene. Already there was a feeling that the promise of a new society which the hippies had hoped to usher in was crumbling. Drug casualties were mounting, violence was escalating and a


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