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The Stoneground girls in perfect harmony. L-R: Deidre La Porte, Lynne Hughes, Annie Sampson and Lydia Moreno.


proud of, the performance and the vocals are much sleazier on the Trident version, much more like I had originally envisaged it when I first wrote it.”


Pete Sears agrees with Sal on this point. “An earlier album had been recorded in London with Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor which, was much better. A more realistic portrayal of how we sounded live, a no holds barred, unpretentious ‘Hippy Band’ spawned from The Hog Farm and The Medicine Ball Caravan. It was more live and spontaneous, compared to the album we ended up releasing that was recorded in LA which I felt was over produced and overdubbed to death.”


European Tour around Christmas. It was a typical Dead show. The girls were taking off their tops and I remember watching a guy fall out of the upper balcony at the beginning. He must have fallen 30 feet and landed on a bunch of people below.”


“The original record was turned down by Warners for reasons I’m not aware of,” adds Valentino. “It was recorded at Trident Studios in London while George Harrison and Phil Spector were working on All Things Must Pass. George had a bit of a fling with one of the ladies, Lydia Moreno. George showed up at one of the gigs we did at The Lyceum Ballroom. He also kept showing up at one of the houses we lived in”.


Tim Barnes, recalls spending time with George Harrison. “George was recording recording upstairs and we were recording downstairs. He came to meet us. He had a full beard, pony tail, and holes in his jeans. He and Phil Spector shook our hands, but didn’t say anything to us for three hours. Later we were playing a big gig at The Lyceum and George came and heard our set, then came backstage. After the gig I headed back to our place in Kent on the train with Pete Sears. There’s a knock on our door at about 3AM. I open the door and there’s George Harrison to see if we want to party. We all went upstairs to this dark room and rapped about Ringo seeing ghosts at an old English hotel. It transpired that George and Ringo had been on vacation in an old hotel on the coast that was supposed to be haunted. George said that Ringo heard pounding on the walls and that he (George) was out cold. George thought it was funny. It was a wonderful time. George had a thing for Lydia from our group. George also wanted to find Wavy Gravy. He kept saying, ‘How can I meet Wavy Gravy?’”


Valentino contines, “I don’t recall who engineered those sessions or where Trident Studios was. A third or so of the band was not satisfied with the recordings. Considering that we had not played together as a band in a studio before these sessions, I thought we were pretty good. In fact, more


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than one record company was interested in signing us up but we went with Warner Brothers. Tom had connections there, they had put out my solo singles and I had history with them from the Beau Brummels days so it seemed like a good idea. Warners hated the sessions that we cut at Trident.


“Tom Donahue brought me the news and I said tell them to ‘stick it’ but Tom decided we should do another record in Los Angeles, at the Record Plant. One song that eventually got selected for the first album was ‘An Added Attraction’, originally recorded by The Beau Brummels. I had never considered reviving that song for Stoneground. As it turned out it was chosen


“I was sure we’d all


wind up in jail but there were lawyers available to help minimise that eventuality.”


by Deidre La Porte and she took it to Tom Donohue without my knowing about it, I’d say improving on The Beau Brummels version.


“Again, I’m not sure how it happened but Tim Barnes chose to cover a song of mine for that album called ‘Dreaming Man’ and I had no idea that he’d done that. He talked to Donohue about it I suppose. It was a nice thing for him to do because he could have brought one of his own songs for inclusion. I still think he made a really great job of singing that one. Neither song had been considered by me as suitable for inclusion on the first album. But going back to the Trident version of the first album that we recorded in London I still think it may have been the better recording, in that it was much more representative of our live act and a more democratic selection of songs. If you listen to the different versions of ‘Stroke Stand’ for example, which I was especially


“John was important in the makeup of the structure,” states Valentino about the importance of Blakeley. “He’s a rhythm guitar master and has a great ear for production. He was over-looked in some ways. He should have had more of a hand in the production than he did. Tom or I were doing as well as we could and we didn’t realise at the time how useful his input would have been. John notably contributed an excellent closer to the first album in the shape of a song called ‘Brand New Start’ and explained the story behind the song; ‘Brand New Start’ was a song that Donohue and I wrote on the tour. We were on the road so much that it was difficult for me to concentrate on writing. I’m not primarily a lyric writer, so unless someone could come up with what I considered good lyrics, nothing got written. Tom liked the piece of music that I had written so he wrote the lyrics. The lead vocal was handled by Annie


Sampson and I think it’s one of the best songs on first album.”


Released in ’71 both in the UK and the USA to good reviews it boasted a gatefold sleeve depicting the band in all its finery. But as with so many albums, sales failed to meet expectations, despite the inclusion of some wonderful performances of some terrific songs. A selection of well chosen cover songs, that display the musical and vocal strengths of the whole band sit comfortably alongside five originals by Sal. ‘Looking For You’ opens side one and may well be one of the best recordings they ever made. Starting off slowly, with just a single guitar and Sal’s vocal, the song soon builds into a runaway performance, broken up by searing guitar solos by Tim Barnes and introducing the full, wild beauty of Lynne Hughes, Deidre LaPorte, Annie Sampson and Lydia Phillips on backing vocals and harmonies. Not everyone fell in love with the band though, as Valentino dryly notes, “I still run into people who think that I should get together with Stoneground again ‘but without the chicks, man’. They just don’t get it, even now. The women set us apart as a band just as much as anything that we men brought to the table, musically speaking.”


The Family Album


Their second album was to be a live one, recorded in August ’71 at Pacific High


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