even to pay the rent! I wanted to rent a house in the country and write music. I would have liked a Mellotron to get string section sounds. I had the idea of combining the Indian improvisation with classical and jazz chord structures. That didn’t happen. They completely refused to discuss how the money should be spent or how the band could get together and write and rehearse.”
Their relationship with Sippen soured in particular. Increasing chemical consumption by both parties presumably added to this atmosphere of distrust, and, inevitably, something had to give. Sippen was sacked. Although exasperated by the atmosphere of distrust that had built up
threesome with Del Coverley again, and recruited a new producer, Colin Couldwell. Like Retribution and A=MH2 before it, Gestalt marked a significant departure from its predecessor. Whereas the songs on Retribution had a certain sense of humour running through them, an air of melancholy seems to have crept in on Gestalt. It appears more reflective lyrically, and in terms of music it is probably the most stylistically diverse collection of songs Clark Hutchinson did. Apart from the two main heavy rockers ‘Man’s Best Friend’ and ‘Poison’, elsewhere the Indian influences that characterised the guitar ragas on A=MH2 have crept back in, whilst jazzier influences are also given freer reign, be
and Hutchinson went their separate ways. Soon after this, Hutchinson went on to play guitar on Pete Brown’s ’72 album, Two Heads Are Better Than One, before forcing himself into self-imposed exile from the music business for the sake of his health. His drinking by then was so excessive that he once told Phil McMullen of Ptolemaic Terrascope, “I was drinking 15 pints of lager with a treble scotch in each every day for six months.” Not surprisingly for an unreconstituted hippy, he is an avowed advocate of psychedelics and has since said, “However, Albert Hoffman’s problem child was always kind to me – as was Aldous Huxley’s first love – they helped me a lot, especially recovering from all that booze. I was ill for a while. Since then I’ve
between them, Shertser remained with the band until his production duties for Retribution were fulfilled.
On its release in October ’70, Retribution was greeted with even less commercial success than A=MH2. By now Clark Hutchinson’s intake of booze and drugs had become quite monumental. Hutchinson recalls, “We did Retribution and I had two plain clothes policemen sitting outside my flat because of ‘Free To Be Stoned’. I had to move away. I got pissed off and got pissed! The band was getting into alcohol so I just went along with it. I mean if you are going to behave like an idiot you might as well do it properly! I never had problems with drugs. Alcohol doesn’t agree with me, same as tobacco. I didn’t want to play in smoky places... I don’t remember much about recording Retribution at all. The only reason I know I’mon it is because I’mon the front cover! Timothy Leary said that all the things in his life that he most regretted, he had done were under the influence of alcohol... I’ll go along with that one!”
It would be a year before their next album, Gestalt. Having since parted company with Peter Shertser and Stephen Amazing, Clark Hutchinson tackled instrumental duties as a
60
they the more conventional piano and guitar number ‘Come Up Here’, or the free-form ‘Disorientated Parts One And Two’. Andy Clark’s vocal range is as versatile as ever, tackling the more reflective slower songs with heartfelt emotion, or the more heavy numbers, such as ‘Poison’, with gravel-throated passion. ‘Poison’ is also significant in that it was an early environmental song at a time when such sentiments were still generally regarded as being the preserve of a few crackpot lefties or far-out hippies. Somewhat vindicated today, Hutchinson still has little time for politicians and stands by many of the values espoused by the counterculture at that time: “The Hippies were right, the system is shit. Politicians are wankers!.. The psychedelic era was the beginning of the investigation of the nature of consciousness for many people. In my opinion that is the true legacy of the ’60s and the only real hope for a peaceful world.”
Although Gestalt was possibly Clark Hutchinson’s most accessible effort to date, it again failed to chart. The drinking and drugging hadn’t abated by the time it was released in November ’71 either. Today Mick Hutchinson says, “Here and there, in a few places it does show that you can overdo the marijuana!” Inevitably Clark
been vegetarian and cycled everywhere. It might seem strange, but I could see all the hard drugs coming and I wanted no part of all that crap.”
Although they parted amicably enough, until 2007, Gestalt was the last time Clark Hutchinson played together. Sadly, one- time bassist Stephen Amazing has since died, but in the meantime Del Coverley has played with numerous bands over the years, including Carl Douglas of ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ fame. Andy Clark went on to forge a career as a respected session musician. Playing with artists as diverse as Miles Davis’s wife Betty, Desmond Dekker, Roy Gaines, Mike Oldfield, The Gap Band, Toyah, and David Bowie on his Scary Monsters LP to name a few. Clark also played in a number of other bands along the way, including Upp with Jeff Beck, Be Bop Deluxe and Red Noise with Bill Nelson and also electro-funkers The Rah Band, who had a hit in ’77 with ‘The Crunch’. Wrestling with a number of personal demons throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Clark finally beat his addiction to heroin – the song ‘One Wrong Step’, originally written back in the ’80s, relates to his battle with drugs. After working sporadically over the years with his old band mate SamGopal, Andy and Sam finally recorded a new album together called Father Mucker in June ’99. Since the
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