Almost as an afterthought, the track would be relegated to the B-side of the delayed second single pulled from the album.
Jimmy was sitting in with the reformed Merseybeats during the second half of ’69 replacing Joey Molland who’d departed to join Badfinger. He certainly needed the cash and he enjoyed the company of his old Liverpool mates and used his time with Billy, Tony and drummer Pete Clarke to write and rehearse new songs for the upcoming recording sessions for his second album.
A different approach was taken for Jimmy’s second solo album for Philips. By late ’69 a new, progressive subsidiary, Vertigo, had been established by Olav Wyper to compete with Decca’s Deram and EMI’s Harvest labels. The move to Vertigo provided the best chance yet for Jimmy Campbell to have his music made available to a much larger and hipper record buying audience.
Meanwhile, Jimmy would contemplate his next move in life as a singer songwriter.
A late night party attended by Fontana A&R man Dick Leahy found Billy Kinsley sitting on the sofa playing ‘Dear Marge’, ‘Penny In My Pocket’, ‘Dreaming’ and other Campbell songs on his guitar to entertain the small crowd of partygoers. Leahy was so impressed by what he was hearing that he demanded to know why Billy had not presented these new songs of his for The Merseys to record. Billy informed Leahy that the songs were actually not his, but a local Liverpool musician, Jimmy Campbell. Immediately Leahy set up a meeting with Campbell and soon The Merseys put two of his songs, ‘Penny In My Pocket’ and ‘Dreaming’, on their next singles.
During the summer of ’68, the 25 year old Campbell entered Phillips Recording Studios under the production of Dick Leahy with legendary arranger John Cameron and his team of professional studio pros.
Jimmy brought enough material with him to complete two albums. Almost all the songs chosen that summer were compositions that he’d written as far back as ’65. ‘Michelangelo’ was dusted off and given a more intimate treatment, as were other 23rd Turnoff-era gems like ‘Mother’s Boys’ and a radically re- worked ‘Another Vincent Van Gogh’ with completely different lyrics to the ’67 demo. ‘Bright Side Of The Hill’, ‘Dear Marge’ and ‘Lyanna’ (written about a Hamburg prostitute) had also been sitting around in Jimmy’s notebooks for years.
The album, Son Of Anastasia, titled in tribute to his loving mother, was released on April 11th ’69. Campbell was unhappy with the results, as he felt the sessions were rushed and his voice came across as “weedy”. The session musicians thought his unique voice sounded like everyone from Nina Simone to Chesney Allen!
Fontana pulled out all the stops promoting the first single ‘On A Monday’ by arranging
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an appearance on BBC TV’s Colour Me Pop and on the BBC2 radio programme Country Meets Folk. A tour supporting folksinger Roger Whittaker ended on the opening night when Jimmy had a few drinks to calm his nerves and fell off a tall stool right before the opening song! He just wasn’ comfortable performing solo in front of such a large crowd, and there is little doubt that his failure to tour in support of the album did nothing to help its lacklustre sales. This would become a recurring factor in Campbell’s solo career.
Undaunted, Hal Carter booked Jimmy into the studio to record ‘Frankie Joe’. Unlike the tracks recorded for Son Of Anastasia (albeit sparingly) with John Cameron’s top session musicians, ‘Frankie Joe’ presented Jimmy for the first time, in his element. The track itself is fairly pedestrian, but more importantly, Jimmy was now playing rock ’n’ roll with his friends Billy Kinsley and Dave Harrison.
Time was booked at Trident Studios in late ’69 and at Chapel Studios during early ’70 for the Half Baked sessions. It was only natural for his fellow Merseybeats to become his backing band for the album. He had written and rehearsed many of the numbers with them on the road. Pete Clarke left The Merseybeats in between the two recording sessions and was replaced by Liverpool drummer Phil Chittick, and it is Chittick who plays drums on Half Baked’s Lennon/Spector sounding ‘So Lonely Without You’, the Bob Dylan influenced ‘That’s Right, That’s Me’ and the reflective ‘In My Room’.
The album found a balance between Jimmy’s melancholy ballads and uptempo electric numbers courtesy of The Rock ‘n’ Horse backing band. This schism is presented in microcosm on the title song itself. The track also features old friend Joey Molland who met up with Billy and Jimmy at the pub and ended up going back into the studio to sit in and contribute guitar to the title song. (Joey has
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