With regular gigs and a growing repertoire of original songs the band soon acquired its first manager, Ray Hammond. A junior reporter on The Middlesex Chronicle, he reviewed one of their gigs and was so impressed he offered to manage them. However, the band was desperate to break out of the local West London scene and soon changed manage- ment in what they believed to be a move for the better. The band was in the habit of recording demos at R G Jones Studios, where they were spotted by Derek Savage and John Turner. “They knew some people at Decca and got us introduced to Tony Clarke, the producer,” recalls Voice. With the possibility of a record contact and national exposure they signed with Savage and Turner.


Clarke was invited to watch them rehearse at the George and Devonshire pub on the Chiswick roundabout. It was a nerve-racking experience, but Clarke loved ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’ and booked them into the studio. “In those days, for Decca, you had to make a demo, which was actually a master, an A and B-side,” Lambert explains, “and they used to have a meeting, I think it was on Thursdays and they’d sit round this table. People like Dick Rowe, would sit round this table and then at about 5 o’clock you heard your fate. The phone rang. I was at Heathrow working, and my manager John said, they want you. So we had a record contract.” Bob Voice remembers it as the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. “It was something beyond my wildest dreams,” he says. “You’ve got to remember I was 17 working in a garage, getting my fingers dirty every day and hating every minute of it, and Dave was likewise running his scooter round Heathrow Airport. Suddenly for the bigwigs at Decca to say we really like you boys and we’re going to make a record’, is something that’s almost impossible to describe.”


They might have secured a recording contract, but persuading Decca to issue a record proved frustrating. It wasn’t that Decca wasn’t interested, but for some reason it wouldn’t commit to putting anything on vinyl. “The ridiculous thing was they wanted to sign me and the band but they didn’t want to release ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’. We couldn’t understand it. Tony Clarke knew what he was talking about and he was a bit bemused by it all too. So we spent the next two or three months in and out of the studios at Decca recording other songs of mine, which were constantly being rejected by Decca,” says a still perplexed Lambert.


With a Decca record contract in the bag, the band turned professional. Lambert recalls the exact day: 1st January 1968. At the same time The Beatles were hatching plans for their raft of companies that soon would be known the world over as Apple Corps. As luck would have it the band’s managers made contact with Mike Berry, who’d recently started working at Apple Publishing, and invited him down to a show at The Drum in Penge. Berry loved ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’ and arranged for the band to meet Terry Doran and discuss a contract at Apple’s Baker Street office. “He invited me to go up to Apple, which I did,” recalls Lambert, “and they said right we’ll


42


publish all your stuff which means ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’ and ‘Treacle Toffee World’ are ours and they will be released.”


Apple was big news at the time and Fire should have benefited from the reflected glory. But despite being favoured by The Beatles, another group, Grapefruit, seemed to get most of the publicity. But that didn’t detract from the sheer thrill of it all. “It was so exciting. I was shaking the first time I went up there, shaking with excitement.” Lambert recalls. “It was an absolute thrill just to be there, the pinnacle of the business in those days, the epicentre. Everything revolved around The Beatles, the whole business. And just to be there was enough for me. I was so excited and everybody was so nice, it was a lovely company to be with.”


The first thing Apple did was pressure Decca into releasing ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’, which it had


Mike Berry suggested they record a song he’d written called ‘Round The Gum Tree’. Despite having plenty of original material, Berry, Clarke and their managers insisted they record it. “We were talked into making that record,” laments Voice. “The producers were looking for a hit and they couldn’t care less how they got it, and I can’t believe that we actually went into the studio and played that. We were persuaded that our record company might drop us if we didn’t get a hit and this was the best way to get a hit.” 40 years on and it still hurts. “My managers wrote the B- side and Mike Berry wrote the A-side. How on earth that happened I just don’t know,” says Lambert. “I can remember those sessions, feeling a little disillusioned already and feeling embarrassed to be honest. I played and sang on the A-side and the B- side when I should have just refused to have anything to do with it. It was such rubbish.”


With the release of ‘Round The Gum Tree’ the band sacked its management


‘Father’s Name Is Dad’ label (top), early ’68 photo shoot in London and the “unmitigated disaster” that was the second single (left).


been sitting on for some time. No sooner had Decca issued the single than Apple intervened and demanded changes to the recording. A quick trip back into the studio to add additional guitar and vocals and the single was perfected. Despite getting heavy rotation on the Kenny Everett and John Peel shows, ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’ wasn’t the hit it deserved to be. With the equally brilliant ‘Treacle Toffee World’ on the B-side it’s among the very best examples of the art of the 45 rpm single. However, their next release was an unmitigated disaster, which the band completely disowned.


and quit Decca. They continued gigging with other up and coming bands like Pink Floyd and were regulars at Middle Earth but as far as the band was concerned it was time to start again. They’d moved on from the poppy, mod sounds of their debut single and were exploring a more progressive trail. “The band was very much alive,” recalls Lambert, “but we were a band that wasn’t doing bubble gum music, we’d left that. When we got the acceptance of ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’ and realised that that was a direction we could solidly follow then I had all the confidence in the world in what I was writing then and I was writing a complete stage act for the band.”


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