The Grease Band
Studio album by The Grease Band
Released 1971
Recorded 1971
Genre Rock
Length 43:59
Label Shelter
Producers Chris Stainton, Nigel Thomas, The Grease Band
The Grease Band is their first album after their stint as the backing band for Joe Cocker.
The Grease Band was a British rock band that started out as Joe Cocker's backing band. They recorded two albums in the 1970s. They are probably most widely known for their performance of The Beatles song, "With a Little Help from My Friends", with Joe Cocker at the Woodstock Festival in 1969.
Their keyboard player was Chris Stainton, another Sheffield born man (known to his friends as Robin) who went on to tour extensively with Eric Clapton. Bassist Alan Spenner and rhythm guitarist Neil Hubbard went on to play in the UK white soul band Kokomo; following this, Spenner worked in support of the late 1970s/early 1980s incarnation of Roxy Music. Drummer Bruce Rowland later joined Fairport Convention. Henry McCullough was the Grease Band's lead guitarist, a role he later occupied in Paul McCartney's Wings, and continues today as a solo artist. Rowland, Spenner, Hubbard and McCullough all played on the original 1970 recording of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Professional Ratings:
allmusic 4/5 stars
Robert Christgau C+
Review by Joe Viglione of allmusic:
Faded old-world flowers adorn both sides of the cover with a big strip of black grease disturbing the lovely imagery on the back. Beginning with Arthur Crudup's "My Baby Left Me," like that other band of famous backup players, the Section, how can this be anything but very musical? Guitarist/vocalist Henry McCullough's "Mistake No Doubt" has eerie backing vocals and is suitably well done, as is his "Let It Be Gone," and though this is far from commercial, it is important to have this document of the guys who made magic behind Joe Cocker in 1969 and Marianne Faithfull in the mid-'70s. This came right in the middle, and the Grease Band's collaborative effort, "Jesse James," could be mistaken for Doug Yule singing Lou Reed's "Train Comin' Round the Bend." It's got that chug-a-lug subdued rock sound. With Henry McCullough's Wings connection, The Grease Band gets a touch of the Beatles' guilt-by-association mystique. As intriguing and wonderful as this album is, had Joe Cocker guested on bassist Alan Spenner's "Down Home Mama" or had Marianne Faithfull taken on the traditional "To the Lord," there would have been that something extra, that intangible that makes records so very special. On their own, they sound like a cousin to the Band, and even cover Dylan on the follow-up to this Shelter Records debut. Recorded in London, it is vintage stuff, and 100 years from its making will no doubt be respected for the historic and studious record that it is. For the time The Grease Band was released, though, the four players barely looking up from the album cover appear like backing musicians, and that lack of identity is what separates this very good music from music that is considered great. Five Henry McCullough originals, one by Alan Spenner, and three Grease Band collaborations do make it, as stated, a good Wings spin-off project for collectors of Beatles-related music.
Review by Robert Christgau:
Can these be the same guys who backed Joe Cocker? From producer and pseudonymous pianist Chris Stainton I expected better--but not, I guess, from vocalist-composer (formerly just guitarist) Henry McCullough. The Band gets away with putting a nonsinger up front by shuffling five of them, and all five non-sing with more passion and style than Henry. And though like Henry they construct their songs out of used materials, they do that with passion and style too.
Biography by Bruce Eder:
The Grease Band was probably the most well-known backing group of the late 1960s: lionized in the British music press as the group playing behind Joe Cocker, and admired by critics and rival musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, they emerged to a brief flurry of activity in their own right at the start of the '70s, as well as backing Marianne Faithfull in her first significant solo work of the '70s.
The band's roots go back to the mid-'60s and Joe Cocker's initial rise to fame, and there were several early configurations of the group as Joe Cocker's Grease Band before the classic lineup took shape in 1968. Cocker had just taken a year off from music, after several abortive attempts, and needed a new backing group -- bassist Chris Stainton became the core of what became known as Joe Cocker's Grease Band, a name he reportedly chose based on a statement he'd read by jazz organist Jimmy Smith, praising a musician for "having a lot of grease" (meaning soul). The resulting version of the group had a lot of company on Cocker's single "With a Little Help from My Friends," and on the album that followed -- a lot of hands' work was represented there, and midway through, Cocker recruited a new member, ex-Eire Apparent guitarist Henry McCullough, to play on-stage. Both Cocker and McCullough felt that the existing Grease Band was too jazz-oriented for what the singer needed, and by the time the smoke cleared, Stainton had switched to keyboards, and Alan Spenner and Bruce Rowland (both ex-Wynder K. Frog) were playing the bass and drums, respectively.
The tour that followed and Cocker's self-titled second album were one of the great showcases of their time, generating a brace of hits and a ton of coverage from the U.K. music press. The American tour of early 1969 only brought the band's reputation, in tandem with Cocker's across the Atlantic. This culminated with Cocker's appearance at Woodstock (since released in its entirety) and then a break, at which point the members found themselves squeezed out by a combination of personal, legal, and management issues, including Cocker's desire to remain in the United States indefinitely, as a permanent resident. At that point, the group was officially disbanded -- Cocker went off to his celebrated Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour in tandem with Leon Russell's wonderfully oversized ensemble (which included Chris Stainton). Ironically, on the film of that tour, the singer can be seen having to answer questions -- clearly not for the first time -- about why the Grease Band broke up. Meanwhile, the other members returned to England, where Rowland played with Terry Reid and the short-lived Heavy Jelly, while McCullough and Spenner had a rendezvous with Spooky Tooth.
They gradually reorganized after a few weeks, however, now with Spenner and Rowland's ex-Wynder K. Frog bandmate Neil Hubbard handling some of the guitar work, and immediately began making noise in the business and news again, this time as the core group of musicians playing on the original Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice recording of Jesus Christ, Superstar. The latter became a British and then a major international musical and pop-culture phenomenon at the end of the decade. And a lot of listeners, especially other musicians, attributed the musical's strong credibility as a rock album to the presence of The Grease Band members.
They were soon signed to a contract in their own right with EMI's Harvest label, which yielded a debut long-player in 1971. That record, with its mix of stripped-down blues, R&B, soul, and roots rock, received rave reviews, and comparisons to no less a predecessor than the Band's 1968 classic Music from Big Pink. A lot of activity followed, including a pair of tours of the U.S., and the future looked promising, if not necessarily bright -- the pub rock scene was happening, which they would have slipped into beautifully alongside the likes of Brinsley Schwarz and McCulloch's former Eire Apparent bandmate Ernie Graham.
The original group began to splinter in early 1972, mostly owing to personal differences. Drummer Bruce Rowland quit first, and went on to play with Bryan Ferry, Ronnie Lane, et al, before landing a long-running gig with Fairport Convention. The group carried on, issuing a second album, Amazing Grease (1975), before they called it a day in mid-decade, although even at that point they were participating on worthwhile records: near the end of their string, The Grease Band backed up Marianne Faithfull in the first new body of recordings she'd done in almost ten years, for the country music album Dreamin' My Dreams (1976) (later reissued as Faithless), which began her comeback by yielding a hit on the Irish charts. Spenner (who died of heart failure in 1991) and Stainton continued to work together, including organizing the group Kokomo, and Stainton later played with Roxy Music (as did Hubbard), while McCullough served briefly as Wings' lead guitarist during the Paul McCartney-spawned band's early, formative days, before going on to a solo career. But even 40 years later, the mention of The Grease Band still brings flashes of recognition to those aware of Woodstock, or the original Jesus Christ, Superstar, or that second Joe Cocker album, and their debut record is still available on CD in the 21st century.
LP track listing
Side One
1. "My Baby Left Me" (Arthur Crudup) - 3:08
2. "Mistake No Doubt" (Henry McCullough) - 4:16
3. "Let It Be Gone" (Henry McCullough) - 4:28
4. "Willie and the Pig" (Henry McCullough) - 4:15
5. "Laugh at the Judge" (The Grease Band) - 5:30
Side Two
6. "All I Wanna Do" (Henry McCullough) - 4:00
7. "To the Lord" (Trad. arranged by The Grease Band) - 4:20
8. "Jesse James" (The Grease Band) - 4:48
9. "Down Home Mama" (Alan Spenner) - 6:31
10. "The Visitor" (Henry McCullough) - 2:43
Personnel:
* Henry McCullough - guitar, vocals
* Neil Hubbard - guitar, vocals
* Phil "Harmonious" Plonk - keyboards, accordion
* Alan Spenner - drums (track 2), bass, vocals
* Bruce Rowlans - bass (track 2), drums, percussion, harmonium, vocals