NOTES FROM THE OTHER WOMAN (When Phil played with Brand X) A few people showed great interest over our website’s ‘historical section’ and its exclusion of Phil Collins as a “core member of Brand X“… Understandably: Phil was hugely consequential since his name alone allowed Brand X to be signed to Hit & Run management …
Reviving another vintage (April 9, 1977) editorial by Dave Fudger for SOUNDS magazine. I leave the offices of Hit and Run Music and step into Maddox Street W. I have my briefcase over my head, for it is raining. Not the regular, round, wet things that are rain drops, but flat disc-like objects known as …
Two open air gigs in one day! on the, same planet! it had never been done before. How could a pioneering journalist/gullible ligging hack like Joe resist the offer to witness such an historic rock ‘n’ roll event? The answer was — easily, for Joe, alias yours truly, had been offered another er . . . lig. This one involved chasing punters at two open air festival gigs (on the same afternoon!) with a quintet of jazz rock deviationaries — Brand X. The open air fests in question being Crystal Palace Garden Party X and the Fête De L’Humanité 1977 near Le Bourget, Paris. France.
The plan was simple: Brand X’s gear had been driven out to the site of the two-day French test and duplicate stuff — keyboards, amplifiers, effects units, percussion, etc, — were hired in England for the Crystal Palace gig. (Brand X drummer and founder member, Phil Collins being an ultramegastar with the Genesis beat group, can lay claim to at least a couple of drum kits and so he had no need to hire.) I was to be limoed to the Crystal Palace bash and immediately following the band’s set we were all to be flown from nearly Biggin Hill aerodrome to Le Bourget on a specially chartered private plane (see fig. a) and thence by road the short distance to the festival site. That was the plan.
A small trove of well-preserved reel to reel tapes from the vaults has just been rescued by Brand X co-creator Robin Lumley.
Most notable among these are sessions from the band’s earliest recordings in their pre-Charisma days, when Phil Collins joined the jam sessions at Island Records in 1974/75.