Groundhogs -

The Groundhogs were an English blues and rock band that made four albums on Liberty, including the popular 1970/71 titles Thank Christ for the Bomb and Split. On United Artists, they made the experimental 1972 albums Who Will Save the World? The Mighty Groundhogs and Hogwash. After their 1974 effort Solid on the short-lived WWA label, a revised Groundhogs cut the 1976 UA titles Crosscut Saw and Black Diamond. Guitarist/frontman Tony (T.S.) McPhee also moonlighted as a backing musician.

Members: Tony T.S. McPhee (guitar, vocals), Peter Cruickshank (bass, 1963-74, 2003-04), Dave Boorman (drums, 1963-65), Bob Hall (piano, 1963-65), John Cruickshank (vocals, 1963-64), Ken Pustelnik (drums, 1965-72, 2003-04), Tom Parker (keyboards, 1965), Steve Rye (harmonica, 1968), Clive Brooks (drums, 1972-74), Dave Thompson (bass, 1972), Mick Cook (drums, 1976), Martin Kent (bass, 1976), Dave Wellbelove (guitar, 1976), Rick Adams (guitar, 1976)

Background

The Groundhogs evolved from The Dollar Bills, a pre-beat combo formed in 1962 in New Cross, London, by bassist Peter Cruickshank (b. 1943) and his singing brother John Cruickshank (b. 1945), both born to British parents in Calcutta, India. Within months, they welcomed guitarist Tony McPhee (b. 1944), who steered them toward blues-rock and suggested a new band name based on the John Lee Hooker song “Groundhog’s Blues.” They rounded the lineup with drummer Dave Boorman and a sequence of keyboardists.

Tony was born Anthony Charles McPhee on March 23, 1944, in Humberston, Lincolnshire; the son of Eileen (nee Harrison) and Charles McPhee, a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence. The family settled in South London, where Tony attended Tooting Bec grammar school and took an interest in blues through his brother’s collection of import records.^>

By 1961, McPhee frequented London’s music haunts, including the Marquee Club, where he witnessed harpist Cyril Davies, a mentor of the city’s burgeoning R&B scene. Tony fronted his own band, The Seneschals, just before his linkup with the Cruickshank brothers.

“Shake It”

The Groundhogs backed John Lee Hooker on his 1964 UK tour. They subsequently served as a backing band for fellow visiting bluesmen Little Walter and Jimmy Reed. McPhee assumed the mic from a departed John Cruickshank.

In January 1965, the Groundhogs linked with Interphon Records for their first single, “Shake It” (b/w “Rock Me”). Soon after, Boorman cleared for drummer Ken Pustelnik (b. March 13, 1946), who came from a farming family in Blairgowrie, Angus, Scotland.

In 1966, McPhee played alongside Eric Clapton on the Decca release From New Orleans to Chicago by pianist Champion Jack Dupree. Concurrently, Dupree and McPhee cut a joint single with two co-written originals, “Get Your Head Happy!” (b/w “Easy Is the Way”), for the Blue Horizon label.

Herbal Mixture

In 1966, McPhee and Peter Cruickshank cut two singles as Herbal Mixture with drummer Mike Meekham. (Further recordings under this name appeared thirty years later on the Distortions Records compilation Please Leave My Mind.) The guitarist also issued two blues originals, “Someone to Love Me” (b/w “Ain’t Gonna Cry No Mo”’), under the nickname T. S. McPhee, the initials standing for “tough shit.”

By 1967, The Groundhogs coalesced as the trio of McPhee, Cruickshank, and Pustelnik. That autumn, they signed to Liberty Records, a division of EMI.

McPhee played on two tracks (“Dust My Broom” “Save Her, Doctor”) on Eddie Boyd and His Blues Band, the Mississippi pianist’s 1967 Decca album with featured guitarist Peter Green. In 1968, Tony earned a co-write credit (with Jo-Ann Kelly) on “Travelling Man,” the debut single by the John Dummer Blues Band.

Scratchin’ the Surface

The Groundhogs released their debut album, Scratchin’ the Surface, in November 1968 on Liberty. Musically, the album plies Chicago-style blues with adaptations of songs by Rosco Gordon (“No More Doggin”’), Willie Cobbs (“You Don’t Love Me”), and Muddy Waters (“Still a Fool”).

Scratchin’ the Surface is the only Groundhogs album with harpist and singer Steve Rye, who wrote “Early In the Morning” (not the Vanity Fair–Cliff Richard hit) and “Come Back Baby.” He dominates Tony McPhee’s numbers, including the lengthy “Man Trouble.”

1. “Rocking Chair” (4:07)
2. “Early in the Morning” (4:47)
3. “Waking Blues” (2:29)
4. “Married Men” (4:40)
5. “No More Doggin'” (4:57)
6. “Man Trouble” (6:27)
7. “Come Back Baby” (3:54)
8. “You Don’t Love Me” (Willie Cobbs) (4:11
9. “Still a Fool” (McKinley Morganfield) (6:35)

Scratchin’ the Surface was produced by Mike Batt, Liberty’s nineteen-year-old Head of A&R. Sessions occurred between October 5 and 13 at London’s Marquee Studios. Liberty cover photographer Michael Hasted captured the album’s waist-deep cover image. He also did the cover photography for 1969–71 Liberty titles by the Idle Race, Cochise, and the self-titled album by Thoughts & Words, which also depicts its subjects in the wild outdoors.

Blues Obituary

The Groundhogs released their second album, Blues Obituary, in September 1969 on Liberty. Here, they embrace a looser, more jam-based style.

Blues Obituary features six Tony McPhee originals, including “Mistreated,” “B.D.D.,” and “Daze of the Weak,” plus their own arrangement of the traditional “Natchez Burning.” McPhee titled the album in anticipation of blues music’s dissolution in light of post-psychedelic progressive trends.

1. “B.D.D.” (4:00)
2. “Daze of the Weak” (3:45)
3. “Times” (5:15)
4. “Mistreated” (5:15)
5. “Express Man” (3:55)
6. “Natchez Burning” (4:35)
7. “Light Was the Day” (6:50)

McPhee himself handled production on Blues Obituary and all subsequent Groundhogs albums. Sessions occurred in June 1969 at Marquee Studios with engineer Colin Caldwell, a soundman on upcoming albums by Alice, Curved Air (Airconditioning), C.O.B., and the Keef Hartley Band. His assistant, Gery Colins, also worked on The Aerosol Grey Machine, the debut album by Van der Graaf Generator.

Blues Obituary features Blackletter typography by Hogart and photography by Zoran Matic, who captured the trio in Lutheran garb pallbearing a guitar from a carriage on cathedral grounds. The back cover presents six further images from Matic’s photoshoot assembled in the shape of a cross.

Liberty lifted “B.D.D.” (Blind Deaf Dumb) as it single, which charted in Lebanon. Meanwhile, McPhee appeared on 1969 tracks John Mayall (“Third Degree”) and the John Dummer Band (“When You Got a Good Friend”). He also played on Western Flier, the second album by Hapshash & The Coloured Coat, a psychedelic design firm.

Thank Christ for the Bomb

The Groundhogs released their third album, Thank Christ for the Bomb, in May 1970 on Liberty. It features nine Tony McPhee originals.

The four tracks on Side One are linked by the theme of “alienness” of a community (“Strange Town”), a small room (“Darkness Is No Friend”), a country (“Soldier”), and overall alienation (the title track).

1. “Strange Town” (4:16)
2. “Darkness Is No Friend” (2:43)
3. “Soldier” (4:51)
4. “Thank Christ for the Bomb” (7:15)
5. “Ship on the Ocean” (3:27)
6. “Garden” (5:19)
7. “Status People” (3:32)
8. “Rich Man, Poor Man” (3:25)
9. “Eccentric Man” (4:53) concerns a man who lived in Chelsea his whole life; first in a mansion and then on the beaches of the embankment.

Sessions occurred in February 1970 at De Lane Lea Studios in Holborn, where soundman Martin Birch engineered Thank Christ in sequence with 1969/70 titles by Beggars Opera (Act One), Deep Purple (In Rock), Faces, Fleetwood Mac (Then Play On), Rock Workshop, Skin Alley, Steamhammer, Terry Reid, and Wishbone Ash.

Alan Tanner of Clearwater Conceptions did the album’s cover visuals, which depict the Groundhogs as wounded soldiers. The back spells out “The End” within a cloud that hovers over a helmeted subject. On the inner-gate, a Sopwith Camel biplane streams red poppies over a crowd of WWI-era civilians. Tanner also handled visuals for Hawkwind‘s debut.

“Soldier” appears on Electric Monster Rock Show, a 1970 German Liberty comp with cuts by Amon Duul II, Brinsley Schwarz, Can, Fantasy, Krokodil, Sugarloaf, and Jean-Luc Ponty.

Split

The Groundhogs released their fourth album, Split, in March 1971 on Liberty. Side One consists of a title-track split into four parts with lyrics inspired by a panic attack Tony McPhee suffered the prior May. Split closes with an unofficial group theme, “Groundhog.”

1. “Split – Part One” (4:25)
2. “Split – Part Two” (5:10)
3. “Split – Part Three” (4:25)
4. “Split – Part Four” (5:38)
5. “Cherry Red” (5:40)
6. “A Year in the Life” (3:07)
7. “Junkman” (4:52)
8. “Groundhog” (5:35)

Sessions occurred in November 1970 at De Lane Lea Studios, where the Groundhogs finished “Cherry Red” live in one take. Martin Birch engineered Split in sequence with 1971 albums by Beggars Opera (Waters of Change), Ray Russell, Stackridge, Stray, Toad, and Green Bullfrog, an ad hoc studio project with members of Deep Purple and Jodo.

Split featured monochrome cover photography by Christopher Richardson, who rendered McPhee in swivel-split multi-vision.

Who Will Save the World? The Mighty Groundhogs

The Groundhogs released their fifth album, Who Will Save the World? The Mighty Groundhogs, in March 1972 on United Artists.

The songs deal with weaponry, pollution, waste, and natural resources from Tony McPhee’s environmentalist perspective. The artwork spoofs these themes with a comic strip that depicts the band as superheroes who defeat a round of eco-terror demons.

1. “Earth Is Not Room Enough” (4:45) spins its title from Earth Is Room Enough, a collection of fifteen science fiction stories published between 1951 and 1957 by Russian-American author and biochemist Isaac Asimov. Tony describes a gas chamber.
2. “Wages of Peace” (4:33) concerns the lethal effects of nature, regardless of human input.
3. “Body in Mind” (3:45) likens mind pollution to air pollution.
4. “Music is the Food of Thought” (4:30) spins its title from the line “If music be the food of love, play on” from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night; since used as an idiom for the emotional effects of music.
5. “Bog Roll Blues” (3:02) describes the use of toilet rolls; a titular spin on “Big Roll Blues” by Big Joe Williams.
6. “Death of the Sun” (3:40) concerns a future eon where the shrunken sun can no longer heat planet Earth.
7. “Amazing Grace” (2:20) is Tony’s Harmonium spin on the 18th century hymn by English Anglican clergyman John Newton (1725–1807).
8. “The Grey Maze” (10:05) concerns grey matter, the outer-tissue of the brain responsible for the localized processing harnessed by people in STEM fields.

Sessions occurred in January 1972 at the new De Lane Lea in Wembley, where McPhee made use of the studio’s Mellotron. Soundman Louie Austin (Catapilla, Mainhorse, Jerusalem, Hard Stuff) co-engineered the album with Birch, who also worked on 1972 titles by Flash, Fleetwood Mac (Bare Trees), Silverhead, and Warm Dust.

Who Will Save the World? appeared in a gatefold sleeve with an additional bottom flap, emblazoned front-to-back with an 18-panel comic strip by Neal Adams, an American comic artist whose prior credits included Ben Casey (based on the Sixties ABC medical drama) and recent issues of legacy titles by DC Comics (Green Lantern/Green Arrow) and Marvel (Uncanny X-Men).

In the comic strip, The Mighty Groundhogs are the superhero trio of Powerful Pustelnik, Quick Cruickshank, and Wizard McPhee. They defeat a round of villains: Mother Population, Devil Pollution, Malevolent War, Pig Business, and Sacred Cow. After Wizard nearly succumbs to the temptress Nightmare, they revert to their real-life form, the Groundhogs, a blues band that “might even accomplish more with music than the superhero Groundhogs will, [despite] all their muscle.”

After this album, Pustelnik cleared for drummer Clive Brooks, an alumnus of Egg and its predecessor Arzachel.

Hogwash

The Groundhogs released their sixth album, Hogwash, in November 1972 on United Artists.

1. “I Love Miss Ogyny” (5:20)
2. “You Had a Lesson” (5:45)
3. “The Ringmaster” (1:25)
4. “3744 James Road” (7:15)
5. “Sad is the Hunter” (5:15)
6. “S’One Song” (3:40)
7. “Earth Shanty” (6:50)
8. “Mr Hooker, Sir John” (3:34)

Sessions occurred at Advision Studios in Central London, where McPhee achieved a “double-guitar” sound with a Hagström guitar synthesizer linked to an ARP 2600. Advision soundman Martin Rushent engineered Hogwash in sequence with titles by Compost, Osibisa, Stone the Crows, Tonton Macoute, and Gentle Giant‘s two 1972 albums, Three Friends and Octopus.

Hogwash appeared in a tri-fold cover conceived by photographer Pierre Tubbs, a Sixties psych musician (Our Plastic Dream, The Owl) with visual credits on recent albums by Man, Hawkwind, and Shirley Bassey. The cover features monochrome portrait shots of each member and a vertical inner-fold with studio pics (in blue surround) and details of their instrumental arsenal.

The Two Sides of Tony (T.S.) McPhee

In 1973, Tony McPhee made his solo debut with The Two Sides of Tony (T.S.) McPhee, released in the UK and Italy on WWA Records. Side One features four self-performed originals of unaccompanied acoustic and electric guitar. “The Hunt” is a side-long piece with electric piano, Ace Tone synthesized drums, and two ARP 2600 synthesizers.

A1. “Three Times Seven”
A2. “All My Money, Alimony”
A3. “Morning’s Eyes”
A4. “Dog Me, Bitch”
A5. “Take It Out”
B. “The Hunt”

The Two Sides appeared in a portrait-shot cover with die-cut holes under Tony’s right eye.

Solid

The Groundhogs released their seventh album, Solid, in June 1974 on WWA. Tony McPhee plays Mellotron on two cuts (“Sins of the Father,” “Snowstorm”) and synthesizer on “Sad Go Round.”

1. “Light My Light” (6:23)
2. “Free from All Alarm” (5:14)
3. “Sins of the Father” (5:29)
4. “Sad Go Round” (2:55)
5. “Corn Cob” (5:36)
6. “Plea Sing, Plea Song” (3:00)
7. “Snowstorm” (3:28)
8. “Joker’s Grave” (8:41)

McPhee produced and engineered by Solid at his home studio in Haverhill, Suffolk. The album’s cover features visuals by Italian-English art director Fabio Nicoli, whose recent clients included acts on Bronz (Tempest), Island (John Martyn), Vertigo (Magma, Jackson Heights), Manticore (Stray Dog), Dark Horse (Splinter), and A&M (Hudson–Ford, Supertramp, Chris de Burgh).

New Lineup

In 1975, McPhee assembled a new Groundhogs with bassist Dave Wellbelove, drummer Mick Cook, and second guitarist Martin Kent. Cook hailed from rustic-rockers Home, which made three albums on CBS, including the acclaimed 1973 concept album The Alchemist. After one new Groundhogs album, Kent overtook Wellbelove on bass and McPhee hired second guitarist Rick Adams.

Crosscut Saw

The Groundhogs released their eighth album, Crosscut Saw, in February 1976 on United Artists. Tony McPhee plays the ARP 2600 on the three longest tracks: “Fulfilment,” “Live a Little Lady,” and “Eleventh Hour.” Bassist Dave Wellbelove plays the guitar solos on “Boogie Withus” and the title track.

1. “Crosscut Saw” (3:44)
2. “Promiscuity” (5:43)
3. “Boogie Withus” (3:51)
4. “Fulfilment” (7:36)
5. “Live a Little Lady” (6:05)
6. “Three Way Split” (4:56)
7. “Mean Mistreater” (2:32)
8. “Eleventh Hour” (6:46)

McPhee produced and engineered the album at T.S. Studios, Suffolk.

Illustrator Mick Lye created the Crosscut Saw cover image: a distressed cybernetic primate with wood-framed eyes and metal saws that form his lower jaw and cleft palate. Lye also illustrated the cover to the 1976 self-titled Virgin release by Mallard, a Magic Band spinoff.

Black Diamond

The Groundhogs released their ninth album, Black Diamond, in October 1976 on United Artists. Tony McPhee plays synthesizer on “Fantasy Partner.” Black Diamond is the second of two Groundhogs albums with the rhythm section of Martin Kent and Mick Cook. Second guitarist Rick Adams makes his sole appearance on this release.

1. “Body Talk” (4:47)
2. “Fantasy Partner” (5:12)
3. “Live Right” (3:50)
4. “Country Blues” (4:15)
5. “Your Love Keeps Me Alive” (5:57)
6. “Friendzy” (5:28)
7. “Pastoral Future” (2:44)
8. “Black Diamond” (6:10)

Black Diamond features graphics by AD Designs staffer Paul Henry, who also did visuals for 1976/77 albums by Alkatraz, Dr. Feelgood, Michael Chapman, and The Stranglers. He employed similar mirrored imagery on Rain Dances, the 1977 fifth album by Camel.

Veteran rock photographer Gered Mankowitz took the Black Diamond pics, which show a quadruple-mirrored McPhee with his red Gibson SG Standard; backed with a shady image of the four-piece Groundhogs around a glowing pyramid. Mankowitz (a Sixties-era Rolling Stones photographer) took recent cover pics for Babe Ruth, Jobriath, Murray Head, and Sparks (Indiscreet).

1977–83 Break

By 1977, Tony McPhee grounded the ‘hogs and formed a new band, Terroplane, which toured the London club circuit but made no recordings. Martin Kent and Rick Adams cut one side of a 1979 split single as part of ABC, a trio with veteran Mancunian bassist Dave Bowker (Eclection, Limey).

In 1979, McPhee reconnected with Scratchin’ the Surface producer Mike Batt for Tarot Suite, the now-conductor’s second all-star concept album. Tony also backed an early muse, Billy Boy Arnold, on the American harpist’s comeback album Checkin’ It Out.

In 1983, McPhee launched T.S. Records and issued “Time of Action” (b/w “Born to Be With You”), the sole single billed to the Tony McPhee Band, a trio with bassist Steve Towner and drummer Mick Kirton.

McPhee retained Kirton for a reformed Groundhogs with bassist Alan Fish, once of the NWOBHM band Zorro.

Razor’s Edge

The Groundhogs released their tenth album, Razor’s Edge, in May 1985 on Landslide Records. Sessions occurred in September 1984 at Alaska Sound Studios in Waterloo, Central London.