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The Move
The
Move were one of the leading British rock bands of the 1960s from Birmingham,
England. They scored nine Top 20 UK singles in five years, but were the best and
most important British group of the late '60s that never made a significant dent
in the American market.
The
major force in the band was guitarist and songwriter Roy Wood, who combined a
knack for Beatlesque pop with a peculiarly British sense of humor. On their
final albums (with considerable input from Jeff Lynne), the band became artier
and more ambitious, hinting at the orchestral rock that Wood and Lynne would
devise for the Electric Light Orchestra. The Move, however, always placed more
emphasis on the pop than the art, and never lost sight of their hardcore rock
& roll roots.
Formed in the mid-'60s, the Move were so named because the five musicians from
the original lineups were moving from established Birmingham groups into a new
band. Taken under the wing of manager Tony Secunda, the group moved to London
and quickly established themselves thanks to their explosive stage
performances. Carl Wayne recalled: 'we launched into the whole publicity
routine, in order to get our name known, including smashing up television sets
on stage, burning life-size dummies of famous people during our act - and we
even set fire to the Marquee at one time, causing a riot. Needless to say,
our stage antics became notorious'.
With
Wood handling all of the writing, the group's first four singles ("Night of
Fear," "I Can Hear the Grass Grow," "Flowers in the
Rain," and "Fire Brigade") all made the British Top Ten in
1967-1968. Despite the strength of the music (and a solid debut album in 1968),
management and press gave more attention to their flamboyant stage antics,
clothes, and outrageous publicity stunts. The most famous of these -- a
publicity mailing for "Flowers in the Rain" picturing British Prime
Minister Harold Wilson in an embarrassing state of undress -- backfired badly
when the band lost royalties from the single in a subsequent libel suit.
After a couple of less successful singles, they topped the British charts
for the only time in 1969 with one of their best songs, "Blackberry
Way," a kind of black-humored flipside to "Penny Lane." The
group's second album, Shazam (1970), was one of their best, allowing them to
stretch out in more progressive and experimental directions than they could
within the format of hit singles. After a misguided venture into the cabaret
circuit, singer Carl Wayne left, leaving the lead vocal chores primarily in the
hands of Roy Wood. Wayne recalled: 'I left the group for several reasons.
Towards the end it became like a marriage gone wrong. We were no longer
getting kicks out of recording hit records, or touring. By then, it was
all down to living with each other's personality and we couldn't manage it'.
The rapid succession of personnel changes would have stopped most bands in their
tracks, but the Move, if anything, became a more interesting group in the early
'70s. This was due primarily to the replacement of Wayne by Jeff Lynne.
Lynne would be the only member of the Move other than Wood to contribute notable
songs and help shape the band's vision. On Looking On (1971) and Message from
the Country (1972), Lynne's cheerier pop inclinations would effectively
counterpoint Wood's darker and more ironic compositions, in the manner of great
rock collaborations like Lennon-McCartney and Stills-Young. Their best work from
this period, though, is actually contained on their singles, several of which
("Brontosaurus," "California Man," and "Tonight")
were British hits.
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