CHEVY
CHEVY
They have a page on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Chevy-150397718303932/
Singles
Too much loving / See the light - July 1980 - Avatar Records
After a few line up changes the group stabilized by 1971 with the following personnel: Martin Cure (vocals) Bob Poole (bass) Paul Shanahan (guitar) and Andy Chaplin (drums). In the middle of the 70’s the musicians began to write songs together. By the late 70’s the band were, in tandem with the “Cupids” gigs, organizing local pub rock gigs under the name of “4 wheel drive” to play rock music and try out their own songs and began building up a strong local following. At this time they recruited a second guitarist, Steve Walwyn, from another local band to build up the twin guitar sound the boys had decided would best suit their own music.
The band had by this time relocated from London to Leamington Spa in the midlands as a better base to travel to gigs around England. The next step was to build a 2 track-recording studio in the drummers attic and begin recording demo’s which were then sent in to every record company in England. A reaction came from Bronze records publishing department and the song “Chevy” was placed In February 1980 on the EMI compilation album “Metal for Muthas Vol. II”. Chevy went on to sign a record deal with Avatar Records, a new company formed by Jerry Rafferty’s former publishers, Robert Patterson and John Brewer. The first release, the single “Too much loving / See the light “ was in July 1980. At that time the group were playing a lot of concerts (for example touring with Alvin Lee and Hawkwind).
The Chevy album “The Taker” was released in September of the same year and received excellent reviews in all the major British music papers. In spite of the good reviews in the music press and the bands great live performances, and not entirely undue to the record company’s inefficiency, the album sold too slowly to achieve national chart success. In the middle of 1981 their second single “The Taker/Life on the run” was released. Chevy’s third and last single ” Just another day / Rock on” was recorded soon after and had a limited release. By late 1981 Steve Walwyn and Andy Chaplin had gone on to pastures new and been replaced by Baz Eardley on guitar and Ted Duggan on drums.
Chevy were still touring England but relationships with their record company and management were getting strained and by the end of that year Chevy sued their record company for breach of contract and quit Avatar just three weeks before they were scheduled to record their second album. With the new line up Chevy played a radio one live In-concert for the BBC with support coming from Rock Goddess. The BBC later compiled and broadcast a Radio 1 In-Concert with Chevy as support to Gary Moore.
Red on Red
Chevy finally split around 1982/83). In 1983 Martin Cure, Bob Poole, Paul Shanahan, Steve Walvyn, Ted Duggan, Bob Jackson (ex- Indian Summer, ex-Badfinger) decided to begin a new group called Red on Red. Unable to secure a new record deal and after one year Red on Red was dissolved. They later added a second keyboard player, Mark Steeds. Ted Duggan handed over his place to Paul Brook -drums, who in the 70’s had been playing in Cupid’s Inspiration.
AFTER CHEVY
Martin Cure who before Cupids Inspiration and then Chevy, was the vocalist with such bands as The Peeps, Rainbows and Still life, set up good time R&B band The Rogues and he still performs with them today. He is the owner of P.A. Company “Cable P.A.” and with some of his old friends occasionally does Cupid’s Inspiration gigs.
Paul Shanahan - Laid down his guitar for some years during which time he became the sales director of a British chemical company. Recently, due partly to his sons’ interest in music, he recently picked up the guitar again and found that it was good.
Andy Chaplin - in the 80’s played with the DT’s and the Steve Marriott Band (ex Small Faces/Humble Pie) together with Steve Walwyn. He now plays with The Razors and occasionally, The Steve Walwyn Band. He runs a market garden and he is involved in other music projects including live promotions.
Steve Walwyn - was playing in The Mosquitoes (1982), The DT’s (1982-89), Steve Marriott Band (87-89), from 1989 his main group has been Doctor Feelgood. Between tours with the Feelgoods, he has worked with Eddie and The Hot Rods (92), Roger Chapman Band, Big Town Playboys (94), Rogues (94),The GB’s, Steve Walwyn Band (96).
Barry Eardley - is now a guitar teacher. After he left Chevy he played in Atomic Rooster, The Mudsliders (with Ted Duggan) and he was co-operating with B. Lea Bradford and Naked Blues. He was also short listed to replace Micky Moody in Whitesnake. From 2004 he played in Coventry based rock group Iron Horse and in 2009 teamed up with Ted Duggan and Bob Poole to form the three-piece power rock band The Motorvators.
Ted Duggan - Past and current bands / artists include The Drifters, Badfinger, Desmond Dekker, Pauline Black, Rankin Roger, The Beat, Roddy Radiation, Horace Panter, Steve Walwyn, The Selecter, Paul Horn, Mark Feltham, James Eller, John Wardi Ward, Cupids Inspiration, and for 20 years he is still working with popular modern dance music performer Banco da Gaia and with Badfinger and The Mudsliders as well as teaching drums. He is a session musician and has played Drums for Elton John, From 2004 he was playing with Coventry group Iron Horse (with Barry Eardley) until in 2009 he formed the rock power trio The Motorvators with Baz Eardley and Bob Poole.
Bob Poole - After a short involvement with Billy Rankin of Nazareth fame he lived in Germany until 2009 where He played bass with the Whitesnake and Deep Purple cover band Snakebite, sang and played bass with the rock band Shark Sandwich, guitar and vocals with the acoustic duo Back To Back, played lead guitar and sang with the acoustic group Side by Side, Bass guitar and vocals with the country/Irish American folk group Country Balls and put together an acoustic solo show that has taken him around the world. He has also written songs and produced records for various German groups. Bob Poole is now back in the UK where he is playing bass and singing with Baz and Ted in the Motorvators as well as pursuing his solo career.
The abridged Chevy story by Bob Poole
I suppose
for me it all started in 1965 when my family moved from a small village in
Gloucestershire to Leamington Spa in the Midlands of England. Leaving school at
15 years of age, I went to work in local shops and Hotels changing jobs
frequently as, from the age of 13, I had already decided that my future lay in
making music. My first guitar was a plastic 4 string thing with a picture of
Elvis on the head. A year later my Grandfather, who was himself an ex
professional entertainer and singer, bought me a Broadway 3 pickup electric
guitar with an action about 3 inches above the fret board. I would plug this
into my Dansette record player and piss off the neighbours, my family and
surrounding wild life banging out tunes on single strings (didn’t know what a chord
was). When we arrived in Leamington Spa I met up with a guy called Rick Purcell
who had an electric guitar and long hair. He showed me what a chord was and off
we went. Formed our first group “Blues Condition” and tried to play the blues.
Next came “Tobias Heat”, playing Cream and Hendrix stuff. A guy my age lived down the road from us and we would have friendly competitions playing our guitar as loud as possible as the other walked past, trying to impress. He was in a soul group called “Jalopy Ride” and his name was Paul Shanahan. Paul then went off to play for 6 months in Canada and when he returned he got a job with Cupids Inspiration. I was well pissed off until one day not long after he asked me if I would like to be their roadie. I immediately said yes as this was a chance to travel and be on the road and who knew what might happen? In 1971 I got my break. We were in Scotland in Kirkcaldy on New Years Eve, a big money night and Cupids bass player was too drunk to stand up on the stage. I had been watching carefully and knew all the songs so I grabbed his bass and said words to the effect of “I can do that”. That was my first real professional gig and from then on I became a bass player. The old bass player left not long after and I got the job. Almost immediately Paul and I started writing songs. It soon became apparent that we were more rock than pop orientated and as Martin Cure, our singer had already been down that road with his former bands “Rainbows” and “Still Life”, we decided to risk the secure income from “Cupids” and turn into a rock band. We found a scruffy old Hotel in Leamington called the Crown and began to put on gigs every Thursday night playing under the name of 4 Wheel Drive, covering bands like Boston, Thin Lizzy and Steely Dan while slipping in our own songs - until in the end we were just playing our own stuff and had an average audience of 200 people each gig. (We used to spend the Wednesday before the gig building a 24 ft-wide stage and rigging up loads of spotlights that we had stolen individually from Cupids gigs). One of the support bands on those gigs called “Hands Off” had a guitar player named Steve Walwyn and as we liked his playing and needed a second guitarist in the band we asked him to join us. He gave up his day job and played with us on the still active Cupids gigs (where we earned our money) and became quickly involved in the song writing and developing of the “Chevy” sound. The next step was to build a recording room in the attic of drummer Andy Chaplin’s attic. There, with a 2 track reel to reel machine, we recorded our first demo’s bouncing tracks up to eight or more times. (The first song we recorded there was “Skybird”). Then we painfully copied hundreds of demo cassettes which we posted off to all the record companies in London. Nobody reacted until, due to poor quality control, we sent a blank tape to Bronze records who sent back a letter asking where the music was.
Encouraged, we sent to them again and a guy working in the publishing department picked up on the song “Chevy” and put it forward to E.M.I. as a track on the new compilation album “Metal For Muthas volume two”. It was used, unfortunately, in it’s by then 4 track demo form so sounded shit but got us a start with the companies. The Bronze guy then left to work for newly formed record company ”Avatar” and took our demos to them and, after some meetings, we signed with Avatar. We went straight into Pye studios and recorded the first single “Too Much Loving” and then a week or two later began to record the album. The album was recorded in three weeks under extreme duress with a spaced out producer who sometimes didn’t seem to know the time of day but in the end, after one week of mixing, it was finished. We were never satisfied with the final production and hated the sound of it as we had in our heads a picture of how we should sound and the producer didn’t come close. However, it got favorable reviews and sold slowly but well (about 40,000 copies were pressed for England and there were limited releases in other countries).
We were by then constantly touring with people like “Alvin Lee” and “Hawkwind”, playing gigs with Gillan and other rock luminaries and we recorded two BBC live in concerts, one with the original Chevy line-up playing with “The Tygers of Pan Tang” and later a second with Chevy mark 2 as support for “Gary Moore”. It was not long before the shit started with the record company. The usual “the cheques in the post” etc., the fall through of the proposed American tour and release (later Avatar told us it was their fuck up and said sorry)! We had three major record companies fly to England from America to see and hear the band and they wanted to sign us for the States but Avatar held out for too much advance money so they called the deal off. This left a rather unhappy group and soon we had problems amongst ourselves that ended up with a new Chevy line-up, Baz Eardley from Coventry replacing Steve Walwyn on guitar and Ted Duggan, also a Coventry kid, replacing Andy Chaplin on drums. We were scheduled to record our second album at that time in Island studios with a French rock producer but three weeks before the sessions began, knowing we would never see a penny from Avatar for our work; we sued the record company for breach of contract and left them. You don‘t get away with that trick in London and the word was out on us as trouble so nobody would give us the new deal we needed and there came a day not too much later when I said to the band “I’ve had enough” and the rest seemed to agree so we split up. There was a third Chevy incarnation a couple of years later for about one year. We called ourselves “Red On Red”, had the same line up as the original Chevy except Ted stayed on drums and we added two keyboard players, Mark Steeds and Bob Jackson. We wrote new songs and recorded some BBC sessions and did some T.V. stuff and live gigs but again, couldn’t get a record deal that suited us so we shut that one down too. As far as Chevy is concerned, the rest, as they say……… Bob Poole - 2010
“But we are
also doing some rare stuff, that would have been on the second album, had we
recorded it. Our normal two part-guitar harmony is giving way to three-part,
with the addition of original guitarist Steve Walwyn. It’s the first time the
three guitarists have all played on stage together.”
Chevy had a great reputation, and if you want to know why, well make sure you don’t miss this one, as it may never happen again....
Ears began pricking when the band gained a prize spot on the EMI Metal For Muthas Vol 2 album with the track Chevy, and the anticipation grew.In 1980 they released The Taker and won a shed-load of fans in the process"
Plenty more Chevy on You Tube - but here a couple -
Martin Cure
Bob Poole
Chevy 1980's
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