STRUCK FROM THE RECORD Manticore & Purple Records

STRUCK FROM THE RECORD

A celebration of sadly departed labels - Manticore & Purple Records

MANTICORE RECORDS

A manticore is a legendary beast with the body of a lion, the head of a man, the tail of a scorpion and a giant Hammond organ for a bottom. Okay, the last bit is made up. Well, the whole thing is made up; it’s a mythical creature.

It’s also the name of the record company formed by Emerson, Lake and Palmer in January 1973.

ELP’s second album, Tarkus, aside from featuring some blistering prog and a rare guitar solo from Greg Lake, also contained the anti-war Tarkus suite, which ran across all of side one. The Tarkus was a sort of mechanical armadillo, said by Greg Lake to represent the military-industrial complex. ER, right. The Tarkus is eventually defeated by a Manticore.It’s sort of hard to explain, really. You kind of have to listen to it.

Anyway, aside from worrying about World War Three and mechanadillos, ELP were also unhappy with their label, Atlantic Records, and the sort of Seventies supergroup that sold the number of LPs that Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer did were not in a position to have to put up with being unhappy with their label. After their third LP, Trilogy, they were ready to go it alone.

Along with manager Stewart Young, they set up the label and drafted in Atlantic promo man Mario Medius – who Lake knew from his King Crimson days – to help run it.

Over the next four years, ELP would release their own records on Manticore, distributed first by Cotillion and then Motown from 1975 until the label’s demise in 1977. The label’s first release was Brain Salad Surgery, one of the great sci-fi rock records, and one of the finest of all prog albums. It’s probably the group’s most complete record, with Emerson’s organs and keyboards absolutely titanic and Lake’s voice at its most powerful. Lyrically, it’s certainly their best record, thanks to the input of former King Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield.

Shortly afterwards, Manticore released an album by Sinfield called Still, which would be his only solo release. It featured an impressive line-up of ex-Crimson members including Lake, Mel Collins and Ian Wallace, but did not prove a springboard to solo success, as Sinfield – although a lyricist of some beauty and imagination – was perhaps not a strong enough vocal presence to carry it off. In addition, he found himself co-opted into ELP as a lyricist, as well as contributing English lyrics to another Manticore act: PFM.

Premiata Forneria Marconi, a prog band from Milan, came to the attention of ELP during an Italian tour and were signed to the Manticore label. They had enjoyed success in Italy with Per Un Amico, and Sinfield was charged with creating lyrics for an English release that would rework existing music but with new words. The resulting Photos Of Ghosts was the first Italian rock record to enjoy significant success in the UK and USA. Over the next four years, Manticore released The World Became The World, PFM Cook, Chocolate Kings and Jet Lag – the last of which, in 1977, would be the label’s last product.

But why have one Italian prog rock band when you can have two? Brothers Vittorio and Gianni Nocenzi formed Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, known also as Banco. They signed for Manticore in 1975 and the label put out a self-titled LP.

Other acts on the label were Hanson – not the boy band trio, obviously – Keith Christmas and Stray Dog.

Hanson were the group of Junior Marvin, the Jamaican-born guitarist (again, not to be confused with Junior ‘Police And Thieves’ Murvin) who would later join Bob Marley and The Wailers in 1977. Prior to this, he released the 1973 LP Now Hear This on Manticore and the album Magic Dragon a year later.

Keith Christmas is probably best known as the acoustic guitar player on David Bowie’s Space Oddity album, but had also supported Crimson, Ten Years After and The Who. Manticore released his 1974 Brighter Day and the splendidly-named 1976 cut, Stories From The Human Zoo. Cat Stevens did the string and horn arrangements for the latter; it’s some nice folk rock Keith had going there. He’s got a website where you can check some out if you fancy.

Texans Stray Dog had met Greg Lake in London and enjoyed a short and riotous career of hard drinking and hard blues rock, with Manticore releasing their eponymous 1973 debut and While You’re Down There in 1975, which was the year the band broke up.

Turning back to ELP themselves, Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends (1974) was an accomplished triple live album, and an excellent showcase of the band at that time. As for the label, the fate of Manticore was naturally inextricably linked to the fortunes of ELP. After the brilliance of Brain Salad, the group was pulled in at least three different directions with none of the three seemingly sharing a vision. With rows about money and the huge costs of their stage shows, as well as the changing mood of the times, it was getting harder to see a future for a prog rock supergroup. The label was closed in 1977.

ELP released Works Volume I on Atlantic Records that year, but it feels like three albums in one, with each member being given one side of the double LP and the fourth being a ‘collaborative’ effort. Works Volume II from the same year is something of an oddity – some blues, jazz and bluegrass thrown into a mix of other offcuts – while ELP’s last album before splitting up was the dire Love Beach, made for contractual reasons only. They split in 1978.

Manticore Records may have only lasted for four years, but it produced some great records by some of prog’s most intelligent and skilful musicians, as well as showcasing some quirky artists who might not have enjoyed much airplay otherwise. Its crowning achievement remains Brain Salad Surgery, and although you didn’t last for ever, Manticore, still, you turn me on.

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PURPLE RECORDS

Would it be unkind to call this a vanity label? Certainly Purple Records put out a lot of material by various band members or hangers-on, and it is fair to say that not all of it would have got a commercial release on a non-Purple-affiliated company. But a lot of the material was excellent in its own way, and the history of hard rock and metal would be the poorer without it.

Established in 1971, the label only put out one LP in the first couple of years – Curtiss Maldoon by Curtiss Maldoon. Dave Curtiss had been involved in an early incarnation of Purple when they were called Roundabout (he played bass), while Clive Muldoon had joined Curtiss in Bodast with Steve Howe, later of Yes. Howe plays guitar on the record, while it also feature the single Sepheryn which, of all things, was reworked by Madonna into her 1996 hit ‘Ray Of Light’.

The Purple People sampler of 1972 was a great showcase of their acts, but for obvious reasons of cost and risk, the early days of Purple Records saw them focus more on single releases – ten in 1972 and five the next year, but from 1973 to 1979 they released a handful of albums a year. However, with Purple themselves disbanding (albeit only temporarily, of course) in 1976, it is the period of 1973-1976 that marked the label’s heyday.

The group that begat the label were just about to enjoy their finest hour: Machine Head, their greatest work, was the first Purple release on the EMI-distributed Purple Records. Recorded with the Stones’ mobile studio in Montreux, Switzerland, it was an instant classic and, of course, went on to sell absolutely shed-loads.

In musical terms, and certainly with the benefit of hindsight, the classic Deep Purple Mark II incarnation had already peaked. The next release (non-UK) was the live Made In Japan (the record that sent them over the top in the USA), but it was followed by the less instantly striking, Who Do We Think We Are, which would prove to be Ian Gillan’s last with the band until 1984, and Roger Glover also left after learning that Ritchie Blackmore was planning to fire him. Grumpy old Ricardo.

But with Saltburn’s finest son David Coverdale installed on vocals, and Glenn Hughes on bass, the band enjoyed a new lease of life with 1974’s Burn, an excellent record.After that, Stormbringer, Ritchie’s last, and Come Taste The Band, Tommy Bolin’s first, albums on lead guitar all charted well. The much under-rated live album Made In Europe followed and then 1977’s Last Concert In Japan was the last non-compilation Purple release on the label, but was a dreadful shambles – Bolin couldn’t play properly because he had lost feeling in his arm. There was also a Mark II singles compilation in 1979 on the Purple label.

So that’s the label’s big Purple releases: what about the rest?

They released some right dirty, pounding early metal from Hard Stuff – a project for Quartermass bass player John Gustafson and Atomic Rooster’s guitarist John Du Cann and singer Paul Hammond. They were signed in 1971 when Rooster folded, and originally called Bullet, but discovered there was another band of that name. They changed their name to Hard Stuff and released Bulletproof and Bolwx Dementia on the label before John joined Roxy Music briefly and, more enduringly, the Ian Gillan Band.

Glam rockers Silverhead looked like they might go all the way, with singer and Pamela hubby Michael Des Barres and (later) future Blondie bass player Nigel Harrison. They recorded an eponymous debut in 1972, with Purple producer Martin Birch on the controls. Ian Paice also did some production for them, but they never quite took off. They also put out a single by Des Barres, who would later be a frequent character actor face on US TV with roles in everything from Roseanne to MacGyver to Seinfeld.

As for Purple members’ solo stuff, the label released records by Jon Lord (Gemini Suite – which helped launch the label, and featured Tony Ashton on vocals, and has the single worst cover in the history of recorded music too) and First Of The Big Bands, another Lord collaboration with pal Ashton and a kind of Hammond organ v boogie piano showdown.

David Coverdale’s 1977 LP White Snake (nb two words, not the 1987 Whitesnake) was his first solo release and steps on the road to the mighty hair metal act of ‘Here I Go Again’ fame.

One of the stranger releases on the label was the 1972 release ‘Who Is The Doctor’ – with Jon Pertwee on vocals. Worth a lot of dough to Doctor Who fans. It was a fun little project for Roger Glover, and although it was really just a novelty record, showed that Purple Records were forward-thinking in terms of electronica. The track was done by Rupert Hine, who would go on to be an important synth-rock producer, and Stevie Nicks squeeze, and who was signed to Purple Records by Glover, putting out a couple of albums for him. Glover, with Ian Paice, also produced for Purple Records signings Elf, whose Ronnie James Dio would later go on to sing for Rainbow.

Also showing Purple Records willingness to take a risk and innovate was the signing of Carol Hunter. The great New York session guitarist who worked with Richie Havens and Neil Diamond, but left Diamond’s band to pursue a solo career – her first release was ‘The Next Voice You Hear’ on Purple Records.

Other signings included Tucky Buzzard, a hard rock project perhaps best noted for being produced by Bill Wyman, and Yvonne Elliman who put out a very interesting mix of quiet acoustic numbers and some rip-snorting rockers including a magnificently banging cover of The Who’s ‘I Can’t Explain’ – the sample of which formed Fatboy Slim’s 1997 hit ‘Going Out Of My Head’, big-beat trivia fans.

As Deep Purple went into hiatus, the label inevitably slowed down, with the last non-Purple release being Coverdale’s second album in 1978, Northwinds. It seemed that the story was over at the end of the 1970s, but in 1997 a CD reissue label approached the owners with the idea of re-establishing the label and releasing material that fits the label’s ethos.
Yes the label was purple and had a big P on it and a vanity project it may have been, but what’s wrong with a bit of vanity, eh, especially when you are as brilliant a band as the Purps.