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Updated 17th March 2004
Flying Pigs CD now out on Voiceprint
The Flying Pigs was a three piece Rock Band regularly playing the main Pub Rock venues in London during the eighties. The band featured cult guitarist Mickey Jones from the legendary Welsh band Man, ex-Alvin Lee bass player Mick Hawksworth and Phil Little, veteran of the London pub circuit, on drums.
The band made three recording sessions, producing ten tracks which have just been released, after twenty one years, on Voiceprint.
CD NEWS - Voiceprint have released the Flying Pigs CD on the Point label. Follow the link to purchase online.
Real Audio stream of Back Together Again from the CD.
The Recordings
session 1 Dulwich - Recorded in a dingy Eight track studio near to Mick Hawksworths
home. We did this session within the first few weeks of getting together since
we needed some kind of tape to get gigs.
Jet Laggin'
On The Street
session 2 Alvin Lees - All done in a day at Alvin's luxury Sixteen track studio
on his farm in Buckinghamshire. Pete Carr produced and mixed. Alvin plays lead
guitar on Private Movie.
Back Together Again
Breaking Up
Psycho
What In The World
Private Movie
session 3 Drums Recorded in Mick Hawkworths bedroom and the rest at Pete Carr's.
Pete Griffiths loaned loads of mikes for the drum tracks and Mick Hawksworth
let off a starting pistol up his rear while he was bending over to get them
out. Fine way to treat a sound engineer.
Assylum
Last Birthday Party
Against The Crowd
Although the master tapes seem to have disappeared, these recordings have been rescued and re-mastered in a digital studio and are at last preserved.
Here are a couple of tracks from the first gig The Flying Pigs did at The Two Brewers in Clapham Common, London on 2nd November 1979. The quality is not great but you can hear the adventurous Spirit in Mickey Jones playing.
In the Autumn of 1979 Mick Hawksworth approached me about forming a band and I was quite flattered because he was well known in the South London circle of musicians and had played with Alvin Lee. Mick had also played with Andromeda who I had heard on John Peel's Top Gear in app. 1970. They were really spacy, moreso than Pink Floyd in a way, and I really liked them. Andromeda recorded an album on which Mick wrote a lot of the material but I have never been able to find it anywhere. Mick also recorded an album with a group called Fuzzy Duck, on which he wrote several songs.. I don't recall knowing of them, but theirs is now one of the most valuable progressive vinyl albums available in the collectors market and Fuzzy Duck enjoy something of a cult status.
Mick and myself held some unproductive auditions although it nearly clicked with a guy called Mike King and an ex-Manfred Mann's Earth Band guitarist, Dave Flett. They were both funny guys and very good players but Mike King was hilarious, a complete nutter. I remember the climax ending of one song we played and on the last big note he swung the arm of the guitar up. He was a big guy and the head of the guitar went through the false ceiling. He pulled the guitar out minus a machine-head. Hawksworth and myself fell about laughing and were unable to continue playing.
Then Mick Hawksworth suggested phoning ex-Man guitarist Mickey Jones who had
been playing in London pubs with his own three-piece called Manipulator. Mickey
came down to the pokey eight-track studio just up the road from Mick’s
flat in East Dulwich and the three of us clicked instantly. We started rehearsing
in my cellar at home and within a couple of weeks we were playing in a few different
pubs in South London. Sometimes Steve Waller (another ex-Manfred Mann guitarist
with the voice of a Righteous Brother) would join us and the pub would be packed
to see Waller and Mickey Jones playing together. Two fabulous singers, both
lead guitarists with major original progressive bands of the seventies.
Very early on we recorded two or three tracks at the small studio near to Mick’s
house but we were keen to get into a quality Studio and see what we could do.
Somebody knew Pete Carr who had produced The Motors’ “Airport”
hit single. He had expressed an interest in producing us and Mick had inveigled
a day in Alvin Lee’s private studio on his farm in Buckinghamshire. We
put down the backings for five or six tracks and Mick Hawksworth and I went
to the pub with Alvin’s roadies. When we returned a bit pissed later Alvin
had put an intro and Lead Guitar solo on one of Mick’s tracks, “Private
Movie”. Mickey said, “He came into the studio and I didn’t
have any ideas what to do on the track so I asked him if he fancied playing
the lead guitar and he plugged in and played it straight away.”
The story goes that Pete Carr took the finished tapes to the States and almost
had a deal with a Major Record Company there when, at the last minute, some
sequence of events or other conspired to dash the plans.
These times were difficult for Rock and Blues bands on the London Pub circuit.
Punk had really established itself and many venues were switching to New Wave
music in order to attract the youth.
The Flying Pigs played a few Tuesdays at a big pub in Clapham Common called
The Two Brewers. We were pulling a crowd and within a year we were a regular
Saturday night band at The Brewers. That was until a 'now well known' BBC Radio
DJ gradually took over the venue and concentrated on Punk and new Wave bands.
He turned us down for a gig, when a year earlier we had been the pub’s
main draw.
Although all the big pubs were going New Wave, Mick Hawksworth knew his way
around and there was always two or three gigs a week in the smaller pubs which
would still be full because a lot of people always showed anywhere Mickey played.
Also, a lot of the other musicians in South London would come to Flying Pigs
gigs and jam sessions were the norm with musicians like Steve Waller, Steve
Smith and Brendan Hoban joining in. For a while Mick Hawksworth ran a Tuesday
night Jam at The Mitre in Greenwich under the name Corporal Henshaws, among
other things,and both Mickey and myself played in that at various times. Other guitarists like Brian Garibaldi and Jimmy Roach were often up woth us. It was a great community spirit between the musicians in the area at the time.
I suppose the biggest gig we did was The Stonehenge Festival in 1983 or 1984,
to about 11,000 people. Unfortunately it ended in disappointment when the guy
who introduced us walked off the stage dragging Mickey’s Echoplex unit
with him. Certain delay effects were built into our sound and routine and it
just didn’t sound the same.
The Flying Pigs worked less after Man reformed and Mickey moved to the West
Country. From 1986/7 Mickey used to travel to London and The Flying Pigs did
mini tours of London playing at places like Walthamstow’s The Royal Standard,
The Plough in Stockwell, The Half Moon in Herne Hill, The Cartoon in Croydon,
The Mitre in Greenwich and occasional gigs in Hastings and The South Coast.
At the Royal Standard we often played with Steve Marriott who we became great
friends with. He used to watch Mickey play from the side of the stage. He told
me a story about once having to pull Jimi Hendrix off his girlfriend at a party
in his flat. A lovely man and one of the best soul singers ever from the UK.
The last time I saw him he was watching us and when we came off I said “Why
didn’t you get up and do a number with us?”, “You never f*****g
asked me did you?” was his reply.I am sure he would have loved to get up and have a blow with Mickey and I suppose we thought he'd never have got up if we had asked him.
In 1990 I moved away from London to the South Coast and Mick Hawksworth evolved
a different line up of The Flying Pigs. Both Man with Mickey and The Flying Pigs with Mick came to play gigs in Hastings that I arranged under our event banner "Liaison".
I am very pleased that
the recordings we made so long ago are being made available and not going to waste. We thought
that they stood up for themselves and it is good that people will be able to
hear them at long last, thanks to the age of technology.
Phil Little
Sadly Mickey Jones has been quite poorly and I know that all the cards and get Well messages from his fans and friends mean a lot to him and are always displayed very near in his room.
8th June 2007
Phil before Adidas caught on
*************
Flying Pigs CD now out on Voiceprint
E-mail phil@littledrum.co.uk