This Glasgow band that made one great album

The Herald Scotland

02-08-2025

Joni Mitchell's Blue, Led Zeppelin's fourth album, Who's Next, by The Who, David Bowie's Hunky Dory, Pink Floyd's Meddle and the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers all came out in the space of 12 remarkable months.
So pivotal was that year that the music writer and broadcaster David Hepworth devoted a book to it: 1971 – Never a Dull Moment, it was called. 'Rock's best year', he said of those 12 months.
One record that saw the light of the day in 1971, though not mentioned in Hepworth's survey, was by a Glasgow band called Northwind. Entitled Sister, Brother, Lover … it was their first and only album. Released on the Regal Zonophone label, the band was 'unofficially' told that some 10,000 copies were pressed and sold.
It has surfaced every now and again in the intervening decades but in the last week or two it has received a distinctive accolade. The Ultimate Record Collection: The 200 Greatest Progressive Rock Albums … Ranked!, from the makers of Uncut magazine, includes Sister, Brother, Lover… in its 'in-no-way comprehensive' list of the 20 most collectable prog albums. It's in stellar company, taking its place alongside King Crimson's debut, In the Court of the Crimson King, and Pink Floyd's mighty The Dark Side of the Moon, to say nothing of records by Gentle Giant, Genesis and Van Der Graaf Generator. (All the albums on the list came out between 1969 and 1975).
Northwind's record, the magazine observes, is 'breezy, bucolic soft-prog from Glasgow's short-lived answer to Wishbone Ash – big on tasteful twin-guitar team-ups', and which sold well in France. It's a 'well-regarded obscurity from a band who lacked label support, although they did open for Fleetwood Mac, [Deep] Purple and Yes'. And though the reissue age had dented prices, copies of the original 1971 vinyl have been spotted for sale at £500.
Read more:
Sister, Brother, Lover… was made by Brian Young (guitar/acoustic guitar/vocals), Hugh 'Shug' Barr (guitar), Tam Brannan (bass/vocals), Colin Somerville (organ/piano) and Dave Scott (drums/percussion).
Brian and Colin, who had been at school together, had launched a band, The Power of Music. As Brian told Martin Kielty, author of Big Noise: The Sound of Scotland, the group did well enough to enable it to buy a van, PA, backline and instruments, mostly on hire purchase.
'We supported The Move and the Pathfinders at the Maryland in Glasgow in 1967, where everyone was wearing kaftans and the stage was covered with flowers. All really groovy! The Move were stunning with Flowers in the Rain and I remember seeing wee Roy Wood standing on top of his massive Vortexian amps to see the audience.
'… The Power of Music moved to Germany towards the end of 1969,' he added. 'We played around the Frankfurt area, and the whole experience changed us. We were doing six long nights a week in front of a well-sussed and well-stoned audience of GIs and Germans. We ended up changing our name to Northwind and signed a deal with Regal Zonophone'.
The band's agents were Ronnie Simpson's company, Music and Cabaret Entertainment, which was based in Glasgow's Hope Street. Other clients were Tear Gas (who subsequently evolved into the Sensational Alex Harvey Band) and Hate.
Tony Calder, who with Andrew Loog Oldham had handled management for the Rolling Stones, 'was looking for bands for his production company Realization 7', Brian told the Rocking Scots website in 2004. 'Both Tear Gas and Northwind signed at the same time – we were then offered Regal Zonophone (no advance) like Tear Gas'.The band hit the gig circuit. Among their memorable shows was one at Green's Playhouse in November 1970, when they supported Fleetwood Mac 'featuring Christine Perfect' – Christine McVie, as she later became.
Northwind also once played Wolverhampton Civic Hall in place of Deep Purple whose keyboard player (Jon Lord) had an injury. 'We played on our own for the entire evening to a delighted audience', Brian told Psychedelic Baby Magazine last year. 'We also supported Free in Edinburgh when 'All Right Now' hit No. 1. Additionally, we supported Tyrannosaurus Rex (unusual but interesting), Eric Burdon and the New Animals (San Francisco was mind-blowing)'.
Recording work on the Sister, Brother, Lover ... album began at Regent Sound, in London, where the Stones, the Beatles and the Kinks had all recorded, and continued at Sound Techniques, a studio that had been used by such bands as Pink Floyd.
From the vantage point of 2025, Northwind's solitary album remains an interesting and highly melodic piece of work. The dual-guitar approach of Brian and Hugh works well throughout, giving a bluesy edge to many of the songs, such as Castanettes.
The beguiling opening track, Home for Frozen Roses, recalls Crosby, Stills & Nash, whose debut album had come out in 1969. The next cut, Acimon and Noiram, has a hypnotic riff and some lovely guitar work by Brian and Hugh. As Brian told Psychedelic Baby Magazine website last year, 'Lead guitarist Shug Barr was an excellent guitarist and a lovely progressive guy. We had two Gibson Gold Tops and Marshall amps (loud), and we played even louder on stage'. He has also remarked that the band devised the double-harmony sound long before Wishbone Ash had even thought of it.
Elsewhere on the album, there are arresting vocal harmonies and tempo changes. Quill, the closing track, written by Tam Brannan, is propelled irresistibly by organ, bass and drums.
'A gentle piece of 'rural' Prog-acoustic rock, which now changes hands for over £150', Martin C Strong noted in his comprehensive 2002 book, The Great Scots Musicography.'The stand-out tracks were the mellow openers, 'Home for Frozen Roses' and 'Acimon and Noiram' (a softer Yes or Wishbone Ash come to mind…)'.
The band, unfortunately, split up the year after the album's release. 'Northwind disbanded after a fateful trip to Zurich around 1972, which followed a less interesting month playing to the GI's again in Fulda, Germany', Brian, who for decades has run Glasgow's CaVa Sound recording studio, told Psychedelic Baby Magazine.
That interview, last year, was prompted by the emergence of 'Peaceful', a compilation of previously unreleased material put out by Bright Carvings, a vinyl-only label specialising in unreleased – 'or barely released' – music from the underground era in British rock and folk music.
As Bright Carvings' website phrases it, The Sister, Brother, Lover studio album 'is, rightly, a major collectible, with its mix of elegantly played and endlessly melodic tracks'.'Peaceful', for its part, assembles unused material from two 1970 Apple acetates with tracks rescued from 1973 studio tapes.
'The result is a careful balance of driving but controlled progressive rock and spectral ballads enhanced by some truly majestic guitar work, great vocals and superb production'. Shindig! magazine rated it at number 13 in a list of 2024's best reissues.
Jon Groocock, the man behind Bright Carvings, believes Sister, Brother, Lover to be 'a bit of a minor classic: excellent songs, well sung and beautifully played, arranged and recorded'.
Read more On the Record:
As to whether it genuinely is 'prog' in the modern sense is, however, open to question.
''Prog'', says Jon, 'is really a term invented in the late 1980s by music journalists and applied to rock-based music from the mid-1970s characterised by long tracks, mainly instrumental, played by often classically-trained musicians, or those from a jazz background, in shifting keys and time signatures with LPs often constructed as 'concept albums' with pretentious or incomprehensible lyrics sung by virtuoso singers'. Such bands include Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes, King Crimson, early Genesis, and Gentle Giant.
Jon continues: ''Progressive Rock' on the other hand was a term that actually comes from around 1969 and was used to describe rock music that had moved on - progressed, in other words - from beat/psychedelia/urban blues rock to a more sophisticated sound, absorbing influences from folk, classical music and jazz on the way.
'So Led Zeppelin was Progressive blues rock, for instance. Black Sabbath and Deep Purple were Progressive hard rock - definitely not heavy metal, the term didn't exist. Fairport Convention were Progressive folk rock. As for Northwind, they were Progressive soft rock'.
* 'Peaceful' can be obtained from brightcarvings.com. Only a few copies remain of the 227-strong limited edition. www.rockingscots.co.uk