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The Herald Scotland

This Scottish rock trio shared a dressing room with Hendrix

The band's two Sunday shows there, on the evening of May 7, 1967, saw Hendrix, who had already tasted UK Top Ten chart success with Hey Joe and Purple Haze, assaulting his amplifier with his guitar while, out of sight of the cheering audience, a diminutive roadie struggled to keep the speakers upright. Sharing the bill – and Jimi's dressing-room – that night was a powerhouse trio from Scotland, called 1-2-3. They consisted of Billy Ritchie on Hammond organ and guitar, Harry Hughes on drums, and Ian Ellis on bass guitar. Ritchie and Hughes were just 20, Ellis a year older. For a band that had made its debut at Falkirk's La Bamba only the previous November, 1-2-3 had made stunning progress. In London, they had impressed the manager of the Marquee venue after playing a mere half of one song at an audition. The venue's newsletter remarked that the band had created 'an entirely new sound in 'pop group music''. Jimi Hendrix was supported by 1-2-3 in 1967 (Image: PA) Their subsequent residency at the Marquee was a series of riotous affairs, with half of the audience loving them and the other half taking an active dislike. Fellow musicians such as Greg Lake, Robert Fripp and Keith Emerson watched them play, however, and were impressed. Epstein was, too, to the point that he signed them to his NEMS Enterprises management company. The Saville Theatre gigs in May 1967, then, were another step forward for 1-2-3. The concert programme (copies of which are for sale online at eyebrow-raising prices) noted that they had a wide-ranging repertoire dominated by standards arranged in modern jazz style" and that NEMS would shortly be releasing plans for a debut album release). Not everyone shared such upbeat assessments of 1-2-3, however. Derek Boltwood, a writer on the Record Mirror music weekly, wrote in a review: 'It seems to be all the rage for groups to have a line-up of only three people. There were two such groups at the Saville last week — The 1-2-3, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience — the 1-2-3 should take a lesson from Jimi Hendrix — you've got to be very good musicians if there are only three of you to make the sound'. Someone who took umbrage at this was a young man named David Bowie, who was about to release his debut album. He had been friends with Billy for a while, having heard their adventurous version of one of his earliest songs, I Dig Everything. And it was Billy who introduced him to Hendrix at the Saville. Not long after Boltwood's review appeared, Bowie bumped into the band at the Marquee and told them that he had written an indignant reply to Record Mirror. His letter spoke of 'three thistle- and haggis-voiced bairns who had the audacity to face a mob of self-opinionated with a brand of unique pop music which, because of its intolerance of mediocrity, floated as would a Hogarth cartoon in the Beano …' The story of 1-2-3 would evolve further – a change of name to Clouds, the release of three albums, and high-profile tours, but for a variety of reasons the trio never received the acclaim their musicianship and ambitions deserved. In later years. however, they have been rediscovered and favourably reassessed. Ellis and Hughes had been in a Bathgate-based group, The Premiers, when they first came across Ritchie, who was already renowned as an expert on the Hohner organ and was capable of playing front and centre rather than on the side of the stage – a decidedly unusual arrangement for the time. At length, the three formed 1-2-3. The first rehearsal, as Billy wrote in his revealing memoir, The ABC of 1-2-3: The True Story, 'was the best musical experience of my life. We all knew we had hit on something special. '1-2-3 was, I believe, one of the finest bands ever to emerge in popular music. It was a tragedy that the band, in that form, never recorded. 1-2-3 wasn't as polished or as powerful as Clouds later became, but what it lacked in experience, it more than made up for in soul and inspiration… Clouds at the 1971 Reading Festival. Photo courtesy of Billy Ritchie (Image: unknown) 'The band', he added, 'was rooted in blues and jazz and pop principles that were not only musical gold dust, but a godsend to all who took from it, and that band would still sound unique today… there really hasn't been a band like 1-2-3 before or since'. A good example of their boundary-stretching work is their version of Paul Simon's song, America, before it had even been released on Simon and Garfunkel's 1968 studio album, Bookends. Rewritten by Billy to include new time signatures 'and as much scope as possible for the three of us to express the song in every way', it showed what the trio were capable of; it was 'Prog before there was such a thing' They also reworked a very early Bowie song, I Dig Everything, even dropping a snippet of Bach into the middle section. A recording made at the Marquee can be listened to on YouTube. Epstein certainly liked 1-2-3, but his sudden death at the age of 32 in late August 1967, just a few months after he had signed them, rendered their immediate future uncertain. Impresario Robert Stigwood, who had just merged his own company with NEMS, took control of their career, but his priority was the career of a promising young act, the Bee Gees. His relationship with 1-2-3 did not last long, and the band and NEMS parted company. Soon, however, they came into contact with Terry Ellis, of the Ellis-Wright agency, who became their manager and agent. When Clouds's debut album, The Clouds Scrapbook, was released in August 1969, tracks such as The Carpenter, I'll Go Girl, Scrapbook and Waiter, There's Something in My Soup all played superbly to the band's individual and collective musical gifts. Today, writes Billy, Scrapbook is regarded as a really good album, one that attracted rave reviews at the time; 'it was', he observes, 'a strange mixture of pop songs, muso playing, and flashes of what would become progressive rock. For me, Waiter … is the best piece of work on there, as close to the bridge between Beatles pop and progressive rock as you will ever hear'. Promotional material by Island Records, issued in advance of the album's release, said: "It would be nice if we could just tell people that Clouds are an extraordinarily talented group playing exciting music in a totally original style". However, it continued, "mental barriers are thrown up against anything new and uncategorised and we are forced to be sneaky and use an easily accepted superhype method of attracting attention to Clouds and their album 'Scrapbook' - again, not what one would expect to hear. Clouds have successfully utilised all their talents to present a varied piece off aural entertainment. Presenting something new, which you believe in, is always something of a crusade, although always most rewarding. So watch Clouds tonight, listen to their album and well ... JOIN THE CRUSADE". Clouds on tour, pictured with friends. Photo courtesy of Billy Ritchie (Image: unknown) Clouds now began to enjoy to a new level of public exposure. They gigged around Europe with the Island Records Tour alongside Jethro Tull and Ten Years After (including a memorable gig at the Royal Albert Hall in May 1969), and the Bath Festival of Blues the following month, headlined by Led Zeppelin, The Nice and others. They played prestigious venues in the States, including the Fillmore West in San Francisco, New York's Fillmore East and (alongside the Stooges) Los Angeles' Whisky-a-Go-Go. In Montreal, they shared the bill with Van Morrison and Johnny Winter. Every time, they delivered a storming set that often put other acts in the shade. In June 1970 Billboard magazine, reviewing a gig at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom noted enthusiastically: 'On the basis of its showing here June 5, Clouds will be a giant. The group is a trio from Scotland that drew a standing ovation on the basis of its hard-driving sound that never lets up ... The group is young, talented ..." There was a second Clouds album, Up Above Our Heads (1970), which was issued only in the States, and finally, that same year, Watercolour Days – 'a beautiful piece of rock orchestration with piano, organ, harpsichord, guitars, mouth organ, drums and violins', said Florida's St Petersburg Evening Independent. But Chrysalis – the record label eventually established by Ellis – was, in Billy's telling, more concerned with Jethro Tull, another band on their roster, and made little or no attempt to promote Watercolour Days. Disillusioned, Clouds broke up in October 1971. Discussions continue to this day after the effect that 1-2-3 had on music at the time. Many fans take the view that 'prog' – progressive rock – was influenced at the outset by 1-2-3. As one fan argues on the progarchives site: 'Many British musicians would strongly argue that UK Prog began with Billy Ritchie and his band 1-2-3. Their residency in late '66 and early '67 at the Marquee introduced musicians as diverse as Jon Anderson, Jeff Lynne, Deep Purple, David Bowie and Keith Emerson to the idea of complex orchestrations played in extended works'.