Amazing adventures resumed; William Leece rediscovers the Liverpool Scene, back on disc nearly 40 years after the poetry/rock band broke up.

Byline: William Leece

FOUR decades on, and it's still difficult to pin down the Liverpool Scene. Were they poets, a collective of musicians doing their own thing, or a good old-fashioned rhythm and blues band? For three years, they had a loyal following in Liverpool at the fondly-remembered O'Connor's Tavern, in Hardman Street (now a fancy dress shop), and also at small venues up and down the country.

And then it all fell apart. A key player was taken seriously ill at the start of a major tour, and there was an ill-fated visit to the United States. Even the band's albums vanished into obscurity. But now, after years of detective work by the Scene's former guitarist Andy Roberts, the highlights have all been pulled together and released on CD for a new audience.

The roots of the Scene went back as far as 1958, when Mike Evans, a teenage schoolboy "passionate about jazz, modern painting and the new beat writers" struck up a friendship with a painter 10 years his senior while they were both working on summer jobs at Rhyl fairground.

That was Adrian Henri, later to find an equal fame as a poet to match that of an artist.

Fast forward to the 60s and they were both in Liverpool.

"Painters like Henri, Sam Walsh and Don McKinley rubbed shoulders with would-be beat poets, musicians, academics and other kindred spirits," Mike recalls now.

"There was a handful of coffee houses and clubs where abstract art decorated the walls, the background soundtrack was modern jazz and poets read their wok aloud - often accompanied by music, usually jazz, live or recorded."

A loose group formed around Henri and Evans - then playing with the Clayton Squares r'n'b band - including two talented musicians who were also studying at Liverpool University - Andy Roberts on guitar and Percy Jones on bass.

Mike Hart, a musician and singer who had been with the Roadrunners, joined them as well, and all the embryonic band needed was a drummer. Memories of exactly how Brian Dodson joined the group are a little blurred. He had been well-known in Liverpool and was also playing the blues circuit in London. Mike Evans remembers that "he more or less recruited himself, offering his services and melding into the amalgam of music and poet almost organically."

Dodson's recollection is that the band had been using a respected drummer, Ron Parry, who was suddenly unavailable. "He was an amazing jazz drummer, but for some reason he was not available one night and would I come and do it? "There was no rehearsal, we met up and did it, and at the end Adrian said 'I'd like to introduce you to our new drummer!' "Nobody told me - I still had work to do in London."

The band's name came from an early LP of poetry from Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten and others. It was entitled The Liverpool Scene, and followed up with The Amazing New Liverpool Scene, and somehow the title stuck to the emerging band which was still finding its own voice, as backing group for Adrian Henri, supporting singer/songwriters from its own ranks in the shape of Hart and Roberts.

It was - almost inevitably - John Peel who took the Scene to a higher level. He had championed the New Liverpool Scene album, Andy Roberts introduced himself in London, Peel in his turn introduced them to their later manager Sandy Robertson, and suddenly they were a proper band.

Well, almost. The first LP, The Amazing Adventures of ... still has the feel of a group of individual musicians sometimes working together, sometimes doing their own things.

Andy Roberts thinks of it as essentially the Mike Hart record, with the second, Bread on the Night, reflecting the obsession at the time with science fiction and the moon landings, and, in Mike Evans's opinion, hanging together more coherently as a band.

Mike Hart is now felt to have been one of the great might-havebeens of Liverpool in the 1960s, a talented musician and songwriter.

He now lives in a care home, well looked-after according to Andy Roberts.

The big breakthrough was to have been a tour backing Led Zeppelin, but it all looked to be going wrong when Brian Dodson was taken ill.

He had been hiding his illhealth for a while, but after a gig in Bristol he could carry on no more and was admitted to hospital with tuberculosis.

Former Escorts drummer Pete Clarke, then a house musician at Apple Records, was recruited on the spot. A professional to his fingertips, the only rehearsal he had was in the Scene's van before being propelled on stage on the South Coast.

He was to stay with the band for its American tour, which with hindsight might have been a tour too far, as the group broke up soon after its return.

Now living in California, Pete Clarke recalls how they were supporting bands like Sly and the Family Stone at big US stadiums, as well as a Black Panthers convention at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

"We were billed as an English rock band - which is about the last thing we were!" * THE Amazing Adventures of ... the Liverpool Scene is on Esoteric Records as a double CD, ECLEC22138 williamleece @liverpool.com Behind the Scene MORE than 35 years have passed since the musicians of the Liverpool Scene went their separate ways.

Adrian Henri stayed in Liverpool as one of the city's favourite sons, both as poet and artist. He died in 2000 from the after-effects of a stroke, just a day after he was made a Freeman of the City.

Andy Roberts worked with the band Grimms, incorporating elements of the Liverpool Scene and Scaffold groups, and for a while had his own group, Plainsong.

He is one of the most respected session musicians on the circuit, and played in Liverpool this week as a guest with Three Bonzos and a Piano.

As a law graduate from Liverpool University, he also did most of the detective work and negotiation to allow the Liverpool Scene's material to be rereleased at last.

Mike Evans was connected with Deaf School in Liverpool for a while, and, after a spell working for the Musicians Union, is now a highly regarded journalist specialising in popular music.

Percy Jones went on to work with a number of other bands, notably Brand X and Tunnels, and is now regarded as one of the world's leading players of the distinctive fretless bass that is his instrument of choice. Like former drummer Pete Clarke, he has been based in the United States for many years, although on the opposite coast in New York.

TWO years after the Liverpool Scene finally broke up in 1970, Adrian Henri put his thoughts into a sleeve note for the compilation album Recollections.

"It's hard to remember the transport cafes, the hours sitting in a Transit, the lousy changing rooms ... all I can remember is having a ball on stage every night even if I'd felt awful five minutes before going on," he wrote.

"We started as a poetry band, ended up as an all-purpose rock group. What probably made us was the English club scene at the time; it makes you sound like an OAP talking, but back in 68 the Bonzos, the Fairports, Colosseum, Edgar, and all the others did the same circuits as us: the Farx Blue Club, Southall, the Angel Hotel, Godalming, the Van Dike, Plymouth and, of course, Mothers in Birmingham.

"There are too many memories for a dozen records ... since then I've had my best book published, and sold lots more, won a major painting prize, written a novel with Nell Dunn and lots more of other nice things. But Liverpool Scene was, for me, the most important thing I've done."

CAPTION(S):

Adrian Henri and Andy Roberts at the Philharmonic hall in 1997, above; and Mike Evans, Brian Dodson was forced to leave the band when he was taken ill in 1969 Liverpool Scene in the late 1960s. From left Percy Jones, Mike Evans, Adrian Henri, Andy Roberts, Brian Dodson and Mike Hart Percy Jones with his distinctive fretless bass is now a renowned jazz/rock fusion performer