Back Door

Back Door were a jazz-rock trio... Colin Hodgkinson first met Ron Aspery whilst the two were playing in Eric Delaney's Showband. The two began to talk about forming their own band around 1969, and eventually Back Door came to fruition in 1971, with Tony Hicks joining on drums. Hodgkinson made an innovative use of the electric bass, making it a lead instrument rather than a part of a rhythm section.
Their unique brand of jazz-rock and Hodgkinson's original playing was a hit at their regular venue; the Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge, Yorkshire. However, record labels were not keen and the band were repeatedly told "No singer, no contract". Ever the innovators, the band decided to record their first album themselves. It was recorded on a 4-track Ampex mixing console in eight hours, and mixed in four hours the next day. Around 1,000 copies were first printed by RCA. The album was sold over the bar at The Lion Inn, and at a few record shops in the local area.
A copy of the record somehow made its way to the NME headquarters in London, and a superb review by Charles Shaar Murray was printed....They were featured several times on John Peel's influential radio show during the early 1970s bringing them to a much wider audience.
(Read more at Wikipedia.)
== Links to Peel ==
Back Door made five sessions for John Peel's shows and, as mentioned above, this radio exposure made a wider audience aware of their music. The DJ always admired artists who produced their own recordings, rather than waiting to be discovered by major record companies, and this was the case with Back Door. Their music too was individualistic, not in the conventional jazz-rock fusion style, and therefore JP responded positively to it. Some of their tracks combined blues and avant-garde jazz influences, in ways which may have reminded him of his hero Captain Beefheart.
However, it was only in the early 1970s that a seemingly uncommercial act like Back Door - a jazz-based trio who played mostly self-penned instrumentals - could find a public and be pursued by major record companies on the basis of Peel show airplay and write-ups in NME and Melody Maker. They eventually signed with Warner Brothers, whose British office (part of Kinney Records) included two Peel "allies" - manager Clive Selwood and publicist Derek Taylor, formerly a colleague of JP on Disc and Music Echo. Despite Peel's wariness of jazz, they were regular session guests between 1972 and 1974, but he seemed to lose interest in them after that. They split up in 1977 but reformed in 2003 - a year before Peel's death.
== Festive Fifty Entries ==
*None
== Sessions ==
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Five sessions only. #5 available on The Human Bed: The Complete BBC Sessions (Hux).
1. Recorded 1972-10-30. First broadcast 21 November 1972.
*Skilpered Widlash / Askin' The Way / 32-20 / One Day You're Down The Next Day You're Down
2. Recorded 1973-06-18. First broadcast 21 June 1973. Repeated 12 July 1973:
*Dancin' In The Van / Livin' Track / Lieutenant Loose / Back Door / Roberta
3. Recorded 1973-06-26. First broadcast 03 July 1973. Repeated 16 October 1973.
*Adolphus Beal / Walkin' Blues / It's Nice When It's Up / Cat Cote Rag / His Old Boots
4. Recorded 1973-10-01. First broadcast 25 October 1973. Repeated 15 November 1973.
*His Old Boots / Blue Country Blues / Walkin' Blues / Adolphus Beal
5. Recorded 1974-09-05. First broadcast 12 September 1974.
*Slivadiv / The Spoiler / T B Blues / Blakey Jones / The Dashing White Sargeant
== Other Shows Played ==
;1972
*26 September 1972: Jive Grind (LP - Back Door) Blakey
*03 October 1972: unknown (sourced from David Cavanagh's Good Night And Good Riddance book)
*17 October 1972: Catcote (LP - Back Door) Blakey
;1973
*31 May 1973: Lieutenant Loose (LP – Back Door) Warner Bros
*05 June 1973: Human Bed (LP: Back Door) Warner Bros
*12 June 1973: Folksong (LP: Back Door) Warner Bros
;1975
*20 March 1975: Streamline Guitar (LP - Another Fine Mess) Warner Bros.
== See Also ==
*Record Collection: B
*Singles Reviews
== External Links ==
*Wikipedia
*Discogs
* Other
Category:Artists