Toe Fat
Encyclopedia
Toe Fat was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 band, active from June 1969 to 1971, notable for including two future members of Uriah Heep
Uriah Heep (band)
Uriah Heep are an English rock band formed in London in 1969 and regarded as a seminal classic hard rock act of the 1970s. Uriah Heep's progressive/art rock/heavy metal fusion's distinctive features have always been massive keyboards sound, strong vocal harmonies and David Byron's operatic vocals...

.

Career

Formed in June 1969, the band was fronted by former Rebel Rouser Cliff Bennett
Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers
Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers were a 1960s British rhythm and blues, soul and beat group who had two Top 10 hits with "One Way Love" and "Got to Get You into My Life" ....

 and, in the course of its two year, two album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 career, featured lead guitarist and keyboards Ken Hensley
Ken Hensley
Kenneth William David Hensley is a keyboard player , guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer best known for his work with Uriah Heep during the 1970s....

; bassist John Konas (Joseph Stanley Konas); drummer Lee Kerslake
Lee Kerslake
Lee Kerslake is an English musician, best known as the longtime drummer and backing vocalist for the rock band Uriah Heep, in addition to his work in the Ozzy Osbourne band...

; and replacements (after the first album), Brian Glascock
Brian Glascock
Brian Glascock is known as a rock drummer for The Gods, Toe Fat, Bee Gees, Carmen, Captain Beyond and The Motels. He also played on albums by Joan Armatrading, Dolly Parton and Iggy Pop and performed in a music video with Nancy Wilson of Heart.He currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he...

 (drums); plus Alan Kendall
Alan Kendall
Alan Kendall is an English musician and was the lead guitarist for the popular band the Bee Gees, before they retired the band name due to the death of Maurice Gibb in 2003...

 (guitar).

The band was founded by Bennett, a former pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 star
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...

, after the dissolution of the Cliff Bennett Band. He teamed with the former Gods
The Gods (band)
The Gods were an English group founded in 1965. The original bandmembers included Mick Taylor , Brian Glascock, and his brother John .-Career:...

 keyboard player Hensley, who drafted in fellow ex-Gods members Kerslake and Glascock. The name was decided over dinner when Bennett and his manager attempted to create the most disgusting band name possible.

Toe Fat was to the record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

, Rare Earth, in the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. In the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, the band signed with EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

, who released their first album on the Parlophone
Parlophone
Parlophone is a record label that was founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The British branch was formed in 1923 as "Parlophone" which developed a reputation in the 1920s as a leading jazz label. It was acquired in 1927 by the Columbia Graphophone Company which...

 label, and the second on Regal Zonophone.

The eponymously titled first album flopped commercially, but gained considerable critical praise. Such was their stir that after their first single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

, "Workin' Nights", (the B-side
A-side and B-side
A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song , while the B-side, or...

 was an early Elton John
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...

 composition "Bad Side of the Moon") they were booked for a tour supporting Derek and the Dominos
Derek and the Dominos
Derek and the Dominos were a blues rock band formed in the spring of 1970 by guitarist and singer Eric Clapton with keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon, who had all played with Clapton in Delaney, Bonnie & Friends...

 in the US. The album was also notable for its cover designed by the recently formed graphic art company Hipgnosis
Hipgnosis
Hipgnosis was a British art design group that specialized in creating cover art for the albums of rock musicians and bands, most notably Pink Floyd, T.Rex, The Pretty Things, UFO, 10cc, Bad Company, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Scorpions, Yes, The Alan Parsons Project, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, ELO and XTC...

. The cover showed a beach scene with four people who have large toes superimposed over their heads. For the US release, a man and a topless woman in the background, were replaced by the image of a sheep. The photo of the band on the back of the US album shows Cliff Bennett, Alan Kendall, John Glasscock, and Lee Kerslake even though Alan Kendall did not play on the first album. This was an interim line-up, Lee Kerslake would soon depart also before second album was recorded.

Hensley quit the band to form Uriah Heep
Uriah Heep (band)
Uriah Heep are an English rock band formed in London in 1969 and regarded as a seminal classic hard rock act of the 1970s. Uriah Heep's progressive/art rock/heavy metal fusion's distinctive features have always been massive keyboards sound, strong vocal harmonies and David Byron's operatic vocals...

. Bennett admitted in the sleeve notes of his Rebellion album that when asked he "probably should have joined them". Kerslake left to join the National Head Band, before also joining Uriah Heep in 1971. Glascock later joined Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull (band)
Jethro Tull are a British rock group formed in 1967. Their music is characterised by the vocals, acoustic guitar, and flute playing of Ian Anderson, who has led the band since its founding, and the guitar work of Martin Barre, who has been with the band since 1969.Initially playing blues rock with...

. Another ex-Gods man, Brian Glascock, became the new drummer. Alan Kendall replaced Hensley, before their second album, Toe Fat Two.

Jonathan Peel (not the DJ
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

) produced Toe Fat 2, after hearing them on several BBC radio sessions, including one for Terry Wogan
Terry Wogan
Sir Michael Terence Wogan, KBE, DL , or also known as Terry Wogan, is a veteran Irish radio and television broadcaster who holds dual Irish and British citizenship. Wogan has worked for the BBC in the United Kingdom for most of his career...

. However, this LP also flopped, despite more radio airplay
Airplay
* Airplay is the amount of time a song is played on the radio.It may also refer to:* AirPlay, an audio & video streaming technology from Apple Inc.* Airplay , Foster & Graydon music project from 1980* Citroën C1, Citroën C1 Airplay...

, and a reasonably successful US tour promoting it. Following these successive failures, their management and labels informed the group that they could no longer fund them.

Bennett recorded Rebellion, before quitting the music industry to become a shipping magnate. He still occasionally tours with the Rebel Rousers.

Alan Kendall and Brian Glascock went on to play with, and write for, the Bee Gees
Bee Gees
The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...

.

Discography

  • Toe Fat (Rare Earth RS 511 [US] / Parlophone PCS 7097 [UK], 1970)
  • Toe Fat Two (Rare Earth RS 525 [US] / Regal Zonophone SLRZ 1015 [UK], 1971)

External links

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