I loved Spooky Tooth (and Gary Wright), but who came up with the idea of doing the Lord's Prayer?
A little research just told me the
Ceremony project was Gary Wright's brilliant idea. It was so brilliant
that Wright ended up leaving the group not long after the album was released and the laughter began.
Something similar happened to Jon Lord in Deep Purple: he pushed the band to deliver its
Concerto for
Group and Orchestra and the result was that, while he didn't quit Deep Purple over it, his influence
on the group's musical direction became slim and none from there.
I did like I Am the Walrus.
That was from
The Last Puff. To this day nobody knows whether it was supposed to be the first solo
album for Spooky lead singer Mike Harrison, or whether the new lineup (Harrison, guitarist Luther Grosvenor,
drummer Mike Kellie, and three former members of the Grease Band: guitarist Henry McCulloch, bassist
Alan Spenner, and keyboardsman Chris Stainton) was actually supposed to be Spooky Tooth Mk II. The
album was billed "Spooky Tooth featuring Mike Harrison," and the lineup broke up not long after the
album was released.
The Spookies reunited in 1972 with Harrison, Wright, future Foreigner guitarist/mastermind Mick Jones,
bassist Chris Stewart, drummer Bryson Graham. They made one decent album (even if its title was still
better than half the music:
You Broke My Heart, So I Busted Your Jaw), one horrible album
(
Witness, which drove Mike Harrison out of the group again), and one waste of vinyl (
The Mirror)
before finally calling it a career. The original lineup minus Gary Wright---Harrison, Grosvenor, bassist
Greg Ridley, and Kellie---tried one more time with 1999's
Cross Purpose. They should have let
it be.
Mike Harrison does have one crown moment as a solo artist: he hooked up with the legendary Muscle
Shoals Rhythm Section for his second solo album,
Smokestack Lightning. It's hard to listen
to it even now without wondering whether this was the direction in which Spooky Tooth should have
gone; it might have ensured their survival as a band.
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