Groundhogs
They helped to spearhead the British blues boom before taking a turn into rock’s left-field for a quartet of classic albums. They bolstered their sound with Mellotron and synth. They even recruited the drummer from Egg. So it’s high time we asked: How prog are the Groundhogs?
Words: Joe Banks
F ormed in 1963, and part of the first wave of the British blues boom, the Groundhogs initially came to public attention as John Lee Hooker’s backing band when the veteran bluesman paid a visit to the UK in 1964. More gigs followed with Jimmy Reed and Champion Jack Dupree, and in 1968 they were signed to Liberty Records by future Wombles supremo Mike Batt. However, it wasn’t long before the band were embracing the new progressive aesthetic with their 1969 album, Blues Obituary, proclaiming in no uncertain terms a move away from blues purism towards pursuing a more experimental direction.
The Groundhogs are a classic example of a band that incorporated progressive elements into their music while retaining their core sound, a process that was rife in the early 1970s. Think of hard rock’s big three at the time – Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath – and then consider Stairway To Heaven, Child In Time and Wheels Of Confusion. But under the leadership of singer and guitarist Tony McPhee, the Groundhogs pushed out further than most. In particular, the four albums they recorded between 1970 and 1972 – Thank Christ For The Bomb, Split, Who Will Save The World? and Hogwash – saw the band become increasingly ambitious, both compositionally and conceptually, with the deployment of Mellotron and synth helping to create an exciting progressive/blues rock hybrid.
Looking back at that period today, McPhee isn’t entirely sure how the progressive influence seeped in: “As a jobbing musician, there was little time to follow others. We were gigging constantly and if it wasn’t on the car radio, we hardly got to hear it.” But McPhee was determined to move the Groundhogs forward: “I’ve always liked going in new directions away from ‘the crowd’ – the blues can be limiting to an extent and I wanted to explore.”