Under Suspicion - The Jess Roden Band:

With Jess’ first solo record nearly complete, conversations within Island turned to who might be available for him to go out on the road with and, basically promote it.

Among the many dozens of 'demo tapes' sent in to the A&R team at 22, St Peters Square, one had caught the ears - this particular group had a spot of previous with Polydor... but... the session that they'd recorded for Island wasn't quite enough to get them a deal. Nevertheless, they'd aroused enough interest to prompt suggesting that they and Jess meet up...

And... the band were called... Iguana.

I went down to Southampton to meet them in a pub where they rehearsed, we spent the afternoon together and we all seemed to be getting on really rather well and agreed to rehearse some stuff. And, that’s exactly what we did.

Iguana formed in the Hampshire coastal town of Southampton in the early seventies; although the genesis of their founding members can be traced back to a slew of hugely experienced, dues-fully-paid-up, t-shirts washed and laundered, jobbing musicians who had populated pick-up bands and soul-review backing groups throughout much of the preceeding decade.

Bruce Roberts, for example, had cut his teeth with The Primeval - playing regular support gigs to the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson, Unit 4+2 and The Who. He went on to join The Quik (who also featured Pete Hunt on drums) who were signed to Deram and released two singles – neither of which caused much trouble to the chart-compilers of the day - and toured with The Who and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band as well as Cream.


l-r: John Roberts; Bruce Roberts; Pete Hunt (front); John Rennie; Alex (who played Hammond Organ)

Immediately prior to Iguana, Bruce was with The Globe Show (with Ronnie Taylor - saxophone and Chris Gower - trombone) who went out as backing-band to: Patti La Belle, Ben E King, Joe Tex, Irma Franklin (Aretha’s sister) and Jimmy Ruffin. That band also supported the likes of Freddy King, Desmond Dekker, The Move and Wilson Pickett (at London’s Royal Albert Hall).

Chris Gower, on the other hand, only took up his instrument not long after he moved to Shanklin in the Isle of Wight aged nine; in 1963 he joined the Unity Stompers and four years later had turned pro, playing a raft of summer-seasons at British holiday camps. From there, he moved to London, joining Roberts, Taylor & Cartwright in The Globe Show.

John (Mags) Cartwright began playing when he was six - "I asked for a guitar but got a banjo instead. Secretly, I was a bit cut-up about that". Prior to The Globe Show, he had a band called The Life - "a harmony group, playing all manner of Tamla stuff" before being contacted by Bruce with the suggestion of joining up. "I find that guitar, bass, piano and drums are all well within my reach - like when we formed the Globe Show, they had a bass player but no drummer".

Cartwright took the hot seat for the next three years, gaining his nick-name (Maggot or Maggs due to his emaciated looks) from Ronnie Taylor along the way.

Ronnie Taylor - "When I was young, I found music gave me some identity and I took an interest in soul music which led to loving the sound of the Sax. So, when I was 15 my Dad bought an Old Boosey & Hawkes Sax and then I went for lessons with a guy called Gill Hume from whom I later bought my Selmer mark Six, (incidentally, that's the Sax that has been on the road with me up until last year)".

"The first band I got involved with was an 8 piece soul band in 1966 called The Anthony James Scene; we just toured round the British coast. My influences were King Curtis and Maceo Parker but I didn't start listening to jazz musicans until I was in my 20's. From 1968 to 1971 I joined The Globe Show (the real name of the band was actually The Chris Shakespear Globe Show) which was made up of musicians from four different bands".

"We backed American artists all over the UK and also parts of Europe, Germany especially. We also did 5 tours with Ben. E King and various others. Then in 1971 the band dismantled and part of the band went on to form Iguana".

"So... really, Iguana was a collection of musicians - some of whom that had previously been in The Globe Show; Bruce on Vocals & Guitar; Mags played Bass though he'd actually been the drummer in The Globe Show; Chris Gower on Trombone and myself. And we three combined with Don Shin who played Keyboards and Pete Hunt who became our Drummer".

Meantime, Pete Hunt's first band was The Storms (playing Buddy Holly covers) before winding up in a band that played Society Balls - "we even had the tartan suits, just like the Shadows" before forming a soul band - The Bit-T Show, "doing loads of Ray Charles material". Next came The Soul Agents - not long after Rod Stewart left, before a stint in The Quik prior to auditioning for Freddie Mack's backing group and, despite failing (as did the other hopefuls) remained with Mack nearly a year. One 'phone call from Bruce Roberts later and the final pieces of the jigsaw that would, ultimately, become Iguana were on the board.

Back to Ronnie Taylor - "The Polydor deal came about after sending tapes out and then in 1971 we joined up with a couple of managers from Liverpool - Tony Waddington and Wayne Bickerton. We then went in the studio and recorded the album in four days and mixed it in three".

Although Iguana's 1972 album was well recieved, the deal with Polydor fizzled out despite the band's growing reputation as one of the hottest live acts out on the road, garnered from supporting the likes of Planxty, Marsha Hunt, Wizzard, The Sweet, ELO’s Jeff Lynne and David Bowie.

Ronnie again, "But, Tony and Wayne wanted us to be commercial like the other band they were managing at the time called The Rubettes. And... that wasn't what we wanted at all... so, basically, the Polydor deal fell apart. Round about that point, Don Shin left the band and moved to Norway - and thats when Webbo joined Iguana.

Steve Webb recalls. "I’d joined Iguana who had released their début album; they were the top band in the south of England, with power and a whole heap a' soul; on drums there was Pete with as heavy a groove as Al Jackson Jnr plus horns to kill for - ace trombonist Chris and the seriously Coltranish Ron on alto. Then there was Mags – a songwriter of great talent on bass and the whole band was fronted by Bruce – soul personified".

"With the Polydor deal over, we’d sent tapes to all of the London labels and... we'd recorded for Island... but... we got turned down. I relocated to London and, in the summer of 1974 while loading steel pipe at Chiswick Ironworks, I received a call from Island and went to meet Jess".

"He was in the final stages of a new record produced by Allen Toussaint and Chris Blackwell with The Meters on most of the tracks and, after spending some time at Basing Street, I also got to play a couple of solos on it".

From that initial meeting in Southampton and the ensuing rehearsal, it was evident that both elements had found their respective match.

"We first got together had a jam in the Spring of '74", recalls Ronnie. "We then started rehearsing and it really went well. A couple of months later we played our first gig in Bogarts, Burmingham".

CB wanted one more song to add to the album (for the American version) before release and hopefully, a single. So, I went into the studio with Iguana and we cut ‘Under Suspicion’.

"However", remembers Ronnie, "it was a compromise becoming JRB, because I didn't feel we should have lost our band's original name and felt it should have become Jess Roden and Iguana because when The Jess Roden Band ended we were left with no name". 

Nevertheless, the band's growing reputation as a live act to be reckoned with began from their first dates, out supporting Roxy Music and grew apace as they toured - seemingly endlessly - as support to shows by Eric Clapton, John Cale, Camel, Freddy King, Barbara Dixon, Rufus & Chakka Khan, Procul Harum and fellow (at that time) label-mate, Georgie Fame.

We soon found our feet and after a month of pretty constant gigging, the band had shaped up really well.



The start-up of the JRB pretty much coincided with Island Records move from Basing Street to a new HQ in St Peters Square, Chiswick.

Things for Island were growing at a pace and the new HQ offered up enough space to get the entire operation pretty much under one roof.

As well as all of the ‘down to business’ areas, there was a rehearsal room, a canteen with a games area and a recording studio and in retrospect, it seems to me that for the next two years the JRB (when not out on the road or in an Indian restaurant) spent most of our time in one or other of those three places.

Indeed, the Island canteen was one of the hot meeting places throughout West London at that time, not least because of the legendary cooking that was overseen by equally legendary pianist-turned-chef 'Lucky' Aloysius Gordon; at one time Christine Keeler's pimp and central within the Profumo affair.

indeed, this was one of the most sensational political scandals of the 20th Century when, as a British Government minister, John Profumo (the Secretary of State for War) was forced to resign from the Cabinet in 1961 for lying to the House of Commons over his affair with Keeler.

Lucky - one of Notting Hill's acknowledged hard-men as well as one of Christine's lovers - played a pivotal role within the affair that very nearly brought down the Government of the day since he was also part of the bizarre love quintet centering around Profumo, Yevgeny Ivanov (a naval attaché to the USSR's London embassy) and Johnny Edgecombe, a fellow Jamaican and Stephen Ward, a Harley Street doctor.

A fight between the two Jamaicans broke out at the Flamingo Club in Wardour Street, ending with Lucky's face being seriously sliced by Edgecombe. This, in turn, led to Johnny looking for Keeler at Ward's Harley Street flat, and shooting at the door while Profumo himself was being advised by Sir Roger Hollis, the then-head of MI5 - most (but not all of which) was commited to celluloid in the 1989 film, Scandal starring John Hurt as Ward and Joanne Walley as Keller.

Because the ‘Jess Roden’ album was one that had been recorded over quite a long period, I was now in a new phase of writing. So there were new songs to be recorded.

John Cartwright was an extemely prolific writer. Any day or night off and he’d emerge the next day with a new song and also Steve Webb had new tunes evolving all of the time.

In the basement studio at St Peters Square, the JRB started to record the new material. American musician and producer, Steve Smith (formerly of Smith, Perkins & Smith) was drafted in to produce the sessions. ‘Diga’ engineered and trumpeter, Dick Cuthell, was assistant engineer.

"We made an album with Steve Smith producing and at one stage Steve Winwood came and played some great Hammond on a couple of tracks" recalls Webb.

Cuthell - besides posessing one of the finest facial-growths within all music, is a little more than either a mere horn player or sound engineer - his credits (over the years) include playing flugelhorn, valve trombone, cornet, tenor horn and trumpet amongst a wide and diverse range of other brass instruments and is, possibly, best known for his work with The Specials and Rico Rodriguez although his collaborations with Count Ozzie &and The Mystical Revelation Of Jah Rastafari, Elvis Costello, Aswad, Amazulu, Joan Armatrading, John Martyn, Steel Pulse, Steve Winwood, Julian Cope, Kirsty McColl,Madness, Eurythmics, Fun Boy Three, XTC, and The Pogues amongst countless others should never be discounted. He has also engineered sessions by acts as diverse as Bob Marley to Bad Company, from Traffic to The Potato Five.

So, in between gigs, Radio One sessions, interviews etc, we continued to write and record.

The album was not to be, however.

Ultimately, the new recordings were deemed by Island to be ‘too jazzy’ and so the stuff was shelved.

In order not to slow the creative juices that were flowing, Island teamed us up with Geoffrey Haslam who had been as an Atlantic Records staff producer in America.

He’d worked with a diverse selection of groups and artists and Island thought that he would be able to bring out a harder edge in the JRB.

Together, we set to work on what would become the ‘Keep Your Hat On’ album. In fact, it was Geoff who suggested that we record the Randy Newman song - I suppose in a way, it set a template for the album.

Haslam's palmares was proven to say the least - with a track-record that included work with the Velvet Underground, Bette Middler, the J. Geils Band, Gil Scott-Heron, trumpeter Eddie Harris, the MC5, and Roland Kirk.

With the album completed, we set off on the road again - this time augmented by keyboard player Billy Livesey. Ben Foot was our Tour Manager - actually, he was with us from start to finish as were Richard ‘Hutch’ Hutchison, who was our sound engineer and Alan McStravick who was the road manager.

Last to join-up and accept the JRB shilling was the afore-mentioned Billy Livsey; a native of St. Louis who, at a tender age had headed off to England to play keyboards - gradually establishing himself as a player of no little repute while working with established artists such as Ronnie Lane, Leo Sayer, Gallagher & Lyle, Curt Smith, Roger Chapman, Kevin Ayers and Tina Turner.

"We also did a great many festivals", says Webb, "with the likes of Uriah Heep, Little Feat, Bad Company and Status Quo and then went on to tour on our own. Dr Feelgood opened for us one night and promptly blew us off the stage and on another Heart crowded us off the stage with loads of Marshalls."

A pattern had been cut. Within about six months, the JRB were back in the studios with Geoff Haslam working on ‘Play It Dirty, Play It Class’.

Touring was turning out to be a great success both in the UK and also parts of Europe (particularly Holland) but for some reason, that success was not translating into huge record sales and so, it was decided that maybe if we recorded at a soundstage and set up like a live show, we would best capture what it was that made our live performances so successful.

The JRB reloacted en-masse to Pinewood in Buckinghamshire, the complex that is set in the grounds of an old Victorian manor house and which has been a leading destination for the makers of film, television and commercials since opening its doors as a film studio in 1936.

The studio complex that was not only home to all of the James Bond movies but where the majority of the Carry On films were also shot and where such classics as Oliver Twist (1948), The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), A Night to Remember (1958), Whistle Down the Wind (1961), The Battle of Britain (1969), The Day of the Jackal (1973), Batman (1989), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) were also filmed.

On one of the soundstages, we set up the equipment the same as at our gigs (except with baffle boards around the drums and amplifiers).

We would run through the tunes (for a soundcheck) and then around six in the evening, eat, drink, smoke, whatever - and then record a performance of three or four tunes back to back and maybe do that twice over.

In essence, it was a good idea - but it didn’t really work and I’m not entirely sure why.

Perhaps it was something to do with the lack of an audience to raise the game for - and/or, real discipline, because when we shifted to Basing Street and then St Peters Square to record the same songs, everything came together really well and really fast.

(Part 2 to follow)...