Bedlam – The Bedlam Anthology

Bedlam – The Bedlam Anthology

Grapefruit Records

6CD/DL

Released 30 June 2023

6CD collection rounding up the works of Cozy Powell’s Hard Rockers, with their sole album presented in original and 2023 remix forms added to by live shows and a selection of recordings by the band’s precursors. Ian Canty writes…

If one was looking to make waves on the Midlands Hard Rock/Heavy Metal scene of the early 1970s, calling your band Bedlam gave all the indications one would need that you were serious about the task in hand. Actually the band name arose as a last minute replacement, after a US hustler turned up shortly before they released their debut album. Purporting to represent another outfit performing under Bedlam’s then-current moniker The Beast, the UK version were unwilling to waste words and time arguing, so switched.

However, they had already run through a number of guises before they happened on this latest handle, something that is witnessed by the final disc of this new set. The Birmingham-based Ball brothers guitarist Dave and bass player Denny teamed up in 1968 with drum ace Cozy Powell, who was then playing with a further Ball sibling Pete in the band Young Blood. At first they were just an extra-curricular venture humourously entitled Ideal Milk, hinting at the profound influence on the three of Cream.

As if to ram home this point, among their four tracks on this disc is their recording of Jack Bruce’s song NSU, cut during a Radio Midlands session. The 100 guitar notes a minute grandstanding 1812 Thrashed soon fades out, with the jamming Blues of Steppin’ Out showing what the band was all about at his stage. Next they came into the orbit of Ace Kefford, who had recently exited local chart stars The Move. As The Ace Kefford Stand they released the tough, soulful version of the Yardbirds’ For You Love as a single. This is present here along with its thunderous flipside Gravy Booby Jamm and three demos, one of which is the original For Your Love and the pick a fine version of a song Sharon Tandy recently made her own Daughter Of The Sun.

After a second single in the freewheeling Blues Rock of This World’s An Apple, credited to the renamed Big Bertha & Ace Kefford, Ace left and BB recruited Dave MacTavish, once of cult Psychedelic outfit Tintern Abbey. Their only waxing together was a single was released on the continent only, pairing up two MacTavish tunes in Munich City and Funky Woman. This 45 boiled down to a tough Hard Rock/Soul Rock split and the excellent Funky Woman is one of the highlights of this set, demonstrating the potential the band had at this point.

Even so MacTavish then in turn decamped and the final aggregation of Big Bertha had in his place Frank Aiello, who was 50% of the 1960s duo The Truth. Ed Welch, later to become a familiar face on TV with musical interludes in Spike Milligan’s Q TV series, plays mellotron on Ring Of Fire, a Denny Ball original and not the Johnny Cash song. Maria Popkiewicz’s prominent backing vocals are a prime feature and they also covered The Zombies’ Time Of the Season around the same time.

Big Bertha then split, but more from them is heard through a live set on disc five of this set. After some downtime when the various members were involved with “name” bands like Dave Ball with Procol Harum and Cozy with The Jeff Beck Group, the four came back together in what was ultimately to become Bedlam. They split before a second album could take shape, but a busy At The Gateway from a rehearsal gives one some idea of how that may have shaped up. The disc finishes with three recordings finished at the end of the 1990s, with a riff-heavy Candy (Rainbow Over New York) impressing.

With that trip through Bedlam’s past complete, let us go back to the first couple of discs of this set, which present their Chrysalis-released album in newly remixed and original forms. The LP sounds slightly better in the remix to my ears and it ensues with the relentless, battering boogie sound of I Believe In You (Fire In My Body). While perhaps not as full-on as Black Sabbath at their mighty-riffing best, on the album Bedlam pack a fair old measure of punch and pursue the odd but appealing foray Funk-wards, like on Hot Lips and Seven Long Years.

The Beast, the number that gave the band their previous moniker, is tough, strutting R&B with a load of guitar pyrotechnics applied and a very much lighter Looking Through Love’s Eyes (Busy Dreamin’) adds the type of agreeable dash of Folk that early Hard Rock acts often dipped into. Bedlam the LP ends with the one-two punch of Putting On The Flesh and a bustling, muscular Set Me Free. On the remix disc adds two bonus tracks, with the tuneful attack of Near The Edge being an admirable demonstration of the band’s talents.

On disc number three a good sounding show recorded in London during 1973 shows Bedlam with plenty of no-nonsense hammer to really cut it live. They run through the album tracks with confidence and flair and songs like Sarah really take off on stage. The standard for the time drum solo heralds Seven Long Years, but it isn’t of too great a duration so as to spoil the set’s flow. They also essay the unrecorded items Mother In Law, a very “of the time” nursery rhyme ditty written by Frank Aiello in a Small Faces fashion and a rather more substantial Bluesy cover of Lee Hazelwood’s The Fool. The risible Mother In Law aside, this is a convincing, well-recorded and pleasingly heavy live set. As a bonus on this disc we also get a rough recording from The Midnight Special TV show of Cozy’s solo hit Dance With The Devil.

That record would prove to be Bedlam’s undoing. The Ball brothers were not going to be pushed down the Pop route by the band’s management on the back of its success, so that was it for Bedlam. Before all this rancour, earlier in 1974 they played a high energy show at Binghampton New York. This gig is documented on the fourth disc of this set. A pulverising version of The Beast stars and the tough chug of Set Me Free sparks off nicely too. There is a radio interview segment which finds the band in high spirits, even so it takes the wind out of the sails a bit. But the clubbing version of The Fool, with a lengthy instrumental interlude, ends things with Bedlam right back on track.

Lastly here we look at disc five, which has the three piece Big Bertha caught on stage in Hamburg Germany in 1970. A less polished audio quality is presented here, but BB were clearly a tight and powerful unit in concert as a riffing Dave’s Idiot Dance makes clear from the off. The Beast and Set Me Free, both of which would later make the Bedlam LP, are played along with a drawn-out cover of The Zombies’ She’s Not There. The spaced out, jamming versions of Blues classics Crossroads and Spoonful show their debt to Cream as ongoing and slow the set down to a ponderous pace, but in its favour the German single Munich City is given a spicy runout.

Then a chaotic Never Gonna Let My Body Touch The Ground and a Rocked-out Rhapsody In Blue take us towards the end of a live set that in truth is padded out with a lot of soloing. But while it does reveal a band full of energy, there is a sense they were in need of direction. Soon though, as Bedlam, they would sharpen their focus.

I found The Bedlam Anthology a good set, despite wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew with it being 6CDs. The album itself is an entertaining item, if perhaps just short of the best the early Heavy scene had to offer, but the two live selections on disc three and four find Bedlam really proving their mettle on stage. The Big Bertha live selection is less essential, but the very enjoyable sixth disc of early recordings more than makes up for it. There are some really good liner notes that come with this set and band member Denny Ball gives one a real taste of what life on the road must have been like in the early 1970s with his thoughts. On Bedlam The Anthology, the listener can trace their germination from 1968 onwards and witness them in full flight, establishing themselves as a real and heavy force.

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