Mike Stuart Span evolved out of the Brighton-based group The Mighty Atoms, which included vocalist Stuart Hobday and bassist Roger McCabe. By 1965, Hobday's early attempts at song-writing had secured a publishing contract with Lorna Music, and the Mike Stuart Span - a name created by reversing the singer's Christian names - was formed, with the addition of Nigel Langham on guitar, Ashley Potter on organ and a teenage drummer Gary 'Roscoe' Murphy. A liaison with local promoter Mike Clayton resulted in the replacement of Potter with Jon Poulter, and the addition of a four piece horn section. For economy this was soon reduced to two (Gary Parsley on trumpet and Dave Plumb on saxophone) as the band concentrated their efforts on American-derived soul music. The band secured a recording contract with EMI, after recording the Hobday penned 'Work-Out', coupled with a cover of The Drifters' 'Follow Me', but it was another Drifters number, 'Come On Over To Our Place' that was selected as the A-side for the band's debut Columbia single in November 1966. A second single followed in June 1967, with their cover of Cat Stevens 'Dear' being backed by Mike d'Abo's 'Invitation', but it was as unsuccessful as their debut, and EMI dropped the band.
This forced the band to dismiss the horn section, with keyboardist Poulter also departing shortly afterwards, and after recruiting guitarist Brian Bennett through an ad in Melody Maker, the revitalised band paid more attention to the importance of studio work, starting with an October 1967 session at Decca Records with Dave Paramor, who had produced their EMI singles. Three tracks were recorded, including the instrumental 'As Close As We Can Get It', which titled after Paramor's insistence that the track should last two and a half minutes, but it actually only ran for 2 minutes 28 seconds. However, Decca decided that the recordings were insufficiently commercial, declining to sign the band, and so without record company support, the group took matters into their own hands, and privately funded a single that appeared in February 1968 on the Jewel label – a new Melodisc subsidiary run by Emil Shallit. The two tracks were recorded at R.G. Jones studio in Morden, and 500 copies of 'Children Of Tomorrow'/'Concerto Of Thoughts' were pressed, making it one of the most sought-after psychedelic 45's. Publicity both at home and abroad brought a cameo appearance in the film, 'Better A Widow', as well as successful tours of Germany and Belgium, and a support appearance with Cream in the UK. Following a session for the John Peel's Top Gear programme in May 1968, the band was chosen to feature in documentary film-maker Paul Watson's BBC TV series 'A Year In The Life'.
The episode charted the band's progress over twelve months, and along the way they dismissed their manager and, thanks to a series of demo recordings reaching Clive Selwood, who was head of the UK branch of Elektra Records, the group was signed to the label early in 1969. In the United States, label boss Jac Holzman immediately commissioned an album, but insisted on a change of name for the group, and so they re-christened themselves Leviathan, and Elektra launched their recording career in April 1969, with the simultaneous issue of two singles. Three of the chosen tracks, 'Remember The Times', 'Second Production' and 'Time', had initially been conceived as Mike Stuart Span recordings, with the newly composed 'The War Machine' completing the quartet, and despite the commercial failure of both singles, work continued on the band's album at Trident Studios. One further old Mike Stuart Span track, 'Flames', was recorded as a single in the summer of 1969, although by the time that it surfaced in October Leviathan had split up. Although Mike Stuart Span recycled much of their unreleased material for the Leviathan project, the original recordings by the group have since surfaced, and if Elektra had allowed them to release an album under their original name then it could have sounded very much like this.
Track listing
01 World In My Head
02 Flames
03 Concerto Of Thoughts
04 Baubles And Bangles
05 Children Of Tomorrow
06 Second Production
07 Time
08 Blue Day
09 Can You Understand Me
10 Remember The Times
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