Cliff Wade came out of York, England, as part of the mid-60s British soul boom, playing with several early groups including the Misfits, before forming the Roll Movement in late 1965, where he was both the lead singer and lead guitarist. They were good enough to beat Soft Machine into the finals of a 1966 Melody Maker-sponsored competition, ultimately finishing second behind Eyes Of Blue, and this led to support slots for The Who and Cream. The Roll Movement never had a chance to show what they could have done on record, as their sole single, 'I'm Out On My Own', was released on the tiny Go label, and was lost amid the gathering psychedelic haze that spread across music in the second half of 1967. The band eventually split up in the wake of the record's failure, and after a short spell with Cucumber, Wade went to work for independent producer Monty Babson and his corporate operation, the Morgan empire, as a music copyist and jack-of-all-trades on the studio end of the operation, which eventually spawned its own label, Morgan Blue Town. In 1969 Wade began recording under his own name with the Mellotron-dominated psychedelic pop single 'You've Never Been To My House', released on the Morgan's label, and although it sank without trace, over the next couple of years he cut more sides, and also became a singer for an ensemble called Fickle Pickle, who scored a hit in Holland with a cover of Paul McCartney's 'Maybe I'm Amazed'. Wade subsequently bounced around the music business, occasionally performing and recording under his own name and in association with various groups, including the Beaver Brothers, and playing sessions with promising new performers. He also wrote songs with his Beaver Brothers partner Geoff Gill, and enjoyed a hit with 'Heartbreaker', which Pat Benatar took up the charts in 1979, at the outset of her career. Many of the tracks that he recorded at Morgan Studios in 1969 have now surfaced, and if we cherry-pick the best of them we can imagine what a Cliff Wade album could have sounded like in 1969.
Track listing
01 You've Never Been To My House
02 I See I Am Free
03 Casting The First Stone
04 Life Story
05 Dagger Lane
06 Gonna Meet The Man
07 Shirley
08 Fern Meadows
09 Sister
10 Rose Village
11 Yes I'm Finding Out
12 I Could Have Loved Her
13 You Should Have Seen Me
