When Ike & Tina Turner toured the UK in 1966 on the back of the grandiose River Deep Mountain High they left behind an unlikely souvenir in the shape of Ikette P.P. Arnold. Ike & Tina had, of course, come over to tour with the Rolling Stones -- and during the course of the tour Pat Arnold had made sufficient an impression on both Andrew Loog Oldham and Michael Philip Jagger that they'd encouraged her to stay on and pursue a solo career in London. It seems that Oldham had ambitious plans for Pat: not only should he record her as a solo artist, he envisaged pairing her up with chart topping Chris Farlowe, fellow Immediate second-stringer Rod Stewart - and possibly even Stevie Marriott, the powerful lead singer of the Small Faces whom he was in the process of tempting to his IMMEDIATE label.
She began singing back-up vocals on various Immediate sessions -- e.g. The Art of Chris Farlowe -- before successfully getting her own career under way with only her second record, Cat Stevens' emotive The First Cut Is The Deepest, which breached the UK Top 20 in June '67. Meanwhile, Oldham had been hard at work in anticipation of this happy event: he intended capitalising on Arnold's newfound chart status by packing her off on a lucrative tour of clubs and ballrooms, and to this end had already put together a suitably-experienced backing group, whom he had christened THE NICE.
Loog's first recruit - he'd begun putting the band together around April '67 - had been bassist KEITH "LEE" JACKSON (Born January 8th 1943, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne), whose most recent gig had been with Gary Farr & the T-Bones, a highly-touted second division R&B combo fronted by the son of Tommy Parr, the famous boxer. The highly- experienced Jackson had learned his trade in various Geordie R&B bands - the Valiants, the Invaders. and the Vondykes, to name but a few -- and had even put in
time on the gruelling Hamburg club scene. Jackson's first recruit was former fellow T-Bone KEITH EMERSON (born Novemher 2nd 1944, Todmorden, Lancs), widely regarded as the leading Hammond organ virtuoso on the London club circuit, who'd most recently played in the VIP's (they later became better known as Spooky Tooth). Although marginally less experienced than Jackson - the T-Bones had been his first professional gig, as a 19-year old - he was clearly an extraordinarily gifted musician, having studied classical piano as a youngster, and was already evincing a strong, natural feel (indeed, something of a preference) for Jazz. Odd credentials for a jobbing R&B musician, to be sure,
The pair managed to prize hot teenage guitarist DAVID O'LIST (born December 13th 1948, in Chiswick, London) away from the Attack, another highly-regarded second division outfit, who'd recently caused something of a buzz with singles like Hi Ho Silver Lining and Created By Clive. Despite his tender years, the precociously gifted O'List (who'd attended the Royal College Of Music and had played in the London Schools Symphony Orchestra) had already carved out quite a reputation - he was apparently in the frame to replace Peter Green in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, but had elected to join The Nice instead. Their initial line-up was completed by former Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds' drummer Ian Hague, who doesn't seem to have lasted more than a handful of gigs before giving way to O'List's former Attack colleague BRIAN "BLINKY" DAVISON (born May 25th 1942, in Leicester) another seasoned R&B pro whose CV included stints with the Mark Leeman Five, the Mike Cotton Sound, and the Brian Auger Trinity.
Davison's arrival completed a tight and accomplished unit, and The Nice sooon began to make their presence felt. One of Oldham's scams had been to save an a support act for P.P. Arnold's tour by sending The Nice out first, to soften the crowd up with a 20-minute warm-up set. Although essentially an R&B group -- P.P. certainly presented a fairly standard mid-60's R&B Soul set -- The Nice avoided R&B cliches simply by playing in an entirely different style. One that, on the face of it, hadn't previously existed! Fronted, inspired, and driven along by the increasingly flamboyant Emerson, their brief set initially comprised their organist's adaptions of classical and jazz pieces, alongside highly stylised covers of songs like Dylan's She Belongs To Me, the Beatles' A Day In The Life, and a tongue-in-cheek, Shadows-like spoof of A Fistful Of Dollars. As a result they gradually began to develop a powerful identity of its own - so much so that they were soon regularly upstaging their "lead singer" as their sets became longer and more free-form, whilst hers became shorter, looking increasingly towards the dreaded shows/cabaret circuit.
This eventually came to a head at the Marquee's National Jazz & Blues Festival, at Windsor, over the 1967 August Bank Holiday weekend -- mind you, with the exception of O'List, they were all seasoned NJB Festival veterans, Davison having made his debut there in '65 with the Mark Leeman Five, Emerson & Jackson in '66 with Gary Farr & the T-Bones. Halfway down the bill on the third day, they were booked to play in the secondary tent, adjacent to the main stage. Emerson had decided to try and attract a larger crowd to the unfashionable side tent by stage-managing a diversion - to which end he turned all their amps up to an ear-rending screech, detonated a couple of dozen carefully-placed smoke bombs, fired off a maroon, stood watching smugly as the ensuing chaos brought hordes of intrigued kids swarming from all over the camp sight, and proceeded to tear the gaff apart with the most memorable performance given by any band that day. This proved to be the turning point: there was no way the hapless P.P. Arnold was going to he able to top that, so they parted company there and then.
Once left entirely to their own devices, The Nice subsequent progress was as spectacular as it was extraordinary. By common consent, 1967 has long been identified as the year that Rock Music first came of age, when all the old rules went out the window as Rock became more adventurous and experimental -- and The Nice were at the very forefront of the movement, pushing back the boundaries in true pioneering/covered-wagon spirit. Occasionally self conscious and frequently self-indulgent, they made up the rules themselves as they went along. It was all nonetheless exciting, stirring stuff -- if not for the faint-hearted, In a contemporary interview Emerson tried to describe their sound and style: "for want of a better word, I suppose you could describe us as a Psychedelic group - but we'd rather you didn't. We are just trying to play the things we like, and to be original. And it's not a weak or pretty sound, it's very hard-hitting and powerful. Davy is blowing everyone's mind on guitar, and when Blinky played a drum solo at Southampton recently, I wanted to stop and applaud him myself!" Hmmm... nonetheless, he was spot-on -- as Melody Maker's Chris Welch confirmed: "their music is wholly unlike any being played by another modern Pop group -- in Britain or America. It is violent, often neurotic, yet rich in chords, harmonies, and melodies. They have the drive of a Blues band - without playing the Blues. They improvise as spontaneously as a jazz group, whithout ringing the changes on standards of a bygone age. They are as free as a psychedelic group, but with vastly superior instrumental ability".
And even at this early stage Emerson's mass-murderer/caped crusader stage persona was manifesting itself as he got into some serious keyboards abuse, savaging his hapless Hammond organ, hoiking it around the stage, mock-raping the thing, shagging it, thrusting dirty great knives into the keyboard (that is, when he wasn't insetting said daggers into his amp and/or speaker cabinets), dousing the wailing Hammond in lighter fuel and igniting it, cracking a whip over the heads of the crowd a la Zorro (or was it Dave Dee?), playing the keyboards with his feet, and occasionally even climbing inside the Hammond to produce spacey noises from the intricate electronic equipment. Their fans went mental, and their reputation soared. A tour alongside Jimi Hendrix served to affirm their newfound reputation, and around this time the media even began to call Emerson "the Hendrix of the keyboards".
Many people have speculated about the nature and origin of the knives with which Keith so famously tortured his Hammond L100. They are, in fact, genuine Third Reich daggers, still complete with inset Nazi crests. Why such macabre items?
"It was actually Lemmy's idea. He was a roadie for The Nice and he said to me, "if you're
going to use knives, at least use real ones." He's a serious collector of Third Reich memorabilia, and even has some of Hitler's personal effects in his collection. Anyway, he produced these Hitler Youth daggers, and I've been using them ever since."
