Back in the early 70's Atomic Rooster were regular fixtures in both the singles and albums charts with songs such as "Tomorrow Night" and "Devil's Answer". Their trademark riff-heavy progressive sound was characterized by the Hammond organ playing of the late Vincent Crane and the raw vocals and choppy guitars of John Du Cann. Playing in a band with the unpredictable Crane was never a safe bet and Du Cann parted company with AR to be replaced by Chris Farlowe whose soulful sound gave the band a completely different sound. Du Cann later toured with Thin Lizzy before recording a solo album in 1977 with involvement from the Status Quo camp. He then scored an unlikley hit with 'Don't Be A Dummy', a song used in a Lee Cooper jeans advert. 

Eventually Du Cann and Crane reunited with drummer Paul Hammond for a self titled album on EMI before recording two singles for Polydor in the early 80's. Changes at the label meant Polydor never took up the option of an album and Du Cann has recently made available the demos he worked on at the time under the title Homework via Angel Air. Universal have also issued a Vincent Crane two disc anthology Close Your Eyes that includes a lot of early Atomic Rooster. Hard Rock House caught up with Du Cann to discuss this latest bout of activity.  

Atomic Rooster

Your career stretches back to the 1960's and before Atomic Rooster you played in The Attack and Andromeda. Are you surprised people still take an interest after all this time?

JC - It's like I've been discovered by a new breed of younger people really and I see reviews calling me a legend and a genius…maybe I am really (laughs) but you don't usually get those sorts of things said about you until you have gone. It's nice but I don't have a big ego and there are a lot of people who get called legendary nowadays. The band I had before Atomic Rooster was called Andromeda and people often say that was like Atomic Rooster without the organ. And that is really as popular and I get asked about that band and the one album we did as much as I do about Rooster. Especially in America and places the Andromeda album always gets very strong reviews. We released a Definitive Edition via Angel Air a while back and that collated everything together that the band ever did. 

Atomic Rooster seem to be well represented on the Internet with quite a few fan sites 

JC - There was a proper web site but the guy who ran it just vanished…I think he fell in love or something…and I gave him loads of clippings and stuff to use because all of the stuff I have is the outtakes and demos that come out via Angel Air. There are endless compilations available and I don't really know who gets hold of all the songs…I think people just help themselves to it really 

Well Universal have just released another anthology that although billed as a Vincent Crane retrospective includes a lot of early Atomic Rooster 

JC -  I don't know much about that one, I know its via Castle / Sanctuary who have brought out Universal, they seem to buy every record label and took every catalogue going, ending up with all The Kinks stuff and the original Atomic Rooster stuff. Unfortunately, as with all of that stuff it's like everything and I never received a penny royalty in my bloody life. 

I know that it covers all eras of the band and after I left Chris Farlowe came in and it was a very different band. Fans defected when Chris Farlowe replaced me because it wasn't the same band and there are two very distinct camps that make up the fan base. Vince wanted to take the band into a more funky soul direction but when I was with the band it was a lot heavier and a lot of the Heavy Metal bands that came along later cited Atomic Rooster as an influence…and there was a lot of death and devil imagery to what we were about at the time. It went along with what Black Sabbath were doing although was maybe a little more progressive… With the money you don't miss what you have never had (laughs) and you take your chance with music but I haven't regretted it in any way because I had a passion to play music. When I was at school I got the cheapest guitar and stayed indoors learning how to play it for a year when I was still at school. 

Do you still have your early guitars? 

JC - Yes, I have got my original Telecaster and Stratocaster as I have always been a Fender person, I never got on with Gibson's. And you look at the old school guitarists such as Clapton or Gilmour and they are all on Fenders now, and people like Gary Moore. And with a Fender you can try and be a bit more original whereas the Gibson's give you that heavier blues tone. A strat was all the rage when Hank B Marvin played one but then you couldn’t give them away until Hendrix came along and now it is very much THE guitar to play. They were expensive in the 60's I had to wait six months to save up the 100 guineas to buy mine. They are like your children in a way, they have played on all of your records and toured the world and its amazing how long they last really. 

In the 60's everybody was painting them up to look psychedelic and the purists would say that was terrible but you never thought about that really it was more a case of you wanting to have the right image for your guitar because it was an extension of you . 

You toured with Thin Lizzy for a time in 1974 

JC - I looked on You Tube yesterday because there is some footage from when I toured with Thin Lizzy and there weren't many people had video cameras back then its amazing really. It's got me playing with Lizzy on a German tour for the first double guitar line up, as you know Gary Moore floated between Lizzy and Colleseum he was all over the place. You couldn't stay in Lizzy and survive cos Phil was one of those sex drugs and rock and roll men and you could tell he was only going to be around for a finite period of time 

You also had similar problems in Atomic Rooster with Vincent being somewhat unpredictable 

JC - Vincent always had a bit of a mental problem he went into a mental hospital three times. It was LSD that did for him a bit like Peter Green and Syd Barrett and I know Peter Green goes out with that band but he doesn't really seem to play much at all. And yet he was one of the classiest guitarists around at the time and had a very light and distinctive touch and BB King used to say he would break into a sweat if Green was on the bill and you cant really give any more praise than that can you. 

If you went to America in the late 60's you came back Syd Barrett. But Floyd were as big as The Beatles really and I've always wanted to be in a band like Floyd because the lights put the show on for them whereas in AR I was the only one mobile on stage. We had the drummer and Vincent and me with two microphones and it was bloody hard work and people use to say to me how did you do it and it was with great difficulty at times because I would have to sing, play guitar and go over to Vincent and remind him where we were in the song (laughs).

When you signed for Polydor and did the two singles, 'Play It Again' should have been a hit really  

JC - 'Play It Again' was a hit because Kid Jensen was playing it non stop and it had enough pre orders to go in the charts at number 16 but the record plant went on strike and couldn't produce enough copies and Polydor gave priority to Siouxsie and The Banshees and we didn't get pressed up to fill the quota so we didn't get the chart position but it was guaranteed to be number 16. 

That would have been a wonderful time to have restarted the band because I think we had come back stronger at that time. It’s a very popular song and I never understood why Polydor didn't take up the album on the strength of those singles because they were quite strong singles and it was quite a tight sound and the band had found its feet again. I was thrust into the whole Atomic Rooster thing because I had a hit and did TOTP with that Lee Cooper jeans song and so I was on a roll with the writing. And I honestly do believe that with Germany and the US being strong markets for us we could have done well with an album. 

  

Homework is the demos then for the album that might have been. There is some quite obvious commercial stuff on there 

JC - 'Make Me Strong' was an obvious 80's commercial riff with an American sound and they always wanted you to redo 'Devil's Answer' and then to this day people still want to hear those tracks, more so the younger generation of 15 and 16 year olds. But a hell of a lot of Rooster tracks got included in that BBC series 'Life on Mars' there was about 6 or 7 tracks on the soundtrack CD. 

When Polydor didn’t go ahead I got disillusioned again after that and Vincent carried on with Towerbell and did another album but he had kind of lost the plot again by then and used a drum machine and a lot of the songs were old bits and pieces. 

In the early years you had time to develop the sound. But all that had changed by the 80's and remains the same today 

JC - A band comes out and you give them a year and hope for their sakes that they have got a hit in another country somewhere because they don't seem to be allowed more than a two album span really do they. I noticed that with The Kaiser Chiefs and I thought they were a really good band with a couple of really good singles and then the second album apart from 'Ruby' they didn't really have much else besides. A band now seems to have all of their good stuff on their first album when they have formed or the second album will often have to have someone else input to really be any good. 

People ask me about my career and think I made a lot of money but I always say to people you are better off going to Tesco and stacking shelves. If you have got a passion for doing music then by all means do it but don't expect to make any money out of it. That's what the Managers are there for (laughs) 

John thanks for talking to us 

Many thanks to Peter at Angel Air for co-ordinating the interview. To check out their latest releases go to www.angelair.co.uk

Dean Pedley