Chris Curtis - Roundabout

Roundabout

In 1967, a year after their first meeting Curtis contacted Edwards. "From out of the blue, Chris rang me from Liverpool. He said I'd like you to be my manager. I'll teach you everything. Brian Epstein's dead, you can be the next Brian Epstein". "That hooked me" recalled Edwards.

Curtis came back to London at the beginning of 1968 and moved into a low-rent flat rented by Jon Lord, whom he had recently met at one of Vicki Wickham’s parties. Curtis was planning his return to performing but he had yet to assemble his new band. In that first conversation with Lord he said, "I've got this concept."

Lord was eager to listen; his previous band had changed their name from The Artwoods to St Valentine's Day Massacre in a desperate effort to cash in on the gangsters craze that followed the film Bonnie and Clyde. Their cover of Bing Crosby’s "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?", released at the end of 1967, had been a failure and he had agreed to make a one-month tour with The Flower Pot Men, a band promoting the hit "Let's Go to San Francisco".

Curtis’s concept was a band with a core of three members: Curtis, Lord and Robbie Hewlett. The other musicians would be engaged whenever the core felt like it. "They would jump on and off the roundabout. But I left that party in a new band, Roundabout." said Lord.

Curtis would arrange for Daimler limousines to taxi him about and was charging the cost to Tony Edwards. Edwards realised that he had made a mistake agreeing to manage Curtis but he liked what he saw of Jon Lord. And Lord was also having problems with Curtis, who had started to use LSD. Lord returned from a few days away with The Flowerpot Men to find the entire flat covered in aluminium foil. Everything; even the furniture and the light bulbs.

Curtis moved out soon after this but he did tell Lord that he had a guitarist in mind for Roundabout. Curtis arranged for Ritchie Blackmore and his girlfriend to fly over from Hamburg, Germany and meet Tony Edwards. The meeting was a success for Blackmore, Edwards and Lord but they had no room for the erratic Curtis. They changed their name to Deep Purple and their first single was Joe South’s "Hush", which Curtis had been playing in Lord’s flat for months.