Eyes of Blue
In 1966 Weathers joined a Neath band The Eyes of Blue, along with Phil Ryan (keyboards) and Gary Pickford-Hopkins (vocals) from The Smokestacks. The band turned professional, and won the 1966 Melody Maker Beat Contest. The prize was a one-year record contract, but they had to record songs chosen for them, rather than their own material and neither of their singles, "Heart Trouble" / "Up And Down" and "Supermarket Full Of Cans" / "Don't Ask Me To Mend Your Broken Heart", sold well.
The Eyes of Blue changed label from Decca to Mercury Records and recorded their first album Crossroads of Time in 1968. They then recorded an album Buzzy, as the backing band for American singer-songwriter Buzzy Linhart, before recording their second album In Fields of Ardath in 1969.
The band Strawberry Dust supported The Eyes, and impressed Weathers, who persuaded Lou Reizner to commission an album, which Weathers produced and wrote/co-wrote 6 songs. Women & Children First was released in 1970, but Reizner renamed the band Ancient Grease, without telling them, and credited himself as co-producer.
The Eyes of Blue’s third album, Bluebell Wood, released under the pseudonym Big Sleep, was their last, as the band broke up shortly afterwards. Weathers briefly played with Strawberry Dust, until they also broke up, later reforming as Racing Cars. After this break up he played drums on the final appearance of the Swansea Soul band the John Smith Committee.
In 1970 Weathers and Phil Ryan joined Pete Brown & Piblokto! playing on one single, "Flying Hero Sandwich" / "My Last Band", before Piblokto also disbanded. Weathers then joined an embryonic Wild Turkey with Glenn Cornick (ex Jethro Tull), Gary Pickford-Hopkins (ex Eyes of Blue) and Graham Williams (ex Strawberry Dust), but Weathers and Williams left to join Graham Bond’s Magick before Wild Turkey recorded any material. He appeared on Graham Bond's 1971 album, We Put Our Magick On You, and later that year joined The Grease Band.
Read more about this topic: John Weathers
Famous quotes containing the words eyes and/or blue:
“I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious—except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Two wooden tubs of blue hydrangeas stand at the foot of the stone steps.
The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black.
The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air.
Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a slum of bloom.
Pardie! Summer is like a fat beast, sleepy in mildew....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)