In the 70s, London-based jazz fusion band Swift didn’t even come close to making a breakthrough. Indeed, they never even managed to so much as darken the door of a recording studio. Legendary Melody Maker critic Chris Welch (also a UKJN writer*) did once hail the band as “an extraordinarily powerful instrumental band somewhat in the mould of Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra” but when the band expired at the end of the decade their passing was unlamented by the world at large.
And yet, remarkably, in 2022 Swift reformed and, against all reasonable expectations, produced an exceptional CD, In Another Lifetime, thus achieving the unusual feat of releasing their debut album forty three years after their demise.
With the recent release of an even more impressive follow-up album, Apus Apus, the time has perhaps now come to tell the tale of a band who once could have been but weren’t, and now shouldn’t be, but are.
Swift formed in Belfast in 1973 and played a few gigs but the band’s ‘classic’ line-up convened in London in 1976: Larry Dundas (guitar), Brendan O’Neill (drums) and John McCullough (bass), all from Belfast, Hugh John (keyboards), from Wales and John Sanderson (saxes, flute) from Derbyshire, who was later replaced by Londoner Pete Thomas.
The band, despite playing jazz fusion, somehow managed to reach the final of a 1976 Rock/Folk competition organised by the Melody Maker. Sadly, in the final they were beaten by Stallion. McCullough still sounds miffed fifty-odd years later: “We got a rousing reception to the extent that I thought, ‘We’re an instrumental jazz rock band but we could be in with a chance here!’ but they awarded it to a Genesis-type band called Stallion which was quite a shock to the audience.
Whispering Bob Harris was on the [judging] panel and I said to him, ‘What happened there, Bob?’ And he just said, ‘Ach, that’s music!’”.
“They were an out-and-out rock band and in the years after I used to quite often look in the music press and say, ‘Where have Stallion gone?’” says Hugh John, sounding not at all like a sore loser.
Chris Welch, happily, wasn’t beguiled by Stallion and recognised Swift’s excellence, writing a major feature on them in the Melody Maker and subsequently often praising them. “We were so passionate about the music and for Chris Welch to champion us was humbling,” says O’Neill.
Stallion may have outrageously thwarted Swift at the 1976 Rock Folk Competition but the band triumphed the following year, when in a competition judged by Ian Carr and others they became the Greater London Arts Association’s Young Jazz Musicians of the Year. “The musical cohesion we had that was missing in some of the other bands helped us win,” reckons John.
“The prize was sponsorship,” explains Dundas. “Any gigs we got, they would top up the gig fee so that was a great help to us.” Adds O’Neill: “We were then able to become a touring band around the UK.”
But Swift’s funding ran out after two years and the changing musical climate and their lack of any real success made it impossible for the band to continue. “I put it down to punk,” says Dundas of Swift’s demise. “A lot of places we would play went punk and had no interest any more in instrumental jazz and all the record companies were just looking for punk bands. So money became short.”
One of the band’s last gigs was supporting John McLaughlin With The One Truth Band at London’s Rainbow Theatre. “I can remember getting the bus back home and thinking, ‘So this is the height of jazz rock fame, is it?’” chuckles John.
Thereafter the musicians’ fortunes were mixed. Pete Thomas gigged and/or recorded with Fats Domino, Slim Gaillard, Elton John, Jimmy Witherspoon and Joe Jackson and composed music for films, TV and adverts. Dundas concentrated on developing his studio expertise in his home studio, releasing some dance tracks but mostly recording for his own pleasure. McCullough, O’Neill and John briefly played in Drowning Not Waving with Lyn Dobson, a former member of Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames, Manfred Mann and Soft Machine. Following the end of that band, John left music, McCullough began a career in international development playing part-time wherever he was based and O’Neill went on to play for ten years with Irish blues rock superstar Rory Gallagher. Gallagher himself had an interest in jazz. “He told me about once doing some festival and he happened to be next door in the hotel to Ornette Coleman,” recalls O’Neill. “And Ornette woke at ten in the morning and practised for eight hours and then went and did the show. I think Rory really got inspired by that dedication.”
After leaving Gallagher, O’Neill played for nearly twenty five years with British R’n’B stalwarts Nine Below Zero and he currently works with Slim Chance, a band dedicated to keeping alive the music of rock star Ronnie Lane, and Band Of Friends who play the music of Rory Gallagher.
The story of Swift should end with the 70s. But in 2020 John McCullough sent some ancient demos of the band to Linley Hamilton who was then presenting Jazz World on BBC Radio Ulster. Hamilton, a giant of Northern Irish jazz as a broadcaster, musician, bandleader, educator, promoter and all-round mover and shaker, was blown away. With his encouragement the band, now minus Pete Thomas, recorded tracks, including Eddie Harris’s ‘Freedom Jazz Dance’ and four originals by John, that had been in their original repertoire.
The quality of the music, on which the band were augmented here and there by Hamilton, on trumpet, English saxophonist Frank Mead and others, surprised even the band themselves. “The music’s more controlled than before,” says O’Neill. “Then we were possibly playing far too fast and tracks were ten or eleven minutes long with loads of time changes all over the place.”
“It’s maturity and experience and knowing when to play and when not to play,” says McCullough. “I feel I did a better performance, in my late 60s, than I would have done in my mid-twenties when I was playing actively!”
So satisfying did the band find working together again that they have now released a second album, Apus Apus – which birdwatchers among the UK Jazz News readership will recognise as the scientific name for the common swift. This time McCullough, who published his first novel, A Virtuous Killer, in 2022, has withdrawn, to concentrate on writing, with Dundas now playing bass as well as guitar. Linley Hamilton again appears on a few tracks and Frank Mead, who has played with Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Gary Moore and the Big Town Playboys and who guested on two tracks on In Another Lifetime, plays throughout the new album.
“We came to the first album pretty cold having not worked as a unit for many decades,” says Dundas. “And at the end we thought we could have actually done better so we said, ‘Let’s continue and do a better one!’ And I think we’ve achieved that.”
John agrees: “I think it’s more accessible and I don’t think there’s anybody we’ve spoken to who doesn’t prefer this album to the first one.”
The band are clearly thrilled to have Frank Mead’s expanded contribution on the album. “He’s so talented,” enthuses Dundas. “He plays soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones, flute and harmonica and his soloing is tremendous. Every time he launches into a solo it just lifts the whole tune. And I think he really enjoys getting to let loose on our stuff.”
Five of the nine tracks are John compositions, again resurrected from the band’s first lifetime. “He’s a vicar’s son,” says O’Neill, “and his early musical influences were classical and church music and he was involved in 60s stuff like Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Then in the mid-60s he fell in love with jazz so he has a wide and diverse pool of influences he draws on to write his music.”
“His compositions are very original,” continues Dundas. “They have beautiful themes and melodies and make great use of time signatures but they’re not like standard jazz tunes. They’re like mini-suites. They’re unique.”
Even the battle-hardened Frank Mead, who has played sessions for many of the greatest musicians in the land, sounds in awe of John’s compositions. “Even for jazz, it’s left field stuff. They’d send me the charts and I’d sit in my studio tearing my hair out, trying to figure them out. It sounds easy when you listen to the record but when you see the dots in front of you, it’s frightening! But they’re fantastically interesting and they pull the best out of me, so it was very satisfying for me to be involved.”
One of the album’s highlights is the ingenious mashup of Miles Davis’s ‘Miles Runs The Voodoo Down’ and the Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’ which appears twice, first as ‘Love Me Voodoo’, then as ‘Love Me Blue’. Dundas outs himself as the brains behind the track. “I was listening to Bitches Brew outtakes and there was one where they were just having a go at ‘Miles Runs The Voodoo Down’. And ‘Love Me Do’ came into my head and I thought, ‘That would work!’ So we laid down a rhythm track which was basically just ‘Miles Runs The Voodoo Down’ and made it into a keyboard feature with a big solo inspired by Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul. And then we introduced ‘Love Me Do’ with Linley Hamilton on trumpet and Frank on sax and harmonica. They did lots of jamming and improvising and it seemed such a shame no-one would ever hear that so we put on ‘Love Me Blue’ at the end of the album which is completely stripped of keyboards. I play a bit of slide guitar but it’s basically Frank and Linley just let loose.”
Says Mead, “I used the bullet mic and amp that I use on stage when I’m playing Little Walter-style Chicago blues harmonica. And they all said, ‘That’s fantastic.’”
Mead in fact has actually recorded with one of the Beatles for he played on ‘Get Out Of My Way’ on Paul McCartney’s 1993 album Off The Ground. “It was thrilling to meet him and he’s a very nice man, very easy-going,” he says. “He was showing us all the instruments in the studio – the Mellotron that did ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and all that stuff. We were like children at Christmas!”
Swift are, to a man, diehard Miles Davis fans. “How can you be a musician and not be influenced by Miles?” laughs Mead. “I saw him a couple of times in his later life and it was awesome. It was like watching God.”
The band also regard Linley Hamilton as a hero of their tale for his enthusiasm instigated their reunion and he has played tellingly on both their albums. “He’s a tremendous musician,” says Dundas, “a teacher, an inspiration and a guru, and when he discovers a musician he’s never heard before, especially from Ireland, he wants to help them. He’s a wonderful human being.”
But as the musicians hurtle through their seventies, do Swift still have a future? Could there be a third album in this most unlikely of musical comebacks? “Why stop?” asks Dundas unanswerably. “The ideas are coming so as long as we can still do it, yeah, let’s continue!”
