Dave Terry is an undeservedly obscure name for a classic rocker with a great voice, a bunch of great songs, and ties to Fleetwood Mac, Arthur Brown, Curved Air, Cozy Powell, Jon Lord, and the Alan Parsons Project. The Londoner also has a crazy story to tell.
Terry first showed up in the mid-’60s scene famous for taking R&B and turning it into psychedelia. In 1965 he was the singer of The Impacts, and scored the gig of replacing Brown when he left The Arthur Brown Union for Paris, where he’d learn the theatrical skills required to transform himself into “the God of hellfire.” When he returned to England a year later in 1967, he formed The Crazy World of Arthur Brown with a backing band which would later split and become Atomic Rooster.
This is the scene Terry in which was immersed. After his stint in the name-shortened The Union, he became the vocalist in The Five Pound Walker in 1966. This is when he started going by the name Elmer Gantry, in honour of the 1960 Burt Lancaster movie of the same name, which was in turn based on Sinclair Lewis’s 1927 novel. The Five Pound Walkers eventually changed their name to Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera. In 1968, the group put out their one and only album, a self-titled cult classic with one of the best opening tracks of all time. Crank it:
This band should have been huge. They were clever and fun. But Gantry’s time fronting his Velvet Opera was brief. After he split just a year later, the Gantry-less band made one more record — 1969’s Ride A Hustler’s Dream. Like the debut, it wasn’t successful, so drummer Richard Hudson and bassist/guitarist John Ford formed The Strawbs, and were involved in the successful side project The Monks, who had a major hit (especially in Canada) in 1979 with Drugs In My Pocket.
Gantry, meanwhile, started his own band — The Elmer Gantry Band — which played around for a little more than a year, before he packed it in and joined the cast of Hair. During this time, in 1973, he was approached by Clifford Davis, the manager of both Fleetwood Mac and Curved Air. The Mac were in turmoil; the band had seemingly broken up and still had gig commitments to fulfil. It had been a crazy time. In 1970, increasingly troubled founder Peter Green quit, followed a year later by guitarist-vocalist Jeremy Spencer who — on the day of a gig at the Whisky A Go Go — walked out of the hotel room he was sharing with Mick Fleetwood and ran off to join the Children of God cult. Their other guitarist, Danny Kirwan, was sacked mid-tour in 1972 due to increasing unreliability caused by drugs and alcohol. His replacement, Bob Weston, got caught having an affair with Fleetwood’s wife. So the tour was cancelled.
Davis’ pitch was this: Gantry would get together with Curved Air guitarist Kirby Gregory, bassist Paul Martinez and session musicians (drummer Craig Collinge and John Wilkinson on keys), and perform as Fleetwood Mac to fulfil the U.S. concert dates. Davis told Gantry and Gregory that Fleetwood was aware of the plan, and would eventually join them on the road. But he never did. And Fleetwood Mac were not happy to discover Davis was promoting a fake band. The matter was eventually settled out of court.
Gantry, Gregory, Martinez and the others decided to keep playing together, and gave themselves the name Stretch. Their best-known song is about the fake Fleetwood Mac debacle — it’s called Why Did You Do It?
But it’s not even their best song. The band were fantastic and made four studio albums through the end of the ’70s. They had a whole slew of killer tracks. One of my favourites is this one, from their 1977 album Lifeblood:
Incidentally, Martinez only stuck around on bass for Stretch’s 1975 debut album. He resumed his session career afterwards, playing with Ian Paice, Jon Lord and Tony Ashton in 1977 before his most famous work on Robert Plant’s first three solo records. He was also the bassist when Led Zeppelin reunited at Live Aid in 1985. He died a year ago at age 76.
Stretch had packed it in by 1978, but reformed in 2007, did a new album in 2011 and they continue to perform. I happened to notice one of the many covers on that 2011 Stretch album, Unfinished Business, is a Fleetwood Mac track — one of my favourites. They do a version of Show-Biz Blues from Then Play On. It’s a track that originally didn’t feature Mick Fleetwood or any of the band members Stretch would have replaced — only Green, who was long gone by 1974.
Gantry kept his name out there by providing lead vocals on a few occasions for the Alan Parsons Project. He sings the opening track on 1980’s The Turn Of A Friendly Card, and more prominently on Psychobabble, one of three singles from 1982’s Eye In The Sky. You can also hear Gantry when he, like Martinez, connected with Lord and Powell — first on Powell’s 1981 solo album Tilt, and then on Lord’s 1982 album Before I Forget.
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
