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This week I caught up with another person with whom I have wanted to speak for many years. It was Mick Rogers, probably best known as the singer for Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
He first crossed my orbit back in 1973 when their glorious single ‘Joybringer’ totally captivated me. I remember singing it at home whilst carrying out some menial household task in order to only have my father start ranting that “Those bloody long-haired beatniks have made a nonsense of ‘I Vow to Thee my Country’” and forbade me to ever listen to it again.
Both songs, of course, were adaptations of the Jupiter movement of Gustav Holst’s Planet Suite.
Soon after, I acquired a second-hand copy of the Solar Fire album and was a committed fan. When Mick Rogers left the Earth Band for a while in the mid-1970s, he formed another band called ‘Aviator’.
The two Aviator albums are now coming out on Gonzo, which gave me a perfect excuse to give him a ring
Aviator were a very different band to the one in which Mick had made his name, and so, for those of you who have not heard of them, here is a potted biography:
Jack Lancaster had already made a name for himself playing with Mick Abrahams in Blodwyn Pig and on several collaborative projects with Robin Lumley including the stellar rewrite of Peter and the Wolf with an all-star cast.
But in 1978 he launched a new project together with two of my favourite musicians.
Martin Horst takes up the story on the Prog Archives: “AVIATOR was founded in 1978 by Jack Lancaster (saxophone, flute, lyricon, synthesizer) and Mick Rogers (guitar & lead vocals) with the co-pilots Clive Bunker (drums) and John G. Perry (bass & vocals).
All four musicians already had an impressive background in different bands. Jack Lancaster had played with: BLODWYN PIG, the MICK ABRAHAMS BAND and the SOUL SEARCHERS, Mick Rogers with: MANFRED MANN'S EARTHBAND, Clive Bunker with: JETHRO TULL, BLODWYN PIG and STEVE HILLAGE, John G. Perry with: CARAVAN and QUANTUM JUMP. They played a mixture of straightforward Rock songs alternating with instrumental Jazz-Rock passages reminiscing COLOSSEUM and BLODWYN PIG, Jack Lancaster gave the band a typical sound with the lyricon and soprano saxophone.
In early 1979 AVIATOR released their first record named "Aviator" on Harvest/Electrola, coproduced by the band and Robin Lumley from BRAND-X. All tracks were cosigned by the band. The tracks are all different ranging from straightforward Rock to Jazz-Rock and Pop.
They went then on a European Tour as a support act for Steve HILLAGE and in the summer of 1979 they did some festivals and venues in Germany, where they did also a public broadcast for the famous WDR radio in Cologne. The tape of the show proves what an excellent live band they had been. On stage they showed their talent, especially in the longer instrumental passages. “
What a band!
What a fantastic band!
Clive Bunker has always been an excellent meat and potatoes drummer, and Mick Rogers is a fantastic singer.
Sadly, Jack Lancaster left the band for pastures new soon after the end of the European tour, but this album remains as testament to quite how superb they were. This is a vastly under-rated artefact of a lost era; an era when music mattered far more than it does today. You must check it out!
