Bev Bevan: bye, bye American high

BACK in 1967 the importance of having a high profile was summed up by The Troggs.

Not only did they get lots of press because of their wild stage shows but they had a huge hit with Wild Thing.

I picked up the music paper one week to discover that Reg Presley's band had been given gold awards at the Mar Del Plata festival in Argentina.

They were somewhat strangely dubbed "the new interpreters of youthful rhythm in international dancing music" - but at least they got to America on the strength of it.

The headlines now said that my group The Move were actually leaving for New York for the legendary US tour.

But they were only headlines.

There had once been some semblance of truth in the idea.Our manager Tony Secunda had once talked on the phone to someone in the US who agreed that it might be a good idea, but that was all there was to it.

Difference

If we had actually gone to the States in 1967, it would have made a huge difference to us.

We started out with Jimi Hendrix and Cream - at the same time, doing the same sort of shows, almost like the same family - but they carried on with underground music while we got swayed by the screaming girls and Top Of The Pops, Jackie magazine and all that sort of stuff.

They really stuck to their guns and went to America to get away from the pop scene back in Britain. They became album bands while The Move became a singles band.

If we'd have gone out there, and persevered with our music in the same way that Cream did, we could well have become really big as a 'serious' band.

As it was, we never really got the chance. A lot of it was our own fault. We were reluctant to leave home, for starters.

Looking back, we were very baby-ish. If we'd come back from the States as an album band then the entire course of our careers would have changed.

By the end of The Move both Roy Wood and I wanted to get serious, but we let the ideal drift away again.

It was the story of our lives.