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The Scaffold | |
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Liverpool, England |
| Genres | Music hall,comedy rock |
| Years active | 1964–1977[nb 1] |
| Labels | Parlophone Island Warner Bros. Bronze |
| Members | Mike McGear Roger McGough John Gorman |
The Scaffold are a comedy, poetry and music trio fromLiverpool, England, consisting of musical performerMike McGear (real name Peter Michael McCartney, the brother ofPaul McCartney), poetRoger McGough and comic entertainerJohn Gorman. They are perhaps most notable for their successful singles "Thank U Very Much" (1967) and the UK number 1 "Lily the Pink" (1968). Since initially disbanding in 1977, the group have occasionally re-formed for performances and projects.
The members of the Scaffold were originally part of a performing revue group known as The Liverpool One Fat Lady All Electric Show. ("One Fat Lady" is the bingo term for 8 and the performers mostly lived in the Liverpool 8 district.) McGough's fellowLiverpool poetAdrian Henri was also a founding member of this early configuration.
Working almost exclusively as a trio under the name The Scaffold from 1964, Gorman, McGear and McGough performed a mixture of comic songs, comedy sketches and the poetry of McGough (as evidenced on their 1968 live album), and they released a number of singles and albums onParlophone andEMI between 1966 and 1971, with several more onIsland,Warner Bros. andBronze thereafter.
"Lily the Pink" topped the UK charts in 1968. The group also composed and sang the theme tune to the popular BBC TV comedyThe Liver Birds, which aired from 1969–1978.
The group's more musical endeavours were usually augmented with contributions bysession musicians.Elton John,Jack Bruce andGraham Nash were among the session musicians who performed on The Scaffold's early records.[1]Tim Rice, who was at that time an assistant to their producerNorrie Paramor, also contributed backing vocals to some of their material. Additionally, although not officially credited as a permanent member of the group during its heyday, guitaristAndy Roberts was a frequent musical collaborator from as far back as 1962, acting as musical director and arranger in a live setting throughout their career and playing on a large number of their releases.
The Scaffold achievedTop 10 success in the UK with:[2]
In addition to thehit singles, The Scaffold's output included four albums:The Scaffold on Parlophone in 1968,L. the P. on Parlophone in 1969,Fresh Liver on Island in 1973, andSold Out on Warner Brothers in 1975. As a rule their early albums contained a higher ratio of live material and were less musically-driven than their singles, often focusing on McGough's poetry and Gorman and McGear's extended comic vignettes. Their debut album was an entirely live affair, and their second album featured a side of live tracks paired with a side of studio recordings.
The three members also recorded and toured extensively outside the confines of the original trio: In 1968, even before the release of The Scaffold's own debut album, McGough and McGear recorded an album without Gorman (the prosaically-titledMcGough and McGear) that featured rock-driven musical backing fromJimi Hendrix andMitch Mitchell among others, and in 1971 the trio joined forces with former members ofThe Bonzo Dog Band andThe Liverpool Scene to form the loose coalition of performers known asGrimms (an outfit that would go on to regularly tour the country and release three albums of its own during the early 1970s). McGear also found time to record two solo albums in 1972 and 1974.
The Scaffold's first greatest hits album, entitledSingles A's & B's, was released onSee for Miles Records in 1982. This was followed by a second greatest hits collection, the first on Compact Disc,The Scaffold: The Songs, in 1992. Three additional compilations of the band's Parlophone tracks have since been released (two of which also include the Warner Bros. "Liverpool Lou" track).
In 1970 The Scaffold starred in their own popular weekly BBC children's television series,Score with the Scaffold. The opening and closing theme tune was usually a shortened variation on their earlier single "2 Day's Monday". By this point the group had also recorded enough tracks for a new studio album, but apart from a few songs that found their way onto singles that year, much of this material remained unreleased until it was included on a 1998 compilation,The Scaffold at Abbey Road 1966-1971.
In early 1971 The Scaffold provided some catchy tunes for inclusion in a television publicity campaign heralding the introduction ofdecimal currency to the UK. In this series of informative five-minute programmes, titledDecimal Five and shown onBBC1, their songs included such relevant lyrics as "Give more, get change" and "Use your old coppers in sixpenny lots". In the same year, in order to broaden their musical palate further the trio and erstwhile collaborator Andy Roberts merged into the expanded line-up ofGrimms with performers such asNeil Innes,Vivian Stanshall andZoot Money, alongside McGough's fellow Liverpool poets Adrian Henri andBrian Patten. Innes and Stanshall can also be heard contributing to The Scaffold's final release for Parlophone,Do The Albert, which also featuredKeith Moon andLes Harvey. During the same period The Scaffold also recorded the darkly humorous theme tune to the British horror movieBurke And Hare, a version of which saw eventual release onThe Scaffold at Abbey Road 1966-1971 (both versions of the song feature a prominent backing vocal from Vivian Stanshall, suggesting that the session may feature the same lineup of musicians asDo The Albert).
In 1972, the group made a half hour musical movie entitledPlod based on an earlier stage production that centred around Gorman's long-running "P.C. Plod" character. The film was made on location in Liverpool, and included boys from the Liverpool Institute High School, earlier attended by the McCartney brothers and BeatleGeorge Harrison. The film was long thought lost but recently appeared on a DVD ofHow I Won The War featuringJohn Lennon. McGear also released his first solo album,Woman with some of the musical performers from Grimms, and Grimms as a unit continued with their exhaustive tours of the UK.
By early 1973 The Scaffold had transferred toIsland Records and releasedFresh Liver, their first full album of new material since 1969, and from which no singles were released (aside from "W.P.C Hodges" which was credited to Gorman as a solo artist). The new album again featured most of the musical performers from Grimms and as such, like the earlierMcGough And McGear album, it relied less heavily than usual on purely spoken-word material. The trio then concentrated on their work as part of Grimms, until the end of the year when McGear left that group after frayed tempers on another demanding UK tour led to an altercation with Brian Patten.
After recording his next solo albumMcGear and the 1974 success of the one-off Scaffold single "Liverpool Lou" recorded withPaul McCartney andWings (B-side "Ten Years After on Strawberry Jam", also featured a musical backing composed by Paul andLinda McCartney and performed by Wings), McGear reunited The Scaffold to tour and record their final album,Sold Out. Following the template set byFresh Liver of more music and less speech,Sold Out was released early in 1975 onWarner Bros. Records. After McGough and Gorman temporarily decamped to participate in the final Grimms LPSleepers in 1976 and Gorman released his solo album,Go Man Gorman, The Scaffold moved to theBronze Records label and continued touring and releasing singles through 1977. After that the group amicably disbanded (although there have been occasional reunions over the years, mostly for live performances).
After releasing a few more singles, McGear retired from the music business in the 1980s. Having proven himself artistically, he reverted to using his family name and has since carved out a career as a professional photographer and author. Gorman remained in the public eye through his regular appearances on such children's television programmes asTiswas throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. He continued to perform and record, and later moved into theatrical direction and production. Meanwhile, in 1978, McGough released his spoken-word solo albumSummer With Monika (based upon his celebrated poetry collection of the same name). Since then he has arguably maintained the highest-profile and most sustained post-Scaffold career, still appearing regularly as a vocal performer on British radio and television, and continuing to be a highly regarded poet and author.
A reunion occurred in 2008, to record a reworking ofThe Lightning Seeds' single "Three Lions", titled "3 Shirts on a Line", forLiverpool – The Number Ones Album, a compilation album commemorating Liverpool being theEuropean Capital of Culture. McCartney and Gorman represented The Scaffold in the Number One Concert in the 10,500-seaterEcho Arena, receiving a standing ovation from the capacity audience. In 2009, the classic lineup was reunited inRonnie Scott's London Jazz Club for a BBC TV programme, and in October 2010, they reconvened for a Gala Concert in Shanghai, to celebrate the end of the Liverpool Pavilion as part of theWorld Expo. They shared the concert with theRoyal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra,OMD and the Liverpool Chinese Children's Pagoda Orchestra.
In August 2013, McCartney and Gorman played to an international audience in theO2 as part of the Liverpool Music Festival. In October 2013 and 2014, the two played at the Heswall Arts Festival with musician and poet Keith Wilson, an occasional member of the line-up since 2008. The trio put on a concert to raise funds for the Nordic Church and Cultural Centre in Liverpool in October 2018.
McCartney and Gorman negotiated with promoters in Japan for appearances in Tokyo in 2015.[citation needed]
On 9 April 2020, the original members of the Scaffold released a re-worked version of "Thank U Very Much" in support of the BritishNational Health Service staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. They recorded the new vocals on their iPhones and these were then put on the original backing track, the master of which McCartney had found in his attic.[5]
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