Malcolm Harker (Ex Indian Summer) - Musical Adventures in Coventry and Teesside.

 Malcolm Harker (Ex Indian Summer) - Musical Adventures in Coventry and Teesside.

Interviewed by Pete Clemons.

Coventry progressive band Indian Summer in 1971 Coventry

L to R Colin Williams, Malc Harker, Paul Hooper, Bob Jackson.

Pete Clemons has a full article on Indian Summer on this site Here

Those in Coventry in the late 60's and early 70's may remember Malc Harker as the bass player of Coventry's top progressive band Indian Summer - who's first (and still highly rated) album appeared on the RCA Neon label. Those on Teesside may remember him as the head of the family firm Harkers Engineering based in Stockton on Tees and for his musical involvements in that area. Pete Clemons put a number of questions to Malcolm and this is his reply - 

One Thing at a Time: 

  

"Well, I left Kentucky back in '49 and got a job on a Detroit assembly line

The first year they had me putting wheels on Cadillacs"

But wait! - that’s Johnny’s story.

Mine involved a different car town, Coventry, and a different assembly line - Webster and

Bennett just off the Foleshill Rd - where I started a machine tool apprenticeship in ’65.

"The first year they had me putting oil pipes on turret slides."

I’d joined a band at boarding school - The Ghosts, who started with Shadows tunes, but then got caught up in Beatle mania. My first Cov. band was Willie’s Cult, but when Willie’s buddy Rod Godwin of The Mighty Avengers joined, I was out. Somehow or other I met a great singer, Tim James and organist, Pete Wright and we formed The Perfumed Garden. Pete’s friend Bob Jackson would come to gigs and sneak onto the organ between sets. We even managed to open for Cream at the Lanch.

The onset of psychedelia, plus the departure of Tim & Pete led to The Acme Patent Electric Band, with young Bob on bass. But one day I fell asleep at the wheel, wrote off the van, and the Patent expired.

Drumming for Imagination (who lacked it) followed, then playing bass for Ultra Sound (later “re branded” as Uncle Sam, who supported The Move, The Small Faces (on the way down) and Fleetwood mac (on the way way up).

Bob had formed Indian Summer by then, with Paul Hooper who lived just up the road from me

Roy Butterfield on the left.

in Earlsdon, where another local guitarist could be heard endlessly practicing Purple Haze in his flat on the High Street. Indian Summer’s first guitarist was the legendary Roy Butterfield, who had once swapped his Telecaster for my school wood-shop-made 12 string, before realizing his mistake. The next time I saw Roy he was rehearsing with Indian Summer, playing his own home-made guitar - with knife-edge frets protruding from the neck. But Roy was never one for the spotlight, so when Indian Summer started to get gigs and a following, he left for London and a brief gig with The Tom Robinson Band - until success intervened. (Tom will make another brief appearance later).

One of Roy Butterfield's composition with Tom Robinson

Then I hatched myself a plan, that would be the envy of any man....

Danny and the Heartthrobs was based on Zappa’s Reuben and the Jets, about an old-time rock & roll band who awake from hibernation unaware that it’s no longer the late ‘50’s. Danny was Paul, Ultra/Sam’s singing drummer. We had a real boogie piano player, Cliff Cowling, plus a brass section (including Tim James on lip-synch alto), bass, two drummers (me & the Other Guy) and a great blues guitarist who had just joined Indian Summer - Steve Cotterill. Steve was left-handed and temporarily between guitars, so I loaned him my right-handed Gibson 330. Steve re-strung it, put a sock in it to stop the feedback - and learned Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock guitar solo note-for-note. We only ever played 2 gigs - both at the Lanch. The first was the last in the upstairs refectory, as the audience cracked the foundation walls. The second was in the main hall, supporting Free, Yes and Mott the Hoople. We went on last - and on and on - until the plug was literally pulled. We also had a last-minute addition to the line-up: The Throbettes - Bob & Paul from Indian Summer in drag.

"Of course gettin’ caught meant gettin’ fired, but I figured I’d have it all before I retired..."

By the end of ‘69 I was ready for a different assembly line, back up north with the family engineering business on Teesside - the reason I’d been sent to Coventry to become an Engineer like three generations of Harkers before me. 

However.....

Indian Summer had a chance of a record deal, but they needed a new bass player to join their new guitarist, Colin Williams - the Earlsdon Purple Haze player. So I agreed to help out for a few months. To help pay the bills, I got a job on another assembly line, at Frazer Nash in Berkswell.

The first week they had me rebuilding water pumps.

When Jim Simpson said he’d got us a deal we didn’t know whether to accept it. So Bob suggested “let’s ask Ozzie”. Ozzie Osborne (for it was indeed him) has no doubt given all sorts of folks a wide variety of advice, but his warning for us was to the point and straight out of Peaky Blinders: “Don’t sign with Simpson. We did and got fuck all - but he gorra a new fridge” But we did sign with Jim - then the next day, we got a better offer from Chrysalis. But the die was cast and studio time booked to meet the launch date for RCA’s new Prog Rock label, Neon, so we all piled into the rented van and headed for Trident Studios in Soho. George Harrison had the studio booked during the day, so we got the night shift. There was no accommodation budget, so Bob, Paul & Colin slept in the van while I stayed with Margaret Diamond, an actress and former lodger at 54 Spencer Avenue, where I’d lived and met all sorts of theatrical and other fascinating folks over the previous 4 years.

There’s a blue plaque on the wall where Trident Studios was, listing all the stars who recorded there: various Beatles, Bowie, Elton John, Genesis, Black Sabbath - but Indian Summer is inexplicably missing.

There’s no plaque on 54 Spencer Ave, CV5 6NP, but it’s still next door to 52, where our landlady, Mrs Kohler, lived and looked after me and many others for so many years.

Finally it was time for the great grandson head home to Teesside and join Harker and Sons (Engineers) Ltd. But I took my guitars, Brum-built Laney amp. and love of music with me. My father Fred had built Harkers into a successful business while I was trying to avoid growing up - a far cry from the struggles of FT, Harry, Jack & my grandfather Hubert who started building steam engines in 1876. But running a business is never easy and I finally started to learn what hard work really was.

Music had to take a back seat - but it was still playing. Haywire was the first Teesside band I joined, playing acoustic folk-rock at venues such as “The Kirk” and The Lion Inn, Blakey Ridge (home of Back Door). One day I saw an advert “Cycle needs a bass player” - so I went along.

See their website here 

https://www.chisholm.nl/cycle/cycle.html

 There were only 2 applicants and neither of us knew of Cycle’s reputation, as I’d just returned to the area and the other guy had just got out of prison. My Prog Rock credentials (plus not being stoned) got me the job, provided I bought Ronnie’s Marshall bass amp as my weedy WEM wasn’t man enough - and wasn’t big enough to cover the hole in the van floor where the rain came in. Cycle were loud - very loud - and good too. Despite all the Newcastle Brown Ale consumed at the pit village working men's clubs we mostly played, we were always on time and in tune (so far as I can remember). The regular encore - Twist and Shout - sung by a couple of hundred drunken coal miners (and their daughters), was something to hear - even from the next village. One of the coal miner’s daughters was Barbara Cook, from Newbiggin, just north of Newcastle. Paul of Indian Summer and Barbara have now been together for over 20 years. My father retired in 1975 and I took over the business, leaving little or no time for regular gigs, so I had to leave Cycle. By then I’d built a recording studio in a barn adjoining our house, Chisel Hill Mill in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, so music was still part of my life, as other bands came to record, including The Beautiful Losers (Melody Maker Band of the Year, 1975) and Chris Rea, who recorded a number of his early demos at Chisel Hill Mill (including Chisel Hill, from On the Beach). I still have the Roland Cube amp he sold me when he was broke.

The major business challenge in the ’60’s and 70’s was to find skilled machinists to do the work. In the 1980’s that changed to the lack of work as the local steel and heavy engineering industries shrank - as happened in Coventry with the car industry. Good fortune and more hard work helped Harkers Engineering managed to find new markets, including offshore oil, aerospace and exports. In 1987 Margaret Thatcher and Prince Charles visited Harkers (on separate occasions), we got a Queens Award for Exports and I got an MBE. Then, in 1990, my American wife Sarah and I got on our bikes and headed for the West Coast of America and Sarah’s home town of Seattle.

It turns out that you’ll meet folks from Teesside all over the world: Paul Rodgers of Free & Bad Company is from South Bank and now lives just over the border from us in Vancouver, Canada (I’ve never met Paul, but my good friend and demon drummer, the late lamented Norman Nosebait was in Paul’s first band, the Roadrunners); Dave Coverdale of Whitesnake lives in Reno, Nevada (I never met Dave either, but Nosebait was the drummer in Coverdale’s first band, Government); Chris Rea married a Stainsby (Middlesbrough) Girl and still lives in the England - but in bucolic Berkshire (I have met Chris - Nosebait was his drummer too!). The one thing these three local heroes have in common is the voice: a combination of soul and steel, just like their blues heroes from the south side of Chicago. Teesside and the South Side have another thing in common: they don’t make steel there anymore - just like they no longer build cars in Coventry, where Bob, Col and my Indian Summer successor Wes Pryce all worked on the assembly line.

The first year they had me putting wheels on Hillman Hunters.

Tom’s Encore:

Teesside Polytechnic was our local Lanch. equivalent and I was asked to join the Board of Governors. Having learned a bit about Harkers Engineering’s history, they realized that the credit largely belonged to my father, Fred, who had left school at 16, worked in India during the war, then finally created a business who’s success reflected the hard work involved. So they decided to award him an Honorary Degree of Master of Engineering. The award followed the annual graduation ceremony, with fellow honourees including Tom Robinson - local lad from Stokesley, pop star, broadcaster and gay rights campaigner. A splendid formal dinner followed in the evening, with after-dinner entertainment provide by Tom Robinson, MA. Tom of course saved his greatest hit for last and instructed all of the assembled guests and local nobility in our tuxedos to join in the chorus:

Sing if you're glad to be gay

Sing if you're happy that way

(Hey!) Sing if you're glad to be gay

Sing if you're happy that way

And we all did as instructed.

Just like Johnny said:

I built it one piece at a time and it didn’t cost me a dime

You’ll seem me when I come to your town,

Gonna ride around in style, gonna drive everybody wild,

‘cos it’ll be the only one there is around.

Malcolm Harker

Seattle, USA



March 2021

Malcolm adds 'Here’s what I’m re-building now: the former Sunderland Fireboat, 'The Fire King'. Harkers built the original steam engines. I had it shipped here from Teesside and have sailed it all the way from Seattle to Alaska and around the outside of Vancouver island'.

Editor's Notes: - 

To read more about Danny and the Heart-Throbs - read Pete Clemons article on their appearance as part of the Lanchester Poly Arts Festival in Coventry here 

Malc's mention of Tom Robinson is interesting - former Indian Summer guitarist Roy Butterfield also wrote or co-wrote for Tom's band - Right on Sister and Up Against the Wall, at least.

Some tracks from Indian Summer 1971 with Malc Harker on bass - 

From the Film of the Same Name (Instrumental)

Half Changed Again

Another Tree Will Grow

Below -  Tim James with his band Ra Ho Tep playing the ruins of Coventry Cathedral

Indian Summer signing the deal with Jim Simpson

Webster and Bennett where Malc Harker did his Coventry apprentice. 

Below Malc Harker In Stockton on Tees (with pics from the https://picturestocktonarchive.com/ ) 

Malc Harker on the left with his workforce.

Below - The Black Lion Blakey Ridge, North York Moors.

Below Chisel Hill Mill up at Chop Gate on the North Yorkshire Moors.

Chisel Hill by Chris Rea

Chris Rea wrote "We'd reached the point where we'd bought a house, I had a child, we were happy. We'd kept the wolf from the door and things were okay. I was in this place called Chisel Hill, which is in the Yorkshire Dales near a place called Whitby, and I remember being happy that day and wrote that song all in one quick go, like you do sometimes. And now when I listen to the lyrics it can be very, very emotional because we all get caught up in life and yet, whoever wrote that song back then, he must have been a really happy guy. Yeah, that song gets me."