'Justice for Flaming Youth'

- from Melody Maker, November 1, 1969.

IT'S NOT often a new group or a new record comes along that sends me leafing through the dictionary for superlatives.

This time it's both. The group is Flaming Youth and the album is 'Ark 2', due for release by Philips - you may already have heard the single, 'Orion', from the LP. On paper, 'Ark 2' could have turned out to be a load of oretentious rubbish. It's a suite dealing with the escape from burning earth by the last space ship.

In fact it's superbly done. The lyrics are adult, bitingly witty and sophisticated. The tunes have both instant appeal and are memorable - a rare combination. The group are the most promising I have heard in a long while - "Flash" Gordon Smith (vcl, gtr, bass gtr), Brian Chatton (organ, pno, vcl), Ronnie Caryl (bass gtr, gtr, vcl) and Phil Collins (drs, percussion, vcl).

The group was originally formed as Hickory to back the Gladiators who were, as Phil puts it, "doing a Four Tops thing." They ended up backing John Walker but decided they wanted to go their own way. They were approached by the writers of "Ark 2" and spent 200 hours working on it, doing the arrangements themselves. The writers, incidentally, wish to remain anonymous because they feel their previous associations might harm the image of the record and the group.

Phil, a former Artful Dodger in the West End production of "Oliver", seems to have most to say in the group and explained to me what exactly their "thing" was. "We do some writing ourselves and play some of Flash's numbers," he told me. "But mainly we take other people's numbers apart and put them together again so you can hardly recognise them. We also attempt to play some jazz."

Flaming Youth are all good musicians. As organist Brian put it: "The audience got to the limit of the three-chord stuff. Now they won't listen if you can't play your instrument. And they really are willing to listen now. It took somebody like Eric Clapton to say: 'I'm going to play what I want to play' and it opened the way for everybody to be able to do their own things." "We also like to think we are an entertaining group," interposed Ronnie.

Flash, the group's resident cynic, feels their future must eventually lie abroad. "England is played out," he said. "They only go to a dance because there is nowhere else to go. Audiences on the Continent will really listen, they don't just go to drink. Flash, in fact, spent a long time on the Continent as a member of the Crawdads. Brian was formerly with a group called the Warriors and Phil and Ronnie with the Freehold.

If there's any justice they have a smash hit album on their hands.

- B.D.

Typed up by Thomas Holter, from GENESIS MAGAZINE No: 20, July 1981.