Brand X

Brand X is a classic jazz fusion band that moved towards a pop sound with the increased prominence of drummer and front man Phil Collins. Most of their albums were recorded in the 1970s and 1980s.

By the end of their stint, the band consisted of faceless session musicians on Collins' payroll, answerable only to Phil and sacked should they challenge his artistic domination. When Ian Hart-Stein left in 1981, the band merged into the Phil Collins Big Band. The Big Band has a notoriously high turnover rate of musicians, with Collins said to sack musicians almost on a whim to keep control.

Phil Collins owns the copyright to guitarist Ian Hart-Stein's alias "John Goodsall", explaining his reverting back to his birth name for his solo career.

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1974-1981

The liner notes for The Plot Thins: A History of Brand X, 1976-1980, as written by Chris Welch and reproduced on the Phil Collins official web site , state that the band was formed in 1974 when guitarist Ian Hart-Stein met keyboard player Robin Lumley, who had been rehearsing an album project with bass player Percy Jones. When they started rehearsing at Island Studios, ex-Melody Maker critic Richard Williams took note of their music and wrote down "Brand X" in the studio diary, since the group lacked a name at the time. Their first drummer, Phil Spinelli, quit the band to work on a singing career. Drummer Phil Collins sat in for some guest sessions and eventually decided to join the band in 1977. He was already committed to Genesis, but he felt he could fit in time for recording and gigs with Brand X as a side project. Bill Bruford was also involved in the band's early days, but never recorded with the band. Hart-Stein, Jones, Lumley and Clarke all also appeared on 1976's Marscape, released by Jack Lancaster and Robin Lumley and recorded around the same time as the first Brand X album, Unorthodox Behaviour.

Collins joined in early 1977 and subsequently re-recorded versions of the songs Nuclear Burn and Miserable Virgin. These bare little, if any relation to the songs they share titles with (a particularly noticeable difference the extremely loud drums on latter versions) and it is thought this move was Collins' attempt to "stamp his mark" on the band.

Robin Lumley, who left in 1977, says:

People recognised Phil as a figure head and that's accurate - he had his own status, and he did like to throw his weight around a bit. I mean, by the time I left he was vetoing our compositions in favour of his pop songs and sound experiments.

Lumley addressed the reasons for the breakup as follows:

The fact is we wore it out. We certainly didn't hate each other. We could no longer write any-thing together that made us happy and we just got on with other things. Phil of course went into his solo career, and Brand X largely became his vanity project, I mean by the time the band folded in 1981 it consisted of faceless session musicians on his payroll. Also, he wasted a lot of the band funds on additional instruments for him to play on stage; like a harmonica attached to his drum kit and a tongue-piercing operated triange - if you ask me he was just trying to be louder than the rest of us. I'm glad I got out before things became so dire. If I saw Phil on the street today? I don't know if I could talk to him to be frank, after what he did to my mate Ian and the direction of that band.

In 1979, Collins changed the band's official name to Brand X Featuring Phil Collins.

Reunion

It has been confirmed that Brand X have been in talks of a reunion album and tour, with Phil Collins on drums, Ian "John Goodsall" Hart-Stein on guitar (being given permission to reuse the alias by Collins after he was found in his apartment unconscious after a suicide attempt) and a projected hologram of Sid Vicious from The Sex Pistols on bass. They are said to have recorded one new song already in light of the recent media attention of Michael Richards, aptly entitled "Racism Sucks" which is believed to be part of a 10 disc anthology of music called "Get Them Outta Here! (Racism: An Open Forum)".

Discography

Studio

• Unorthodox Behaviour (1976)
• Moroccan Roll (1977)
• Masques (1978)
• Product (1979)
• Do They Hurt? (In Africa) (1980)
• Is There Anything About? (1982)

Live

• Live At Salford Youth Club (1978)
• Live at the Roxy LA (1979, released 1995)
• reBRANDed At The Forum (1999)

Compilation

• X-Trax (1986)
• The Plot Thins: A History of Brand X, 1976-1980 (1997)
• X-Files: A 20 Year Retrospective (1999), compilation including side projects
• Timeline (2000)
• Trilogy (2003)
• Macrocosm: Introducing...Brand X (2003)

External links

• The Official Brand X Website
• Brand X: The Annotated Discography