Family

Family came out of Leicester, in 1966.

Roger Chapman’s extraordinary vibrato vocal, Charlie Whitney’s guitar, and a cycle of bassists, fiddle players and keyboardists that changed with almost every album. Seven studio LPs between 1968 and 1973 — Music in a Doll’s House, Family Entertainment, A Song for Me, Anyway, Fearless, Bandstand, It’s Only A Movie — three top-ten records, five top-twenty singles, and a US debut so disastrous that Bill Graham personally pulled them off the Fillmore East stage.

They were never an easy band to file. Too prog for the rockers, too rock for the prog crowd, too literary for either — Chapman’s lyrics ran from kitchen-sink miniatures (Hometown, The Weaver’s Answer) to Bunyanesque tour-bus parables (Holding the Compass) to outright surrealism (The Chase). The instrumentation absorbed jazz, country, classical and music-hall in equal measure. Welsh writer Roy Hollingworth called Chapman’s vibrato “a cheese-grater”; Penny Valentine in Sounds credited him as the inventor of festival “idiot dancing.” John Peel booked Family for a long run of BBC Radio 1 sessions through 1968–1972, and famously summed up the live experience: “at concerts you were always grateful for a few bodies between yourself and Roger.”

The lineup carousel is half the story. Ric Grech left mid-1969 American tour for Blind Faith, replaced by ex-Animal John Weider; Jim King’s saxes and harmonica gave way to Poli Palmer’s vibes and EMS synthesisers in late 1969; Weider departed in 1971, replaced on bass by John Wetton for the Fearless / Bandstand peak; Wetton left for King Crimson in 1972, replaced by Jim Cregan; pianist Tony Ashton joined for the final ten months. Through it all, Chapman, Whitney and drummer Rob Townsend held the centre.

They split for good after a hometown Leicester Polytechnic show on 13 October 1973, ending the night with a Holiday Inn pool-party riot. Chapman and Whitney continued as Streetwalkers through the rest of the ’70s; Chapman’s German solo career, fronted by The Shortlist, stretched on for four more decades. We aim to present as much as we can dig up — gigs, sessions, press notices, lineup changes, photos, fan recollections — to build up a detailed history of the band over time. Corrections, additions, and shared memories are always welcome.