“You could never call us pretentious. We were a rock’n’roll band. A rock’n’roll band that liked to experiment”: The wild story of Family, the British hellraisers that John Lennon loved and Middle America hated

It was all about the music, man, and the vibes and the drugs and the parties and the chicks. I remember we’d sit in the house we shared, and Charlie would pick up a guitar, strum a few chords, and I’d write the lyrics and the melody, and then Jim King would come in and take it somewhere else. “I’m proud of the albums we did, but we always struggled to capture the real essence of the band, the way we sounded on stage,” says Chapman, who would whip the audience into a frenzy with his manic shape-throwing and trashing numerous tambourines against his mic stand.

Author: Lee Marlow

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