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John Butler, of Diesel Park West:
'Round The Bend was the label name set up by a guy named Adrian Maloney, who from the late Sixties to the early Seventies was the bass player and co-writer with progressive rock band Spring. Spring came from here in Leicester but (by complete chance) became the resident band at Rockfield studios in Monmouth Wales. Their debut album is now a highly sought collector's item. The lead singer in Spring was Pat Moran (the both of them were childhood mates) and together formed a band around 1965 named The Sissy who became quite popular locally, eventually morphing into Spring.'
'Adrian was better known by his nickname 'Bone'. Ask anyone in Leicester or Wales about Bone … believe me, they will ALL know. He was a larger-than-life character for sure. After the Spring debut album, Bone was sacked by the muso mafia now running the band and he returned to Leicester where he set up an 'organization' dedicated to getting as many gigs as possible for aspiring young players or broken down ex-rockers. When I say 'gigs', however, I don't mean the standard rock gigs of the day, but gigs in social clubs or British Legions. The bands were thrown together on the day of the gig by Bone himself, and off they went to perform around the Midlands under millions of different names.'
'Me and Moth were part of this, as was Robin Pizer and Rick Gretsch from Family and Clapton's Blind Faith. Basically everyone in Leicester was part of this enterprise somehow, and it had two positive effects and one negative. The positives were that it gave people some money by playing music during a very grim economic period in Britain (77-87) and sometimes it even brought combinations together who were good. On the negative side it could make people lazy and dependent on just staying where they were and never finding the balls to move forward. Mainly, though, it was one big laugh and we all had a pretty good time.'
'Bone eventually formed Round The Bend as an outlet to put stuff out he would record at Rick's studio at Barkby Road. One track called 'Round The Island' actually got some airplay on Radio One so for a brief moment Bone thought he had scored. There were other releases like 'Help Me', which Bone had sort of manouvered Rick into singing.The Christmas song Moth did was voted one of the worst ever Christmas songs in a survey by the BBC, actually though it ain't a bad performance! It was all a product of Bone's fertile imagination, which he had until the end. Sadly, Bone died last September and just the other week his erstwhile buddy Pat Moran also passed away. They are probably rehearsing together right now, and Bone is probably in tune for the first time ...'
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