Following hot on the tail of 2025’s Circle The Sun album by the reformed Atomic Rooster, this double CD, Friday The 13th: The BBC Sessions 1970-1981, features BBC performances by the various line-ups of the original band, including two complete BBC Radio 1 ‘In Concert’ appearances, as well as a few previously unreleased versions of some of their well-known pieces.
Unlike other keyboard-led bands of the time, such as Greenslade, Rare Bird and Fields, Rooster also used electric guitar to merge a gothic sensitivity with a more intense, sometimes much darker, sound. Vincent Crane decided not to include a bass player, performing the role himself on keys, much like Ray Manzarek in The Doors. Listen to ‘Sleeping For Years’ and you hear a prime example of this.
The Rooster were an integral part of the first wave of early-seventies prog bands, and it was somewhat surprising they didn’t become a bigger name, given the quality of their first few albums. Formed in 1969 by keyboard maestro Vincent Crane, someone criminally ignored in prog keyboard circles, they emerged from the wreckage of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, with Carl Palmer in the original line-up. He and Nick Graham leave after the first album in 1970, Palmer to help form ELP, and John Du Cann (guitar and vocals) and Paul Hammond (drums) join Rooster, evolving into what became, for many including this writer, the definitive Rooster line-up: the one who recorded their classic 1970 album Death Walks Behind You, ultimately their commercial peak. But while their first two albums were good, keyboard-fronted prog, and they even managed two top-twenty hit singles, after Chris Farlowe joins they begin to embrace a slightly funkier direction and their star wanes somewhat.
Disc one opens with five tracks from 1970 and 1971, on the Mike Harding radio show. In the current climate, it’s difficult to imagine a popular family entertainer allowing tracks like the blistering ‘Friday the 13th’, with Carl Palmer on drums, and a sinister-sounding ‘Death Walks Behind You’ being performed on their show.
After this, Du Cann and Hammond leave, Chris Farlowe (vocals), Ric Parnell (drums) and Steve Bolton (guitar, he’s in the 2026 Rooster) join the band, and there’s now a noticeable difference. Their two 1972 sets from Johnnie Walker’s radio programme see tracks like ‘Stand By Me’ and ‘Breakthrough’ played with Crane on more electric piano than the Hammond organ that helped define the Rooster sound, and it’s hard imagining the classic line-up performing something like ‘Close Your Eyes’. I would never denigrate Farlowe‘s vocal abilities but, following John Du Cann, his voice was entirely the wrong fit for the Rooster.
By November 1981, however, on the Friday Rock Show, the classic line-up is back together again, with Shug Mildridge on bass (he’s also in the 2026 Rooster), and the difference is night and day. Their powerful Hammond organ sound is back at the forefront and they perform sublime versions of ‘In The Shadows’, ‘Death Walks Behind You’ and hit single ‘Devil’s Answer’. This set sees the Rooster returning to their best form, and it’s a real pity Du Cann and Crane butted heads once again, which sees Du Cann leave.
Disc two begins with four tracks from the previously unreleased John Peel Sunday show, January 1971, with the classic line-up on top form and powering their way through Rooster classics like ‘Sleeping For Years’, ‘Vug’ and a slightly longer version of ‘Friday the 13th’. It was a bonus to hear Peel’s laconic tones introducing each song.
The remaining six tracks derive from Radio 1’s ‘In Concert’, July 1972, and it’s the Chris Farlowe line-up, though on this set Crane plays more Hammond organ and they perform solid versions of ‘People You Can’t Trust’, instrumentals ‘A Spoonful of Bromide’ and ‘All In Satan’s Name’, before a slightly longer and heavier version of ‘Devil’s Answer’, though I suggest Rooster would not have made the singles charts had Farlowe sung on the original version.
The tracks featuring the classic line-up show Rooster’s ‘live’ prowess at its best, and they’re worth the price of admission on their own. The tracks that feature Farlowe are mostly well performed, though not all of them are, but, while he can sing, his soulful voice was never right for fronting a band like Rooster.
Sadly, all members of the classic line-up are no longer with us. Vincent Crane took his own life, Paul Hammond is believed to have done the same, though accounts vary, and Du Cann died of a heart attack. But at their peak, when they leaned towards the slightly darker side of prog and were powered by Crane‘s Hammond organ, they were indeed a fine band, and deserved to have been much more successful.
