…Sacrifice remains a tremendously strong proto-heavy-prog album, and this anthology represents a fascinating insight into Black Widow’s brief career and the times they lived in.
When deciding what to put on the cover of this box set, Grapefruit didn’t shy away from highlighting the one thing Black Widow are best remembered for: their notorious stage show. It’s not every day a band enacts a satanic sacrifice of a naked virgin on stage, as Black Widow did at the climax of their shows. That behaviour would probably still cause a stir today, but back in prudish United Kingdom in 1970 it caused enough of a storm to make the national press. That notoriety has overshadowed the music of the band, and this wonderfully complete anthology might help make up for that. While all the music here has seen the light of day at some point in time, it is the first time it has all been brought together, allowing us to chart the rise and fall of the band. In addition to the three official Black Widow studio albums, this six-CD set includes the lineup’s first effort under the name Pesky Gee!, the first version of the debut album and the material for a fourth album (released relatively recently as Return to the Sabbat and Black Widow IV respectively), a full run-through of the debut album on German TV, and a live concert in Milan. So, let’s dive in and see if there was more to Black Widow than naked virgins….
The band originally formed in 1966 in Leicester as Pesky Gee! That rather obscure name was the title of an instrumental by a now forgotten group called Broodley Hoo. Pesky Gee! started off as a soul band and had a very stable seven-piece line-up of Kay Garrett (vocals), Kip Trevor (vocals, guitar), Bob Bond (bass), Gerry Taylor (organ), Clive Jobes (sax, flute), Clive Box (drums) and Chris Dredge on guitar. Jim Gannon replaced Dredge in 1969, just in time for their one and only album. In typical ‘60s style, it was recorded in four hours in the middle of the night. Clive Jones reminisces that they had to sneak out after the session which made him wonder whether they had actually paid for the studio time or not! In another typical ‘60s fiasco, they called up the record label, Pye, to remind them that the name was Pesky Gee with an explanation mark. That message got garbled and rather than having a self-titled album by Pesky Gee!, the outcome was an album by a band called Pesky Gee with the title of Exclamation Mark. Remarkable!
Exclamation Mark was an album almost totally of covers, very much in the psychedelic pop style of the time. There’s an eight-minute version of Donovon’s Season Of The Witch which meanders along pleasantly, highlighting Kay Garrett’s strong vocals and Gerry Taylor’s organ work. Garrett is also impressive vocally on Erma Franklin’s A Piece Of My Heart and the straight forward run through of Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild is given a bit of originality by the riff being played by both guitar and sax. The self-penned piece, Another Country, is probably the track of most interest since it gives hints to the future Black Widow direction. Its construction is rather clunky with the sax and guitar parts overlapping in a slightly chaotic way. There’s a nice Doors-sounding organ solo in the central section, but little to hint at the big step forward they were about to make.
Despite the occasionally interesting instrumentation and the neat dual-vocals, Exclamation Mark was a fairly ordinary piece of work and poor sales meant that they were dropped by Pye. It was time for Pesky Gee! to reinvent themselves and they did so quite dramatically. The idea came from drummer Clive Box. There had been an explosion of interest in all matters pertaining to the occult, from Hammer Horror movies to Denis Wheatley novels, and the gutter press loved to spout on about people like Aleister Crowley or Alex Sanders (a high priest of the neo-pagan Wiccan religion). And of course, in the musical world, Black Sabbath had already thrown their hat into the occult ring with their debut album lyrics. Box convinced his bandmates, and they decided to throw their hat into the occult ring. As we shall see, rather than a hat, it was more a case of throwing the hat, shirt, trousers and underwear into the ring as they adopted the occult theme in its entirety. And Pesky Gee! was not a name that would fit the bill, and so Black Widow was born.
Guitarist Jim Gannon set about writing new material with suitably satanic lyrics and a demo of the proposed album was put together. At that point, Kay Garrett left to get married and settle down. That was a loss, although easily fixed by Trevor taking over all the vocals, and the subsequent contract with CBS led to Black Widow’s debut album, entitled Sacrifice, to be released in 1970. While the occult themes might have led the uninitiated into expecting ponderous proto-metal music in the style of Black Sabbath (especially since the two bands shared the same management team briefly), Sacrifice proved to be something of a surprise. Despite being written by a guitarist, it is almost bereft of guitar riffs or lengthy guitar solos. Instead, the sax and keyboards tend to take the lead. The complexity and length of the compositions give a prog feel to the proceedings but there’s also a strong jazz-rock undercurrent reminiscent of Colosseum. Despite the dark turn of the lyrical content, the music curiously remained bright and cheerful.
A leitmotif of nearly all Black Widow albums was to open and close with the two longest pieces. In the case of Sacrifice, these also correspond to the two standout tracks. Opener, In Ancient Days, has an atmospheric organ intro before the rhythmic vocal section is enhanced by a sultry hook line on the sax. It’s a big step up from Pesky Gee! The eleven-minute closing title track opens and closes with an infectious fast boogie that to these ears sounds like a prototype of Uriah Heep’s Easy Livin’ (perhaps Ken Hensley deliberately or subconsciously shaped Easy Livin’ based on this track). The lengthy middle section gives room for Taylor on flute and Jones on organ to indulge in some soloing. It’s a very impressive piece and probably the best song the band wrote. Between those two major bookends are a further five tracks. Attack Of The Demon is the strongest of these to these ears with the anguished vocals of Trevor declaring ‘all of my sins have left me in hell’ being particularly striking. And then there is Come To The Sabbat, perhaps their most well-known song, and one that has been covered by quite a few bands. The opening flute over tribal drumming is certainly striking, and today would be described as Nordic dark folk music. The chanted chorus is memorable too although the upbeat verses sound more like a dance around the maypole from a Steeleye Span album than a dance with Satan! There really isn’t a bad track on Sacrifice, and it’s not surprising that it reached number 32 in the UK charts. Things looked very good indeed for Black Widow.
One of the fascinating aspects of this box set is that you can compare the released version of Sacrifice with the original demo version. The one evident difference is of course the presence of Kay Garrett’s voice, even if she was used more sparingly than I expected. The only track she takes the lead vocals on is Seduction, and it’s a song that certainly suits the female voice. The other track where she makes a difference is in Come To The Sabbat where the male/female vocal interchanges make more sense as they reflect the two characters in the story. Musically, the shorter songs are less developed while Sacrifice lacks a bit of drive, perhaps hampered by the mix. The one track that struck me as better was In Ancient Days, where the opening organ mood was a bit quieter and more mysterious, and the piece lengthier thanks to an impressive extended sax solo.
While Black Widow didn’t believe in the occult and only used the satanic lyrics as a gimmick, that didn’t stop them from going for broke with the occult imagery in the live set. This was choreographed by members of Leicester’s Phoenix Theatre Company, and the show climaxed with a young naked girl representing the female demon Astaroth, who after having simulated sex with Kip Trevor, was mock sacrificed. Not surprisingly, there was a reaction from the establishment, with Jones even recalling ‘Vicars would turn up at the shows, waving crosses and telling the crowds to beware of the evil dark magic of Black Widow’. The band’s management realised that this was ultimately counterproductive and suggested the band move away from the occult imagery, which they did, but only with blood on the floor – Box and Bond disagreed with abandoning what had made them known and they both left.
The 1971 follow-up was simply called Black Widow. It opens promisingly with Tears And Wine, something of a slow bluesy piece which includes a lengthy guitar solo. That heightened profile of Gannon’s guitar here and elsewhere is at the expense of the sax/flute and organ work, and the the end result is that as well as losing the lyrical impact of the occult, the originality in their music was diminished too. Black Widow sounds like run of the mill early ‘70s bluesy rock just as Exclamation Mark sounded like run of the mill late ‘60s psychedelic pop. There are some decent moments – the atmospheric Mary Clark and the startlingly punkish Wait Until Tomorrow, but there are some embarrassments too such as the horribly disjointed Gypsy.
Black Widow didn’t chart, and chief songwriter Jim Gannon jumped ship to be replaced by John Culley for 1972’s unimaginatively titled Black Widow III. In some ways, it represented a surprising return to form and despite some of the shorter material having a retro late ‘60s style, the sax, flute and organ are back to being prominent and there’s a strong prog feel to the longer tracks. The highlight is the opening three-part The Battle which has strong melodies, good contrast between louder and quieter sections, and an extraordinary finale with waves of Hammond chords leading to a big guitar solo (where Sulley shows he’s a cut above Gannon in the axeman competition). Also impressive are King Of Hearts and Old Man, the latter sounding influenced by early Barclay James Harvest. Overall, Black Widow III can’t match Sacrifice but there’s plenty of good material that is worth exploring.
Black Widow III didn’t chart either and the CBS contract concluded, and was not renewed. The band bravely ploughed on and recorded material for a potential fourth album. Five tracks were put down beginning with Sleighride, a rather poor reworking of Prokofiev’s Troika theme. Yes, that’s the one ELP made popular (with I Believe In Father Christmas). Amazingly, Black Widow manage to make that jubilant theme sound cheap and dull! In the other tracks there’s more focus on good melodic content and interest in the instrumental side. That results in the nice pastoral sound of More Than A Day – a good Black Widow song, but equally one that could have been written by Fairport Convention. The one surprise amidst the mediocrity is The Waves which has a fine melody and a stirring chorus underpinned by big Hammond chords. It’s up there with the best songs Black Widow have written. Sadly, that one outstanding song wasn’t enough – labels were no longer interested in Black Widow, and the demoes shelved until they finally saw the light of day as Black Widow IV, along with four shorter songs (also included here) that were demos recorded with new singer Rick E. These four short demos are not exciting, even if the reworking of another classical piece (Fauré’s Pavane) is enjoyable enough.
The live run through for German TV of Sacrifice gives an interesting glimpse of the band live. Most notable are the fifteen-minute version of In Ancient Days, which includes the long sax solo from the demo version recorded with Garrett, and an irresistible version of Sacrifice. The remaining tracks are less compelling and probably inferior to the studio versions. The live recording from the Teatro Lirico Milan in May 1971 is of frustratingly poor quality. You can certainly sense the energy of the band and enthusiasm of the audience too, but the recording quality makes this more one for diehard fans than those casually interested in the band.
It’s difficult to summarise Black Widow’s career. Each album is markedly different and, if you want to be cynical about it, they seemed to bounce (or be bounced) around trying to follow the latest trend in the chaotic and fast-changing musical period in which they lived. All of this is perfectly chronicled in the comprehensive 40-page booklet that accompanies the six CDs. While their musical output is of varied quality, Sacrifice remains a tremendously strong proto-heavy-prog album, and this anthology represents a fascinating insight into Black Widow’s brief career and the times they lived in.
