Pulling up the covers
The session back at Rockfield went really well and while people were overdubbing and putting down parts Cyril and I would finish off songs that weren’t quite ready. It was at this point that Cyril decided that rather than do the work on the new songs we should do a load of covers. George, James and I didn’t really care for that but Cyril, being the authoritarian figure he was, made it clear that if you didn’t like it there was always an alternative – leave. Even Dave Edmunds mentioned the covers. However, everyone, including Sire, loved what we were doing on the album but by this time Punk was starting to raise its head. That changed things although we still had the support of our label. Pride becomes a fall…

We went back home to the US in November ’75 and not a lot happened until the album came out in the summer of ’76 when we were asked to play this gig at the Roundhouse in London with The Ramones and The Stranglers as support. That summer was really hot so we were soaked in sweat – in fact it got so hot on stage that Cyril’s Copycat tape echo melted. Despite all that it was a great show and people went nuts. Make no mistake, The Ramones didn't blow us away despite what some people have said since.

Back to the studio
We then went off and played a few gigs in France and then headed back to the States – that must have been the middle of October ’76. We started negotiations to do another LP – we had a three LP deal – and we went back into Rockfield about June ’77. James had left the band by then. He’d got married and his focus had gone and I think he was just fed up. He started playing loud and sloppy and he kept calling me ‘kid’ and things like that and even Cyril said, "He’s not a kid man, he writes some of the songs." He also wanted to take his wife on the road and we had this standing rule that there were no partners on the road. First, we couldn’t afford it, and second, we were like a squad going into battle and camp followers just get in the way.

Mike Wilhelm [centre] joins The Flamin' Groovies

Cyril and myself just thought "who are we going to get?" and Cyril thought we kind of owed Mike for poaching me and he could certainly cover the songs – except for the singing – and I think he brought a lot to the band. He joined two or three months before we went into record Now and by that time we had most of the songs worked out.

The mood in the band was really good when the album was finished but we got no support from Sire, our label, when the album came out. We were supposed to do a tour, which got canned – that’s when everything went terribly pear-shaped. We went back to the States and had to leave our gear behind and while we were away the trucking company holding our stuff – all our guitars and amps – sold it to pay for an outstanding storage bill.

We were flabbergasted – unable to speak. We didn’t know what to do so we phoned Sire who called up Phonogram and the head of their legal department contacted the trucking company. About a week later I got a call saying it was all coming back because of a serious threat of legal action – their lawyer had conceded immediately – and everything was returned except for Cyril’s John Lennon Rickenbacker.

Stranded in Eden
We returned to the UK in the summer of ’78 and looked to go back to Rockfield. Unfortunately we couldn’t get it so Dave Edmunds suggested we use Eden Studios instead. We started to record Jumping in the Night and Dave turned up for the first session and then disappeared. We were told he couldn’t do it because Jake Riviera had said that anyone signed to Stiff couldn’t use their talents to promote or produce people who weren’t on his label.

We ran out of time in Eden and ran out of songs so Cyril asked me if I had anything and I said "Yeah, I’ve got Next One Crying" which we did at Trident Studios.

Continued... >

Greg Shaw talks about the chart failure of Shake Some Action. The following is an extract from an Internet posting from 2001.

"Cyril approached me, at the American office of UA, with the Rockfield and Capitol tapes. He convinced me to put out a single to give him leverage with labels. I thought Shake Some Action should be the single but he was holding it back. We released You Tore Me Down and believe it or not, through my industry connections, I was able to get more than a hundred commercial radio stations to play it.
   "On the strength of this I convinced Seymour Stein at Sire to do an album. He heard both versions of Shake Some Action [Rockfield and Capitol] and felt the Rockfield version should be on the album, along with the other Edmunds productions that were to be done.
   "The Capitol version remained in the can until Phillips, the UK label, picked it as a better choice for the debut single, for whatever reason. It was exactly the wrong thing to do in 1976 when the British public's taste was rapidly turning to rawer, more punk sounds. But at the time, who knew?
   "Up to the July 4, 1976 show at the Roundhouse, when the Ramones made their British debut supporting the "legendary" Groovies (only to completely steal the show), the Groovies' idea was to be an edgy pop band in the Beatles tradition – flashy clothes, rock star attitude and pop records.
   "As the tour proceeded, each support band – first the Damned, then the Vibrators – had full punk audience support, while the Groovies received only polite applause, except from their coterie of die-hard fans from the 1972 days. If the whole project had appeared in ‘73 or ‘74, as it could have if they'd stayed with UA in England, the trip might have worked given the complete vacuum of hipness in the world that year (save for the New York Dolls). In 1976, in the light of the exploding punk scene, it seemed ludicrous.
   "I go into this detail because I think it's the only way to explain why Shake Some Action failed to do much of anything. It did get a lot of FM airplay, and Sire did promote the album fairly heavily, but it wasn't what American radio wanted to hear. It didn't take off.
   "Shows with the Ramones and other punk bands completely stole the fire from Cyril's vision of a 60s-based pop phenomenon. In 1972 the Groovies had a real shot at being a commercial success.
   "Even in 1976, they made something of a dent, but by then, and from then on, they were relegated to cult band status. I think they could've stormed the charts in England had it been a year or two earlier, but we'll never know."