Sporting his greatcoat in the late 60s and early 70s, Ruts DC drummer David Ruffy was a teenage follower of Edgar Broughton Band. He tells Prog why they mattered so much.
“I recently passed the site of the old Marquee Club on Wardour Street in London. I used to be a regular in my teens and I saw Edgar Broughton there a few times. I also saw Led Zeppelin there when they were still The New Yardbirds.
I used to go out a lot then, and over at the Red Lion in Leytonstone I saw the original line-up of Yes, Quintessence, Mick Abrahams Band; and my old band, Emerge 1943, supported Quiver there.
Edgar Broughton was quite political – not overtly or party political, but he was quite outspoken – but he also liked Howlin’ Wolf and Captain Beefheart; and he could do it, so he did.
He famously did Apache Drop Out as a single. It was a Captain Beefheart song from Safe As Milk; and, being British, they said, ‘Let’s have a bit of The Shadows in it.’ Apparently, Hank Marvin turned up at the session, liked what they were doing and said, ‘If I’d have known you were doing this, I’d have lent you my echo unit.’ But the guy who wrote the song wouldn’t let them use the original title, Droupout Boogie, so it had to be Apache Drop Out.
They were like Hawkwind or The Pink Fairies in that they’d always be playing somewhere
I was one of those greatcoat-wearing teenagers and I saw them play twice in Hyde Park. They were like Hawkwind or The Pink Fairies in that they’d always be playing somewhere. Hawkwind used electronics but so did Edgar Broughton Band.
On their second album, Sing Brother Sing, they had a track called Psychopath, which was quite weird. And they had this gadget that went ‘beep-beep-parp-parp!’ that was really well-placed in the song.
They really resonated with me because I was a young working-class boy and they didn’t do the posing rock thing. And that attitude has stuck with me ever since. In The Ruts, we used to write the songs together, and the songs were in the folk tradition in as much as they were songs about real people that you could relate to. I think that’s what Edgar Broughton was doing.
People think punk started in the late 70s, but it didn’t; music was going well for a long time and it was ours before it went corporate, and Edgar Broughton Band were right in the thick of it.”
