From Back to Front Noel (Drums and Vocals), Ian St. John (Bass and Backing Vocals), Jack Jones (Lead Guitar and Backing Vocals), KC (Lead Vocals and Rhythm Guitar)

The band started out of the ashes of a club band called Arena. The singer (Kieron Clark or KC), bass player (Ian St. John) and myself the drummer had mulled over with the idea of putting a tribute band together for some time, but to who to, we were unsure.

As you probably know there are a million and one Abba, Queen and Beatles tribute bands and although the later ones are two of my favourite bands, we were pretty sure the market didn’t require any more of them.

Kieron and I have been in bands together for over seven years and had always played ‘Air That I Breathe’ or ‘He Ain’t Heavy’ in virtually all the bands over the years. He’s a life long fan of The Hollies and sites Allan Clarke as one of his major influences. He put forward the idea of a Hollies tribute.

This idea was reinforced by an agent (soon to become manager) coming to one of Arena’s final gigs and heard us play ‘He Ain’t Heavy’ as the close to the first spot. After the gig he suggested that with our blend of voices a Hollies tribute band would be an excellent idea, as there didn’t seem to be any tributes to them, or at least we hadn’t heard of one.

I was unsure because, not knowing their back catalogue other than the obvious tunes, whether there would be enough material or even a market for such a band. Was this the reason there were no tributes to them doing the rounds?

How wrong could I have been! I soon came to realise that the one of the main reasons why there probably wasn’t a tribute band to them was because of how high Allan and especially Graham’s voices went within the songs. After lots of research, trawling the web and actually listening to the band I was surprised to find that, firstly they were still performing with new members and at the amount of hits the band had actually had. Being a fan of Harmony bands such as Queen and Sweet (Album Sweet is very close to Queen if only a little heavier), I soon became a massive fan of the band and wish I had seen them with Allan still fronting them.

We soon found a guitarist (Jack Jones) and started rehearsals January 2002. This proved quite a task at points, firstly because of the old mono recordings of the band, trying to decipher what was actually going on and then re-arranging the complex harmony arrangements within our vocal ranges.

All of the songs we play with the exception of ‘He Ain’t Heavy’ are in the same key as their original. We use a little technology for the orchestrations on the ballads and a little percussion here and there, but other than that, we are a live band with no help from vocal effects or ghost voices unlike some tribute bands I’ve seen.

Our first gig was supporting the Queen tribute QEII at Bedworth Civic Hall in front of 750 people in April 2002 and since then we’ve slowly been building the bands reputation with lots of sell out gigs around predominantly the midlands area. Although we recently played Allan’s hometown of Salford at the Hard Rock Casino.

Current set list :- 1) Just One Look 2) Yes I Will 3) Bus Stop 4) Carousel 5) Air That I Breathe 6) If I Needed Someone 7) Carrie Anne 8) Gasoline Alley Bred 9) Sorry Suzanne 10) I Can’t Let Go 11) We’re Through 12) Stop In The Name Of Love 13) Jennifer Eccles 14) Stop Stop Stop 15) Look Through Any Window 16) Listen To Me 17) Here I Go Again 18) I’m Alive 19) Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress Encore 20) He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother 21) Stay

We are currently recording a CD for a number of agents that require a demo of the band for more work in this country and in Europe and possibly Asia.

Noel   (Drums and Vocals)

Just One Look