Harsh Reality
Release information
Band: HARSH REALITY
Title: HEAVEN AND HELL
Label/Cat. No.: Esoteric ECLEC 2290
Release date: 26th September 2011
Track listing:
1. WHEN I MOVE
2. TOBACCO ASH SUNDAY
3. MARY ROBERTA (PART ONE)
4. PRAYING FOR REPRIEVE
5. HOW DO YOU FEEL
6. HEAVEN AND HELL
7. SOMEONE’S CHANGING
8. QUICKENUT/DEVIL’S DAUGHTER
9. MARY ROBERTA (PART TWO)
10. MELANCOLY LADY
11. DON’T SHOOT ME DOWN
12. GIRL OF MY DREAMS
13. MARY ROBERTA (PART THREE)
Bonus tracks:
14. TOBACCO ASH SUNDAY (mono single)
15. HOW DO YOU FEEL (mono single)
16. HEAVEN AND HELL (mono single)
17. PRAYING FOR REPRIEVE (mono single)
Harsh Reality’s most famous song is the evocatively-titled ‘Tobacco Ash Sunday’, an organ-led power ballad that wasn’t a million miles, it must be said, from ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’ (except it hasn’t since suffered from an interminable number of radio plays – quite the opposite, in fact). In recent times, that arbiter of taste and renowned fan of late 60s Britrock, Paul Weller, covered the song as part of a live TV session. ‘Tobacco Ash Sunday’, which was issued as Harsh Reality’s debut single on Philips in October 1968, was actually written by a West London teenager named Terry Stamp (no relation to The Who’s manager).
Terry later (ahem) stamped his authority on the rock scene with cult band Third World War before issuing a solo album Fatsticks for A&M and then emigrating in 1976 to America’s West Coast, where he lives to this day. Back then, he was one of those many budding musicians, scratching a living via gigs and hustling songs were he could. Harsh Reality’s recording of ‘Tobacco Ash Sunday’ and, subsequently, ‘Heaven And Hell’ (another of his songs) was as much a mystery to the writer as anyone else, though the conduit was Terry’s publisher, Schroeder Music of Berkeley Street, London.
Terry’s back story reads like an ‘everyman’ tale of the jobbing 60s musician – having served time as bassist with the Mike Rabin Band. “I lived in Twickenham in the sixties and had a great run playing bass in the resident band at the Wimbledon Palais from 1962 through to mid-1967, when the Palais closed,” he recalls. Without a steady income to pay the rent, Terry turned his hand to songwriting – and one of his first songs was ‘Tobacco Ash Sunday’, inspired by Terry’s surroundings.
“I was struck by the contrast of being inside the Wimbledon Palais and the surroundings outside in Merton High Street,” explains Terry. “Inside was like an oasis in a pretty dismal area of London, streets of Victorian row houses and ramshackle small factories that seemed to have been there for a thousand years. Inside was like another world – warm, fun and it glittered. It was alive – and I was alive with it. Outside was dark, cold, wet, foggy, a shock to my system before puttering home in my '58 Morris Minor. So that’s the vision I had in my head when I was putting ‘Tobacco Ash Sunday’ together: ‘the paper mill’, ‘the concrete sea’, ‘the old brick walls’, ‘the post box dial’ and a serious shot of sunlight setting the ‘waiting watcher’ free. I had never heard ‘Tobacco Ash Sunday’ used as a phase, the title just came to me.”
The youngster then got a lucky break. “I recorded a demo of it at a local Twickenham home demo studio, Manor Road,” continues Stamp. “The guy who ran the studio also had a day job with EMI, which took him to music publishers in the West End. He had a demo of ‘Tobacco Ash Sunday’ and played it to whoever would listen. That brought me to the attention of John Fenton, the manager at Schroeder. He had a group of songwriters and musicians under his wing called The Writers’ Workshop, where the idea was to write hit songs for pop stars to record. John Fenton quit sometime in 1968, leaving me marooned there, as he had signed me to a five-year songwriting contract!”
In due course, however, some of Terry’s songs were picked up. “I never really had any communication with Schroeder,” he admits. “I never knew that Harsh Reality had an album out in 1969, though I do recall hearing acetates of my two songs recorded by them up at the Schroeder office, when they asked me to come in and sign song contracts.” Speaking of which, ‘Tobacco Ash Sunday’ was officially published on August 7, 1967, while ‘Heaven And Hell’ was made public on September 13, 1968.
“After I came up with another song ‘All The Best Songs And Marches’,” Terry continues, “which was getting multiple artists recording it, Schroeder put me on a small retainer/contract each week to write songs for them. One of those songs was ‘Heaven and Hell’, which I just cranked out. The situation was OK at first, but I soon realised this different form of songwriting became a drag, just pulling songs out of the air, rather than savouring the whole process as a place to escape to, enjoy and mull over.” (The Writer’s Workshop also played host to the likes of Kris Ife, Mick Wayne of Junior’s Eyes and Jerry Donahue, among others, but that’s another story…).
According to Terry, Harsh Reality omitted to include one particular line from his demo – although the writer is still a huge admirer of their rendition. “Man, how strong that version is, just killer, great vocal/organ, and I loved the way the drummer worked his drums in the bridge. But I always wondered why they left out the part, ‘Somewhere out across your lonely sea, there's a girl waiting for me’. It does round off the lyrical content, anyway – that's how I knew Paul Weller had covered the old Harsh Reality 45 because he left it out too!”
