Evil Woman

The Zoo Crew has got a long one on the turntable for the Zoo Freaks tonight, and it is the kind of record that does not ask permission. Spooky Tooth, "Evil Woman," off the 1969 album Spooky Two, running somewhere around nine minutes if the needle stays honest. You can hear the whole thing, and a lot more deep album rock besides, over at THE ZOO. This is not the Electric Light Orchestra tune with the same title, and it is not the Crow song that Black Sabbath cut as their first single. Different writers, different rooms, different trouble. Larry Weiss wrote this one. The same Larry Weiss who later handed Glen Campbell "Rhinestone Cowboy," and who had already had a hand in "Bend Me, Shape Me" and Jeff Beck's "Hi Ho Silver Lining." Guy Darrell put a version out in 1967. Lou Rawls had a soul cut of it in 1968. The Troggs and Canned Heat took a swing too. Spooky Tooth heard the bones of it and decided a three-minute complaint was not nearly enough.

Jimmy Miller produced Spooky Two at Morgan Studios in London, the same Jimmy Miller who had been behind the glass for Traffic and was about to spend a long season with the Rolling Stones. The band stretched Weiss's song past the nine-minute mark, side one closer, sheets of Hammond, Luther Grosvenor's guitar coming in twice like somebody had kicked the door, Greg Ridley on bass, Mike Kellie beating the kit as if the floor owed him money. Mike Harrison and Gary Wright trade the vocal. Harrison comes out of Carlisle with that rough northern holler. Wright answers in a falsetto that does not sound polite. One old write-up of the album said the two of them make you want to call the fire brigade or a psychiatrist, or just laugh, because the thing is that far over the line. After enough trips through the word "woman," barked and screeched and half-sung, the side ends. The accusations do not.

Spooky Two landed in Britain in March 1969 and in North America that August, Island at home, A&M over here. It did not set the British charts on fire. In the States it got to number 44. Canada saw it at 48. Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums later parked it at number 42 on a list of long-forgotten gems, which is a polite way of saying the people who found it never put it down. The rest of the record is no afterthought. "Waitin' for the Wind" bucks like a meaner Procol Harum. "Feelin' Bad" has Joe Cocker sitting in, a man the band had pointed Chris Blackwell toward after meeting him on an old Merseybeat tour. Steve Winwood turns up on "I've Got Enough Heartaches." "Better by You, Better than Me" is the other song from this album that walked out into the world on its own, later cut by Judas Priest. Wright has said the recordings peaked right here, on the second album, and then the band got sidetracked.

The sidetrack is its own story, and the boys have told it more than once. After Spooky Two, Island put them on a project with the French electronic composer Pierre Henry. Ceremony came out under the Spooky Tooth name. Wright's version of the argument is plain. They told the label it was Henry's album, that they were only playing on it like session men. When it was finished the label said it was great and they were releasing it as the next Spooky Tooth record. The band said that had nothing to do with the direction of Spooky Two and it would ruin their career. Wright's line after that is short. That is exactly what happened. Harrison later said Blackwell came up to him and called it the biggest mistake he ever made, and that the mess is what split the band. Kellie never could say why the hits did not come. The talent was sitting in the room. The timing was not.

How they got in that room is a Carlisle story that took the long way through London. In 1963 Mike Harrison and Greg Ridley were in the V.I.P.s, a driving R&B outfit out of Cumberland. A few singles on RCA and CBS did not do much at home. They were a draw in France and Germany. Island's Guy Stevens liked them. The lineup shifted. Luther Grosvenor came in on guitar. Mike Kellie took the drum stool. For a short spell they even had Keith Emerson on keyboards, before he went off to the Nice and then Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Stevens had them change the name to Art. They cut Supernatural Fairy Tales, psychedelic pop with phasing and Summer of Love manners, and a cover of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" as a single. Album and single stiffed. None of them were natural songwriters yet, and Blackwell knew it.

Gary Wright was the fix, and he was not what the English boys had ordered. Wright was born in Cresskill, New Jersey, in 1943, a child actor who had been on Broadway in Fanny, then a student who went after medicine and psychology in New York and Berlin before the music won. He was gigging through Europe with an R&B combo called the New York Times, sometimes billed the New York Tymes. They opened for Traffic in Oslo. Chris Blackwell was in the building. Jimmy Miller, an old friend of Wright's from New Jersey, was already producing for Island. Blackwell walked Wright into the Island offices on Oxford Street and introduced him to what was left of Art. Grosvenor has told the story without polishing it. They all said they did not want any Yank in the band, this was an English set-up. Blackwell said they were at the end of the line with Art, and otherwise they would be out of a job. Kellie remembered the same afternoon as the last chance saloon. They rehearsed. It clicked. October 1967, Spooky Tooth. Wright on organ and vocals, Harrison still out front, Grosvenor, Ridley, Kellie. Miller produced the debut, It's All About, in 1968. Spooky Two was the one that showed what the pairing could do.

The road out of that lineup is familiar if you have been living with British rock for a while. Ridley left for Humble Pie. Grosvenor later turned up in Mott the Hoople under the name Ariel Bender, after a stretch with Stealers Wheel. Kellie ended up with the Only Ones. When Wright and Harrison put the name back together in 1972, the guitar chair went to Mick Jones, who would form Foreigner a few years on. Wright's own path went through George Harrison's sessions, a trip to India, and the synthesizer records that gave him "Dream Weaver" and "Love Is Alive." He never talked about Spooky Two like a footnote. The reunions came and went, Germany in 2004, a European run in 2008, the Island fiftieth at Shepherd's Bush. Ridley, Kellie, Harrison, and Wright are all gone now. The records are not.

The old official site, spookytooth.co.uk, does not answer anymore, so there is no working band homepage, and no official Facebook, Instagram, or X account for Spooky Tooth that a browser can open and trust. What is still standing is the fan gathering Spooky Tooth Fans & Friends, where the folks who remember the V.I.P.s, Art, and the Tooth keep photographs and clippings moving, including old press on Spooky Two. That is the right door if you want the stories from people who were in the room, or wish they had been. Until then the Crew will keep spinning the long cut. Nine minutes of Hammond, two voices, and a woman the song never forgives. Turn it up. The liner notes on other Miller records already told you what to do if you do not agree with the recommended level.