Rock and Roll Show

Zoo Freaks, settle in for a minute, because the Crew just dropped "Rock and Roll Show" by Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, off the album Lifeboat, and this one has a little backstage story that the radio never told you. The song was written by Gavin Sutherland, the younger of the two brothers, and it was cut at Island Studios in London with Muff Winwood producing. It was not on the original British Lifeboat from 1972. That first version was mostly the brothers with session players, and among the guests on those sessions were Steve Winwood and John "Rabbit" Bundrick. After the record was done, the brothers figured they needed a real working band if they were going to play the songs live and have a shot at America. Along came Quiver, the London rock group with Tim Renwick, Willie Wilson, Bruce Thomas and Cal Batchelor, and the two outfits joined up. The new lineup cut a handful of tracks for the North American Lifeboat that came out in 1973, and "Rock and Roll Show" was one of them, sitting alongside "(I Don't Want to Love You But) You Got Me Anyway," "Have You Had a Vision," and a cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." Same album also carried Gavin's "Sailing," the song Rod Stewart later took to number one in Britain. So when you hear this cut, you are hearing the moment the folk brothers turned into a road band.

The brothers got started a long way from Island Studios. Iain Sutherland was born in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, in 1948, and Gavin came along in Peterhead in 1951. Their father played violin and accordion in a local dance band called the Melody Makers and kept a stack of jazz records around the house, Stéphane Grappelli being a favorite. Most of the family before them had worked the fishing boats. Gavin got his first guitar on his tenth birthday in 1961 and fell for the Shadows, especially Hank Marvin. The first tune he learned was their instrumental "F.B.I." Years later he even met Hank through Bruce Welch. The brothers decided they were going to be musicians in 1964, on a family holiday on the Isle of Man, after they saw a poster for a beat-group competition that featured five bands from Liverpool. By 1968 they were recording as A New Generation, and their single "Smokie Blues Away" borrowed a melody from Dvořák's New World Symphony. They later signed to Island after Muff Winwood heard a demo, put out "The Pie" and "Sailing," and in late 1972 and early 1973 hooked up with Quiver. Their first gig under the combined name was at the Marquee in London. Iain passed in 2019. Gavin has kept writing and recording from up in the northeast of Scotland.

If you want to follow the trail, Gavin keeps a home base at gavinsutherland.net, posts as Gavin Sutherland Music on Facebook, and puts new records up on Bandcamp. There is not a clearly active official Instagram or X account for the brothers or the old band that we can point you to with a straight face. Fans keep the flame at the long-running site songsinger.info, run by Brian Mathieson, which holds the biography, the discography, tour dates and hard-to-find tracks, and there is a fan page called The Sutherland Brothers & Quiver on Facebook. That is the neighborhood. Back to the turntable.