When Camel Came Along With Phillip Goodhand-Tait
Before they became prog superstars, Camel auditioned to become Phillip Goodhand-Tait’s backing band and played on’ I Think I’ll Write a Song’.
Phillip Goodhand-Tait is one of those people whose name crops up in the gig ads that are found in early 1970s copies of the Melody Maker, where he can be found playing at clubs in and around the London area. He came originally from Yorkshire, but moved to Guildford in Surrey in 1957, which is where he started out playing in a band called Phill Tone and the Vibrants that was later renamed, in 1961, to Phill and the Stormsville Shakers.
By 1966, Phillip had a deal with Parlophone and recorded three long-forgotten singles. These came out under the name of the Stormsville Shakers, and then in 1969, they changed the name of the band to Circus and recorded a self-titled album for Transatlantic, but by this time Goodhand-Tait had left; Mel Collins who was later in King Crimson was in Circus.
And after having written some singles for Love Affair in 1969, Goodhand-Tait managed to get a recording contract with Decca, but it only lasted for one single release…it was a song that went nowhere. In 1971 he signed to DJM Records and recorded an album entitled, I Think I’ll Write A Song – there were high hopes for this singer-songwriter, but as one rather harsh critic described him, “He was the poor man’s Elton John.”
Meanwhile, guitarist Andrew Latimer, drummer Andy Ward, and bass player Doug Ferguson were calling themselves The Brew and gigging around the Guildford area. On February 20, 1971, they auditioned to become Phillip Goodhand-Tait’s backing band, and having got the gig, it was them that played on I Think I’ll Write a Song.
It was their first and last album with Goodhand-Tait. Shortly after it came out in August 1971, the trio recruited Peter Bardens and, after an initial gig to fulfill Bardens’s commitment in Belfast, Northern Ireland on October 8, 1971, they changed their name to Camel. As Camel, their first gig was at Waltham Forest Technical College, as the support band for Wishbone Ash in December 1971. And the rest is history…
