In the beginning there was .....  Dr Feelgood!

Eddie And The Hot Rods burst out of Canvey Island in 1975 following in the footsteps of local pub rock heroes Dr Feelgood. It was this back to basics approach that forged the band. Following various early members dropping out of the band they numbered ex-boxer and vocalist Barry Masters, harp specialist Lew Lewis, guitarist Dave Higgs (ex Dr Feelgood roadie and player in Southend's the Fix), 15 year old schoolboy bass player Paul Gray and drummer Steve Nicol.

Graeme Douglas: Dave Higgs originally called the band Eddie and the Hot Rods as a hotter/more speedy name than the name borrowed from one in which I was a part time member before the Kursaal Flyers ie Eddie and the Blizzards. The funny thing is that I originally intended to call that band Slim and the Lizards, but the other guitarist (Barrie Martin – the Hamsters) forgot what I told him and vaguely remembered something and the somethings.
 

The tried and trusted approach to gigs - working mens clubs and obscure pubs where the pool tables got more attention honed the bands act.

Barrie. It makes you work 'arder to try to draw the audiences attention. We'd get so frustrated from being ignored, that we ended up pushing the P.A over an stuff... that kind of thing actually got them to respond, you know. Zigzag 60 1976

Also part of the act was their 'additional' member Eddie who was later dropped.

Barrie. We made this 6'6" guy with a trilby hat, pin stripe suit and shades- and we'd 'ang 'im up on a sort of budgerigar cage stand/ mike stand at the back of the stage where it was all dark...I'd go and talk to 'im during the set, and the punters thou. At the end of the act, we'd wrench 'im to the ground and beat 'im up. We used to call him Eddie - which is where our name came from. Zigzag 60 1976

One very important member they also picked up following his attendance at a club the band had started was  Ed Hollis a DJ from Southend and friend of Higgs who became the manager who not only penned lyrics for the band but also turned them onto harder acts like the Stooges and MC5 which obviously influenced their sound.

If a comparison has to be made...then it probably shouldn't be with the Stones or the Feelgoods, who are the most obvious choices, but with the unutterably magnificent MC5. Not that the Rods have the same political cross that the Five were forced to bear, but they play a similar brand of of short and sharp teen anthems, that comes from the heart and the gut, rather than the intellect....Manager Ed Hollis reckons that when the Rods do get around to doing an album, they'll be aiming for the sort of feel  that the MC5 got on 'Back In The USA'. Paul Kendall Zigzag May 1976

Years later the ever acerbic journalist Tony Parsons would refer to the relationship of the band to Hollis in the NME as

Conservative, fascist puppets of a megalomaniac Canvey Island Kim Fowley

Hollis would also come to produce their records. However we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Courtesy of the Feelgoods they got a gig in London which secured their place on the London gig circuit. Eddie & The Hot Rods quickly developed an enviable reputation as a live act that provided a combination of 60s style garage r’n’b action and thrills, harking back to the early Rolling Stones gigs at the Railway Hotel in Richmond, but with a more energised and grandstanding flavour (their elongated version of Them‘s “Gloria“ was the climax to their set, though it seems contemporaries the 101ers may have pioneered the song in this format). As a result of this regular positive mentions in the music weeklies got the buzz going about them.

Howard Thompson: The energy on stage was infectious and it wasn’t long before they started to attract decent sized audiences at all the pubs and clubs around town. Me? I had no real reference point as to what the hell I was doing. I didn’t know if they were going to sell records. All I knew was I liked 'em. A lot. They played the kind of music I grew up with but gave it a rawer edge and a life-or-death intensity that was hard to ignore. Their shows were thrilling. Back in the office I told Richard Williams [Island Records] that I’d seen something that I really liked and asked if he would come along and give a second opinion. Uh...and a green light. http://northforksound.blogspot.com/2008/09/eddie-hot-rods.html

Their growing standing on the circuit resulted in an offer from Chris Blackwell’s Island company by their A&R whizzkid Howard Thompson (now a prog-minded outfit having dispensed with most of its early Reggae rooster) and their first single “Writing On The Wall“ appeared just as a residency at the Marquee was beginning, a set of gigs that was to be eventful not least for the fact that they broke all previous house records. Anchor and United Artists were said to be interested in signing the band and who knows if things would have turned out differently. As it was Island had little knowledge of promoting bands like the Rods. Later they would sign Ultravox and get them nowhere and famously promise Stiff Little Fingers a contract and them dump them.

Undoubtedly one of the early turning point of the Hot Rods career was their Feb 1976 Island showcase gig at the Marquee Club in Wardour Street supported by the Sex Pistols. There has been some debate that there was some collusion between the two bands respective managers to make this something of an event, but what is sure is that a few chairs were thrown around, Jordan stripped to her waist and the Pistols lost the support slot for the Hot Rods residence, but gained much more.

Lydon: Eddie & The Hot Rods to me was everything that was wrong with Live music. Instead of fighting all this big stadium nonsense, they would narrow themselves into this tiny clique by playing in pubs...when it came to the actual gig, somehow the monitors were turned off. I call this industrial sabotage! No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. Johnny Rotten

Dave Higgs: They can't play or nuffink. They just insult the audience. They wrecked our PA. We waited for them to apologise, but they had fucked off.

Will the real punks please stand up?

This resulted in the Hot Rods looking like bemused pub rockers shrinking back from the edge of punk rock and putting the Pistols over as the scene’s legitimate rebels. Steve Jones succinctly summed up the difference between the band.

Actually, we're not into music, we're into chaos!

Lew Lewis, who played the harp so hard his mouth often bled by the end of gigs had dropped out of the band mid 1976 and formed his own outfit Reformer. Llater Lew was imprisoned in 1987 for his part in an armed robbery on his local post office using a fake gun and bicycle as a getaway vehicle but not before contributing to the Stranglers 'Old Codger' and making the marvellous 'Caravan Man'. His last contribution to the band was the b side of Woolly Boolly Horsepley.e

Howard Thompson (Island A&R man): My memories of Lew are vague, but I do remember us all speeding back from a show in Cheltenham (where they’d opened for fellow Southenders, The Kursaal Flyers) when, all of a sudden, Lew opened the van’s side door and proceeded to relieve himself, holding onto the driver's seat while his mac flapped in the breeze (and piss). He had a kid, maybe two, and was always getting evicted from the places he lived, ending up on people’s floors, or lord knows where. http://northforksound.blogspot.com/2008/09/eddie-hot-rods.html

However it was not immediately apparent that this fissure had occurred to the nascent Punk scene and the Rods continued for a time on a decidedly upward path. The band regularly sold out the Marquee  and set attendance records at the venue and also a live ep from there which perfectly captured their early sweat stained, energy filled shows. The single was released in August 76 how was an adrenaline infused rendition of a live set of covers 96 Tears, Get Out Of Denver, Satisfaction and Gloria and reached no43 in the UK singles charts. The band also played the Mont Marsan Festival with The Damned, Nick Lowe, Pink Fairies and Gorillas among others.

A month later contrast the predominantly old guard Mont Marsan with the the 100 Club Punk Festival featuring the Damned, Clash, Buzzcocks, Vibrators, Subway Sect, Siouxsie & The Banshees and the Sex Pistols and you can see the cataclysm coming. At that time though gigs and energy were enough to roughly coalesce a scene that could bring together a liking for bans as diverse as Blue Oyster Cult, Eddie & the Hot Rods, Deaf School, New York Dolls and Jonathan Richman.

The first few issues of “Sniffin Glue” featured rave write ups on the Rods and it was only really at the turn of the year things got more defined and the Rods found themselves deemed “unfashionable”. Just as the gulf between the Hot Rods and bands like the Pistols, Buzzcocks and Clash was becoming clearer the “Teenage Depression” LP emerged. It was felt despite the slight controversy of the title track (“spending all the money and its going up my nose”) and the front cover art capturing the feel of 1976 that the record itself was a disappointment (certainly this was the feeling at “Glue”) and most people seemed to feel it was only as a live band Eddie and the Hot Rods truly excelled.

They bring music back to us kids. The band are not removed from us by big auditoriums separated by fierce security guards. The band are part of the audience and they know it......They're playing for us. They reflect the way we live, our whole lifestyle. Steve Mick Sniffin' Glue Nov 1976

There's no feel to their stuff, no distinctive sound to build on... a live album would have been better - that would have been an instant classic. Mark P on 'Teenage Depression' Sniffin' Glue Nov 1976

As a predominantly live band they moved fast. The debut album was recorded with with Vic Maile (Feelgoods and Hawkwind producer) and done in 4 days. in October.  Their first  John Peel session consisting of 4 songs in February 1977 was done in 2 hours with only possibly the Damned being quicker!!

As Punk hit at the beginning of 1977 the bands future looked rosy. NME had them as the most promosing emergent act, their debut album had a bit of controversy and balls and they appeared to be part of a wave of exciting aggressive music.

Their first appearance of the year was surprisingly on the back of the Damned's first album as 2000 copies were mistakenly pressed with the wrong photo shown below. More likely this was Jake Riviera cashing in on the Rod's popularity!

Nevertheless it must have come as a disappointment to the band that their first release in March was 'I Might Be Lying' coupled with 'Ignore Them' which died to death and which the Hot Rods blamed on Record Company inactivity referring to Island as 'Wankers'. Later they would admit

Barrie: We've been working solidly for the last 18 months, we were just trying to get Graeme into the band then. That single came at the wrong time. It's just a matter of timing. Record Mirror 17.9.77

In fact Island posted full page ads consisting mainly of glowing reviews for previous singles and live shows in the music weeklies and was the first single to be advertised as the Rods. The single was also a watershed for the band. The A side was strictly pub fare while the excellent B side was the first to feature new boy Graeme Douglas of local pub heroes the Kursaal Flyers on guitar. Douglas had been sacked from the Kursaals managed by Jonathan King after registering his distaste with the choice of producer, Mike Batt of Wombles fame, and the fact the band were heading for more MOR territory. Coupled with his compositional boost their manager Ed Hollis would again provide the lyrics for the songs replacing Dave Higgs as primary supplier of songs and the band would gain an extra depth with a second guitar.

Graeme Douglas: Dave Higgs was the person who wanted me to join the Hot Rods, because he admired my guitar playing and wanted to fatten up the sound a bit with him concentrating on rhythm guitar (he is a bloody master at amphetamine rhythm). Ed, always one for the main chance though, sold me the idea by convincing me that HIS IDEA was that the Hot Rods should emulate the MC5 with Fred Smith and Wayne Kramer. Consequently, I never really got the chance to collaborate with Dave on song writing until much later.

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With help from Ian Part Time