Another live single 'At The Sound Of Speed' ep followed again doing nothing really retreading old songs. However from here on in 1977 was to prove their most successful year as the effect of the Douglas/Hollis partnership came into play.

This move immediately paid dividends when in July they released the now classic single “Do Anything You Wanna Do” (penned by the duo themselves) and again released under the shortened name of the Rods with the classic Aleister Crowley with Mickey Mouse ears on the cover. In many papers it was single of the week and it went top 10.

Paul Gray: It wasn't long afterwards that what was to be known as the Curse of the Hotrods struck. In retrospect it wasn't the best of ideas to mess about with Alistair Crowley. The single cover featured the image above featuring Crowley's face with a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, a play on Crowley's mantra - "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" . It wasn't long before the letters started coming from his followers, saying we were playing with fire and threatening dire retributions on us all. At the time it was unnerving and we tried to laugh it off, but uncannily enough we suffered more than our fair share of tragedies soon after. In no particular order one of the guys responsible for the cover committed suicide, our manager died of a drugs overdose and all sorts of other troubles befell band members that I won't go into here. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.gray/archives%20&%20stories1.htm

A second John Peel session in October was followed by the release of the fantastic  “Life On The Line” (with a second suicide themed sleeve) in November to great reviews in the music weeklies. The album also made number 27 in the charts.

With all this chart action and great reviews it was a full six months before another single bar the backing of the band for former MC5 vocalist Rob Tyner on the single 'Till The Night Is Gone (Let's Rock)' and 'Flip Side Rock' which wasn't exactly life changing stuff.

Another single 'Quit This Town' was released in December which should have been a hit but which stalled at number 36. A third single 'Life On The Line' was released in March 1978 and flopped.

Disappearing over to the US on tour with the Talking Heads, Ramones and Tom Petty didn’t help them make the breakthrough in America. Maybe they had their own similar type of heroes in Springsteen and couldn’t connect with the likely lads from Canvey. Much like their forerunners Dr Feelgood touring the US not only didn’t lead to stardom there but also killed their momentum in the UK too.

Away from the recording scene for almost a year things had changed beyond all recognition. If the Hot Rods were somewhat removed from the cutting edge in 1977 by the start of 1979 they might as well be a Mersey beat outfit. To add to their woes they split from their manager Hollis described as 'there were lots of unpleasant bits and pieces' and a band that had seemingly toured hard and sold shed loads of records but with very little financially to show for it.

Paul Gray: He was an essential part of our success, but from being the major driving force behind the band we started to loose faith. For a band that had constantly toured and sold tons of records we had little to show for it, and later we realised that we were effectively broke. Tax etc had been deducted from our wages - at the height of our success I can't remember earning much more than £75 a week - but had not actually reached the Inland Revenue. He was also spending more time on other projects, with some Very Dodgy People, and had succumbed to the excesses of practically everything. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.gray/archives%20&%20stories2.htm

Graeme Douglas: On the first tour of USA late 77, the band had developed so much that Dee Dee Ramone commented, after one show in Boston, “How come you guys manage to play so hard, so fast, and with so many chords?”. We had blown them all away. On our return to the UK, Hollis, as Paul has said, had taken leave of his senses by developing a taste for heroin, originally to come down from massive ingestion of cocaine, but then because it was a better, if not more productive, high – consequently, and unbeknown to us, we toured more and more to keep a manager’s drug habit manageable.

The Life On The Line tour of early 78 spring was the last that the band, and Ed, were together and focused. In the beginning, Ed had the notion of the English MC5 – when we got there he had lost interest in touring and wanted to become the Kim Fowley for others. He might even have become Simon Cowell, had he lasted this long! During the following six months it took a long while for the band to realise what had been happening to the money we should have been earning. We were doing short trips here, there and everywhere.

With the song writing partnership split up and Douglas now sole composer and writer he admitted struggling.

The trouble is I tend to find too many words and they're too long. I had to get my razor out and cut them down a bit. NME 3.2.79

A reflective interview with Higgs and Douglas in the NME saw them bitter, at times angry and reflective (as the picture below shows)

Douglas: We were slagged off by the punks in the same way that the hippies slagged off Scott McKenzie....the thing is as soon as you get a movement, you get a narrowing of ideas and people get hard line ethics. You have to think this, you have to wear that, you have to like certain things. That's what happened this time. NME 3.2.79

Commenting on the length of time between records Douglas commented:

They didn't just allow us to take our time,...they insisted on it.
You mean they didn't like what you offered them at first?
You could say that, says Douglas a bit ruefully

For the Hot Rods it couldn't get worse. They returned then with the downbeat “Thriller” LP in 1979. This LP had a decidedly bitter edge, a sense of glories denied and press back biting pervades (“The Power And The Glory”). Despite featuring guests like Lee Brilleaux, Jools Holland and even Paul McCartney's missus Linda the record was only a minor UK hit. Island wasn't interested in another record by the band who was just about spent musically and personally.

Paul Gray: In the spring of 1979 we set off on yet another long UK tour supported by The Members. They were actually getting more airplay than us for their single "Offshore Banking Business". Where we were starting to sound tired and, dare I say it, jaded, they were fresh and enthusiastic. Looking back on it now we were knackered, we'd been worked to the bone, and there was no fooling the punters. We were drinking loads - a bottle of Jim Beam for me, Southern Comfort for Bazza, Vodka for Dave - it would all be gone before we left the dressing room, and on top of that we were almost single-handedly supporting the Colombian economy! What had once been a great adventure had ceased to be fun and, although we wouldn't have admitted it we were going thru' the motions. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.gray/archives%20&%20stories2.htm

Graeme Douglas: The material wasn’t all it should have been. 'Power and the Glory' and 'Circles' were classic songs – the others were not up to scratch. There was no fire in the grooves because the the creative energies had been burned out of the Hot Rod team by hustling for short trips to pay the wages that week.

The band signed to EMI got a new manager and found themselves dispiritingly on the end of being reinvented as an R&B band again and a gruelling US tour.

Paul Gray: Not long after, at The Lyceum, scene of so many Hotrods triumphs in the past, Graeme finally lost the plot. Well, someone had to. Halfway thru' the show he handed his guitar to the puzzled photographers in the pit at the front and started crawling about the stage on all fours, up on the drum riser and tried to bite Steve's ankles. The memory of Steve valiantly trying to keep time whilst simultaneously bashing Graeme on the head with his sticks is one that will live with me forever. That very night he was sacked. We limped on for a few more gigs without him but I had lost heart. The fun had gone, we had no dosh and I had no faith in the manager or the direction EMI wanted us to go. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.gray/archives%20&%20stories2.htm

With Paul Gray leaving to join the Damned in 1980 all that remained was the “Fish And Chips” LP on EMI before the first incarnation of the band folded.

Why weren't Eddie & The Hot Rods massive?

Bands who are primarily a live act always have a problem in the studio capturing that energy. NME Book of Modern Music 1978

So it was with the Hot Rods but they also had a few more obstacles in their way including lack of top notch material and a clash with the turbulent times of Punk Rock. 'Teenage Depression' had them as contenders but at at time When 'Anarchy' and 'New Rose' were still fresh and 'Grip' and 'White Riot' were coming out, releasing the Retro pub rock sounding 'I Might Be Lying' firmly put the band with the old guard. If you think this is being harsh look at the Stranglers, Clash, Damned or Pistols discography and you can see its song after song of quality. With the Rods there's a lot of hit and miss as you roll through theirs.

Then you have the two periods of the band. Pre Douglas with the Higgs/Hollis more R&B sounding band and the more rockier edgier twin guitar attack of Douglas/Hollis. Add to that a manager that contributes lyrics and produces and you have a reliance and lopsidedness in the band. In January 1978 the Rods were top of their game and the question has got to be why was there no new product to keep them in the public eye? The answer was the classic combination of mismanagement both by their manager Hollis and their Record Company.

Graeme Douglas: The 'Life On The Line' tour should have started in the USA and finished in the UK (in Jan and Feb 78). There should have been a few weeks off for song writing and rehearsing, then some serious recording, had Ed still been capable – if not, then another producer should have been acquired by Island before it was all too late to get back and crack the USA with a new album.

Island was being run as a social club, not a record company – there was no-one on the ball enough to advise the main bands who were having management and direction problems (ie us); they were all jockeying for their chance to take over as MD.

Because of this they didn't release anything until 1979 and by then it was a different world. We were into post punk. The Stranglers were nearly onto 'the Raven', the Clash 'London Calling' and Siouxsie 'The Scream'. By then the Rods were out of steam and out of time.

Eddie and the Hot Rods are still around today after various reformations through the years (down to Barry Masters as the last original member) and they still however put on a mean live show. In a certain light they can turn the clock back all those years to those hot, dirty Marquee nights...

Graeme Douglas: It would be easy to say that the Hot Rods were amphetamine rock. What they lacked lyrically they made up for in sweat. You didn’t need to think, you didn’t need to pose, all you needed to do was dance or jump up and down as fast as possible.

On record, as we tried to develop, as the Stones had found, there were pharmaceutical problems. Whereas the Stones were able to survive, the Hot Rods weren’t. Playing on stage with the Hot Rods was the most fun you could possibly have with your clothes on (and more-often-than-not) with them off as well.

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