Dear Mr. Time

The roots of Dear Mr. Time wind back to 1968 and a Chelmsford-based group called the Shoo String Band. After earning their spurs on the local group scene, they ventured to London in the spring of '69, even appearing at the celebrated Marquee Club on a couple of occasions (their first Marquee gig that March saw them share the bill with pre-Uriah Heep band Spice). However, the Shoo String Band was primarily a club band with its origins in soul, and that August Chris Baker (guitar) and John Clements (drums) took up the offer to expand their musical horizons by forming a new group with Barry Everitt (vocals, keyboards) and Dave Sewell (bass), both previously with another local group, the John MacIntyre Collection. The new band's direction would be progressive rock, its goal to develop and record its own material. Dear Mr. Time was born.

Under Direct Management (headed by Bryan Reeve, another former ‘John MacIntyre’ member), Dear Mr. Time put their own slant on contemporary classics like ‘Eleanor Ridgy’ and ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ and hit the road. With the British college circuit, the gateway to prog-rock success, a virtual closed shop to untried provincial groups and managers, the band turned to Europe, where Chris and John had played before with the Shoo String Band. On the back of a mailed demo and a one-off gig in Munich, they stayed on in Germany, knocking on doors, doing whatever gigs came up, and then repeated the process in France, looking up old contacts. The strategy paid off. It was the atmospheric use of instrumentation, including 12 string guitar, glockenspiel, recorder, flute, bowed bass and even an old bellows-operated harmonium that set the band apart. They quickly gained a following in clubs like the P.N. Club, Munich, and Paris's Golf Druout, becoming one of the most popular British bands playing the northern French circuit that autumn. During their December 1969 tour, gendarmes lined the stage in Lille to keep the crowds back, John Clements remembers. On that same tour, the band appeared on French TV, filmed live at Golf Druout.