The Sorrows - Take a Heart & more...YouTube

From 1965 - Coventry group THE SORROWS with Roger Lomas and Don Fardon, Wez Price on bass - hit the

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charts with Take a Heart featured here on You Tube from Offenbach along with three other tracks. Great to find this vid. Don Fardon went on the have a hit as a solo artist with Indian Reservation in the 70's and Roger Lomas and his brother played in  Dogers in the mid 70's ( a derivative of Badfinger with ex Indian Summer musicians Bob Jackson and Paul Hooper and Colin Williams. I saw the Sorrows play at Warwick Uni Arts Festival in 1971 along with Edgar Broughton and High Tide. Roger Lomas went on to produce some of the Two Tone tracks.

 

SO R R O W S - 4 tracks live in Offenbach Germany

 

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The Sorrows were Coventry's biggest group of the 60's and were reknowned

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for their tough R & B style (mixing R&B, Beat, Folk Rock and raw punk attitude) - they went through a number of line up changes.
The original line up was- Don Maughan (Fardon) - Vocals (Formally with the Hawks / Pip Witcher lead guitar / Phil Peckham (formerly of the Vampires) on bass and Bruce Finlay on drums / Terry Dukes on rhythm guitar.

 

After the first single (which failed to chart) Terry Dukes left replaced

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by Wes Price from the Unknowns and The Autocrats. After the 3rd single, Take A Heart which

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reached No21 in the UK charts and No 1 in Italy and was a hit in other European countries such as Germany, Don Maughan left and became solo under his real name Don Fardon and Phil Peckham. They worked as a three piece for a while. They recruited Roger Lomas form The Clouds and Pip Witcher took over on lead vocals and Chris Smith joined on keyboards / vocals formerly with East Side Protection. Later Wes Price joined Indian Summer. Pip Witcher later joined Roger Lomas in the Eggy with Bill Campbell and Bill Bates.

 

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Their singles - only one of which charted in the UK were -

1. A self-penned song I don't want to be free - which they played on Ready Steady Go - Picadilly Label (Pye) (John Schroeder produced them - known for the single Cast Your Fate to the Wind) 1964
2. Baby
3. Take a Heart Written by Miki Dillon (aka Mickey Tinsley) for the Boys Blue - again presented on Ready Steady Go and the single reached No21 in 1965 and was a big hit in Europe and the USA and No 1 in Italy where the band became quite famous. The follow up only reached No 47 in the NMEcharts.
4. A debut album followed also called Take a Heart - the album failed to chart.
5. Other singles that were not hits were You've got what I want / Let the Live Liv / Let me in / Pink Purple, yellow and red.
6. 6. Italian album - Old songs - New Songs
   

The band at one stage had a residency at the Pilot in Radford - Coventry. They also played the City's Highfield Rd. Football ground during half time.

On the strength of their Italian No 1 they were offered a stadium tour of Italy (playing in huge, 30,000 to 40,000 seater Football stadiums) and RCA provided them with their own Villa. The reaction was so great , they decided to settle in Italy during 1966. During that year they were major pop stars there, frequently having their hotels mobbed by enthusiastic fans, who blocked the roads outside, holding up posters of the band !!. The band spent too long following up their success and with management problems they ended up penniless and returned to the UK.

Sources - Godiva Rocks - Pete Chambers and Broadgate Gnome music site.

Comments

[Jim Pryal]

GREAT!!!!

[greg]

i have a mint condition take a heart 1965 album never been played!!!!!!! great bit of info here i had no idea who they were!!!!!!!!!!