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Undaunted, McPhee continued to take the band in a more progressive direction, adding an ARP 2600 synthesiser to their musical armoury. And following the departure of Pustelnik, the band’s new drummer was none other than Clive Brooks from Canterbury scene stalwarts Egg, who had supported the Groundhogs on tour. “Clive was a lovely man and there was a lot less stress involved with getting together on time playing and touring,” says McPhee. “He was a powerful player who suited the times and new material that I was writing.”

The Groundhogs were not British blues at their most creative; nor were they British blues at their most generic. They were emblematic of some of the genre’s most visible strengths and weaknesses. They were prone to jam too long on basic riffs, they couldn’t hold a candle to American blues singers in terms of vocal presence, and their songwriting wasn’t so hot. On the other hand, they did sometimes stretch the form in unexpected ways, usually at the hands of their creative force, guitarist/songwriter/vocalist T.S. (Tony) McPhee. For a while they were also extremely popular in Britain, landing three albums in that country’s Top Ten in the early ’70s. In 2003, original manager Roy Fisher put together a short-lived 'original line-up' to celebrate their fortieth anniversary. McPhee left the band to pursue an acoustic career, embarking on a major tour in 2004 with Edgar Winter and Alvin Lee and issued an acoustic blues album Blues at Ten. However, despite getting to No.8 in the UK charts, it got a decidedly frosty reception compared to their previous albums. “A lot of fans and the press didn’t like it. To be honest, it was rushed and I never had the time to work on the production or even think about what we were playing, and I agreed with them for a while. It was only a few years later, when I could listen to it objectively that I realised its strengths. We often get people now saying that it’s their favourite album.”

The Groundhogs “Split”

a b Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19thed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p.237. ISBN 1-904994-10-5. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( September 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) The Groundhogs had emerged from the British blues boom of the mid-1960s, and as the 70s dawned they embraced the expansive, exploratory spirit of the era. A performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival affirmed their growing status. The Groundhog’s’ acclaimed 1970 album Thank Christ for the Bomb, which saw the band move away from the blues

The LP which actually achieved that milestone was ‘Thank Christ For The Bomb’, released in 1970, which peaked in the Top 10 of the UK album chart. In 1997, McPhee recalled the circumstances behind the album with the attention-grabbing title, which ran against fashionable philosophy at the time (although some say that fearsome weapons like the Atom Bomb and the Hydrogen Bomb are the major reason for it being over 50 years since the last World War). McPhee refuses to take the entire credit for this revolutionary theory, admitting: “Well, it was forced on me a bit”. Roy Fisher suggested that McPhee should think of something controversial for the new LP. “John Lennon had just made his famous quote about The Beatles being more popular than Christ, and everyone was up in arms. So Roy said ‘Let’s marry it up with the bomb. How about ‘Thank Christ For The Bomb?’. So I went home and I had to write these lyrics, and my initial thoughts were that in the First World War, if you were injured you were sent home. And that was my first idea – a soldier is blown up and his toes are blown off so he goes home again. No, that’s not enough. So I thought, well, let’s make it the atomic bomb, really piss people off. My thought was, and it’s been said by other people, that once something is invented you can’t forget it, it’s there, so there’s no point in trying to pretend it doesn’t exist. I always felt that through the ages, the broadsword must have been the ultimate weapon at one point, because they could chop people’s heads off all over the place, and the crossbow and the longbow – there’s always been the ultimate weapon, it’s just a question of degree, really”. In 1966, the Groundhogs evolved into Herbal Mixture, which (as if you couldn’t guess from the name) had more of a psychedelic flavor than a blues one. Their sole single, “Machines,” would actually appear on psychedelic rarity compilations decades later. The Groundhogs/Herbal Mixture singles, along with some unreleased material, has been compiled on a reissue CD on Distortions. Nonetheless, The Groundhogs’ reputation has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years thanks to the patronage of musicians like Stephen Malkmus, alongside Queens Of The Stone Age, The Arctic Monkeys, Endless Boogie and Wolf People. The strength of their performances led to John Lee Hooker dubbing them the “number one British blues band” and further gigs with other blues icons soon followed, including stints with Little Walter and Jimmy Reed.Groundhogs On Air 1970-72 (1998, Strange Fruit) from 21 July 1970, 29 March 1971, 26 July 1971 and 7 December 1972 [7] As the flames of the early-’60s British blues were slowly extinguished, The Groundhogs split for several years and McPhee found session work. He sometimes recorded under the moniker T.S. McPhee, a blues-inspired name given to him by (John Mayall/ Fleetwood Mac) producer Mike Vernon –the T.S. standing for ‘Tough Shit’. Music Classic Concert - The Groundhogs". BBC. 2017 . Retrieved 21 October 2021. "Ship On My Ocean"; "I Love Miss Ogyny"; "Free From All Alarm"; "Dog Me Bitch"; "Light My Light" [PH]; "Soldier"; "Sins Of The Father" [PH] - introductions by Mike Harding; credited as from Paris Theatre 1974, except [PH] Playhouse Theatre 23 May 1974 It was quite a way to bring the Groundhogs’ moment in the commercial sun to a crashing conclusion. The more straightforward Solid, from 1974, failed to make the Top 30 and spent only one week on the charts. They broke up shortly afterwards.

The band were very popular in Euroape and I saw the several times. “Thank Christ for the Bomb” is also well worth a listen. That he was never short of younger musicians to work with says something about the extent of the Groundhogs’ influence. The sound of McPhee wrenching awesome swoops and screams out of his guitar on Garden, or of the jagged, impassioned soloing on Split Part 4, had a once-heard-never-forgotten quality: many of his fans became musicians themselves. a b Andrew Male (7 June 2023). "Tony McPhee And Groundhogs: The Best Albums Ranked". Mojo . Retrieved 22 October 2023.McPhee was grounded in the early 1960s British blues scene that had taken hold in clubs including the Marquee in London’s Soho, where he watched musicians such as Cyril Davies. He joined a south London group, the Dollar Bills, in 1962 and renamed them the Groundhogs. According to Tony in Zig Zag’s John Tobler’s sleevenotes to the 1987 re-issue of ‘Blues Obituary’ it was the BBC’s John Peel producer John Walters that forced the band’s hand. “He decided he hated the blues,” McPhee told Tobler, “We figured it was time to get away from it.” He was married twice before, to Christine Payne, with whom he had a son, Conan, and Susan Harrison, with whom he had a son, Vincent. Both marriages ended in divorce. Joanna survives him, as do his children, two grandchildren, Scarlett and Victor, and his sister Olive.