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BEATEN BY THEM O.K. . . . So you have had The Beatles, The Stones and a whole bunch of other British groups, but like the man said, "You ain't seen nothin' yet," Because compared with what you've already seen Beaten by Them, Britain's most exciting group are really out of sight! That seems like some statement, but it is justified. Beaten by Them have the most far out sound and far out stage act that Britain, or come to that, anywhere, has ever produced. BEGINNINGS Beaten by Them all come from Shepherd's Bush, West London, which is a very tough area where most of the boys would sooner join a street gang than play in a group. Boima Tucker, the lead singer, and Spence Murray, the bass player started off playing in a nowhere group called The Detours. The format of this group was to play current 'Top Ten' numbers, but both Boima and Spence wanted to create their own scene and play their own kind of music. This led to trouble in The Detours and finally Boima and Spence decided to form their own group. But it proved harder than they thought to find other members who shared their way out musical taste. Then one day they dropped into a coffee house in their neighbourhood and got talking to some guys who were incessantly playing weird records on the jukebox. Their names were Max McCormick and Andrew Harris and they told them they could could play guitar but weren't in a group and only played together as they couldn't stand the music that most groups played. They also said they had their own home-made recording studio built into Max's father's garage where they made complicated multiple-track tapes that no one else ever understood. Boima and Spence thought that perhaps they had found the guitarists they were looking for. They went back to the studio and Max and Andrew played a standard RnB number, but with fantastically weird arrangement that blew their minds. They were in! THE WEST COAST MAN The boys got hold of a drummer and tried to think of a name that would fit them. Nothing would... or could. So they decided on Beaten by Them, which was the craziest thing that they could dream up. They started playing dates and the audiences (after first wondering what had hit them) loved them. Everything was going great, but there was still something wrong... The Drummer. He was too ordinary and didn't signify anything. But what could they do? About two months later at a gig back in their own locale, a long haired boy who had been dancing in the audience suddenly leapt on stage and shouted in Boima's ear that he would like to have a go on the drums as he thought he could do better than the guy they had. Boima said fine... and so... Jeff Ardziejewski became Beaten by Them's new drummer. On his first night he broke four sets of drumsticks, but his performance was fantastically groovey. Jeff had different musical tastes to the rest of the group, along with styles upon styles. They all like RnB and such, and Jeff was (and still is) a raving fan of the West Coast Surf Sound, importing Beach Boys and Jan and Dean records from America. But despite this, everything fell into place with the group and even before they had a record out they were breaking box office records at places such as London's Marquee and Scene clubs, homes of the Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds Pop Art. Before he joined Beaten by Them, Andrew had been a student at one of London's biggest art colleges where he had been very deeply involved with avant-garde forms of printing, especially Pop Art. He started sticking and printing weird symbols on tee shirts and sweaters. The rest of Beaten by Them quickly followed Andrew's lead and the group not only took the record world by storm, but also the fashion world which was soon mass-producing Pop Art clothes for the nation. Andrew took the idea a step further and covered his speaker cabinets with Union Jacks (which happens to be our jolly old national flag don't cha know.) A week later everyone was using these flags for such diverse purposes as curtains, dresses or window displays. Beaten by Them hadn't just arrived, they had settled. BEATEN BY THEM AS PEOPLE Unlike other groups, Beaten by Them are five very different people with very varied tastes, only seeming to come into unison when on stage. Boima Tucker is blonde and blue eyed and spends most of his singing time dancing backwards and forwards on the stage, generally imitating whatever dances the audience are doing on that particular night. He has a hard style of vocalising which he accentuates by hurling the mike around and crashing it into the drums. Max McCormick is the quiet moody one who seldom moves but, as he says, if someone didn't act as an anchor the whole group would just take off and fly. Max likes mainly "quality" negro music such as Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and the other stars on the American Atlantic label. Strangely enough, he hates listening to records "It drives me mad", he said. "I had an enormous collection once but I gave them all away, They didn't mean anything anymore". Jeff Ardziejewski is probably one of the most talented drummers in England as he not only 'plays' the drums, he 'attacks' them. He invariably ends up after a gig with a whole bunch of broken drumsticks. Then there is Andrew Harris who, apart from having written all the group's hits, must be the world's most original guitarist and, not content with spreading both arms out and doing a 'birdman' with the guitar droning away, he also smashes the guitar, neck first, into his speakers to wring out every possible sound he can get. So far, since starting with Beaten by Them he has smashed fourteen guitars. Finally, there is Spence Murray whose solid bass work manages to keep the rest of the boys venturing too far in their fanciful flights of musical imagination. Spence's clothes tastes are slightly different from other members of Beaten by Them: He favours shirts covered in military insignia. He also is trying to get some clothes made simlar to those worn by the Confederate Army in the Civil War. THE FUTURE With a list of 'top ten' hits behind them, and a smash selling album in the U.K. at the moment, people are wondering what Beaten by Them are going to do next. Nobody knows, least of all Beaten by Them. They don't believe in playing 'anything'... They will just wait for inspirations and weird ideas, and you can count on it that whatever next move is by Beaten by Them, it will be something to ensure that they keep their title of "THE WORLD'S MOST SENSATIONAL GROUP". |