My first thought was, ‘Maybe I made a mistake here. It was a sound that had been lost during the psych-progressive waves of the late 1960s and was being rediscovered.ĭave Tice: “Joining The Count Bishops, I found myself in a band which (had) a repertoire based on R&B and blues songs of the mid-‘60s. But his time in England during the 1970s as singer with The Count Bishops was significant for showing his versatility as vocalist and because the Bishops, along with Eddie & The Hot Rods (among others), represented a version of heavily juiced R&B that was perfected by Dr. Feelgood- L to R: Wilko Johnson, John “Big Figure” Martin, Lee Brilleaux and John “Sparko” Sparks.ĭave Tice is probably best known for his time as vocalist with groundbreaking Aussie hard rockers Buffalo. Feelgood, and still today, he uses a deceptively simple chopping guitar sound strong enough to penetrate the most waterlogged sponge brains of pub dwellers. Wilko Johnson is not only a rock ‘n’ roll survivor, a man who cheated death after recovering from a terminal cancer diagnosis, but he is also really good at guitar. If you said ‘pub rock’ you’re talking about a kind of venue not a kind of music.” – Wilko Johnson “But they were bands of all kinds: jazz and funk and rock. Feelgood, Eddie & The Hot Rods and The Count Bishops. The pub rock “scene” splintered off to all kinds of directions, one of which was the no-bullshit approach to beat heavy 1960s American R&B taken by Dr. One thing’s for sure, it was not defined by any sound. But, far from closing the book on that definition, people have instead written entire tomes about what pub rock was. Pub rock was a thing that happened in places like England and Australia where bars are called pubs. The 1970s were the best time to do this since it was a chance to hear some rock ‘n’ roll, cheap! Music was transformed in ways that involved journalistic words like punk, metal, new wave and pub rock. In the old days, when human contact did not involve a major illness risk, people crammed themselves into bars. Feelgood, Eddie & the Hot Rods, the Count Bishops in the UK, and Buffalo, Rose Tattoo and AC/DC in Australia, among many others. ‘Pub rock’ was simply a convenient label for the rootsy music of Dr. Before punk arrived in London, a revival of basic, uncomplicated rock & roll, infused with R & B, had already been packing the pubs of the UK and Australia, even if it wasn’t burning up the charts. Feelgood) and Dave Tice (Buffalo, Count Bishops) talk to PKM and give us the scoop on the Pub Rock scene.

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