Vincent Crane’s organ-led Atomic Rooster had the bigger of their two 1971 hit singles when The Devil’s Answer took them to number 4 in the chart.

I guess this song falls into the same category as Ashton, Gardner & Dyke, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Ten Years After, and CCS, and people like that – bluesy brass-enhanced RnB that you feel will want to become prog when it grows up.

It’s an unusual line-up on this 1971 TOTP appearance: Vincent Crane on Hammond organ, the criminally underrated John Cann (aka Du Cann) on guitar and vocals, and either Paul Hammond or Rick Parnell (son of bandleader Jack Parnell) on drums. 

Soon after this Du Cann left and was replaced by Paul French, who erased his predecessor’s vocals from the whole album and re-recorded them himself. You can hear his (inferior) version on the US version of the single.

Line-up changed were not unexpected for Crane, the only constant member until his suicide in 1989. Over a long career, Atomic Rooster went through more than a dozen members (including Carl Palmer, Ginger Baker, Bernie Torme and Chris Farlowe) and almost as many musical styles.

They were formed by members of The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown in 1968 after Crane suffered a nervous breakdown on tour abroad and returned home with drummer Carl Palmer to form a new band with Brian Jones, who had just left The Rolling Stones.

Plans changed when Jones died before they even got started and Crane instead formed a band with no guitarist, recruiting bass player Nick Graham instead. Atomic Rooster made their debut with this line-up (organ, bass, drums) supporting Deep Purple in 1969.

By their third album, Palmer had left to form ELP and Graham had moved on, being replaced by DuCann. Following further countless break-ups and reunions, Crane worked with Peter Green and Rory Gallagher and, less obviously, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, before succumbing to the bipolar disorder that had seen him hospitalised regularly since the late Sixties, and overdosing on Anadin in 1989.

The underappreciated DuCann, who came from a band called Andromeda and went on to temp in Thin Lizzy at one point, died in 2011.