Back in the heady days of Pub Rock, a band arrived on the scene that was a little different to most. They had a pedal steel player, and their lead singer seemed to base his look on George Cole’s ‘Flash Harry’ in the St. Trinians movies. The band were, of course, The Kursaal Flyers, and they would go on to become one of the more commercially successful bands on the pub rock circuit, though that success would, ultimately, be their undoing.
Though they enjoyed a great reputation as a live act (and, having seen them, it was well deserved) they struggled to transfer that energy to record and their first two albums, “Chocs Away”, and the “Great Artiste”, didn’t sell well. For their third album, “The Golden Mile” (1976), they turned to Mike Batt as producer, taking them in a more pop-oriented direction, and he gave them their only hit record, a single from the album, called ‘Little Does She Know’. Perhaps unfortunately, Batt achieved this success through a completely over-the-top, Phil Spector style production, which had little in common with the Kursaal’s stage sound. It was, it now seems, the kiss of death for the Kursaals and, by 1977, it was all over for a band that had promised so much (though there have been subsequent reunions).
Fast forward to 2003 and, out of the ashes of The Kursaal Flyers, we get The Ugly Guys (named from a Kursaal’s song). What few people knew at the time was that the Kursaal Flyers started out as a country rock covers band, hence the pedal steel guitar of Vic Collins, and that love of country rock never deserted Collins and lead singer Paul Shuttleworth. In 2003 they formed the band that currently consists of the two ex-Kursaals plus guitarist Steve Oliver (ex-Jerry The Ferret), former Pinkee, Nevil Kiddier, on bass and ex-Mickey Jupp sticksman, Bob Clouter, on drums.
I discovered them quite by accident. I’d been re-reading Will Birch’s excellent book, ‘No Sleep ‘Till Canvey Island’, a definitive tome on the British Pub rock scene. Will Birch was, of course, the drummer with the Kursaal Flyers, and it got me wondering what had happened to the rest of the band. A bit of research led me to The Ugly Guys and I really enjoyed the tracks I heard. Their first album “Truckers, Kickers and Cowboy Angels” came out in 2007 on Bad Dog Records and there have been six more albums since then, the most recent being 2023’s “Cover Your Tracks” (now on Conquest Records). In 2015 they recorded and released a very different version of ‘Little Does She Know’, for the song’s fortieth anniversary, and it transforms the song into something much more in keeping with a bunch of country rock enthusiasts.
This is a band that needs to be more widely recognised because they play honest, down to earth, country rock. It’s nothing groundbreaking or particularly clever, they just write good songs and perform them well, and surely that’s worth a little recognition in this day and age?
2025 promises to be a good year for The Ugly Guys. Their current record label, Conquest, will be re-releasing their entire back catalogue early in the year. Then a ‘Best Of’ album is scheduled for release around Easter time, and the band’s new album will be coming out in the summer. Live gigs are being planned for later in the year to tie in with all these releases, so there should be plenty of opportunity to get out there and see and hear what you’ve been missing. For a bunch of Ugly Guys, they make a very pretty sound.
Interesting. I remember a documentary about them on BBC. Checked, and it’s on YouTube fronted by Melvyn Bragg.(And now on my watch list). Cheers.
Just to clarify – the doco is from 1976 and is about the Kursaal Flyers, not the Ugly Guys. But it is an excellent film and it is on YouTube. Well worth a watch.