Bringing the swing to British pub rock

Bees Make Honey takes Nag's Head patrons to Caldonia in rare 1973 video

The lamentably named Eggs Over Easy, a trio of talented American musicians and songwriters, is credited with launching the pub rock era when the band played a Monday night gig at the Tally Ho, a bar in the Kentish Town district of North London that until then had been booking only jazz acts.

It was May 3, 1971. The smallish crowd that night was enthusiastic, word spread, and before you knew it Eggs Over Easy was muscling jazz acts off the Tally Ho’s weekly entertainment schedule. While some jazz musicians undoubtedly saw red as they lost gigs to these the Americans — who played country tunes, for fuck’s sake — an Irish string bassist in one of the jazz bands with a residency at the Tally Ho instead saw opportunity.

Barry Richardson was no jazz snob. He liked all kinds of music, including country, and had paid his dues performing live with bands on the thriving Irish showband circuit. Seeing the reaction (and the extra gigs) Eggs Over Easy was getting at the Tally Ho, Richardson reasonably presumed their success could be replicated with the right players — like his talented, stage-hardened former bandmates in Dublin.

Thus was formed one of the early popular bands on the growing London pub rock circuit, Bees Make Honey. (Seriously, what’s with the cringy band names?) By 1973, the British music press had discovered pub rock, with Bees Make Honey “enjoying the lion’s share of the publicity,” writes Will Birch in his excellent book, No Sleep Till Canvey Island: The Great Pub Rock Revolution.

So what was it like to see Bees Make Honey in a British pub back in the ‘70s? I was pleasantly surprised to find the YouTube video below showing the band performing Louis Jordan’s Caldonia at The Nag’s Head in High Wycombe, a town roughly 30 miles northwest of London.

The description on the video says this show is “circa 1973.” If so, it probably was December 17, which would make it a Monday. (If these places were packed on Monday nights, then pub rock really was a thing!)

Unfortunately, only months after this show, Bees Make Honey began falling apart, their destiny as “the next big thing” in British music to be unfulfilled.

But on this night, at least, the band was swinging, the crowd was jumping, people were dancing, and life was good. Check it out below. You can feel the fun vibes, and no one was looking at their iPhones.