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From an article in Goldmine by Dave Thompson

Anyone rattling around a good UK record store during the summer of 1976 will tell you, a most peculiar single had just come out on Stiff. Twelve years earlier, you'd have taken it for a Beatles record - it had that *With The*/*Meet The* shadowing down to a tee. A year later, you'd have sworn it was Elvis Costello, the hornrimmed specs and the serious stare.

But it was neither and you knew it. Because, if you had even the tip of a finger on the pulse of the London scene at that time, you knew precisely who the Roogalator were and exactly what they portended. For this was the band which posed for an *NME* photo shoot beneath a headline demanding, "is this the future of rock'n'roll?" And you know what? It could have been.

Roogalator looked weird, everybody said so. Not weird in "oh-my-gawd, aren't-they-weird?" kinda way, not weird like those Sex Pistol kids you read about occasionally, and certainly not weird like the Doctors Of Madness, the deranged physicks who set out to defy the very laws of graphic, while trying to rise to the top of the heap while their glam rock metier was sinking even faster.

No, Roogalator were weird because, at a time when most bands were hairy and scruffy, they were clean-cut and smart. In an age of extroversion, they seemed positively insular (all apart from keyboardist Nick Plytas, who just looked like a scared bunny). And at a time when rock stars looked like... well, like rock stars, Roogalator looked like bank managers. At shows, you'd seen one of them standing at the bar, wander over to say "hello" and he'd send you packing because your rent check had bounced.

But then they'd get up onstage and all such thoughts were banished from your mind, as the band kicked into the dirtiest, tightest, funkiest groove you've ever heard four white boys play. They seemed so nice and they sounded so nasty. Maybe they were aliens. Or maybe one of them was, the one with the glasses. He came from Cincinnati, after all.

How exotic that was! Sin-sin-ati, so naughty they named it twice. Of course there were other Americans around at the time, hanging out in London looking for a lucky break, but for the most part they came from the boring bits... Noo Yawk, El-lay, Bay City. This Danny Adler guy, though, not only did he come from the coolest sounding place, he sang about it as well.

The first time Roogalator were on the John Peel Show, which in turn means the first time most people got to hear anything more than the excited buzz of a thousand swooning critics, one song - "All Aboard" - took you on a train across the plains, with a rhythm that rattled like an iron horse in heat.

Another, "Ride With Your Roogalator," took you up to poke the firebox as you thundered through the night. And then there was a screech of brakes and a shower of sparks and you were pulling into the end of the line, the almighty "Cincinnati Fatback."

Think Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" if it was set loose on "Route 66," or Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" tied to the "Star Spangled Banner." Think every thought you've ever dreamed of when you're far away and homesick, then imagine what they'd sound like set to music and flooding out of a radio set halfway round the world. The future of rock'n'roll? Well, it was better than bloody Bruce Springsteen.

Adler had been living in London five years at the time of that maiden Peel session, and fronting Roogalator for close to four. Before that, he'd scoured the country with Smooth Loser, a band formed with BBC DJ (and fellow ex-pat American) Emperor Rosco's brother Jeff Pasternak (bass) and Chris Gibbons guitar), usually as support for Rosco's own Roadshow. They ran through a lot of drummers - Malcolm Mortimer, later of GT Moore and the Reggae Guitars, was a member for a time; he returned to Adler for an early incarnation of Roogalator, only for Ian Dury then to steal both him and bassist Georgi Dionisiev for a later incarnation of Kilburn and the High Roads.

By that time, of course, Adler had long since worked out what he wanted from Roogalator. Through the 1960s, he had been immersed in the Cincinnati club scene, "a melting pot of soulfulness," as he describes it, a place where you could (and he did) jam with Albert T Washington one night, Bootsy and Catfish Collins the next. Then, with Smooth Loser, he encountered Gibbons, a guitarist whose own style was as English as Adlers' was mid-western. "We did a lot of experimental stuff, mixing our styles," Adler recalled. When Smooth Loser broke up, that mix was what he intended pursuing.

Roogalator played their first live show in November, 1972, at a talent night staged at the London Marquee, but little happened. Adler killed time between the extremes of the Irish C&W circuit, and monster jam sessions with Ginger Baker's African drummers. He spent some time in Paris studying jazz theory, then returned to London and suddenly, things started moving. With Adler linking with drummer Bobby Irwin, pianist Steve Beresford and keyboard player Nick Plytas, a wild, experimentally minded combo, Roogalator cut a demo and landed themselves a booking agency deal. Neither Beresford nor Irwin wanted to take things any further, however, and with their first live shows now coming up fast, Adler and Plytas rebuilt.

Drummer Dave Solomon, a bandmate of both Plytas and Beresford in a Motown covers band, replaced Irwin; Irwin himself, meanwhile, noticing the band still didn't have a bassist, had given a copy of Roogalator's to Paul Riley, a member of pub scene heroes Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. He joined up shortly before Roogalator's September, 1975, debut and, for a short time, it was his fame which attracted Roogalator's first press notices.

Not for long, though. "Within two or three weeks, the response was amazing," Adler remembered. "we landed a spot at the Roundhouse and got an incredible review, completely over the top." Feted by the music press (they'd landed the "future of rock'n'roll" tag by Christmas), haunted by would-be managers, pursued by desperate record companies, Roogalator had the world at their feet and every time they'd kick it away. The suitor would make a suggestion too many, the band would shoot back with a demand too far - when Chas Chandler showed up backstage offering to make Adler the "next Jimi Hendrix," the guitarist turned him down. "I said 'I'm Danny Adler. I'm not interested in being Jimi Hendrix."

Roogalator were unique, but they were also single-minded - indeed, it was because they were single-minded that they were so unique. But that also meant that whatever they did had to be done on their own terms. And no record company was willing to let that happen.

Still, the band did record some demos for United Artists in November, 1975 - it was there that they met Robin Scott, the man who would eventually become their manager, their producer and ultimately, their record label chief as well. In the meantime, Roogalator continued to soar. Then, in January, 1976, Roogalator opened for Dr Feelgood at London's Hammersmith Odeon, and the common consensus is, they blew it.

Too much, too soon? Maybe. In three months, Roogalator had risen higher and faster than they could ever have dreamed, but that one final step, a record contract, remained as elusive as ever. Suddenly, everything seemed an anti-climax.

Drummer Solomon quit, to be replaced with the returning Bobby Irwin; even before the new man was in his seat, however, Riley, too, had departed. With Jeff Watts on bass, Roogalator recorded the aforementioned Peel session, but when a dreadful European tour culminated with the band having all their possessions stolen from the van, Watts departed. Irwin followed, rejoining Paul Riley in the Sinceros, a band the bassist was now managing, and Adler was ready to give up.

Manager Scott, however, would not hear of it. Plytas was still on board, a new rhythm section, Scott's brother Julian (bass) and drummer Justin Hildreth, was recruited and, by early summer, Roogalator were signing a one-off single deal with Stiff and preparing for the release of "All Aboard"/"Cincinnati Fatback."

To the average onlooker, the line-up changes made no difference. Maybe the band played with a smidgen less visceral urgency than the early shows had highlighted; maybe a touch of road- and world-weariness afflicted Adler's performance. Weariness schmeariness. The third ever release on the upstart Stiff label was a marvel, capturing everything the two songs ever imparted, one a relentless railroad boogie, the other a slab of triumphant proto-rap, namechecking sights and sounds a million miles removed from the mock-flock wallpaper of London pubs and beer-stinking backrooms of the clubs and halls.

Roogalator marched on, gigging relentlessly. They returned to the BBC for a second Peel session in November and came close to signing with Virgin. A single, Plytas' "Love And The Single Girl," caused a bit of a splash, but when Virgin demanded that Roogalator sign a publishing deal as well as a recording contract, the band backed away. Besides, even they knew that time was passing them by. Dexterous funk wasn't "in" anymore; now the papers were full of bands which had been grateful to open for Roogalator through 1976, unlikely sounding outfits like the Vibrators, the Clash and, of course, the Sex Pistols.

The punks stole Roogalator's thunder, Costello stole Adler's geek in glasses persona. By the time manager Scott launched his own Do It label and Roogalator cut their debut album in mid-1977, Adler himself simply wanted to get the old songs down on tape at last, then move on to something else. When Nick Plytas quit for a tour which took him onto Lene Lovich, Tom Robinson, Tina Turner, Neneh Cherry and the *Jonathan Ross Show*, an era had clearly ended.

As a trio, Roogalator toured on through 1978, cutting one more single ("Zero Hero") and at least demoing a second album. Hildreth was next to leave, to be replaced by Nick Monnas (from Stormu Y'amashta's band) and, in July, 1978, Roogalator came to the end of the line.

But of course it wasn't the end of the story. Striking out alone, Adler revived much of the projected second Roogalator album for his own solo debut, *The Danny Adler Story*, before launching an idiosyncratic career which has run through a stream of extraordinarily eclectic albums over the past two decades. Roogalator's name lives on through a triptych of CD compilations (*Early Danny Adler*, *The Roogalator Years* and *Cincinnati Fatback*) which, in presenting multiple versions of much the same songs, offer a fascinating glimpse into the workings and development of this extraordinary band. It's been two-plus decades since Roogalator's heyday. But down the years, you can still hear them calling, "All aboard!"