10 - A former member leaves and the sound changes

1993 saw the Stargazers as busy as ever, with or without the band.
Ricky drummed for Restless for some gigs in Finland. Peter joined the Metrotones in February and remained with them until December. He also played some steel guitar on the Comets’ We’re Gonna Party (Hydra Records)
Facing the success of the band in Japan, Vinyl Japan released “Rock That Boogie” an album full of unissued material including demos, studio outtakes and radio sessions dating from their stint with Epic and featuring mostly the original line-up with Pete on guitar and Anders on bass.

But the main event of the year was to be the departure of Ricky, one of the two founding members. He explains how this happened: “The Stargazers were writing a new album, which had a lot of jazz influenced numbers on it. The boys told me that they wanted the band to go in a much more jazz based style, this was driven mainly by John and Pete. It was pretty obvious to me that they had been having secret meetings behind my back to discuss this without my knowledge, I was not impressed with this at all and told them that we are a Rock’n’Roll band, changing our style to jazz was a big mistake and it would alienate us from our core audience. I wrote some numbers but as usual these were not really liked (in my opinion) by certain members of the band and received negative comments. Again this disappointed me greatly. I also got a new job as a sales engineer and this meant that I may not be available for all the gig dates that may come up. This did not help with my standing within the band. Anyway things were a bit tense for me with the band at this time but we kept on going, playing regular gigs and writing album material. (…) One Saturday in 1993 we played a gig at the Dublin Castle in Camden, London; this was to be my last gig with the band. We went down very well and met there the next day to rehearse for our new album, after this session I drove home and got a phone call from Danny to say that I had been sacked from the band with immediate effect. I asked him why this was and he said it is to do with the new jazz direction, they wanted a more jazz drummer and the fact that I maybe couldn’t make all of the gigs. I asked if I could complete all of the forthcoming gigs (which I had booked as a band manager) including a new Japan tour with Marshall Lytle, No you can’t was the reply. (…) This really made me feel bad at the time, not only was I not given the opportunity to bow out with some dignity, I felt let down by people who I had considered friend and that hurts the most.”
The departure of Ricky definitely closed a chapter in the band’s history. As good as the following line-up could be, it wouldn’t be the same without him anymore.
The remaining four members then hired Gary Richardson (again!) and the band embarked in December to a second tour of Japan to promote “Rock That Boogie”. But for Danny “the second tour was tainted slightly by the loss of Ricky.” Chris was busy otherwise and couldn’t come but the band had Marshall Lytle to guest on a few tracks (including Rock Around the Clock).

In Japan with Gary Richardson, 1994.

Back from Japan, the Stargazers wasted no time and found themselves in Rooser Studio on February 19th - 20th to start working on the new album. The direction in which they headed for this session was different than their previous recordings and marked a departure from their usual sound. Wallace penned many songs leaving more room to his jazz influences with Peter adding hot Charlie Christian licks on them. Davenport also wrote Haley influenced tunes more in their usual style (L.O.V.E, Let’s Go Rockin’ n’ Rollin’) and Danny contributed Swingin’ On A Star a killer rockabilly number.
When asked about his legacy with the Stargazers, Wallace answers “I gave the world Give Me That Jive! (…) It’s my all time favourite Stargazers album!!! By a long way (…)I did write 65% of it. This was my way of saying we have quality songs within the band. Pete’s tracks were great & Dan came good with a couple.”
The band toured Germany to play this new material on stage, but Ricky’s feeling proved to be right and this new stuff wasn’t well received by the old fans (not to speak about the loss of Ricky).
John remembers this period “We had a lot of negativity from the Teds, sad and blinkered, that whole mid 50’s British RnR was played by jazzers but our audience was not ready for it in the early 90’s.”
The various members of the band had mixed feelings about this material and in the end the Stargazers decided not to release these recordings and eventually came back to the style they were associated with. These sessions were finally released five years later under the name “Give Me That Jive - the 94 sessions”.
Danny “Every time you change band members it takes a while for everyone to settle in and so it was with new drummer Gary and the different influences - this was a fun time too but it got too jazzy for my tastes… too close to Future in the Fire here and there. Opinion was divided about it - so we sat on it for a while.”
Chris Gardner “It was something we worked on for a long time. Built up an album of all new songs, toured it around Germany. The recordings which were issued were actually only demos really. They were recorded in a basement studio in Shepherd’s Bush. John Wallace was the driving force behind this. He had written some songs and wanted to change the musical direction of the band. We were not all totally happy with that and the move towards jazz did actually break the band up. So we didn’t believe we had a finished product. But John, who financed the session, eventually wanted to get his investment back, and sold the album to Vinyl Japan. I think it was the best thing we did so I was very happy when it finally came out!”
The final episode of this sad chapter in the history of the band that started with the departure of Ricky happened when John left the band at his turn in mid-1994 to form Heavy Shift a modern jazz band that had a worldwide hit with their debut album “Unchain Your Mind” released that same year. Simon Gilby, an accomplished jazz player, replaced him. At one time or another Richardson also left and the band hired Shaun O’Keefe (Keytones) to play drums. This line-up recorded a four track 10” for Vinyl Japan. This mini-album features a reworking of Peter’s Go Go Honey, an original number penned by Danny (Send Me A Letter Loretta) and two covers: My Blue Heaven and Ida (Sweet As An Apple Cider) both played in their best Bill Haley style. This is a pretty good EP despite the absence of John and Ricky. This was to be Peter’s last recording with the band as he left shortly after leaving only Danny as the original member helped by now long time ‘Gazers Tim and Chris with Shaun, Simon and Jim Knowler (from the Keytones too) to replace Peter.