Rare Bird

The band was formed in December 1969. It featured lead singer and guitarist Steve Gould, organist Graham Stansfield, electric pianist David Kaffinetti and drummer Mark Ashton.[1] The first album released in 1969 was called "Rare Bird". Along with Van der Graaf Generator and The Nice, they were one of the first bands signed to Charisma Records, the record label that Tony Stratton Smith had founded.[2]

Rare Bird began when Graham Stansfield (aka Graham Field) placed an advertisement for a pianist in a musical periodica; he received thirty replies and subsequently formed a group called "Lunch". He met Dave Kaffinetti in November 1968, and together they formulated the basic ideas for Rare Bird. In August 1969, they found the ideal rhythm section in Steve Gould, Chris Randall and Mark Ashton. Field and Kaffinetti had originally envisaged that the band would be a four-piece and were looking for a singer/bass player. Gould and Randall, who had both previously been members of the Pop-Psych band "Fruit Machine", applied to the ad as vocals/guitar and bass respectively, and both were taken on. Lunch played a few gigs. It later turned out that the founders of the band were more interested in Gould and convinced him to play bass. Randall was asked to leave the band. Two weeks later, they had signed management and agency contracts, and three weeks later, were in the studio recording their debut album. Before joining Lunch, Randall and Gould had previously written a song called "To the Memory of Two Brave Dogs". Rare Bird included this song in their debut album renaming it "Iceberg" but Randall received no credit.

Their late 1969 release "Sympathy" reached No. 1 in Italy and in France, sold 500,000 copies in France and is estimated to have sold one million globally.[1] It became their only UK hit single, reaching No. 27 and staying on the chart for 8 weeks.[3]

A 1970 cover version of Sympathy by The Family Dogg, reached number two in the Netherlands.

In 1992 the song returned to the UK chart with a version by Marillion that reached No. 17.[4]

In 2001, Sympathy was sampled by Faithless in their song "Not Enuff Love", named after a chorus line in "Sympathy".

In early 1971, Graham Stansfield left Rare Bird to form a short-lived solo project, The Fields. Later members included Fred Kelly (Nic Potter), Ced Curtis, Paul Holland, and Paul Karas on the Epic Forest album with Andy Curtis and Fred Kelly appearing on the album Somebody's Watching.

The band finally split up in 1975. Dave Kaffinetti (credited as David Kaff) played the part of Viv Savage in This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Chris Randall went on to play with Martin Murray and The Honeycombs, the group of the mid-1960s with their worldwide hits, "Have I the Right", "Love In Tokyo" and "Thats the Way!".

Paul Holland had previously been a recording engineer at Southern Music's studio in Denmark Street, London during the time that Fruit Machine recorded songs for release on the Spark Label under the direction of Barry Kingston. He died of cancer in 2010.

• Rare Bird discography at Discogs