That project was briefly put on hold when John Mayall, who had seen a shambolic set by Bond and had been impressed at how Hiseman and Heckstall-Smith had managed nevertheless to follow him, invited both to join his band, the Bluesbreakers, with whom they appeared on the album Bare Wires (1968). Bond used the blues as a basis for improvisation, but because he was often under the influence of heroin and alcohol while performing, the improvisation could get out of hand and the other band members would leave him on stage to fend for himself.įrustrated, Hiseman approached Reeves and Greenslade with the idea of forming a new group with “no drug addicts, no time wasters and no passengers”. In 1966 he played on a single, Devil’s Grip, by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and then accepted an offer to replace Ginger Baker as drummer in the Graham Bond Organisation, a move that allowed him to quit his day job as a marketing management trainee at Unilever. Later he appeared in the wittily named Wes Minster Five and was a founder member of Neil Ardley and the New Jazz Orchestra. He played in a school trio with Reeves on double bass and Greenslade on piano. Hiseman studied the violin and piano at Addey and Stanhope grammar school in nearby New Cross, but found that his true interest lay in the drums. Lily played the flute and piano and Philip’s family included music hall entertainers and dance band musicians. John (it was Melody Maker that referred to him in 1964 as “Jon”, and he saw no reason to change it) was born in Woolwich, south-east London, to Lily (nee Spratt), who worked in the music library at the Bank of England, and Philip Hiseman, a senior lecturer in printing at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. An excellent legacy of their performances is Colosseum Live (1971), a double album with six extended tracks. Their third UK album (there was a US-only release, Grass is Greener, drawn mainly from previous albums), Daughter of Time (1970), included Chris Farlowe on vocals. In 1969 Litherland was replaced by Dave “Clem” Clempson, and Valentyne Suite was the band’s first album under the Vertigo imprint, the title track again showing their infatuation with A Whiter Shade of Pale. Being a rock band that improvised, every show was different the ever-changing Beware the Ides of March, for instance, began with Heckstall-Smith playing A Whiter Shade of Pale, but then, it could go anywhere. The band consisted of Hiseman, the saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith, former schoolfriends Tony Reeves and Dave Greenslade and, on guitar and vocals, James Litherland. Colosseum’s first appearance was at a disco in Scarborough in 1968.

Band called colosseum