Unicorn - P.F. Sloan/ Going Back Home

 

English Country Rock meets Jimmy Webb 

Label: Big T

Year of Release: 1971

Unicorn are occasionally cited as one of the seventies rock groups who really should have been huge, but barely raised above the club and university circuit. Consisting of Ken Baker on guitar and keyboards, Pat Martin on bass, Kevin Smith on guitar and mandolin, Peter Perryer on drums and Trevor Mee on guitar, they also sang harmonies in a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young styled blend. They weren't alone in taking that particular road in the UK - even Hank Marvin was up to similar tricks by the early seventies - but their style was admired enough to catch the ears of David Gilmour, who produced a number of their LPs.

Prior to Gilmour's ears twitching, this little single slipped out on the Big T label, a cover of Jimmy Webb's "PF Sloan" which took the bruised Americana of the original and sanded down some of the edges to create a version some still reference as outshining Webb's version. It certainly lets plenty of sunlight in through the cracks, sounding like a possible minor hit in another universe. 

Unicorn had a long history prior to this record, beginning life as The Late Edition in 1968 and occasionally backing Billy J Kramer under that name, before eventually shortening their name to The Late and finally Unicorn. How such name-hopping came about isn't recorded, but one can only assume that line-up changes may have been to blame.

"P.F. Sloan" was included on their first LP "Uphill All The Way" which contained covers of artists the band admired, before Gilmour got his mitts on the group and produced "Blue Pine Trees" for the Charisma label in 1974 and "Too Many Crooks" and "One More Tomorrow" for Harvest in 1976 and 1977 respectively.

The group disbanded in after the failure of "One More Tomorrow" to push them into the big time, apparently blaming the changing trends of the late seventies. In reality, though, homespun country rock was always a hard sell in Great Britain and it's perhaps not surprising they didn't push open many doors, however skilled they were at delivering some very classy records. 

Ken Baker released a solo single on Logo in 1979 entitled "Whatever Money Can Buy", but in terms of post-split activities, that really seems to have been it for the lot of them. Many of their albums have been reissued bundles of times since, though, and the world is your oyster if you wish to explore their work further. 

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