The Pop Corporation

British Blues legend, prog overlord and axe-master, Tony McPhee from The Groundhogs, has sadly passed away. In a FB post on the group’s page, it said: “We are deeply saddened to announce that 79-year-old guitar and blues legend Tony (TS) McPhee, died peacefully at home today 6th June, from complications following a fall last year.”

In a previous life, Pop Corps interviewed Tony and found him to be warm and wonderful and everything you’d want from a boots and bottleneck man of the road. He chose a life on stage after seeing Cyril Davies at the Marquee in 1963, and thought “this’ll do”, before starting his own group named after the John Lee Hooker song, ‘Groundhog Blues’.

The group would tour as Hooker’s backing group as well as cutting their teeth up and down the UK’s motorways, becoming one of the more fearsome live acts on the circuit.

With classic LPs like ‘Split’, ‘Thank Christ For The Bomb’ and ‘Who Will Save The World’ under their belt, they guaranteed themselves a devoted fanbase that would last for McPhee’s career.

It’s the group’s signature track ‘Cherry Red’ that still endures, both influential on British punks, as well as real ale Blues heads. A pulverising piece of music that hasn’t been matched at least in UK circles, blowing away Zep, early Fleetwood Mac, Cream and the rest.

Not one to sit still, McPhee would push the boundaries of blues rock, and venture into Space Rock and prog, adding synths and Mellotron to the mix, with Prog magazine saying: “the four albums they recorded between 1970 and 1972 saw the band become increasingly ambitious… helping to create an exciting progressive/blues rock hybrid”.

One of the things that made so many love McPhee was not how his band almost blew the Stones off stage with a ’71 support slot for the group, but rather, McPhee’s unwillingness to seek the spotlight and play celeb. He was a guitarist first and foremost, and when asked, it was backing Hooker that ranked highest amongst his personal achievements. He was musically adventurous, but personally, a pragmatist. A straight up-and-down, honest, working musician.

In later years, you’d find McPhee playing the blues circuit pubs and hanging with fans with no airs and graces. His name ‘TS McPhee’ stood for ‘tough shit’. Exactly what you’d hope for.

They represented the tough, ugly comedown of the ’60s and faced it head-on. Abrasive, straight-talking, proto-metal, proto-punk, chaotic and hard working. They weren’t into the fairies and goblins of prog, and weren’t so deferential to the blues that they couldn’t twist it and bend it entirely out of shape – The Groundhogs were the people’s champs, and McPhee, the master.

“I was never fashionable” he once said. We knew. We loved him for it.

On the self-effacing superhero artwork for ‘Who Will Save The World?’, he mockingly referred to himself as Marvellous McPhee, but the thing is, we all truly thought he was exactly that.