Keith West - Havin' Someone (1974) video free download

Keith West - Havin' Someone (Deram 1974)

Keith Alan Hopkins at 18 was the singer of Four Plus One with whom he recorded his first single. His next band, The In Crowd, released three singles in 1965 before mutating into Tomorrow, one of the stars of british psych pop. They released in 1968 one of the most representative LPs in that field, though Keith had already found success the previous year with his first solo single "Excerpt From A Teenage Opera", made under his alliance with pop magician Mark Wirtz.

After two more singles and the split of Tomorrow, Keith did some producing work for other artists and made a few recordings with some famous friends like Steve Howe, Nicky Hopkins, Ron Wood o Aynsley Dunbar. But the EMI record label wasn't really impressed and those songs were kept unreleased for many years. His next project wans't quite lucky either. Keith had teamed with his writing partner Ken Burgess and Andrew Loog Oldham was very interested in their material but when a release time was due, his Immediate label went bankrupt and once again Keith's music remained unreleased.

The Deram label released two singles by Keith West in 1973 and 1974 and then little more was heard of him again in the U.K. Though, in 1974, the german progressive label Kuckuck released the only official LP by Keith under the title "Wherever My Love Goes". After noticing the date of the songs copyright, the general mood of the record and some other details, we can then decuct that this LP could be in fact some kind of compilation from some of those recordings Keith West had previously made, and which had remained in the can.

Indeed, the opening song, "The Power And The Glory", is produced by Andrew Loog Oldham and was almost recorded by Elvis Presley after the cover version made by The Fortunes. Some distinguished musicians appear on the recording: John Weider (Eric Burdon & The Animals, Family), the american Glen Ross Campbell (The Misunderstood, Juicy Lucy), Johnny Almond (John Mayall) or Tommy Eyre (Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation). It's a record much of its time, with some great moments and others more self indulgent, probably because of the abundant smoke of the time. The little jewel on it is probably the closing "Sad Song", the only one not written by Keith but by his writing partner Ken Burgess.

Needless to say that the sales of the album were quite poor, in spite of Kuckuck releasing a single from it ("The Power And The Glory" b/w "Liet Motif"), and with the passing of time and the album being released in Germany only, it has become a bona fide rarity.

A bit later, in 1975, Keith made a new band again with John Weider: Moonrider. Bruce Thomas, after his time with Quiver and before moving to Elvis Costello's Attractions also joined. After Moonrider's selftitled and only album, Keith West made some sporadic recording under pseudonym and had several music related activities: productions, publicity jingles, and his own publishing company which he still runs nowadays.