Sutherland Brothers & Quiver: Friday 20th September 1974, The Penthouse, Scarborough

The ‘Beat of the Street’ tour

Iain Sutherland (guitars, vocals) / Tim Renwick (guitars) / Gavin Sutherland (bass, vocals) / Pete Wood (keyboards) / Willie Wilson (drums)

Now here was a band that I really enjoyed. Or should that be bands, plural? Most readers of this blog will be aware that the Sutherland Brothers (Gavin and Iain) were a successful band in their own right before joining up with the members of second band Quiver to create the outfit that I saw on this night.

The “SutherQuivs”, as they were affectionately known, had been together since 1973 and had by now produced three albums, the latest being ‘Beat of the Street‘, but it was the previous album that had caught my attention, the wonderful ‘Dream Kid‘ (1973) with its excellent and catchy title track which inexplicably flopped as a single. Nevertheless, I was thrilled when they played that song and I vividly recall that we really did enjoy this gig as they performed many of the older tracks from their repertoire, including ‘The Pie‘, together with the newer ‘Laid Back In Anger’ and, famously, ‘Sailing‘ which would become a hit in a much changed version the following year for a certain Mr. R. Stewart, and then again in 1976 when the BBC picked it up for the theme to their documentary series “Sailor“, about life on board HMS Ark Royal. That’s not a bad legacy, lads, and I guess that the royalties that would have accrued would have seen the band quite comfortable for a couple of years or so. Anyway, I digress…

Unfortunately but hardly unexpectedly, there are no setlists available for this period so we are going to have to assume that as well as the tracks mentioned which I know that they definitely played, they would also have performed material from ‘Lifeboat‘, ‘Dream Kid‘ and especially from the new ‘Beat of the Street’ album which they were keen to plug. This was another good night with a popular band who deserved to be bigger.

1975 would see them release the album ‘Reach For The Sky‘ which in turn spawned their one mega-hit in their own right, the soppy ‘Arms of Mary‘ which sold by the barrow-load in 1976 and became their most well-known tune, but was never a favourite of mine. As far as I was concerned, the band had “sold out” by that time.

As a postscript to this gig, Quiver were jettisoned in 1979 and the brothers recorded one further album before calling time on the whole thing at the end of that year.

Setlist: unknown

And a small Penthouse advert from Melody Maker, 7th September 1974, plugging our gig.  NB Sailor played on 4th Oct, not Seventh Wave (who actually played 8th Nov).