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The Move were a British Rock music band formed in Birmingham in 1965. They scored nine top 20 UK singles in five years, but were among the most popular British bands not to find any real success in the United States. For most of their career The Move were led by guitarist, singer and songwriter Roy Wood. He wrote all the group's UK singles and, from 1968, also sang lead vocals on many songs. Initially, the band had four main vocalists (Wood, Carl Wayne, Trevor Burton, and Ace Kefford) who divided the lead-vocal duties among themselves.
The Move evolved from several mid-1960s Birmingham-based groups, including Carl Wayne & the Vikings, the Nightriders, and the Mayfair Set. Their name referred to the move various members of these bands made to form the group. Besides Wood, The Move's original five-piece line-up in 1965 was drummer Bev Bevan, bassist Ace Kefford, vocalist Carl Wayne, and guitarist Trevor Burton. By 1972, The Move had been reduced to a trio consisting of Wood, Bevan and Jeff Lynne, formerly of the Idle Race. The band's later years saw this lineup develop a side project called Electric Light Orchestra, which would go on to achieve major international success after The Move disbanded. Wood would later leave that group and form the decently successful band Wizzard.
During their time together, the band released four studio albums, two compilation albums, one live extended play, and 18 singles. After their first two singles, "Night of Fear" and "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" hit number 2 and number 5 on the UK singles chart, the band released their self-titled debut in 1968, which hit number 15 on the UK Official Albums Chart and garnered two more top-10 singles, "Flowers in the Rain" and "Fire Brigade". After 1968, the band would have three more singles in the top 10, including "Blackberry Way", which went all the way to number 1. The band also released three more studio albums, Shazam, Looking On, and Message from the Country before their breakup.
In 1981, the band briefly reunited for a one-off charity concert, consisting of Bevan, Wood, and Kefford. 23 years later, in 2004, Bevan would form the "Bev Bevan Band" with Phil Bates and Neil Lockwood. The name later changed to "Bev Bevan's Move" and Bevan would invite Burton to the group in 2006 as an occasional guest in shows, before he became a permanent member of the group. Between 2007 and 2014, Burton and Bevan, alongside Lockwood and new members Phil Tree, Gordon Healer, Tony Kelsey, and Abby Brant, performed intermittently as "The Move featuring Bev Bevan and Trevor Burton". The band's most recent reunion would happen in 2016, as "Bev Bevan's Zing Band", with Bevan and former members Tree, Brant, and Kelsey, alongside new member Geoff Turton.
Secunda got them a weekly residency at London's Marquee Club in 1966, where they appeared dressed as gangsters. Their early career was marked by a series of publicity stunts, high-profile media events and outrageous stage antics masterminded by Secunda; these included Wayne taking an axe to television sets. Wood was uncomfortable with this sensationalism, and many concert promoters responded by banning The Move from live performances, but the stunts succeeded in drawing media attention and concert audiences to the group. Eventually, Secunda also managed to persuade Wood to begin writing songs for the band during his time off. They secured a production contract with independent record producer Denny Cordell, but that was turned into a media event by Secunda, who arranged for the band to sign their contracts on the back of Liz Wilson, a topless female model. Wood wrote their first single, "Night of Fear", a No. 2 hit on the UK Singles Chart in January 1967, which began The Move's practice of musical quotation (in this case, the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky). Their second single, "I Can Hear the Grass Grow", was another major hit, reaching No. 5 in the UK.
In April 1967, NME reported that The Move had offered a £200 reward (equivalent to £ in 2025) for the recovery of the master tapes of ten songs intended for their debut album. The tapes were stolen from their agent's car when it was parked in Denmark Street, London. The tapes were found in a skip (dumpster) shortly afterward, but the damage caused to them meant that new mixes and masters would have to be made, resulting in the delayed album only being released in March 1968 instead of the original plan of autumn 1967. Their third single "Flowers in the Rain" was the first chart single played on BBC Radio 1 when it began broadcasting at 7am on 30 September 1967, introduced by Tony Blackburn. The single, which reached No. 2 in the UK, was less guitar-orientated than their previous two singles, and featured a woodwind and string arrangement by Cordell's assistant Tony Visconti. The track was released on the re-launched Regal Zonophone Record label.
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For their fourth single the group had planned to release "Cherry Blossom Clinic", a lighthearted song about the fantasies of a patient in a mental institution, backed by the satirical "Vote For Me". However, The Move had been unnerved by their court experiences; they and the record label felt it unwise to pursue such a potentially controversial idea, so the single was shelved. "Vote For Me" remained unreleased until it appeared on retrospective collections from 1997 onwards, while "Cherry Blossom Clinic" became one of the tracks on their first LP, called Move.
As a direct consequence of the lawsuit, The Move fired Secunda and hired Don Arden, who had himself recently been fired as manager of the Small Faces. In a 2000 interview, Wayne noted that there had always been a major split within the group about Secunda's tactics: "Secunda had the animals who would do what he wanted to do in Trevor, Ace, and me—the fiery part of the stage act. I think Roy would obviously qualify this himself, but I believe he was slightly embarrassed by the image and the stunts—but the rest of us weren't ... We were always willing to be Secunda puppets." Carl Wayne, 2000 interview , The Move Online. Retrieved November 2006.
The Move were on the bill at the inaugural Isle of Wight Festival on 31 August 1968. In mid-1968, their fifth single "Wild Tiger Woman", a song acknowledging the group's love of Jimi Hendrix (Wood and Burton sang backing vocals on "You Got Me Floatin'" on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's second album, ), sold poorly and failed to make the UK chart. The Move responded with their most commercially successful song to date, "Blackberry Way" (co-produced by Jimmy Miller), which topped the UK chart in February 1969. Wayne refused to sing the song, so it was recorded as a trio with Wood again handling lead vocal. Richard Tandy played keyboards on "Blackberry Way" and joined the band for a time, playing keyboards live, and switching to bass when Burton was briefly sidelined with a shoulder injury. Upon Burton's recovery, Tandy departed to join the Uglys. The new, more Pop music-oriented musical direction, and the single hitting number one was the last straw for the increasingly disenchanted Burton, who wanted to work in a more hard rock/blues-oriented style, and he left the group in February 1969 after an altercation on stage with Bevan in Sweden.
At this time the band invited Jeff Lynne, a friend of Wood, to join. He turned down the offer down because he was still working toward success in the Idle Race, another Birmingham-based group. It was rumoured in the music press that Hank Marvin of the recently disbanded The Shadows had been invited to join The Move. Some years later, Wayne recalled that to be nothing more than a publicity stunt; however, Marvin himself, in an article in Melody Maker in 1973 and elsewhere, has maintained that he was approached by Wood and invited to join The Move, but declined because their schedule was too hectic for him. Bevan confirmed in a 2014 interview that the band invited Marvin, but they never expected him to accept. Burton was ultimately replaced in 1969 by Rick Price, another veteran of several Birmingham rock groups, who joined on a temporary, non-contractual basis. Thus, the group in spring 1969 consisted of Wayne (vocals), Wood (guitar, vocals), Bevan (drums), and Price (bass, vocals).
Both Ace Kefford and Trevor Burton struggled commercially after leaving The Move. Kefford formed his own short-lived group, the Ace Kefford Stand, with Cozy Powell on drums. After this, he pursued a solo career and recorded a solo album in 1968, but it remained un-released until 2003 when it appeared as Ace The Face. Burton played bass with yet another Birmingham group, the Steve Gibbons Band, was one-third of the short-lived band Balls (with Denny Laine and Alan White), and later fronted his own blues group as lead guitarist.
In October 1969, The Move made their only concert appearances in the US, opening two shows for the Stooges in Detroit, and playing dates in Los Angeles and at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. When neither their US record company nor promoters showed any more interest—the band even had to make their own accommodation & travel arrangements—the remaining proposed tour dates in New York were cancelled and the group returned home. During that period, Arden sold The Move's management contract to impresario Peter Walsh, who was at the time also managing the Marmalade. Walsh, who specialised in cabaret acts, began booking the band into cabaret-style venues, which further increased the tension between Wayne and Wood. Bevan later said the others felt "old before their time" when playing cabaret dates. By this point, Wood was openly discussing his desire to form a band playing more eclectic music, including both harder rock and classical instruments, which he tentatively dubbed "The Electric Light Orchestra".
The Move's second album, 1970's Shazam, continued The Move's practice of musical quotation, and of elaborately re-arranged versions of other performers' songs. "Hello Susie" (a Wood composition), which was a Top 5 hit for Amen Corner in 1969, quoted Booker T. Jones' and Eddie Floyd's "Big Bird". The album also featured a slightly slower re-recording of "Cherry Blossom Clinic", an instrumental medley of public domain works, and a cover of a Tom Paxton song, "The Last Thing on My Mind". Despite such superficial similarities with their past, however, the album represented a clear break from The Move's identity as a pop group, reintroducing them as a hard-edged underground band. Burton played bass on a couple of tracks as they had been recorded before he left, although this was not credited at the time.
Well aware that Wood was intent on setting up his new, orchestral rock project, Wayne suggested that Wood concentrate on performing with his new band while continuing to write songs for The Move, which would be reorganized with a lineup consisting of Wayne, Burton, and Kefford; however, his suggestion was rejected by Wood, Bevan and Price, so after getting angry and embarrassed witnessing a fight between Wood and a drunken audience member in Sheffield, Wayne quit the group in January 1970, a month before the release of Shazam. He subsequently worked in a variety of musical ventures and appeared on television and radio. In 2000, he replaced Allan Clarke as lead singer of the Hollies and performed with them as lead singer until his death from cancer in 2004.
For the rest of the year, The Move concentrated on studio work, because they still owed one more album under their existing contract with Essex Music (David Platz) – which Essex Music was planning to use to set up its own record label, Fly Records. To prepare for their new direction, Wood and Lynne overdubbed multiple instruments, including piano, woodwinds, sitar, and a Chinese cello that Wood had bought. However, before the third album Looking On was completed, Arden signed the new Wood-Lynne-Bevan band (without Price, who was not under contract with The Move) to a three-album deal with the Harvest Records division of EMI that included a £25,000 (equivalent to £ in 2025) advance – announced at the time as £100,000 (equivalent to £ in 2025), but still more money – £8,333 each (equivalent to £ in 2025) than the band had seen so far, despite its success. As a result, by the time Looking On was released in December 1970, with five songs composed by Wood and two by Lynne, Fly Records had lost interest in it, despite the fact that the album included a No. 7 hit, "Brontosaurus", which was the band's last recording for Regal Zonophone.
The second single from the album, "When Alice Comes Back to the Farm", failed to chart on Fly. The song intended as the B-side of that single, "10538 Overture", was ultimately held by the band for its new Electric Light Orchestra project, and Price's bass line was deleted and re-recorded by Wood, since Price was not part of the new group. Price in fact was unaware that The Move were working without him, until he heard about new material being made in early 1971. He then pursued other projects, including the band Mongrel, although he later rejoined Wood in Wizzard and the short-lived Wizzo Band. He went on to work in musical management, and also formed the duo Price and Lee with his wife Dianne Lee, formerly of the duo Peters and Lee.
In 1972, after the release of the first Electric Light Orchestra album, The Move released what turned out to be a farewell record, a maxi single consisting of "California Man", "Ella James" (from Message, but a track originally planned by EMI to be their first single on the Harvest label) and "Do Ya". "California Man", a No. 7 UK hit—featuring baritone saxophones, a double bass, and a riff borrowed from George Gershwin—was an affectionate tribute to Jerry Lee Lewis (the double bass had Lewis's nickname, "Killer", written on it) and Little Richard, with Lynne and Wood trading verses and lines. Meanwhile, Lynne's "Do Ya" became The Move's best-known song in the US; it was the only Move song to reach the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. 93. (However, the Electric Light Orchestra's remake of "Do Ya", recorded after Wood's departure, was a significant US hit in 1977.) With the release of the album The Electric Light Orchestra, within weeks of the last single being released, they appeared on television promoting both The Move's last single and ELO's debut single (the long-delayed "10538 Overture") at the same time. Wood and Hunt quit ELO during the early recording sessions of ELO's second album, ELO 2, which was the group's final album under their Harvest Records contract. Wood went on to front the glam rock band Wizzard, as well as releasing a solo album in 1973, Boulders, while Lynne, Bevan and Tandy kept touring as ELO and finally achieved international success. Boulders was recorded during Wood's time with The Move, but its release was held off because Lynne and Bevan wished it not to compete with The Move's albums.
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After Wayne's death in 2004, Bevan formed the Bev Bevan Band—shortly to be renamed 'Bev Bevan's Move' (with no other past members), in order to capitalise on The Move's continuing reputation and belated success. Bevan recruited former ELO Part II colleagues guitarist Phil Bates and keyboard player Neil Lockwood, plus bassist Phil Tree, to play a set on tour composed mostly of classics by The Move. Wood expressed extreme displeasure at that development. Mojo magazine, 2007
Former Move guitarist Burton joined the band on occasion during 2006, and joined permanently in 2007 (Wayne had tried to broker a reunion between Bevan and Burton before his death, and was to be involved with the new band). Bates departed in July 2007 to re-join ELO Part II (now renamed the Orchestra) and was replaced with Gordon Healer. The Autumn 2007 tour was billed as "the Move featuring Trevor Burton and Bev Bevan".Bev Bevan interview with Johnnie Walker, BBC Radio 2, 20 September 2007
In 2014, the band toured as The Move with a lineup consisting of Bevan, Burton, Tree, keyboardist/vocalist Abby Brant, and guitarist/vocalist Tony Kelsey. On 2 May 2014, Bev Bevan announced through a Facebook post that The Move had broken up, and that he and Burton would tour separately with groups called "the Bev Bevan Band" and "the Trevor Burton Band". In December 2014 the Bev Bevan Band completed their "Stand Up And Rock" tour, which lasted for almost 50 dates, in conjunction with Bevan's childhood friend Jasper Carrott. Guests on the tour included Trevor Burton, Geoff Turton and Joy Strachan-Brain, alongside Bevan, Kelsey, Tree and Brant.
In 2016 the band announced that they had reformed again, and were due to perform at The Core Theatre in Solihull, West Midlands, with a line-up consisting of Bevan, Burton, Tree, and Kelsey; however, it was later revealed that the band performing would no longer be billed as 'The Move', but as 'Bev Bevan's Zing Band', and would not feature Burton; with the line-up consisting of Bevan, Tree, and Kelsey, along with a returning Abby Brant, and Geoff Turton on lead vocals.
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