The following year came 'Markley, A Group' (Forward ST-F-1007 1970). In all but name the last recording by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, the album's title was hugely ironic. In the back sleeve photos a boyish Michael Lloyd appeared alongside a sinister, grinning shot of Markley and the rather more sombre-looking Harris brothers for the first time since the Fifo LP. Indeed, Lloyd was even allowed to share the production credit. Any ideas the others may have had about a new spirit of democracy within the band, however, soon evaporated when Markley insisted on star billing. According to Lloyd: "The Forward album was about the last of Bob being really coherent. He had progressed to saying: 'Oh, we can't call it the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - it's got to be my name'. Well, I had arranged this deal with Mike Curb to do an album by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, which made some sense to him - not a great deal - but some sense. Then Markley wanted to change it. That didn't come up until we had finished the whole thing and by then, of course, it was too late. It was the same old problem we had with song writing credits and other things and that's really the way it was across all of the albums, but eventually it just got to be horrible with Markley and contractually impossible. It was a stupid thing really. I mean, we should have called it the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band because at least we would have sold ten copies or something. I don't know, at that point I think I probably just wanted to get out and get done with it."

There was also a certain irony in the fact that the LP was on Mike Curb's Forward label. After all, a year or so earlier it had been Curb who had famously thrown the Velvet Underground and the Mothers Of Invention off Verve (a subsidiary of MGM, of which he was President) because of their association with drugs and 'weirdness'. Yet here he was releasing an album by a group of musicians who had not only adopted a name directly inspired by the former band, but who had also covered the latter's 'Help, I'm A Rock' - and that was before one even went on to consider some of their own equally bizarre material. Lloyd speaks in Curb's defence: "I think his motivation was honourable. When you think back to that period of time there were quite a few rock stars who were dropping dead from drug overdoses. Besides, by the time we joined MGM I don't think the Velvet Underground were selling any more records and their contract might have been up. I went right through all of that and I never drank, I never used drugs - nothing - and I think it was a tremendous blessing. That was despite all of the influences around me, of course. In the 60's you were almost an idiot if you didn't take acid - you were like a downer - but I was very focussed on what I wanted to do and it wasn't something that interested me at all. I didn't need to feel better because I already felt great. I was doing all the things that I wanted to do."

As the result, perhaps, of the inevitable confusion caused by the change of name, the 'Markley, A Group' album has long been overlooked. For those who favoured the harder-edged psychedelic adventures of the earlier recordings, the change of direction after 'A Child's Guide' must have been hard to swallow. Yet in a sense the band had come full circle. After starting out five years earlier in relatively humble fashion on the Fifo label, the high hopes of the three-album Reprise deal had ended with disillusionment and the virtual dissolution of the band. Now, after the low water-mark of the 'Where's Your Daddy?' LP, the band emerged with a work which was, in many ways, a fitting end to their career. Inconsistent certainly, with the first side probably the strongest, the album still had many wonderful moments, particularly a number of delicately structured songs underpinned with subtle arrangements and over-layed with immaculate harmonies.

Michael Lloyd - circa 1973 (from 'Friends' LP)

The record undoubtedly benefited from Michael Lloyd's full involvement, bringing with him his now considerable production experience. Singing many of the lead vocals, his self-assured keyboard playing featured prominently on several tracks while his orchestral arrangements were exquisite. Danny, too, was once again a full participant in the album, co-writing well over half of the songs on the LP compared with only two on 'Where's My Daddy?' and none on 'A Child's Guide'. A clue to his lack of involvement in the previous albums could be found in the opening track 'Booker T & His Electric Shock'. Sung by Danny, the humourous lyrics belied their serious subject matter. According to Lloyd: "Danny had been a manic depressive and had gone through all kinds of horrible times from way before the band. That song was about a mental institution and the electric shock treatment which he had there. It happened many times and once it started it was almost impossible to stop. It was a horrible thing for him to go through - remember that this was a long time ago when they didn't really know what to do - but eventually they found out that it was a lithium imbalance." Shaun, by contrast, recalls having little to do with the album beyond singing on the re-recorded version of 'Outside/Inside'. With its sweeping strings and trickling harpsichord this was an altogether more confident and polished version than the original, but once again Shaun regarded the lyrics - especially the line "I'm as rough as a cow's tongue" - as a prime example of Markley's misguided ruination of his melody.

It seems that Markley was particularly proud of his efforts on this final LP which, for the first time, came with a separate lyric sheet boldly declaring: "Lyrics by Markley." They were certainly memorable. The usual tirade against wealth continued with 'Zoom! Zoom! Zoom' ("Money, Money, Money / Tear it to pieces / Money, Money, Money / I don't care at all...") and 'Roger The Rocket Ship' was a genuinely funny take on paranoia ("Look out for interplanetary spaceships and magnetic storms / Some sort of advance warning system should be set up / Look out for solar flares, polar bears, and a third eye / That watches every move you make, watches every step you take..."). Not for the first time, however, the abiding theme was childhood innocence facing corruption in an adult world, while a predilection for young girls was evident from the titles alone: 'Elegant Ellen'; 'Little Ruby Rain'; 'Sarah The Sad Spirit'; and 'Sweet Lady Eleven And The Tattooed Man'. It is tempting to look amongst his lyrics for clues as to how Markley saw himself: perhaps as "the last electric man in the last electric band" of 'Next Plane To The Sun'; or "Bobby the Bad Bum" loved by 'Sarah The Sad Spirit'. Amidst the apparently nonsensical words of 'The Magic Cat', however, there lay a passage in which Markley almost seemed to anticipate his impending fall:

"Straw the Pink Policeman / Tore thru the wall...DRAW!!! / 'A gentle fawn on the lawn is nude / And that's against the law.' / Girls don't know much so young / Everyone starts to run..."

If one track justified Markley's arrogance, however, it was the beautiful ballad 'Little Ruby Rain', a song which proved that, despite the internal tensions, the band were still able to unite their disparate talents. Written by Markley and Danny Harris, the latter's acoustic guitar, played alongside a gorgeous string arrangement, sounded like a mature reflection of his earlier composition 'Will You Walk With Me', while the lyrics, confidently sung by Lloyd, were among Markley's most poetic:

"Stay in the shadows of my hand comfortable friend / You're a tree-ripened girl, still green, seen on billboards / You're a baby, not in age, but ideas / Toss and turn my friend to the end of the storm, underneath your sleeping eyelids. Little Ruby Rain, your storm is just a game / But it's strange to be yesterday's thunder. You're the sun reflected in the sand of a faraway land / You're a circus performer, magnificently twirling / The acrobat inside you is leisurely suspended, using no net / Destiny is below with its casual arithmetic, waiting. Little Ruby Rain... When the vines of Time, squared, electrify your soft hair / And four white horses with ruby-red eyes pull your casket away / Only a thimbleful of people will understand / And as the applause dies down, I'll remember you the way we are today. Little Ruby Rain..."

If the 'Group' album was the last recording to be made by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, for Michael Lloyd it was only the beginning of an extraordinarily successful musical career which has, to date, netted him over one hundred gold and platinum records. After becoming the Vice President of A & R at MGM, aged 20, in the fall of 1969, Michael achieved his first major hit producing Lou Rawls' single 'A Natural Man', winning himself a Grammy in the process. After forming his own band Friends, along with two Australians Darryl Cotton and Steve Kipner (ex-Tin Tin), Michael recorded an LP in 1973 (SE 4901) only to see it pulled by MGM when he and Mike Curb left the label. Unperturbed he went on to record two further albums under the guise of Cotton, Lloyd and Christian. However, he soon discovered that his strength lay in producing and composing for others, most notably those toothsome Mormon siblings the Osmonds (including their 'experimental' 'Crazy Horses' period and Donny's solo career), as well as other teen heart-throbs like Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett. His greatest achievement - in commercial terms at least - came with the 1987 film 'Dirty Dancing', for which he acted as musical supervisor as well as producing and co-writing much of the music. It went on to become one of the biggest-selling soundtracks of all time. Now married with four children, Michael lives in a mansion which used to belong to Oscar-winning actress Gloria Swanson, star of Billy Wilder's 'Sunset Boulevard' and, by a strange coincidence, an early silent film called 'Shifting Sands'...

Meanwhile, Shaun had also continued his career in music: "In the early 70s when Michael became successful producing Lou Rawls I would act as contractor for his sessions, calling up the musicians and co-ordinating the union contracts. I put together a reel-to-reel tape of four songs and sent them around. Through Michael a single off my album come out on Verve under the name Brigadune, but nothing happened. Then Capitol agreed I could do an album. Both my parents appeared on that - my father arranged some of it and Michael and Danny helped out as well. Unfortunately it came out on Capitol on the same day as 'Dark Side Of The Moon' - how could I compete? After that I realised that if you want to be the creative artist you should get someone else to cut your deal for you. It's not easy to do both and it was stupid to have an album on a major label and have no manager. Nevertheless, it was the first time I had the chance to do what I wanted to do. From that point I worked with Michael and became president of Barry Manilow's publishing company. After that I started getting calls from everybody." Apart from his solo LP ('Shaun Harris' Capitol ST11168 1973) and the Brigadune 45 ('I'll Cry Out From My Grave (God I'm Sorry)' b/w 'Misty Morning'), Shaun also collaborated with Danny and Michael on other singles under names like The Grand Concourse and Rockit. Shaun eventually grew disillusioned with the Los Angeles scene and now lives with his family in Oregon. In recent years he has taken up the cause of standards in education, written a play about his childhood and set up a highly successful children's film festival - even playing host to Margaret Thatcher.

Although Danny admits to losing the plot somewhat during the 70s, in 1980 he also released a solo album, 'Thank Him Every Day' (Azure Records KM 6846/AZ 8003), which combined synthesisers with religion. He got his life back on track and in 1984 he married Vicky, who he had first met years earlier when she was running an incense booth at one those infamous Teenage Fairs at which the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band were playing. After they moved to Sweden, where he worked as an alcohol and drugs counsellor, he continued to play folk music - Ralph McTell's 'Streets Of London' was a particular favourite - and recorded another album which has yet to be released. More recently he has established himself as a film actor, appearing in Jack Nicholson's Oscar-winning film 'As Good As It Gets' where he can be seen dancing in the restaurant scene! He is now writing a book about his experiences in the band and beyond. He and Shaun and Michael remain close friends.

Despite being a founder member of Three Dog Night, Ron Morgan never got to share in their phenomenal success. As his brother recalls: "Ron didn't do well under pressure. He suffered from bad stage fright, but it was really 'drug fright' - he was so high all the time that he became paranoid. They played the Whisky and when someone said Eric Clapton was in the audience he just froze. Ron found the pressure of living up to his image - and everyone's expectation - was too hard to bear. When Three Dog Night gave him a contract he flew back to Denver and the family lawyer had a look at it. It didn't look favourable for Ron so he didn't sign and by the time he got back to LA they had already replaced him. He never thought it would amount to anything anyway. He would never admit it, but their success really bugged him. He felt persecuted." Almost immediately another opportunity arose in the form of established Reprise act, the Electric Prunes, but unfortunately for Ron the group was about to hit the buffers. According to Dick Whetstone, drummer and vocalist with the final Prunes line-up, Ron became involved after John Herron quit unexpectedly during the sessions for the 'Just Good Old Rock And Roll' LP: "We knew Ron from a Denver band called Superband that included Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards. The two of them had landed a gig with the original version of Three Dog Night prior to the first album release. Ron was anxious to play in a less structured band - he wanted more solos! He was a world-class guitar player. He joined us in time to help finish the last tracks on the album and began touring with us, along with his Harley. Ron lived to play music, but the lifestyle contributed greatly to his death." After Three Dog Night and the Electric Prunes Ron moved back to Denver. Bob: "He was disenchanted, but he wasn't going to sell out. He did drive a cab for a while - he loved the freedom of it, there were no pressures and he was his own boss - but Ron got in a bad way. He was strung out on 'reds' - addictive sleeping pills - which he had been popping with Three Dog Night and he ended up on the street. He had no skills apart from music, but after he got married in '76 he sorted his life out and became a janitor. He still played and we used to jam a lot. Then he had a motorcycle accident and things went down hill. He got put in a psychiatric ward for a time. His wife divorced him and kicked him out of the house. It was while he was in hospital that he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. The worst thing you can do with that is drink, but he had a strong constitution - he could always put away the drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately he didn't know until it was too late. He died in his sleep in 1989 at 44. I can remember Ron getting his royalty cheques - they were usually for about 75 cents. Ron lived the way he wanted to, but I guess music never gave him the security he wanted." Bob Morgan continues his brother's legacy with his own band Blackwood Magazine.

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