Crawler. What a band. One of my earliest musical recollections as a teenager just discovering “proper” music in the mid-1970s and the emerging NWOBHM era was attending a triple-bill at the Sheffield City Hall. On that bill were Boxer, Crawler and Moon. It was rather sparsely attended and they gave away an old fashioned promo single with one song from each band. Still have that.
Moon sucked. Big time. Boxer were great. Crawler were outstanding. Not quite NWOBHM though not far off and really rocked live. Next time I got my pocket money it was straight to one of the Bradleys branches in the city centre (any local around who remember Bradleys then?) to buy the Crawler album. Great cover too. And it was a stormer. Finely crafted musicianship and deceptively heavy with tremendous guitar from the then pretty much unknown Geoff Whitehorn.
Over the years my vinyl copy became worn out. Back then the crude trick was to try and tape it. That tape long since lost. I could never get the Crawler album out of my head though nor could I find it anywhere. Every time I bought something off Amazon I’d always search for it and always be disappointed until one magical day a couple of years or so ago it was there – reissued. BUY NOW…..!
A few days later the CD arrived and what an absolute aural delight to hear those crisp sounds again. Whitehorn, the silky voice of terry Wilson Slesser and all the rest of it. As fresh now as it was 35 years ago. This is a seriously under-rated album and for the uninitiated worth buying simply for the closing track – Stone Cold Sober.
And The Crawler album now it’s been reissued again on one CD with the follow up – Snake, Rattle and Roll – there’s no excuse for not getting your ears around this. Do it right now and discover a band that should have been much, much bigger.
I saw them one more time – Sheffield Top Rank – then they pretty much faded away. Whitehorn to join Procul Harum (I think) and they keyboard player (Rabbit Bundrick) worked with The Who.
There is a bit of a back story in the under a previous incarnation – Back Street Crawler – the much missed Paul Kossoff (ex-Free of course) was the man on the guitar though when he prematurely found his death it of course brought many changes resulting in the Back Street bit dropping and the band continuing as simply Crawler. Geoff Whitehorn was plucked out of relative obscurity and viewed by all as Kossoff’s replacement which was somewhat unfair on him I think as of course Kossoff was unique and Whitehorn had a different style – and a great guitarist in his own right.
You could do a lot worse than to check out the double re-issue. Something between classic rock and NWOBHM from gifted musicians who were probably victims of falling between the two stools as punk was about the take off which the record companies found more commercially attractive for a while.
But never mind that – Crawler were great!
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT CRAWLER PLUS SNAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL ON AMAZON
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