The Story Of Vinegar Joe (part I)

Mock muggins, sexual advances, and sweat stains were all part of the Vinegar Joe story - along with some blistering British blues-rock. But one member was plotting to leave...

It's late 1973, and Vinegar Joe singer Elkie Brooks is walking home to her flat in Fulham. She’s halfway down the alleyway that leads from Putney Bridge underground station to the New King’s Road, when a man steps out of the shadows.

Without warning, he punches Brooks in the face. She falls to the ground, ripping the long winter coat she’s wearing. The man steals her bag, along with all her money and credit cards. A dazed Brooks struggles to her feet, runs back to the station and calls for help. An ambulance arrives to take her to hospital. The headline in that day’s Evening Standard reads: ‘Rock star mugged in West London.’

…Except it was all a scam, a mock street crime designed to drum up publicity.

“Bizarre as it might seem, it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Brooks says today. “The robber was a professional boxer. He knew what he was doing. He knew he wasn’t going to mark me.”

“So a ton of people who had never heard of Elkie Brooks saw her name on the front page of their evening paper,” says Pete Gage, Vinegar Joe guitarist and Brooks’ then-husband. “Effective? To anyone who suspected it was a stunt, it certainly told them how determined we were to succeed.”

But steely determination wasn’t enough. A few months later, in March 1974, Vinegar Joe broke up when it became apparent that, all along, the band had been created as a vehicle to launch the solo career of Brooks’ vocal partner, Robert Palmer. Gage sighs: “More fool me for not seeing that coming.”

Vinegar Joe were the first band this writer ever saw live, in the exotic environs of Slough Community Centre. They made quite an impression. Elkie Brooks – belying her present-day, soft-focus MOR image – was raunch’n’roll personified, a thigh-thrustin’ hybrid of Janis Joplin and Tina Turner.

Robert Palmer was, by contrast, the ultra-coolest of cats. A smooth operator who sashayed around barely breaking a sweat while his bandmate stomped, shrieked and hollered like a she-devil. Brooks and Palmer were polar opposites but their onstage relationship was pure dynamite. Yin, yang, thank you, ma’am.

Palmer sported a tousled mop of short blond hair and stylish attire that plainly wasn’t bought at Kensington Market. He was more Paco Rabanne than patchouli oil – which most certainly couldn’t be said of Vinegar Joe’s other male musicians, led by six-stringer Gage. They were craggy hippies in scoop-necks and loon-pants who cranked out R&B so rough-edged you could sand floors with it.

Vinegar Joe formed in late 1971 out of the ashes of jazz-fusion combo Dada, who had released a single album for Atlantic Records the previous year. “Musically, there were no boundaries with Dada,” says Brooks. “There must have been 10 or 12 of us altogether. There were two other vocalists besides me (Jimmy Chambers and Paul Korda), we had trumpets, saxophones, trombones… It was a very unusual band.”

Dada

"Paul Korda was a key part of Dada at the beginning, but we all found him too bizarre and full of bullshit,” says Gage. “I had had my eye on Robert Palmer for a couple of years; I first saw him playing bass and singing with The Mandrakes at Hull Art College. (Trumpet player) Alan Bown gave me a call looking for a vocalist and I recommended Robert to him. But I also warned Alan that, one day, I’d want Robert to front one of my bands.”

When Korda was sacked from Dada, “I called in my favour with Alan,” says Gage. “Robert was very confused and undecided, but the offer of a US tour won him over.”

Dada in the grounds of York University, UK (December 1970)

With Palmer in tow, Dada departed for the States to play a series of dates supporting Iron Butterfly. Behind the scenes, however, Atlantic Records supremo Ahmet Ertegun had decided the multi-membered Dada was financially unviable and too much of a drain on his label’s coffers. “We were told to drop the brass section, trim the frontline and get more rock-oriented,” says Gage.

Dada bassist Steve York – soon to be part of the fledgling Vinegar Joe – recalls being summoned to a meeting at London’s Hilton Hyde Park Hotel.

“I was there along with Elkie, Robert and Pete,” he says. “We met Ahmet and (Island Records boss) Chris Blackwell. Ahmet wanted the four of us to be part of a slimmed-down band that he’d share with Chris. We’d stay on Atlantic in the States, and Island would have us for the UK and the rest of the world.”

“What we didn’t know was that Blackwell already had his claws into Robert,” says Gage. “Alan Bown was signed to Island and Blackwell had snapped up Robert as a solo artist.”

Moreover, Blackwell wasn’t keen on Elkie Brooks being part of Ertegun’s proposed new band.

“Chris wasn’t interested; he didn’t want to know about me,” she confirms. “Luckily, Robert stood his ground, saying: ‘No way, she’s a fantastic singer, she’s great, she’s got to be a part of it.’

Gage, now a sound-production teacher in Australia, has a more barbed view of events. “Atlantic wanted Robert Stigwood to manage Dada. When I refused to give Stigwood a blowjob, all deals were off the table. Ertegun had tried to get his leg over with Elkie; he was crazy about her as ‘the rose’. After he failed, he sub-licensed us to Island.”

Blackwell insisted the new band be called Vinegar Joe, after a sourpuss US Army General called Joe Stilwell. “A pretty lame, unattractive name,” says Gage. “No doubt it was a reference to me being too serious, sarcastic and unimpressed by his status.”

Vinegar Joe backstage at the Civic Centre in Aylesbury, UK (1972)

Gage, now a sound-production teacher in Australia, has a more barbed view of events. “Atlantic wanted Robert Stigwood to manage Dada. When I refused to give Stigwood a blowjob, all deals were off the table. Ertegun had tried to get his leg over with Elkie; he was crazy about her as ‘the rose’. After he failed, he sub-licensed us to Island.”

Blackwell insisted the new band be called Vinegar Joe, after a sourpuss US Army General called Joe Stilwell. “A pretty lame, unattractive name,” says Gage. “No doubt it was a reference to me being too serious, sarcastic and unimpressed by his status.”

US Army General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (left) and plasticine models of the band (right)

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