Brand X - Is There Anything About?

Brand X was a jazz fusion band active between 1975-1980 and 1992-1999. Noted members included Phil Collins (drums), Mike Clark (drums),Percy Jones (bass), John Goodsall (guitar)] and Robin Lumley (keyboards).

Brand X started in 1975 as a “jam” band funded by Island Records, whose A&R rep Danny Wilding wrote down the name “Brand X” to keep track of their activity in the studio calendar and the name stuck. Genesis drummer Phil Collins took over on drums and in early 1976 Unorthodox Behaviour was released to coincide with an extensive UK tour.
Sometime in 1976, both John Goodsall and Phil Collins (along with Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips) assisted Peter Gabriel in the recording of demos towards his debut solo album after leaving Genesis. Goodsall also recorded experimental music with a band that included Bill Bruford, Bayete (Todd Cochran) and Doni Harvey on Bass, from Island label-mates Automatic Man, a San Francisco group led by Santanas drummer Mike Shrieve.
In 1979, Collins re-joined Brand X for part of the series of recording sessions which would generate enough material for two albums, 1979s Product and 1980s Do They Hurt?. These took place at Startling Studios, located in Ringo Starrs countryside home (formerly owned by John Lennon), with two distinct line-ups operating in alternation (the amazing Mike Clark (mikeclarkmusic.com)provided drums on the other tracks), as Jones later explained. “Our record and management companies were both complaining about poor record sales and telling us we had to make the music more accessible. Some of the guys agreed to go along with this but I felt that to do this would not generate a new audience but would probably just alienate the one that we already had. The only solution was to have two bands, one being more accessible and the other being more experimental or whatever. For my stuff the line-up was Robinson, Clark, Goodsall and me; for the other direction it was Lumley, Collins and Goodsall with John Giblin on bass. We recorded in shifts, ours was 8pm to 4am and the others, 10am to 6pm”. Many fans consider the tracks with Jones and Clark to be the more fascinating and creative material.