The guiding fire behind the latter-day
Pink Fairies, a founding member of
Motörhead, and a house producer during Stiff Records' first flash of maverick brilliance,
Larry Wallis is one of the legends of the British rock underground, an astonishing guitarist, and author, too, of one of the classic singles of the punk era, "Police Car." He was one quarter of the
Takeaways supergroup (alongside
Nick Lowe,
Sean Tyla, and
Dave Edmunds); he blazed across
Mick Farren and
the Deviants' seminal Screwed Up EP; and he was single-handedly responsible for proving to the punk rock cognoscenti that long hair (
Wallis' reached past his armpits) wasn't necessarily a sign of old-fart redundancy. In an age when Angry Young Man-style guitar was valued above any other musical attribute,
Wallis played angrier (and younger) than virtually anyone you can name.
Wallis' pedigree reaches back to the early '70s, and a roll call of bands that included free-festival favorites the Entire Sioux Nation, former
T. Rex percussionist
Steve Took's
Shagrat,
Blodwyn Pig, Lancaster's Bomber, and, briefly, metal heroes
UFO, before he joined
the Pink Fairies in time for their third (and possibly finest) album,
Kings of Oblivion. The band broke up following its release and, in 1975,
Wallis reappeared in
Motörhead -- a move that the guitarist unhesitatingly describes as preordained: "It was just as if the serendipity fairy had arrived,
Lemmy had been 'imprisoned in
Hawkwind,' and was now flexing his leathern wings.... It just had to be."
Together,
Wallis and
Lemmy alchemized one of the hardest-hitting bands of the entire pre-punk era, and the handful of shows that the group played during this period was nothing short of the absolute revision of all that had taken place before. Certainly their label of the time, UA, was absolutely baffled by the band, sending them into the studio first with
Edmunds, then with former beat boom survivor
Fritz Fryer, before deciding that nothing the band did was actually marketable. They were dropped from the label and the tapes were buried in a lead-lined box, figuratively if not literally. And they remained there until -- surprise, surprise --
Motörhead became late-'70s superstars, and suddenly anything with their name attached seemed eminently saleable indeed.
On Parole, titled for one of
Wallis' own compositions, was released in 1978 and has been available ever since.
Wallis departed
Motörhead around the same time as they were dropped and, through early 1976, he led a revitalized
Pink Fairies lineup around the London club scene as it lurched from pub rock to punk. By late summer,
the Fairies had signed with Stiff Records and released the single "Between the Lines," the label's second-ever release. They also appeared at the first Mont de Marsen Punk Festival that August, a gathering of the clans that pitched the likes of
Nick Lowe,
Little Bob Story, and
Eddie & the Hot Rods into the middle of rock's latest firestorm. Of them all,
the Fairies came out on top, but with a sense of timing that they had long since perfected, the group announced that this moment of absolute triumph was the ideal time to break up.
Wallis remained with Stiff, recording "Police Car" with
Hot Rods bassist Paul Gray and drummer
Steve Nicol for release in spring 1977. He also produced the first two singles by
the Adverts, including the Top 20 hit "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," and became a star turn on the autumn 1977 Live Stiffs tour of Britain. Billed alongside
Ian Dury,
Nick Lowe,
Elvis Costello, and
Wreckless Eric, he took the stage with an all-star band dubbed the Psychedelic Rowdies; the Live Stiffs album includes an absolutely incendiary "Police Car."
Wallis began work on a solo album in early 1978, recording with
Deke Leonard, Big George Webley, and
Pete Thomas; unfortunately, record company politics saw the record shelved (it remains unreleased) and
Wallis moved on. Further stints alongside
Mick Farren were interspersed by gigs with
Wayne Kramer and a decade-long songwriting career with
Dr. Feelgood. A mid-'80s
Pink Fairies reunion was bookended by
Wallis' own bands, the Death Commandos of Love and the Redbyrds, while
Wallis finally released a solo album,
Death in the Guitarfternoon in 2001. While
Wallis played occasional live gigs, he steered clear of the recording studio, though his back catalog continued to be reworked for his fans.
Shagrat's
Lone Star album was reissued in 2016, while
Death in the Guitarfternoon returned in an expanded edition in 2017. 2017 also saw the release of
Sound of Speed, a collection of rare and unreleased
Wallis tracks.
Larry Wallis died on September 19, 2019; he was 70 years old. ~ Dave Thompson