by Richard Skelly » Wed Jul 04, 2018 2:33 am
Easy to forget that The Chessmen were very much a vehicle for Guy Sobell's scintillating guitar playing. Prior to Meadowlands, the group began--minus a drummer--as a way for UBC students Guy, Terry Jacks, bassist Bill Lockie and singer Eric Kalaidzis to earn some coin playing the frat-house circuit. Kalaidzis was reportedly such a chess wunderkind that the band was inspired to call itself The Chessmen, even though Eric soon left.
Minus a lead vocalist, The Chessmen briefly bulked up on instrumentals. Guy Sobell came to the fore with Meadowlands, a rearrangement of a European traditional that featured drummer Kenny Moore-the first of a series of Chessmen percussionists in the next 18 months. Meanwhile, Terry Jacks was still trying to find his groove as a rhythm guitarist. (It firmed up enough by the time of The Poppy Family to reportedly inspire Kurt Cobain's rhythmic style in Nirvana.) To stave off being fired, Terry soon started writing and singing original Chessmen songs.
Meanwhile, Meadowlands got some US notice (having Red Robinson listed as producer of the Robin Spurgin engineered session probably helped). Released on Decca Records subsidiary London in Canada, Meadowlands b/w Mustang got picked up by Jerden Records in America. A third song from those 1965 Spurgin sessions, When I'm Not There, got some re-recorded vocals by Terry Jacks in 2009 for a Chessmen anthology released by Vancouver-based ReGenerator Records.