RC: I was wondering, what are your thoughts of why didn�t the original Leaf Hound make the big league. I mean, Growers of Mushroom had supposedly everything - a big label to back it, a potentially huge hit single (�Freelance Fiend�), great musicianship. Why success eluded the band?
Pete: Well, the band did a do a great album. Mick, my cousin on guitar, and myself both composed most of the material and we both thought we had done as good a job of it as possible.
The group changed its line up from the five-piece recording outfit, to a four-piece working band. This was brought about by both Mick and myself realizing that we really didn`t need a rhythm guitarist, as Mick was perfectly able to cut it on his own, but as the rhythm guitarist was the brother of Stuart the bass player, when this suggestion was made they both decided to leave and the replacement on the bass was to be Ron Thomas from the heavy metal kids group. This was the four-piece band that toured Germany all those years ago.
The tour was to promote the album, which was meant to coincide with the tour, but this never happened; the album did not get released and disillusioned with the record company and our crappy agents, we threw the towel in and thought sod it, and called it a day.
If the record company had done its job properly and delivered the goods when it should have done, and if the Agency we were with at the time weren`t so useless then I believe it would have been a very successful band indeed.
RC: I see you already answered what would�ve been my second question: �Why did the band break up?� What did you do post Leaf Hound?
Pete: I went on to join a band called Big Bertha with Cosy Powell, then on to Atomic Rooster for the album In Hearing of, then Cactus for �Ot �n� Sweaty.
After Cactus broke up, I was held into a bad contract in America, which meant that I could not work at all in music anywhere for a further three and a half years. This crippled my career at a time when I was thought I was really doing well both lyrically and vocally. I returned home to England completely screwed.
After waiting until my contract expired, I heard of a German based band Randy Pie were auditioning for a vocalist in London, and I went and got the job over two hundred applicants and recorded, lived, and toured in Hamburg Germany. We recorded Randy Pie�s album Fast Forward in the States, then the band broke up and to my complete surprise, the record company, Polydor, offered me a solo album, which was Ducks in Flight (which was out in �78 and only in Germany).
RC: But now a new line up of Leaf Hound has emerged.
Pete: After hearing such great feed back after getting the digitally remastered edition of Growers of Mushroom re-released after all those years (and incidentally its still getting great reviews), I decided to put a new Leaf Hound group together, and now we have almost finished recording a new album which will be called Leaf Hound Unleashed, and it`s sounding pretty good too!
I`m hoping we will get it placed with a good record company and to get it released before September this year.
RC: You are the only original Leaf Hound member in the new line up. What happened to the rest of the guys?
Pete: My cousin Mick still keeps in touch with me and he was the only person from the original band that I would have wanted, but he now lives in San Diego in the States, so I unfortunately couldn`t really get together with him to reform the group, although he did play in London and jammed with the new band when we played in town last year, and that was when we played with Mountain in Camden at the Underworld Club, which was a real buzz. I have no idea what the other guys are doing now, all these years later.
RC: Do you have some crazy or funny stories, some anecdotes from living the life of a rock band?
Pete: Well, I put my foot in my mouth once when in Germany on tour. A radio show host on air in Berlin asked me, "Well Peter, what do you like to do in Hamburg when you�re not doing your music?"
My innocent, thoughtless reply was, "I like to bomb around Hamburg in my Spitfire!"
Let me explain: "Like to bomb around " is cockney for "race around" and the car that I drove at that time was a Triumph Spitfire, so by accident and completely out of taste, I learnt a lesson in how not to impress a radio audience.
RC: What�s next for the mighty Leaf Hound?
Pete: We are to do the Roadburn Festival in Holland at the end of April, and the Swedish "Fill Your Head with Rock" Festival in June. So the new band will get a chance to strut its stuff!
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