Just before the lads embarked on their successful recording career Mick decided to leave the band in pursuit of love, got married and moved to Wales. In came drummer Brian Shearer; and this was the line-up in place for the first seven singles.

So how did the record deal with CBS, one of the biggest record companies in the world, come about?  The girlfriend of a friend of Rick's knew a record producer and record plugger called Roger Easterby, who managed chart act Vanity Fare. She recommended Chicory Tip to him and he went to see them. He liked what he saw and when he came across a song called "Monday After Sunday" he knew he had found the perfect track for Chicory Tip to record. The deal was done in 1970 and the first single came out on 19th June that year.

"Monday After Sunday" got airplay, as did the follow-up, "My Girl Sunday", but neither single troubled the chart compilers. The third single, "Excuse Me Baby," got them a lot more airplay, including from Radio 1 DJ Alan "Fluff" Freeman who made a jingle out of the song, and played it frequently on his show.  The band made the very low reaches of the charts and attracted "Top of the Pops" coverage. It was a re-make of the old Magic Lanterns hit and was featured on one edition of the world famous programme - sadly the clip has been long wiped by the BBC and unless any pirate copies were made back then it is unlikely we will ever see that performance.

But it got them noticed and the fourth single, "I Love Onions", was expected to do better. The song had just been released on November 5th 1971 when all promotion was stopped because producer Roger Easterby, who was in charge of their productions with Des Champ for their whole career, was given a copy of Giorgio Moroder's version of a song called "Son Of My Father."  Giorgio was a German singer-producer who had written the music to the song and his partner Pete Bellotte wrote English lyrics to it. It was a German hit record by Michael Holm (who wrote the German lyrics for the song called "Nachts Scheint Die Sonne."  Easterby was a record plugger at the time and decided that he wanted his band to record the song and get it out as a single before Giorgio's version got up a head of steam.

Back then anyone could cover a song as long as it had already been played on the radio in the UK, so he took it along to his local station, got it played, and then set to work getting Chicory Tip in the studio to record it. It was such a secretive operation that he daren't even get a copy of the proper lyrics. Instead they jotted down what they thought were the words - they were ALMOST right! - and away they went.  The big gimmick though was the use of the moog synthesizer which was claimed to have been played by engineer Chris Thomas, but this was disputed by Rick Foster when interviewed on the subject. He said that while Chris programmed the moog it was actually someone else who played on the record. He couldn't recall the name of the musician but it was the same guy who performed the song on "Top of the Pops" on the most viewed Chicory Tip clip of all time. If anyone can throw some light on who it actually was we will be delighted to name him here!