Since 1965, the McCullagh brothers, Tully (Terence) and Mike, have become an integral part of the South African rock and pop scene. They first started as the Blue Three with Richard Hyam (who later formed Pendulum) and their first album 'McCully Workshop Inc' came out in 1970 and included the epic and powerful 'Why Can't It Rain' which went to #12 on the Springbok Radio charts.
McCully Workshop also played on Jody Wayne's 'The Wedding' in 1970, but they are probably not too proud of that one, though it did hit #1 for 3 weeks on the Springbok charts.
'Genesis' released in 1971 was a concept album based on the book of Genesis from the Bible (but I guess you already figured that out) and included a number of long tracks with sub-sections, typical of the prog-rock albums of the time.
Crocodile Harris (real name Robin Graham, from Cape Town), recorded the brilliant haunting pop classic 'Miss Eva Goodnight' (Springbok #5, April 1974) which was written by Mike & Tully and featured the musicianship of all the then current McCully Workshop members.
'Ages' (released in 1975) is a great pop-rock album. This album reflects styles from different ages of music and various influences can be heard: Uriah Heep, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Beach Boys, etc. The vocal harmonies are really superb. '1623' is a wonderful violin-led instrumental by Richard Wilson and the blues organ solo in 'Blues in C minor' has just got to be heard to be believed (the vocals should be ignored, though).
Their 4th album, 'Workshop Revisited', released in 1977 shot them to prominence when it introduced SA fans to hits like 'Buccaneer' and 'Chinese Junkman'. The album also saw Mike McCully winning the 1978 'Songwriter Of The Year' award.
They used to play in the late 70s at the Canterbury Inn (Fairmead Hotel) in Cape Town and wonderful renditions of classic rock songs could be heard on a Sunday night. Chicago's 'I'm A Man' (with a lo-o-ong percussion solo), Barry Ryan's 'Eloise', Grand Funk's (or Traffic's) 'Feeling Alright' and of course their own brilliant 1977 hit single 'Buccaneer' could all be heard; of course no dancing was allowed on a Sunday in those days, so we had to just sit and listen... and listen we did.
Tully got very involved with the Falling Mirror project during the late 70s and 80s as producer and musician.
Skip forward to the '90s and we find Tully McCully running one of the finest recording studios in Cape Town (Spaced-Out Sound Studios) while brother Mike chalks up further success with his stage musicals like "Sixty-Something", which played to over 350,000 people over a five year period.
With many older SA albums getting a new lease of life on CD, the McCullys' decided to rework some of their old classic songs. The original late 70s band members, Richard Black (lead guitar and vocals) and Rupert Mellor (keyboard and vocals), were recalled to help flesh out the music. Mike McCully played drums and Tully handled the guitar, bass and vocals while Kevin Gibson (drums) and ex-Falling Mirror member Allan Faull (lead guitar) helped out as well.
They also recorded a number of new tracks. They named the album 'Buccaneer' after their biggest hit and it features wonderful male vocal harmonies, epic guitar solos, superb keyboard flourishes and a thundering rhythm section. McCully Workshop have lost none of the spark that made them one of SA's greatest pop/ rock bands and 'She' is just one great example of how good they still are at writing and playing catchy, listenable pop/ rock songs.
This is a band that deserves to be listened to, over and over again.
The Best Years Of Your Life
Every Tuesday and Thursday between 5 and 5:15 p.m., you could catch "Pop File" on Radio 5. This was presented by record producer Tully McCully. He had an early start in music. While he was still in his late teens he and brother Mike formed the group McCully's Workshop. The first number they recorded was 'The Wedding'
with Jody Wayne and it became a hit [Number 1 on Springbok Radio in 1970]. This was followed by 'Buccaneer', 'Miss Eva Goodnight' [sung by Crocodile Harris in 1974] and 'Chinese Junkman', all of which were hits. The song 'Miss Eva Goodnight' was written by Tully when he was only 15 years old (this song was written by Mike and Tully).
-- The Best Years of Your Life (5FM, 1997), info supplied by Andrew King, September 1999
Excerpts from an interview with Tully taken from the Paul Bothner website
"My father was a famous voice on the radio back in the '60's and he had access to a studio called Sound and Film Services, every now and again he would bring home a tape machine. My brother [Mike] who plays drums and myself would play around and record ourselves in the lounge, we were about nine at the time. We recorded a track called "Swinging Time" with some other friends when we were thirteen and sent it to a record company. They really liked it and sent us to Feature film sound but it didn't sound as good as the one we recorded at home. The track didn't get anywhere but it was quite interesting. We grew a bit more and at sixteen we started a band called McCully Workshop and a whole string of other bands and I started a garage studio. I bought two Brunel tape recorders, the original old valve jobs.
Jody Wayne had come down from Jo'burg and he wanted to record a ballad, they wouldn't let him do it in Jo'burg, so he asked us to do it. I took the reverb unit out of an old Hammond organ and recorded everything with yards of reverb and it went on to sell four gold discs (it was called "The Wedding"), we made eleven rands each !! Things continued from there and the studio grew but it was much harder in those days, a four track Studer was R25,000 in '67. I then met a guy called Rocky Gush who was a complete genius he built his own four track using two Philips heads stacked to give four heads. I was impressed with some recordings he had done and asked him where he got his compresor/limiters from, he had actually made them. He charged me R30 each so I bought fifteen! We went on to build stuff and ended up with a sixteen track machine and recorded all the 'Buccaneer' stuff. Then we built a twenty-four track and did all the Leslie Rae [Dowling] stuff and finally bought an Otari twenty-four track. Listening back to those recordings I must say I actually prefer the qualities of analogue, the new 24 bit systems are ok, I never liked 16 bit".
