"A new single Brontosaurus backed with Lightening Never Strikes Twice [sic] is also on release on Regal Zonophone." "Although Roy and Jeff have not really had time to concentrate on their songwriting, Jeff's lyrical powers added to the Move will obviously become a large influence upon them. The group's current single Brontosaurus is a Roy Wood composition, but we can well expect to see combined efforts in the future." "Not to put too fine a point on the situation, the move were, quote, 'dead worried' when their heavy single Brontosaurus began to look like an even heavier flop only a few weeks ago. Five weeks after released they were still waiting for a TV promotion spot... they reckoned the record had had no more than two plays on Radio 1... and the reaction from the retailer had been virtually nil. Then came the all-powerful Top Of The Pops-- and an immediate interest in Brontosaurus to the point where it's now No. 6 in the NME Chart and still climbing. Heartened by the apparent vote of confidence for the new Move, group member Rick Price was in candid mood the other day when he told me how radio and TV producers had virtually thrown the single out of the door when they heard it. Said Price: 'We heard that the producers of the Dave Cash show even said, Get that load of x!!x! out of my office! I think the trouble is tha+ t so many people want us to go on turning out singles like Flowers In The Rain. I'm not saying I was completely sold on this single myself at the beginning. I think I probably had more faith in it than anybody else in the group, but I still had doubts. It was a bit of a worry when it was released, because Charlie (Carl Wayne) had also left, and the gigs had also dropped off because let's face it, he was a big attraction.'" "[Looking On] includes Brontosaurus which was a big hit for them and the excellent When Alice Comes Back To The Farm, which wasn't." "We were really a pop group when Charlie was with us. I think that Brontosaurus is a stepping stone in our attempt to gain recognition from an audience who are prepared to listen to say other than our hit singles." "And who could ever forget Brontosaurus, the absurdly heavy speaker-shattering dance favorite of the barbituate generation?" "Oh, just before [the recording of 10538 Overture] Charlie [Wayne] had left [The Move], and I had written Brontosaurus and we had to have some sort of front man. Everyone was pointing at me, but I didn't think I could do it because I'd always been the songwriter standing beside my amp. It wrote it because it was and easy song and eventually I designed the gear to go with it and I painted my face in triangles. But I didn't think I'd have the courage to go on stage and do it. We did Disco 2 and I got a few drinks down me and went on leaping about like a maniac. It was more surprising to me than the band that I did it, and I felt embarrassed. I persuaded myself to do it a couple more times and once I'd got over it I was okay." "When Carl Wayne left the group, I had a lot of responsibility put on my shoulders that I'd never had before. I'd always been just the songwriter standing at the back of the stage somewhere, twanging away. Someone had to be a front man, everyone pointed at me and I was thrust out there. Everyone wanted to do heavier stuff and wrote Brontosaurus. We did all the trimmings that go with it on stage. It was a hit and we were dead chuffed. We thought, we're getting away with it, at last we can move on from the out-and-out commercial thing and get on with some heavier stuff." "A&M isn't helping to promote this any with their ad showing a couple of brontosauri fucking. If you got off on Shazam, you'll love this song, heavy as its namesake, describing a dance ('She could really do the Brontosaurus') that must be fun to do. Much too long for AM radio, this oughta be one of those 'underground hits' you hear so much about." "There are the odd electric wah-wahs [on The Move's Tonight], but this is altogether more appealing than the horrible Brontosaurus." "If you want to be convinced [how good The Move is] by one song, this should convert you. Brontosaurus, a small-bit single, also gets the body moving, especially with the bass and slide guitar getting into a frenzy at the end." "Wizzard's first single [Ball Park Incident] is another entry from that dictionary of rock 'n' roll Wood started with Brontosaurus and California Man. " "Roy Wood is one of our most consistent contemporary songwriter/performers and he alone has been responsible for... the Move (Do The Brontosaurus [sic], Flowers In The Rain, etc.)" "Brontosaurus definitely takes everything to extremes, and is an appropriate finale. The prominent bass, always a Move trademark, is overwhelming, along with Roy's slide guitar. This was Jeff Lynne's first session with us to the best of my memory... and it was very representative of our live sound with Roy and Jeff on guitars." "Brontosaurus was released as the first Move single to feature Lynne, and it became a Top Ten hit after a few months on the fringes of the charts. It's a slow-building, ponderous song, which finally chugs along towards the end. Overly dense production was its main flaw." "Hot on the heels of [the Move's] second LP Shazam, salvaged from their last studio sessions with Carl, came the first Move single on which Roy was undisputably front man, the heavy metal send-up Brontosaurus. A Top 10 hit in May 1970, it was followed by the even heavier When Alice Comes Back To The Farm, on which Roy played multi-tracked cello as well as lead and slide guitar." "Brontosaurus (1970) was very heavy. I wrote that around an image I wanted to portray-- which ended up being the Wizzard iamge. I designed this jacket to look like scaly dinosaur skin. I wrote the song around that. We went on television to do Brontosaurus-- my first gig as lead singer-- and I wanted to do something else visually besides wear the coat. I looked in the dressing-room mirror, and thought maybe I'd paint my face to match. I added triangles around the eyes, and then back-combed my hair; when the rest of the group came back they couldn't believe we were going onstage like that. I went totally mad, rolling around the floor with my guitar. Rick actually stopped playing: he couldn't believe it. That was the new image from then on. I think our musical transition to heavier rock would have been more difficult without it. [...] Jeff Lynne was on the Brontosaurus session; he was in London with The Idle Race, came over, and I let him play on it. He'd already told The Idle Race he was leaving, but had to work out his notice. We did a couple of gigs in the meantime with Black Sabbath; they weren't very successful. Lynne's joining us made a big difference because we had two songwriters instead of just one, and obviously the musical influences were going to change a lot. I needed somebody in there who could write, and who I rated as a writer. [...] Brontosaurus was done during the making of Looking On." "The departure of singer Carl Wayne, to whom the M.O.R. leanings were attributable, enabled Roy to reroute the band via the heavy metal dance record Brontosaurus but insufficiently so to satisfy his desires for artistic fulfillment." "In 1970, the Move's chronic personnel instability-- specifically Carl Wayne's departure-- gave Lynne a second opportunity to join. This time he said yes, making his first Move contribution to the earthshaking Brontosaurus single." "May 1970: the group return to the Top 10 singles chart with the hard-hitting Brontosaurus. " "Yeah, [Brontosaurus was] definitely [in the direction that I wanted the band to follow]. I can't remember much about the actual recording session, except it was the first song Jeff played on with us. We did a BBC TV thing which was the predecessor to The Old Grey Whistle Test (Colour Me Pop)- We had to do Brontosaurus and I was a bit nervous: it was the first time I'd ever been the lead singer on TV properly. I thought it was time for a new image. The guys went to the bar and I put this long coat on, made of black-and-white triangles of material, and it looked like there was still something missing. So I got my comb and combed my hair out so it looked really wild. Then I put on some black-and-white make-up around my eyes, making my face up to match the coat, and a star in the middle of my forehead. It was basically the creation of the Wizzard image. When we did the programme, I started rolling around the floor and biting the neck of my guitar, as you do. I had a few large vodkas before I went on, so I was all right. We had a great reaction from that, and that image stayed until the band broke up." "Yeah, definitely [Brontosaurus was more in the direction that I wanted the band to follow]. I can't remember much about the actual recording session except it was the first song Jeff Lynne played on with us. I remember that." "I thought [Roy Wood] looked really good when he had the D'Artagnan sort of look, then he got really hairy. He got really bizarre! I think what it was really, was after the cabaret thing, we went from doing Ave Maria to releasing Brontosaurus-- how different can you get? So the idea was to show everybody that The Move were a rock band again, heavy and bizarre." "The Move added heavy-metal guitars to their cracked choruses when Jeff Lynne joined the band in 1970 - if listeners didn't know what to make of this at the time, today the crunching grandeur and rockabilly bottom of Brontosaurus sound like a natural next step." "Brontosaurus, Cheap Trick, originally by The Move. Cheap Trick always not-so-secretly wanted to be The Move. Here, they prove that they were up to the job." "The Move embraced the era's hard rock and progressive inclinations and delivered the most overlooked album of their career. That was Looking On, flagged up by two hard-rocking 45s, Brontosaurus and When Alice Comes Back To The Farm." "Brontosaurus, driven by a granite version of The Beatles' Lady Madonna riff, slow-burned its way up the chart, eventually resting at Number 7 in April 1970. The single paved the way for a minor chart invasion of hard rock singles that year-- Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile, Black Sabbath's Paranoid, [and] Deep Purple's Black Night. [...] Brontosaurus loudly proclaimed the arrival of what might be called the 'New Move.' [...] On Looking On, though, the two singles [Brontosaurus and When Alice Comes Back To The Farm]-- both woefully underrated-- sounded mildly out of place." "We're looking at a limited fan-only 7-inch release of Brontosaur in an exclusive picture sleeve plus t-shirt." "Proto-metal rocker Brontosaurus is the standout [on Looking On]." "In March 1970, The Move's first single of the new decade [Brontosaurus] introduced the heavy sound of the pop market in head-turning, genre-inventing style." "Looking On is a perfect marriage of old and new Move, singles When Alice Comes back to the Farm and Brontosaurus are a perfect combination of well crafted pop songs aligned to a much heavier and almost progressive feel and the albumoverall is far removed from the previous years Shazam." "The singles Brontosaurus and When Alice Comes Back To The Farm are respectively lumbering and manic." "The first recording by the newly-reconstituted group [The Move], Brontosaurus, was released in March. A kind of heavy metal dance song with tongue-in-cheek lyrics, it was built around an engaging guitar riff and ended up as a frantic rock n roll duel between slide guitar and Jeff s boogie piano. For some weeks it seemed destined to disappear quietly, especially after unenthusiastic reviews from journalists who preferred The Move s more poppy sound. But an appearance on Top Of The Pops and plays on Radio 1 s contemporary show Sounds Of The 70s helped boost it to No. 7 in the charts. The B-side, Lightnin Never Strikes Twice , written by Rick Price and Mike Tyler (the real name of Mike Sheridan) and with Rick on lead vocal, had been recorded shortly before Jeff joined." "Lynne became The Move's second songwriter on December 1970's Looking On album, which yielded a hit with Brontosaurus."The Move - Brontosaurus [Original Single Version] Details
"Roy Wood, Bev Bevans [sic] and Rick Price have completed the next single title Do The Brontosaurus [sic] by Roy Wood c/w Lightnin' Never Strikes [sic]-- a Rick Price composition. it is set for release on March 6."
Unknown (February 21, 1970 - Record Mirror)
Unknown (March 14, 1970 - Record Mirror)
Valerie Mabbs (circa 1970 - Record Mirror)
Alan Smith (circa 1970 - New Musical Express)
Al Clark (December, 1970 - Beat Instrumental)
Roy Wood (circa 1970 - unknown magazine article)
John Mendelsohn (October 14, 1971 Rolling Stone #93)
Roy Wood (November 27, 1971 - New Musical Express)
Roy Wood (late 1971 - Unidentified UK newspaper)
Ed Ward (1971 - The Rolling Stone Record Review (issue number unknown))
Unknown (1971 - Source Unknown, Tonight single review in the liner notes for the Message From The Country remaster CD)
Al Rudis (January 16, 1972 - The Lincoln Star)
Phil Hardy (January 1973 - Let It Rock magazine)
Ron McCreight (December 8, 1973 - Record World)
Bev Bevan (1974 liner notes for The Best Of The Move)
Joel Bellman (December 1976 - Trouser Press #17)
John Van der Kiste & Gill (1987 - Face The Music fanzine #3)
Roy Wood (Early 1989 - Face The Music fanzine #5)
Paul Cox (1986 - liner notes for First Movement)
Ira Robbins (1990 liner notes for Afterglow)
Mark Paytress (July 1994 - Record Collector)
Roy Wood (July 1994 - Record Collector)
Roy Wood (September 30, 1994 - Roy Wood: The Wizzard of Rock article in Goldmine)
Bev Bevan (December 1994 - Face The Music fanzine #19)
Mark Coleman (April 16, 1998 - Rolling Stone magazine)"Jeff plays guitar on the [Brontosaurus] session with Roy."
Rob Caiger (September 25, 2003 - Useless Information mailing list)
Ed Bumgardner (January 8, 2008 - Relish)
Mark Paytress (2008 - Looking On remaster liner notes)
Mark Paytress (January 2008 - Looking On remaster liner notes)
Rob Caiger (February 5, 2008 - Showdown mailing list)
Editor's Note: This proposed 7" single never was produced.
Andy Gill (April 17, 2008 - The Independent)
Mark Paytress (October 2008 - Anthology 1966 - 1972 liner notes)
Tony Bartolo (2008 - Shaz Music website)
Peter Muir (2008 - Get Ready To Rock website)
John Van der Kiste (August 2015 - Jeff Lynne: Electric Light Orchestra - Before and After)
Kris Needs (April 2016 - Prog magazine)