TIMEBOX
After playing drums in local bands Pete and the Pawnees and The Music Students, with keyboard wizard Chris Holmes, Ollie was persuaded by bassist Clive Griffith to take up the vibraphone and, in 1965, both he and Chris went to London to join Clive in Take Five, which soon became Timebox.
In 1967, Ollie took up guitar and the band acquired the legendary Mike Patto on vocals and, finally, drummer 'Admiral' John Halsey.
Chris Holmes keyboards
Clive Griffiths bass
Ollie Halsall guitar vocal
Mike Patto vocal
John Halsey drums
STUDIO
I'll Always Love You
Save Your Love
Single 10 Feb 1967
With Richard Henry, vocal
Soul Sauce
Wish I Could Jerk Like My Uncle Cyril
Single 21 Apr 1967
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Don't Make Promises
Walking Through the Streets
Single 20 Oct 1967
Mike Patto's first vocal appearance
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Come On Up [John Halsey's first appearance]
A Woman That's Waiting
Single Aprl 1968
French only release
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Beggin
A Woman That's Waiting
Single 31 May 1968
The backing vocals on Beggin' are Mike, Ollie, and Clive along with Kiki Dee, and the additional percussion was played by Barry Morgan, later of Blue Mink. Chris Homes: Yeh love Kiki. In a reverse situ, Timebox provided handclaps on Billie Davis's euro-hit 'I Want To Be Your Baby' "
John Halsey
Girl Don't Make Me Wait
Single 22 Nov 1968
Gone is The Sad Man has also appeared on numerous UK prog-rock compilations
Single 14 Mar 1969
"Did the Baked Jam Roll originate in that Caff across the road from Club Noreik?. I seem to remember it was a favourite on the menu. Patto said you could always tell whether what you were eating was a main or a dessert by whether it was smothered in gravy or custard. To help your memory, here is a photo of Barnabas (roadie) in said caff, having cleaned-up his jam roll. Nice wallpaper." - David Baxendell 2019
3 Oct 1969
Shapes and Sounds
Orange & Red Beams From The BBC Archives, 1967-1969
Various artsites.
Timebox tracks included:
The David Symonds Show 21 June 1968
David Lee Travis 22 September 1969
Shapes And Sounds’ offers their four remaining session tracks from the Beeb archives, which include a beautiful version of their famed ‘Beggin’, a rendition of ‘Yellow Van’ which most definitely puts the single cut to shame, a superb take of ‘Stay There’ and perhaps most importantly, an admirable slice of blue-eyed soul in their cover of the Young Rascals’ ‘A Girl Like You’, which the band never recorded outside of the BBC.
The original CD and VINYL versions are out of print, but mp3 versions are available by kind permission of Nigel Lees
Beggin'
The Sound of London's Mod/Club Scene
2008
A Woman That's Waiting
Beggin'
Come On Up
Don't Make Promises
Girl, Don't Make Me Wait
I Will Always Love You
Leave Me To Cry
Love The Girl
Save Your Love
Soul Sauce
Walking Through The Streets
Wish I Could Jerk Like Uncle Cyril
Your Real Good Thing
The Deram Anthology
2008
Earlier complilation by Deram Records. Tracks as Beggin less: I Will Always Love You, I Wish I Could Jerk Like Uncle Cyril, Save Your Love, Soul Sauce , but plus:
Both the Beggin and The Deram Anthology incorrectly credit Halsall/Patto for Come On Up, which is actually a cover of The Young Rascals song by Felix Cavaliere.
Out-take not included elsewhere
The Original Moose on the Loose
An arbitrary and incomplete collection of five Deram A and B sides 1976
• Poor Little Heartbreaker
• Gone Is The Sad Man
• Yellow Van
• Baked Jam Roll In Your Eye
• You've Got The Chance
• A Woman That's Waiting
• Girl, Don't Make Me Wait
• Don't Make Promises
• Walking Through the Streets
• Beggin
Moose on the Loose
The Great Lost Album
• Yellow Van
• Tree House
• Poor Little Heartbreaker
• Baked Jam Roll In Your Eye
• Black Dog
• Country Dan & City Lil
• Eddie McHenry
• Barnabus Swain
• Promises
• Stay There
• Timebox
• Gone Is The Sad Man
Produced by Wayne Bickerton [Not to be confused with The Original Moose on the Loose which is a singles compilation.]
The Deram Anthology and Beggin compilations include singles and b-sides plus tracks recorded for the unreleased album. Whilst they form comprehensive documents of the band's recording career, both releases miss the golden opportunity to finally present the intended album Moose on the Loose in its full glory.
The convenience of individual mp3 tracks has robbed us of the sheer enjoyment of listening to 'albums' as complete, flowing bodies of work. So, I have sequenced two continuous 'sides' to create what, in my opinion, is one of the greatest late 60s albums never made. To get the full effect. Set aside two 17-minute sessions to listen to the whole of each 'side' uninterrupted.
All tracks are Halsall/Patto compositions except Country Dan and City Lil and Gone Is The Sad Man - which are Halsall alone.
TIMEBOX I Hold No Grudge Bouton Rouge • French TV 1968
TIMEBOX Come on Up Bouton Rouge • French TV 1968
TIMEBOX Riding Along on the Crest of a Wave
I apologise if some things on this site are a little obscure, especially to our non-UK members. Admiral John Halsey was a cub scout in his youth, which is probably where he got this song from. Here he is accompanied by a young Peter Halsall from the 12th Southport pack with their rendition of the Gang Show classic, Riding Along on the Crest of a Wave.
TIMEBOX Misty
Ollie was just 18 when this was recorded and had been playing vibraphone for only about a year. Pretty remarkable, I would have thought?
TIMEBOX Beggin • Bouton Rouge • French TV 1968
TIMEBOX Come on Up The Big Switch [Film] 1969
"Ollie with his first guitar and an instrumental version of Come On Up. I was hoping this film [The Big Switch. 1968] had been lost and not found, it's so awful. "The guy dancing with the blonde was Stephen Lesk or Lest something like that. He was the manager of the Scotch of St James. They dubbed a different voice onto him I remember. "The whole thing was so amateur. It was a club in Earls Court or The Cromwell Road [The Cromwellian?] can't remember. We did it for free. "Laurie Jay and Stephen convinced us it was a golden opportunity to break into the big time. Nobody in Timebox was writing anything and that's why we did an instrumental version of the Young Rascals, Come On Up. "When it was released it was a double feature with another film called The Sweet Sins Of Sexy Susan. We all went with Eric the roadie to a seedy cinema in Soho and saw it. All the dirty old buggers in there were fiddling with themselves with raincoats on their laps. No popcorn in those days, just tissues." - John Halsey
The Big Switch IMDB
Take Five 1966
TopKevan Fogartym Geoff Dean, Ollie
Chris Holmes, Clive Griffiths
Animation of all the Timebox appearances from the Melody Maker 1967 - images change every three seconds.
CLCK TO ENLARGE
Friday 9th August
8.45 - 9.15 pm TIME BOX
Cheeky bit of plagiarism by Plexi 3 from 2009
Smile were the pre-Freddie version of Quenn. The lead singer was Tim Staffell. He was previously in Morgan with Morgan Fisher, who, of course, has a close connection with Ollie. Moreover, Morgan played keyboards on Queen's 1982 European tour. How many degrees of separation?
"Laurie Jay employed the services of a publicist, and he used to make things up to get us press coverage. [Elaine:] I remember your Dad phoning up saying, "I didn't know Johnny was going to Russia!" Yeah, and we'd been caught up in the French student riots."
John Halsey
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Timebox set list 1968
Melody Maker • 6 September 1969
I asked [Charlie Watkins] what was the best sound he'd ever heard from one of his systems, fully expecting him to name Pink Floyd, who became probably the biggest users of WEM equipment and who had proudly included their WEM PA as part of the sonic payload depicted on the rear of the 1969 Ummagumma album. But that wasn't his answer at all. "No. Mike Patto's Time Box should have had that reputation, because they used to do magic with it — later they became Patto, a Roundhouse sort of band..."
Gary Cooper Sound on Sound magazine 2015
The appearance on Colour Me Pop was 7th December 1968
[and, of couse, the tapes were wiped by the BBC in their wisdom]
Admiral' John Halsey & 'Professor' Chris Holmes
Cambridge 1997
© Barry Monks
Unfortunately, not a real sleeve, although this should have been the A-side
Timebox publicity leaflet. Clive Griffiths: Cello?
Cartoom by Eddie McHenry - immortalised in the Timebox song. Presented to Mik Glasser in 1970
An Afternoon in the Drawing Room
One of my best Timebox memories: My roommates and I decided to throw a party and it was going along splendidly until the record player started acting up. There were various versions of who of Timebox were actually in attendance at the party; since I am the last surviving member of the four of us, I will go with my own version, as I distinctly remember Mike and Ollie sitting on the steps of our "sunken" living room that night (no Chris, no Clive) looking rather exhausted as they had just come from playing a gig someplace. The music stopped and everyone was sort of at a loss to deal with the quiet. Quick as a flash Ollie ran out to the van and within minutes the music was once again happening. I have no idea what he did but whatever it was, it worked. However, the lowest volume was approximately 14-1/2. I was sure that we would be deported or at least ticketed (it was, after all, St. John's Wood) but when I looked out the window there were people dancing in the street and suddenly our small party had become a huge block party, thanks to Ollie's ingenuity. I found out later that we had emptied out the pub around the corner and half the houses in the neighbourhood. Good music played loudly will do that. The next morning several of my albums had disappeared and I was most upset that my Tim Hardin Live in Concert album was one of the missing. It always struck me as ironic that the next Timebox single turned out to be Don't Make Promises, with the arrangement sounding unusually similar to the live version on my purloined album. Oh well."
Patricia Olkiewicz 2017
Further reading
Tmebox on the Road • garagehangover.com
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