Pool Of Sound - Marseille

Marseille

Neil Buchanan was born in 1956 in Aintree, Liverpool and studied at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys. On leaving school, when his guitar playing was good enough he formed a band called 'AC/DC. He applied for a place at Liverpool Art College, but the principal told him that he had to choose between a career in art or a career in music, he wasn't allowed to do both. Neil chose music but unfortunately found out that his band name had been already taken by an older band who came over from Australia, so in 1976 he and his mates changed their band name to 'Marseille'.
The bands first release, 'Red, White and Slightly Blue', was produced by 'Nazareth' guitarist Manny Charlton, but didn't receive the promotion or distribution it needed to really make it, but the second album, simply titled 'Marseille' from 1979, brought the band to a much larger audience and most importantly was the first NWOBHM album to get released in the USA on RCA.

1979 Album cover

The original members of 'Marseille' were Paul Dale on vocals, Neil Buchanan  on lead guitar, Andy Charters on rhythm guitar, Keith Knowles on drums and Steve Dinwoodie on bass guitar.
Neil has said, "We were five lads from Liverpool at the forefront of what later became known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. We'd come out of the Liverpool Institute and we thought we were the heavy metal Beatles".

Neil Buchanan on stage

'Marseille' were the first band to win the 'UK Battle of the Bands' with the finals judged by Brian May and Roger Taylor of 'Queen' at Wembley Arena on the 31st of  October 1977. They were then signed by Mountain Records and went on to record a series of singles and albums. They toured extensively for several years around the UK and Europe from 1978-1980 alongside 'UFO', 'Judas Priest', Ian Gillan, 'Nazareth' and 'Whitesnake',and became the first of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands to break into the USA around May 1980, playing to some 30,000 people every night in the big stadiums around the same time that 'Def Leppard' were also breaking through in the US.
Neil again said, "We did the whole dizzying heights thing – Lear jets, stretch limos, real rock excess. America couldn't get enough of us. We were playing to 30,000 people a night. Then, from nowhere, our management company Mountain went bust, dragging us with it. One minute we were sunning ourselves on the beach in California, the next I was on the dole in Huyton. They were also saying we owed £250,000."

With all their equipment still stranded in the U.S., the band were forced off the road and into a two-year legal battle with liquidators, which precluded them pursuing another recording contract.
This caused the group to break up with members going their different ways, Neil entering the world of TV as a presenter and ended up fronting the CITV programme 'Art Attack' which he co-created. Neil came up with the ideas for more than 500 episodes of Art Attack, which have been now aired in over 30 countries. The show became a global hit almost overnight and is now one of the most internationally decorated programmes in TV history, winning over 30 awards including two BAFTAs and being nominated a further eight times!​ He says, "My proudest moment was when Art Attack won the first two BAFTAS. For an ordinary lad from Liverpool it doesn't get much better than that!" Paul Dale and Andy Charters also left the band. Charters moved to the US, and the two remaining members, Keith Knowles and Steve Dinwoodie later recruited vocalist Sav Pearse and guitarist Marc Railton from local Liverpool band 'Savage Lucy' to complete a third album entitled, 'Touch The Night' on the Ultra Noise label in 1984.

Fast forward to 2010 and the story of Neil's band had a happy ending. He reformed the original 'Marseille' and recorded and released a new album - appropriately called 'Unfinished Business'.​ However in 2017, following further line-up chnages, vocalist Nigel Roberts announced that both Neil Buchanan and Andy Charters, the remaining two original members of 'Marseille', will no longer play in the band, due to Buchanan's consultancy work for children's television and Charters still living in the USA.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2019/07/pool-of-sound-our-kid.html