"McGuinness Flint" (UK Folk-Rock 1971)

McGuinness Flint was a rock band formed in 1970 by Tom McGuinness, former guitarist with Manfred Mann, and Hughie Flint, former drummer with John Mayall, plus vocalist and keyboard player Dennis Coulson and multi-instrumentalists and songwriters Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle. Their first single "When I’m Dead and Gone" reached No. 2 on the UK singles chart at the end of the year (and No. 47 in the U.S.), and the debut album McGuinness Flint also made the UK Top 10 album chart.

A follow-up single, "Malt and Barley Blues", was a UK No. 5 hit in 1971, but the group floundered under the pressures of instant success, being required to record a second album before they were ready, and an inability to reproduce their recorded sound adequately on stage, which resulted in disappointing live shows. The second album Happy Birthday Ruthy Baby failed to chart, as did the title track when released as a single.

Gallagher and Lyle quit towards the end of 1971 to record as a duo. The group then recruited bassist Dixie Dean, and recorded Lo and Behold, an album of Bob Dylan songs which had not yet been officially recorded and released by the writer himself, credited to Coulson, Dean, McGuinness, Flint, and issued in 1972. A single "Let The People Go" was banned by the BBC as it related to the Ulster crisis, a fate which also befell a contemporary single by Paul McCartney and Wings, "Give Ireland Back to the Irish".

Coulson left and was replaced by Lou Stonebridge on keyboards and Jim Evans on guitar. This new line-up recorded two further albums, Rainbow (1973) and C’est La Vie (1974), but interest had evaporated, and they disbanded in 1975. A splinter group, Stonebridge McGuinness, had a minor hit in 1979 with "Oo-Eeh Baby" (No. 54 in the UK) and released the album Corporate Madness on RCA Records the following year. This group proved short-lived, however, and afterwards McGuinness and Flint both joined The Blues Band, fronted by former Manfred Mann vocalist and harmonica player Paul Jones.

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