Jody
(1977- 1980)
Bobby Speedie Lead Guitar & Lead Vocals
Alistair Speedie Rythmn Guitar & Vocals
Dick Hewat Keyboards & Vocals
Alastair Stewart Drummer & Vocals (left 1978)
Tom Annan Drummer (1978-1979)
Singles Scotland, Bonnie Scotland (as Hampden's Heroes)
As a result of appearing on ATV's New Faces in 1977, Spinning Wheel turned professional in the summer of '77. The band had a record deal with REL records in Edinburgh and spent a couple months recording a single 'Take a little time for love', penned by David Valentine and Bobby Heatlie (who subsequently wrote number 1 hits for Aneka and Shakin' Stevens).
The name of Jody was the end product of a competion run in the local paper, The West Lothian Courier , where the winner had a day out in the studio watching the band record.Needless to say, the single was never released, although about 6 demo 7 inch singles were pressed. Hopefully, a copy of the song can be found and it will be uploaded to this site.
The band gigged quite succesfully over the 12 months, playing on the same music circuit as Sloopy. Both bands were managed by Music and Caberet in Glasgow.Some of venues gigged by Jody included the Kinema Ballroom, Dunfermline, Clouds, Edinburgh, Apollo Niteclub, Glasgow, The Darlington Hotel, Ayr, most town halls in the North East & South of Scotland plus numerous gigs on Skye, Lewis and Ullapool.
Many outside performances were given at local gala days and in the bandstand of the local park in Bathgate - one gig had Bobby Heatlie joining the band on stage, playing sax, keyboards and percussion.
1978 - The World Cup in Argentina
Jody became 'Hampden's Heroes' and appeared on Granada TV's 'Get it Together' with none other than Slade. The single never really charted, although it was voted the 'best' world cup song by Radio Forth listeners - but had no chance after Scotland were eliminated after the first round. Here some shots of the band during the show.
The piper who performed with the band was the legendary session musician Judd Lander, who was in the Merseybeat group 'The Hideaways'. Judd also played the iconic harmonica rifts on the Boy George Culture club hits in the 1980's - in fact - Judd appeared recently on Jools Holland Hootenanny with Boy George.
As a musician Judd has performed on well over 200 session and is credited by artists such as Prefab Sprout, Madness, The The, Tina Turner, Beach Boys, Mike Oldfield, Dina Carrol, the Communards and more recently can be heard performing on works by more contemporary artists; Richard Ashcroft, Annie Lennox; his classic solo contribution on the single ‘Say You’ll Be There’ by Million selling artists The Spice Girls can still be heard pounding over the airwaves.
The drummer, Alastair left band in 1978 and was replaced by Tom Annan from Kirkcaldy. The band were resident in the Bird Cage in Edinburgh nearly 6 months before Jody bit the dust.
There was a brief coalition between Bobby Speedie, Alastair Speedie, Dick Hewat, Jamie O'Neill, Stewart Wilson and Tom Howison. They came second in a battle of the bands competition in Glasgow and were successful in passing a BBC audition. However, the core of this band would form Sound & Vision a few years later.
Both Bobby and Alistair Speedie dropped out of the music scene between 1979 and 1982. Dick Hewat featured with Sideshow (featuring the legendary 'Freddie Wilson') along with Stewart Wilson from 1980 to 1981. Bobby and Dick teamed up together again in 1983 with Sound&Vision .
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