With Hide Go Seek championed by fans and press alike (“A true lionheart still roars,” wrote The Mirror), Chappo could have chosen that release as the swansong to a stellar career. In 2011, the singer told the Rock Legacy website that “I’ve tried retiring over the past ten years or so”, and dropped a few hints he was considering stepping back from the spotlight – most notably with a 2012 live album pointedly titled Maybe The Last Time.
But the music wasn’t done with Chappo. By February 2013, he was back on the stage, at the peak of his powers and more passionate than ever, at the heart of a reunited Family lineup who performed together that month for the first time in over 40 years at London’s O2 Shepherds Bush Empire. As the historic show approached, Chapman admitted to nerves at the sense of occasion. “I just hope we don’t blow it,” he told Uncut magazine. “I don’t think we will, but in the back of your mind you go, ‘I hope we don’t let them down and let ourselves down’.”
In the event, the demand for tickets was so high that an extra night had to be added, while the band’s onstage telepathy and transcendent performances felt as though no time had passed at all. As Family went on to steal the show at that August’s Rockin’ The Park festival in Nottinghamshire, the only disappointment, Chapman noted, was that while John ‘Poli’ Palmer, Rob Townsend and Jim Cregan had readily stepped back aboard, Whitney was reluctant to leave his paradise home in the Greek Islands. “He said, ‘It just sounds like a lot of hard work for a couple of gigs. But have a good time’.”
Throughout 2013, Family were a towering presence on the British scene. Alongside the shows, fans welcomed the release of Once Upon A Time: a definitive Family compilation, gathering the band’s entire catalogue – including outtakes, alternative versions and rarities found in Chappo’s loft – on a 14-disc boxset whose mouthwatering presentation scored the Grand Design award at the 2013 Progressive Music Awards. “Obviously, if it looks good,” said the singer, “then it’s a nice thing to be recognised like that.”
Reignited and freshly relevant, with endorsements coming from younger bands like Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, Family spent the next three years embracing the road, playing sell-out dates across the UK in 2014 and 2015, and lighting up the European festival season in 2016. That December, Family signed off with shows in London and Leicester, at which the lineup was expanded to a seven-piece format that let them explore the most ambitious corners of the catalogue. “On the off-chance that this is Family’s last hurrah,” wrote Pete Feenstra on Get Ready To Rock, “the band plays with discipline, craft, nuanced restraint, humour, and plenty of conviction.”
Even with Family on hiatus – for now – Chapman’s creative wheels continued to turn. Released in 2021 on Ruf Records and Chappo Music, his long-awaited new solo album, Life In The Pond, draws a line under a period in which the 79-year-old has been absent from the studio but privately prolific. “I’ve never stopped writing,” he reflects, “and with Life In The Pond, I felt the need to hear what I’d put down in music.”
Life In The Pond reunites Chappo with faces from his past – including Poli Palmer as co-writer/producer and guest guitar from Geoff Whitehorn – while joining the dots between his early influences and taking the pulse of modern life. “There’s nostalgia for the different musical styles that influenced my life,” he says. “American rock from the ’50s to now. British R‘n’B from the ’60s, like Georgie Fame, the Stones, Zoot Money. Folk. Blues. Motown. Stax. Blue Note jazz. Classical. Americana. Country. A whole mess of influences. Mostly it’s anger at politicians that’s kept me fired up. But I’m also influenced by daily happenings, world news, people, acquaintances. It’s all in the lyrics.”
This latest album finds Chapman’s voice in vintage form and his musical radar more receptive than ever. Opening with the rootsy groove, vocal grit and brass licks of Dark Side Of The Stairs, the album’s mood roams from hypnotic seven-minute epic Nightmare #5 to Rabbit Got The Gun’s dystopian soul-funk. Having Us A Honeymoon opens with a snatch of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, before honky-tonk piano leads a lusty East End singalong. At the other emotional extreme, On Lavender Heights is a hushed stunner, Chapman using little more than his voice – with a dash of keys and strings – to carry a flash of true tenderness.
And while the lyrics can be biting, there’s a wistfulness to the closing Naughty Child that suggests that, even at 79, Chapman’s wide-eyed idealism remains intact (‘When the world was young and foolish,” he sings. ‘When the world was running wild…’).
The world has turned a few times since ’66, but Roger Chapman still has something to say – and with Life In The Pond, his voice as an artist is more vital than ever. “I’m very pleased and grateful that Poli gave me the opportunity,” he says, “because I think we really came up with the goods on this album.”