Family/Discography
The family albums in order: eight records in six years. The band changed bassist four times while making them, and it shows - no two of these albums are trying to do the same thing.
Every number in the family discography below is taken from the record this archive has carried from the start. Nothing is estimated and nothing is filled in from elsewhere.
| Album | Year | Type | Tracks | Minutes | UK peak | US peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Music in a Doll’s House | 1968 | Studio | 16 | 37 | No. 35 | - |
| Family Entertainment | 1969 | Studio | 11 | 39 | No. 6 | - |
| A Song for Me | 1970 | Studio | 12 | 38 | No. 4 | - |
| Anyway | 1970 | Studio | 8 | 38 | No. 7 | - |
| Old Songs New Songs | 1971 | Compilation | - | - | - | - |
| Fearless | 1971 | Studio | 10 | 38 | No. 14 | No. 177 |
| Bandstand | 1972 | Studio | 9 | 37 | No. 15 | No. 183 |
| It’s Only a Movie | 1973 | Studio | 9 | - | No. 30 | - |
The sleeve plates are drawn for this archive. The original cover art belongs to the band and its labels and is not reproduced here.
The debut, and the critics’ favourite. Chapman brought blues and R&B phrasing to the front while Grech and King filled the arrangements with violin, cello, saxophone and harmonica - one of the first records to be described as progressive rock.
Released without the band’s consent by manager John Gilbert, who mixed it in a hurry. Family fired him and later re-recorded parts of it. The sound turned away from psychedelia towards acoustic guitars and sitar.
Produced by the band themselves and their highest-charting record. It sold almost nothing in the United States, where the 1969 tour had already done its damage.
The turn towards hard rock, and the record the band’s own account treats as the pivot of the whole catalogue. The unconventional instruments stayed - there is a violin solo in the middle of it.
Remixes and rare tracks, assembled partly to undo the rushed mix of Family Entertainment.
The first Family album to enter the American charts. The track list runs from blues through folk and funk to something close to proto-disco, and reviewers there treated it as a staple of British rock.
Chapman and Whitney both admitted the songwriting had moved towards conventional verse-and-chorus structure. Fans still name its ballad the best thing the band recorded.
The last record, and the one nobody noticed. It is also the most cheerful - funky, upbeat and openly ironic, with Chapman singing about the making of a western.
Read as a run, the family albums make a curve rather than a line. The two records either side of 1969 are the experiment: Music in a Doll’s House pushes long solos, echoing vocals and studio effects through “See Through Windows” while keeping a rural folk undertone in “Mellowing Grey”, and Family Entertainment answers it by putting the electricity away - acoustic guitars, and a sitar on “Face in the Cloud” and “Summer ’67”.
Then the writing changes hands. Chapman, Whitney and Grech had been the songwriters, and when Grech left mid-tour the band lost one of its three engines. A Song for Me is the sound of the remaining two adjusting: “Drowned in Wine” sets folk motifs on a hard-rock rhythm, “Some Poor Soul” is straight blues rock, and it went higher than anything else they made. Anyway, later the same year, drops the hedging entirely - “Good News-Bad News” steps into Led Zeppelin territory while “Strange Band” keeps the violin in the room.
Fearless is the odd one, and the interesting one: blues, folk, psychedelia, funk and a proto-disco lurch on “Larf and Sing”, on a record that somehow holds. Bandstand is where the family discography turns conventional, and fans still name its ballad “Glove” the best thing the band recorded; “Burlesque”, nominally about a bar in Leicester, is the most American thing on it. And then It’s Only a Movie, which nobody bought, is funny and light and quietly one of the better endings a band of this era managed.
The chart positions, track counts, running times and release dates on this page come from the published record, and every album links to the article its figures can be checked against. Where that record is silent - the label on an individual sleeve, a full tracklist, a producer credit - the field is left out rather than filled in from memory. The songs named are the ones the record itself singles out.
The singles
Six years of releases in which nothing sold, then two years in the top fifteen, then three singles in 1973 that vanished without trace.
| Year | A-side | B-side | UK | AUS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1967 | Scene Through the Eye of a Lens | Gypsy Woman | - | - |
| 1968 | Me My Friend | Hey Mr. Policeman | - | - |
| 1968 | Old Songs, New Songs | Hey, Mr. Policeman | - | - |
| 1968 | Second Generation Woman | Hometown | - | - |
| 1969 | No Mule’s Fool | Good Friend of Mine | No. 29 | - |
| 1970 | Today | Song For Lots | - | - |
| 1970 | Strange Band Three-track EP, with a new version of “The Weaver’s Answer” | Three-track EP | No. 11 | - |
| 1971 | In My Own Time Thirteen weeks on the UK chart | Seasons | No. 4 | No. 86 |
| 1971 | Larf & Sing | Between Blue and Me | - | - |
| 1972 | Burlesque Twelve weeks on the UK chart; opens Bandstand | The Rockin’ R’s | No. 13 | - |
| 1972 | My Friend the Sun | Glove | - | - |
| 1973 | Boom Bang | Stop This Car | - | - |
| 1973 | Sweet Desiree | Drink To You | - | - |
| 1973 | It’s Only a Movie | Suspicion | - | - |
The songs
Fifteen songs and what they are for on the record. Nothing here is an invented reading - each line comes from the account this archive carries or from the published entry on that song.
| Song | Year | On | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Weaver’s Answer | 1969 | Family Entertainment | The signature song. Played live for a year before it was ever recorded, taped for a BBC Radio 1 session in July 1968, and still closing sets at the 2013 reunion. A new version was cut for the Strange Band EP, which reached No. 11. |
| See Through Windows | 1968 | Music in a Doll’s House | The experiment: long solos, echoing vocals and studio effects run through it. One of the reasons the debut gets called an early progressive rock record. |
| Mellowing Grey | 1968 | Music in a Doll’s House | The folk undertone underneath the psychedelia - rural, quiet, and the counterweight to the rest of the album. |
| Summer ’67 | 1969 | Family Entertainment | Instrumental, written by Whitney, and one of the two places the sitar comes forward as the band puts the electricity away. |
| No Mule’s Fool | 1969 | A single | The first Family single to chart, at No. 29 - two years and four failed singles after the first one. |
| Drowned in Wine | 1970 | A Song for Me | Folk motifs set on a hard-rock rhythm. Still in the setlist forty-three years later. |
| Some Poor Soul | 1970 | A Song for Me | Straight blues rock, and the clearest view of what Chapman had brought in from the R&B years. |
| Good News-Bad News | 1970 | Anyway | The step into hard rock, with a long solo that puts the band in Led Zeppelin territory for the length of it. |
| Strange Band | 1970 | Anyway | Keeps the violin in the room while everything around it gets heavier - the band refusing to drop the instrument that made them odd. |
| In My Own Time | 1971 | A single | Their biggest single: No. 4 in the UK, thirteen weeks on the chart, No. 86 in Australia. |
| Larf and Sing | 1971 | Fearless | The lurch towards something close to proto-disco, on an album that already runs through blues, folk, psychedelia and funk. |
| Burlesque | 1972 | Bandstand | Nominally about a bar in Leicester, and the most American-sounding thing they recorded. No. 13 as a single, twelve weeks on the chart. |
| Glove | 1972 | Bandstand | A romantic rock ballad, and the song fans most often name as the best thing the band recorded. |
| My Friend the Sun | 1972 | Bandstand | Released as a single and never charted, yet by 1976 the trade press was calling it a Family favourite alongside “Burlesque”. |
| It’s Only a Movie | 1973 | It’s Only a Movie | Chapman singing about the making of a western, meta and ironic, on the last record nobody bought. |
After 1973
Twelve releases in the four decades after the band stopped, and a reunion that sold out.
A band that broke up in 1973 with one unnoticed album should have gone quiet. Family did not. The compilations start in 1974 and keep coming through 1980, 1981, 1990, 1992 and 2000. In 1989 the Peel Sessions were released; between 1991 and 2009 five separate live and BBC-session records came out, including three volumes of the BBC recordings covering 1968 to 1973. The material kept being worth putting back on sale for thirty-five years.
Then the audience answered directly. The 2013 reunion at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire was announced as one night and sold fast enough that the band added the evening before it and brought in extra musicians. That was not nostalgia scheduling - it was demand outrunning supply forty years after the last record. The shows carried on to Rockin’ the Park later that year and through UK and European dates until 2016.
The audience it reaches is the one that came to the catalogue sideways: through the BBC sessions, through the Peel recordings, through a violin turning up where nobody expected one. The songs that hold up are the ones that were never quite in fashion to begin with, which is why they never dated.
Eight releases between 1968 and 1973: seven studio albums and the 1971 compilation Old Songs New Songs.
Music in a Doll’s House, released in 1968 on a Reprise deal. Sixteen tracks, 37 minutes, and a UK peak of No. 35 - the lowest chart placing of any of their studio records, and the one critics liked most.
A Song for Me, released on 23 January 1970, at UK No. 4. It is also the only album the band produced entirely themselves.
Two. Fearless reached No. 177 on the Billboard chart in 1971 and Bandstand No. 183 in 1972. Both came after the 1969 tour that had already cost the band its American audience.
It is a compilation rather than a studio album - remixes and rare tracks, released in March 1971. Part of the reason it exists is that Family Entertainment had been mixed in a hurry and released without the band’s consent, and this was the chance to put some of that right.
It’s Only a Movie, 1973. Nine tracks, no critical or commercial attention, and the most cheerful record they made - funky, upbeat and ironic, with the title track about the making of a western.