Hot Chocolate formed in Brixton, London, England in 1968. Members of the group included Errol Brown, Tony Connor, Larry Ferguson, Harvey Hinsley, Patrick Olive and Tony Wilson.
In 1969 the band started working on a reggae version of the John Lennon song “Give Peace A Chance”. Errol Brown had changed the lyrics for their version but was informed that he could not do this without John Lennon’s permission, so a copy of the demo was sent to the Beatles Apple record label to see what they thought of it. Fortunately, John loved the version and it was released on the Apple label.
The group was given the named ‘The Hot Chocolate Band’ by a secretary at the company, Mavis Smith, the band later changed it to just ‘Hot Chocolate’.
Towards the end of 1969 Mickie Most signed Errol and the cofounder of the group Tony Wilson as writers and recorded their songs with Mary Hopkins, Julie Felix and Herman’s Hermits before encouraging them to come up with a song for themselves. In 1970 Hot Chocolate, with Errol Brown as lead singer, released their first record entitled “Love Is Life” which reached number 6 in the charts. This was the start of a fifteen year career for the group who amassed a total of over 30 hits and also became the only group in the UK to have a hit for fifteen consecutive years.
In 1981 Hot Chocolate had the honour of being invited by Prince Charles and Lady Diana at their pre-wedding reception at Buckingham Palace which was attended by heads of Government and many members of European Royalty.
In 1986 Errol left the band and took time out to spend more time with his wife and then young children. The rest of the members of Hot Chocolate also took some time off to consider their future and in 1992 Patrick Olive, Harvey Hinsley and Tony Connor joined up with agent Richard Martin and decided to start touring again.
The band found a new singer Greg Bannis and keyboard players Andy Smith & Steve Ansell. Since 1992, the band has enjoyed years of continued success touring all around the world performing to many thousands of fans who love the music of Hot Chocolate. In 1997 the classic single “You Sexy Thing” reached number one in the charts after it was featured in the movie ‘The Full Monty’ and a new Hot Chocolate ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation released in October 1997 reached number 10 in the album charts.
In 2010 singer Kennie Simon replaced Greg Bannis on vocals creating what many are saying is the best sound ever.
Ingredients
4 cups low sodium chicken broth
3 cups water
1 box Long Grain & Wild Rice (w/ flavor packet, we used Roundy’s brand of Near East)
2 stalks celery, diced
¼ cup red onion, thinly sliced
½ cup carrots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried majoram
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¾ cup heavy cream
¼ cup milk
salt and pepper, to taste
2 cups cooked chicken
Directions
In a large saucepan or dutch oven, drizzle olive oil on the bottom and add carrots, celery, garlic, onion, marjoram and seasoning flavor packet. Saute for 5 minutes over medium heat.
Stir rice in; then mix in the flour. Add chicken broth and water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes.
While soup is simmering, heat the heavy cream and milk in a small saucepan, just until hot. Add milk and heavy cream to the soup mixture along with the cooked chicken. Simmer for another 30 minutes, or until the rice is cooked through. Season with salt and pepper.
Chimichurri is an Argentinean green sauce that can also be used as a marinade, making it a perfect accompaniment to this grilled steak. Serve with steamed vegetables and rice for a well-rounded, healthier meal.
Chimichurri
1/3 cup packed flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ teaspoon chilli flakes
Pinch sugar
Good pinch ground cumin
1 clove garlic
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil*
1 tablespoon hot water
2 cups cooked brown rice (3/4 cup before cooking)
To make this meal even healthier use Tick approved ingredients.
* Products available with the Heart Foundation Tick.
1. To make chimichurri, combine parsley, lemon juice, chilli flakes, sugar, cumin and garlic in a processor and pulse until finely minced. With machine running, pour oil and water down the feed tube and whiz until the mixture is well combined. Set aside.
2. Preheat barbecue to moderately high.
3. Rub steaks with garlic. Spray barbecue rack with cooking spray. Cook steaks 4-6 minutes, turning once. Transfer to a plate, cover loosely with foil and stand 5 minutes. Cut into diagonal slices and serve with chimichurri and rice.
Make this meal healthier by using Tick approved ingredients.
*Products available with the Tick. Remember all fresh fruit and vegetables automatically qualify for the Tick.
1. Combine the sliced pork fillet, garlic and chilli paste in a small bowl.
2. Heat the oil in a large wok over medium heat and fry the basil leaves until clear and crisp. Remove gently and set aside to drain.
3. Increase the heat to high and stir fry the pork fillet for 2 – 3 minutes.
4. Toss through the tomato and beans and heat through.
5. Fold through the cucumber and spoon stir fry onto a bed of crispy fried noodles.
6. Top with the fried basil leaves and serve with steamed Jasmine rice.
Enjoy a light Thai inspired dish using your favourite vegetables and protein. Try using fish instead of chicken for a new twist on the classic.
Serves: 4
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
400ml reduced fat coconut milk
250ml reduced salt chicken stock
2-3 tablespoons green curry paste
3 kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded
300g pumpkin, peeled and chopped
500g Sealord Simply Natural frozen dory fillets*
230g can bamboo shoots, drained
600g Birds Eye frozen vegies (eg green beans, carrot, broccoli)*
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon palm sugar, grated
2 tablespoons Thai basil leaves, torn
1 ½ cup Sunrice Doongara clever white rice*
2 stalks lemon grass, halved
Make this meal healthier by using Tick approved ingredients.
*Products available with the Tick. Remember all fresh fruit and vegetables automatically qualify for the Tick.
1. Put the coconut milk, stock, green curry paste and kaffir lime leaves in wok or large pot and bring to the boil. Cook over a high heat until the sauce starts to thicken slightly. Add the pumpkin and simmer for 10 minutes or until it starts to soften
2. Add the fish and bamboo shoots, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until the fish is cooked through. Add the Birds Eye frozen vegies, fish sauce and palm sugar and cook uncovered until the vegetables are soft.
3. Remove from the heat and stir through half the basil leaves.
4. Put the rice, lemon grass and 4 cups of water in a pot, bring to the boil and cook over a high heat until steam holes appear in the top of the rice. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender. Transfer rice to bowls, spoon over curry and scatter with remaining basil leaves.
Dragon formed in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1972, with a line-up that featured Todd Hunter, guitarist Ray Goodwin, drummer Neil Reynolds and singer Graeme Collins; by 1974 several personnel changes had occurred including the introduction of Todd’s brother Marc Hunter on vocals and Neil Storey on drums.
The band recorded two progressive rock albums in New Zealand, Universal Radio and Scented Gardens for the Blind, the second with an added guitar element from Robert Taylor. Paul Hewson also joined the band on keyboards and from this point Dragon’s music took on a pop-flavoured AOR feel.
Dragon eventually landed a contract in Australia with CBS Records and relocated to Sydney in 1975.
Always a lightning rod for controversy, the band was rocked by the heroin overdose death of drummer Neil Storey only weeks after arriving in Australia and their original manager was also deported back to New Zealand on drugs charges. By then, founding member Ray Goodwin had left the group.
Storey was replaced by Kerry Jacobson and, between 1975 and 1979, Dragon scored a string of major hits on the Australasian pop charts with songs including “April Sun in Cuba,” “Are You Old Enough” and “Still in Love With You” and with the albums Sunshine and O Zambezi, making them one of the region’s most popular rock acts.
Marc Hunter left Dragon in 1979 due to health problems which were, by then, seriously affecting his performances. New singer Richard Lee was recruited and the group recorded the Powerplay LP before breaking up in 1979.
Dragon was forced to reform in 1982 to pay off outstanding debts, but they stayed together and decided to have another shot at success. The band’s second comeback single “Rain” proved to be a massive hit, but Kerry Jacobson left the band for health reasons and was replaced by British drummer Terry Chambers, formerly from the band XTC. American keyboard player and producer Alan Mansfield also joined the band at this point.
The group’s 1984 album Body and the Beat became one of the biggest-selling albums in Australia and New Zealand and the band was restored to something close to its late 70s glory. Their public profile was further raised at this time by the Marc Hunter solo album Communication. Its title track became a moderate hit in Australia.
Paul Hewson left Dragon and tragically died of a drug overdose in New Zealand in January 1985, with Terry Chambers and Robert Taylor leaving Dragon some time after. American drummer Doanne Perry replaced Chambers, and Taylor was eventually succeeded by local Sydney guitar ace Tommy Emmanuel.
This line-up recorded the Todd Rundgren-produced Dreams of Ordinary Men album and toured Europe under the name Hunter in 1987, where they were somewhat misrepresented as a heavy metal band in some markets.
Dragon again split up in 1988 although a year later Todd and Marc Hunter and Alan Mansfield reconvened once again with guitarist Randall Waller and drummer Barton Price (ex-Models and The Choirboys) for the 1989 Bondi Road album, which actually featured Tommy Emmanuel’s guitar playing.
Dragon continued to record and tour with varying line-ups centered around the Hunter brothers and Mansfield until 1997, although Todd Hunter had largely retired from the band to do soundtrack work.
In 1998, Marc Hunter was diagnosed with severe throat cancer and died later that year. The compilation CD Forever Young, released on Raven Records, captures many of the highlight tracks of his tumultuous career.
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This light dish is packed full of mouthwatering flavours, and is perfect for a summer lunch or dinner.
Serves 4
Cooking time: 6 minutes
Ingredients
420g can no added salt brown lentils, rinsed and drained
1/3 cup currants
1/4 cup pepitas, toasted* (see Tip)
1 long red chilli, seeded and finely chopped
1 small red onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup mint leaves, chopped
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley
1 orange, rind finely grated and juiced
1 tsp ground cumin
3 tsp olive oil*
1/2 tsp brown sugar
Cracked black pepper, to season
Olive oil spray*
700g skinless snapper fillets, trimmed, and cut into smaller pieces if large
Lemon, to serve*Products available with the Heart Foundation Tick. Remember all fresh fruit and vegetables automatically qualify for the Tick.
1. Combine the lentils, currants, pepitas, chilli, onion, mint, parsley and orange rind in a large bowl. Toss well to combine. Combine 1/4 cup of the orange juice, cumin, olive oil, sugar and pepper in a screw-top jar and shake until well combined. Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving and toss to coat fully.
2. Preheat a barbecue flat-plate or large non-stick frying pan on medium-high. Lightly spray with oil. Season the fish with cracked black pepper. Cook for 2-3 minutes each side or until light golden and just cooked through. Serve with the lentil salad and lemon.
Tip Pepitas are the edible seed of the pumpkin that have been dried. You will find them where all the nuts are in the supermarket. They are nutritious and add crunch to salads. To toast them place them onto a baking tray and roast in 220°C (200°C fan-forced) oven for 3-5 minutes. Alternatively, dry roast in a non-stick frying pan frying pan over medium-high heat. Watch carefully as they can burn easily.
Although remembered today primarily for one or two songs, Stealers Wheel in its own time bid fair to become Britain’s answer to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Only the chronic instability of their line-up stood in their way after a promising start. Gerry Rafferty (b. Paisley, Scotland, Apr. 16, 1946) and Joe Egan (b. 1946) had first met at school in Paisley when they were teenagers. Rafferty had seen three years of success as a member of the Humblebums before they split up, and he’d started a solo recording career that was still-born with the commercial failure of his album Can I Have My Money Back? (Transatlantic, 1971). He’d employed Egan as a vocalist on the album, along with Roger Brown. Rafferty and Egan became the core of Stealers Wheel, playing guitar and keyboards, although their real talent lay in their voices, which meshed about as well as any duo this side of Graham Nash and David Crosby-Brown joined, and Rab Noakes (guitar, vocals) and Ian Campbell (bass) came aboard in 1972. That line-up, however, lasted only a few months. By the time Stealers Wheel was signed to A&M later that year, Brown, Noakes, and Campbell were gone, replaced by guitarist Paul Pilnick, bassist Tony Williams, and drummer Rod Coombes (ex-Juicy Lucy and future Strawbs alumnus). This band, slapped together at the last moment for the recording of their debut album in 1972, proved a winning combination working behind Rafferty’s and Egan’s voices. The self-titled Stealers Wheel album, produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, was a critical and commercial success, yielding the hit “Stuck In The Middle With You” (top 10 in America and the UK). Even this success had its acrimonious side. Rafferty had quit the band by the time Stealers Wheel was released, replaced by Spooky Tooth’s Luther Grosvenor, who stayed with the groupon tour for much of 1973. Delisle Harper also came in for the touring version of the band, replacing Tony Williams. With a viable performing unit backing it, the Stealers Wheel album began selling and made No. 50 in America, while “Stuck In The Middle With You” became a million selling single.
As all of that was happening, the group’s management persuaded Rafferty to come back-whereupon Grosvenor, Combes, and Pilnick left. Having been through a dizzying series of changes in the previous year, Stealers Wheel essentially ended up following a strategy-employed for very different reasons-that paralleled Walter Becker and Donald Fagen in the American band Steely Dan (funny, the similarity in the names, too). Egan and Rafferty became Stealers Wheel, officially a duo with backing musicians employed as needed in the studio and on tour.
There was pressure for more hits. “Everyone Agreed That Everything Will Turn Out Fine” was a modest chart success, the mid-tempo, leisurely paced “Star” somewhat more widely heard, cracking into the top 30 on both sides of the Atlantic. A second album, Ferguslie Park (named for a district in Paisley), completed with session players as per the duo’s plan, barely cracked the top 200 LPs in America (although it was somewhat more popular than that number would indicate, among college students), and that would lead to a poisonous internal situation for the duo, as the pressure on them became even greater. In fact, the record was first rate, made up of lively, melodic, inventive pop-rock songs.
The commercial failure of the second album created a level of tension that all but destroyed the partnership between Egan and Rafferty. Coupled with the departure of Leiber and Stoller, who were having business problems of their own, and the inability of the duo to agree on a complement of studio musicians to help with the next album, Stealers Wheel disappeared for 18 months. Ironically, the contractually mandated final album, Right Or Wrong, that emerged at that time came out a good deal more right than anyone could have predicted, given the circumstances of its recording. The group had ceased to exist by the time it was in stores.
The break-up of Stealers Wheel blighted Rafferty’s and Egan’s careers for the next three years, as legal disputes with their respective managements prevent either man from recording. After these problems were settled, Egan made a pair of albums for the European-based Ariola label. Rafferty, in the meantime, emerged as a recording star with a mega-hit in 1978 in the form of “Baker Street” and the album City To City.
Stealers Wheel disappeared after 1975, its name and identity retired forever by its two owners (although, ironically, Rafferty did an album in the mid-1990’s, Over My Head, on which he re-invented several Stealers Wheel-era song that he’d co-written with Egan. He and Egan have both made records that refer in lyrics to the troubled history of Stealers Wheel, immortalizing their acrimonious history even as at least three best-of European collections of Stealers Wheel material immortalize their music, and “Stuck In The Middle With You” remains a popular ’70s oldie, revived most recently on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino’s movie Reservoir Dogs, and was recut by the Jeff Healy Band.
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1 tsp chipotle paste or 1 tsp smoked hot paprika (pimentón)
1 tsp ground cumin
700ml chicken stock
250g chopped tomatoes, from a can
200g large peeled raw prawns
300g halibut or other firm white fish fillets, cut into 2½ cm pieces
300g clams
500g small new potatoes, halved and boiled
juice 2 limes
To serve
lime wedges
1 avocado, chopped
handful coriander leaves
1 small red onion, finely diced
corn tortillas, sliced and baked
Method
Toast the chillies in a hot dry frying pan for a few moments (they will puff up a bit), then remove. Deseed and stem chillies, and soak in boiling water for 15 mins.
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, season and cook for about 5 mins or until softened. Add the chipotle paste, reconstituted chillies, cumin, stock and tomatoes. Sauté for 5 mins, then purée until very fine in a blender. Pour back into the pan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 mins. When close to eating, add the prawns, fish fillets, clams and potatoes. Place a lid on top and cook for 5 mins over a medium-high heat. Add the lime juice and serve with lime wedges, avocado, coriander, red onion and tortilla chips for sprinkling over.
