Clive Brooks

Clive Colin Brooks (born 28 December 1949) is a drummer, best known for his work in the English progressive rock band Egg.

Brooks was born in Bow, East London. Answering a Melody Maker ad in early 1968, he joined Uriel, a blues-rock group formed by City of London School pupils Dave Stewart (keyboards), Mont Campbell (bass and lead vocals) and Steve Hillage (guitar and vocals). (The band re-grouped later under the name Arzachel and released one album in 1969.) With Hillage's departure in mid-1968, the remaining three continued as a trio and became Egg in January 1969. The band signed with Decca and released two albums on the label, splitting up in July 1972 (although they came back together to record a final album, The Civil Surface in 1974).

Egg's members first played together in Uriel, a Hendrix / Cream / blues / psychedelic group formed by school friends Steve Hillage (guitar), Mont Campbell and Dave Stewart. The line-up was completed when Clive Brooks answered their 'drummer wanted' ad in Melody Maker. Uriel began gigging in 1968 and in the summer of that year decamped to the Isle of Wight to play a club residency. Events from this trip were later immortalised in Egg's anthemic 'A Visit To Newport Hospital'.

At the end of the IOW stay Steve Hillage left the group to pursue his academic studies, later rising to fame as a '70s guitar hero. Uriel continued as an organ trio and fell in with a management company who forced a name change of 'The Egg' on the band. After signing with Decca in mid-1969 the band evolved into a hard-working live unit who won many fans on their travels round the UK. Under the musical leadership of Mont Campbell, short songs began to give way to long complex instrumentals influenced as much by Stravinsky as by the odd time signatures of Soft Machine. Psychedelia continued to loom large in Egg's consciousness, and when the group were let loose in a recording studio for the first time they revelled in the new sonic possibilities it offered, creating the deranged soundscape 'Boilk' on their first eponymous LP.

Egg and Decca parted company after the release of their second album The Polite Force, considered by many to be one of the finest prog albums ever recorded. Combining musical ingenuity, instrumental dexterity and super-tight performances, The Polite Force (produced by Neil Slaven) featured the much-loved 'A Visit To Newport Hospital' (whose opening fuzz organ riff is often mistaken for heavy metal guitar), the thoroughly mad 'Contrasong' and the intricacies of 'Long Piece no. 3', an extended instrumental piece in four movements. Accompanying these compositions is the nine-minute 'Boilk II', a multi-layered sound collage with psychedelic overtones.

...
Wikipedia