Dennis Cowan

Dennis Cowan (*6 May 1947, + 1975) was a British musician. He played the electric bass and is noted as having contributed to records by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes.

When he was eighteen, he joined the Band ‘Devil’s Disciples’ as a rhythm guitarist; a band consisting of Peter Banks (later in ‘Yes’) on guitar, John Tite on vocals, Ray Alford on bass and Malcolm "Pinnie" Raye on drums. They used to play covers of the whole of the first Rolling Stones album, in the same order that the tunes were on the record. They played covers of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters without even knowing who these people were, as Banks later stated in an interview. Dennis was a big blues fan and actually had records of black musicians from America. The Disciples lasted for about a year before disbanding. During their time, they spent three months for gigs in Hamburg; they recorded two songs on an acetate: Arthur Alexander's ‘You Better Move On’ and Graham Gouldman's ‘For Your Love’. There are files that state the tracks were recorded in 1964, but this is unlikely, because the Yardbirds didn't have a hit with it until early 1965. The tracks can be found on Banks' archival album ‘Can I Play You Something?’.

After disbanding, Banks joined The Syndicats, replacing their guitarist Ray Fenwick and Dennis Cowan joined ‘The Tribe’ with John Neighbour (voc, hp), Frank Torpey (lg), Martin Slavenic (org) and Malcolm Wolffe (dr); Dennis himself had switched to bass.

The Tribe played quite often in Ealing before they were signed to Shel Talmy’s Planet Label to record the single ‘The Gamma Goochie’ (backed with ‘I’m Leaving’). They later went to Paris and Scandinavia and spent about a month in Copenhagen.

After the failure of the single, they moved to RCA to record another 45er called ‘Love Is A Beautiful Thing’ (backed with Steel Guitar And A Glass Of Wine’), released in May, 1967. At the time of release, they had a three-month residency at the Marquee.

For a short time after that, they changed their name to “The Dream” before breaking up in October 1967 after a few gigs only, including a further month at the Marquee. Torpey later would become co-founder of glam rock band “The Sweet”.

In 1968 the Bonzos had dropped the Doo-Dah from their name and made a further step from jazz and vaudeville into the pop or rock direction. Unhappy with these changes, Vernon Dudley (who wasn’t friends with the electric bass) and Sam Spoons left the band. “With Vernon gone we needed a bass player and ….. got Dave Clague and then Joel Druckman on bass……Either we had bass players who were frustrated and wanted to get up and do something or it wasn’t in tune with what we were doing. Dennis Cowan though, was quite happy to go ‘dum dum dum’ in the background and put a mask on or something and have a custard pie stuck in his face… - he was quite happy” (quote from Bob Carruthers’ book ‘Jollity Farm’)

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