Kingmaker (band)

Kingmaker
L-R: Myles Howell, Loz Hardy, and John Andrew
Background information
Origin	Kingston upon Hull, England
Genres	Indie rock
Years active	1990–95
Labels	Scorch, Chrysalis
Past members	Loz Hardy Myles Howell John Andrew

Kingmaker were a British indie rock group, founded in Kingston upon Hull in 1990.

The group was formed during their gap year by school friends Loz Hardy and Myles Howell. They placed an advertisement for a drummer, and recruited John Andrew who was an ex-travelling puppeteer and considerably older; he has also worked for the BBC as an engineer.

The band began playing and touring, before making their recording debut with The Celebrated Working Man EP. After this they signed up to Chrysalis Records and released a second EP, entitled Waterproof, in 1991.

Their debut album Eat Yourself Whole was released on 7 October 1991. It was well received, and spent three weeks in the UK Albums Chart, reaching a high of No. 29 in October 1991. In addition they released the single "Eat Yourself Whole", which, despite sharing the name of their album, did not appear on the original UK version. It reached the top twenty of the UK Singles Chart.

During 1992 Kingmaker were supported on tour by Radiohead, who had not yet released Pablo Honey. On 29 August that year they appeared on the bill alongside Babes in Toyland, Beastie Boys and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Pukkelpop festival near Hasselt, Belgium.

They then landed an American recording contract with Chrysalis. Their second album, Sleepwalking, was released on 17 May 1993.

Speaking to Hybrid magazine in 2000, Hardy explained that when "Armchair Anarchist", the first single taken from Sleepwalking, failed to break into the Top 40, executives at their record label made several changes that Hardy felt were to the detriment of the band. These changes included re-writing Sleepwalking, to include more commercial-sounding tunes and moving all the publicity in-house. One more aspect that Hardy felt destroyed the band as a creative unit was the record label's decision to introduce formatting of their singles.