Until…

If you’ve been holding your breath, we apologise but here is the ultimate chapter of the Middle of the Road story.

In 1991, Sally was contacted, out of the blue, by Ian McCredie, asking if she would be interested in getting back together and singing with the band.

After some thought, she agreed, on condition that Ken joined her.

To make sure that her voice was up to singing again, the four originals were contracted to appear on a German TV show to perform to full playback.

This proved successful and they were invited to appear on a Dutch TV show to perform 6 of their hits, live.

This time they added Neil Henderson and a keyboard player and arranged concentrated rehearsals in Glasgow.

The TV show turned out to be a major event in front of 18,000 people in a large indoor venue with a cast list of international artistes and groups, many of whom re-formed specially for the show.

During this newly revived career, the band appeared with many of the hit makers of the 60s, 70s and 80s at these festival-type events. This was a bonus for them to meet and mix with the very artistes they admired in their early days as “Los Caracas”. “The Mamas and the Papas”, “Spanky” McFarlane, Scott Mackenzie, Chris Andrews, and the late Bonnie Tyler to name a few.

Special events included regular appearances at the Golden Years Concerts in Antwerp and a special 40th anniversary tour celebrating Germany’s long running “Top of the Pops” show, “Disco”, presented by Ilja Richter on ZDF. In fact, they were among the show’s most frequent international guests, credited with 14 episode appearances between 1971 and 1976.

They appeared on the UK’s Top of the Pops just as often but thanks to the BBC wiping many of the 70s Top of the Pops recordings, only one of the band’s appearances remains. Their very first. “Disco” is the main source of Middle of the Road’s TV material. ZDF had the foresight to archive their shows and keep them available.

For the next 18 months the band performed regularly on weekends until, as seems to happen regularly with sibling band members these days, the McCredie brothers fell out, arguing over Ian’s son Stuart’s right to use the name Middle of the Road to promote Lorraine Felberg and Stuart McCredie as a singing duo.

As a result, Ian left the band leaving Sally, Ken, Eric, Neil and their now regular keyboard player, Shug Devlin, to find a new guitarist and vocalist, Phil Anderson from Orkney.

In the meantime, Ian joined with his son, Stuart and his girlfriend, Lorraine Felberg, later replaced by Lorna Bannon, to form an alternative Middle of the Road.

They continued to use the name, which had not been registered, to promote their tenuous connection with the original band’s international success.

In order to distinguish themselves from this virtual “tribute” band, the originals performed as Middle of the Road featuring Sally Carr. They were intent on keeping, as much as possible, to the original sound and arrangements of their past hits.

Although not ideal, it established the fact that there were two bands known as Middle of the Road but only one featured Sally Carr. With three original members, they were recognised by their fans and the media as the original band.

For the next year or so, nothing changed until Eric had to retire due to ill health leaving Sally, Ken, Neil, Phil and Shug to carry on using the original arrangements. Sally’s voice and appearance had always been the main element of the band’s image and now it was even more important than ever.

For the next 25 years, Middle of the Road featuring Sally Carr continued working in Europe with a few changes to the lineup.

Phil Anderson left to emigrate to the USA and now lives and works in Nashville. He was replaced by Kenny McKay on guitar. Stewart McEwan replaced Neil on Bass Guitar. Later, he was replaced by Jacek jan Komiago from Poland when Stewart retired from touring and sadly, unexpectedly, passed away a short time later.

Sally and Ken always remained faithful to the original sound of the band as much as possible and this final combination replicated the original harmonies satisfactorily if not exactly. Ken has always insisted that the combination of Sally’s, Ken’s, Erics and Ian’s voices was the key factor in Middle of the Road’s authenticity, something that the two brothers seemed to forget.

In 2011, Sally suffered a brain haemorrhage and a stroke a year later which impeded her ability to perform and sing but she insisted on carrying on. Her voice still retained the distinctive sound she had always had, and the band was called upon to appear on stage and TV up until the Covid pandemic.

A recent accolade for the band is that it was the group that introduced Europop to the world. ABBA acknowledged that they had modelled their sound on that of the four Scottish musicians. Quite a decent legacy, with Middle of the Road’s original recordings still achieving millions of downloads on the internet.

Today both Sally and Ken have retired from performing but Ken, always keen to preserve the memory of the original sound of the band, organised a final release of six albums on CD, recorded in the 70s, with all the original members. These recordings were rarely heard outside of mainland Europe. One extra CD of re-recorded live arrangements of the original hits was added to the final collection with a new song written by Sally, Ken and Phil at a session in Phil’s Orkney studio. They are all available online from all the usual outlets.

Original Artwork for the CDs