Mother Sunday - Midnight Graveyard / You Don't Understand (1971)

I kept you waiting but you won't be disappointed with this one ! It was on my wishlist for some time but I finally managed to get the thing for you.

Mother Sunday is now a quite sought after obscurity which deserves attention. I've contacted its founder member, Mr. André Lehman who generously allowed me to post Mother Sunday's story and music on this blog. Mr. Lehman kindly shares two of his personal photographs !

Only 500 copies of this psychedelic jewel were pressed on the small swiss label Moon Records (founded by H.Boris Bühler, a friend of the band). The tracks were recorded at Steff Sulke's famous Soundcraft Studio, in Bienne. It features guitarist Hans "Bruschmi" Bruggmann from the swissbeat  band "The Counts". The cover was designed by Matthias Weibel.
 

Here's Mother Sunday's biography by André Lehman:

Mother Sunday was formed in ca. 1969 under the name “The Juice”. We consisted of a guitar player by the name of Gégé, a drummer whose name I cannot remember and myself on keyboards and vocals. Our repertoire consisted of current chart hits cover versions and we were a very busy band on the weekends with three to five halfhour gigs in different locations a night. We never had a permanent bass player, always guests, once even a young girl by the name of Heidi.

By ca. 1970 a new bass player joined as a guest, his name was Michel. He was a real crazy hippie with extremely long hair and he introduced us to “substances” to open our minds. LSD changed our attitude to music instantly and from there we were open minded to experimental live jam music. 

Rolf Sydler

At the time in Zurich (Switzerland) there was a rock club in the old part of the city called “Star Club”. Many later great worldwide success acts played three 45minute sets every evening for three weeks on a very small stage like “Spooky Tooth” “The Nice” and “Black Sabbath”. We hung out with the Black Sabbath guys a great deal and started to get into the dark groove musically. That’s when we changed our name to Mother Sunday and from then on the days of covering chart material were over. We went creative. Our repertoire built up on a general tune but always with open improvisations during gigs all depending on our state of mind. Soon a fan base of like minded people developed and followed us to wherever we went to play. 

Michel Leuenberger

The line up was Rolf Sydler (16 at the time!) on drums, Michel Leuenberger on bass, and me André Lehman on keyboards and vocals. We toured the country a lot and also did many gigs in southern germany and western france and played quite a few high profile open air festivals.

In 1971 we were offered a deal for a single by Moon Records, the owner being a good friend and the drummer of Sysiphos, a great experimental swiss band!!! The single reached the “BLICK” top ten in Switzerland for a couple of weeks.

The band stayed together for another two years doing many gigs but things went downhill when the parents of the drummer were so concerned about their sons health or sanity or whatever you want to call it and basically lured him out of the band with money and fancy cars etc. We auditioned many potential replacements over months but since we were such a close knit outfit we were unable to find and therefore split up.

After that, I got involved in the music industry and for over 30 years I headed record companies, owned a record company, produced many bands etc. I now try to live a quiet life here in Ireland and have again found the time to go back to my musical roots by producing my own stuff at home for my own pleasure or for the pleasure of those who are interested.

André Lehman, Nov. 2011

From top to bottom: pianist André Lehman, drummer Rolf Sydler and bassist Michel Leuenberger, guitarist Erwin Bertschi (not playing on the record).

Line-up / Musicians:

• André Lehman / keyboards & vocals
• Rolf Sydler / drums
• Michel Leuenberger / bass
• Hans "Bruschmi" Bruggmann / lead guitar
• H.Boris Bühler / congas

Midnight Graveyard:

You Don't Understand:

Special thanks to André Lehman and H.Boris Bühler for their collaboration.