A British jazz fusion band signed to the label of Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator, with Hipgnosis sleeves and a drummer who became one of the most famous musicians alive. The music has almost nothing to do with any of that.

The short version

Brand X came together in London in the middle of the 1970s around guitarist John Goodsall and bassist Percy Jones, with Robin Lumley on keyboards and Phil Collins on drums. They made eight studio albums between 1976 and 1997, three of them entirely instrumental and the rest jazz-rock with vocals used sparingly. Moroccan Roll reached number 37 in Britain, their best placing anywhere. The line-up rotated constantly, and Phil Collins is on five of the eight albums, not all of them.

London, Island Studios, and a label that made no sense

The group formed out of sessions at Island Studios; the sources put that in 1974 or 1975 depending on which you consult, and the settled quartet dates from late 1975 when Collins took the drum chair. What is odd is where they ended up. Charisma signed them, gave them Hipgnosis sleeves and shelved them next to the label’s progressive acts, which is why they turn up in guides like this one. Discogs files the original albums under jazz and rock, and adds a progressive tag only to the 1992 CD. The prog filing comes from the label and the personnel, not from the music.

The fretless bass as a lead instrument

What defines them is Percy Jones’s fretless bass, used as a lead instrument rather than as a foundation. Around it Goodsall plays fast, clean lines with none of the blues vocabulary most British rock guitarists carried; Lumley covers electric piano and synthesizer; and the drummer, whoever it is, plays with a lightness that comes from jazz rather than from rock. On the first album every single piece is credited to all four members. That collective credit is unique to the debut; from Moroccan Roll onward the pieces are credited to individuals.

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Two line-ups, one studio, two albums

In 1979 the band did something genuinely unusual. Two line-ups worked in parallel at Startling Studios: one built around Collins, John Giblin and Robin Lumley, the other around Jones, Peter Robinson, Morris Pert and Mike Clark. The sessions produced Product in September 1979 and Do They Hurt? in April 1980 — one album leaning toward song structures and vocals, the other toward the jazz end. A third record, Is There Anything About?, was assembled in 1982 from what was left over. Three albums from one stretch of studio time is a lot, and the ratings show it.

What the drum stool actually looked like

Which brings up the thing most often got wrong about this band. Phil Collins is not the drummer on every Brand X album. He plays on the first two, is absent from Masques entirely, drums most of Product, appears on only two tracks of Do They Hurt?, and drums all six on Is There Anything About? — then he is gone. Chuck Burgi drums Masques, Mike Clark most of Do They Hurt?, Frank Katz both of the 1990s albums. Anyone approaching this group from the Genesis end will get it wrong, and it matters: the third best-rated album is one he does not appear on at all.

Album by album

Eight studio albums between 1976 and 1997, most of them instrumental and none of them with the same line-up. Tap any title for its guide.

The players, and the two reunions

John Goodsall played guitar on all eight albums and Percy Jones bass on all eight, which makes them the band in any meaningful sense. Robin Lumley covered keyboards on the 1970s records and produced Masques without playing on it. Phil Collins came and went around his other commitments. Around those four passed Morris Pert on percussion, Peter Robinson and Franz Pusch on keyboards, John Giblin sharing the bass chair for three records, and the drummers Chuck Burgi, Mike Clark, Kenwood Dennard and Frank Katz. The band stopped in 1982, returned as a trio in 1992, stopped again around 1999, and worked once more between 2016 and 2020.

Where to start

Start with Unorthodox Behaviour (1976): entirely instrumental, entirely collective, and on the community verdict the best thing they made. Then Moroccan Roll (1977) for the wider palette and their highest chart placing. Then Masques (1978), the album people skip because Phil Collins is not on it, which is rated within a hair of the two before it and is the strongest argument against reading this band through its drummer.

Why they still matter

Brand X matter because they were a proper fusion band who happened to be filed with the progressive rock catalogue, and because Percy Jones treated the fretless bass as a front-line instrument at a time when very few British players did. Their records still turn up on prog shelves, which is how most listeners find them, and there is no harm in that as long as nobody arrives expecting suites and Mellotrons. What they get instead is a small group of musicians playing very fast, very precisely, and for the most part without words.

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