Music from the yesterdays and today!

WHY NOT are not a new band, they have been around since 1967 in the Rock arena.

Geoff Horgan (later known as Mad Dog for his crazy antics on stage) at aged sixteen years was in England a "Rocker". Geoff rode a BSA Motorbike and wore a leather jacket with metal stud and chains on it, long shoulder length hair, and listened mainly to Country, Rock n Roll and UK Blues Band music. Ian Scotney also 16 years old rode a Scooter with a short hair cut, neatly dressed, was known as a "Mod", and listen to mainly Beat Bands and Soul Bands.

Mods And Rockers were enemies. A rumble between Fashion and Music in Extreme.

One day in June 1966, Geoff Horgan and Ian Scotney happened by chance to meet on the street in their home town of Wallington, in Surrey, (just south of London) and after a short discussion decided to have a Jam session together. This resulted in the two enemies forming a band together, the Rocker and the Mod. Geoff played at the time Rhythm guitar with Vocals, Ian Scotney Lead Guitar with Vocals, also imported was a friend of Ian’s, Neil Adams on Drums, and Platon Georgiades on Bass guitar.

Something very strange started to happen as the band started to rehearse together.

Instead of performing the usual Beat Songs of the day, or Pop Music, they started out by Jamming together and experimenting with sounds on Guitars, Amplifiers, Keyboards, and Geoff, who had started writing songs at aged 14 years, started writing more and more original songs for the Band.

Ian Scotney had two years before been living in the USA in Chicago with his parents before moving back to England in 1966. In the USA Ian had heard a new sort of sound arising out of the woodwork there called Psychedelic Rock. Having explained this idea to the other members of the Band, it so started out that Why Not was born in the UK, and also started performing Psychedelic Rock right back in 1967. The first ever band in the UK to perform such music. Psychedelic Rock for those that do not know what it is, is a platform for experimenting with sounds, song-writing, ideas, and the boundaries to this type of music has no end.

This form of Psychedelic Rock was later to be known as "Underground Rock" and much later as "Progressive Rock". But Geoff Horgan took this even further by researching the origins of Rock Music himself and the secrets he found were at the time unbelievable.

(1) The newly founded Band WHY NOT soon found a Manager GEOFF DULLEY later name BIG GEOFF who had performed on Keyboards in a Blues Band.

Together with the close supervision of Big Geoff who found the Band their first gigs, Big Geoff also found a Record Label in London, England who was also interested in releasing Why Not.

In 1967, A Vinyl Single was released by Modern Home Music Label, (London-England) with the A side written by Geoff Horgan titled "I’ve Gone", and the B Side titled "Walking By Myself" penned by Jan Laine. This was in effect the first ever Rock Single released in the UK, and it sold an amazing Eighteen Thousand Singles with mainly little promotion or advertising, mainly through mail order and at gigs.

The Single was recorded in one day in the studios not like many bands of today that need one hundred takes to get it right. Why Not were a band that played it from the gut, they felt the music and were a very tight band. In 1968 followed a series of Single followed the first album titled "Somekind of Feeling" also penned by Geoff Horgan who was doing all of the song-writing, even though the Band was not signed to the record label, most of these recordings were released by the Band independently.

During 1967, Why Not were very busy recording new songs and performing many gigs, including a lot of well known gigs in London.

In 1968, the band were asked to perform an Open Air Concert, at Hitchin in Bedfordshire, (North of London), which was a free concert, and totally illegal, but around Twenty-Five thousand people turned up to hear the band. At this time Why Not had changed its Line-Up slightly. Neil Adams had taken over on Lead Vocals, and a new drummer was imported known only as KEN (Surname unknown to this day), together with Scotney, Horgan and Georgiades.

The public liked the Psychedelic Rock sound from Why Not, the long jam session improvised on stage, and acquitted the band with excellent applause.

The arrival of the Hippie Era had arrived, a year later in 1969. People started like Why Not to grown long hair; wear strange clothes, no fashion differences and the mod and Rocker era was long over. Class barriers came down, and all classes of people started to mix and discuss life and all things together. Psychedelic Art open up, as well as the music.

At the end of 1969, Ian Scotney left Why Not and for a year Geoff Horgan started to perform with a series of other bands learning the art of Lead Guitar, and taking time out to improve on his song writing talents.

(2) In 1970, Geoff Horgan met up again with Platon Georgiades and Neil Adams, and together with new members Chris Page on Keyboards (Cousin from Jimmy Page), and Rob Godwin on Drums, they reformed WHY NOT once again taking their brand of Psychedelic Rock that much further.

WHY NOT also found a new manager GRAHAM ROLLINSON (Photographic Editor of Penthouse Magazine) who took the band under his wing, and who managed a lot of bands at that time, and got the band a Record Deal for the next six years, with MHM Records, a subsidiary of Marble Arch Records. Why Not started to tour with much more bigger names in the Rock Arena, e.g., Deep Purple, Argent, The Pretty Things, T-Rex, Supertramp, ELO, The Who, and in the USA with Formerly Fat Harry and ACE.

During 1970 to 1976 the Band recorded a series of Singles, and three Albums, titled "The Pink Album" (1971), "The Orange Album" (1973", and "The Black Album" (1975), plus a bootleg album released by the band and sold at their concerts only in between titled "House Of Rock".

Psychedelic Rock was for WHY NOT totally un-commercial, and even though they occasionally recorded more Garage Rock type songs, they never made the Charts or the big time like so many other bands did. But Why Not got to tour all around the world, in Australia, Japan, Guam, USA, and Europe mainly in smaller type clubs, and became a sort of Cult-band to some ardent Rock Fans. By 1976, the Psychedelic era or Underground Rock type of band had run its course, and Rock was changing over to the more Punk Rock, New Wave and Heavy Metal eras. So the band demoralised split up at the end of 1976.

In 1980 WHY NOT came back together again briefly to record a new album which Geoff Horgan had also written a new Rock idea. But the album was never really finished and the original members of Why Not drifted apart once again, never to perform together anymore. But Geoff Horgan was not keen to let Why Not go just like that, and continued to use the band name whenever the opportunity arose. Geoff Horgan went onto a career of writing Pop Songs for other well known artists, as well as Children’s Stories and songs which were very successful. In the late 1980´s Geoff Horgan formed his own Music Publishing and Licensing Company and successfully handled many other well know Metal and Rock Bands, as he does even today.

Between 1980 and 1998 Geoff Horgan working with many various other musicians recorded a series of Album under the Why Not name which merely were not Chart albums, and were recorded with many various record labels. Also Geoff recorded a lot of tracks that were never released until the era of digital downloads arrived and now a lot of those tracks can be heard on the Internet worldwide for the very first time.

(3) In 1991, Geoff Horgan got together with REG FELLOWS (Manager and Producer of Heavy Metal Band Diamond Head) and started to help Geoff re-record and re-work the album Geoff had recorded with the original members of Why Not back in 1980, the unfinished album. Together with the help also of Drummer Ritchie Battersby (The Wild Hearts Fame) a new clang of Psychedelic Rock was born, but a lot more commercially

Sounding remixed on 24 Inch Tape.

The same Album was then digitally re-mixed by DIRK BURO in 1999, and so eventually the album first started in 1980, saw its first release in the year 2000, by World Wide Records (USA) and SPM International (Europe) and was widely acclaimed by the Press. One Magazine in Belgium Max Magazine wrote: "If this album had been released in 1980 it would surely have been a Number One hit in both the UK and USA".

In any case the album had sales of around 35, 000 CDs worldwide between the year 2000 and 2004, plus thousands of downloaded tracks as well.

In 1994 Geoff Horgan together with three other well known musicians released an album titled "The Legend Of The Lost Decade" under the band name THE CARDS, released on Rough Trade Records/Zomba, which was really the story of Psychedelic Rock and Why Not´s part in it all.

In 1997, Geoff Horgan was asked to write a Christmas song for a well known UK Reggae artist, and through this work met up with DIRK BURO (Producer of such bands as e.g., The Temptations, Boney M, Captain Hollywood, Incognito, The Weather Girls etc) and Rough Trade Records who were releasing this Maxi-single, asked Geoff if he would record a Rock Version of the same song to go on the Maxi-Single as a bonus track. Geoff seizing this opportunity, did just that with the help of UK Producer Simon Harrison (Ex-Michael Bolton Band), and mixed by Dirk Buro, which received more airplay than the Reggae Artists version did.

After this Geoff Horgan and Dirk Buro together with UK Black Reggae/Soul Producer,

decided to record a new Why Not Rock album together, and so in December 1998, the album "LOVE IS ALL" was released in Europe only on Megaphon Records/TKO Magnum UK. At the time the music scene was dominated by Dance and Pop Bands, Rock had taken very much a back seat in the later 1990´s. The Press in Europe acclaimed this album as bringing the Rock Music back to the forefront of the music scene, as even Rolling Stone Magazine was seen to quote, "Rock is back".

WHY NOT had done it again, and started once again its progression in Rock.

(4) In the year 2000, saw the release of the Album from the Original Members of WHY NOT titled "REVOLUTION INC."

In 2001, two new member climbed on board the Why Not train, being "MARK DUANE GAMBLE" (Former member of the famous Boy Band KWS, who had several hits worldwide with "Please Don’t Go", "Rock Me Baby" and others) on Keyboards and who is also a well known Producer of bands e.g., Human League, Scorn, and others; and CHRIS GROOVER, on drum, known for his work with Steffen Wolf, Bryan Adams, Eric Burdon, and others. Together with DIRK BURO and GEOFF HORGAN they released in 2001 a Maxi-Single titled "HERE FOR YOU" Sponsored by Fashion House Bon Prix, and German Telecom. The single was an instant success on the radios in Europe, and was followed by the album titled "NO ANGLES in the same year on MP Media Records/Artefix. The album was a real mixture of Rock, Reggae, Trance, and Psychedelic Rock, and received mixed press acclaim.

In 2002 Geoff Horgan decided to take a route back to the roots of Psychedelic Rock, and recorded an album of tracks that were totally improvised. The idea being to record each instrument separately only taking one take of each instrument, and laying each instrument over the other. The effect of total improvisation was amazing, and so saw the press as a real controversial but un-commercial album. Released on Artefix Label.

The Press in Europe were not exactly sure what the album was all about. The main theme of this album was the art of feeling and concentration.

In 2003 was released the album titled "ON YOUR RADIO" a more Garage rock type album, including some unreleased material. The album did not go down too well with the International Press, as they found the album to be a bit too poppy, released also on Artefix and MP Media records.

In 2004, was released only in the UK, the album titled "TERROR ERROR" more of the Psychedelic improvisation Jamming experimental music, which receive also good Press in the UK, and now is available worldwide on downloads.

Thereafter followed a three year break from recording as the lads in Why Not had also other commitments to follow.

In 2008, saw the release of the album titled "THAT GIRL", a mixture more of Garage Rock, but with a few Psychedelic tracks thrown in, which actually did quite well on some radios even in the USA, and on downloads.

(5) WHY NOT completed a last tour of Europe in 2005, covering countries e.g., Russia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Austria, before the current band line-up split up, but Geoff Horgan is still recording under the Flag of Why Not, and whoever wants to record with it.

What the future of Why Not is nobody knows, but the contribution Why Not made in the progression in Rock Music made a lasting impression on many people that saw it live or managed to get hold of one of their records.

Record Market Magazine wrote of the Why Not "To see Why Not live is a happening of the first kind".

Nigel Molden (General Manager of Warner Bros in the late 1980´s): "Why Not were the founders of not just Rock, but of many of the sounds used in Hip-Hop and Dance music today, and without bands like Why Not, there would probably have been no progression in the sounds Pop Music feeds off of. If you don’t know Why Not, then you don’t know Rock".

John Peel (Famous BBC Radio DJ): "Well, Why Not Indeed".

Many Media Journalists have always criticised Why Not over the last 40 or so years, and trying to really understand the direction of Why not is not easy, but just listen to their music and decide for yourself.

WHY NOT are also known as Protagonist’s and always find a cause to follow, like with their recent Internet album release "Requiem For Irag" or about to be released "Sex Cells" or the album "The Fucking Blues".

Why Not always have something to say, or find a new way of doing it musically.

Just released last year we saw the ROCKTHOLOGY Album series in the year 2007, being that Geoff Horgan said "When the Rolling Stones celebrated their 40 years in the music biz, they released an album with 40 Licks on it. Why Not have gone one better and released 40 Albums".

Forty years of Why Not 1967-2007, and the train keeping on running along on the rails of music scene, where it will end who knows, but Why Not are still there making waves.

Well, WHY NOT!

(6) CURRENT MEMBERS OF WHY NOT ARE.