Unit 4 Plus 2
 With
his wholesome good looks and thick dark hair, Hertfordshire-lad
Tommy Moeller had been a rival local attraction to another
Cheshunt rock 'n' roller, Harry Webb, who later adopted the stage
name Cliff Richard.
By 1962, Tommy was singing in a modern folk quartet called Unit
4, in which he also played piano and guitar.
Among the group's
early members was Brian Parker, who briefly tasted fame as
guitarist with The Hunters, an instrumental act whose records
included a minor classic called The Storm, which Parker
co-wrote before the group broke up after drummer Norman Stacey was
killed in a car accident.
Despite only a short spell with Unit 4, Brian continued writing
songs with Moeller and one of the first fruits of this song writing
relationship was Couldn't Keep It To Myself, an odd
hybrid of hootenanny and Merseybeat.
The group's repertoire also mixed pop-folk tunes like Cotton
Fields and La Bamba with big ballads such as Climb
Every Mountain (from The Sound
Of Music) and Nat King Cole's
When I Fall In Love, which were draped in lush four-part
harmony.
 By 1963 it seemed the line-up had stabilised with Moeller,
second vocalist Peter Moules, and guitarists Howard Lubin and
David 'Buster' Meikle (who had once led The Daybreakers).
At the
suggestion of manager Johnny Barker (a sort of Hertfordshire Brian
Epstein) Unit 4 broadened their scope by adding a rhythm
section. With bass guitarist Rodney Garwood and drummer Hugh
Halliday, Baker closed a deal with Decca on behalf of Unit 4 Plus
2.
Though Green Fields touched the lower regions of the
charts, the soft ponderous accompaniment and pastoral lyricism of
it - and the follow-up, Sorrow And Pain - conjured
an alien atmosphere to the Big Beat that dominated British pop
music in 1964.
The third single, Concrete And Clay, began life as a
slow, soulful semi-acoustic track much like the other two.
It was,
however, ultimately recorded with a harder staccato edge and a
pronounced Latin American touch, possibly propounded when two old
acquaintances were invited to help out. These were Russell Ballard
and Robert Henrit, who had respectively played keyboards and drums
in Meikle's Daybreakers.
Concrete And Clay knocked The
Rolling Stones from the top of the British charts in April
1965. Ironically it was Cliff Richard who toppled them the week
after.
The single reached a respectable Number 28 in the USA,
prompting the group to next update Jimmy Rodgers' Woman From
Liberia purely for the American market. Unfortunately they
fell from grace in America as quickly as they had risen.
 The Unit's next three UK releases refined the jerky style
realised at the Concrete session but, though they gave a
good account of themselves in the Top 30, they could not recapture
the unique qualities of the blueprint.
The more straightforward Stop
Wasting Your Time (the B-side of Hark) showed that
they were able to branch out into other areas.
Unit 4 + 2 were blessed with a talented - though underrated -
source of original material in Tommy Moeller and Brian Parker.
The
feverish tension of Baby Never Say Goodbye for example,
was every bit as engaging as Concrete And Clay if
only because a more legato approach belied the Costa del Hertford
arrangements of earlier efforts.
The song had originally been given to Harrow's Bo Street
Runners, winners of a Ready Steady Go R&B
contest in July 1965.
A turntable hit on pirate
radio, the Runners version rendered Baby Never Say Goodbye
old hat by the time their benefactors' version reached the
shops six months later.
When the band transferred to Fontana Records in March 1967,
Halliday and Meikle called it a day and Ballard and Henrit joined
on a permanent basis.
With Russ now contributing to the song writing
pool, the group were buoyed by DJ John Peel's
belated advocacy of I Was Only Playing Games and
other latter day singles, which only served to stretch things out
a bit longer.
Unit 4 + 2 roamed the British college and dance hall circuit
until their feet began to crumble in 1969.
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