A while after the break-up of Leviathan, Gary 'Roscoe' Murphy joined Hellmet, a group that also featured Terry Aikin (vocals); Steve Day (Lead Guitar) and Ray Mellors (Bass guitar). The article below originally appeared in Zig-Zag magazine in January 1970

Roscoe Murphy used to drum with Leviathan - the third British act, after the Incredibles and Eclection, to be signed by the Elektra label. They broke up and now, wiser, he is involved in a new group venture Hellmet.

"Well, firstly the Leviathan split was amicable. Apart from me, only Brian is still playing, and he now lives in Tonbridge and is looking for a new group in that area. We had one main drawback with regard to Leviathan which occured before we even went under that name, but I'll come to that later. Other things which didn't help much were that latterly we had no manager and any neccessary hustling had to be done by the group itself, although we had a good deal from Clive Selwood of Elektra and Dave Robinson of Paragon, with regard to both advice and bookings. We even had a BBC 2 programme about us called 'A Year In The Life' but we were unable to make anything of it. We made a complete LP, but that was never brought out. The television thing happened too late really. If it had been shown soon after it was made, we might have got some more bookings on the strength of it, but I don't know..!"

But the main reason for their lack of success was managerial mishandling, and Roscoe's story will be of interest to any inexperienced group thinking of throwing in their lot with someone they don't know too well. He went on to explain about his troubles. (The name of the person in question has been disguised for obvious reasons).

"Our big hangup was a guy called X. When I joined the Mike Stuart Span, he was their manager and he was also later the manager of Extreme Sound and Motion, two other local groups. As the Span cut down to a four man group, and Elektra got interested, he became very involved with the band, and really worked hard for us. But then he got this idea, which was, I think, to be our downfall. He said that he wanted to but a record shop in which the four members of the band and he would each have a twenty per cent interest. The idea was to make any money that we earned grow, so that we should have something to fall back on if bad times came. It sounded ok, so we did it. Then we went to Belgium. When we left, everything was fine, but when we back, all his time was spent in attending to the record shop, and there was no time for us. That didn't please us. Then there was the thing about money. He was to take 50% of our earnings to use to pay commission, expenses and all that, and we were supposed to get 2.5% between us. The other 2.5% was his fee as manager. This was after the shop was paid for. But we rarely got what we were supposed to; it was always "You need new stage costumes", and that sort of thing, he had always spent it all before we got to being paid. There was always a cheque coming which was spent already. He had this thing about being a second Brian Epstein, in fact that's what he used to say, "one day I'm going to be the new Brian Epstein, and if you boys stay with me, I'll take you with me!". But anyway, it's got to the stage when we got fewer and fewer gigs, and he didn't want to know anything about his shop. We then got to the stage when we weren't on speaking terms. We just went to see to get paid, and he wasn't even straight with us then - you wouldn't think that a vicar's son could be like that."

"He still owes us quite a lot. We've been to ask him for it, and we even got a solicitor onto it. I think we got one small payment, but it's always "I can't afford it".

Ray Mellors and Terry Aiken, also in Hellmet, were in another of X's groups - Motion. "He dropped us like a hot brink too", said Ray, "though we weren't so financially involved. But I remember on the television programme, there was a shot of him in his luxury pad watching Leviathan on some TV show and he was saying, "well if thats the best they can do, they can go back to the building site". Gratitude - after they owed most of his shop. Then when they left him he said "I'm through with groups for good". But he's got a new one now, called Success".

Mr. X took them for a ride in another way too. Roscoe explained :

"One other thing which hit's us very hard at the time of the split was the question of National Insurance. When we started getting fairly large sums for playing, he made this suggestion that we should have a small rise each, but then he said we should stay as we were and he would buy our insurance stamps. We agreed to that, and everything seemed fine - until the split came, and we tried to go on the dole till we could find some sort of work. And guess what? He hadn't stamped the cards at all. We were really stuck".

After Roscoe's experiences - Hellmet intend to tread carefully. They have yet to appear publicly, and are continuing their other jobs until they get firmly established.

Steve Day, the fourth member is enthusiastic about their material, and the way that their combined musicial sympathy improves their individual work.

I don't fell cometent to draw any conclusions about their music yet - I've only heard them at rehearsal in a cramped basement room - but I must say that I find them much more intersting and promising than many of the super hyped bands I am inveigled into seeing by various undoubtedly well meaning but musically unaware people.

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