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Morshead had a bit of the devil in him! Victor, as well as singing, playing guitar, piano and organ, also
blew a cornucopia, which is somewhat like a cornet. During gigs it usually rested on the Leslie speaker
cabinet, ready for him to pick up at any odd moment and insert into a song. Apparently, the other band
members got a bit cheesed off with him playing it so often, with the result that, at one gig, John
surreptitiously picked up the offending instrument, and placed it directly behind Victor, who always
stood up while playing. When he stepped back - crunch - and no more cornucopia!
The band undertook one very successful 1968 US tour, but their management did not follow it up with
the arrangement of another, so they returned to the UK to fulfil fairly low profile pub and club gigs,
instead of the likes of The Fillmore East and West,
and the Boston Tea Party, where they had gone
down a storm. Indeed, one of their Fillmore East
concerts was recorded live, but their management
apparently baulked at paying for the tapes, which
were then wiped!

The return to the UK grind brought the band back
to earth with a resounding crash, and even the
addition of keyboard player Tommy Eyre (who
appeared on the third album - “To Mum From
Aynsley And The Boys”) could not stop the band
from disintegrating in late 1969/early 1970.
After the band had split a final album, entitled
Victor Brox with Cornucopia “Remains to Be Heard”, was released. In theory, it
was a collection of odds and ends to fulfil their
record contract, but in fact it contained some fine
original material, with one of the highlights being a beautifully weighted guitar solo on the minor key
slow blues, ‘Downhearted’.

Morshead and Dmochowski then joined forces with guitarist/vocalist Jackie Lomax and ex-Animals
drummer Barrie Jenkins in Heavy Jelly. The physical presence of the band was probably off the back of
a guitar instrumental single (’Time Out-The Long Wait’ and ‘Chewn In’) that was recorded by Morshead
and Dmochowski with drummer Carlo Little, as part of a spoof review by the Time Out magazine.
Although obviously a studio jam, the 2 tracks contained some very fine guitar playing, and deserved to
be heard much more widely than they actually were. The A-side was quite a rocky workout, but Morshead
excels in this genre as easily as he does in the superb slow blues on the B-side.
Heavy Jelly didn’t last long, although I did get to see them at The Country Club, in North London - and a
very impressive outfit they were too. I can only assume that Morshead had bought the Gibson 335 from
Victor Brox by this time, and then sold it to Jackie Lomax. I don’t recall him using it with the band, but I
definitely saw Lomax playing Eric Clapton’s psychedelic Gibson SG Standard.
They recorded an album, that remained unreleased, although bootlegged, until it finally appeared on cd
in 2014, on the Angel Air label. It contains some fine songs, and more of the signature Morshead guitar
licks. Indeed, like Peter Green, and later Stevie Ray Vaughan, he seemed to be able to inject his bluesy
way of playing into different types of music, and making it sound perfect for the occasion.

After Heavy Jelly came to an end, Morshead flitted around the scene for a while - legend has it he was in
the studio when Peter Green recorded his “End Of The Game” album (Dmochowski was on bass) but did
not contribute. He then had a short stint with Graham Bond’s Holy Magick, lending his guitar to the
album of the same name, and worked very briefly in the studio with Denny Laine.

The Denny Laine session unfortunately appears to be the final time the playing of John Morshead was
committed to tape. Indeed, he seems to have simply disappeared from the scene, with various stories
doing the rounds at the time, and since - one being that he went to Africa, and was jailed for gun-running,
and another that he was living in Scotland, where he had fishing “interests”. He then mysteriously
reappeared very occasionally in the late 1980s, once again in Dorset; this time with a band called Dr.
Jim’s Wonder Tonic, which apparently is a name purposely chosen for the odd jam, by Dorset guitar
player Paul Hart. Indeed, on at least one occasion the band also included both Victor Brox and Alex
Dmochowski. As to who played drums, no one seems to know, but it wasn’t Aynsley Dunbar, who by this