In September 1964 a single was released that flopped miserably - and yet changed the course of Irish popular music. The single, a version of Louisiana bluesman Slim Harpo's "Don't Start Crying Now', was by Them, five Belfast rhythm-and-blues fanatics fronted by Van Morrison, who attacks the song with a wild ferocity that still shocks today, and it began a blues boom in Ireland that signalled the end of the line for the unoriginal, besuited showbands which had until then dominated the scene.

Them's second single, a version of Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go', with Morrison's classic composition "Gloria' on the B-side, was released in November and became a worldwide hit, providing Van with the momentum that enabled him, by and by, to become the superstar that he remains today.

The extraordinary story of Them is a story of success and failure, of betrayal and bitterness and exploitation - and of wonderful, imperishable music.

The saga begins with a small-time, no-hope band, The Gamblers. Band leader Billy Harrison explains: "We were Ronnie Millings on drums, Alan Henderson on bass and myself on guitar and vocals, gigging round Scout halls and Legion halls and wee functions. Then wee Eric Wrixon came along, playing keyboards. We were playing rhythm and blues, leaning towards rock 'n' roll - the original "Hippy Hippy Shake" before the Swinging Blue Jeans got their hands on it, Little Willie John's "Fever" - that sort of thing. And we were heavy into early Presley.

" Then we brought in Van Morrison, who had left The Monarchs Showband, to play saxophone. I never knew him as a singer, but he knew a lot more blues songs than me, so he began to sing a few songs, then gradually more and more, which allowed me to concentrate on guitar, so it just came about that Van became lead singer. I was into R&B like Chuck Berry, but Van was into Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, so he introduced more blues into the band. His father had a phenomenal blues collection and that's where that influence came from.

" We used to rehearse above Dougie Knight's cycle shop in Shaftesbury Square, and Eric Wrixon came up with the name Them, when we were sitting in the rehearsal rooms. And we decided to let the hair grow, which was "el freako" for Belfast, and not wear uniforms. That was our kick against the establishment. Every band then did Shadows steps and dressed the same. We were a group - but individuals at the same time.

" Then the "Three Js" - Jerry, Jerry and Jimmy - took over the Maritime Hotel, a trad-jazz gig in College Square North, and approached us to play blues there.'

Eric Wrixon continues: "The Three Js ran a very good advertising campaign in the Belfast Telegraph: "Who Is Them? What Is Them?", and the first time we played the Maritime there were 50 people; the second night 180; the third night we sold out - and we sold out as long as Them were there. There was a time, a place, an atmosphere and a band and it all fitted together and it was all totally right. We were the first band in Ireland not to wear band suits, the first to have long hair, the first to play rhythm and blues. And we weren't lagging behind England - Them were more extreme than The Rolling Stones and musically in advance of them. [Bobby Bland's] "Turn On Your Lovelight" was Them's biggest number. It was fifteen minutes long, which was unheard of, starting as practically a dirge and building to a frenzy. Van had this incredible act of tearing off his clothes, falling on his back and singing very well at the same time.'

Harrison agrees. "We were nutters onstage. We did whatever we felt like doing and that as much as the music got across to the crowd. They would clap time, stomp, dance, shout and yell. The crowd was feeding off us and we were feeding off them. When it came to the end of the night you didn't really want to stop. It was an unbelievable period. It wasn't big money, of course, but we were playing for the love of playing. There were no breadheads.'

" The way of making money,' explains Wrixon, "was to play as many places as possible in one night. In those days bands, even people coming from England, played short sets - in fact once there was a nasty rumour that Georgie Fame was coming to Romano's Ballroom and in his contract he refused to play less than two hours! I think the Musicians' Union here had an enquiry about it! So Them would play half an hour in the Dance Studio, then half an hour in the Plaza, then half an hour in the Fiesta, then an hour in the Maritime. Also we were on the door in the Maritime - which was sold out by seven o'clock, with 250 people paying ten shillings each.

" A few months later the band started to play provincial Northern Ireland - about six months before provincial Northern Ireland was ready. People just stood with mouths open. And we got bottles thrown in one or two places, notably Cookstown.'

" There was a disastrous incident there,' agrees Harrison. "They threw pennies at us and we collected the money off the stage, which annoyed people even more. They got incensed, things were said on both sides, and the police had to escort us out of town.

" But we reckoned the band sounded as good as The Rolling Stones. There wasn't another white man in Britain could phrase like Van. He was always good at ad libbing. He could just conjure words. My recollection is that Van didn't write songs - he wrote ideas and then the song came as he was performing. He never had a song written down - maybe words here and there on cigarette packets - but you'd diddle about with some riff and he'd put something on top of it and gradually it evolved. Everything was refined on the road.

" My memory of "Gloria" was us sitting down in me mum's house playing riffs and different chord sequences and "Gloria" popped up out of it. So did "Philosophy".'

" Van was superb,' enthuses Wrixon. "He had presence, he was a songwriter, a great singer and showman, fun, one of the boys, uncomplicated. But the band was talented as a unit. It wasn't Van plus band. Billy Harrison, as a guitar player, wasn't the man with the most technical ability that I've ever heard but he sounded right. He was rough - which was his charm.

" I was terrified of him. He was a hard man and I just did what I was told. When people offered not to pay us, Billy changed their thinking very quickly. He would not have been physically intimidated by a lot of people. He was the brass-necked organiser that Van never was. Van was the very artistic, laid-back, "Ach, it doesn't matter, man" sort of person. Billy Harrison was, "No, he owes us another 20p, let's have it." To me both inputs were part of what made Them work.

" One of the most important things for Them was to arrive in London with the usual inferiority complex coming from Northern Ireland, to play with The Pretty Things - who became good friends of Them - on live shows and say, "Fuck, we're better than that. We're not looking up at them - they're looking up at us."'

The band, now managed by Philip Solomon, signed to Decca, having recorded a demo tape for electronics whiz-kid Peter Lloyd in Belfast. "I still have a copy of the demo,' declares Harrison. "It's very, very raw. You can hear all the mistakes. But Peter Lloyd opened the door with that, because he knew people in Decca. He knew Dick Rowe, so Dick Rowe arrived one night at the Maritime, when we were in a wild phase of "Turn On Your Lovelight", which worked at winding up the crowd and winding up the band as well. The wee man used to pace the stage during it like a wild animal. It really used to lift things up and get things going.'

Suitably impressed, Rowe signed the band, their first Decca session, on 5 July 1964, producing "Gloria' and several other tracks. But for Harrison this session, produced by Rowe himself, and subsequent sessions produced by in-house producer Tommy Scott, were unsatisfying. "You got people trying to refine things and telling you what to do and we were naive. You say, "They know more than I do," and you think you have to do what you're told. A certain amount of spontaneity goes out of it.'

Them's reputation has been sabotaged by stories that they were replaced by session men on their records. In particular, it is said that Jimmy Page - later of Led Zeppelin - plays the immortal guitar lick on "Baby Please Don't Go'. Harrison is adamant: "I can stand with my hand on my heart and say I played lead, not Jimmy Page. I wrote the lick and I'm playing it. Page was there, but he played the solid chunk in the background. And a session drummer, Bobby Graham, played, but Ronnie Millings was playing as well.' The rumour is, however, that Millings was unmiked and only Graham was recorded. "I don't know. They were both being recorded, as far as I'm concerned. Another guitarist, Dave, sometimes used to augment, but there was no one else.'

Wrixon supports Harrison: "There are plenty of witnesses who can testify that Billy Harrison had been playing "Baby Please Don't Go" live exactly the way it later turned out on record. Billy Harrison plays like Billy Harrison. He played it before, during and after the session the way you would expect Billy Harrison to play it.'

A few Them tracks, including "I Gave My Love A Diamond', were produced by American producer Bert Berns, who had written "Twist And Shout' and other classics. "Brilliant. Unbelievable guy,' enthuses Harrison. "I remember him coming out of the console: he walked over to the drum kit, grabbed a stick and started beating on a cymbal and saying, "Let's get this thing cooking," and created an atmosphere. Suddenly everybody went, "Yeah, we're not sitting here tied to these seats, we're allowed to express ourselves." Berns just created a whole freedom of atmosphere within the studio. Helluva producer. The guy was magic.'

The band stayed at the same London hotel as blues harmonica legend Little Walter. "We used to have sessions with him and John Lee Hooker in the lounge. We ended up getting thrown out because they brought amplifiers into the bloody place! Little Walter was an unbelievable player, an unbelievable bluesman. We were acting what that guy had lived. That's really the size of it.

" Van, Alan and myself went to see Walter at a club one night and he called us up on stage to play with him. He and Van both sang and blew harp, Alan played bass and I played guitar. I'll not forget that. He thought highly of the Wee Man, too. Everybody did.

" And we played as Jimmy Reed's backing band at a couple of gigs. He was easy enough to play with but you couldn't hear anybody else but Jimmy Reed, he turned the amplifier up so loud. A guy came up to me between numbers saying, "Would you mind turning down - we came here to hear Jimmy Reed," and I said, "Who the fuck do you think you're hearing, man? It's not me." The next song started - and I took my hands off the guitar and shrugged!'

Them were notoriously unco-operative with journalists, and top Sixties writer Keith Altham famously tells a story about being intimidated by a sullen Harrison cleaning his nails with a knife during an interview. "Quite possible,' concedes Harrison. "But no one was threatening him with it! What created the thing about Them being bad to interview was you got journalists who came in with their standard, prissy, stupid, bloody dickhead questions, with no real relevance, and we didn't have any time for it. "What's your favourite colour?" Who gives a monkey's? We were playing for love of music and enjoying playing, but no one was asking about the music. We were walking, talking, eating, sleeping, playing, working music, all the bloody time. The one big release was we all loved the cartoons. We all used to go to the cartoon cinema, if we got to a town early for a gig, and let off steam. Pure escapism.'

The Bert Berns-produced "Here Comes The Night', released in March 1965, became another international success, reaching number two in the British charts, but by then Wrixon was long gone. "I had A levels to do and Solomon said, "Either you're in the band or leave." I said, "Surely this ultimatum can be waived for six weeks and I'll get these A levels out of the way?" It couldn't be, so I left. If management had supported, instead of exploiting, Them could have been on a level with the Stones.'

Drummer Ronnie Millings, a family man, was another early defector, resigning to find a steadier income. John Patrick (Patsy) McAuley came in on keyboards to replace Wrixon, then moved to drums, replacing Millings, with his brother Jackie joining on keyboards.

Jackie McAuley played on several tracks on the band's first, self-titled album - subtitled The Angry Young Them - released on Decca in June 1965. "There's no session men on those tracks at all,' asserts McAuley. "In those days, in Belfast, an original band couldn't get arrested. They were all showbands. Brilliant musicians, but all doing covers. We done some really bad gigs in ballrooms, where people wanted to hear the Top Ten. "Do you know any Cliff Richard numbers?" Van wouldn't answer them, just give them a look: "This is it and fuck you." We had our lives threatened loads of times, but it was a terrific thing Van did. He stood his ground and never went into covers when he was under pressure to do it.

" We were doing eight gigs a week, all over the country. I was popping pills to stay awake and we were all living on top of each other. There were all these disputes. "You did this, you did that." When it came to my turn I said, "Fuck it, I'm going." When I left the disputes carried on. Because if something's wrong, it can't be the manager's fault, or the agent's fault, it's got to be one of your friends. That's the naivety of it.'

McAuley was replaced by Peter Bardens, his brother Pat leaving soon afterwards to be briefly replaced by Terry Noone, and the band began to disintegrate, dissatisfied with their management's handling of finances. Harrison tried to resolve matters. "The band agreed things weren't right, but when I broached the subject and created a big row I was left standing on my own - the union rep with no members! Management used the principle of divide and conquer. There were threats like, "I'll see you guys never work again." The threats got across and I heard certain ones had whispered about finding another guitarist, so I copped the needle. One day they arrived at my house to go to a show and I said, "Bye - I'm not going." I think now I was too hasty, but I still think I held that damn band together, 'cos it collapsed after I left.'

Joe Boni briefly replaced Harrison before the band fell apart and the only survivors, Morrison and Alan Henderson, limped back to Belfast where they recruited guitarist Jim Armstrong, drummer John Wilson and keyboard/sax/vibes player Ray Elliott.

Armstrong was a local phenomenon who, while still a schoolboy, had played in Belfast's top showband, The Melotones, who were resident in the city's Romano's Ballroom. "The summer holidays were great,' recalls Jim. "I could do eight hours a day in Romano's, just practising on my own.'

The Melotones were veterans, a generation older than Armstrong, but a tribute record to Jim Reeves, "Jim Forget Them Not', sung by Billy McCandless, had nearly led to a record deal. "Decca wanted to sign us. They wrote, "Great record, send us details of lead singer: colour of hair, age, etc.". When we wrote back, "White; 56", they didn't want to know!

" But with The Mels I developed my ear, playing all those old standards like "Lullaby Of Broadway". I was into Barney Kessel and Joe Pass, then I went back into the R&B and blues that it all came from - Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, B.B. King . . .'

Another of the new recruits, John Wilson, only seventeen when he joined the band, had already lived out some serious rock 'n' roll fantasies with Belfast band The Misfits. "The Misfits were into covers of American hits and we had mohair suits and all the right gear,' he explains. "We went out to Hamburg in '64 and for young boys from east Belfast to arrive in "Sin City" in the mid-Sixties, with sex 24 hours a day in the Reeperbahn, was mind-blowing. It took us two weeks just to calm down! The Top Ten club would have been our main gig and we would have worked from seven o'clock at night to four o'clock in the morning, an hour on, an hour off.'

Wilson understood the appeal of the original Them. "Musically the original Them wouldn't have been good, but as entertainment it was excellent. They had an in-built insanity and at gigs it seemed like these guys could self-explode at any minute. There was a madness there and not much discipline, but they were exciting and this madness made them stand out.'

The new Them went to work. "We rehearsed for two weeks at the Maritime,' recollects Armstrong. "Then did the Top Hat in Lisburn, the Flamingo in Ballymena - "The best hot dogs in the world" [the club's proud boast] - and then on the road. Up and down the motorway. We had Selmer gear which was clapped out, a minibus that was clapped out . . . we were clapped out! We didn't even have seats to sit on - we sat on speakers. We drove overnight from Wales once, were in London at 8 a.m. to record some TV show, then drove to Edinburgh for a gig that night.

" We were playing on the strength of Top Ten poppy records like "Here Comes The Night" and there wasn't enough publicity saying it was a blues band. Scotland used to be good 'cos they were into a bit of gut music and some of the universities were great, but other gigs were awful, like the Top Rank ballrooms where they were wanting to hear "Here Comes The Night". We were doing "Stormy Monday", with the nice chords in it - not the twelve-bar, all the substitutions - and they were going, "What's that?" It was bad management - you have to tell people what to expect.

" But there were times Van came off raving 'cos we were doing Jimmy Witherspoon's "Times Are Getting Tougher Than Tough" and he liked the jazzy feel to it, with vibes and sax.

" One night in St Mary's College, though, they pulled the plug. Ray and Van were playing "The Train And The River" on two saxophones, which was originally a jazz thing by Jimmy Giuffre with Jim Hall on guitar, where the music gives the sounds of a train and then the river weaving through. The crowd were going, "What's going on here?" and the caretaker came on and switched off the power!

" But the most embarrassing gig was once when Van came wandering on with a drink in one hand and a joint in the other, downed the drink, ran forward and leapt over the speaker, slid on his ass across the stage and spread-eagled into the mike stand.'

Even worse, the debacle was witnessed by Billy Harrison. "It was horrific,' he sneers. "And very amusing. Van came leaping in over an amplifier and fell on his face. I went with Phil May and Viv Prince out of The Pretty Things and I suppose we were going to do a bit of piss-taking but we didn't have to - they did it for themselves.'

Returning from Scotland once, Them's career nearly came to a grim end. Armstrong: "The roads were caked with snow - it wasn't gritted or anything. You couldn't see a thing. The van did one of those slow-motion turns and I was sitting with my suitcase on my knee going, "Arrrgggghhhh . . ." I can remember sliding down, thinking, This is it, goodnight. There was a drop at the side, but the van spun right round and went straight. The snow cleared and we thought, Only another six hours and we'll be in London! The next thing . . . CRUNCH - we had skidded on black ice and hit a traffic island. I thought I was sent for.'

Armstrong, who had given up a steady job in a bank to join Them, wasn't enamoured of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. "Every time I had two days off I went home. I was saving to buy my own bank! Ray Elliott and Alan Henderson were great looners. They would lose all their money gambling and drinking and hanging out with The Pretty Things. I was only a small-sherry-at-Christmas man at that stage. I was a clean-cut kid fresh from Sunday School.'

The new Them recorded the Them Again album, released in January 1966. "Tommy Scott produced and Tommy would come in and say, "Here's the tunes you're doing,"' remembers Wilson. "If my memory serves me well there were a few tunes that I was sure I'd heard before by people like Nina Simone, and I suddenly found out, no, this was one of Tommy's tunes! They realised the power of copyright and the money to be made through publishing.'

Five of the songs on the album are Morrison compositions. "Probably he'd have cornered somebody on their own like Ray Elliott and they would have fiddled about with the song and then come to the band and said, "Let's have a blow over this," but it was very haphazard. If management had've had their act together they'd have seen the potential Van had and they'd have nurtured it and never let it disintegrate through greed.'

" There were a few tracks left over from before, but everything after I joined was played by the band,' asserts Armstrong. "We're on twelve of the sixteen tracks - no session men. They weren't going to put "I Put A Spell On You" on the album - "It's too jazzy" - and what happens? Alan Price does it and has a smash. Plus we were getting ripped off - the album went gold, but I didn't get any money.'

John Wilson fared no better. "I never got any money from Them recordings,' he declares. "At a later stage in my career I signed a piece of paper 'cos The Misfits were stuck in London and needed money to get somewhere and I got a cheque and I signed over all my rights to anything I did with Them. Real business sense! But joining Them was good experience for me. It got me into the major leagues doing recordings and one-nighters and TV - things you wouldn't have got the chance to do back in Belfast.

" When I think back I was probably the weakest link in the band, because the other guys were extremely talented, experienced players. They used to make fun of me 'cos I was so young and I was influenced by buying clothes in Carnaby Street and all this sort of stuff. They used to say, "Don't worry, Junior, you might meet a pop star tonight." They used to make fun of the fact that I was actually into that. In fact I was so young I couldn't get a permit to do European gigs, so they had to get a stand-in drummer any time they played in Europe.'

Like Armstrong, Wilson remembers life on the road with Them as gruelling. "We crashed the truck in Preston once. Van got us a taxi and the driver says, "Where to?" and Van says, "Oxford Street." We arrived in London, said our goodnights and I went straight in, loaded everything and went to the airport to fly home to Belfast. And there were all the other guys already in the airport! Everybody had had the same idea!

" Looking back, mostly the band didn't work well live because there was too much drink and whatever else. It had the potential to be good, but it was never nurtured. No one cared. But there was a definite charisma when Van performed. He was always creative but in those days he was just a commodity, like a tin of beans. I left two weeks before they went to America in 1966. I'd had enough of the madness, the drinking and the uncertainty and it was just awful - just loads of pressures.'

Them's American tour has gone down in rock 'n' roll legend. "We were met in New York and got the Riot Act read about do's and don'ts,' remembers Armstrong. "No drugs, no under-age women. Then we flew to San Francisco and the guy who read us the Riot Act woke up with a fifteen-year-old! Then we flew to Phoenix and we stepped off the plane in 110-degree heat. I was wearing a tweed double-breasted jacket which near killed me - I didn't know what to expect.'

The band's first American gig, with Wilson replaced by English drummer David Harvey, was in a football field. "They drove us on in an open-topped Cadillac,' recalls Armstrong. "Masses of screaming kids, a PA with two little speakers and I had a little Fender amp, not miked - to fill this huge outdoor arena.'

Them played at the Whisky A-Go-Go in LA for two weeks, with The Doors and Captain Beefheart supporting. "They were all heavily into drugs and we were all heavily into drink. Everyone wanted to know what we were on! I didn't identify with the drug culture. That first time I was over there I didn't take anything. I came from this little staid upbringing. I had this Mr Sensible on my shoulder. But our drink tab in the Whisky - beer was free and spirits half-price - was $2,600 in two weeks.'

Jim Morrison of the then little-known Doors, fell under Them's drunken influence. "The guys introduced him to alcohol and he couldn't handle it. He wrecked rooms and stuff like that. Him and Van were thrown out of the Whisky one night for shouting, "Johnny Rivers is a wanker." The Doors did all the things that went on to be hits - and they sounded just like the records did. Jim Morrison did a lot of Van tricks, like turning round and crouching into the bass drum and then turning round. Van did that - but then Van stopped doing anything, except cartwheels now and again.' On the last night of the residency Jim Morrison joined Them onstage. "We did the big "Gloria" jam.'

Frank Zappa also befriended the band. "Ray [Elliott] being a typical looner woke up in bed with this girl. Frank walked in with his ponytail and Mexican bandit moustache and the girl said, "That's my old man." Ray near shit, but yer man just says, "Come on out and hear this album [Freak Out] I've just recorded." Ray came back stoned out of his lid and thought it was great. That was his introduction to Frank. And then Frank came down and played with us a few times. He got onstage and played blues and we swapped choruses on the likes of "Stormy Monday". It was great fun. And we talked guitar and influences and stuff we liked.'

The band, however, often felt misunderstood. "We played Waikiki Shell once absolutely sober and played, we thought, a respectable set, very musical. And the promoter was raging, saying we were all drunk, 'cos we just stood there and played. So next night we all got drunk, Van fell into the drums, we did an awful set, and the promoter said, "That's brilliant; that's what I wanted!"'

Another gig ended ingloriously. "Van went funny. He went over to Ray Elliott, lifted a mike stand and went to hit him with it - took a swing at him. It just missed him. He came over to me and I said, "You come near me and I'll wrap this guitar round your head." The promoter pulled the curtains 'cos there was going to be a fight on stage.

" I thought Van was a great singer. Very creative. He couldn't play guitar - still can't - but he can say enough with those few bits he can do. Same as saxophone. The feeling was there. But he wasn't doing his job 100 per cent a lot of the time, because he didn't want to be doing what he was doing. He didn't want to play to screaming kids. But he couldn't communicate that to anyone else. But a lot of stuff we rehearsed was the guts of [Morrison's 1968 solo breakthrough album] Astral Weeks, like "Ballerina". Alan, Ray and I sat acoustically with flutes and stuff playing that into a tape recorder. And we used to do "Ballerina" on the tour, so the band was creative.

" And there's a track on that second album which is very creative - "Hey Girl", which is very poetic. The G6-C6 feel - very pastoral, with flutes, which was "things to come".

" But we didn't have a manager who was half-way sympathetic to what we were doing and nurtured the talent. Plus we were getting ripped off. We did four months knocking our bollocks in and I finished with nothing. I had to borrow money to get home.'

Back in Ireland Them petered out. "We played Derry Embassy Ballroom with Van's cousin Sammy Stitt, who played harmonica with the Jim Daly Blues Band, depping on drums. The band was awful. There was still bad feeling from the tour and the drummer was all over the place so I said, "Forget it."'

Morrison began gigging with Them Again, with future Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell, who had previously played in local bands like The Atlantics and The Deltones. "The Atlantics was the first band I played with,' reminisces Bell. "We did Shadows numbers, then Beatles numbers, then the Stones came out, so we went from instrumentals to The Beatles to the blues. After that I was in about twelve groups. Every band I left [future blues rock superstar] Gary Moore would take my place!

" The Deltones had their own van which was unheard of. And a Vox AC 30 amp - I used to dream about owning a Vox AC 30! We played Betty Staff's and Clarke's, but weren't allowed into Sammy Houston's 'cos we were a pop group and wore suits! We played a lot of showband supports, like for The Freshmen and The Royal, so we would be playing to 2,000 people, which was very frightening, 'cos we were just fifteen or sixteen, but an incredible experience.

" Then I was in Crymble's Music Shop one day and Van introduced himself and gave me his address in Hyndford Street. I went up and he had this tape recorder and a few songs. He plugged me into an amplifier and said, "Play along." He liked what I did so we formed a band, and he got these two guys that were in The Alleykatz: Joe Hanratty, a drummer, and Mike Brown on bass. We played around Ireland for two or three months - Van Morrison and Them Again.

" The first gig was the Square One club in [Belfast's] Royal Avenue. I had the list of numbers but Van just said, "Start a blues in E." I said, "What about the list?" and he said, "To hell with it! Start a blues in E." The stage was quite small, so I was standing six inches from the front, and these two girls tied my shoelaces together. I seen them doing it, but I couldn't stop playing!

" Van was quite intense and a perfectionist. He wanted to give his best but in some places, they didn't understand what he was doing. But he was a professional. You can't force people to like you.

"We played Queen's University rag ball one night. Everybody was smashed - the audience and the band. I was pissed as a newt and Van said to the bassist, "Tell Eric to turn down," so I turned down. Then Van turned his guitar up, so I said, "To hell with this!" and I turned up again. I got a really bad write-up in City Week from Donal Corvin: "Last night Eric Bell tried to outshine Van Morrison with sheer volume." I left the band that night because there was bad feeling.'

Morrison soon emigrated to America and rock stardom, while his former Them colleagues - Henderson, Armstrong, Elliott and Harvey - regrouped, with Morrison being replaced by Kenny McDowell who had sung with The Mad Lads, the regular support group to the original Them in the Maritime.

" In the Sixties Belfast was the hub of the music industry in Ireland,' explains McDowell. "The whole of Belfast was buzzing. The first time The Mad Lads played the Maritime was the second gig Them had done in the place. We used to play the break for them every week. They were a really good band. We never got together with them onstage - we in The Mad Lads were in awe of them, watching them play and Van was always, even then, that bit aloof from it all.

" We played a mixture of R&B, like Don Covay, and blues, like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, and I even remember doing a few of Otis Redding's early things and the more middle-of-the-road Chuck Berry sort of thing. And the guys who ran the Maritime were these blues enthusiasts and so you were always being fed this music in the interval on the old reel-to-reel tape recorder.

" There was no beer sold in the Maritime, though it didn't stop people coming in stoned on scrumpy or whatever, but it was a great atmosphere and people like Joe Harper [later immortalised in Morrison's song "Joe Harper Saturday Morning"] made it. Joe was the caretaker. He took a great interest in the kids and if they had too much to drink, made sure they got home. And he gave musicians great encouragement. If we had a gig in Dublin, Joe would hire the minibus 'cos we didn't have licences, and drive us down. When I first started writing Joe actually bought me this fabulous tape recorder to encourage me. And he would go guarantor for guys who wanted guitars. A super guy. Everybody told Joe their troubles and he would sort them out.'

The Mad Lads had signed to the same record company as Them - Decca - and like Them had been assigned Bert Berns as producer. "Bert had just produced Them's "Here Comes The Night". He had brought a few tunes over from America and I guess The Mad Lads got the lesser of them, but having said that, it was still a privilege for somebody who was just starting out in their career to be working with someone who had written such classic songs as "Piece Of My Heart".

"" Out With My Baby" was the first single we had out, with a tune I had written, called "So Long", on the other side. The other track we did was "Answer Your Phone". I was the only one of The Mad Lads who actually played on them. Andy White was the drummer and Phil Coulter was the keyboard player, who took me under his wing and looked after me because this was the first time I'd done anything this grand, so I was in awe of the whole thing. It was just "Sing!" and that was it: it was all out of my control.

" And on "Answer Your Phone", when I went back to London a second time to do a bit more singing, Berns had written down the wrong chords for four bars. He'd actually recorded it, but had by now gone back to the States and I didn't have the heart to say, "This is wrong!" so I sang my part straight through, struggling to sing the melody over the wrong chords. So my part was right and Bert Berns' part was wrong!

" The manager put the single out as Moses K & The Prophets. He sacked the band and was going to form a backing band for me, with me as Moses K, but the whole thing collapsed and I was left without a band. I'd been happily playing with The Mad Lads, with guys I'd grown up with, and suddenly they're axed, I've no band and I can't play. I didn't play at all for maybe a year and a half. Then I got a phone call from Joe Harper, so I met him and we went to Jim Armstrong's house and Jim's first words were, "Do you want to go to America?" Sure I want to go to America!

" Carol Deck, who worked in a teen magazine Flip, had become a friend of the band when they were there before and she was instrumental in getting Them back over again. Through Carol Deck Ray Ruff was chosen to put the money up and he brought the band over and managed us. He had been a minor musician years before, a Buddy Holly impersonator at one point.

"" Dirty Old Man", on Sully, was our first single and that was a tune I absolutely hated. The idea was, "Let's do another "Gloria'" and it certainly was no way another "Gloria". But touring was the greatest bulk of what we did. We started off with 65 days straight touring, then a day off, and then 38 days. We started off on the Mexican border and worked the whole way up into Canada. Then across Canada and down to LA with some of the hops between gigs being 700 miles, so you were driving through the night to the next one. It was gruelling.

" You start off, it's great, everybody has plenty to talk about, but when you live in a small, confined space, with five or six blokes, and you've talked about everything there is to talk about, the tension builds and builds. The strain of living two or three in a room and the roadie on the floor and not knowing anybody, anywhere, is very hard. You can get quite ill. I know I was totally run down.

" And I was never a great fan of our music. We were getting away from what Them was about which was R&B/blues and getting into psychedelia which I was never a fan of. I was more into the O.V. Wrights and Otis Reddings of this world. But I was the kid in the band, the new recruit, so I went along with it. But we were a good gigging band - we still had the rawness.

" Probably the ultimate was playing three nights with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at the Electric Theatre in Chicago - that was probably the highlight of my career. The guys had met them before so there was a good bit of craic going on. Frank was a great guy and he and Ray Elliott got on really, really well because Ray was a quite off-the-wall guy. The Mothers were absolutely superb. The quality of their musicianship was tremendous. I remember the last night they played they were rushing off for a plane to fly to New York, so the last tune they played they called "Packing Up" and they packed the gear as they played! They packed the whole gear, the snare drum was the last thing to go in and that was it, the lights went down and end of the show!

" And I remember we played the Baton Rouge Festival with blues legend Freddie King and a tornado blew up and it just went black. They had to tie all the gear down. You stood into the wind: the crowd were out this-a-way but the sound all went that-a-way. When you took your glasses off afterwards your face was totally black but for the white eyes.

" And we played with [jazz legend] Joe Pass. We were doing the Merv Griffiths TV show and the tune we were doing was "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out" and Joe Pass was in the house band. We were playing live and they just joined in which was a nice gesture so I can always say I played with Joe Pass.'

Armstrong, who was voted third-best guitarist in an LA Free Press poll, behind Hendrix and Zappa, remembers a misadventure in Perrytown. "A little redneck town. We did four numbers, with lots of rednecks flicking cigarettes - "Urgghh, long-haired weirdos" - then the power went off and these rednecks followed us into the band room. The promoter just didn't want to pay us, so he got his friends to cause trouble. When we left they drove after us and rammed us. At the red lights they got out and put in the windows. We got out of town and there were twelve cars across the road so we couldn't get past. We turned back and went into a garage to call the police and the man says, "Get the fuck out of here" and pulled a gun. We went to the police station and the guys came in. They knew the police - you know, good old boys. All this "Hey Jethro, how's your dad?" And we're sitting picking glass out of ourselves! We sued the town for one million dollars. We never got anything. Maybe our manager got one million dollars. Perrytown. Wonderful place.'

In LA, while gigging at the Whiskey, all the band's passports were stolen - except Armstrong's - but temporary passports enabled them to fulfil gigs in Canada. After gigging in Winnipeg the band drove to the border but were stopped because their temporary passports didn't contain work permits, and told to go back to Winnipeg. Armstrong takes up the tale: "Everybody thought it would be a jolly good idea to sneak over the border. Boys' Own! Five go Tramping Over the Border! We drove 200 miles along the border through the night. At dawn we picked this lonely crossing . . .'

The roadie dropped the band on the Canadian border and drove the Cadillac across. "I was legal, I had a visa, but I wanted to join in the excitement. We were sneaking through the wheat fields. Ray Elliott was heavy on the drink the night before. He started to feel it. "Oh Jesus, the heat, slow down, fellas." We cut back into America . . . the Cadillac draws up . . . into the car . . . drive on. Next thing we heard this siren. It was the border patrol, guns and all. They thought we were drug smugglers and brought us back to the customs post where Ray threw up all over the floor. They gave him a bucket and mop: "Hey, long-haired bastard. Wipe it up." We got the fingerprints bit. Then they realised we were harmless and said, "You'll have to go back to Winnipeg." Here we go again - we'd just driven 200 miles away from Winnipeg!'

After Winnipeg it was back across the border, legally this time, to Sioux Falls for a flight. The band were told their flight had left, even though for the next half-hour they could see it on the runway. "The guy didn't want to put us on 'cos we'd long hair. We thought we'd show him. So we chartered a wee six-seater plane. A horrendous experience. The lights went off - the pilot's flying over Route 66 with a map and a torch. We stopped for refuelling and he couldn't turn the engine off 'cos it wouldn't restart. Kenny and I had fallen asleep in the back while the others got off for a Coke but the plane lurched into gear and started lumbering down the runway. Kenny and I were staring out at the guys and the wee pilot was running along beside the plane. He just managed to hop in and stop it!'

Three days after the journey began the band reached their home base, Amarillo. "There was no radio contact. "Fuck it," the pilot said - "We'll just go in." If anything else had come in we were dead. We had three days' growth, we were stinking, and people were saying, "What kept you?!"'

In January 1968 the band released Now And Them, on Tower, an uneasy mixture of the R&B for which they were famous (for example, a storming version of John Mayall's "I'm Your Witch Doctor'), commercial pop (like Goffin and King's "You're Just What I Was Looking For Today') and psychedelia - notably a ten-minute group composition "Square Room', on which Elliott, with a spellbinding flute solo and Armstrong with a guitar solo featuring an exotic, Eastern-sounding tuning, play scintillatingly.

One track, "Walking In The Queen's Garden', had been left behind by Morrison. "Van had had a few lines and it was something that they had been jamming about with and then Alan Henderson took it up and wrote more lyrics for it,' explains McDowell.

" We used to do it with Van. It's based on an old Howlin' Wolf lick,' adds Armstrong.

In keeping with the times the band are photographed in beads and kaftans on the front of the sleeve but are described in teenybopper prose by Carol Deck in the liner notes. McDowell, we are informed, is "charming in that delightful Irish way,' and "you can't help but love Kenny'. Armstrong "likes to like and is easy to like'. However, there are a few hints of the strong feelings of bitterness and resentment felt by the group, as a result of their bruising experiences in the music biz. Of Henderson it is written, "It's a little difficult to earn Alan's respect, as it is with all of Them,' and of Elliott, "Ray doesn't trust people, but maybe he has a reason.' Elliott is further described as being "the world's largest leprechaun not necessarily in captivity . . . impossible to understand . . . capable of talking for hours without making sense to anyone other than himself'. And Harvey, we are told, is "quiet, easygoing and slow at everything' - a rather unfortunate choice of phrase, as the drummer's time-keeping was regarded as being suspect.

Released as a single, "Walking In The Queen's Garden' became a heavily requested item on Californian radio stations - for example, it made the KFXN Top 40 - but neither Tower nor manager Ray Ruff had the clout to push the band to stardom.

Increasingly the strain began to tell on the band and Ray Elliott cracked first. "It really is difficult on the road,' sighs McDowell, "and he'd just had enough. We were in New York and he just flipped and decided he was going home to Belfast and that was it.'

Despite the chaos the band, now a quartet, somehow recorded Time Out! Time In, released in November 1968, an acid-rock classic, with stunning singing and musicianship. The (near) title track, "Time Out For Time In', is mesmerising raga rock with Armstrong on sitar and McDowell handling the long melodic lines with masterful control. But drummer Dave Harvey was out of his depth. "It's in 11/8, a funny tempo,' muses Armstrong. "We were into all that. We used Johnny Guerin, who was Joni Mitchell's old man, on most tracks, because Dave wasn't a good drummer.'

Many of the songs, it must be said, have misogynistic lyrics, typical of the era: "She got a sweet love potion to blow your mind/ You've fallen under that strange girl's spell' sings McDowell venomously on "She Put A Hex On You', his voice filled with contempt, as Armstrong's vicious-sounding guitar freaks out in the background. And on "Bent Over You' - on which Armstrong unleashes a dramatic, savage solo - McDowell accusingly declares, "You've twisted my mind'.

All but two songs were written by obscure hippy songwriters Tom Lane and Sharon Pulley. On one track in particular Armstrong was in his element. "On "The Moth" I play seven guitars: an acoustic; four guitars like a string section; then two twelve-strings detuned to sound like balalaikas.' Indeed, throughout the album Armstrong's playing is audacious, imaginative and wildly exciting.

The only band composition is the raga rock "Just One Conception', with McDowell in hippy prophet mode, pontificating on the meaning of life: "There's no deception,' he advises. "Only one conception'.

Again the album didn't sell and the band lost heart. "We were getting ripped off and it's hard when you're out there playing every night and all the money's going elsewhere and everybody's getting rich except you,' explains McDowell. "It had got to the stage where we were living on $5 a day. I tried to fight Ray Ruff but I'd been away two years and I was physically and mentally gone and the idea of coming home appealed to me.'

Armstrong, too, had had enough. "We were drawing minimum money and sending money back to pay our publicity agent and so on. Suddenly we were contacted saying bills hadn't been paid. It turned out the money we were sending back wasn't going to who it should have. I had to contact home: "Send me the money for a ticket. This is another fiasco." That was me home again, with the proverbial tail between my legs.'

Alan Henderson kept Them's name alive using American musicians and the production talents of Ray Ruff for two further, weak albums. Them, on Happy Tiger, was a collaboration with Jerry Cole, a respected LA session man who had been in the resident band on the Shindig TV show, had recorded with The Beach Boys and Johnny Cash, and had played on The Byrds' version of "Mr Tambourine Man'. In Reality, for the same label, featured Jim Parker (guitar) and John Stark (drums) of The Kitchen Cinq, an Amarillo band whose album Everything But . . . had been produced by Lee Hazlewood. The remakes of "Gloria' and "Baby Please Don't Go' included on this sixth Them album can safely be called unnecessary.

The albums inevitably flopped, although Henderson remained with Ray Ruff for a grandiose Jesus rock-opera project, Truth Of Truth, released on Oak Records in 1971, featuring the talents of top session musicians like Larry Carlton, Jerry Scheff, Hal Blaine, John Guerin, Joe Osborne and, again, Jerry Cole. The double-LP was lavishly packaged with a twenty-page booklet, but despite the presence of so many illustrious contributors the music was truly appalling. Henderson wrote or co-wrote eight of the songs, but lyrics like "Awake, awake, O Israel, God is sending you a Messiah' are not the stuff of which rock 'n' roll classics are made.

Ruff went on, by his own count, to produce 254 records that entered the Billboard charts, working with Commander Cody, Phil Everly, Hank Williams jnr. and others and being called by top producer/arranger Jimmy Bowen "a promotional genius and the best promotions man ever', but Henderson drifted out of music. Which should be the end of our saga - except, amazingly, a Them re-formation took place in 1979.

Eric Wrixon explains: "A film called The Rocker came out in Germany with Them's "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" on the soundtrack, which, released as a single, went to number one, whereupon Them re-formed.'

Harrison clarifies: "It was going to be John Wilson on drums, Jackie Flavelle from the Chris Barber Band on bass, Eric Wrixon on keyboards and Mel Austin as chanter. Mel and I were putting some songs together between us and I'd written some songs. Jackie and Wilsey opted out and the whole thing fell through which put me into an almost mental-breakdown state, so not wanting to let it go I got in touch with Alan Henderson in the States and he was all for it. We got another drummer, Billy Bell, and that was the line-up that went and made Shut Your Mouth [on Teldec] under the name of Them.

" It could have been a lot better. My playing wasn't as good as it could have been. Pure rustiness 'cos I hadn't been playing at all. That would apply to a certain extent to the rest of the band as well. And a weakness was we weren't actually a working band, nor were we session men who could just come together. That was a weakness but at the same time it lent a certain rawness to it - the end result sounded very much like where Them had left off, sound-wise. There was no great musical ability but there was an honesty about it, which was a good thing.

" Another weakness would have been in the songs that I had written myself. When you get someone else to sing them it doesn't quite work the same way. I think if you listen to the songs that Mel and I wrote together, Mel sounds a hell of a lot better than when he sings the songs that I wrote on my own - he had a better feel for them. I think I should have sung a couple of my own songs myself.'

" Billy wasn't into playing current-day solos,' argues Wrixon. "All the solos on the LP are either organ, piano or mouth organ, which I had to go back afterwards and do. So although Billy wrote every song on the album, certain people in the band got paranoid about how it was going to sound live and Billy was replaced by Jim Armstrong.'

" Yes, for a change!' grimaces Harrison, who still seethes about being ousted. "Et tu, Brute. I was looking forward to going. There were 21 gigs over a 30-day period and we were going into the studio to put down some more tracks which I had a lot of material written for. We were going to come back with three grand each in our pockets which I reckoned was good bread for a band that was only trying to get their foot in the door again. I think they ended up doing five gigs - they talked themselves out of it and made a Horlicks of it. Funnily enough and cheekily enough - and they had no chance - they asked me before they went if I had any songs that they could take with them for when they went into the studios and I said, "No, you gotta be joking. You ain't getting anything."'

Wrixon merely says, "The band toured Germany, but without the promised record-company support.'

Jim Armstrong is blunter: "The tour was a shambles.'

And so the mighty name of Them was finally - perhaps mercifully - laid to rest. Nearly twenty musicians played in Them between 1964 and 1979 with only Van Morrison achieving lasting stardom. But history has unfairly neglected some terrific musicians who, with Van, put Northern Ireland on the musical map and made some unforgettable music. Let us then salute, not only Van, but also all the others - Irish rock heroes to a man - who helped create the undying legend of Them.

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