Eric Allandale had led his own band at one stage as well as having played with Edmundo Ros and was a former member of the Terry Lightfoot and Alex Welsh bands. Bassist Peter Macbeth was a former teacher. Tony Gomez, the keyboard player, was a former clerk, while Clem Curtis had been an interior decorator and professional boxer. There is some disagreement as to who was responsible for choosing the band's name, and various sources give slightly different accounts of their beginnings. One version is that they were originally called The Ramong Sound, or The Ramongs, and there were two lead singers, Clem Curtis and Raymond Morrison aka Ramong Morrison. When Raymond was imprisoned for six months, a friend of the band suggested future Psychedelic shock rocker Arthur Brown. The Foundations came together in Bayswater, London, in January 1967. They practised and played in a basement club called the Butterfly Club, which they ran. While managing the club themselves, they played music nightly, and handled the cooking and cleaning. They would get to bed around 6 or 7 a.m., sleep until 4 p.m., get up and begin again to get ready to open at 8 p.m. Sometimes they barely made enough money to pay the rent, let alone feed themselves. At times, they lived off the leftovers and a couple of pounds of rice. The biography on AllMusic stated that Barry Class was the first to discover them, although others claim it was Ron Fairway. When they were at the top spot with "Baby, Now That I've Found You", Fairway commented to Melody Maker that most managements would have pulled them out of the "bargain priced dates" that had been booked for some time. #Song fill me up buttercup professional.
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