Johnny Moped

Johnny Moped formed in Croydon in May 1974, cycling through a string of throwaway names before settling on singer Paul Halford's stage name by January 1975. Halford fronted the band throughout. Early members included Ray Burns, later Captain Sensible of The Damned, and briefly Chrissie Hynde on guitar, dismissed before she went on to form The Pretenders.

Their music sits between pub rock and first-wave punk: fast, loose, played with more enthusiasm than precision, and delivered in Halford's strangled bark. They were never a commercially successful group, and their reputation rests largely on the affection of contemporaries and on a small run of records that remain genuinely odd.

The band played London's Roxy Club through early 1977, on bills alongside the Damned, Eater, Slaughter & the Dogs, Wire, X-Ray Spex and the Buzzcocks, and supported Motörhead at the Hammersmith Odeon. A live cut, "Hard Lovin' Man," appeared on the compilation Live at the Roxy WC2.

Signed to Chiswick Records, they released three singles, including a cover of Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie," and the album Cycledelic in 1978. The b-side "Incendiary Device" placed fifteenth in John Peel's 1977 Festive Fifty, and Cycledelic was later named one of the fifty best punk albums by The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

Most of the band reformed in 1991 to record a second album, The Search for Xerxes, and a documentary, Basically, Johnny Moped, appeared in 2013. A later line-up, with Rob Brook on second guitar and long-serving bassist Jacko Pistorious, kept recording into the 2010s, working with producer Dick Crippen on new material.