joy

What became apparent in signing with such a large record company, was the extent to which the band handed over all concerns regarding their promotion to that company. Their image, their recording career, indeed the entire future direction of the band would now rely essentially with the marketing whims of CBS. After years of being a rock band, they were being now being promoted as a pop act now, with TV appearances on Razzamataz, and Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, and an appearance on the cover of the July 79 edition of Disco 45 magazine.

fame at last

The band appeared on Tyne-Tees TV's Check It Out programme, and Piercy was persuaded by Buzz magazine to review the album How The West Was One (a double live album, featuring 2nd Chapter Of Acts, Phil Keaggy & David). It was a long album, and he was not entirely keen on it. The review appeared in the August 79 issue.

Also in August, ATF recorded their first live set for the BBC's Radio One In Concert series, which was broadcast as a half-hour programme soon after, and featured many of the songs from the forthcoming album.

CBS 7769

On 10th August, CBS released the follow up single Laser Love . It is coupled with Your Love Is Alive, and issued on transparent luminous orange vinyl, with a picture sleeve that allowed the disc to be seen through it, giving the effect of a laser beam zapping at a heart. Despite keen purchasing activity by fans (encouraged by the fan club magazine Friends) it did not fare as well as One Rule For You. During the next four weeks after it's release, it made slow progress up the lower echelons of the charts ... 151 ... 93 ... 88 ... 74.

On August Bank Holiday weekend, having pulled out of the Reading festival because they were too far down the running order, ATF returned triumphant to the largest Greenbelt festival held so far. Over 15,000 people attended the weekend, which featured Cliff Richard's first attendance at the festival as well as a surprise appearance from Larry Norman. Cliff had just attained his first no.1 single in over ten years with We Don't Talk Anymore, and the recent conversion to Christianity of Bob Dylan, along with the release of his new album Slow Train Coming (also on CBS), and with ATF having achieved success in the mainstream charts, there was a feeling abroad that 'Christian' music was finally a force to be reckoned with.

ATF return to the greenbelt stage in triumph

ATF headlined on the Saturday night, following Garth Hewitt's band (who had himself, recently signed to EMI). The set began with the customary Thunderbirds theme intro, and concluded in spectacular fashion when, towards the end of Like The Power Of A Jet, an almighty firework display began, which was unquestionably rather loud, and carried on for several minutes, before the band returned to do the Beatles encore. It must have woken up half of Bedfordshire. Worried organisers, concerned at losing their license, were sharply critical of the band. As Peter recalls:

"We were hauled across the coals for doing that. We had invested something like £10 per second of our own money for those fireworks because we wanted to put a show on for the crowd. Why not? That production cost us! The fee from Greenbelt in no way covered what our expenditure was to put on that show. We had additional lights, we had additional equipment, the whole thing. We really wanted it to be special and that's what we did. We checked out beforehand what we were doing and let them know that we needed a special enclosure built so the fireworks could be set off. When we arrived at Greenbelt the enclosure was nearly finished. They then changed their minds and there were all sorts of 'heavy scenes' backstage. We just said we were going to have the fireworks and stamped our tiny feet."

But the crowd loved it, and having sat in the cold night air for so long, had something memorable to go home with, and the ATF-fireworks-display-incident would quickly become a part of the lore of Greenbelt. Despite the fireworks wrangle, Banks remembers the show fondly:

"I know that the Greenbelt crowd was so behind After The Fire. Everything we did, we were real stars there. It was a very nice feeling."

To further emphasise the leap in scale that Greenbelt had undertaken, BBC's Radio One chose to broadcast an hour long Special from the festival on the Monday evening. As well as playing a couple of tracks from ATF's new album (the current single Laser Love, and Check It Out), it also featured poorly edited excerpts of an interview by Richard Skinner with Piercy, in which Piercy pontificated the difficulties of being in a band, and also, perhaps conscious of the two distinct audiences tuning in, rather tied himself in knots trying to explain the bands Christian stance. Piercy's words were contrasted with those of Writz manger Dave Rees. As if to emphasise the difference of approach from ATF, Writz had opted to miss Greenbelt, and play the Reading Festival, but their change of image - far more radical than ATF's - was not well appreciated by those who remember the safer days of Fish Co. So while Piercy was fielding questions as to whether ATF was a Christian band, Writz found themselves being asked whether they would deny being Christian's at all. The road into mainstream music was obviously going to be scattered with such land-mines.

To further the coverage given to the festival, a 55 minute documentary film of the event is commissioned. Made by Tony Tew, and shot on 16mm colour film, Greenbelt Live! included footage of ATF filmed at the start of their set. The band were not, however, included on the live soundtrack album that was released alongside the film.

Also present at the festival was Nick Brotherwood, who, along with Tony Hudson, held a seminar on rock music over the weekend. The seminar was based on a reader's poll, published in the August edition of Buzz, which credited ATF as the Best Group of the year (with ELO in second place), and One Rule For You as the Best Single. Had the album been released earlier, there would have been no doubt of the outcome for that category either, such was the band's popularity at this moment. Amusingly, they were also voted in 2nd place as the Best New Group (after Dire Straits), not perhaps indicating an increase in their fan-base, but simply a determination of loyal fans to vote for the band at every opportunity.

After a month of slow progress up the charts, Laser Love finally reached no. 62 on 8th September, and stayed there for a further two weeks.

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