From Neil Merryweather.com: "In a nutshell... Neil took the members from Mama Lion into a studio to demo some songs. They recorded half a dozen songs and a few days later, Mama Lion wound up in New York City to play Central Park with Billy Preston. The engineer in L.A. made an acetate of Neil's songs and sent it to Neil in care of Famous Music. The band went to a meet n greet at Famous Music and Neil played the acetate at the party. The head of A&R loved it and bought the music from Artie Ripp.
Neil called the project "Heavy Cruiser." When Mama Lion got back to L.A., Neil took the band back into the studio and they recorded a few more tracks to complete the "Heavy Cruiser" record. Artie Ripp stopped the band from putting their names on the record because he didn't want it to interfere with his main act Mama Lion.
The same thing happened when Neil did more of his songs with the band and produced a second Heavy Cruiser record called "Lucky Dog" - band members names were left off the cover.
This group from Amsterdam evolved from the band Penny Wise. When they started out in 1969, the lineup was Donald Van Os (guitar/backing vocals, ex-Penny Wise), Martin Van Os (drummer, ex-Penny Wise), Johan Slager (guitar, ex-Little Johnny & Flaming Stars), Peter Van Aston (vocals), Robert Verway (bass, Brainbox).
Lineup in 1970 - Donald Van Os, Martin Van Os, Egon Verhoeven (bass, ex-California License), Michael Van Dijik (ex-Ekseption, went to Brainbox and stayed there from '71 to '74).
In 1974 the lineup changed to: Donald Van Os, Martin Van Os, Michael Van Dijik, and Jocques Zwart (ex-Think Tank). In that year, Amsterdam fell apart. Peter Van Aston became a producer and composer, and released a few albums under the name Peter Bewly.
The band never released a full length album, but has 9 7" singles to it's credit. A self titled compilation was released after the band had broken up in 1975 on Pink Elephant.
From Canada, Ex-Mandala members Dominic Troiano, Roy Kenner, and Pennti "Whitey" Glan, left Mandala in 1969 and the next year moved to Arizona, where they recruited Prakash John and began playing the circuit with heavy blues based riffs and a bit less sophisticated output looking for something different.
They caught the attention of Reb Foster, an L.A. disc jocky while he was in Arizona and ran a management company through Cuordoroy Records, an affiliate of ABD/Dunhill Records. They signed with Dunhill in 1970 (Bush was the first band to sign with Cuordoroy) and soon found themselves opening for such acts as Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf. As they prepared for the release of their first album, the band found themselves in the middle of a law suit between Cuordoroy and Dunhill which did absolutely no good for the band, who ended up only releasing their eponymous debut. They hobbled along for another year, but called it quits, broke.
Troiano and Kenner weren't out of work for long, once The James Gang came calling (who was seeking replacement for Joe Walsh's position) and Troiano would later join the Guess Who, and release several solo albums, as well as form his Black Market project before becoming immersed in production and behind the scenes work. Kenner would often appear on Troiano's works, as with John, who, along with Glan, went on to record with Alice Cooper.
The band re-released the album in 1995, at the same time that another "Bush" came out of Britan with the same name. To avoid any legal trappings, the band released the album as "Bush X" for the Canadian release.
Two years later, Troiano and Gavin Rossdale, leader of the British band held a press conference in Toronto to announce they'd been given the Bush name on recordings.
