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Mike Rudd is a New Zealand born musician and composer who has been based in Australia since the late 1960s , and who is best known as the leader of respected Australian progressive rock bands Spectrum and Ariel in the 1970s.
Rudd's first major group in New Zealand was the Chants R&B. The group came to Australia and settled in Melbourne in 1966 but broke up soon afterwards. Rudd then joined The Party Machine led by also included Ross Wilson and Ross Hannaford (best known is Australia for their next group Daddy Cool).
After Party Machine split up in 1969 Rudd formed his own band, Spectrum, one of Australia's first progressive rock groups. This also marked the beginning of his long association with bassist Bill Putt. Spectrum released four LPs as several 7" singles, inlcuding the first Australian rock double album, Milesago, and their national #1 hit single "I'll Be Gone", which has remained one of the best-known songs of the period. The group also worked under the pseudonym Indelible Murtceps and recorded one LP under that name.
After Spectrum split in April 1973, Rudd and Putt formed Ariel. Along with keyboard player John Mills they joined forces with two leading Sydney musicians, guitarist Tim Gaze and drummer Nigel Macara from pioneering progressive band Tamam Shud. They released one moderately successful LP, A Strange Fantastic Dream, in December 1973, but Gaze and Macara left the band soon after it was recorded.
In early 1974 Rudd and Putt and began work on an extended concept piece, The Jellabad Mutant, and began rehearsing the music with drummer John Lee, ex-The Dingoes. Lee then brought in a friend, lead guitarist Harvey James, and this arrangement eventually coalesced into the second lineup of Ariel. They recorded a full-length demo tape of the planned LP, called The Jellabad Mutant, and presented it to their record label EMI, intending that it would be recorded as their second LP, but to their surprise it was rejected.
However, by this time the band had gained some critical attention in the United Kingdom, thanks in part to leading disc jockey John Peel, and this led EMI's parent office to invited the group to record their next album in London at the world-famous Abbey Road Studios. However the rejection of the Mutant album left the band with a major lack of material, and when they arrived in London they realised that EMI had realised that the lineup had changed. Rudd hastily wrote a number of new songs, but they were forced to fall back on his back-catalogue of songs, recording new versions os several Spectrum/Murtceps songs. The resulting album, Rock'n'Roll Scars, was mixed by famous EMI recording engineer Geoff Emerick, who had worked with The Beatles.
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