Occasionally a band will achieve success and the lead singer thinks, “Who needs these guys?” and then leaves to go solo. Sometimes they’re right and the success continues unabated. And other times it abates, and it’s only a couple of years before people start asking, “Whatever happened to that guy?”

Leaving didn’t work out so well for Wayne Fontana. But it ended up working out great for guitarist Eric Stewart.

Fontana formed The Mindbenders in Manchester, England in 1963 when two of his bandmates didn’t show up for an important gig and he grabbed two of his friends (one of whom was Stewart) from out of the audience to fill in. Instant band. The name sounds like an early take on psychedelia but it actually came from a movie about political intrigue, sensory deprivation experiments, and brainwashing. Pretty heavy stuff for a pop-oriented beat group.

The band signed with the Fontana label (no relation) and scored their first UK hit about a year later with a cover of Major Lance’s “Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um.” They followed that up in early 1965 with “The Game Of Love,” a rockin’ little number from the musical mind of Clint Ballard Jr, a songwriter who had already penned a number of hits (including “You’re No Good,” which Linda Ronstadt would take to #1 in 1975).

“The Game Of Love” rolled its way to #2 in the UK, but climbed one spot higher in the US, topping the Hot 100 in April. Six months later Fontana quit the band in the middle of a concert and struck out on his own. He scored a couple of now-forgotten hits in 1966 before falling off the charts and fading into obscurity.

Meanwhile, The Mindbenders decided to carry on with guitarist Eric Stewart taking over on lead vocals. Wasting no time getting back on the horse, they released their first single, “A Groovy Kind Of Love,” in December of 1965. A few months later, it hit #2 in both the UK and the US (#1 on the Cashbox chart). Groovy, indeed.

Alas, the group failed to significantly dent the charts again on either side of the Atlantic, even after an appearance in the very popular movie To Sir, With Love in 1967. Their bassist quit in 1968 and was replaced by Graham Gouldman, a songwriter who had already written a mountain of huge hits for The Yardbirds, Herman’s Hermits, and The Hollies. Stewart and Gouldman hit it off and when The Mindbenders broke up not too much later, they stayed in touch.

To make a long story short (we’ll make the short story long another time), within a few years they co-founded 10cc and spent the 1970s on every country’s pop charts. Who knows what would have happened to Wayne or Eric had Fontana stayed with the band. They might have stayed at the top, or might have continued to drop. Either way, we wouldn’t have gotten “Dreadlock Holiday.”

So come on, baby, let’s start today… with Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders.

Let’s throw in “A Groovy Kind of Love” from the Fontana-less trio: