Whilst at the wonderfully named second Sky River Rock Festival in August 1969 Terry had met and got to know David Lindley a talented multi instrumentalist, David had an established reputation for roots country music blended with a wide variety of other musical genres. His skills were backed up by an impressive collection of guitars and other stringed instruments. Previously David had been the leading light and founder of influential group Kaleidoscope who received this accolade from Jimmy Page "They're my favorite band of all time - my ideal band." when as a member of the Yardbirds he saw them playing in San Francisco. David was also connected to Terry via mutual friend/manager Chesley Milliken (sadly no longer with us).

When Terry was back in England David wrote to him and suggested getting together to play. Another door opening! Terry got straight back to him and David wasted no time in collecting his array of guitars, his wife and young daughter before flying over to England. Terry quipping that the freight charges for David’s instrument collection would sink the project before it got started. Oh and Lee came too, Lee Miles bass player to the Ikettes, amongst others.
Terry, Lee and David spread themselves around in the small, quintessentially, English villages ringing Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

David stayed in Brampton, having welded some green wellies to his feet which legend has it remained in place for the whole of his stay in England. Becoming fond of english cider he found himself awake many a night and as any self respecting american away from home would, passed the time polishing his Samurai sword.
Lee holed up in an apartment in a sprawling mansion called the Holme in GodManchester (there really is such a place) where apart from practising the bands tunes he amused himself by playing his bass along to the local church bells. 
Terry very much on home territory was living in an unbelievably named cottage, House of Dreams in Holywell. You couldn't make all that up, could you ?  The river Ouse (pronounced ooze) wandered lazily along the edge of the village and was to be in part the inspiration for his next album.
In between sampling the delights of the English countryside the band now including drummer Alan White who'd joined after a brief tenure by ex Greaseband Bruce Rowland, rehearsed and began playing in public.
The first notable performance was at the Isle of Wight Festival on the 27th of August 1970 where they played to a crowd several hundred thousand strong.
This was the third IOW festival and had the largest recorded audience of any UK festival. It was beset by problems with clashes from people demanding free entry, an early attempt at securely fencing an open site , a real mixture of ‘Love Peace and Understanding’ with ‘ hey we need to make a profit and pay people’s wages’. The flavour of the event was accurately captured on a film documentary of the festival. There was even an act of parliament passed just to prevent festivals on the island (‘Isle of Wight Act’ 1970 ). I’ll have to check Hansard  ( UK parliamentary record ) and see if Terry is mentioned !
Despite the problems there was an impressive lineup to enjoy, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davies, Free, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, The Moody Blues and ELP, Terry was in good company. 

Alan White, Terry’s drummer, had been booked by John Lennon for a studio session and King Crimson drummer Michael Giles stood in. Their set was a heady mixture of blues power rock with inventive country elements slipped in by David, sometimes much to Terry's surprise. As part of the set they played a Kaleidoscope number Brother Mary which had been on the Zabriskie Point soundtrack, though it was introduced and listed at the IOW as C’mon Mary. Available on bootlegs for many years their IOW session has now been formally released on CD.
Whatever the success of their live performances Terry was still tied to his contract with Mickey Most and desperate to record. Legal negotiations continued getting nowhere as the band honed their skills.  The legal impasse was only finally sorted by the personal intervention of Ahmet Ertegun co-founder of Atlantic records who'd taken a personal interest in Terry. Top man in an internationally successful record company taking the time to sort out the legal wranglings of a  struggling english rock singer, happy days when record companies were as interested in the art as much as the product.

Let’s not overdo the angst though, Terry was making good use of his time. May 71 he got an invite to play at Mick Jagger's wedding to Bianca in St Tropez.  Terry recalls arriving at the airport and watching crates of champagne being loaded onto the plane.  He and the other passengers gazed thirstily at the crates, assuming the drink was being flown over for the main wedding event. In fact it was to keep the invited passengers lubricated for the trip by plane and coach and emblematic of how the next few days went.
Back in the real world, England, and  the first proper Glastonbury festival known as Glastonbury Fayre was being set up. Terry was invited to open the event and the band with Alan White back in the drum seat duly kicked off  what has become the main event in the UK for 3 decades. They encored their set with a superb rendition of Dean which segued into a  jam  with Terry trading vocal tricks with Linda Lewis. Terry and the band at their best.  Thankfully this song was caught on the  film ‘Glastonbury Fayre’ oddly not available on DVD but, if you're lucky occasionally shown on television.
With legal restraints removed the band began what would become a two-year odyssey to record  the album River, which wouldn't see the light of day  until 1973 when it was cautiously released by Atlantic records.
The sessions began in London in Advision studios with Terry staying over in town whilst he was recording. 
Terry had long been a fan of Brazilian music and had come to know one of it’s leading lights, Gilberto Gil who he had met when they played on the same day at the IOW festival.
Gil had fallen seriously out of favour with the Brazilian regime and had to flee, Terry through his lawyer had given  a helping hand to his attempt to gain asylum in the UK, further cementing their friendship. In the early part of their stay in England, Gil and numerous members of his family were camped out in his London flat. Terry recalls returning from studio sessions to the sound of portuguese banter and exotic cooking smells. Gilberto did in fact turn up for some of the early Advision sessions though sadly Terry doesn't recall him actually playing on any of the tracks.   But Gil’s bossa nova ( literally new beat ) style is evident particularly on the title track River. 
Gil stayed in the UK maintaining a friendship with Terry’s drummer Alan White which together with meeting the ‘first’ River producer Eddie Offord led to a long association with prog rockersYes.

The UK sessions for River flowed along, perhaps the  project needed  a firmer hand perhaps there was no way that things could have gone different, whoever was in charge. A comtemporary witness in the studio recalls much experimentation, Eddie Offord the producer is heard hopefully saying "I wonder if this is anything to do with the number we're meant to be doing " spoken to everyone and no-one. Terry musing wistfully that it would be good to get over to America, to California and live there for a while.
He thinks there may have recorded nearly 3 albums worth of material and reflected that sometimes he could come up with tunes  he couldn't find words for and sometimes he had words built into his head to which he just could not find a tune.
As the sessions drifted on people were getting restless David was being enticed over to America by Jackson Browne and Alan had an offer on the table from Yes.  Terry already had a base established in California and decided to accept the inevitable he gathered up the tapes as they were and flew to America with Lee.

After taking a little time out to regroup he ploughed on with the project grabbing David as and when he was free from working with Browne. The album finally took shape under the patient guiding hand of veteran producer Tom Dowd (Allman Brothers and Otis Redding ) and  with the addition of session men Willie Bobo and Conrad Isadore. Only two tracks remained from the extensive London sessions, Dream and Milestones.
There finally in the summer of 1973 the album was given a reluctant and low key release by Atlantic, it wasn’t the album Ahmet was hoping would justify his efforts on Terry’s behalf.
So, what of this album, over two years in the making two different producers in two different countries ?

The title track, River, with its genesis in the heart of rural England only really took shape in America furnished with a Latin groove by Willie Bobo.  The river that Terry is pictured sitting by on the cover was actually the mighty Colorado River in America not the lazy old Ouse  in Cambridgeshire England. A metaphor if ever there was one for the english country boy growing out of and way from Albion to find a home in the new Babylon that is and was west coast America.
The album didn’t exactly fly off the shelves at the time and has remained pretty much unobtainable for decades, attaining an almost mythical status. It was finally re-released on CD a few years ago sadly without any of the extra material that is lying in a vault somewhere.
Some say it's a long lost classic, a flawed but worthy near masterpiece, others a bewildering jumble of styles, country rock, Latin, jazz  and slow acoustic blues. It was clearly conceived as a whole, a  concept album if you will, the watery metaphor stringing the tracks together as the groove drifts along like a river slowing down and washing into a sea.
Certainly for most people it's not an album that rewards one with instant appeal give it a few listens to, let it sink in then maybe make a judgment on it. I’m firmly in the ‘flawed masterpiece‘ camp. For all the time and effort there still is a sense of it not quite having got to where it might have and I hope someday somebody will dig out all the unreleased material and sit down with Terry to have another go at producing a final work.