By , it looked as if opportunity would fail to knock for The Riot Squad. The band had been through the mill. Evans even got the band to develop the moniker into a partial concept by having a flashing blue lamp on stage when the group performed live. At this point the band fractured, with Bonney and Mitchell going on to more lucrative pastures.

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Butch himself was performing in the foyer when The Beatles made their second appearance in October He said he knew Joe Meek and he thought he could get us a contract. We jumped at the chance! On Friday, February 3, , he killed his landlady, Violet Shenton with a shotgun and then turned the barrel on himself. He wanted to talk about what we were going to do in the future. Next thing we were driving to a gig in Woolwich and there were newspaper placards saying he was dead!
Decades on from when the Riot Squad was an active group, people can be forgiven for not being familiar with them. In point of fact, the band went through so many lineup changes that even in anyone outside their immediate circle of friends might've been hard put to give a definitive description of the group. Part of their problem, in terms of posterity, was their name -- at least three other outfits have used the same name since the early '60s, and this sextet wasn't even the first that honor fell to a Liverpool-based outfit from a couple of years earlier. And it could also claim credit during its later phases for giving no less a figure than David Bowie a lead vocalist gig -- on and off -- for close to eight months in , even if they never made any official recordings with him. Their story began in when producer Larry Page decided to put together a group whose sound would be a more pop-focused brand of British Invasion-style rock from that of his one big success of the time, the Kinks. They were all young, from 17 to 22, but had surprisingly extensive experience as session musicians, and each was proficient on more than one instrument, which allowed for the potential for Page to use them in a multitude of modes and styles, and musical capacities. Page was going to call them simply "Riot," but Evans proposed and he accepted the alternative of Riot Squad. But by then the group was starting to build a reputation as a live act and their shows were pulling serious crowds. Things started to go wrong just as they were looking up -- the band's hopes were hinged on a tour with the Kinks and the Yardbirds , but when the Kinks had to pull out, owing to an injury to Ray Davies , everything else fell apart, as the Yardbirds ' commitment became shaky as well. What had seemed a golden opportunity now became a non-starter.
Riot Squad were an English second-wave punk rock band from Mansfield , England, initially active between and Riot Squad formed in , with an initial line-up of Duncan "Dunk" Mason vocals , Nigel "Nello" Nelson guitar , and Paul "Pommi" Palmer drums , Nelson the only one of the three with any musical experience. The band began playing further afield and with money borrowed from Dunk's father recorded their first demo, Religion Doesn't Mean a Thing in a basement studio in Mansfield. The Rondelet label folded, prompting Dunk to turn Rot into a proper label, releasing the next three Riot Squad singles, although he stepped down as singer, being replaced briefly by Rick Williams and then Butler's brother Lee. Dunk compiled the Rot singles and a few unreleased tracks on the No Potential Threat album, which reached number 13 on the indie chart. Dunk continued to run Rot Records until the label's distributor, Red Rhino went bankrupt.