"One minute they were a band you'd never heard of, then the next you couldn't get into the gigs": In 1972 the then-unknown Focus appeared on UK TV. Within a year, their guitarist was voted best player on the planet

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Ground-breaking TV music program The Old Grey Whistle Test had been on air for only a year when Focus arrived at the BBC TV studios in mid-December 1972. That week’s edition was already pretty solid – film clips of Marc Bolan and John Lennon, a live set from The Crickets – but it was the relatively unknown Dutch band who stole the show. Their scintillating performance of two instrumentals – Sylvia and Hocus Pocus – had everybody talking. For presenter Bob Harris, Focus were Whistle Test’s ‘big bang’ moment. 

“They were an absolute sensation,” he remarked. “We discovered that we had an audience out there and it numbered in millions.”