Forty three years late, the song goes on the record: Tank have released The Man Who Never Was as a single, and it takes its place among the CD bonus tracks on Cleopatra's reissue of This Means War, out on 23 October, together with its demo. In 1983 it was cut from the album and buried as the b-side of Echoes of a Distant Battle.
Drummer Mark Brabbs explained where the title came from and where it went wrong. “The title for 'The Man Who Never Was' came from a late 50's war thriller film of the same name, except Algy sings 'The man THAT never was' instead of '…WHO never was',” he said. Algy Ward's pre production lyrics followed the film, Brabbs added, but Ward rerecorded the vocal alone and changed a good deal of it, so whether the words still follow the plot is anyone's guess.
This Means War was the album that brought in guitarist Mick Tucker and gave the band two guitars for the first time. It was produced by the former Argent bassist John Verity, fresh from making the first Saxon album, in what amounted to a soundproofed tent on a north London industrial estate. “We went a bit more metal than we ever had done in the past, but it was a natural progression,” Brabbs said. Tucker put the brief more plainly: “Algy wanted it to sound like Rainbow Rising.” Cleopatra are around halfway through a reissue of seven Tank albums, with Filth Hounds of Hades and Power of the Hunter already in the shops.