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Chapter 1:
  Start Me Up

Chapter 2:
·  Get Rhythm

Chapter 3:
  Changes

Chapter 4:
  Travelling Band
Urban Gorilla
Driving Sideways
The Story of a Band
by Henry Ayrton
Henry Ayrton 1968


2) Get Rhythm

No one seemed very sure how we were going to set about finding a new Mr. Bass Man but we carried on practising dutifully in hopes that one would eventually parachute in. It wasn’t long, however, before Howard turned up for a Sunday rehearsal in a deserted lecture theatre looking exceptionally pleased with himself. He had, he declared, solved the problem of our musical vacancy but wouldn’t be drawn on details.

Sure enough, no sooner had we lurched into a bassless version of that old warhorse, “Dust My Broom”, than the door opened and in walked a big guy with a mop of blond hair and clutching a bass guitar. This was Jeff Dade, who was to become a permanent member of the band. He’d apparently been walking down Church Street a day or two earlier accompanied by his constant companion, his girlfriend Celia, when a small man with a large moustache came bouncing Tigger-like across the road. Much to his astonishment, the man’s opening conversational gambit was to accuse him of being a musician. This piece of dazzling intuition may partly be explained by Jeff’s attire, which was a sort of North Lancashire variation on the Carnaby Street look – powder grey jacket, frothy lemon shirt, dinky little hat, that sort of thing. But even given that most Lancastrians in those days affected a rather drabber mode of dress, this was still something of a shot in the dark. However, it turned out to be an accurate one and when Jeff guardedly conceded that he was indeed a musician when not working in the Town Hall or walking innocently along with his girlfriend, his interrogator demanded to know what instrument he played. His admission that it was the bass guitar was met with a cry of triumph and he was instructed to present himself at Bowland College Lecture Theatre that Sunday afternoon with a view to joining what was undoubtedly going to be the biggest thing to come out of Lancaster since Buck Ruxton, the celebrated medical murderer.