Driving Sideways
The Story of a Band
by Henry Ayrton
The Story of a Band
by Henry Ayrton
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.
Jeff feared he may have been the victim of a practical joker or some deranged lunatic but, since he had nothing better to do that Sunday, he turned up at the rehearsal. And we were all very glad that he had because, although he wasn’t completely au fait with the sort of material we were working our way through, he was a seasoned musician with his own equipment and had until very recently been playing with a local band that went under the cod-Dickensian name of Obediah Heap (to be fair to them, they predated those memorable metal merchants Uriah Heep by a good three years). But poor old Obediah was now no more and his demise was our good fortune.
Jeff came equipped with certain built-in advantages, not all of them immediately apparent, although the simple fact that he played bass and had his own equipment was good enough for us. We soon learned, though, that his knowledge of the local scene meant he had good contacts, which included the manager of a Morecambe music shop who seemed only too willing to let him have various items on appro with which we could improve our sound.
He also had more technical knowledge than the rest of us, which meant that malfunctioning equipment wasn’t necessarily something you merely shrugged your shoulders over but could actually get fixed. And he had other contacts, including promoters and agents and so forth.
And he had an entourage which not only consisted of Celia (who quickly demonstrated a fierce loyalty towards Jeff’s new band) but also Roy Cheetham, a taciturn, bearded, pipe-smoking telephone engineer also possessed of extensive electrical knowledge and who in addition had that most sought-after possession, a grubby and battered yellow Commer van which was fated to become our home on wheels for the next two or three years.
Roy had been the roadie for Jeff’s previous band and had the perfect temperament for such a role in life: he was patient, obliging, longsuffering, seemingly uninterested in girls and virtually teetotal.
All, in all, it was an inspired moment that Howard had had that day in Church Street and he was insufferably smug about it for weeks afterwards.
Jeff came equipped with certain built-in advantages, not all of them immediately apparent, although the simple fact that he played bass and had his own equipment was good enough for us. We soon learned, though, that his knowledge of the local scene meant he had good contacts, which included the manager of a Morecambe music shop who seemed only too willing to let him have various items on appro with which we could improve our sound.
He also had more technical knowledge than the rest of us, which meant that malfunctioning equipment wasn’t necessarily something you merely shrugged your shoulders over but could actually get fixed. And he had other contacts, including promoters and agents and so forth.
And he had an entourage which not only consisted of Celia (who quickly demonstrated a fierce loyalty towards Jeff’s new band) but also Roy Cheetham, a taciturn, bearded, pipe-smoking telephone engineer also possessed of extensive electrical knowledge and who in addition had that most sought-after possession, a grubby and battered yellow Commer van which was fated to become our home on wheels for the next two or three years.
Roy had been the roadie for Jeff’s previous band and had the perfect temperament for such a role in life: he was patient, obliging, longsuffering, seemingly uninterested in girls and virtually teetotal.
All, in all, it was an inspired moment that Howard had had that day in Church Street and he was insufferably smug about it for weeks afterwards.
It soon became apparent, however, that all was still not well in the engine room because no sooner had Jeff committed himself to the band than Mick let it be known he wanted out. I was rather puzzled about it at the time and assumed there were some kind of conflicting loyalties at work.
It later came out that he and Howard were not enjoying the most cordial of relations, though what it was they’d fallen out over was never clear to me. Howard seemingly took the cavalier view that if he could hire ’em he could also fire ’em and Mick got his marching orders in a decision that was certainly not in the finest traditions of the democratic process. All I know is that one day he turned up to collect his drums in the company of a tough-looking friend called Will who fortunately was known to some of the others and so any unpleasantness was kept below the surface. Still, to lose an old group member just after you’d found a new one wasn’t a very good omen and filled us with gloom.
Jeff, however, regarded it as merely a temporary setback and in no time at all announced that he’d tracked down a drummer for us called Terry Beglan. Terry was someone Jeff had been to school with but who had since gone his own way and was currently working as a window cleaner in Lancaster. But he had his own drum kit and was at a musical loose end, so was only too willing to have a tryout with the band. He turned out to be a good, strong rock drummer who was not averse to a little flashy, jazz-tinged cymbal and hi-hat work from time to time to spice it up and who also conformed to an unwritten rule about band membership: he was a great fan of The Goon Show.
Some while later, I was told a story that Terry had once been earmarked for a tryout with the famous sound engineer and record producer Joe Meek but that Meek had committed suicide just a week or two before the date of his audition. Since, however, I was also told Terry didn’t like to talk about it, I wasn’t able to find out if there was any truth in the story. But in more recent years after I’d re-established contact with him, Terry felt able to tell me the story himself.
In the spring of 1966 a few months before his 18th birthday, Terry had moved south to try to seek his fortune as a drummer on the vibrant London music scene. He’d rubbed shoulders with all kinds of people from Steve Winwood to The Merseybeats, many of them to be found at musicians’ haunts such as The Giaconda in Denmark Street – nowadays a classy restaurant but at that time little more than a humble café known as The Gio.
It later came out that he and Howard were not enjoying the most cordial of relations, though what it was they’d fallen out over was never clear to me. Howard seemingly took the cavalier view that if he could hire ’em he could also fire ’em and Mick got his marching orders in a decision that was certainly not in the finest traditions of the democratic process. All I know is that one day he turned up to collect his drums in the company of a tough-looking friend called Will who fortunately was known to some of the others and so any unpleasantness was kept below the surface. Still, to lose an old group member just after you’d found a new one wasn’t a very good omen and filled us with gloom.
Jeff, however, regarded it as merely a temporary setback and in no time at all announced that he’d tracked down a drummer for us called Terry Beglan. Terry was someone Jeff had been to school with but who had since gone his own way and was currently working as a window cleaner in Lancaster. But he had his own drum kit and was at a musical loose end, so was only too willing to have a tryout with the band. He turned out to be a good, strong rock drummer who was not averse to a little flashy, jazz-tinged cymbal and hi-hat work from time to time to spice it up and who also conformed to an unwritten rule about band membership: he was a great fan of The Goon Show.
Some while later, I was told a story that Terry had once been earmarked for a tryout with the famous sound engineer and record producer Joe Meek but that Meek had committed suicide just a week or two before the date of his audition. Since, however, I was also told Terry didn’t like to talk about it, I wasn’t able to find out if there was any truth in the story. But in more recent years after I’d re-established contact with him, Terry felt able to tell me the story himself.
In the spring of 1966 a few months before his 18th birthday, Terry had moved south to try to seek his fortune as a drummer on the vibrant London music scene. He’d rubbed shoulders with all kinds of people from Steve Winwood to The Merseybeats, many of them to be found at musicians’ haunts such as The Giaconda in Denmark Street – nowadays a classy restaurant but at that time little more than a humble café known as The Gio.
One of the many contacts he made there was a guitarist called Barry Pender who did session work for Joe Meek at his home studio in Holloway Road, Islington, from where hit records such as “Johnny Remember Me” by John Leyton, “Don’t You Think It’s Time” by Mike Berry and, of course, “Telstar” by The Tornados had emerged.
After Barry had made the necessary introductions, Terry became a member of Meek’s squad alongside him. Their work mainly consisted of trying to lick the half-formed ideas of various hopefuls into some kind of shape but it was work that always had the potential of leading somewhere more glamorous. Indeed, little did Terry know that another Joe Meek session drummer a few rungs up the ladder from him was a certain Mitch Mitchell. By coincidence, however, Terry was acquainted with a guitarist called Noel Redding. One day in the autumn of 1966, Noel told him that he was going for an audition to play bass for a black American guitarist who’d just arrived from the States and was looking to form a trio. Terry pointed out that Noel was a rhythm guitarist rather than a bass player but Noel reckoned he could bluff his way through the audition. As indeed he did. Terry subsequently met Noel, Mitch and the American guitarist for a meal at the Gio, little realising at the time that he was consorting with what from now on would be The Jimi Hendrix Experience. So near, yet so far.
But, three or four months after that, things suddenly began to look up on the Joe Meek front. Joe had decided that Barry Pender had talent worth cultivating and encouraged him to form a group to be known as Barry Pender & The Force. Terry was to be their drummer. They rehearsed hard and some preparatory work was done in the studio. Terry thought that nothing actually got completed but apparently that wasn’t the case. One track, entitled “Be Yourself”, did in fact get finished and, according to The Joe Meek Society, is still in existence. But all that Terry knew at the time was that, early in the New Year, things were only just starting to come together for Barry Pender & The Force.
Then, a bare fortnight later, he was walking down a street past a newsvendor when he spotted a familiar face staring out at him from the front page. The date was 3rd February, 1967 and the photograph was that of Joe Meek who had shot his landlady before turning the gun on himself.
After Barry had made the necessary introductions, Terry became a member of Meek’s squad alongside him. Their work mainly consisted of trying to lick the half-formed ideas of various hopefuls into some kind of shape but it was work that always had the potential of leading somewhere more glamorous. Indeed, little did Terry know that another Joe Meek session drummer a few rungs up the ladder from him was a certain Mitch Mitchell. By coincidence, however, Terry was acquainted with a guitarist called Noel Redding. One day in the autumn of 1966, Noel told him that he was going for an audition to play bass for a black American guitarist who’d just arrived from the States and was looking to form a trio. Terry pointed out that Noel was a rhythm guitarist rather than a bass player but Noel reckoned he could bluff his way through the audition. As indeed he did. Terry subsequently met Noel, Mitch and the American guitarist for a meal at the Gio, little realising at the time that he was consorting with what from now on would be The Jimi Hendrix Experience. So near, yet so far.
But, three or four months after that, things suddenly began to look up on the Joe Meek front. Joe had decided that Barry Pender had talent worth cultivating and encouraged him to form a group to be known as Barry Pender & The Force. Terry was to be their drummer. They rehearsed hard and some preparatory work was done in the studio. Terry thought that nothing actually got completed but apparently that wasn’t the case. One track, entitled “Be Yourself”, did in fact get finished and, according to The Joe Meek Society, is still in existence. But all that Terry knew at the time was that, early in the New Year, things were only just starting to come together for Barry Pender & The Force.
Then, a bare fortnight later, he was walking down a street past a newsvendor when he spotted a familiar face staring out at him from the front page. The date was 3rd February, 1967 and the photograph was that of Joe Meek who had shot his landlady before turning the gun on himself.
Having had the promise of an exciting future dangled in front of him only for it almost immediately to be whipped away again under such horrific circumstances, it’s no wonder that Terry didn’t care to talk about it for many years. He stayed around in London for a little while longer, trying to find other ways of achieving his ambitions, but finally gave up and moved back North. Joining a bunch of largely untested amateurs must have seemed a great comedown for someone who’d come so close to success, but he never let it show and was perhaps only too glad to be able to play again without feeling the pressure of undue expectations.
At any event, we now had in place what turned out to be the first stable lineup of The Stark Electric Blues Band. We were very pleased that it was a town-and-gown sort of affair because we considered that having all-student personnel might have seemed a little too effete. And, as well as giving us more street cred, our town members also provided us with an entrée to the gig scene beyond college events. In fact, as we quickly turned into more of a fighting unit, we started to venture farther afield, first of all to neighbouring colleges and then the occasional gig in a pub or club.
We also formed our own club by starting up a Wednesday night residency in the back room of The Nag’s Head in Church Street. So far as I know, the landlord didn’t charge us for the use of the room and even let us take admittance money at the door. All he required in return for his favour was that more people than usual came in to buy drinks on what was usually a quiet night. Well, it certainly wouldn’t be a quiet night with us in action but the drawback to this otherwise generous offer was the fact that the beer was so foul it was difficult to get it down some nights. It was Tetley’s, a brew I’d been weaned on, but it tasted nothing like the thirst-quenching nectar I knew of old, being brewed in Warrington rather than Leeds and seemingly having horrible things done to it before it got dispensed from the bar. Still, all in all, it was a very good residency to have since, even if business was slack, we were still subjected to the discipline of what amounted to a regular, extensive rehearsal. To make it seem more like a proper club, we used to invite fellow musicians to come and do guest turns and Jay and I also started to do our own in-house acoustic spot – an opportunity both for me to try out my folk-blues repertoire in a non-folk club environment and for Jay to switch from alto sax to clarinet.
At any event, we now had in place what turned out to be the first stable lineup of The Stark Electric Blues Band. We were very pleased that it was a town-and-gown sort of affair because we considered that having all-student personnel might have seemed a little too effete. And, as well as giving us more street cred, our town members also provided us with an entrée to the gig scene beyond college events. In fact, as we quickly turned into more of a fighting unit, we started to venture farther afield, first of all to neighbouring colleges and then the occasional gig in a pub or club.
We also formed our own club by starting up a Wednesday night residency in the back room of The Nag’s Head in Church Street. So far as I know, the landlord didn’t charge us for the use of the room and even let us take admittance money at the door. All he required in return for his favour was that more people than usual came in to buy drinks on what was usually a quiet night. Well, it certainly wouldn’t be a quiet night with us in action but the drawback to this otherwise generous offer was the fact that the beer was so foul it was difficult to get it down some nights. It was Tetley’s, a brew I’d been weaned on, but it tasted nothing like the thirst-quenching nectar I knew of old, being brewed in Warrington rather than Leeds and seemingly having horrible things done to it before it got dispensed from the bar. Still, all in all, it was a very good residency to have since, even if business was slack, we were still subjected to the discipline of what amounted to a regular, extensive rehearsal. To make it seem more like a proper club, we used to invite fellow musicians to come and do guest turns and Jay and I also started to do our own in-house acoustic spot – an opportunity both for me to try out my folk-blues repertoire in a non-folk club environment and for Jay to switch from alto sax to clarinet.
Individual nights at The Nag’s Head blur into each other although I remember one fractious occasion when the landlord set up a television set so his regulars could watch a European football match featuring Manchester United and this (for the time) unusual occurrence caused a good deal of friction between him and us, though it was mercifully soon smoothed over.
One of our best nights started very badly. It was a lovely summer’s evening and not many people wanted to spend it in the back room of a grimy pub. We were down to a small knot of loyal diehards for an audience when suddenly a big crowd of Swedish students turned up. They jibbed at paying an entrance fee and we refused to change our club rule so they retired to the bar to drink in sullen silence. For our part, we struck up as usual for the benefit of our loyal rump, whereupon a great crowd of Swedes suddenly started pouring through the door, seemingly now quite happy to stump up the entrance fee. Not only were the takings good that week, but our newfound fans turned out to be an excellent and enthusiastic audience. For some time afterwards, we lived in hopes they might make a special trip over to England just to see us again but, alas, no.
But, good night or bad, most of our takings were blown at the Indian restaurant across the road once the gig was over. It was called The Amanath but, inevitably, it was known to us as The Anathema. The manager, an affable cove called David, clearly combined business with charity because he used to usher us into the upstairs room after the main restaurant beneath had shut and we would proceed to unwind boisterously until invariably eating ourselves into a stupor. Unfortunately, I was absent on one occasion when the festivities were interrupted by an almighty crash coming from the street. Everyone rushed to the window to see a man sitting on the pavement outside the pub, surrounded by shards of glass and shaking his head in a confused fashion. It turned out there had been a free and frank exchange of views during a lock-in – and since the door was locked he’d been evicted from the premises by his debating partner using the most direct route, the bar window.
If the restaurant was still officially open when we arrived, a table was set aside for us at the back, on a raised area up two or three steps. One very quiet night when we were the only customers left, the door in the far corner opened and three or four exotically dressed characters shuffled in, clearly a little uncertain of their reception.
One of our best nights started very badly. It was a lovely summer’s evening and not many people wanted to spend it in the back room of a grimy pub. We were down to a small knot of loyal diehards for an audience when suddenly a big crowd of Swedish students turned up. They jibbed at paying an entrance fee and we refused to change our club rule so they retired to the bar to drink in sullen silence. For our part, we struck up as usual for the benefit of our loyal rump, whereupon a great crowd of Swedes suddenly started pouring through the door, seemingly now quite happy to stump up the entrance fee. Not only were the takings good that week, but our newfound fans turned out to be an excellent and enthusiastic audience. For some time afterwards, we lived in hopes they might make a special trip over to England just to see us again but, alas, no.
But, good night or bad, most of our takings were blown at the Indian restaurant across the road once the gig was over. It was called The Amanath but, inevitably, it was known to us as The Anathema. The manager, an affable cove called David, clearly combined business with charity because he used to usher us into the upstairs room after the main restaurant beneath had shut and we would proceed to unwind boisterously until invariably eating ourselves into a stupor. Unfortunately, I was absent on one occasion when the festivities were interrupted by an almighty crash coming from the street. Everyone rushed to the window to see a man sitting on the pavement outside the pub, surrounded by shards of glass and shaking his head in a confused fashion. It turned out there had been a free and frank exchange of views during a lock-in – and since the door was locked he’d been evicted from the premises by his debating partner using the most direct route, the bar window.
If the restaurant was still officially open when we arrived, a table was set aside for us at the back, on a raised area up two or three steps. One very quiet night when we were the only customers left, the door in the far corner opened and three or four exotically dressed characters shuffled in, clearly a little uncertain of their reception.
Then one of them spotted us in our place of honour, pointed at us and said to his companions in a pronounced Southern States accent, “Hey man, look – hair!”
We were unused to being addressed in this fashion (unless it was accompanied by oaths or sneers, of course) so we simply stared back at them.
Our interrogators demanded to know who we were and what we were about but since they seemed very friendly and genuinely curious we told them were a blues band unwinding after our usual mid-week residency. At this, our newfound friends got very excited and one of them said, “I knew it! Us too, man, we’re in a band and we’ve been gigging tonight as well.”
It turned out that their gig had been a cut above ours since they’d been headlining on the Morecambe Central Pier. They were, in fact, members of John Fred & His Playboy Band, who’d recently had a US no. 1 hit with a Beatles spoof called “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)”. The record had also lodged in the British Top 5 for the whole of February, 1968 and so a UK tour had hastily been arranged to capitalise on its success.
“But don’t judge us by that pop shit, man,” one of them confided in us. “Really, we’re an R&B band just like you.”
They were from Baton Rouge in Louisiana, a fact that interested us a great deal since this was serious blues territory. But we recognised few of the names of the blues musicians they casually lobbed at us. And they, for their part, we were astonished to discover, didn’t know anything about Robert Johnson who, thanks to the certification of Eric Clapton, was regarded in the UK as the ultimate romantic blues hero.
“But we’ll certainly check him out when we get back home,” one of them said, “because we like all that kind of nigra music. Yes,” he said, warming to his theme, “we’re not like a lot of the folks back home who won’t have anything to do with nigras. Not us, man. Nigras are OK by us. ’Long as they don’t get too uppity, of course.”
We were unused to being addressed in this fashion (unless it was accompanied by oaths or sneers, of course) so we simply stared back at them.
Our interrogators demanded to know who we were and what we were about but since they seemed very friendly and genuinely curious we told them were a blues band unwinding after our usual mid-week residency. At this, our newfound friends got very excited and one of them said, “I knew it! Us too, man, we’re in a band and we’ve been gigging tonight as well.”
It turned out that their gig had been a cut above ours since they’d been headlining on the Morecambe Central Pier. They were, in fact, members of John Fred & His Playboy Band, who’d recently had a US no. 1 hit with a Beatles spoof called “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)”. The record had also lodged in the British Top 5 for the whole of February, 1968 and so a UK tour had hastily been arranged to capitalise on its success.
“But don’t judge us by that pop shit, man,” one of them confided in us. “Really, we’re an R&B band just like you.”
They were from Baton Rouge in Louisiana, a fact that interested us a great deal since this was serious blues territory. But we recognised few of the names of the blues musicians they casually lobbed at us. And they, for their part, we were astonished to discover, didn’t know anything about Robert Johnson who, thanks to the certification of Eric Clapton, was regarded in the UK as the ultimate romantic blues hero.
“But we’ll certainly check him out when we get back home,” one of them said, “because we like all that kind of nigra music. Yes,” he said, warming to his theme, “we’re not like a lot of the folks back home who won’t have anything to do with nigras. Not us, man. Nigras are OK by us. ’Long as they don’t get too uppity, of course.”
There followed an uncomfortable silence as a cultural chasm suddenly opened up beneath our feet.
But we got on well with them for all that and, since they had a day or two off, we spent quite a bit of time with two of them, the guitarist Jimmy O’Rourke and one of the trumpet players, Charlie Spinosa (who was a particularly nice guy). They must have been staying in Morecambe, I guess, because I have a memory of those two being part of quite a collection of students and similar types the following night in a seafront bar. As we emerged, a window shot up in an adjoining apartment building, a girl’s head popped out and she chastised one of our hangers-on for not visiting her. But she’d forgive him if he came up right that instant. Her errant boyfriend needed no further encouragement and, with a hasty farewell, disappeared into a doorway leading to the flat.
“Did you see that, man?” Jimmy said to Charlie. “This place is sassier than it looks.”
We never saw them again but we did get a postcard from Baton Rouge in due course, wishing us good luck.
One other Nag’s Head night that sticks in my mind is an occasion when I struck a particular note on my slide guitar that set off such a resonance in my skull that my ears rang for two or three days afterwards. This is because, when playing in this style, I’d rest my guitar on my lap and the cramped conditions meant that my head wound up at exactly the same height as my mighty AC30.
Maybe it was this event that eventually made Jeff take pity on me – although it was more likely the fact that I had to keep retuning my guitar if we played the next number in a different key. He kept asking me questions about how high the action of a slide guitar should be (i.e. how high the strings should be above the fretboard) and since I didn’t actually play the guitar in a conventional way, did I really need frets – violinists don’t, after all. I answered all Jeff’s questions as best I could without quite seeing the point of them until one day he turned up with an old copy of a magazine called “Practical Wireless”. It contained an article about constructing a pedal steel guitar, an instrument used in country music that, like the lap steel used in traditional blues, was a descendant of the Hawaiian slack string guitar.
But we got on well with them for all that and, since they had a day or two off, we spent quite a bit of time with two of them, the guitarist Jimmy O’Rourke and one of the trumpet players, Charlie Spinosa (who was a particularly nice guy). They must have been staying in Morecambe, I guess, because I have a memory of those two being part of quite a collection of students and similar types the following night in a seafront bar. As we emerged, a window shot up in an adjoining apartment building, a girl’s head popped out and she chastised one of our hangers-on for not visiting her. But she’d forgive him if he came up right that instant. Her errant boyfriend needed no further encouragement and, with a hasty farewell, disappeared into a doorway leading to the flat.
“Did you see that, man?” Jimmy said to Charlie. “This place is sassier than it looks.”
We never saw them again but we did get a postcard from Baton Rouge in due course, wishing us good luck.
One other Nag’s Head night that sticks in my mind is an occasion when I struck a particular note on my slide guitar that set off such a resonance in my skull that my ears rang for two or three days afterwards. This is because, when playing in this style, I’d rest my guitar on my lap and the cramped conditions meant that my head wound up at exactly the same height as my mighty AC30.
Maybe it was this event that eventually made Jeff take pity on me – although it was more likely the fact that I had to keep retuning my guitar if we played the next number in a different key. He kept asking me questions about how high the action of a slide guitar should be (i.e. how high the strings should be above the fretboard) and since I didn’t actually play the guitar in a conventional way, did I really need frets – violinists don’t, after all. I answered all Jeff’s questions as best I could without quite seeing the point of them until one day he turned up with an old copy of a magazine called “Practical Wireless”. It contained an article about constructing a pedal steel guitar, an instrument used in country music that, like the lap steel used in traditional blues, was a descendant of the Hawaiian slack string guitar.
Setting aside what relevance this had to radios, Jeff asked me if something like that would be of any use to me. Not really, I said: I didn’t need as many strings as that style of playing required, let alone pedals to change gear with. Yes, said Jeff, but what if you had two sets of six strings side by side, then you could have them fixed permanently in the two main keys we used in our repertoire (E & G) and wouldn’t have to keep tuning up. Well, I supposed that would work, but I still thought it was a fanciful pipe dream, even when Jeff took away the guitar we’d inherited along with the equipment on the understanding that he could conduct whatever hideous experiments he liked on it.
But then a couple of weeks later he turned up with what looked like a cross between a knitting machine and a coffee table on long legs. His father, a dance band musician in his youth and an inveterate tinkerer with any kind of DIY equipment, had devised and built the thing using the magazine article as a rough guide and Jeff had wired it up, cannibalising the pick-ups off both my horrible old battered black guitar and a redundant one of his own. The two fretboards were made of an opaque kind of plastic with the frets simply marked out in indelible ink at the correct intervals and there was a switch at one end that you could flick over to select one set of strings or the other. It didn’t look pretty but it was highly effective and, after I’d bought myself a proper bullet-nosed, Hawaiian-style slide and practised assiduously, I began to make real progress on the instrument and so enhanced the sound of the band.
It became, I suppose, one of our distinctive features and it wasn’t until Juicy Lucy emerged a year later that any other band we were aware of had a comparable sound – though clearly they hadn’t sprung from nowhere and their forbears, an American outfit called The Misunderstood (favourites of John Peel, unknown to us), were actually already in existence.
The emergence of a distinctive group sound made us increasingly ambitious and Jeff proceeded to fix us up with an agent in Blackpool called Mick Wright. He warned us, though, that in order to qualify for inclusion in his books we must be able to provide publicity material on demand. Being students, we instantly cried poverty, a tactic that usually worked surprisingly well – but Jeff would have none of it, insisting that we have some posters printed at the very least.
But then a couple of weeks later he turned up with what looked like a cross between a knitting machine and a coffee table on long legs. His father, a dance band musician in his youth and an inveterate tinkerer with any kind of DIY equipment, had devised and built the thing using the magazine article as a rough guide and Jeff had wired it up, cannibalising the pick-ups off both my horrible old battered black guitar and a redundant one of his own. The two fretboards were made of an opaque kind of plastic with the frets simply marked out in indelible ink at the correct intervals and there was a switch at one end that you could flick over to select one set of strings or the other. It didn’t look pretty but it was highly effective and, after I’d bought myself a proper bullet-nosed, Hawaiian-style slide and practised assiduously, I began to make real progress on the instrument and so enhanced the sound of the band.
It became, I suppose, one of our distinctive features and it wasn’t until Juicy Lucy emerged a year later that any other band we were aware of had a comparable sound – though clearly they hadn’t sprung from nowhere and their forbears, an American outfit called The Misunderstood (favourites of John Peel, unknown to us), were actually already in existence.
The emergence of a distinctive group sound made us increasingly ambitious and Jeff proceeded to fix us up with an agent in Blackpool called Mick Wright. He warned us, though, that in order to qualify for inclusion in his books we must be able to provide publicity material on demand. Being students, we instantly cried poverty, a tactic that usually worked surprisingly well – but Jeff would have none of it, insisting that we have some posters printed at the very least.
So we had a black and white photograph taken of us standing next to an old wall down in the Stonewell area of town. We then commissioned a local artist, Maggie Howarth, to make up the posters for us.
Maggie would go on to make an enviable reputation as the creator of
mosaics with pebbles and cobblestones but in the late 1960s her forte was silkscreen printing. She increased the contrast on our photograph dramatically, eliminating nearly all the grey areas, and surrounded it with psychedelic swirls in tasteful shades of orange and turquoise (this was 1968, remember).
Unfortunately, the psychedelic effect didn’t come out as intended and Maggie was so disgusted she wanted to destroy the lot but was persuaded instead to let us have the posters at cost, as long as we didn’t say who’d been responsible for them.
We thought we had a fine advert for the band, even if the exaggerated contrast was kinder on some band members than others. Dave’s cheery grin in conjunction with his facial hair, for instance, left him looking a little like Mickey Mouse on speed and the paisley shirt I’d ill-advisedly bought during a visit to Belfast the previous summer was thrown into startling relief – as was my hair, which I was surreptitiously growing longer but which had only just reached the embarrassing stage of sticking out over my ears. And my would-be cool posture leaning against the wall made me look as if I’d shrunk a foot or so. As for Jeff, the coat slung carelessly over his shoulder now resembled a sinister, cowled figure that might have stepped out of the pages of an M.R. James ghost story.
Still, little faults apart, it was very acceptable publicity material without a doubt and it made us feel even more of a proper band, especially once the work started increasing, thanks to our newly-appointed agent.
Maggie would go on to make an enviable reputation as the creator of
mosaics with pebbles and cobblestones but in the late 1960s her forte was silkscreen printing. She increased the contrast on our photograph dramatically, eliminating nearly all the grey areas, and surrounded it with psychedelic swirls in tasteful shades of orange and turquoise (this was 1968, remember).
Unfortunately, the psychedelic effect didn’t come out as intended and Maggie was so disgusted she wanted to destroy the lot but was persuaded instead to let us have the posters at cost, as long as we didn’t say who’d been responsible for them.
We thought we had a fine advert for the band, even if the exaggerated contrast was kinder on some band members than others. Dave’s cheery grin in conjunction with his facial hair, for instance, left him looking a little like Mickey Mouse on speed and the paisley shirt I’d ill-advisedly bought during a visit to Belfast the previous summer was thrown into startling relief – as was my hair, which I was surreptitiously growing longer but which had only just reached the embarrassing stage of sticking out over my ears. And my would-be cool posture leaning against the wall made me look as if I’d shrunk a foot or so. As for Jeff, the coat slung carelessly over his shoulder now resembled a sinister, cowled figure that might have stepped out of the pages of an M.R. James ghost story.
Still, little faults apart, it was very acceptable publicity material without a doubt and it made us feel even more of a proper band, especially once the work started increasing, thanks to our newly-appointed agent.
( ... Continue to Chapter 3 ... )