15 posts from August 2007

About me

I did my first gig at The Coachmakers WMC, Coventry in about 1964 with a school mate, Steve Lougheed on guitar and me on drums ( an orange sparkle Gigster snare and a suitcase for a bass drum with the name 'The Electrons' painted on the front). We played Shadows tunes quite badly. The drum would be worth a bit now. (Same make and colour as Mick Fleetwood started on I found out later from a tv programme but he had a whole kit!).
We then expanded the band and had John Jones on guitar, Dave Holt on bass, who later played with Bob Brolly's Cavalry and Phil Street on vocals. We had a manager then, Bill Luckman. Bill ran a driving school in Earsdon and tried to get us signed to EMI.  We used to rehearse in St Johns church, Spon End. Bill came to see us one day with a 'no thanks' letter from EMI. I remember the EMI letterhead being brown. It still felt  great just to get rejected by EMI. Phil went on later to be road manager for Smackee and now lives in Perth with his family. More on Phil later. We used to play over at The Fox Inn at Lutterworth and round and about wherever we could get gigs. I had upgraded to a Premier Oyster shell finish at that time. This band had several names, The Mild, The Electric Circus and my favourite 'Pagan Sabbat'. We did not know that Black Sabbath had started up in Birmingham. I bought an old Suttons bakery diesel bread van and we painted it black with the name on the side. We changed guitarists and got Eddie White who lived in  Widdrington Road to take over. Like me, Eddie had quite a stammer when he was young so it was hilarious listening to the conversations. We were probably not very good but we did a fair few gigs and enjoyed the crack of mates in a band. We would sometimes get a gig over Birmingham way and would stop off at 'Alex's' Pie stand' in Brum that was a well known meeting place for bands late at night.The Move were there one night. 
There was also another chippy in Spon End (gone now) where you'd see other local bands late at night. The General Wolfe was a gig venue even in the 60s as well as The Navigation pub, Stoney Stanton Road and The Walsgrave pub.
Somewhere around here I  have to mention Jigsaw and The Sabres. Two great bands from Coventry. Jigsaw got to No 9 with 'Sky High'. The Sabres appeared on 'ATV today'  and changed  their name to 'The Flying Machine' shortly after.  Paul Wilkinson, the drummer went to Cardinal Wiseman Secondary Boys school as I did. He was a good drummer. Another good local band were 'The Tears'.

At the time the hippy movement started mid to late 60s, we had another manager, Dennis Williams,  who bought us some smart kafthans (from a shop that was right opposite the Colin Campbell pub on the corner?) It was about the time of 'All you need is love'. He used to drive us round for a while in a smart black Humber Super Snipe. (till it caught fire!)  We thought we were the dogs b******s!! We supported Jigsaw one night at the Courtaulds club  in Lockhurst Lane. I'd finally got a brand new kit by then. It was a Premier red sparkle with a chrome 2000 snare (for the anoraks). I got it on HP from Crane's  music shop in Gosford Street along with a Shure Unidyne mic and boom stand.  There was nothing like a good old Hire purchase agreement.  The working class never had it so good. I lent the kit to Ted on one ocassion as he had almost  the exact same kit. (Acorn did a great version of  Cream's 'Toad' and I think  Ted wanted to have the double kit that was just being made popular by Ginger Baker).  He was playing with guitarist brother John in 'Acorn' at the time and Dek McConkey on bass I think. (For a while they had Maggie Hall as a Go Go dancer. Good ol' Maggie. She's in Australia now. She was Phil Street's girlfriend for a long time). Ted wanted to try a double  kit.  It never came back the same.Ted, if you read this, you owe me 30 quid for a tom holder! I eventually sold the kit to Ritchie Medlock who played In 'I', Dills next incarnation after Gods Toys for a while and then did a stint along with Chris Jones in Smackee. Great drummer Ritchie.

There was a change in lineup and a band emerged with Derrick McConkey on bass and Mick Smitham on guitar.  More on Mick in a while. It was  called 'Liberation' and played a mixture of covers and originals. Many 'broken down van' tales ensued and all being on the dole except Phil, it disintergrated after about a year. We did a suport slot with Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon, remember 'Riding on the Pony Express'?
I left home about 1969 and moved into a flat in Whitley village with a local guitar hero of the time, 'Beck' who's real name was Derek Wilson. He had played in '3 am blues'  band with Nicky Hawkswell on bass and Rodney Joyce on congas.  Living in that flat was a life changing experience for me.  Nicky visited the flat and had a Fender bass guitar he'd painted lime green with Woolys gloss paint and burned the word 'F**K' upside down into  the wood. He was an amphetamine addict  from Keresley village and I don't what happened to him in the end. He seemed like an exciting guy to know at the time.  I rehearsed with Beck and a guy named Robin Eve, who a couple of years  later appeared on TOTP dressed as a womble. The band never gigged and Beck moved out a couple of months later.
Phil Street moved in at this time. The flat was a real magnet for hippies, freaks, drop outs and anyone who liked a smoke. There were some lovely people around at that time.  There was quite a  lot of experimenting with  joints as it enhanced the  'listening  to music' experience.  I passed out one Friday night in The Umbrella club and the next thing I remember, is waking up in bed in the flat about 2 days later after mixing drink and pills. Silly boy! Never again.   Around this time I got involved in a studio project. A band  called 'Ning' was put together by a producer called Mike Berry from Sparta Florida  music publishers, London, to record a single called 'Machine'. It was released on the Decca label  in 1971 and sunk without trace but did get airplay on radio Luxembourg. Unbeknown to us it was also released in Holland and Germany. In the band were a bass player  .......?  Ross from a Nuneaton band called 'Gregorian Chant' - I've forgotten his name, a keyboard player from Coventry  called James Edwards who lived in Bagington and played organ at Bagington church. He did a mean rendition of Beethovens 5th and Derek Wilson on guitar. We had to sneak into Luxembourg studios in London at night time and record it on the cheap.(Fleetwood Mac recorded Albatross there). One of those muso experiences. A music paper of the day - 'Record Mirror' ran a competition where punters were invited to draw what they thought a Ning looked like! Funnily enough I saw a German pressing of the disc on e bay in the last year going for 30 quid.  
It was at this time I met John Alderson who was looking for a drummer for Wandering John.
We rehearsed in Binley woods schooI. I really enjoyed being in that band as we played a mixture of original and covers.  Rory Gallaghers 'Blister on the moon' was one of my favourites as well as Hendrix 'Stone Free'. John is a great guitarist and it's been good to read about  Ade Taylor elsewhere on the site. We had a roadie from Canley called Mick who owned some lights and maybe the PA. There was a reel to reel recording made somewhere. John Alderson has it I found out. Apparentley I scream on it like a demented  redskin !! Oh dear. John Gravenors massive red hair which looked absolutley brilliant at the time must get a mention - Ian Anderson eat your heart out -  only joking.  I remember the Cathedral gig and the great scene that was happening at that time in Coventry. Bands like Indian Summer, Mead, April, Dando Shaft and many others were around at the time. I saw John about 10 years ago at a gig in Tamworth. I saw John's 'Travelling Riverside Blues band' at The Colin Cambell in the early 90s. It was good to read the Al Dockers piece on the site. The Godiva pub and Golden Cross were two of the main watering holes.
I moved to Leamington in the early 70s and met up with a  bass player called Harry Frazer and a singer/songwriter called Jamie Lord.  With Mick Smitham we formed a band called Stepmother. I only remember Stepmother playing 1 gig  with that lineup  and that was at the Regent hotel in Leamington. Quite an amazing gig. We also did a  recording  at Monty Bird's studio in Snitterfield. Good to see info about Jamie on other parts of this site. . For whatever reason, the band folded. Mick joined Monster Magnet (which included Bob Jackson, Paul Hooper, another great drummer and Tim James on sax). I got married and moved back to Coventry. I got a normal job at this time and joined a band called 'Just before Dawn'  in 1975 managed by Norman Dewis, chief test driver for Jaguar. Norman had been a racing driver in the 50s racing with the likes of Sterling Moss and he was the first person to drive from Cov to London on the new M1 in an E type Jag in 1959 - all those years ago - amazing!). His son Graham played bass. It was a club type  covers band and had regular work. We used to practice at Normans farm near Packington. You always got tea and biscuits off  Nan, Normans wife. Other guys in the band were Martin ......? on keys,  Paul.........? vox and Pete Morris on guitar. I remember Ray King  knocking on the door one day looking for a drummer for 'Pharoes Kingdom' which evolved into the Specials I think. I was unable to help out at that time. More on Ray later.
About this time I sold a silver Hayman drumkit to  the late Pete King, who was the drummer of 'the Flys' (formerly Midnight Circus) and later 'After the Fire' who had the big international hit with 'Der Kommissar' in 1980. I think it was his first kit. He came to the house with brother Chris to see the kit. More about Chris later. Also at this time I remember  we looked after Bob Jacksons alsation for a week as he was off Stateside doing some gigs. I forget the name of the band.

Sometime around here I did some rehearsals with Joe Beale at a farm  outside of Warwick with a bass player called Tony McGhee. We never gigged but we  did a recording in Birmingham with comedian  Bernie Clifton. It was a comedy micky take of  the Jaws theme  called 'Gummy'. I mailed Bernie recentley to see if he had a copy but he didn't. Just as well.

In 1975, I joined a band called Khayyam, who were a funk/jazz group with Chris Jones on guitar (Chris did quite a lot of work with Smackee  later) and Rodney Joyce on congas and a bass player named Dave Wickes.  They originally had a sax player named  Steve Tatum and a jazzy drummer  who left so the sound changed quite a bit with my style of drumming. This was another  great band  for me and was very well recieved by audiences. We played some great  gigs of the day including The Speakeasy club, London (an exclusive club for pop stars et al  - a  bottle of whisky was 15quid even then) The Greyhound Croydon, upstairs at Ronnie Scotts, London.  Really quite exciting times. I got to meet 'Speedy' - Georgie Fame's bongo player and shared a couple of spliffs with him in his flat in London thanks to Rodney, the chief mover and groover. We got a few standing ovations but ......
broken vans, on the dole - the usual musos tale of woe!! and it stopped. I'd quit my job and with a mortgage..........
I got another job and then joined a band called 'Stiletto' - another covers band based in Coventry and Nuneaton. We were a popular local pub band and always did well in the 'Dog and Trumpet'  in Coventry with Thin Lizzy covers going down a bomb, literally, as we used to use those maroon type explosive devices that made a serious bang! Stiletto were Graham Walker on vocals and guitar, Dennis Burns on rhythm, Arun Bhandari on bass. We had  regular work including sharing the bill at Warwick Uni with Ruby Turner, Mungo Jerry, The Sinceros and more. You have to picture Graham with a false nose that lit up and a cloak  launching into 'Delilah" - hilarious! One time we had no maroons, so our roadie Phil 'Do the dog' made something up out of weedkiller. My God!!! When it went off we had to evacuate Wyken hall as the whole place filled with dense acrid smoke! More on Graham later. 

During this period, Arun and I did a recording via Chris King with 'Black Parrot Seaside'  at Pathway studios, London. Wreckless Eric and Elvis Costello had done tracks there and Dire Straits had recorded  'The Sultans of Swing' album there. We were on hallowed ground. Just a small place with an eight track recorder as I remember.  We recorded a very funny song about  being reincarnated as a vacum cleaner! I still laugh now thinking about it! I just had a mail from Geoff Veasey -so great to hear that The Parrot are still performing.

Another great Coventry band of this time was Reno, championed by Kid Jensen and Radio 1.  Many people thought that they were going to take off but sadly they didn't. I don't remember any of their names but they were great musicians with brilliant vocal harmonies. In 1979 I  recorded a song with Arun called 'Send me to Coventry' at John Rivers Woodbine street studios in Leamington Spa.  We were trying to jump on the ska bandwagon that was emerging in Coventry. On the B side of the single was a tune called 'Mobbed' featuring Bob Jackson of Indian Summer (and now The Fortunes) on keyboard. We called the band 'The Mob'. Mercia radio made it their 'single of the week' in their first week on air in 1980. It recieved some other airplay and publicity but that's as far as it went. It was at  these sessions at Woodbine  that I first met 'Ollie' or Roland Oliver as I was later to find out. He was in a band called Machine at that time with Julian Bell on keyboards, Mike Collins vocals and guitar, Silverton Hutchins on drums and Tony Clarke on riddim guitar. Silverton had left The Specials just before they took off I think. Ollie  was trying to cadge a lift back to Cov. Not long after this time, mid 1979, I'd left Stiletto and went for an audition in Radford in the upstairs room of a terraced house to try out for what became 'Hot Snacks'.  Silverton had left and Machine had had a track on the compilation album 'Sent to Coventry' with other bands like The Mix and The Urge.The first gig I did with Hot Snacks was  at The Dog and Trumpet on a Weds night. I was still learning the tunes in the car on the way to the gig. As it goes, the gig was great and very well recieved by an enthusiastic audience. Over the next 6 months, we built up a great following in Coventry and played many times, packing pubs out.  Of course the whole 2 Tone thing was exploding and the Coventry music scene was jumping. They were exciting days except I was going through a divorce at the same time, which is never easy for anyone. I remember one gruelling recording session at London Road. Chris King who was interested in managing us at one point, brought his mixing desk and monitors. We set up all the gear and banged down 10 songs live to tape for about 8 hours non stop. None of this overdubbing lark!!  Blood sweat and tears! There were a good few Coventry bands getting plenty of attention and audience support. I remember The Reluctant Stereotypes, (became King), The Swinging Cats, Gods Toys, 21 Guns, The Urge, EMF, L'homme de Terre and a good few more. A big high was playing in a Mercia radio sponsered concert of Coventry bands at the Belgrade theatre one Sunday night. Mike the singer, who was totally unpredictable, came on completley naked.  Mums, dads and brothers and sisters in the audience. It was the last song and a load of fans invaded the stage blocking him out. It's on video somewhere. Mustn't forget Ian, the mate who came on as a baby elephant during our rendition of the Henry Mancini tune of the same name. The Mercia DJ presenting the show looked a bit unhappy afterwards. Both the Specials and Selector gave us support slots at the Spa centre, Leamington which was brilliant. Two great nights. In Dec 1980 we got offered a national tour with Bad Manners playing mostly universities for about 18 dates. I think Ollie was the contact on this one as he was friendly with Douggie, the Manners singer. So we set off in a Brady hire van, a  bunch of misfits with about 2 bob between us, striking out for the big time for 50 quid a night. What an experience that was!  There was a lot racism going on at that time. We got spat on every night by the first ten rows of skinheads at a few gigs. Both us and Bad Manners had black musicians so we were the targets of their vile behaviour. During one gig at West Runton Pavillion, Norfolk, some of  the crowd turned nasty. We knew it was time to get off. As we were moving gear, I saw in slow motion, a beer can coming at my head. It landed fair and square in my face!  We had to barricade ourselves in the dressing room with flight cases jammed against the door while  a mob of skinheads tried kicking the door to bits.It went quiet for few minutes so we made a run for it out of the venue and into dark lanes leading down to the sea. We stayed there till it was light before going back to get the gear. It was a really frightening experience.

The tour overall though was fantastic, playing to packed university halls heading into Xmas. One lttle point; Ollie took Paxo, his dog on the tour. The first night we left him in the van while we played. When we came back to the van, Paxo had chewed up the passenger seat big time. It was a new van. Oh well!

When the tour finished near the end of December, we were convinced we would go on to bigger things. We got signed to Carlin music publishers and we were advanced the money to record 2 demos in London. A lot of people who supported us expected us to take off. Well we didn't and my own theories are; 1. We didnt have a manager  2. We weren't out and out Ska  and also, the New Romantics were just starting to appear. After about 3 years of graft and frustration we split up. Ollie went on to be Dr Mustard. Tony Clarke went to live in London. Mike, Julian and myself and roadie Andy Dalton put money into buiding our own studio in the upstairs of the Mike's house in Caldecote Road,  Radford where we'd rehearsed for 3 years. I must mention  Mike's lodger, Bill Beveridge. Bill put up with a lot of noise during those years in the upstairs bedrooms of the house. Bill was a Union convenor at British Aerospace. Imagine a full band blasting it out in a small mid terrace house.for hours on end. Bless the neighbours as well. Sequencers, samplers, drum machines and computers were being increasingly used in music. We spent a lot of time experimenting with sequenced music. We called the studio Black Box. I was the tea boy, resources procurement  person and apprentice drum programmer. I got an old telly out of a skip and pushed it 4 miles in a wheeelbarrow to the studio. Andy did a humongous amount of soldering. For any anoraks who might read this we used a ZX81 computer as the sequencer. Julian, who was and still is an electronics boffin, wrote a programme in basic code for the sequencer. So the ZX81 hooked up to the telly out of the skip was the heart of the studio. We had a Bell digital delay unit we'd bought off Roger Lomas that served as the sampler. Julian cut into the circuitry  to increase the sample time to 1 second. The sounds were routed through a battered  Allen and Heath mixer we'd bought off Chris King. A Yamaha FB01 was the MIDI module and an Alesis MMT8 was used for the drums. An Ensonique mirage sampling keyboard provided up to 8 samples at a time. A Fostex 8 track was the tape machine. It all came out of a Quad amp and a pair of Tannoy Stratford monitors.  It took 8 mins at the end of every session to save the data onto cassette. We had a mike and speaker housed in the downstairs toilet to provide reverb till we could afford to buy a 'Great british spring'.  If a session was going on and reverb was required, you had to nip out to the garden for calls of nature. We built a 'vocal booth' and I had an old mini that was used to collect matresses from people we knew. They were used to soundproof the booth. We had 4 matresses on the roof. God knows how we didn't get nicked. The booth was completley dark inside and singers had to use a torch to see the lyrics. We did many demos of our own music and also recorded other people. We never ran it as a business. Neol Davis popped round one time as did Roger Lomas. Desmond from Selecter brought his bass another time for a long jam which we recorded, I remember going for a drink with Desmond after and getting totally drunk in a pub up the  Foleshill Road somewhere. In 1985 we did some demos of  quite poppy and catchy tunes with Ray King and two female singers. It was decided  to master a couple of the demos. It was arranged that we go to Cabin studios, London Road and re record two of the songs with Paul Sampson engineering the tracks. The session never got properly started as a halt to proceedings was called  due to a contractual dispute between Julian and Ray. That was that! No recording. Bizzare. I dont know what Paul thought of it all. It's a funny ol' game, lol!! . On a sad note though, Mike Collins got killed on his pushbike in a collision with a lorry on the A45 cycling to a part time job he had as a guide at The Henry Doubleday Centre, Ryton organic gardens.  It was a tough time ringing his folks and  friends, waiting for the inquest and everything else. A tree was planted at Ryton gardens in his memory.

After Mike died we had to vacate the house. I'd been living in a flat in Hillfields for a couple of years but got a house in Radford near the Motor pub. We set the studio up there. By now, Andy the roadie had had enough and gone back to his roots in Barnsley, Yorkshire. We carried on with demos and did a couple of projects with different singers. Ellie recorded several tracks with us  and also a singer called Jane D'Alby. Ellie later sang backing vocals for The Baptists,  a cracking rocky blues band fronted by Jason Toynbee ( brother of Poly Toynbee the tv newsreader and journalist)  with Neil Hunter and some other good Coventry musicians at the time. One funny thing here. One night at about 2 am, I decided to mess with some drum tracks we'd been working on. I turned the gear on but forgot the bass bins were still on. Everything else was routed to the headphone amp. I didn't reaslise that there was some serious bass pumping out of the bins till about 5.30.am. Bless the neighbours cos no one said a word! One demo we did which was heavily dance music orientated attracted interest from a guy in London who had managed Adamski. We travelled down to London to his wine bar in Camden. He took us round various multi media studios for what I'm not sure. I think he was just checking us out. Nothing ever came of that. Not long after this, we decided to call it a day on the studio front. Julain went off and designed and installed a couple of studios before going into teaching.

I was keen to play live again and heard that Roddy, ex Specials was looking for a drummer for his band, The Bonediggers, a Rockabilly and  ska combo. I spoke to Roddy in The Oak  and a rehearsal was arranged. The manager  was Gerard Joyce. The Bonediggers shared lead singer and rhythm guitarist was Dave West and  the bass player was Sam Smith. We had a roadie later, Steve Brophie. I had a rehearsal with them at Gerards house in Stoke where Dave lodged and we all got on well. A few rehearsals and  we were soon gigging regularly. We played a good few times at the Tic Toc club in the downstairs bar. we played the upstairs bar as well supporting 'King Pleasure and the biscuit boys' and 'Big Audio Dynamite'  There were some great bands playing The Tic Toc in that period. I remember The Giraffes and Jerry Dammers used to do a DJ spot downstairs.  The Bonediggers HQ was the Dive bar. It was a bikers pub at this time. We had a good following down there and would pack the place when we played. There was a fan called Boris  who had a Land Rover which he had painted black with the Bonediggers logo, a skull and crossbones in a star painted on the sides. It was quite a sight when about 12 of us piled in with the roof off to go for a spin via some country pubs with a bit of 'off roading' thrown in for good measure! They were a great crowd in The Dive and arranged coaches to come and support us on London gigs.  We got offered some work in Norway and Sweden. This was a great trip. We flew to Oslo into a blizzard where we got picked up by a taxi driver who used to work in Coventry!!  We took a train right up through the mountains of Norway to the coast at Bergen amongst the Vickings and Fjords and what happens? We meet a biker who used to live in Coventry. Funny thing; the guy who arranged this was  a record label  boss, Andy Case from London. I found out that his brother Fred Case, used to teach me French at Cardinal Wiseman's.

We had to take a 7 hour train trip back down the mountains to Oslo  with no food or drink, on wooden benches, in the dark stopping at every station. Believe me, we were glad to get off that train. Anyway, we did a good few gigs including the 100 club, London, the Moonlight club, London and The Mean Fiddler. We also appeared on the Mary Costello show Radio London (just after Jethro Tull) and Harmony FM in Coventry. We recorded 2 demos, one at The Depot with Mike Roberts in the chair and another at Woodbine Street.

We played in Paris at The Montemarte Theatre with Le Garcon Boucherie (The Butcher Boys) and a few other French bands.  Later we went to a club in the Pigalle area where Picasso lived during his 'Blue' period. Weird place, pigs heads sticking out of the walls. A nice trip. We also got to play Germany and Sweden and had  some great  experiences  with trips up the fjords and beer at 4 quid a pint (1992). I had some great times and experiences with The Bonediggers.

After the Bonediggers I joined 'Graham Walker's Propellor' - back with Graham - for another stint - in his rock and blues band. We did mainly pub gigs and had a good lineup with Graham on guitar and vox, Bill Wilkinson on bass and Julian Ward on guitar. Occasionally, Spencer Walker would play percussion. Spence is a great drummer in his own right. Bill lleft and was replaced by Howard .......? from Warwick, later replaced by Ollie Carlane. Tim James played sax for a while. Another recording at Woodbine St. Eventually I left Propellor to set up Inferno - a party band playing chart hits from 60s to 90s. The band is still going strong with Eamonn Kerr on vocals and guitar, Julian Bell,  Keyboards and wizadry and Martyn Lewis on bass and vocals. (Jim's Current band can be viewed here - www.inferno.uk.com)

Cheers and on with the show!

To cut a long story even longer.........