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Buckingham had old-fashioned shops, rather than supermarkets – butchers, greengrocers, a wool shop, a saddler, two gentlemen’s outfitters and a very good toyshop. Walter Tyrell, the fruit-and-vegetable man, delivered to our estate twice a week, his overloaded cart drawn by one of his small ponies. Brook’s Dairies delivered milk and orange juice daily, also by horsepower.
My Victorian-built primary school was in Well Street. I got on well with the teachers, except deputy head W. T. Benson. I don’t know why he took such a dislike to me. When I was seven he ridiculed me in front of the class for a spelling mistake. All he did was make me realise that I rather enjoyed being the centre of attention – a sign of things to come!
I failed my eleven-plus and went to the secondary modern. I never did go to university, but in 2015 the University of Buckingham honoured me with a master’s degree for services to music and Buckingham! I accepted with a great deal of pride. My dad was there with my wife, Fran, and daughters Charlotte and Olivia. I wish that my mum could have seen it, but she passed away the previous year. I did find it ironic to be mingling with brilliant academics who had years of hard study under their belts when I had received only a very average education myself. Some of my teachers had also taught my mother some thirty years earlier. Imagine that! How could they possibly relate to my generation?
I was twelve when President Kennedy was shot in November 1963. I remember being scared by my mum’s reaction. ‘There will definitely be a war if the Russians did it.’ I went to the pictures that night, but I couldn’t take my mind off JFK and impending doom. I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time. Young people in that cold war period lived in constant fear of the Russians and another world war. But the USSR was innocent, this time, and therefore not going to bomb us off the planet.
Beatles records had started hitting the charts that year – they cheered America up, and they cheered the world up. In my head, it was the Beatles who beat the Russians – I was convinced of that fact. They also ended the reign of the artists I had grown up with in my household – middle-of-the-road stars like Joe Loss, Jess Conrad, David Whitfield, Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson and Perry Como. Meanwhile, Lonnie Donegan, Joe Brown, Cliff Richard and the Shadows survived and managed to stay with the new army. I had become a fan of a few of them: Joe Brown, Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde. They seemed splendid. Their shiny guitars fascinated me. I watched them on Ready Steady Go!, Juke Box Jury, and Thank Your Lucky Stars.
My cousin Sylvia Chalmers was a huge fan of Elvis, but she was older than me. Merseybeat was the happening thing and all I could think about was guitars. But now came the hard bit for an almost-teen. Just how do I learn to play the guitar?
There were no musicians in either side of my family. The first person I ever saw playing the guitar in the flesh was Roger Williamson from Northampton. He played ‘Apache’ by the Shadows at my cousin Jean’s wedding reception in 1961 and I think he had a gleaming red Fender Stratocaster. I didn’t really know how to judge but I thought he played really well. He played ‘Shakin’ All Over’ by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, a seminal song with the guitar riff of the period. Guitarists today still rate it. London session guitarist Joe Moretti plays those brilliant parts on a white Fender Telecaster.
I was fortunate at a ridiculously young age to have seen acts at Buckingham Town Hall and in the surrounding towns. There was always the potential for danger, with fights breaking out during sets, but I used to sneak in the back of the town hall and climb into an old lighting box to watch the bands on Friday nights, usually fibbing to my folks that I was visiting my grandparents. I saw Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages – at a time when there was with the real possibility that Ritchie Blackmore was playing guitar – Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, maybe Neil Christian and the Crusaders with Jimmy Page on guitar, Freddy ‘Fingers’ Lee, Mike Sarne and Bert Weedon. I was bitten by the excitement, alone up there, with the hall full to bursting.
I was in Steeple Claydon hall one Saturday night in 1964 to see the Primitives, and I thought they were fabulous. I got as close to the stage as I could. I had never seen men with such long hair – I was more than impressed. They made two singles for Pye Records and Jimmy Page played on both of them, I’m told. They came from Oxford but their home could have been Jupiter as far as I was concerned. I had seen them on the TV, and now I was a few feet away from them. I was captivated.
I used to see a guitarist from nearby Winslow when I was 14. Nipper – his real name was Gerald Rogers – had quite a reputation and often played weddings. His group was the Originals – Les Castle, Snowy Jeffs, Nipper and either Keith Fenables or Maurice Cracknell singing. Nipper played guitar. One night at the Verney Arms I heard them do Muddy Waters’s ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’. It was a revelation to hear local guys play this, and play it well.
My cousin Keith Aston had somehow got a guitar but I was under strict instructions not to touch it. I did, of course. I found it a hugely pleasurable experience, just holding it and touching the neck. I didn’t really understand the feeling, it just felt right. I had to have my very own guitar and I bugged my folks until they caved in. Finally I had a very old and very used acoustic Spanish guitar. It wasn’t particularly good, I knew that even then, cheap and hard to play, especially for a beginner. It was almost impossible to hold one or two notes down, let alone a chord. I persevered until my fingers bled, skin coming off the tips. My hand ached beyond description and became such a painful claw that Mum asked me why my fingers were such a mess. She was genuinely concerned. I practised every single day for months on end and, gradually, the pain subsided, although the worn-out instrument remained extremely difficult to play. This was how I learnt my craft, and what a miracle that I, and countless others all over the country, were prepared to go through this pain barrier.
I astonished my folks one evening when I was able to play along with the theme tunes from Coronation Street and Dixon of Dock Green. They were both very enthusiastic but I told them that, even though I had improved, the guitar was holding me back. I thought my heavy hint was a bit of a long shot but to my delight they agreed. Thank you, TV theme writers!
I saved every penny from my paper round, and had been saving all my birthday and Christmas money for a couple of years. I had enough money for a deposit! Dad said he would help me out as much as he could. ‘How do we get an electric guitar?’ he said. I knew exactly where. I had been there before.
3.
Look Through Any Window (#litres_trial_promo)
When I was 13 I spent a few days in at my aunt Doreen’s house in Hampstead, London. I was allowed to make a bus trip on my own after promising I would see the town but not get off the bus.
I boarded the no. 24 from Hampstead to Pimlico, a round trip of about three hours. It remains a great way to see central London. I sat in the prime seat – front, upstairs – and went to Camden Town, Marylebone Road, Gower Street, Trafalgar Square into Whitehall. Sitting there all alone I saw Nelson’s Column, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and more, all sights I had only seen in pictures or TV. It was very exciting.
On the return leg I glanced up at 114 Charing Cross Road, the Selmer Music Store – the UK’s sole importer of American guitars. It was a life-changing moment. I had promised not to leave the bus, but what could I do? I had seen Selmer’s window, full of Fender, Gibson, and Epiphone guitars. It was fate. If I had been sitting on the left-hand side of that bus, I would never have noticed. I was down those bus stairs and off the footplate without thinking.
There were bass guitars, amplifiers, and custom-coloured Strats that I’d only ever seen in catalogues. The archtop Gibsons in the store were almost two hundred pounds, an unreal amount of money. One side of the store stocked brass instruments with the famous Selmer badge on them, all very well but of no interest to me, really, the guitars had me totally spellbound. Selmer’s was a magic kingdom. The Beatles had been in this very store, as had the Hollies and the Applejacks.
I spent over two hours in the shop but it took me an hour before I actually plucked up the courage to touch one. The assistants were very nice and I took a Fender Stratocaster down from the wall and dared to ask how much it was. The answer was 140 guineas, the equivalent of around £165. This was an incredible amount of money. That very same model today would be worth £30,000 or more.
It eventually dawned that my aunt and uncle would be wondering where the hell I was as I’d been gone for three hours longer than expected – oops. I apologised, told them where I had been and promised not to do it again.
The next day I was on the twenty-four again, this time getting off at Cambridge Circus. I walked up Charing Cross Road and to my delight I discovered many more guitar shops – Macari’s, Pan Music. I returned to Selmer’s where I heard a famous band were also browsing – could it be John, Paul, or George, or maybe Tony Hicks or Graham Nash? No, it was just the Bachelors, brothers Con and Dec Cluskey buying new Gibson acoustics. The Bachelors were one of my mum’s favourites.
It wasn’t until later visits that I met the Merseybeats, also Chris Curtis, the drummer with the Searchers. I had taken a guitar from the wall, totally out of my price range, of course, and was playing it quietly. Curtis said I was a very good player and invited me to his flat in Chelsea. I accepted his invitation – he was a pop star, after all, and had a chauffeur-driven car. I still don’t believe it, but I got in the car with a man I had just met. With hindsight, that could have been a terrible scenario.
He said that he would cook at the flat. Jon Lord later told me that he was probably elsewhere in the flat at the time – Jon was ten years older than me and was just then starting the project with Chris that would later become Deep Purple. As it turned out, there were only Cornflakes in Chelsea and so that was the meal. I did feel a little strange, eating cereal with Mr Curtis, and wondering why I was there. I should also say that Chris was very nice to me, and nothing whatsoever questionable happened. Maybe he had in mind that I could have been the guitarist for Roundabout, but I was only a young teenager. Jon would later pull my leg about that day, especially at breakfast in a hotel on the road where there were Cornflakes around.
I got to know Denmark Street’s shops well and when my dad asked me where we could get an electric guitar, I was ready. Dad was the guarantor for the hire purchase agreement. Selmer had a special offer on the Colorama 2 by the German company Hofner, whose guitars were very popular, reasonably priced and good quality. It was the one for me. The monthly repayments were quite high, but I really didn’t care: and I had my first electric guitar!
I held the green plastic case tightly as we went home. I thought the guitar was beautiful. It was finished in a cream colour, had twin pickups and a tremolo arm. I took it everywhere – my mum often said that I was chained to it. I couldn’t believe how much easier it was to play than my Spanish acoustic. There was just one more thing …
‘You never said anything about a bloody amplifier!’ said my dad.
I pleaded with him and we acquired a five-watt Dallas amp from Butler’s furniture shop in Buckingham. I practised daily and our next-door neighbour, Tom Tranter, who worked nights, soon had his own name for my setup. He called it ‘That bloody electric thing.’
I quickly improved at the guitar while my grades at school plummeted (although I did get a B-plus for music). The art teacher said in his year report, ‘I have never known such an idle and yet so charming boy.’ I rather liked that.
The first real group I was in was the Jokers: I must have been about 14. They were already an established act with Eric Jeffs on bass, Stan Church on drums, Dave Brock (not the future Hawkwind leader!) as the vocalist and second guitarist, and Steve Rooney the lead guitarist. Eric played bass guitar left-handed, à la McCartney – but strung normally and played upside down.
In the practice room at the youth club I immediately realised the underpowered Dallas was useless in this company. I knew I needed a bigger amp but I didn’t have any money, and asking Dad was out of the question. Guitarist Steve owned a six-input amplifier with a massive thirty watts of power which I used via Dave. Steve found me – a young upstart – playing all the guitar licks he knew plus quite a few that he didn’t and, worse still, playing them through his massive amp. Having both of us in the band was never going to work. The upstart 14-year-old was already shining brighter than Steve and he left the band – and took the big amp with him. Dave Brock had a lovely, blue Watkins Dominator amp which he lent me. I wish I still had it, a very collectable amplifier.
Steve later told me he left the band because he wanted to spend more time with his girlfriend. I was amazed. Even at 14, I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to spend time with a girl instead of being the guitarist in the Jokers.
I was very keen, practising all the time, learning Chuck Berry riffs and Bo Diddley songs, and I settled in very quickly. We had a major upset when drummer Stan Church left after a member of his family was jailed for the manslaughter of a local girl. The case even made national TV. I was very young and quite frankly confused. I didn’t understand why this had to have such an impact on my band – was having the name Church the reason?
Roger Hollis replaced Stan as our drummer. He lived near me in Overn Avenue, and was an early heavy metal drummer: he really did hit them hard. We practised every Tuesday and Thursday evening, when the sound of the judo lessons in the upper room was louder than the band. Amps were soon to become a lot louder – thank you, Jim Marshall.
We had another setback when there was a robbery and all of the Jokers’ equipment was stolen. The story made front page of the Buckingham Advertiser and they sent a photographer who asked us to look appropriately sad. I felt a bit of a fraud as the only equipment I owned was safely back at home: I would never, ever leave my guitar behind.
The Jokers ran out of steam and I came across the Originals, whose guitarist Nipper Rogers had been such an inspiration to me. On one Sunday afternoon I was playing acoustic guitar in the garden of the King’s Head. Originals’ singer Keith ‘Diver’ Fenables heard me playing, asked who I was, and then disappeared. He had gone to tell drummer Les Castle about this new kid playing the guitar. He casually asked me if I could play any of their songs and I said yes, I could.
‘Good,’ he smiled back at me. ‘Be here at seven tonight.’
It dawned on me that I had just signed myself up to a gig. Nipper Rogers’ job took him away from the area and the Originals couldn’t do any gigs – until this particular Sunday! I was petrified: not only had I only played their songs in my bedroom, but Nipper was streets ahead of me as a guitar player My mouth had said that I could do it and so now I would play in a pub packed with punters.
I arrived at the King’s Head at about six, very nervous, and a little panicked because I didn’t have an amplifier. Les Castle was setting up his drum kit and had a big smile.
‘Well, you are young, my boy,’ he said, pointing to Nipper’s Burns Orbit 3 amplifier. ‘Use that.’ Les, Keith and I played in a corner of the main bar without a bass player. I kept my head down to avoid making any eye contact with the audience. I was pleased not to hear any booing after the first few songs. Les Castle gave me another smile.
‘Fabulous, my boy, carry on like that!’
We played ‘I Can Tell’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’, ‘Green Green Grass of Home’, ‘Twist and Shout’, ‘Kansas City’, ‘Look Through Any Window’ and ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’. By this time Keith Fenables was also smiling.
Half an hour later it sank in – I was playing with the Originals. I dreaded to think how it sounded, but after a few songs I felt brave enough to glance at the crowd. They were looking happy and a little shell-shocked. Who the hell was this wonder kid? Where was Nipper, the one-and-only, local Hank Marvin? The audience got louder as the night went on, and everyone had a bloody good time. At the end of the night, Keith introduced me to the crowd: ‘Let’s hear it for the new kid on the cuh-tah, ladeez an’ genelmen!’
Keith was deliriously happy. Never again would Nipper Rogers dictate to the Originals: here was a readymade and impressionable new player they could call on, unencumbered by girlfriend or job. The position of my hero Nipper as the top dog was gone after one Sunday night in the King’s Head. I was the new kid in town. Nipper never once called me out for taking his gig. Not only that but he was the single influence among all the great guitarists who made me believe I could pick up a guitar. Thanks, Nipper.
The bonus that night was that I got paid! Thirty shillings, a pound note, a 10-bob note and a baguette sandwich to take home. I could sense things were about to change – this was a turning point for the very young BM. I was hired for the regular Sunday night Originals gigs and the Hofner Colorama paid for itself many times over. I practised hard, improving the guitar parts on the songs and gaining in confidence. All my earnings were put aside at home for a Fender Strat and amp, and my mum found the savings one afternoon. There must have been the best part of a hundred pounds, a hell of a wad for a teenager. She and Dad sat me down to ask where I’d got the money from. It was only fairly recently that my dad admitted they thought I might have been a robber. They never expected I was paid to play. My dad’s face lit up although dear old Mum seemed a little sceptical. I soon acquired my own Burns Orbit amplifier.
We played most weekends, mainly in pubs, working men’s clubs and at wedding receptions and I got my first taste of fame. I loved it. I became quite a draw at the King’s Head, a local guitar hero. People treated me slightly differently – most were positive, although a few were jealous and some were unable to accept that this young kid could play the guitar at all. Women who were years older than me loved to hang out with the band, regardless of their marital status. Some weekends I was invited to a female fan’s house for a drink. I got to know a lot of them and I must have been very different to their husbands who had to be at work the next morning, mainly because I had to be back at school.
By the time I was 15, I was in my room so much, playing guitar, that I had become a bit of a loner at school. I did have a few good mates: Richard Bernert, Steve Wheeler, Derek Knee and Mick Hodgkinson, but even then it was the common love of music that connected us. I’d often go to Richard’s and mime to the Small Faces’ first album he played at maximum volume in the living room. I was Steve Marriott, of course, and Richard was Kenney Jones knocking the crap out of a cake tin and cushions with a knife and fork.
Music also played a background role in a job I did with Derek and Richard. We worked for a local chicken farmer, feeding thousands of chickens, collecting eggs, and cleaning out the cages. It was pretty well-paid for the time. The henhouse was an inferno of squawking, but we had a very loud radio pumping out Radio Caroline or Radio London from an eight-inch Fane speaker. The first time I ever heard the Stones’ ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ was on Radio Caroline. The opening line really grabbed my attention.
Pirate radio was so important. I got to hear fantastic records one after another, and maximum volume in the henhouse made them sound so much better. The radio reception was unpredictable: some days our area was good, but I was likely to lose the guitar solo just when I was ready to learn it!
I didn’t want to leave school at 15, so I stayed for another year, not knowing what I wanted to do in terms of a ‘proper’ job. The only clear path I had in my mind was something involving guitar. And, boy, was I playing a lot of it by the time I reached my final year …
At the start of the year there was mass excitement because of the arrival of a new 22-year-old French teacher, Elizabeth Rees. She was a great-looking girl, about five foot three, long, black hair, glasses on the end of her nose, short skirt and high-heeled shoes. I think she could tell she was near enough every schoolboy’s fantasy. She stopped me in the corridor to ask why I had opted to take history instead of French. As she smiled at me I asked myself the same question. She said that she would make sure I worked hard and I went to the school office and promptly dumped history. I never did learn much French, but she did teach me one hell of a lot about life.
Elizabeth had heard me playing with the Originals and said she was astonished by my playing and I would be famous one day. This was a revelation – she was the only forward-thinker in the school, heading for the Seventies with the same attitude as all the kids who were stumbling towards that decade of change.
Despite my passion for the guitar, music had never been a favourite lesson. I didn’t know or care what a stave was – tiny black squiggles on five straight lines did not seem like music – but I enjoyed the playing side. I remember one lesson I was playing to some girls when music teacher Mrs Gwen Clark arrived. I put the guitar down.
‘Don’t put that thing away just yet,’ she said with a hint of sarcasm. She passed me a handwritten sheet music. ‘So, can you play that?’
I looked at the paper – black squiggles on a stave. I couldn’t decipher it. She was making a point about my sight-reading ability.
‘Now listen and learn,’ she said. She played the first notes on the piano. I recognised the tune, the theme from Z Cars on TV. The girls in my class looked on. I picked up the guitar and played the Z Cars melody almost instantly, Mrs Clark was looking a little vexed. I then played the guitar intro to Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’.
‘So, can you play that?’ I asked her. There were more than a few giggles. Mrs Clark was furious and, to contain her embarrassment, she left the room. I laughed, but she should have taken pleasure in seeing one of her own students playing this way, as an untrained natural. I am still irritated by the way that people with obvious talents were disregarded. If I had listened to my teachers I would never have left Buckingham, and never have tried to make it as a guitarist. It makes me wonder how many potential writers, musicians and artists there were in those dingy, soulless schoolrooms during the Sixties who were ridiculed for having such dreams.
I needed a practical music education. Enter my cousin John Keeley, three years older than me, who visited from Liverpool. He sang and played harmonica in a band, which impressed me a lot. I told him that I could play the guitar, which didn’t impress him, but he did listen to me playing along with recordings by Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Searchers, before instructing me to throw the records away. He told me to get LPs by Howling Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy – but I did refuse to give up the Beatles. John had seen Williamson at the Cavern with the Yardbirds, and allowed me to keep my live Yardbirds LP featuring the young Eric Clapton. The blues hit me like a hurricane.
I became obsessed with all things Eric Clapton. I even bought Tuf town shoes because I read he wore them – I read any Clapton magazine article and I paid close attention to his influences. I soaked them all up – I was a musical sponge. If Clapton mentioned a player in an interview, I went straight down to the local shop to order that record. Some were so obscure, some on American labels with strange names: Chess, Federal, Sue and Pye International with the red-and-yellow labels. Artists such as Freddy King, Otis Rush, T. Bone Walker, and more. I slowed down the records to 16 rpm on the radiogram, making it a little easier to learn the guitar parts.
It wasn’t always straightforward to find this music. A folk guitarist first suggested I should listen to BB King. The folk player had a really good fingerstyle and liked the way I played, saying it was a very different approach. I was lucky to get a UK Ember label 45-record by mail order of ‘Rock Me Baby’, BB King’s great song. When that Ember record arrived, that was really it. I later found King’s UK Stateside releases, the European versions of the early BluesWay/ABC. Live at the Regal is the one liked by most guitarists, but for me it was Blues is King. Both were recorded in Chicago in the mid-1960s with a small band, and BB is on great form vocally and his guitar playing still motivates and inspires me.
If asked today, I might most often say that the music of The Beatles was the source of my musical career. But, if I am really honest, the blues music went on to inspire and motivate me most of my life. I had already been aware of Big Bill Broonzy, his name fascinated me, but I never really knew what blues music was. But, once I had heard the Yardbirds and John Mayall I was looking for their source material. I searched for BB King, Leadbelly, Big Bill, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, which led me to Freddy and Albert King. I was given a Louisiana Red album when I was about 14 called Low Down Back Porch Blues. I liked it a lot, although I didn’t really understand what it was about.
At around that same age, I saw Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Muddy Waters on TV. I was mesmerised. There is some quite phenomenal footage from 1964 of Rosetta Tharpe tearing it up with a white Gibson SG Custom at a railway station platform in Cheshire. It sounds crazy but it is a fact. Try and find it! This was the music I wanted to play. I bought a 45 of Howlin’ Wolf, ‘Smokestack Lightning’, which featured a fantastic guitar player on B-side ‘Goin’ Down Slow’– this was Hubert Sumlin. Hubert played with both of the great Chicago blues players, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.
I was soaking up all this music. Gone were all my records of UK artists, even The Beatles and The Hollies were at the back of the pack when it came to the bluesmen. ‘Boogie Chillen’ by Hooker fascinated me, and still does. The guitar part is so weird, but I loved it and tried to play it. I didn’t know about capos or tunings then, but I loved the sound. I found that I could reproduce some of Sonny Boy’s harmonica parts on the guitar. That inspired me a lot. Just a tiny fraction of this music was developing my own style and, even though I was fully aware that Eric Clapton and Peter Green had already got it down, I did persevere.
When Cream themselves played Aylesbury in February 1967 there was nothing that would stop me seeing them. My pal Alan Clarke and I hitchhiked to a venue which was heaving with the largest number of people I had ever seen in one space. And then Cream were there: Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, and ‘God’ himself, Clapton. Their Marshall amps towered on the small stage, Eric playing his Gibson SG Standard and I heard the ‘woman tone’ in person. I watched in a kind of dream state as they opened with ‘N. S. U.’, and played ‘Sleepy Time Time’, ‘Sweet Wine’, ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’, ‘Cat’s Squirrel’, and a devastating ‘I’m So Glad’. They were magnificent.
I was jolted into the real world in a surprising way. I felt a sharp prod in my back, and turned around to see Elizabeth Rees, the new French teacher. She was in a very good mood, looking really good, and had a definite twinkle in her eye. She straight away said she would take us back to Buckingham after the show. She was with a friend, a nasty little piece of work named Drew, who taught history. How pissed off Drew must have been to take us back on his date. Alan and I were just grateful not to walk back the sixteen miles.
Outside Buckingham town hall I thanked Drew for the lift, he eyed me with some contempt, and I got out of the car. To my surprise – and Drew’s shock – Elizabeth also said ‘Thanks’ and ‘Goodnight’ to him. Man, he must have been livid. Alan walked back home while Liz invited me back for a coffee at her flat in Well Street, a minute’s walk away.
I was still filled with the excitement of the Cream gig, until it slowly dawned on me that I was alone with my French teacher in her flat. She was calm and chatty, and we discussed the show and our musical interests: all very grown-up stuff. Liz had liked that I played ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ at the pub. She went to her bedroom and came back with an album to play on her Dansette record player. It was The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. I had never bothered with acoustic music, unless played by black musicians. The only folk music I was aware of was by the likes of Wally Whyton and the King Brothers on the radio show Family Favourites. Bob Dylan was so radical. I was quite stunned.
‘Listen to his words,’ she said. I still listen to them today.
She told me I could be like my heroes and that if I practised, worked hard and, above all, dedicated myself to being a musician I could make it a career. She pointed that neither Bob Dylan nor Eric Clapton had ever seen the inside of a university, and that the old USA blues players that I worshipped were lucky to get any schooling at all. I really listened to her. Academically, I was way behind, but in learning about life I was taking a huge step forward.
I spent a lot of time at school with Liz Rees, and rumours were rampant, particularly as my French was not improving. Liz was a bohemian free spirit, just the person a young lad of fifteen years of age should stay away from. I was infatuated, of course: she did exactly as she pleased and didn’t give a damn about authority.
Something had to give and, halfway through my fifth year, it did. I was called for a meeting with headmaster Gerald Banks. I expected a loud barrage of abuse, but he was very cool and professional. Mr Banks was a good man, and I now see how he turned out to be more of an influence than I realised. Miss Rees was not mentioned by name, but we both knew what the talk was about. He was astute enough to realise and could see that I was a very grown-up fifteen-year-old. I knew what I wanted and I think he knew I would get it. I had no fears about the future, exam results were of no real interest to me and I certainly didn’t give a toss about other people’s perception of my relationships.
As the summer of 1967 approached it was obvious that my French exams were never going to happen. Liz even rang me at my home telling me to stay away from the oral examination, given that I couldn’t really speak a word of French.
There were rumours that Liz been asked to leave at the end of the year or that she might have been sacked. I think she would have resigned long before they could have fired her. I went to her flat to be greeted by a bloke of about 22. She introduced me to him, he was in a band from Birmingham called the Ugly’s. She had met him at a gig that weekend. Liz Rees was with a man, I was mortified, but didn’t really know why. Now I know, of course, that I was jealous. She was spending time with him and not me. She could sense my distress, smiled and put her arm around me. He made us all some coffee.
After a few days sulking, I went to see her again but her housemate Eileen Marner told me that she was gone for good. I must have looked terrible because Eileen was extra nice and told me I needed to get over her. Liz had been my guru and I as a young boy I was totally smitten. Her outlook on the importance of enjoying life and take-it-while-you-can attitude struck a chord deep within me. She said that I could do it. She was right, wasn’t she? Thanks, Liz, wherever you may be.
I did glimpse her briefly once more, years later. It was the early summer of 1974 and I was on my way to play with Wild Turkey at the Marquee Club. I waited for a tube, dressed in my four-inch, wooden-heeled platform boots – black-and-white stars and stripes all over the leather – orange-and-yellow loon pants with twelve-inch flared hems, a psychedelic tie-dye shirt, accessorised with long necklaces, rings and my hair long and very curly. I also had a long, off-white Afghan coat – well, it was 1974. I spotted an attractive woman in her thirties, reading a book. She smiled back at me and as the train pulled out, she mouthed, ‘Bernard?’ Liz! But she was gone, and I have never seen or heard anything of her since. I thought again about those long discussions we had – not for the last time.
After that brief summer of love, the guitar always came first. I was dumped by girls many times, but I never gave it a second thought. In any case, I struggled with girls my own age, having discovered older women. A lot of the venues the Originals played had female managers who would ask the guys to ‘send that young one that plays the guitar for the cash’. The band would giggle as I would often be met by a buxom, mid-thirties stunner in seamed stockings, black underwear and high heels. The rest of the Originals would be waiting for my reaction.
I vividly remember a lunchtime bowling alley gig in Bedford; the manager was a miserable old sod of about 40, but his more than attractive wife was the lady with the money. She was a wonderful tease, running her hands along her legs, smiling at me, saying how young I was to play so well, flattering me and watching my reaction. Giggling and flirting outrageously, she gave me a sexy look and put the two ten-pound notes in her very considerable cleavage. She added that if I could retrieve the cash without using my hands she would add another five-pound note. I played along, burying my head in her bosom and using my teeth to get the notes. I was young, naive and, of course, enjoyed the whole thing very much. She told me she was bored in Bedford since moving from London where she had been an exotic dancer, whatever that meant.
‘Check these out,’ she said. ‘I was a bit of a catch when I was younger.’
She passed me a few photos of her naked or wearing very little. I was shocked, really, holding full-frontal pics with the very lady in them standing next to me. Her husband arrived at that point. He grabbed the pics from my hands, threw them in the corner and told me to fuck off. She laughed and gave me a cheeky wave. I had the gig money though, safely in the back pocket of my Levi’s. The band asked whether I’d gotten the £25. The extra fiver had been a ruse.
4.
Welcome to the Real World (#litres_trial_promo)
I finally left school in 1967, without any qualifications, but also without any misgivings. I did feel a little sorry for myself though and found myself kicking my heels around the town. School done, Liz Rees gone – I supposed I’d have to go to work, then.
To my folks’ relief I found a job, at a ladies’ hairdressing salon in Bletchley, about ten miles from Buckingham. I commuted on my scooter, on which I had painted bright coloured flowers – 1967 was, after all, the year of the hippie and of having flowers in your hair (or painted on your Vespa). My treasured Hofner guitar was similarly adorned. What a sight I must have been, a long-haired kid zooming down the A421 Buckingham to Bletchley road every morning. I got a lot of stick for it but all I cared about was making enough money to buy a Fender Strat and eventually, in my dream of dreams, using that Strat to earn me enough money to buy a white MGA sports car.
The reality of my first proper job soon hit home. Adam of York was in Brooklands Road and the owner was a small bald man, certainly not Adam, but maybe he had come from York. His wife was a first-class battleaxe, a Margaret Thatcher lookalike who called her husband ‘Mr Derek’, and I disliked her from the start, though she was fascinating. She was prim, very self-assured and loudly northern, but affected a posh speaking voice, accented by her heavy Lancashire twang: ‘Madam’s ’air lewks loovly – very classy ’air,’ she would say. ‘That’ll be two-poun’ ten, please, lady.’
‘Mrs Derek’ seemed incredibly old but was probably only forty. She was a tyrant and treated all the staff like shit. She obviously believed that she owned people if she paid their wages. I heard ‘I pay the wages around ’ere!’ many times. I should thank the sad old bird, really, because she cemented my desire to be my own boss.
I washed around fifty heads a week. My hands were in and out of hot and cold water every day, sores and splits began to appear and they even bled. I applied tins of Atrixo cream, but the pain was still excruciating. The final straw for me came with Mrs Derek’s point-blank refusal to let me watch Chelsea and Spurs in the FA cup final of 1967. This was the only live football game of the year. I snuck out of the salon at three in the afternoon and watched a bit of it in a local TV shop, before moving next door, to the Jim Marshall music shop but my northern ogre knew where to find me.
‘Get back to work, you little sod!’ she screamed from the doorway, her face contorted.
I was making three pounds and a few shillings a week from this waste of time. It had been my folks who, understandably, thought I should have a real job. But I hated it so much. I returned to the salon one last time. ‘Just stick your job Mr Derek, and your awful wife. I’ve got a gig to go to,’ I said, feeling rather good about myself.
Mrs Derek was furious because she had wanted to sack me first. What a sight she was – eyes bulging, tongue out, spitting out words and looking at Mr Derek for support. He gave none. The older girls laughed, loving the fact that the old bag was getting it from the youngest and lowliest employee.
I walked out, never to return. My folks took it well but were keen to see me employed somewhere. It was not to be with the Originals. I had been feeling very stuck with them, sucked into music I didn’t really want to play. I was a lot younger and had younger ideas. Time to find another band but, as it turned out, they found me.
The Daystroms were the biggest local group in the area, even touring outside Buckingham with their own vehicle – a Ford Thames van. I’d heard a lot about them. They took their name from a Swedish company that produced home kits to make amplifiers. Mac Stevens was their bassist and Tony Saunders was on drums. Singer Dougie Eggleton called the shots and, most importantly, owned the van and PA system. Dougie had seen me with the Originals and decided I would be better off in the Daystroms. I didn’t argue – I wanted to be in the biggest group in the area.
Lead guitarist Alan Rogers was Nipper’s cousin. He was a cool guy; tall, slim and, I noticed, he had very long fingers. I thought this was essential for a guitarist – I looked at my own fingers and inwardly frowned. But even with longer fingers it became obvious in those early rehearsals that ‘the kid’ was already some way ahead of Alan as a lead guitarist.
The group practised in the drivers’ room at Buckingham’s milk factory. It was small, stank of smoke, and was not at all suited for the job but it was free and I loved it. I didn’t love the material much. Even at this very early stage I knew I couldn’t play ‘Silence is Golden’ by the Tremeloes for very long. I was still super-keen to be playing, though, and endeavoured to learn all the rhythm parts. I also knew most of the lead guitar parts, and Alan Rogers was very aware of this as he struggled to play them.
My first performance with the Daystroms was at Whitchurch youth club. Alan Rogers didn’t show up and Dougie Eggleton was panicking. ‘Bernard, you will have to play lead and rhythm guitar, I know you can do it.’
I knew that I could do it, too, and even if I was a little over-confident everything went well. Afterwards, in the dressing room, Dougie announced that I was to take over on lead. Nobody uttered a word in protest, and I breathed the rarefied air of the lead guitarist.
Over summer we changed our name to the more modern-sounding the Clockwork Mousetrap, and the Ford van became a kaleidoscope of colour. On stage we played ‘San Francisco’ by Scott McKenzie, ‘Massachusetts’ by the Bee Gees and still bloody ‘Silence is Golden’. Despite my reservations about the material, I played a lot of shows, including my first bookings at any distance. We travelled to Northampton, Bedford, Aylesbury and even into Cambridgeshire. It wasn’t exactly a world tour, but for a 16-year-old it was an amazing experience. I was at the annual Buckingham Carnival parade, playing with the band on the back of a lorry. We also played the town hall that night.
I built a musical reputation yet, to a fair few, I seemed like a ‘right little big ’ead’, with an ego. But I was simply growing in confidence because I knew I could play. Most of the criticism came from people who would so have loved to be able to play the guitar. Bitterness is a horrible trait.
We played just about every local village hall twice – or more. We also had more prestigious bookings, like the officers’ clubs of Upper Heyford and Croughton US air bases. The crowd reacted differently to UK audiences. Maybe seeing a band playing American songs reminded them of home, thousands of miles away, as did the drinks and homemade snacks that I had never heard of before: cold Budweiser beers, Hershey bars, and the infamous product of one Mr Jack Daniel. I looked forward to the interval, when I could listen to their great soul records, including Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye. I was soon hooked on soul. After the break I’d have to get up and play ‘Silence is Golden’. I really wasn’t impressed.
One GI became a huge factor in my subsequent career. He was a black officer at Heyford and a guitarist, who had seen me struggling with a few parts. He approached me one Friday night during a break. He had a rich, southern accent, somewhere like Alabama. We had been playing our average versions of Stax material, probably ‘Soothe Me’ or ‘Hold On I’m Coming’ and he asked if he could play my guitar. He was good – very good. To my shame I only remember his first name, Bobby, but I’ve never forgotten his help.
He showed me the correct way to play the great rhythm guitar parts and brought his own Fender to the club. Between sets he taught me to play all sorts while the others were usually having a drink. Bobby explained in great detail where and how to shape chords and told me about fret positions. He kicked me into advanced playing by really emphasising the importance of rhythm guitar when I had previously been of the mind that lead guitar was of prime importance. Bobby spoke about ‘the feel’, over and over again. He told me that ‘the feel’ should be the very first and the very last thing I think about when learning a song. That tiny but monumental piece of advice stayed with me throughout my career.
