Dad bought the family guitar one Sunday from a swap shop in Lee Green; my brothers and I rejoiced! It comes with a training book,- it’s author: -the bishop of Woolwich!! – really! I struggle to hold the strings down- how do we tune the dam thing?! I give up for a while. A friend at school Chris Pye is given a guitar for helping out at a school jamboree. –We are great mates. I go to his house – we take guitars to school (Charlton secondary) Mr James the music teacher tunes us up. A string breaks and hits me just above the right eye- “take care of this guitar thing boy” he said.
Chris plays the first live guitar chord I have ever heard- A minor! Wow! What a sound! I play the James Bond theme- Harry Lime etc on just one string……..we swap ideas, I pickup a D major + E major etc …and it’s home to practice on what was to become my first love.
The Beatles have been caressing my ears for years. I love their harmonic singing- along with my brothers- as we write our first song; ‘She’s my girl’,- and what a great chorus it is. – The Beatles; The Small Faces;The Kinks; The Move; Jimi Hendrix; anything with strong guitar in it, in fact almost all bands,-we love them! Sunday mornings I join in with Chris at Johnny Morrisons house in Highgrove Plumstead. He shows us lots of stuff. – plenty to do!!!
Some time later Chris is in a band ;he is the lead guitarist. We (he?) have slashed guitar and radio speakers, and discovered distortion-YEAH! Jeff Beck coming out of his bedroom .
Cobwebs and Strange. In 1969
The band let me play and sing along with them- what a sensation-lots happens. ‘Cobwebs and Strange’ become my first band. We do a first gig for me at Saint Peters Youth Club in Woolwich. Lots of skinheads, Ska and Reggae music was played there. We get things thrown at us, usually peanuts then finally a lump of metal – but all is safe – JUST! …Next day in town kids recognize us – first brush with fame I guess.
Electric guitars we experiment on – surgeons Bath and Pye turn a harmless Vox Stroller into a psychedelic painted , five pick-up non-controllable beast!
Rehearsals move to the Ascension Halls Plumstead Common. Del Palmer (my other best mate) – I tell him to buy a Bass guitar – I teach him for a week and he’s in! He suffers the finger pain we all go through and sits at home with them dangled in warm bowls of salt water to harden them up. We eat packets of raw jelly to strengthen the nails. Our drummer Grf (Gary Robert Fuller) is the loudest Ginger Baker around. Barry O’Hare the ex bass player moves, on as does Douggie Doy (rhythm guitar). Where are they now? BAND SPLITS when the speakers in my amp split.
During the middle of this period , while working on my scooter a Vespa Sportique, my brothers;- elder John and Alan (middle) and I spot Johnny Coathen more than a couple of times walking up the road with his electric guitar in hand, and finally I pluck up the courage to talk to him. It’s OK. He is on his way to ‘the benches’ – a spot up in Samuel street, where the most amazing player Melvyn Hyland sit’s on special nights, and performs to a quite substantial crowd of onlookers. HE WAS THE MAESTRO- we all get to talk. Johnny plays the best blues in the world ,and another character Alan Maclean, - who lives in the same street very rarely makes an appearance – and boy is it worth waiting for! This guy sings like Stevie Winwood and plays bass as well! Melv, and John play Hendrix and/ Clapton licks like they’re going out of style, but they sure weren’t, that was where we were! I pick up my first riffs from these masters. Melv plays Country guitar in the style of Chet Atkins , Classical guitar – pop, rock but he’s a rock and roller at heart – and still is.
Vanessa Lee works where Al Mac works. I meet her, and she becomes my girlfriend. She’s great, a true Katherine Hepburn. She takes me to meet her brother- the now legendary Albert Lee. We go to The Roebuck pub gigs with him in Lewisham to hear him perform superbly with top club and radio stars Country Fever. It’s music all the way as Head Hands and Feet -(Albert plays this stuff to me) showcase their talents on completion of there first album at the ‘Speakeasy’in the city. Vanessa and I enjoy the hospitality of their record company, and sit down for a meal with the band and friends. I sit opposite Peter Sarstedt who’s recently had a number one with ‘Where do you go to my lovely’- what an experience.
Del, me, Vanessa plus an old friend Gary Gardner
I play Albert the Free albums and he likes this band a lot. He records some on to his ¼ inch tape deck ,which takes prominence in his front room. Albert cranks up the volume and plays along with lots of his own music as he so rightly explains- ‘to get the feel of a live band in the room’
BAND SCHOOLING
At school things are looking up. I meet Vic King (a year above me) he plays drums. Alan Bagshaw plays bass and he lives 15 yards from Del Palmer. Another band is in the air. I look for a bass player for the new outfit. As I neared the two bass players houses I was faced with the decision of who’s door to knock at first. An impulse sent me to Del Palmer and I found him at home on the Morris Walk Estate.!
Work begins, I’m writing songs and have been for some time. Del’s dad ‘Nobby’ runs a part of a youth club, and offers us a room for a jam. We play all afternoon, and boy isn’t it great – this is the start of something real good. We were Charlton School’s rock band ,Tame, later to become the KT Bush Band.
TAME get off to a flying start. Vic meets a young man who wishes to manage a band – one Mr Jim Stockdale of Stockdale Tyres fame, Lakedale Road Plumstead. Vic’s other band are offered an introduction to meet the great man, but decline, So we take their place, we are serious – meet the man, and bingo – it’s on! John Clary offers to roadie for us and comes along complete with his own Transit van.
Tame, 1970 L-R Vic King, Del and me.
The band do all the local sixth-form gigs, playing The John Roan School Blackheath; Saint Josephs Academy, and many others. These are the younger equivalent of the college circuit that bigger bands do. We are treated like stars and still perform all our own songs, and support many other bands on ‘major’ gigs, such as Woolwich polytechnic, and the Woolwich Polytechnic Disco,- another of our favourite venues. More gigs come along in the freezing winter atmosphere in Chiselhurst Caves ,where The Jimi Hendrix Experience had appeared.
Our manager is hard to find. We enter the Melody Maker competition to no avail, using un-familiar back lines, creating much heartache especially for a guitarist who relies on his own sound.-still;- all good learning. Singers are auditioned from the start, but I stay on lead vocal with Del backing. We even perform acoustic sets in between the gigs. A long residency at the famous Shakespear Hotel in the centre of Woolwich, where bands the like of Fleetwood Mac, amongst others, appear. Squeeze; Glen Tilbrook’s Band (a couple of years younger than ourselves ) begin to gel locally around this time.
Ready to Rock at the Shakespear in Woolwich!
WRITE A HIT!
It’s all change again!- harmony singing calls the tune. One day while having refreshment at The Three Tuns pub in Blackheath Village, with my pal Cliff Starn. Barry Sherlock introduces himself to me and we get chatting. Barry was an Eltham Green school whizzo another muso ,along with Lionel Azulay – a fiery little drummer and multi-instrumentalist who I also knew from the TAME days. Barry was the first Beatles nut I’d come across who knew a hell of a lot about them and their music. We got on like a house on fire, and within the hour were playing songs at his place, eventually writing two songs that night! Barry had a job as tape operator in Dick James music studio. He has a wealth of knowledge. shortly before, he worked at The Beatles Apple Music and met the fab four!
Eventually a new band was on the go. Del, Lionel, Barry and myself – known as Company. We get an audition at Essex Music in Poland street London. We have a lovely manager in Albert Azulay (Lionel’s Brother) who had previously, by some miracle, secured us a recording session with Ossie Burns – the early producer of The Bee Gees, although at that time making hits with the New Seekers We were very young and generally not that familiar with the recording process (apart from Barry) but were more than keen to learn. Like a lot of kids around this time I guess, I used to hook up a couple of tape or cassette machines to experience the wonders of overdubbing. Ossie fortunately liked our songs, and politely told us to rehearse, rehearse, -work hard as we could on all sides.
Lionel’s family, bless ‘em , used to let us rehearse in Albert’s bedroom upstairs once, twice, sometimes every day of the week! Albert used to sleep in the same room at times,-because he was doing night work! We finally get signed to Essex Music and Fly/Cube Records. Company are scheduled to make a couple of singles and one album,- things go well, myself and Barry’s songs are chosen for the master recording session….. the backing tracks are laid down, then….. Tradegy!..... Lionel has a near fatal road accident on his motorbike on the way home from his girlfriend’s house late that night.His arm is severely damaged. He is hospitalized – the boy who when I first played with him- (one of Malcolm Clark’s early mates) would play rhythms – different on each limb, and have a conversation at the same time . Boy !I cried as much as him when this came about .
…. We the band ,waited and waited. The band had to complete it’s commitments , so reluctantly another drummer was required. Adverts then auditions led to a very nice drummer Charlie Morgan, who secured the job .At seventeen years of age - he lied about this telling us he was nineteen! He was a very organized person our Charlie.
CONKERS
The band now known as Conkers, secured the talents of Ivan Penfold , who put some humour back into the outfit; bringing songs like ‘ Give me money ‘, maybe some of this early stuff could get up on the Web along with Company songs and the like. A lot of these recordings were ‘one take’ demo’s so if tracked down, maybe we could all agree to ‘air’ a few favourites. Ivan later moved on to a marvellous band known as Grand Hotel managed by the super Tom Watkins (Wham, East 17 etc). Line up included session supremo Graham Broad (drums), and the brilliant Danny Mcintosh on lead guitar duty (now Kate’s partner- Bush that is!) Kate had a writing contract with EMI and they were always asking her to come up with a Number one hit – the same asked of myself at Essex Music. I used to call her and ask how the writing was going fairly regularly. I always found it easy to talk my lovely friend Kate.
Conkers set out to conquer England organized by now manager Alan Reeves ( ‘Port and Brandy man’). John Guy was roadie and general heart councillor- Mr Reliable for the band, and could lift spirits at the blackest of times. The tour was a total disaster; blown out at Carlisle-,blown out up Edinburgh, stranded for some days. Del, John and myself stayed, while there was enough fuel to get the others back to London. We had one great big last meal, and slept for 16 hours,- rescued by the boys and the record company on the Monday. We returned home in some disarray. The band did eventually split but only after doing some notable performances backing the likes of The Majestics, among whose ranks Peter Clark the actor of James Bond, and other blockbusting films belonged. In those days he was known as Clark Peters! They were a terrific soul singing trio.
Amongst other venues, we held a fairly long residency at Baileys nightclub in Bristol. Johnny Worth the composer of many hits including What do want if you don’t want money,also Gonna make you an offer you can’t Refuse, conducted the band on the first night, after rehearsing the complete package. He certainly gave me some invaluable instruction I still use to this day
Click poster for next chapter
One of our early posters by Bill Stickers