ROCK AND ROLL pt 5: The search for Slade

I used to go watching Slade everywhere, big halls, small halls, clubs, you name it. I remained a big fan of theirs, even when they were effectively dead and determinedly putting on their best ever shows. One year I saw them 15 times. Unbelievable. Even the group didn't understand it.

After Slade lost their singer and their bassist, they carried on with Dave Hill and Don Powell from the original band and a succession of musicians, going through the 'ever-revolving door' that comprised the rest of the band.

At this point in the game (1995), a guy I knew back then had this quite brilliant idea of staging a Glam Rock Festival with a series of concerts featuring the one-time big stars, including Slade, Suzi Quatro, Les Gray's Mud, The Rubettes and Brian Connolly and whichever version of The Sweet he was dragging round with him.

Because he was a mate and a big Slade fan - and also because he really liked my band, Bad Habits - we got a contract to play at the festival and the support slot with Slade.

He chose to do it in Widnes of all places..... at The Queen's Hall in Widnes, to be precise. What a cracking venue. Widnes is best known because the rather lovely Sporty Spice came from there and also because a road goes through it.

The shows sold almost respectably, due to him getting whatever free press he could and bugging every radio station he could think of to mention the shows. Widnes is a stone's throw from the immense city of Liverpool. Not ONE advert was placed in any Liverpool paper and so the sales could have been a whole lot better. The venue sportingly took over responsibility for the costs of the shows when it became apparent to my mate that he could make a whacking great loss on the deal.

The day of our show with Slade arrived and we piled into our cars and hit the M62. A bunch of us turned up and set up a stall to sell our CD and stuff and then we found the dressing room at the side of the stage and put our things in there.

Slade's backline was already in place, so we set up our gear in front of their rigs and got our sound together.

The dark, cavernous hall had a real echo problem and snares hit once came back at us in triplicate.

As we soundchecked, the main attraction turned up in dribs and drabs. I had met them all several times and they were definitely quite surprised to see me up on the stage soundchecking.

We clattered meaningfully through 'Smoke on the water' and declared ourselves basically content that we were loud enough for the venue, seeing as all sound was reflected everywhere and from onstage it sounded like a total quagmire.

A thumbs up from the sound engineer either meant that he was fed up with trying to get a decent sound for us and wanted to go to the pub, or that we actually sounded halfway acceptable. The video we got later confirms that he was possibly in the pub while we soundchecked.

We wandered off stage to eat our butties and crisps in our dressing room, to find Diminuitive Wolverhampton Rock Legend, David Hill, all 4' 6" of him in his stack heels, trying to slide a partition across the dressing room so we wouldn't see him in his grundies, as he changed into his comedy superstar outfit later on.

"This won't do at all. This just isn't right.." he kept grumbling, puffing and panting, as he inched the heavy partition across the gap. It took him about 5 minutes and no-one lifted a finger to help him. The rest of his group looked at him bemused, as he sweated and chunnered to himself and strained headlong towards a hernia.

The partition in place, he got us to move all of our things quickly out of his tennis court sized area into our three square feet. Obviously he needed the extra room for his ego. we put our equipment cases well out of the way behind their gear onstage, as we would have ended up changing in the street otherwise.

Once we had finished moving our belongings, The Diminutive Rock Legend walked up to me and I thought he was actually going to pass the time of day with me for a minute or two, as he had done so many times before. Nope. We were on a professional footing now and he decided to break the news to me bluntly that we could forget playing any Slade songs. Once he had hammered that point home, he was slightly discombooberated to find that the rest of my band weren't particularly keen on Slade, so we weren't going to trot anything of theirs out.... and that there was slightly more interest in our £200 fee.

The Diminutive Rock Legend then stomped off in a cloud of his own importance, to go for a nice meal down the road with manager Len Tuckey (who we all admired as The Man Who Had Repeatedly Bonked Suzi Quatro), while the rest of his hirelings looked for a MacDonalds. What a glamourous life, eh?

We were sightly disappointed by the attitude of my former hero, but shrugged it off as we had a good gab about gear and such with the rest of the group. Steve Makin, their excellent guitarist, tried to point out that we don't play Smoke on the water like that... I cheerfully recalled a nice comeback line... "You do when you're in THIS band!" and mentally thanked my old mate Gary.

Further disappointment came just before we went on stage. None of us had picked up our copy of the contract stating that we would be paid our £200 fee, so the sound engineer decided to charge us half of it, or we could forget going through the PA. "Bollocks to that," we said, but we were unable to root out the contract and had to stump the cash up. I was going to drive 40 minutes each way for it, but there wasn't time. The guy who booked us lived 20 minutes away and had a copy of the contract there, but he was trying to find Dave Hill to do the soppy fan thing.

Then we got some more rules, in case the sudden charge for going through the PA wasn't enough of an insult.

If you sing any Slade songs (NO WE DON'T) the lights and sound go off.

If you step in front of the monitors (a space reserved for the star) the lights and sound go off.

If you play over 30 minutes, the lights and sound go off.

We were supposed to be doing 45 minutes, but of course it was in the contract. The guy who booked us was by now cuddled up to Dave Hill somewhere, so he was unavailable for comment, or to sort out his show. We were blazing mad.

This anger did us a lot of good, as when we went on stage, we went on determined to tear the place apart and did a great set. Seeing as we had brought a lot of the crowd with us, we went down very well. Slade support acts used to get bricked off in the days when people cared fanatically about Slade. Status Quo, Alex Harvey, Saxon... they all dodged missiles. We didn't. We did 40 minutes and the sound man didn't bother to turn the sound off. I think he had gone to the pub again.





After we went off, the lesser members of Slade congratulated us and one person travelling with them said that Slade's bassist Trevor was leaving soon; Did I fancy talking to Dave about the job? No, I f---ing DIDN'T.

We watched Slade's set from the side of the stage for a while 'til I went down the front like I always used to, when Jim Lea was still in the group and had a go at enjoying it.

When Slade finished their show, we got our gear out through the back doors of the venue. I had a few albums with me and as I saw The Diminutive Rock Legend stood around, I went up to him. He saw the albums and groaned, "Haven't you got enough of those signed?" When Slade were up a certain creek and we used to see them regularly, it never occurred to me to get records signed. I missed lots of opportunities. Now The Diminutive Rock Legend was being sniffy about signing a few autographs. "Oh, no.. I lent them to my mate and have just got them back," I lied. "I don't want them signed," which at least was now true.

We had achieved one of my life ambitions and had supported (what was left of) Slade. We hadn't died. We had been ripped off by a sound engineer, who had warned us about everything short of breathing. I had been let down terribly by Dave Hill's stinky attitude. but.. we had done a great show and gone down really well. Result. I, for one, was quite happy when I got home.

12-strings to rule them all...

Just bought one of these....

Gibson SG Supreme Bass

This is my new Gibson SG Supreme bass on its first outing.

ROCK & ROLL PART FOUR: If it’s too loud, you’re too old…”

(A further past adventure)

Once upon a time, I joined a very good band (which I still choose not to name) that worked like crazy, with no weekends off and no lives to speak of. We should have – by rights – been a very happy little crew, as we worked solidly, played very well and on the whole, knew what we were doing, when and where we were doing it, and worked solidly as a team to get most things done.

In groups, there is always a fly in the ointment. As soon as one person joins up with another, there is always scope for disagreement. In this particular group, the discontent mainly stemmed from there being an established pecking order. The drummer and guitarist had been together for untold centuries and everyone else was considered to be also-rans in comparison.

The guitarist was used to playing at the sedate volume of a transistor radio in a sandwich shop and a gutless performance which wouldn’t disturb anyone. Rehearsals with a new bassist toughened the group up somewhat and the audience reactions seemed to be very good indeed.

However, the fly was stirring away discontentedly in the ointment with a very big spoon.

One thing about having been in a group for a long time – for me, anyway - is that I know what I am used to. I know what I like and what I am comfortable with and I obviously prefer things to stay that way as much as possible. In this group with me as the newcomer, I was unintentionally instigating change by just being there and having an actual playing style (even though I had toned it down quite significantly to almost the point of catatonic boredom) and there was resistance to that change.

One night at a club in Sale, I was told again that my bass was too ‘boomy’. I was stood right in front of my amplifiers and it just wasn’t set too loud or too deep. The lead guitarist glowered at me and made ugly face gestures which I was supposed to interpret in some way. I just thought he was either having a stroke, desperately wanted a crap mid-show or something, and so I carried on regardless. The rhythm guitarist, who was stood next to me, had obviously had several years of experience of translating this gurning into The Queen’s English. His next move was to start fiddling with my amplifier volumes while I was singing ‘Summer of ‘69’. As I sang, I noticed that my bass volume was dropping alarmingly and I had alarming visions of new speakers, blown fuses and all sorts,as my sound petered right out. I turned round slightly when I got a second and saw the rhythm guitarists hands moving deftly away from a pair of severely turned down amps.

I hissed at him that if he ever did that again, then he would need new fingers.

I then set my amp volumes so I could at least hear a little and resumed singing. This all went on in front of a paying club audience, mid-song.

I glanced over at the lead guitarist and he had a face like thunder. He was REALLY glowering at me. I was just put out by this stupid behaviour. So I switched my amps off and just strummed the bass in an unplugged style. The rest of the band didn’t notice. The audience did, however. At the break, the Tom Jones tribute act that we were on the bill with asked me what had happened to my bass sound? One minute the group had a lovely balance then the bass disappeared, then it went off altogether.

He asked. So I told him.
He thought it was nuts.

There was an uncomfortable interval, where the group all decamped to the lounge bar. I asked if I was too loud. “Yes, because I can hear you,” was the reply. Brilliant. Bass players should be seen but not heard. There’s a quote for you. Use it if you want to. I didn’t say it though.

The second half carried on under a hostile sort of truce and there was a loud argument in the car park, as we loaded to leave, about exactly what was reasonable in this outfit and what wasn’t. When we landed back at my house after the gig, I told the rest of the band that I was sick of being treated like a leper because I actually plugged my bass in and that I was leaving.

The drummer went into his well used and worn out speech about people in groups always letting him down and wore me down into continuing for the time being.

The next week we played at a large hotel, out in the wilds, near Disley, Cheshire. The lead guitarist had more complaints about the bass volume, which was merely set to ‘timid’. I played at the quietest volume imaginable and actually played a couple of songs deliberately out of time and in the wrong key, to see if the group noticed or cared. They didn’t. I even dropped a few naughty words into the backing vocals. I avoided the rest of the group at the intervals.

Our next gig was at a prison on the way to Blackpool. Lovely….. I went on stage with my newly bought black 1958 Flying V bass and the lead guitarist had an apoplectic fit about it not being a 60’s guitar. Wrong. To be factually correct, The Kinks used one, as did a few others, but never mind. That actually gave the temperamental artiste a migraine.

I was told that the next night’s show in Salford was cancelled. I think they actually got their old bass player to do it.

I would not play with them again. The next rehearsal was cancelled, due to illness. I rang another member of the band about something else and of course he was out. A bell rang in my head and I drove to the rehearsal room to catch them rehearsing with a much-revered former 60’s pop star that they knew. The rhythm guitarist was playing bass through one of my amps! Cheeky fucker! I walked up behind him and switched it off. He nearly shat himself.

The rest of the group - and the much-revered former 60’s pop star - retreated cowering to the far end of the room, while I made it clear to the group leader that I had had enough and would collect my gear the next night.

Which I did….

ROCK & ROLL PART THREE: Raining cats and dogs in West Yorkshire....

Another true story..

One bloody awful wet night we found ourselves over in West Yorkshire. In Heckmondwike, or somewhere grandly-named like that. Certainly the wrong side of Huddersfield. We had driven over, in what was almost certainly the worst downpour ever seen in the entire history of man, with possibly three inch visibility in front of us, to play at..... the local working men's club.

This place held a few fond memories for me, as it was the first venue I had ever played with that group. I had driven over in my own car and the rest of the group had travelled together in one car with a trailer for the rest of the gear. On arriving and parking up, staring from about 20 feet away at the venue, the rain was so coming down hard, we couldn't actually see the building through the downpour.

After a few depressing minutes, I decided that the rain wasn't going to let up, so I grabbed my suit bag and some guitar cases and legged it for dear life, through the rain, up the Z-shaped ramp at the side of the club, which always made the trip three times as long with all our heavy gear. Once I had emptied my car, I made for the group trailer and rescued my bass amps from the back and lugged them both up the ramp. By the time I had finished and was back in the dressing room, I looked something seriously like a drowned rat.

I got a towel out of my suit bag and dried my hair off a bit. Then I damply went on stage and set my gear up, plugged everything in, tuned up, bought a drink at the bar. Great. All working. In the Dry at last. Nice pint. But what is wrong with this picture?

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the rest of the mighty troupe again yet at this point.

They had not actually ventured out into the wet to come into the venue. I put my coat over my head and braved the storm outside again. Back down the Z-shape ramp I went, to find the remining three artistes sat in the dry, on the gear in the trailer, moaning about the bloody awful weather. Not without reason, I must concede.

The drummer looked balefully at the driving rain and proposed quite seriously that we just cancelled the show and drove home. The lead guitarist (1) nodded in the glummest possible form of agreement, just like he always did, no matter what it was that the drummer said. Lesser Guitarist (2) looked at the weather and probably thought it was great weather for going out on the wiley windswept moors shooting at animals and that, but not quite up to it for carrying gear around. He was sat firmly on the fence about what to do, really, but given time, he would side with the others, just as he always did. They sort of looked like they were really going to get back in the car and turn round and drive another 75 miles home, without even bothering to do the show.

That was the point where I realised what professionalism was (and wasn't).

They were worried about getting their hair wet, while I had unquestioningly got on with the job and moved all my own gear by myself, got sodden doing it and had set up on stage in front of a rapidly growing audience (who were also rapidly getting older while they waited for these temperamental artistes to get their collective finger out). They sat there like a bunch of jellies, worrying about getting their f**ing hair wet!

I HAD MORE HAIR THAN THE REST OF THEM PUT TOGETHER AT THAT POINT.

I look back now with a degree of embarrassment at how I nearly lost it and went berserk at them. I was furious. It could have gone very badly. I kept as calm as I could and told them flatly that if I had to go back in there and dismantle my gear, I would first of all explain to the concert secretary and audience exactly why I was doing it. Their agent would simply love that, as I am sure he would have heard about it before I had got all of my gear back in the car. I also would expect to be paid in full for the job and it would definitely be the last one I ever did with them. If I ended up putting my gear back in the car, unused, after a 60 plus mile round trip, it would be the very LAST time they ever saw me or my gear.

The gloomy troupe had a conflab as I stomped off back into the venue to give them a minute or two to confer. They must have wreaked a total miracle of self-hypnosis to motivate themseves to get off their backsides and somehow they assembled themselves into the well drilled fighting machine that they probably were about 40 years earlier and carried PA columns the size of classic red telephone boxes, guitar amps, drums and a partidge in a pear tree up the impractical Z-shaped ramp.

We did a good, but damp, show, but it was certainly the point where I decided that it was the beginning of the end for me.



The final show of that part of my music career came a little while later. That's a good story. I'll bring that one up for you in a while.

ROCK & ROLL PART TWO: Murder on the dance floor

I've had quite a bit of feedback about my earlier tale of The Pub At World's End. If you thought that was interesting, I may be able to pull a couple of similar things out of the old diary.

Here's another story, from way back in the day...

I used to be in this rather good band and we did proper 60's stuff and we worked very hard, a few nights a week, playing all sorts of venues in Lancashire and Yorkshire, from working men's clubs through Masonic lodges and hotels and small theatres and civic centres, right up to the rather prestigious Preston Guild Hall.

One night we went to play in a gorgeous function room in a hotel somewhere up Lancaster way and played at a Licensed Victualers (pronounced 'vittlers') party. As you can probably guess, Pub landlords, when they get a chance to get together, work nice and hard on eating themselves stupid, getting as pissed as rats, shagging each others wives and getting up to whatever evil mischief they can manage.

The venue we were playing that night was a fairly regular function gig for us and we had a full dance floor and the evening was going very well... until we noticed a small crowd gathering at one corner of the dance floor, where they shouldn't exactly be.

Guys in groups tend to watch our audiences, as they are our entertainment, especially some of the extremely lovely women dancing in front of us. The group exchanged a few looks as things unfolded before us. There was one woman who looked especially distressed and some people were comforting her and a lot more people were stood in a circle round a couple of people crouching down, over what turned out to be some poor bloke on the floor, who was not really doing very much of anything.

Someone at the back of the room waved frantically for us to stop playing, which seemed like a good idea to us, as we had been playing for a while since all this had first kicked off. And we getting less and less comfortable with it all, as we noticed the woman at the back of the room was getting more and more hysterical.

We ground to a halt mid-song in a fairly professional stylee and you wouldn't have spotted the join. Our guitarist popped off the stage and sauntered over to the scene of the commotion to take a quick but very subtle peek at the source of the halt.

Our guitarist came back to the stage and said that "There's nowt down for him.... Brown bread". Ooops. Meanwhile, the organisers searched high and low for the DJ. We knew him fairly well from doing a fair number of gigs with him. Quite a likeable lad. That night his girlfriend wasn't sat next to him handing him discs, so while we played, he was making the most of the opportunity to have wild bestial sex, swinging from the chandeliers, with one of the party goers.

The guests bemoaned the total lack of any music of any sort and, in the absence of the hapless DJ who was probably experiencing a 'little death' of his own at the time, the finger was pointed at us to get back up on stage and play some guitars - or something - quietly, while the new widow totally failed to get used to the idea and cried her heart out, while people danced on a couple of feet from her rather uncomplaining husband.

Under the odd circumstances, we competely resisted the temptation to belt out 'Heartbeat' as it may have just been slightly inappropriate. After about ten more minutes, in rolled a posse of Ambulencemen, who waved at us frantically to stop playing. Experienced musicians recognise all the hand signals after a few years.

We cut the song short - in our rather accomplished stylee - skirted round the opposite way to the gatering of ambulancemen and wandered off aimlessly to the bar in the next room. People were still standing a few feet away from the commotion, as if waiting for a bus, gabbing away, oblivious to the drama around them.

Still.... no music......

We had sat down in the nearby lounge bar and had downed a pint each and were looking at the prospect of another drink when we finally heard some Herb Alpert mood music drifting through the closed louvre doors. An odd night and not much to laugh about, really...... until in walked a hapless DJ, looking a bit shocked at it all.

"Isn't this dreadful?" he said. Then he made up some story about why he was out of the function room for so long. Something to do with his car. It was really filthy weather and simply throwing it down outside and he was bone dry, but never mind. He made a move to get up to go and change the CD.

"Your flies are still open," quipped one of our party. A red-faced young man, totally caught out, did up his zip and sidled off into the main room.

Group News: March 2008

March 2nd:
A quiet time at the moment, as part of the group is away on holiday. Now that Mike has done such a good job of settling in that we are looking at getting four brand new songs into the set shortly. This of course all depends, as usual, about us all being in agreement with what is put forward. It is often the case that one of us may not have any enthusiasm at all for any of the songs put forward, which knocks us back to square one. But we are very democratic and patient, so we keep trying to find 4 good songs that we all like.

March 6th:
Ian went to watch Hare Of The Dog at The Moses Gate (a venue we are back at later this year). They put in an excellent performance, with a number of the songs that we cover in their set (which is fair enough, seeing as we didn't write them to start with)! More reason to get some new songs together, as we do a number of songs that 'everyone' does. Ian was very impressed by them indeed.

8th March:
The Antelope, Kearsley - The landlord seemed to be quite pleased with our performance. We are back there in September, anyway. We will be rehearsing a few new songs over the next few weeks. We have a few songs that we have done some work on already, so there is scope for a good amount of change to the show. Probably about 7 new songs. Change is good for you.

13th March:
A rehearsal at Colin's country mansion. We worked on a few new ideas and tightened up one or two things that have been missing from the set for a little while. It was decided that a couple of songs that we do are dropping out of the setlist, as we have played them more than enough now.

14th March:
The Fleece, Ashton. This is probably what you would call our 'home gig' as three of the group live within spitting distance of the venue. Thanks to our supporters for turning up - great to see Mr and Mrs H, Howie and various of our favourite group The Incredibles, a Lazzy or so. What a nice big noisy crowd!



We have been trying to get more video footage together for the site but Colin's video camera doesn't like how loud we are, even when we are supposedly 'quiet'.

18th March:
The Incredibles hosted the usual Tuesday jam night at The Caledonian, Ashton. Mike got up and did an acoustic set (we must convince him to do one of the tunes from that with us) and Ian got to play with The Incredibles, after they had a bass mishap of sorts. A really great jam night run by Howie's crew and Tommy. Everyone should go to it.

Easter weekend:
Mike is in Scotland, disturbing the peace of all the Haggis growing community, while running nekkid through the heather. Steve is busy teaching Wigan's guitarists to be excellent inbetween visiting pubs and emptying the pumps. Ian is doing some gardening and going to watch Justin Currie in Manchester again on Easter Sunday. Colin is preparing his defence for his upcoming Kerbcrawling trial (only joking). In between all this feverish activity, we are listening to a bunch of new songs and we reckon they will be quite good to go shortly.

The Cherry Gardens rang on Easter Sunday, telling us that we now won't be playing there on Boxing Day as they aren't putting a band on that night. Not overly impressed, but what can you do?

28th March:
The Windmill, Westhoughton. Lots of Ian's friends popped in to watch us - thanks very much.
We had a good evening, despite one of Steve's two new Strats being interfered with by the PA, which we reckon was down to venue's electrics. The landlady was very happy with us indeed, but has filled the venue diary up til next year (as they only put groups on monthly at the moment),so it remains to be seen whether we will be back there or not.

29th March:
The Woodlands, Blackburn. Again, we seem to have a regular local following up there who come out to see us. Great. We appreciate it. Not a bad show, Mike had rearranged the setlist a bit for us.

March 31st:
A very positive evening's rehearsal - some songs have now been completely banished from the setlist for all eternity and we won't miss them at all. Everything lasts for a certain time and then you move on. We ran through six new songs, which are in various states of repair and have agreed the next 8 new songs we are working on (one of which should be in the show next week), plus we came up with a few new ideas out of the blue, which we all readily agreed on.

Back again in early April!!!