how much I enjoyed being with this band.
Phil Mogg tried every trick he knew to upstage Wild Turkey and it all failed. Michael Schenker grinned at me from the stage as I watched from the side. He came up laughing afterwards to say Mogg was going completely crazy in their dressing room.
We had a friendlier experience with Yes, who asked Wild Turkey to open for a short tour of Germany in April – a truly mystifying package, but it worked. I had garnered a good following in Germany and Glenn Cornick was very pleased to hear the roar when Gary announced my name. After a gig near Stuttgart we ended up in a very crowded steam room in a Holiday Inn. Steve Gurl, Yes bass player Chris Squire and members of the Turkey and Yes crew were drinking beers with a host of very pretty and naked German female fans. It was all pretty innocent really, the men wearing small towels.
Gary Pickford arrived in a pretty drunken state, his customary plastic bag of fresh fruit and nuts to hand. He would always have an apple and then light up a Marlboro. ‘These things won’t hurt ya,’ he’d say. When he lit up in the sauna there was uproar. The girls ran out coughing and spluttering and jumped into the swimming pool. Gazzy looked very confused, Chris Squire was very amused and a watching Rick Wakeman cracked up.
Rick was very down-to-earth and hung out with the support band although he was a big star. I can confirm the legend that he really did order and eat curries during the gigs – washed down with a nice bottle of wine. His band were always pleasant and I realise that I was fortunate to be on the road with them.
Wild Turkey found life in General Franco’s Spain was a lot less easy-going. Driving from Zaragoza to Madrid we were unknowingly trailed by police and the military. The dictatorship viewed us as the worst kind of influence on the youth of Spain. I didn’t know the history then but the very fact that a British rock band was on tour in the country still amazes me.
As usual, Glen didn’t want to stop but it got so hot that we had to beg. We pulled into a roadside taverna and six of us piled out, dodgy-looking and long-haired. Mid-drink, soldiers appeared, shouting at us in Spanish. A younger soldier explained in English that we could be in trouble for drinking on the roadside. We were sobering up fast until a local policeman saw Glenn and shouted, ‘Living in the past!’ A Spanish dictatorship Jethro Tull fan. We were free to go and were given a high-speed escort. To this day whenever I gig in Spain, someone will talk about that Wild Turkey ’74 tour. I always enjoy that.
The band split on our return. We had no management and Chrysalis had not signed a new album. Endless gigs were the future and none of us wanted that. With them, I’d had my first sessions at BBC radio, Maida Vale and we had been the last touring band to play the original Cavern Club in Liverpool. I still remember the smell – old beer, body odour, cigarettes and Dettol. It sounds disgusting, but it was fabulous. Gary Pickford and Glenn Cornick passed away in 2013 and 2014. They were both wonderfully talented and good-natured individuals. Both very much respected and missed.
I moved on from the bedsit in Shepherd’s Bush as Fran and I took a basement flat in Paddington that we christened ‘The Dungeon’. It was shabby without the chic, but we were very fond of it and the location was fantastic. I was keen to find a new band and I didn’t have long to wait.
I had first met Cozy Powell in his dressing room at Manchester University after a Wild Turkey and Bedlam double-header. We immediately got along. I loved his can-do attitude. Here was a truly phenomenal player who had played in the Jeff Beck Band and yet he was much more interested in talking about football and racing cars. He said Bedlam was falling apart, Cozy’s hit record ‘Dance with the Devil’ having a negative effect.
Cozy called me at The Dungeon some weeks later to ask me to join his next band, Hammer. I was over the moon. I think it had upset him personally that his solo success had caused a problem. I said that I had experienced something similar with UFO, and he revealed that he knew all about that. He had been checking me out …
He was signed to Rak Records, owned by super-producer Mickie Most, and the new band would comprise singer Frank Aiello from Bedlam, Clive Chaman from the Jeff Beck Group on bass and Don Airey as keyboardist. Don was a classically trained musician with little experience on the road with a rock band but when he arrived at the rehearsal room, everybody’s face lit up. I heard a Mini Moog for the first time that evening and Don was already a total master, bending single keyboard notes the way I could bend a string on a guitar. It really was something else. His solos would scream just like a guitar.
Cozy’s double red Ludwig kit, shining in the centre of the room, looked ominous even before he sat down at it. Hearing him play was a real eureka moment, totally unlike experiencing him with other bands or on record. He held the sticks in the traditional way and could be very subtle with his playing but then the power of those bass drums would knock me for six. I was blown away by his timekeeping. I had to keep myself together with this man.
Our set opened with an instrumental, ‘Super Strut’ by Eumir Deodato, an old bluesy song by Elvis Presley, ‘Trouble’, a couple of Cozy’s hits – ‘Dance with the Devil’ and ‘The Man in Black’– the Clive Chaman song ‘Who’s That Girl’ and a couple of songs I had written, ‘Hold On’ and ‘Keep Your Distance’. A Marquee gig was heard by the likes of Queen’s Roger Taylor and Brian May, along with Cat Stevens, Brian Auger, Max Middleton, Suzi Quatro and Jeff Beck. Clive was quite unbelievable that night. ‘Super Strut’ had me open-mouthed at his dexterity. Cozy eventually leaned over to Clive and whispered, ‘Clive, listen, I know all your famous mates are here, but do you fancy playing the next fucking song with the rest of us?’ I was in hysterics!
Football would become almost as loved in the band as music. We played at any opportunity – in rehearsal rooms, outside gigs on the car parks. The mere sight of goalposts on the way to a gig would result in a stop-off. ‘Surely we can spare twenty minutes for a kickabout?’ Cozy would say.
We carried our kit everywhere, Powell in bright-red Swindon Town gear, Don with his Sunderland stripes, Frank in Arsenal away kit, and Clive in a gold Brazilian shirt. I looked more like Dave Mackay after too many nights in the pub. We were late for a Swansea gig after stopping for about an hour in the heavy mud of a Welsh field. Don was injured in a filthy Aiello tackle. He hobbled to the venue entrance, moaning and groaning, the rest of us covered with mud. The Welsh doorman was having none of it. ‘Fuck off yew lot, I’ve got Cozy Powell and the Hamsters ’ere in ’alf an hour.’ We explained that we were indeed the Hamsters.
Here is some inside info hardly anyone knows about. Cozy put a team together to play in the showbiz league, with members of the Average White Band, Humble Pie, Hammer and David Gilmour (a fine footballer). Cozy was a raiding winger, fast and dirty on the right. Don Airey played in midfield and was dreaming of and trying to channel Jim Baxter. Frank Aiello, on the inside right, was a real nuisance to opposing teams. Alan Gorrie was our superb goalkeeper. Hamish Stuart, a powerful centre-forward, was brave beyond the call and headed any ball. Jerry Shirley never stopped swearing. Dave Clempson was a fast and brilliant forward.
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