up in white ties and tails. We opened for bands such as Trapeze, Osibisa, and Dada, featuring wonderful singers Elkie Brooks and Robert Palmer. They evolved into Vinegar Joe and we opened for them many times. I talked to Robert Palmer a lot – he was so cool in those days but always very approachable and chatty. We lost him too soon in 2003, but he left us some fantastic music. Elkie Brooks was simply stunning. The first time I watched her perform I was completely mesmerised by her outrageous clothes, cowboy boots, stage manner and incredible voice. She sang like a dream and there was the bonus of the pairing of her voice with Robert Palmer.
Vinegar Joe guitarist Pete Gage took me under his wing. He played a Gold Top Les Paul, wore a cowboy hat, and was married to Elkie Brooks – I was green with envy. I later had the extreme pleasure of playing guitar for Elkie. I received a phone call from her asking me to cover for Geoff Whitehorn for a few gigs in 2005 and, well, a few gigs turned into about six months. After all those years I spent worshipping her and her voice as a young man, she was now singing better than ever and with me playing guitar by her side.
5.
Alan Upward was one of Skinny Cat’s roadies and he lived in Oxford. He was quite a character. It was Alan who introduced me to a commune near Buckingham at the end of 1969.
Some people he knew had moved into Chetwode Manor, a very large rambling mansion, close to dereliction, but the crazy thing was that the electricity and water were still available. A group of Oxford hippies had discovered it, and Alan knew them well. I became a weekend hippie, the band rehearsed and played there, and it was fun. I wanted Skinny Cat to move in. Ray said that he had to go to work, but I did move in as I was between jobs (I still took washing home for my mum to do).
One evening a girlfriend of one of the other guys who lived there returned from work at an Oxford teaching hospital and passed around some pills. I have never been much of a drug-taker. I’ve never smoked cigarettes or indulged with weed very much. I was a little sceptical but I swallowed one of the pills. I had watched the others’ reactions on a previous weekend and they seemed to be fine. I waited for about two hours. Alan had also dropped a tab and we both looked at each other and shrugged. Nothing was happening.
When somebody else said they were going into Buckingham Alan and I jumped in the Land Rover. That’s when things started to happen in my head, things that I didn’t really understand, and our driver gave us very strange looks as we arrived in the town centre. Cars floated around me in a stream – no longer a street. We tried to walk towards the market but the sand was too deep, and we didn’t mind. I tried to talk to Alan but my voice was a loud gun going off in my head. We reached the market, and a group of people came to talk to me. Alan pleaded with me to be cool. Cool? What was that? We were close to a pub and people were asking me about Skinny Cat. Their speech slowed down until their mutterings became one extremely long word.
What on earth was wrong with them? I thought.
The sand shifted beneath my feet.
I looked up and everyone had the head of a fluorescent, brightly coloured animal: a rabbit, a cat, a dog, another rabbit, a cascade of colour and noise. They were all speaking, all shouting, all at once. I was terrified. I stood in that wet sand while everybody else went absolutely mad. I knew I was the sane one. Frantically, we tried to get back to the Land Rover, and one of the locals grabbed my arm and asked if I was OK, with genuine concern. Me? I was obviously fine. He had the problems.
I never took LSD again.
Skinny Cat opened for Fleetwood Mac, thanks to a booker we had met at the Oxford Polytechnic. I’m sure this is a fact very few people know. The gig was in Headington in Oxford. Although there was no Peter Green, I did talk with Danny Kirwan and John McVie. Mick Fleetwood was around but I didn’t get a chance to speak to him. Kirwan played brilliant guitar on his black, three pick-up Les Paul Custom – the very guitar he would smash to pieces before leaving Fleetwood Mac only a year later. I took some old photos with me that night. They were from an early Fleetwood Mac gig in Windsor. John McVie looked at them with great fondness, especially the two single shots of Peter Green. I remember his face and exactly what he said: ‘It’ll never be like that again.’
I didn’t really take his words in at the time, but I do now. He was reflecting upon the loss of Peter Green in the band and couldn’t imagine they’d ever be the mammoth success they became and still are today without him. I will always remember John’s face as he looked at those old photographs. At the time, mainly because Peter Green wasn’t there with Mac, I didn’t really realise the momentous thing it was for Skinny Cat to open for them. I hugely respected the others in the band, but Peter Green was my idol. It’s only really writing this all down now makes me realise how big a deal it was to open for the one and only Fleetwood Mac, with Peter Green or without.
Towards the end of that year, 1970, Skinny Cat gigged all the major venues in London, including the Temple at the Flamingo Club, the Marquee with Audience, the Acid Palace in Uxbridge with Blonde on Blonde, the 1860 Club in Windsor with Argent and Eel Pie Island with Hawkwind and Stray.
In October we opened for the brilliant Irish guitarist Gary Moore with his first band Skid Row at the Haverstock Hill Country Club, near Hampstead. Skid Row were sound-checking when we walked in. Within seconds, my mouth was wide open, not only because of the utterly astonishing guitar playing of Gary, but the sheer power of the band: Brush Shiels on bass and Noel Bridgeman on drums. The frenetic style of the music and the sheer speed at which they could play really brought home the differences between the pros and semi-pros. Gary had a woollen bobble hat, drainpipe jeans, a tank top, and the trace of a beard. He played a red Les Paul with P90 pickups. He was sitting on the drum stool, playing ‘Rambling on my Mind’ on guitar, bass drum and hi-hat – a one-man band. This was the very same song I had played back in Banbury; needless to say I didn’t play it that night!
Gary and I got along very well. He admired my newly acquired Gibson SG Les Paul, the same guitar I loaned him many years later. We were almost the same age, but I could see how much I needed to improve. Gary Moore at that time would have been a real eye-opener for any guitar player. I liked him best when he played slower and bluesier things. He soon became a treasured friend, and he played at my wedding in 1980.
The venue had one poky little dressing room but Skid Row insisted we share it. I took note of their attitude. DJ Bob Harris introduced the bands that night and we are friends to this day. He is an extremely well-read person in music, and his knowledge of country is fantastic. He still remembers those brilliant days at the Country Club.
We also opened in London for performance art collective Principal Edwards Magic Theatre and prog band Van Der Graaf Generator, who were both more than snobby backstage. Slade, by contrast, had that whole skinhead thing, and really did look very intimidating. They were actually quite scary with their very loud Midland accents. They put on quite the most foul-mouthed act I had ever witnessed. I was quite disgusted, even at 19. But any negative first impressions dissolved after we chatted and found they were actually really decent blokes. Noddy Holder told me that all the effing and blinding was part of the show and the crowd loved them.
Seeing the different sides of genuine people in bands as I did with Skid Row and Slade made me think about my future. It had dawned on me that the music business was a very broad church and could accommodate both Gary Moore’s obvious genius and the basic honesty of Dave Hill’s guitar playing. It was a real eye-opener for me, as were some of the dirty tricks played by headliners to make their support acts look bad.
One of these was Stray, who had a record deal. We were pleased to be on the bill with them. We thought we would be able to use the in-house PA system, but Stray didn’t allow it. We had to bring in our little Marshall PA system, and then Stray’s road
