Читать книгу Where’s My Guitar?: An Inside Story of British Rock and Roll - Bernie Marsden - Страница 13

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 manager didn’t like the space it was taking up on the stage. It was an unpleasant feeling to be treated so shabbily, and I made a mental note to myself that if I were ever in that position, I would know how to act. We played the gig and went down fairly well, but I never forgot their antics.

As Lowell George sang with Little Feat’s ‘On Your Way Down’, you might meet again with those you misused on your way up. That was true for Stray, I’m afraid. They never really made it, and what went around did indeed come around. Just a few years after that night in London with Skinny Cat, Stray were the opening act for the chart-topping Cozy Powell’s Hammer in the splendid Blackpool Opera House. It was 1974, and I was the guitarist in Hammer.

There were problems fitting Stray’s gear on the stage because Cozy’s kit was very large, and Hammer had a lot of backline. Was this time for my revenge? No, because I didn’t want to stoop to Stray’s level, but I was quietly pleased when our drum tech got in a heated discussion with Stray drummer Richie Cole. He looked at me sheepishly. He knew who I was and he knew we had met before but couldn’t quite remember where. I asked the tech to move Cozy’s legendary red Ludwig kit so the Stray lads could get their stuff on for their gig. Those Stray boys taught me that the stage belongs to all musicians.

Skinny Cat were not going to make it either, that much was clear. We continued to gig, but for me the goal remained getting myself a pro gig and moving to the city. While I enjoyed playing in such a strong regional band, I was also on the lookout for promising auditions. There was a newspaper kiosk at the end of Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road in London that had the first London issues of Melody Maker by Wednesday lunchtime. Musicians gathered to see the ‘wanted’ ads a day before the rest of the country. The ads would promise a record deal and would give a number. You rang, and rang, and rang, and then finally got through to someone on the other end of the phone who gave you a day the following week to go to a rehearsal studio somewhere in London. You’d turn up, usually not having a bloody clue what band you were auditioning for.

But I did spot a Melody Maker ad for the Bluesbreakers, still the gig of gigs for any aspiring or established pro player. I called Miller Anderson, the guitarist of the Keef Hartley band, who helped me out after Skinny Cat had opened for the band; a good guy. Miller knew Mick Taylor who, it was rumoured, was leaving the Bluesbreakers. I was confident enough to think I might audition. It sounds a little crazy with hindsight but it shows you just how confident I must have been. Miller called Mick Taylor to see if I could skip some of the audition scenario. There would have been scores of guitarists looking for this gig with John Mayall. Miller arranged for me to meet Mick in London and also asked him to put in a word for me with John Mayall himself. Thinking about it, it made total sense. Mick Taylor had only been 17 when he joined the Mayall band himself and he would understand.

Mick lived in a flat in Porchester Road, Paddington. I rang the bell feeling nervous: Mick was a huge name, alongside Eric Clapton and Peter Green, but he was a quiet, studious kind of person and made me feel at ease, although I couldn’t help but wonder to myself where his guitars were stored in the flat. We had a conversation over coffee, and he soon enough shared some devastating information. While Mayall’s management had run the ad in Melody Maker, John had decided he wouldn’t be taking on another electric guitarist. I think Mick felt a little awkward, but I was not at all put out. I was thankful for information that had, after all, come from John Mayall himself.

I headed home, admittedly feeling a little deflated. Mick was not much older, but he had so much more experience and was already a tremendous blues guitar player. Of course, he also knew at the time that he would be joining the Rolling Stones in the near future. He didn’t tell me then, but when the news was announced I was excited – I knew a Rolling Stone! The holy trinity of Clapton, Green and Taylor – was it ever better than that? What a time to be playing the guitar.

I finally got to play on stage with Mick Taylor in October 2016 at a Jack Bruce memorial gig in Shepherd’s Bush. We stayed at the same hotel and I told him about the time we first met. He didn’t remember any of it, why should he? I had been the kid from nowhere back then. At last we finally got to perform together and he played some truly beautiful stuff. It may take years but music always brings you together.

Another disappointment followed my first encounter with Mick Taylor. This time it was with Alan Clarke of the Hollies. He drank in the same Hampstead pub as my dear uncle, Ken Gotts, and said that he was putting a band together. He had left the Hollies, and Ken duly mentioned his talented nephew. There was a lot of excitement at home when Ken called my mum to say he had arranged an audition. Dad drove me to Watford and gave me the money for the train. At the hall near Belsize Park I waited in the hallway for my call, my guitar case clutched tightly, excitement and nerves building. Alan shook my hand as I introduced myself as Ken’s nephew. Then, disaster. The sight of my guitar emerging from the case was met with awkward coughing from the others.

Alan was auditioning for a bass player.

I didn’t blame my uncle Ken. Not only was he always a bit deaf, but he probably wouldn’t have realised there was any difference in putting the ‘bass’ before guitarist. I made my apologies for wasting their time and got ready to go. Alan Clarke told me not to worry. He passed me a bass and I had my audition after all. How nice was that? I hung out with him and the band for the day, making tea and coffee. Alan gave me a huge injection of confidence when he told me I could go all the way with the guitar, and I thank him for that.

I had another non-starter, at least first time around in April 1972, with UFO, a band who didn’t mean that much to audiences in the UK. I had never heard of them before I auditioned but they had enjoyed success in Japan and Europe. They were certainly a bigger band than Skinny Cat. A hippy girl with pink hair answered the door at what I thought was the audition. ‘Name?’ she said. No greeting. ‘Wait here.’ A few lads, presumably guitarists, were waiting in a small room. There were guitar cases everywhere. The pink-haired girl ushered me into a small office to meet manager Mark Hanau, who was in a yoga pose, wearing a thin woollen sweater, and sporting cropped, spiky hair and a good layer of makeup. He looked at me without saying a word. I was almost 21, had long, thick, curly hair and was wearing a denim shirt, jeans, and desert boots. I wasn’t exactly Ziggy Stardust. ‘Bernie Marsden?’ he said, looking at his list, not me. I just wanted to know where I should set up and play.

Calling me ‘my dear’ a good few times, Mark said that UFO was his vision and I would by no means fit that vision. I could be the best guitarist in the world, but I had turned up to an interview rather than an audition. I was straight out. What a twat. I thought that was the end of that.

Late in the autumn a green envelope arrived emblazoned with the logo of a fairly new company, Chrysalis Records. Wilf Wright was UFO’s new manager and he was inviting me to an audition – yes, a proper audition, in a rehearsal room, with a Marshall rig. I was working at that time for a Buckingham builder, and took the day off work. It was a case of second time lucky. I got the gig. Time to be a rock star.

Skinny Cat had built up a very good following but I knew the band would never scale the heights. Mick Bullard and Ray Knott were very supportive and said they had known I would be gone at some point. I only have fond memories of my Skinny Cat days. My folks were pleased for me but, understandably, a little apprehensive. They had read about bands and musicians in the press: womanising, hard drinking, drugs, overdosing. I did my best to reassure them that I would be OK.

My girlfriend, Frances Plummer, was a fashion buyer at Harrods and we got a tiny bedsit in Shepherd’s Bush. This was it – the life in London that I had dreamt of and that we were now living together. We didn’t earn much, but we got into a wonderful London routine: jumping on buses, hailing black taxi cabs, taking the tube, exploring markets with spicy foods and foreign ingredients, and visiting Greek, Chinese and Indian restaurants. Fran’s career advanced rapidly and I would go away a hell of a lot on tour but she understood. She knew that me being a pro guitarist wouldn’t be easy but she too had her work. I was extremely lucky to have her by my side.

I soon realised that, by coincidence, the guitarist from Hawkwind lived on the top floor of our house while Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs and his wife Nina rented the large basement flat. Mott were veterans of multiple US tours, despite Mick being a notoriously bad flyer. I watched the tour manager and band members carry him from the flat to the car for the airport on many occasions, full of sleeping tablets for anxiety.

It was while we were having one of our regular tea breaks in their flat, Mick fiddling with a newly acquired Gibson 335, that he passed me a cassette to play. A fan of Mott had sent the band a demo of a song he had written. It was called ‘All the Young Dudes’ and the fan was David Bowie. Mick really rated the song and thought it would be Mott’s last shot at the real big time. It was, indeed, the breakthrough at last, followed by ‘All the Way from Memphis’ and ‘Honaloochie Boogie’. I was lucky to get to hear these as rough mixes. Suddenly Mott was a hit. Fran and I watched Mick on Top of the Pops on our new tiny colour TV in the bedsit. I felt happy for my neighbour, it was a massive deal and a dream of mine. I thought one day maybe it could happen for me.

The UFO manager, Hull-born Wilf Wright, was good to me from day one. He may have felt a little sorry for me, because he knew there was a slight tension from the off between the rest of the UFO boys (Phil Mogg, Andy Parker, and Pete Way) and me. Partly this was because the others were all from north London, and I was the lone country boy. They let me hire one roadie and so I was always grateful to have Chelsea Dunn from Skinny Cat with me. It really did help in those early days to have him around: he was my only ally. The band only ever seemed to play one-chord boogies; there was nothing particularly challenging about the music. Still, it was good to be playing in a headlining act – I was now in the first division.

My first pro gig was at the Marquee Club on 3 November 1972. Other bill-topping acts that week were Chicken Shack, Patto, Beggar’s Opera, Stackridge, and Nazareth – even Screaming Lord Sutch. Fans were queuing to get in along the street and past the Ship – this was the Wardour Street pub to be seen in, if you were a musician. Once I used to be in those lines myself and now others were waiting to see UFO.

I injected a few bluesy things into the setlist, ‘Move Over’ by Janis Joplin and ‘Back In The USA’ by Chuck Berry, but that was the extent of my musical input at this early time. Andy Parker was a powerful and very loud player, although he could not play a straight drum roll. Pete Way, in my opinion, wasn’t the most naturally gifted bass player I’d ever worked with. He wasn’t that fussed about technique or sound, and rarely locked in with Andy – which is vital for drums and bass: the rhythm section always needs to be together. He was always more concerned with his stage clothes than his playing.

A pattern emerged very quickly. Phil Mogg had a tendency to ‘Baby, baby’ after almost every line he sung and it irritated me intensely. The first line of ‘Move Over’ is, ‘You know that it’s over, baby’, and even that was followed by ‘Baby, baby’. I found myself stifling an irritated grin every night. Phil and I were on a collision course from day one, really. He never passed up the chance to exert his position as number one, not that I ever wanted it, but I did ask more questions about running a band in that first month than Andy or Pete ever had. I wanted to learn about this business of being pro, and fast.

I soon gathered a following, much to Phil’s acute annoyance: we played about five shows a week and I received £15, increasing to £20 when we were in Europe. Doing a gig almost every day of the week undoubtedly hardened my character. I was becoming very resilient. It wasn’t long before I realised the job was much more than playing the guitar.

My first trip abroad – my first-ever flight – was on a Lufthansa plane to Frankfurt, Germany. We played the Zoom club, the Frankfurt equivalent of London’s Marquee. I was amazed when the audience really took to me. Everything made sense that night – my decision to join had been vindicated. Here was a whole new audience for me to conquer: goodbye north Bucks, hello northern Europe. I never underestimated all the hard work UFO had done in Germany, which helped me to build my own name. We were headlining for audiences of up to a thousand a night and thousands more at festivals. It was a far cry from the couple of hundred fans I might have seen before. I appreciated that, still do today.

We got to play alongside If, with Geoff Whitehorn on guitar, a great player; the Scorpions, Klaus Doldinger, Hackensack, Supertramp, Climax Chicago, Can, and Atlantis. It was wonderful to meet so many great musicians from different countries. I did a lot of reminiscing about Skinny Cat – it seemed a very long time ago, particularly when I was experiencing avant-garde bands such as Can. I liked their guitarist, Michael Karoli, as a person and, as a musician, well, I thought he was a quiet genius. He was the David Gilmour of Germany, playing a white Stratocaster and using an Echoplex tape-echo machine with loads of distortion pedals. Everything I never had. I’d watch him as he stood right in the middle of the stage for about fifteen minutes just playing a single chord with effects pouring from his army of pedals. I was totally fascinated by his approach. I had never been exposed to music like theirs. I realised that being a pro guitarist was a long-distance race rather than a sprint.

The other UFO boys were totally incredulous. Phil Mogg thought it was demeaning for the headliners to watch the support. Sod that! I watched everybody I could. Posters began to appear in Germany that promised, ‘UFO featuring Bernie Marsden’. I’m quite confident it would be a good thing for most people, but not UFO. Phil Mogg ended up screaming at the promoter. I just couldn’t understand what the problem was – wasn’t I in UFO? The others resented my growing fan club and I couldn’t help but wonder if the same thing had happened to my predecessors Mick Bolton and Larry Wallis. Sometimes I had to fight back both verbally and physically. Chelsea had to pull Mogg and me apart. We laughed it off, but there was an undeniably negative vibe.

The beginning of the end of my relationship with UFO was a double-headliner with Supertramp at the London College of Printing in 1973. UFO opened and Supertramp guitarist and writer Roger Hodgson watched in the wings. I didn’t have a guitar tech and when one of my guitar strings broke I quickly put down my Firebird and switched to my spare Les Paul Junior. I felt something hit me in the side of my face. The lights were in my eyes and I presumed somebody had thrown something, until I saw Pete Way laughing. My suspicions were aroused.

Mogg looked at me with a grin on his face, ‘Try to be more professional, country boy.’ He had indeed just slapped me on the face onstage. I lost it, big time.

I flew across the stage as Phil caressed his mic stand and hit him squarely across the back with the very solid 1956 Gibson Les Paul Junior. He staggered forward still holding the microphone stand and managed to carry on singing.

Cue pandemonium.

Phil charged with the mic stand swinging in my direction. I parried with the guitar, Pete Way soon joined in, and Chelsea came on stage, trying to break it all up. Drummer Andy Parker just kept playing, blissfully unaware that anything unusual was happening. The crowd thought it was part of the show.

Roger Hodgson was still in the wings, open-mouthed. He later asked if that was a regular occurrence. I said it wasn’t usually so violent.

I saw Supertramp a lot in those early days. They were a very good live band and all really nice people – unlike UFO. I began to get familiar with some of the new songs Supertramp were playing, most of them not yet recorded. I liked them a lot. I heard ‘Dreamer’ and ‘Bloody Well Right’ in very early versions. The entire world now knows those songs and I feel lucky to have heard them in development. They released Crime of the Century in 1974 and became a worldwide success, selling millions. I smile every time I hear the harmonica intro of ‘Crime’ on the radio or ‘Dreamer’. I always feel a connection with Supertramp. Good days.

As for UFO, Wilf Wright had practically vanished and this was a major factor in what was a looming break-up. It was a shame: I had enjoyed recording demos at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth with Dave Edmunds. He was a kindred spirit, a fellow blues-orientated guitarist. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the others instantly hated him because he was a), Welsh and b) very famous. Some of the basic tracks later appeared on Phenomenon: ‘Rock and Roll Car’, ‘16’, ‘Oh My’ (songs that I had written with Skinny Cat) and an early working of ‘Doctor Doctor’.

I got to meet the Schenker brothers, the guitarists in the Scorpions, through gigging with UFO, and I was immediately impressed with Michael’s playing. I thought he was everything UFO could do with. I told Phil to check him out. He, of course, refused. Back in England, band relations worsened and I soon realised I wasn’t happy at all. My dream of turning pro wasn’t quite living up to my high expectations. I hadn’t imagined I would be considering quitting my first pro gig, but I was dreading my shows.

I called Wilf and told him I couldn’t face another tour in Europe. I don’t think he knew how serious I was. The guys left the UK and I didn’t follow. For years the official story was that I missed the ferry because I lost my passport, which was utter rubbish. I didn’t want to go and it was the only time in my entire career that I have missed gigs. Michael Schenker took over on guitar while Wilf and Chelsea persuaded me, rightly, to finish off the tour. I eventually arrived to find I was not the most popular person in the dressing room. I was petulant, unprofessional and ego-ridden, but I had been the odd one out for too long.

Those final gigs were filled with tension, which only eased towards the very end. We made a deal – an extremely strange deal. We just didn’t like each other and so I denied ever having been in UFO and they denied that I had been in UFO with them, despite the fact thousands of fans had seen me playing with them on stage between November 1972 and July the following year. This crazy ‘secret’ lasted until the Whitesnake days.

I knew that Michael would be approached to have the gig on a permanent basis, which was exactly what I had suggested without any response a few weeks before. In no time Michael became a bona-fide guitar hero, and that still makes me proud. The moment I saw him, I knew he was bloody good and he only got better and better over time.

I now realise that those gigs with UFO across Europe made me the musician I am today. I still think the music I inherited from the former guitar players was crap and that UFO improved in leaps and bounds with Michael Schenker. But the experience for me on a personal level was invaluable. I took the baton with both hands and I’m still running with it today. Phil, Andy, and Pete, I wish you well.