Читать книгу Where’s My Guitar?: An Inside Story of British Rock and Roll - Bernie Marsden - Страница 8

Over nearly fifty years on the road as a professional musician in different cities, countries and continents, I have often thought about Brian Davies.

Brian was a couple of years above me at secondary school in the Sixties in Buckingham, my home town just north-west of London. He was always friendly to me and was an all-round good guy. I remember him being a particularly good athlete: good at running, long jump and javelin. His girlfriend at the time was Diane Jones, someone who I secretly worshipped from my lowly position in the younger classes. I played football with him at school and later for Buckingham Town Juniors. I was a decent enough player but I always thought that he was a very good footballer.

As far as I could see, Brian Davies had it all. We got along well without being close friends. He left school two years before I did, but we still saw each other at football games and sometimes at the pub when I might have been playing the guitar. My playing had always fascinated Brian.

The last time I saw Brian was in 1970 at the corner of Buckingham’s West Street and School Lane, where we had a short chat. He said he was no longer with Diane Jones and that he hadn’t been able to play football much of late. I told him that I still wanted to be a professional musician; Brian and I had often talked about our dreams. I thought he looked a little grey. Under his arm he carried an old-fashioned glass medicine bottle full of a lurid green liquid. I told him not to drink too much of it: whatever was inside looked as though it might kill him. I could not have been more wrong about that – he had actually been prescribed it to treat a cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Brian passed away later that same year. I was deeply shocked. He was so young, just 21, and I was only 19. Brian had always encouraged me to be a professional musician. He championed my ability and said that I shouldn’t ever give up. I still think about Brian Davies a lot.

At every milestone I have reached, a little piece of Brian has been there with me. Whether it was stepping off the plane for the first time in Japan, getting the phone call to say ‘Here I Go Again’ had reached US No. 1, or receiving my honorary degree from the University of Buckingham, I’ve always thought of him.