Читать книгу Chas and Dave - Chas Hodges - Страница 18

Just before The Stormers split we did a couple of test recordings and also backed a singer called Danny Rivers, (who we met at Butlins), on a couple of demos. Danny Rivers had a couple of brief spots on ‘Oh Boy’. He sung ‘Stuck on You’ on one appearance, but had trouble reaching the high note in the middle. ‘Tear’ was the word. The line was, ‘A team of wild horses couldn’t tear (high note) us apart.’ Jack Good got Dickie Pride to sing ‘tear’ behind the scene while Danny mimed the word. It worked. You’d never have spotted it if you didn’t know.

Danny was managed by Peter Yaquinandi who was a bit of a character. One night not many days after the bike pinchin’ episode fate took a hand. There was a knock on my door. It was Peter Yaquinandi, or ‘Yak’ as we called him. He was managing a singer called Mike Berry who had passed an audition with an independent recording engineer named Joe Meek. Joe was well impressed with Mike Berry but not too impressed with his band. Yak was on his way round to see the rest of our band. If he could get them back together, would I be willing to audition at Joe Meek’s as a backing musician to Mike Berry? He played me some demo tapes and Mike was like Buddy Holly (not ‘like’ him but almost him!). Buddy Holly ranked highly among my Rock heroes along with Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.

I was all for it. The rest of the boys agreed: Reg Hawkins on rhythm guitar, Billy Kuy on lead (ex-broom!) and Bobby Neate (who now called himself Bobby Graham) on drums. An audition with Joe Meek was arranged. We passed the audition and before we knew it we had a record out on the market. My first record! ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ by Mike Berry and The Outlaws (Joe’s new name for us). That one didn’t do too good, but soon after, The Outlaws recorded ‘Swingin’ Low’ which made the top fifty. We were on our way, but the chart thing was really an extra for me. The main thing was, I was back playing and enjoying myself. The deck chair factory? A bad dream I’d woken up from!

Joe Meek was alright. By that I mean that his heart was in the right place. He was a bit of a bum boy, as I found out later. At the time I met him, I’d heard these stories about blokes stickin’ their winkles up other blokes’ bums – but who could really believe that? I mean, I was told havin’ a Jodrell sent ya blind and – and, well, I could go on for ever! I was sixteen years of age. Old enough to realise that schoolboys told these fairy tales to each other while havin’ a crafty dog end round the back of the bike sheds. But I was in for a shock.

A mate of mine, Tony Ollard, played me a tape he’d got from somewhere, of some guitar playing. I’d never heard the like of it before. He told me he thought it was a bloke called Chet Atkins but he didn’t know who the other bloke was. I thought it could be one bloke double-tracked. Later on I found out it was Chet Atkins but it wasn’t double-tracked. The man just played like two guitar players! I begged Tony to lend me the tape and I’d get it copied and return it straight away. Who do I know who’s got two tape recorders? Joe Meek! Next time we did a session I asked Joe if he’d do a copy of this tape for me.

‘Bring it up tomorrow and I’ll do it.’ I was there. He’s done the tape, I was well pleased, caught the last bus home and played that tape ’till the sun came up. Next day I’m ravin’ about this tape to the boys.

‘Never mind the tape’, they said. ‘What about Joe? Did he give you one?’

‘Bollocks!’ I’ve gone, ‘he’s alright, how old are you?’ Christ, some people just don’t grow up, do they?

Now Joe wrote most of the instrumentals for the band. I say ‘wrote’, his method was more like ‘get an idea for a tune, find a record that was the right tempo and sing his tune to it’. The resulting demo (which I had to decipher) was a din; he sang out of tune too. I had to work out what I thought he was trying to get across. Most of it I figured out but I had to put my own bits in for the bits I couldn’t decipher. Joe always seemed pleased with the result, so all was well. Anyway he’d invite me up to listen to his latest creation and I’d take the acetate home and try to make it playable by the band.

This happened on many occasions. Not a move was made, bum-boy-wise. Ol’ Joe’s alright!

One Saturday afternoon I’ve gone up there to listen to another Joe Meek ‘composition’, heard it, worked it out with difficulty and worked out how we’re gonna do it. Got it! Great! Ready to go home.

‘Do you want a cup of coffee ’fore you go, Chas?’

‘Alright, Joe.’ I can remember feeling a bit uneasy but ‘He’s alright’, I told myself.

In his sitting room he had this sofa. No matter where you sat on it, you were sort of bounced towards the middle and ended up sittin’ next to whoever else was on it. Even if you both sat down at the extreme ends of the sofa. Which we did.

So there we were. Me and Joe. ‘I hope my mates are wrong,’ I’m thinking as we sat together in the middle of the sofa. Now in them days wrestling was just becoming popular, and Joe had it on the telly. It was popular in the Sixties and was always on of a Saturday afternoon. As I’m trying to knock back the cup of coffee he made me which had too much sugar in it – funny how you remember silly details – Joe said to me:

‘I love wrestling, do you?’

My whole life flashed before me. I thought, ‘Oh no! It’s the bums he likes! My mates were right.’ Too late! The next minute, there was a hand groping round my bollocks and I froze. Petrified. It must have been only a fraction of a second that I sat there rigid but it was enough to make Joe think, ‘He likes it,’ ’cos his hand started scrunching quicker and he started bobbing up and down. My eyes started watering. I looked at Joe. His eyeballs were bulging but he looked ever so happy. I leapt out of that seat like my arse was alight. It very nearly could have been. I found my voice, but the best I could come up with was:

‘I’ve got to be going now. I’ve got to go and meet my big brother.’

I had always mentioned my ‘big’ brother when I was threatened by anybody at school. It was the best I could think of. I was out of his flat like a shot. I kept running until I saw a bus that was heading in the general direction of home and I leapt on it. The conductor asked for me fare in a normal voice and I felt safe. I was back in the land of the un-bum boys.

Next day though, I thought, ‘I believe now there are blokes that stick their winkles up other blokes’ bums.’ I was growing up. I rang Mike Berry and told him of the episode.

‘The dirty bastard,’ was all he kept saying between the gaps of my story.

‘Yes,’ I said in the end. ‘Isn’t he?’

I never spoke to Joe for days afterwards but as I started to weigh it up I thought, ‘Well, it does go on; but at least I got away and didn’t get raped.’ I s’pose it’s the same as some geezer fancyin’ some bird. He weren’t to know I liked birds and not geezers. He fancied me so he had to find out. But now he’s found out he knows where he stands.

He rung up and apologised a few days later. ‘That’s OK, Joe,’ I said, ‘but let’s have no more of it.’ That was the end of that, but Charlie Hodges could now say when the subject of bum boys came up,

‘Oh yes, it goes on alright. You don’t believe it? Oh, come now. How naive can you get!’

Joe with all his eccentricities was well before his time in the recording field. DI-ing the bass, for instance, was a matter of course for Joe. DI-ing or ‘Direct Injection (nothing to do with bum boys!) meant the bass player didn’t use an amp. The bass was plugged more or less direct into the tape machine. No amp was used in the actual studio and this meant there were no stray notes or floatin’ around to be picked up by other microphones. This technique meant a much cleaner and purer sound for the electric bass. All studios do it now. Joe always had five or six mikes on the drum kit instead of one or two which was usual for the time. He loved a sound that had ‘presence’. He wanted the snare drum, hi-hat, bass drum, cymbals recorded close. It worked. They all do this now. Joe would have been in his element with a multi-track machine. He never got one as far as I know; they were still a novelty in England when Joe died not many years later.

Now The Outlaws were doing alright. We were out on the road with Mike Berry and started doing a few sessions up at Joe Meek’s. Joe was always recording somebody or the other. Most of ’em never came to anything but we did some sessions with an actor, John Leyton. ‘Johnny Remember Me’ was one of the songs we did, and suddenly I was on a Number One Hit. My friends and relations thought I was rich, but you got £7. 10s a session regardless of whether it was a hit or not. I earned far more off Joe’s flops. I thought this fair enough, still do, but they’d go, ‘What! He got all that money and all you got was £7. 10s?’ They probably thought I’d copped a fortune, and was keeping it dark.

We did a few other recordings with John Leyton. Among ’em was the follow-up, ‘Wild Wind’, on which I played fretless bass. It had frets on it at the beginning of the session, but I got this idea halfway through that a bass guitar without frets might sound a bit like a double bass. I couldn’t wait to try it so levered ’em out on the session. It didn’t sound too bad. As far as I knew it was the first fretless bass guitar. (I’ve still got this bass. My original Hofner. I got it fixed up recently and used it on my new album this year. 2008. It sounds great. The last time I recorded with it was on ‘Dontcha Think it’s Time’ in 1963. Forty-six years ago! Daft ain’t it?)

We backed John Leyton for a week in Brighton later on. There was a bit in ‘Wild Wind’ he used to sing which I thought was comical. He sung the song in an American accent but when he got to the word ‘trouble’ he sort of went all Cockney. It was the best part of the whole song for me but I’m not sure he meant it to be a laugh. You see, he had to really holler that word to get it out as it was the highest note in the whole song. He had to really open his mouth wide. Now you can’t sing ‘trouble’ in American style (‘trerble’) with your mouth wide open like a barrow boy’s. It has to come out as ‘trubball’. Good though.

That original Outlaws band was a good line-up. Bill, Bob, Reg and me. Reg was a real rhythm guitarist. Not like most of them. In those days most of them were frustrated lead guitarists. He was my best mate in the band, and we still see a lot of each other today. Dave likes Reg, too. He’s got a great sense of humour and is always good company. I first met Reg at Higher Grade School. He was a year older than me but him and his mate, and me and my mate, Rodney Clark, used to knock around together. It was unusual to mix with anyone in a different year to you but we all used to laugh at the same things. It was coincidence that we ended up in the same band together. We lost touch after we left school then met again a few years later up the King’s Head (the birth place of The Outlaws).

I was with Reg when I learnt my first chords on the piano. Apart from having the same taste in humour we also had the same taste in music. He introduced me to the music of Jack Elliot and Derrol Adams. We both loved Big Bill Broonzy and Chet Atkins. We’d sit around for hours on end doing our best to copy ’em.

We were both Jerry Lee fans too. When we were at Butlins we found out there was a way of sneaking into the Viennese Ball Room after it was shut. It had a grand piano! We’d sit up all night singing and I began to get off some bits I thought sounded like Jerry Lee. How much like Jerry Lee it was I don’t know but Reg liked it and that gave me encouragement.

Bobbie Graham was a great drummer. A bit of a jazzer when he joined us, I don’t think he was too mad on Rock ’n’ Roll, (it wasn’t considered ‘cool’ then) and I don’t think he was too mad on me at the time, trying to get him to play like Jerry Lee’s drummer.

Perhaps I was too young to explain what I meant. I knew Bob was a better drummer than Jerry Lee’s but the feel wasn’t right. (I don’t even think the musical term ‘feel’ was used in those days, I just used to say, ‘It don’t sound right, Bob’.) He did eventually get into Rock ’n’ Roll (p’raps I wore him down) and there was no one to touch him.

Billy Kuy? Now what can I say about ol’ Bill? A bit short-tempered in his younger days (to say the least!) but you could have a laugh with him. He knew his instrument and was particularly good at chords. I remember saving Bill’s life once.

Me and Bill had just finished a gig at The Angel, Edmonton. Irish John, my stepfather, told me there was a party going afterhours over the top of the ‘Ex’. I asked Bill if he fancied going, his eyes lit up and off we went.

We had to walk through Edmonton Green on the way. Now Edmonton Green was renowned for pulling bits of stray after dark and Bill spotted a bit of stray. But the bit he spotted (Bill wasn’t to know and probably wouldn’t have cared anyway as he was three parts pissed) was the dodgiest bit of stray in Edmonton. Everyone knew her (except Bill).

Bill’s homed in and started giving her the ‘Billy Kuy chat’. ‘Bill, you’re mad,’ I tell him. ‘Come here.’ Too late. He’s back with her on his arm and a big ‘Look what I got’ smile on his face. He’s invited her to the party.

Anyway we’ve arrived, seen Irish John, we’re in. Straight up to the bar. Great. I’d forgotten about the bird, so had Bill. It was me and Bill, after-hours in a pub.

‘What d’yer want to drink, Chas?’

‘I’ll have a pint, Bill.’ I’ve gone off to the bog.

I’ve come back. No Bill. Now where’s he gone? He’s supposed to be getting the pints in.

I’ve looked round, and there he is. Rabbitin’ away nineteen to the dozen to some great big Irishman. The look on Bill’s face told me it wasn’t no matey conversation. Bill was wild-eyed, and by the look on the Irishman’s face he was none too friendly either.

I’ve gone to the rescue. As I’ve got near, I’ve recognised the Irishman, Big Mick, one of my stepfather’s workmates. Bill’s picked on a wrong ’un this time! I’ve moved in.

‘Hallo Mick,’ I’ve gone. ‘How ya doin’?’ He’s looked round, wild an’ all, but soon as he saw me he softened a little.

‘Chassy boy! How yer fluten doin’?’ Thank God he’s recognised me. I’ve breathed (for Bill’s sake) a sigh of relief.

‘Not too bad, Mick. What d’ya want t’drink?’

‘Oh, I’ll have a wee Scotch with ya, Chassy boy.’

I’ve done it! I thought. But no.

‘Oh no you fuckin’ won’t! We’ve got some business to finish!’ says Bill. Mick’s friendly look changed back to the wild one again.

‘You little git! Oi’l morder ye!’ he’s said, leaping at Bill’s throat.

‘Hold up, hold up, hold up!’ I’ve gone. ‘Look, Mick! Talk to me! What’s the matter?’

I’ve moved round the front so he can see my eyes. He’s dropped Bill.

‘He says I’ve been chatting up his girlfriend. Oi wasn’t! I swear oi was only talking to the woman!’

I believed Mick, but I couldn’t believe Bill. Getting all possessive over this ’ol bird! He’d forgotten all about her for the last hour. I’ve given him a look, as if to say, ‘Are you mad? This bloke’s three times the size of you! Bugger off quick while you’re in one piece.’

‘Look, Mick,’ I’ve said, ‘me and Bill’s been out and had a few pints. We’ve had a good time and Bill’s a bit pissed. Let’s forget it, come on I’ll buy you that Scotch.’

Mick would’ve gone for it, but oh no.

‘I’m not pissed, Chas.’ ‘Oh, shut up, Bill!’ ‘And your Irish mate’s a cunt!’

With that Mick’s gone for Bill in a big way, and he meant it. He’s lifted Bill up like a bit of rag and pushed him through the nearest door. Which happened to be the bog-hole. I’ve run in, and there was Mick with Bill on the floor, trying to grind his head in the piss trough with his boot. Bill’s head was jerking from left to right, deftly dodging every stomp, but it would have been only a matter of time.

‘Mick!’ I’ve hollered, grabbing hold of him. Mick’s turned round ready to take a swing, then saw it was me.

‘Mick,’ I said. ‘Leave him alone. He’s not worth the bother. Come and have a drink.’

Mick was torn between two emotions. Bill at last saw the light and was up and away. I dragged Mick to the bar and bought him that Scotch.

Bill did end up fighting someone that night. It was Freddy the Fly, a mate of ours. They had a punch-up all up and down Edmonton Market. I don’t know why, but it was the way Bill liked to round his evenings off.

Around 1962 the original Outlaws folded up. Reg decided the business wasn’t for him and settled down with a regular job. Bob joined Joe Brown and Bill buggered off somewhere or other. That left me and Mike Berry. If I remember right, the first new Outlaw was drummer Don Groom.

In fact I think he did a couple of gigs with Reg and Bill before they left. Mike got hold of Ray ‘Biffo’ Byhart to play rhythm guitar, so now we had drums, rhythm and bass. All we needed was a lead guitarist.

Mike heard about this lead guitarist who had been working with Screaming Lord Sutch. (Sutch had a reputation for finding good Rock ’n’ Rollers). But the guitarist would only consider joining if we took his piano-playing mate on too. We didn’t want a piano player, but we thought we’d get ’em down and if we liked the guitarist we’d talk him into joining us on his own.

They’ve both turned up, and I’ve never seen such a weird-looking couple of geezers. The guitar player was about four foot six tall with bleached blond hair and a face straight out of a Brueghel painting. The piano player was about six foot tall, as skinny as a rake and looked dopey. Neither one of ’em hardly said a word. ‘Oh, well,’ I’ve thought. ‘Let’s get it over and done with, think of something diplomatic to say as to why we don’t want ’em, and think again.’

Now I want you to try to imagine how a young, enthusiastic and talented Rock ’n’ Roller looked at things in those days. You see, we knew the feel of our music, but we weren’t particularly masters of our instruments. We simply hadn’t been playing long enough to become so and any player that was nimble or ‘fast’, as we called it, gained our immediate admiration. But usually the ones that were fast didn’t have the feel and vice versa.

Anyway, I’m plugging in me bass, thinking about who can we ring tomorrow who might know of a lead guitarist, when I heard a sound that made me freeze. It really did. My life for two seconds was in suspended animation. I can remember how far the jack plug was from the hole and everything.

‘DIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY DUM BEOODLY BLAT BAP WEEDLY WOP’

I’ve heard a guitar run that was not only fast, and I mean fast, but had a real Rock ’n’ Roll sound. Now anything you experience in life that you don’t believe is possible, don’t register immediately. You know it happened but your brain tells you it’s impossible, so it tries to blank it out. I’ve looked round at the guitarist, he’s casually fiddling with the controls on his amp.

‘Do that again,’ I’ve said.

‘What?’ he said.

‘What you just did.’ So there he’s gone again:

‘DIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY DUM BOOBABABABLAT BLAT WEEDLY WOP’

‘What, that?’

‘Fuck me, yer! Let’s do a song, what do you know?’

I’d forgotten the piano player.

‘The piano player likes Jerry Lee,’ said the guitarist, lookin’ toward his mate who’s sat there at the piano motionless lookin’ like a shop window dummy that’s been on a hunger strike.

Alright, how about ‘I Could Never Be Ashamed of You’ I’ve said, at the same time tryin’ to think how I’m gonna get rid of the piano player and keep the guitarist. Bonk! We’ve gone into it.

The piano player from the back looks like he’s not started. His body and head never moved. But, am I imagining it, or is the most incredible noise comin’ out of that piano? It can’t be. He’s not movin’, I’ve walked over to the piano. Only his hands were movin’ but the sound they were makin’ were Jerry Lee! My favourite Rock ’n’ Roll pianist!

Now, like I said, you’ve got to realise that English Rock ’n’ Roll musicians were new at the game. American Rock ’n’ Rollers had the edge. You had to get near ’em before you ever thought of overtakin’ ’em. Here were two musicians that were not only near ’em, they topped ’em. We’ve gotta have ’em! What a band we’ll be!

But they never joined.

To this day I don’t know why, but they didn’t. Perhaps I was too enthusiastic, perhaps I should have been a bit more cool. I don’t know. They stayed with Sutch. Perhaps they got the hump when we said we didn’t want the piano player at first, and had just come down to taunt us.

Anyway they didn’t join. (The piano player, by the way, was to become a quite famous session man. Nick Hopkins. I did a few sessions with him later on. He played piano on John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. The guitar player was Bernie Watson. He was supposed to have turned towards classical music, but nobody ever discovered his whereabouts, so nothing was proved.)

No, they didn’t join us, but they suggested another ex-Sutch guitarist, Roger Mingaye or ‘Scratch and Scrape Bailey’. No one’s gonna top that Bernie Watson, I thought, but I was pleasantly surprised when Roger turned up. He wasn’t as ‘fast’, but he had a great sound and a good Rock ’n’ Roll feel.

He joined The Outlaws and once more we had a working band. Me on bass, Biffo rhythm, Scratch lead guitar, Don on drums and Mike vocals. One of the first tours we did was Scotland. We had ‘Just a Matter of Time’ out, which the new band was on.

Life on the road with a bunch of blokes you hardly know is always interesting, to say the least. You soon do get to know each other and have to learn to get along. It wasn’t unusual for a clash of personalities to be sorted out with a punch-up. Scratch used to have digs at Biffo. Poor old Biffo. Scratch would really give Biffo stick, about how his guitar was always out of tune, and how all he liked was the ‘Shads’.

We used to say to Biffo, ‘Stick up for yourself. He won’t let up ’til you do.’ But Biffo was too easy – until one day. We were sittin’ in a cafe. Scratch started on Biffo again. Right out of the blue (and we all sat back in amazement) Biffo said, ‘Say one more word, Scratch, and I’ll punch you straight on the fuckin’ nose.’ Well done, Biffo! Scratch was struck dumb. He made an attempt at a joke, lookin’ towards us for support, got none and bottled out. Biffo got no more trouble from Scratch. Scratch became a nicer bloke after that and we all got on better. But Scratch was to get that punch on the nose, only not from Biffo.

We were on stage somewhere in the middle of Scotland, setting up for a sound check. Mike Berry was in a bad mood about something. Don’t know what. But he came stormin’ on to the stage, said something to Scratch, Scratch called him a cunt, and Wallop! Mike had turned round about three times with his fist stuck out, caught Scratch on the jaw and sent him flying off the stage to the middle of the dance floor. I was shocked to see poor old Scratch flyin’ through the air. He wore glasses and was littler than Mike. I leapt at Mike and pushed him.

‘What did you fuckin’ do that for? He didn’t deserve that,’ I said.

Mike immediately felt guilty and we jumped down to see how Scratch was.

His glasses were all bent up, and all he kept sayin’ was, ‘I’ll fuckin’ get you, Berry.’

We straightened his glasses out as best we could while Mike was trying to apologise. But Scratch didn’t want to know.

‘I’ll fuckin’ get you, Berry,’ was all he kept sayin’.

That night Scratch’s face blew up like a football. The next day it was worse. We took him down the hospital. They x-rayed his jaw and found it was broken. They had to wire it up and he spent the rest of the tour like that, drinking soup. Mike had exhausted his apologies but every now and then Scratch would say through his wired-up teeth, which made it sound even more threatening, ‘I’ll fuckin’ get you, Berry.’

He never did, but Mike feels guilty to this day. So you should, you big bully!

(Mike & Scratch met for the first time since then, in 2004, over forty years later, at a Screamin’ Lord Sutch annual reunion memorial gig at the Ace Café. All was forgiven and they rocked well together on stage.)

Biffo was the first one to leave that band. Scratch suggested as a replacement a Canadian bloke he knew. Ken Lundgren. Ken was to become a big mate of mine and still is. Apart from bein’ good on the guitar (and steel guitar) Ken was good at organising things. This was what we needed. Ken drove the van (on the wrong side of the road at first!), rang agents, fixed gigs and did just about everything, and drank like a fish. I liked a couple of pints but I wasn’t in Ken’s class. We’d be drivin’ home from a gig in the ol’ Thames van. Ken’d have a crate o’ beer beside him to ‘keep me awake’. I’d be behind him with a rolled-up road map ready to whack him on the back of the head when he started nodding off, which was often. Poor ol’ Ken was the only one who had a licence to drive.

The Outlaws were now doing a lot of gigs on their own. We were becoming less available to back Mike Berry on his gigs so he formed his own backing band. With Ken as our new rhythm guitarist we recorded ‘Sioux Serenade’ and ‘Ku-Pow’. We spent about six months on the road with this line-up. The next one to go was Scratch. He announced one day, right out of the blue, that he was going to emigrate to Australia, on his own.

A lead guitar player was needed, so we did the auditioning bit. No good. None of ’em was as good as I was on the guitar. Perhaps this was the answer. It might be easier to find a bass player and I go on lead guitar. I liked playin’ either instrument so it didn’t matter to me. I suggested it to Joe Meek (it was at Joe’s place we’d been holding the auditions). Joe thought it was a great idea.

‘I know a bass player who came up from Southampton with a group to audition,’ Joe said. ‘I think we could get him.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Well, he’s tall, quite good lookin’.’

‘No, for fuck’s sake, what’s he like on the bass?’ Trust Joe.

‘I’ll get him down and see what you think of him.’ He turned up. His name was Heinz Burt.

I wasn’t impressed. He was a bit image-conscious, to say the least. Not a very desirable quality for a musician to have, in my book. I hoped he was goin’ to be useless. It would have made it easier. As it happens he was passable. But he didn’t fit in. He was too ambitious. Wanted to be a ‘star’. No good for us. We didn’t want to be stars if it meant pandering to the masses. We wanted to enjoy ourselves and play good music and fuck about and that. I decided to take the easy way out and rather than tell Joe I didn’t like him, I told Joe I didn’t think I was up to playing lead guitar and I wanted to go back on bass.

‘Okay,’ said Joe. ‘We’ll carry on auditioning for a lead guitarist. But I shall build a band round Heinz.’

By this time Don Groom had got fed up and went off to join Mike Berry’s new group, The Innocents. We now needed a drummer as well as a lead guitarist. The advert went back in the Melody Maker, now saying, ‘Drummer and Lead Guitarist wanted for Hit Recording Artists, The Outlaws’. Things were looking gloomy. But every cloud has a silver lining. I got a phone call from someone who had been up at Joe Meek’s, who said he had just seen Alan Caddy and Clem Cattini (Johnny Kidd’s guitarist and drummer) walk into Joe Meek’s to audition for The Outlaws.’ Great! I’d heard them play. Perfect! I’ve rang Joe.

‘Is it true?’

‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘But they’re no good for you so I’m forming a group with them round Heinz.

‘But I know how they play. I like ’em.’

‘Well, they’re now in my new group I’m forming called The Tornados.’

Fanks, Joe!

We carried on auditioning. We found a drummer who suited us. Mick Underwood. All we needed was a lead guitarist. Me and Ken remembered seeing a guitar player (another one who was with Sutch) that we liked. Let’s find out what he’s up to. We found out his name was Ritchie Blackmore and we got him down. He wasn’t particularly quick at pickin’ up a tune but he had a style of his own, a good sound and a good Rock ’n’ Roll feel. He was in.