Been gathering memoirs to text... (If I'm repeating myself anywhere here, please forgive)
Most Memorable gigs:
Genesis Earls Court Saturday 25th June 1977
The Stranglers Roundhouse Sunday 26th June 1977
Led Zeppelin Bromley College early 1969
Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup Bridge House Elephant and Castle winter 1969
The Only Ones Fulham Greyhound circa ‘77
Ian Dury Lewisham Odeon mid-seventies x 2
Black Sabbath Ewell University 1970
Fairport Convention Bromley College 1969
The Nice Mistral Club Beckenham 1968 or early 1969
Pink Floyd Earls Court Friday May 18th 1973
Captain Beefheart The Venue Victoria Friday 14th November 1980
Hawkwind; Pink Fairies; The Sweet, Thunderclap Newman all-nighter at Goldsmiths University New Cross 1972-ish
The Move, Mistral Club Beckenham 1969
The Marmalade Uxbridge 1969
Bridget St John, Cousins, Soho 1969
Savoy Brown Blues Band & Chicken Shack London College Of Fashion & Technology 1968
The Who Lewisham Odeon 1971
The Damned Sunday September 11th 1982 Hammersmith Palais
Pink Floyd Earls Court 26th October 1994
Senser, Astoria Thursday 12th May 1994
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band The Marquee 1972
The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown The Bal Tabarin Downham 1968
Led Zeppelin The Lyceum Strand London 1970
The Pink Fairies, Harrow Inn, Abbey Wood, 1973
I think the Earls Court Genesis gig was the most enjoyable gig I’ve ever been to, it was probably the last year Genesis retained any vestige of cool despite having Phil Collins front them. It was the first time I’d seen a decent laser light show which may have impressed me a great deal. Me mate Arthur was doing security at the venue and me and the first wife bumped into him and he asked us where we were seated. We pointed to half way up the very back tier and he said ‘follow me’. He took us to five rows from the front and said ’Have those two seats there’ explaining they were reserved for Susan George and her hubby but they wouldn’t be attending. Just to put the icing on the cake each chair had a bottle of white wine on it which Arthur said we may as well have – result!
I believe 1977 was the year the Genesis LP ‘Wind and Wuthering’ was released which imo was the last half decent album the band released, it was all pretty much downhill from thereon with Phil Collins losing all credibility almost overnight.
And the day after Genesis I travelled to Camden to see The Stranglers – quite a contrast. The band stopped their set mid-song and the bassist Jean Jaques Burnel said the next person who spat at them he would personally come down and knock them out. The spitting stopped completely.
Led Zeppelin hadn’t been formed long in January or February 1969 when I paid 7/6 to see them at Bromley College and they were very good. The place wasn’t packed at all, you could walk from right at the front by the stage to the bar and get a drink then go back to where you were.
15 months later I paid £1 to see them at the Lyceum – that’s inflation for you. They’d got a bit more popular by then and I had to queue round the block for a whole 15 minutes before I gained admission.
Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup was one of the last original American bluesmen, most well known for having written ‘My Baby Left Me’ which of course Elvis Presley recorded and had a hit with. In ‘69 I went to a pub under a railway bridge between Elephant and Castle and The Borough where I saw him perform in a small upstairs bar at The Bridge House pub. This was one of those gigs I’m really rather glad I attended.
I saw The Only Ones many times at many different London venues – The Greyhound, The Marquee and The Rock Garden being just a few. A very original and exciting band, they were at their best live and I have never understood why they never made it any bigger. And as coincidence would have it I used to buy all my puff from Peter Perrett, the bands' founder/singer, before he gained some fame.
I saw Ian Dury twice at Lewisham Odeon mid-seventies, first one year then the next. Pure entertainment and 100% feelgood factor.
One warm summer weekend five of us drove from South London to Ewell University in Surrey where we saw Black Sabbath before they got kind of famous and they were very very good. After the gig we went to Tunbridge Wells where we stayed with my cousin Linda then the next day went to Brighton where there was some free festival occuring.
And on Sunday we bunked in to a festival at Plumpton Race Course and saw Ginger Baker’s Air Force. Which made us rather glad we hadn’t paid money to get in.
Talking of bunking in, that’s what we done to see Fairport Convention at Bromley College, who were superb. Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson and I think the drummer Martin Lamble was still alive at that time.
I met this hippie fella where I was working who was actually an ambassador’s son who lived in a posh gaff in Knightsbridge. Robert (for that was his name) introduced me to some new music and lent me Safe As Milk by Captain Beefheart and I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die by Country Joe & The Fish – 2 LP’s which pretty much turned my life around altogether. Robert noted The Mistral club at Beckenham was near where I lived and suggested we go and see some band called The Nice. So we did. Another life-changing event, thank you Robert, wherever you are now.
The Mistral was a small club opposite the end of the tram line at Beckenham, I believe it’s still being used as a club. You entered downstairs and paid your admission money to a lady sitting in a white Rolls Royce, very odd. The bands performed upstairs and amongst others I saw there were The Pretty Things, The Move and Tyranosaurus Rex. Not that I saw much of Tyranosaurus Rex cos all the audience were standing up and Marc Bolan and Mickey Finn sat on the floor. Good call lads…
I saw Pink Floyd on their Dark Side Of The Moon tour at Earls Court in 1973, I remember there were several anti-aircraft spotlights being used outside as we went in, making patterns in the sky. 21 years later I went back to the same place and watched them do the same thing again.
Despite being a fan of Captain Beefheart since 1968 I only ever got to see him perform twice, once at Knebworth in 1975 supporting Pink Floyd and at the Venue in Victoria in 1980. I am so glad I did.
In the early seventies I attended an all-nighter at Goldsmiths Uni in New Cross where the lineup was: Thunderclap Newman; The Sweet; The Pink Fairies and Hawkwind. Hawkwind introduced us to Herbie, the world’s biggest strobe light, apparently. For me an historical occasion as I think that night was the most stoned I’ve ever been in my life. Beer, speed, dope, mescalin and coke. And I still managed to keep it together (I think).
In 1968, I may not even have left school when I saw The Marmalade play at some disco type club in Uxbridge, Middlesex. We only went because we knew the DJ playing there that evening – Steve Maxted. And they were really good, which surprised me, I had them down as just another piece of fluff pop band. I wuz wrong.
In the late sixties there was this basement folk club venue in Soho named Cousins and there I saw Bridget St John who gave me the shivers, albeit in a very nice way. What a superb evening that was.
My first rock band gig was the Savoy Brown Blues Band at the London College Of Fashion and Technology just off of Regent Street. Support was Chicken Shack who had a young lady named Christine Perfect on keyboards and vocals. She done quite well when she teamed up with another blues band also treading the boards at that time.
I went to this gig, incidentally cos me mate Phil Hurrell was going to the college and got some free tickets. I got chatting to a very attractive young lady and asked her out and she agreed. But she lived in Hornsey which to me at the time seemed like half a planet away so I never followed it up. Would somebody very kindly kick me hard up the arse a few times? Thank you.
The Who, Lewisham Odeon, 1971. With Keith Moon, the year Who’s Next was released. Need I say more?
Ah, The Damned at Hammersmith Palais, that one threw me a curveball, I was something of an innocent abroad. So there I was standing down the front waiting for them to come on and I was thinking ‘this is good’. Then the band came on, started playing, and the whole world erupted around me. Eeeeeek! Lost in a mosh pit. I eventually made it, on all fours I think, to a safer position some way back from the front of the stage. Now that was an experience.
Senser at The Astoria. I had learnt my lesson and stayed away from the front and all them mad moshers. That gig was pure adrenalin. At the end of the evening after people had filed out of the Astoria the floor was always a sea of empty red stripe cans, I figure a small fortune could have been made from a recycling centre. The Astoria, of course, is no more, lost to a rail scheme.
In the early seventies I was a huge Alex Harvey fan and saw him loads of times, several times at The Marquee. At one of his gigs I found myself standing next to him using the Marquee’s urinal. Alex spoke to somebody next to him and as he did so he turned. This movement caused his jet of waste liquid to be directed at my footwear and my shoes received an unrequested wash. Alex realised this and apologised to me profusely ‘Och I’m awful sorry laddie’ said he. So I can now boast with some pride ‘Alex Harvey wee’d on my foot’.
Arthur Brown came on stage at The Bal Tabarin with a flaming barnet and all the band wore expressionless face masks. Very Lindsey Kemp dahlings. Vincent Crane on the Hammond organ and Carl Palmer on drums. I also saw Arthur at The Marquee a few years later. The Marquee back then had about six rows of chairs at the front and I was sitting in the front row watching Arthur and the band perform. Half way through one song Arthur left stage then a few minutes later came back on – stark naked. He decided to stand right in front of me and I swear he thrust his pelvis forward. This meant that Arthur’s todger was just inches from my face. Now, all eyes were on him so I just had to stay cool didn’t I? I sort of managed, at least I didn’t get up and run away but I did go a bright cherry red. All these years later, seared onto my memory banks, is a detailed image of Arthur’s three piece suite in close up detail. Thank you Arthur but there are some things in this life I could happily have lived without.
And The Pink Fairies at Abbey Wood, on a warm summers evening in a wooden shed in the pub’s garden with views of the rail station and Thamesmead – surreal or what? Two drummers, intense, and they looked like the sort of guys you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of.
