Ain't Bad for a Pink

by Sandra Gibson

  Phil Grice – Gricey – is a good example of what I mean. He was a good guitarist who stuck with pop and didn’t become part of the Skunk Band but he worked at the shop. He was possibly the laziest lad I’ve ever met, and I had to go and dig him out of bed, cup of tea at the ready, if I wanted him to come to work. I am, and was then, very tolerant of erratic timekeeping as long as the priority work was done. Plum was similarly poor at morning timekeeping. Once the business was really up and running you had to have a bit of a hierarchy though the rules weren’t conventional. They were based on friendship and good will and flexibility.

  Making A Snake

  I recall the amount of preparation that had to go into equipment for gigs. One night we were making a “snake” for an important gig the next day. It involved 32 channels, 64 plugs and 3 soldered joints per plug. We were doing this upstairs at Nantwich Road and it was going to take all night.

  With a big bag of grass.

  Anyway – it got late and I had to let my wife know I wouldn’t be home. We didn’t have a phone so I had to phone the old lady next door. She was religious and squeaky and I got the old spliff giggles and I couldn’t communicate with her for laughing and in the end I couldn’t leave the message. I think it was a crucial moment in relation to my wife. We were in two different worlds. There are pivotal moments when you start working in the business. You get a different outlook on life and that separates you from other people.

  Wayne Davies (Slim). (3)

  Plum: Not One Drop Spilt

  I had a long acquaintance with Plum; he went in and out of my life even after we had split up as business partners. I admired his practical skills and thought his strengths were complementary to my own; the original partnership was a sound idea in more ways than one. Unfortunately he didn’t know how I operated. He thought my lucrative visits to cities like Manchester, Liverpool and London to buy stuff for customers were pleasure trips and believing this he rightly felt resentful. He certainly hadn’t rated my input – in fact he probably thought there was no input from me. So he wanted to split up. Plum kept Hewitt Street and I had Nantwich Road; I retained the Custom Amplification trade name and Plum renamed his section: Air. We had a share-out of stock and there was some animosity between us, but only initially. He continued making and supplying cabinets and if I wanted a cabinet I might have it off him but I was much more interested in retail than manufacture. Hewitt Street was in effect a wholesale factory shop. If Plum had listened to me I could have made it into a manufacturing unit but at the end of the day Plum was only interested in having just enough money for his present needs and never worried about the future: he just spent the money without considering tax or VAT or money for materials. Unfortunately his practical excellence was not enough to compensate for his lack of business acumen and he went bankrupt within six months. Meanwhile I had a growing business in vintage guitars which Gordon-Smith was advertising.

  Plum could be very generous; he had a heart of gold and a head of lead; if you needed £100 he’d give it you, but he might have to consider robbing it from someone else! He was very keen on live music and would both perform and encourage others to perform. Everyone remembers the famous occasion when Plum was playing at The Royal. The worse for wear – he fell off the stage onto the dance floor – holding his beer intact whilst all the time his bass guitar was feeding back. With not a drop spilt. Not one drop.

  Plum went off to Rhyl doing what he was good at: getting by, helping to run a night club, building bars, doing sound systems. He also dealt in cars, mainly cheap knackers. He was a survivor.

  In the Eighties Plum lived in a caravan at the back of the premises, did repairs and ran the shop, freeing me up to go sailing. I rented a double garage behind the shop and Plum started to do some installation work again. I could offer customised PA systems: I did the assessment of needs, the negotiation and the selling then all I had to do was tell Plum what was required and he would build it, drive it to the place needing it and install it. Job done. The building would fall down before one of Plum’s installations would budge! We supplied customised equipment for all the local clubs and dozens in the Potteries. When the clubs went into decline we started getting our own equipment back in the shop for resale.

  There was the notion of a separate company: Decibel Sounds. It was to be the heir to Air! But before that could happen we split up again, this time for different reasons: we’d had a robbery and the tools went and the garage was no longer available for rent. So Plum went to Rhyl again. Then back he came and I re-employed him and he looked after the shop and did repairs as before. I think he latched on to me because I was stable and settled. People can only do this if they know this about you – they need to be able to predict.

  But his enthusiasm for live music endured.

  Come On Down

  He was totally enthusiastic about live music and used to encourage people to have a go. Plum would drive up in his tiny car, with his big belly and he’d say, “Come on down – I’ll get you a drum kit.” He was just so keen for people to play. He’d resurrect Jam Night anywhere and he’d encourage young lads to play. He did the sound at The Limelight when it first opened.

  Andy Smith. (4)

  Ozzie: Spraying It Around

  My business and musical career wouldn’t have survived without people on hand to make stuff and shift stuff and set up stuff – unconventional characters who didn’t quite fit in anywhere else and who contributed to the anarchic times. Sometimes when you visited Plum’s workshop you’d feel rain. You’d look up and there would be Ozzie: a character who looked like Roger Daltrey – a Roger Daltrey who’d been kicked all round a football pitch – and he’d be pissing on you from the exposed beams. An old prison trick. The showers were even more tropical when Plum joined in.

  Anyone buying a cabinet made by Ozzie and Plum got more than they paid for. They left charming messages on the inside such as, “Fuck off – don’t be nosy!” or rude nudes – Ozzie could draw – or solid bodily substances. They didn’t believe in customer care. You’d borrow the van and find the windscreen wipers wouldn’t budge. Ozzie had left a heavy present on the windscreen: a huge dark turd that gradually became more pliable as the rain did its job until liquid shit was flying everywhere. What a journey that was.

  But I could be basic with my practical joking as well. Whilst shooting on Beattock Moor with my dog Rafe I met a dog handler who admired his obedience. He asked me how I achieved it. “Oh – I give him the occasional wank,” I said. The next time I met the dog handler he had been handling dogs in more ways than one. “You know what you told me to do? Well it didn’t work,” he said.

  I kept a very straight face.

  Ozzie – Keith Osbourne – wasn’t a musician but he would be a roadie. You had to keep an eye on him because he attracted mither. One night he and I were leaving Gorstey Hall after doing the sound system for a band. It was quite late on; we’d had a few drinks and Ozzie decided to piss on me. Soon it was pee wars round and round a parked car, both of us trying to score hits. The car was a Rolls Royce. It was the Mayor of Crewe’s Rolls Royce. There was a woman sitting in it wearing a very big necklace. The Mayoress of Crewe! She was sitting very still. Very, very still.

  Things were always rather primitive with Ozzie.

  Melvyn Allen: Drumming For Pete

  Melvyn started his working life as an apprentice engineer at Rollmakers. He enjoyed the theory but disliked the practical work so he left and became a drummer – part of the first Skunk Band line-up, earning enough to keep the wolf from the door. He used to have a Ludwig Super Classic ’63 kit, like the Beatles. I have a very high estimation of him: he’s the best drummer I’ve ever heard. He can do a bass drum roll on a single bass drum faster than anyone on a double bass drum and various famous drummers have been mesmerised by him . Melvyn’s drumming had loads of volume because he learnt his technique from a jazz drummer. He’s the only one I know who can do a drum solo which sounds like music, not just drumming.

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nbsp; I’ve also valued his loyalty. Melvyn had the opportunity to join Tony McPhee and the Groundhogs at the time they were backing John Lee Hooker. Both John Lee and Champion Jack Dupree regarded them highly and they had toured with the Stones.

  “I drum for Pete,” Melvyn said.

  Melvyn was the only member of the band I allowed to smoke on stage. This was because Melvyn Allen smoking a cigarette had great theatrical potential. The cigarette would move slowly from one side of his mouth to the other, the ash still intact, such was his dynamic control.

  Al Dean

  Like policemen, drummers and bass players come as a pair. Al came with Melvyn and became the Skunk Band’s bass player. He had served an apprenticeship as an electrician. An innovative musician, he was also excellent as a sound engineer. Al and I went separate ways musically when he went down the pop and R & B route coincidentally with the demise of Nantwich Road. This split is understandable; I could no longer afford to employ anyone and people had to seek their main chance in order to survive financially. At one point Melvyn, Al Dean, an organist called Kenny Jones and a lead singer called Chris Steele – a melodic Joe Cocker – together with Phil Grice and Phil Colclough were in a band called Mustard. Mustard did the gruelling Hamburg stint. Years later, Melvyn, Al Dean and John Darlington went to South Africa and Kenny Jones was their contact there, having emigrated some years earlier.

  I can’t help noticing how extensive and kaleidoscopic musical networks are and how many of my musical friends and acquaintances emigrated or died young. Chris Steele – the singer with Mustard – went to New Zealand where he had a successful career in light entertainment . He unfortunately died of cancer. John Billington – an early musical acquaintance and long-time friend – also went to New Zealand. He became a film cameraman and covered the Balkans War. He died accidentally in 2009 when he missed his footing getting onto his yacht from his dinghy. His body was found in the sea.

  Al Dean, a very competent musician, went on to have local commercial success, with Big Blue House and with The Holding Company. His latest band is Flight 505. He still builds PA systems and has personally built a luxury studio. He also supplies the sound systems for the Audlem Proms and organizes the Nantwich Blues Festival with Phil Martin.

  What To Do With Celery (5)

  Phil Doody is a drummer. From time to time your band gets stranded in hostile terrain and you need someone to rescue you. He was the one who towed us back safely from the red light district in Leeds – of which more later. On a recent visit to the shop he described some of the times he spent with us in the Skunking days as “a lifetime in a day”. There was a gig at the Joiner’s Arms, Chorley. Phil had been drinking hard and became violently ill. So the band shared his packed lunch! When Al Dean saw the celery he didn’t know whether to eat it or smoke it – according to Phil. The pub had accommodation for bands: a sort of communal dormitory and when it was time to go to bed Phil was surprised when no-one wanted to share with him. Could it have been the smell of eau de puke? Shep’s excuse was that he always slept at the foot of my bed, “like a faithful dog”.

  Everyone Loved Pete

  When the folk club at The Brunswick first opened Whitty and I influenced others to look at musical roots. By the time we supported the inauguration of the Sandbach Folk Club in 1972, Pete Whittingham and I had done quite a lot to establish acoustic music in the area. That occasion was effectively the outing of the Skunk Band, a bringing together of our combined musical influences: myself, Whitty, Melvyn and Al. The heart of the band was the musical compatibility between Whitty and I, combining and balancing my blues and his folk-rock; his songwriting and my arranging: a compatibility that found its voice in our instinctive harmonising. We were part of the musical trends of the Sixties and Seventies, encompassing an acoustic revival that manifested in folk rock, psychedelic folk and a growing interest in the blues, as well as traditional folk and a pop explosion with blues influences. I was keener to honour the earlier manifestations of the blues from the Twenties and Thirties rather than the later urban blues exemplified by the Chicago musicians. We pushed out the boundaries with our combination of material and we also did comedy numbers – unusual in a young band.

  Pete, an artist, a lyrical musician with a good sense of humour, was also a wild, hard-drinking man, loved by all who met him though he could have mood swings that frightened people. This was to have a future influence on the potential of the band.

  Hectic Times

  I had a friend called Pat whom I met at school. Together we would go to The Twisted Wheel at Manchester or The Torch at Tunstall where we took substances. We were also part of the Northwich Art College scene and that’s how Pat met Whitty, whom she married. Everyone was in love with Pete Whittingham but he was a hopeless case and these were hectic times. Whitty would fall asleep in people’s gardens or in baths; people would step over him or even on him; they would pee on him.

  The two Petes had met and started playing together. Whitty was the only one Pete was able to play with spontaneously; they created wonderful harmonies; they were fabulous together; the banter between them was part of the act as well.

  It’s such a tragedy that Whitty was too drunk all the time but Pete let it slip as well. But it could never have worked with Whitty – not in his destiny. He was your classic talented, gifted, artistic person, doomed to die early. Pete’s never found anybody to replace Whitty. He’s tried very hard but I think it’s as a solo performer that Pete’s talent lies.

  Zoe Johnson. (6)

  Grand Junction

  I watched the Skunk Band perform numbers by Ry Cooder, Little Feat, Mississippi John Hurt, Leadbelly and others at the original Grand Junction in Market Street, Crewe. The line-up was Pete Johnson, Pete Whittingham, Melvyn (on drums) and Al Dean. I’d never heard anything like it. I was listening to Hawkwind, Queen and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band at the time and although I was blown away by Pete’s music I found it difficult to change my musical tastes. But I’d never heard anything like it.

  John Darlington. (7)

  Thriving Business

  The first phase of the Skunk Band lasted about two years until 1975. By this time the business was doing well and the prosperity made everything easier with regard to equipment, reliable transport etc. and I owned an expensive house. I don’t know if this relative wealth created complacency or if the fact that it allowed me to spend money on sporting activities caused a waning of interest in the band. Perhaps things needed to change; you can’t stay the same musically without becoming stale and boring. Anyway, I took up Enduro riding, flying and sailing. I was extremely busy with my business: I was selling guitars for £500 and £800 and my shop turned over £89,000 in 1979. It was unheard of for a provincial shop to import from abroad in the Seventies, but I was importing stuff from Yorkville Sound in Canada, Electro-Harmonix in New York and Gruhn guitars from Nashville. I would regularly go to the airport to pick up a thousand quid’s worth of pedals – now known as stomp boxes. The biggest amp sales were in Traynor Amplification which came from Yorkville Sound.

  My business activities were attracting attention from the authorities; they were on my back. They thought I was laundering drugs money but nothing could be further from the truth. Fortunately I was always one step ahead of them: my books were impeccable.

  My Way, Cadnant, See Feder And Huff Of Arklow

  For someone who has stayed put in Crewe I’ve had a lot to do with mobility: cycles, motorbikes, cars, skis, planes, parachutes, boats and yachts. The yachts I owned reflected the youthful times of good money and each had its own character. My first boat was a motor yacht: My Way. I bought it in Swansea in the mid Seventies. I saw it; I wanted it but I hadn’t got the ready cash and I was anxious in case it was sold in the meantime.

  Des Parton invited me to have a drink in the town centre. This was unusual since we drank in The Barrel. Anyway, he went to the building society and when he got back to the pub he handed me two thousand quid in cash. I could buy the boat outrigh
t. I had only mentioned it in passing but he must have sensed my longing. I was able to have the boat because of his sensitivity and generosity. He was able to let me have the money because of his chart success but he didn’t have to – he could have spent it on himself. Over the years I repaid him with guitars and a little money. I kept My Way for five years.

  I inherited some money from my Auntie Betty and bought a fishing boat that had been used during the Royal Investiture to take the Prince of Wales round Caernarvon harbour. It was called Cadnant. When I had a problem with Cadnant I sold it and bought Sea Feather, originally called See Feder. The name was anglicised, not changed, because in the folklore of the sea that would have been unlucky. It had been bought in 1936 for Luftwaffe pilots on holiday and for training the Hitler Youth. I didn’t have any objection to the boat’s provenance: the Germans made some damn good stuff. After the war it became a windfall yacht to be taken by the British Navy which used such vessels as sail trainers. Government cuts in the 1970s occasioned their sale and this one, the Sea Feather, ended up virtually as scrap, in a boatyard in Beaumaris. A friend of mine helped me to renovate it; he loved that boat. At that time he owned a famous yacht called Huff of Arklow which had won lots of races in its time. Its designer was Uffa Fox who also built unsinkable lifeboats for World War II.