Ain't Bad for a Pink

by Sandra Gibson

  Give Me Sunshine

  You get used to prima donnas when you’re in show business so it’s good to meet entertainers who behave well, as the Three Degrees did. Unlike their manager.

  I used to provide the sound system for corporate entertainment at a stately home near Stafford. A posh setup. KC and the Sunshine Band were performing. This was a nine piece band but I had only provided two microphones. I apologised and was about to call it off so they could make other arrangements. “Does it work?” someone asked of the sound system. “Certainly. Of course it works.” “Then we’ll work round it.”

  Then followed what I would describe as a perfect night. They were probably better not having what I should have taken – brass instruments are loud anyway and it sounded great: just like a live acoustic band. I’m always bowled over by professionalism in musicians. The Drifters were similarly professional: a consummate cabaret act, perfectly polite and a great band. I did the sound for them at The Heavy Steam Machine round about 1977.

  Homeward Bound, I Wish I Was

  Like being a musician, being a sound engineer or a roadie meant getting used to a mobile life spent largely on Britain’s motorways. It could be fun and it was not unusual to meet Rod Stewart at the services but it was exhausting and stressful as well.

  Partly as a result of the connection with The Adverts, Custom Amplification built up a reputation for providing good sound systems for punk groups. Accordingly, I provided the PA for high-profile groups such as the Sex Pistols – they were just punks! – and The Boomtown Rats. I didn’t always go with the sound engineers. Sometimes I was not needed at all and at other times, for special things, I went separately. Al Dean and Shep usually went in a large Mercedes 608D van, with a couple of others. Such heavy and expensive material needed guarding at all times so I hired out stuff on condition that Shep went with it. I had confidence in my sound engineers: they knew and understood how it all worked.

  This life had none of the romance often associated with travelling. Asked if I had done gigs in Belfast or Dublin, I once denied it only to be reminded that I had played both cities with my band and solo, and I had also done sound systems in these places. Yet no city distinguishes itself from any other if you’re focussed on motorway routes, venues, hotel rooms and relentlessly moving on. There simply isn’t time or energy to allow the mind to imbibe a sense of place. Imbibe something else, perhaps.

  Shep

  Shep had been introduced to my shop through Pete Whittingham. He’d been sleeping rough on a park bench and looked like a tramp. One day I locked him in the premises and threatened not to let him out till he’d had a bath. After that he stayed at the shop and started to work for me. Shep went on to tour with Bob Geldof and was briefly to be seen on the Live Aid Concert, adjusting a microphone stand. According to him the Live Aid technicians had T shirts made: “Fuck the world – feed the crew” but were banned from wearing them. Although this is a humorous, possibly apocryphal story, it does highlight the fact that this profession, although it touches the lives of the rich, talented and famous, is not prestigious in spite of being crucial.

  Shep toured the world with performers such as ELO, Joan Armatrading, Ozzy Osbourne and Ginger Baker. I met Ginger Baker briefly. A total eccentric. Shep remembers seeing him heading for the hills with two very rich young ladies and a big bag of coke. Shep was with Alex Harvey when he had a massive heart attack on a dock in Belgium. The second heart attack killed him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital in Zeebrugge. It was the day before his forty-seventh birthday and he had been performing with his new band, Electric Cowboys. I never claimed the money for the sound system.

  Shep has returned to Crewe and worked as the sound engineer at The Limelight until recently.

  The Comedians

  Custom Amplification did the sound systems for Bernard Manning and Ken Dodd.

  Part of Manning’s act at Rolls Royce Club was to make the microphone sound as if it was working intermittently. Then he would give the sound engineers a good ‘telling off’. I knew he would do this so I was prepared. When he got to this part of the act I shut the out front sound down and left the monitors on. So Bernard could hear it through the monitors and the audience couldn’t hear it at all. Bernard was complaining that the sound system was going wrong – “but only through the monitors, Bernard,” I said. The comedian laughed at this reversal of his joke.

  With Bernard Manning what you see is what you get and it’s the same with Ken Dodd: a true professional and a nice man. I remember him sending an envelope with money in for the lads to have a drink.

  The Rolling Stones

  I met the Rolling Stones at a party somewhere in London, some time in the Eighties. I remember the exclusivity of the event: how you had to have someone to take you and how generous the hospitality was once you had made it into the venue. I found with them as with other performers that if you treated them in an ordinary way you had a good time with them. You could just get drunk and powder your nose: if someone empties a line of coke in front of you, you tend to join in, or else they won’t ask you again!

  I’ve thought about the drugs scene that celebrities are involved in. I wasn’t into drugs until I was about thirty but drug-related belonging is not the only option. It’s not my only option anyway. There’s another way of being part of things: if it takes someone to bring a party to life by dancing or singing – that’s me. They love you for it and they ask you again.

  Political Shoes

  Not all of my brushes with celebrity have been through the world of entertainment, unless of course you include politicians in this world. We visited the Scilly Isles: there are five altogether and you can visit each one by boat taxi. Walking along the high street on the main island, St. Agnes, was a man with a Labrador, a mac, a pipe and a wife. He just said, “Good morning,” pipe in the corner of his mouth. It was our Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.

  We visited Tresco: lovely gardens with wild budgies flying about, birds that would eat off your plate and ships’ figureheads all over the place. Later on, we went to the only pub on the island and someone was playing guitar, quite averagely. It didn’t take many pints for me to borrow it.

  “Don’t break any strings!”

  “I’ve got a whole shop full at home. If I do I’ll put a guitar on the end of it.”

  The songs went down well. I went for a pee. Harold Wilson came and stood next to me. I was that shocked I part turned round and splashed his shoes! Harold Wilson was my father’s hero; he liked the idea that class barriers were being brought down. They certainly were! The PM complimented me on my guitar playing, though not my aim. In retrospect the most amazing thing was that there were no photographers and no security men. Today’s prime ministers couldn’t go for an egalitarian pee.

  My combined activities in music and sport put me in contact with the famous and the notorious. I discovered that they were the same as me and even prime ministers piss.

  More Endings

  Though death loitered in corners as we partied and shagged and bent our minds to avoid its gaze, that death letter always caught you unawares. You pick up the phone expecting to talk about amps and microphones and mither or the best route to a gig and someone’s saying,

  “There’s no easy way to tell you, Pete….”

  The deaths in the Skunk Band years have tended to be sudden and therefore more shocking than the previous deaths in my family. Pete Whittingham, Keith Brammer, Moggsie and Plum all died suddenly. My best friend and musical brother, my sports companion, my surrogate son and my one-time business partner: all suddenly gone.

  Alcohol was to claim a beautiful girlfriend and Des Parton’s guitarist Ron. My friendship with eccentric entertainer Eugene was conducted partly in bars and partly in the cancer ward. There’s a fine line between a party and a wake.

  Notes: Section Two

  (1) John Darlington, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 3rd January 2007.

  (2) Andy Boote, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 4th Septem
ber 2006.

  (3) Wayne Davies (Slim), interviewed by Sandra Gibson 30th January 2007.

  (4) Andy Smith, from a conversation at Custom Amplification, 2006.

  (5) Phil Doody, from a conversation at Custom Amplification 19th March 2009.

  (6) Zoe Johnson, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 26th April 2007.

  (7) John Darlington, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 3rd January 2007.

  (8) Zoe Johnson, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 26th April 2007.

  (9) Wayne Davies (Slim), interviewed by Sandra Gibson 30th January 2007.

  (10) Ibid.

  (11) John Darlington, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 3rd January 2007.

  (12) Letter sent by Pete Whittingham from Perth, Australia in May 1984.

  (13) Letter sent by Pete Whittingham from Perth, Australia, 21st August 1984.

  (14) From a letter sent from New Zealand by John Billington shortly after Pete Whittingham’s death.

  (15) Letter sent by Pete Whittingham’s parents to Pete Johnson, 5th February 1985.

  (16) Performance by Chew The Roots at The Imperial, Crewe, 29th December 2006, reviewed by Sandra Gibson.

  (17) John Darlington, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 3rd January 2007.

  (18) Ibid.

  (19) Ibid.

  (20) Ibid.

  (21) Andy Boote, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 4th September 2006.

  (22) Ibid.

  (23) Website: www.vavoom.altpro.net.

  (24) Ibid.

  (25) Performance by Vavoom! at The Imperial, Crewe, reviewed by Sandra Gibson, 2006.

  (26) Andy Boote, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 4th September 2006.

  (27) Dave Evans, Shady Oak, Beeston, 9th May 2009.

  (28) Ibid.

  (29) Des Parton, interviewed by Sandra Gibson, May 2006.

  (30) Ibid.

  (31) M&M Music, i.e. Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent.

  (32) Des Parton, interviewed by Sandra Gibson May 2006.

  (33) Manchester Evening News, 3rd February 2009.

  (34) Andy Smith, from an e-mail sent to Sandra Gibson 9th February 2010.

  (35) Keith Marriott on myspace.

  (36) BB King quote from Wikipedia.

  (37) Wayne Davies (Slim), interviewed by Sandra Gibson 30th January 2007.

  (38) Ibid.

  (39) Ibid.

  SECTION THREE

  Where The Moonon Crosses The Yellow Dog:

  The Country Blues

  For all the partying of my rock ‘n’ roll life, my passion has been the country blues and I have kept faith with this since the age of thirteen. No matter where my journeys in less-than-reliable vehicles took me, the constant soundtrack to everything was the blues. It has been my rock.

  The closest I got to having a religion.

  Bully For Me

  An Unfair Match

  The blues embraced me at the threshold of my teens. My needs for comfort, self-expression, stimulation and exploration of technique were fulfilled by the blues. The blues galvanised my sense of justice.

  Like all kids in a northern industrial town I had spent my childhood on the streets: doing errands; measuring the time by dandelion clocks; absorbing the tribal laws; guarding the bonfire stuff; registering those who wouldn’t give you your ball back; aware of those slightly exotic types in bright dressing gowns rumoured to be ex-opera stars and those shadowy presences our parents told us not to speak to.

  When I was nine, three lads cornered me, bent on giving me a pasting. An unfair match. I spotted my chance: one of the lads put his shopping bag down. I grabbed it, swung it round and round my head and sent it clattering, crashing and smashing all across the road. Pretty spectacular. The boys were in tears – they’d be in trouble at home for this. Surviving against the odds has always been instinctive for me and I have extended this into fighting on behalf of others in a similar situation.

  The Land Of The Free

  “Every time I go downtown

  Somebody’s kickin’ my hite around.” (1)

  My study of slavery and the blues revealed an epic story of exploitation and oppression: from street bullying to the sanctioning of lynch law. Everything the Southern black had been through was abhorrent and it was still happening. I was aware of this before Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights Movement entered my consciousness. Segregation and discrimination against black people in the Land of the Free, especially in the South, had created an impoverishing apartheid long after slavery had been abolished. The overruling of the remaining Jim Crow Laws and the ratification of the Voting Rights Act took place as late as the mid Sixties. All this is so recent and so fresh in the memory. A white Nina Simone fan posted this comment on YouTube: “We had a cross burning in our front yard because a multi-racial band was playing touch football when neighbours were driving by”. (2)

  Indignation reinforced my appreciation of the blues. I felt compassion for the plight of the black people of America and admiration for the way they combined raw emotion with supreme musicianship in responding to life’s big issues – often with humour. Meeting so many of the old blues singers during the Sixties confirmed my respect. I wanted to resist bullying on their behalf. Feeling their songs deserved to be heard by a wider audience, I’ve done my best to communicate this.

  The country blues has always been my main thing and by the country blues I mean music originating in the Southern states of America from the conditions of the black people living there. The rawness and realness I found in some of the music was a true expression of the black experience, as far as I was concerned. The poor quality of some of the recordings gives it a distant, plaintive sound that I have always responded to. My repertoire also includes music not labelled as country blues but interpreted in the spirit of the genre. And the genre does have a wide scope and a big heart: light and shade, subtlety and harshness, humour and sadness, farce and tragedy, love and passion and bawdiness.

  The Origin, Scope And Development Of The Country Blues

  The Blues Did Not Originate In Africa

  The country blues was first published in 1912 and first recorded in the Twenties: long after the blues had been established as an oral form. Some archivists have claimed it had its origins in Africa but as a musician I would refute this. People singing what came to be known as the blues wouldn’t have heard African rhythms. They weren’t even recorded – where would they hear them? I think that the African influence in the blues is minimal, if it exists at all, because the oppressor always commits cultural genocide on the oppressed. The slaves brought to America had to be stripped of any sense of identity other than that of being owned. Families were split up; they weren’t allowed to gather in large groups; they were worked to death. Oh yes – their culture was beaten out of them one way or another. Not even rhythm was allowed: there were religious reservations about dance and rhythm and black people were not permitted to play drums because communication of any kind had to be suppressed in the interests of political control.

  No: I don’t accept that the blues came from Africa – not even the rhythms. A primitive quality is in the music because of the way the Southern blacks lived: subsisting in rural poverty and playing raw-edged versions of what was available in the prevailing culture: mainly European music. Thirty years after I made this claim, some prominent musicians have made similar statements.

  They would have had access to sea shanties – especially the first generation of slaves – work songs, white hillbilly music, folk songs from Europe and gospel from white folks’ hymns. If you study the provenance of songs you can find the same song being reinterpreted as it travels from one culture to another. We think of “St. James Infirmary Blues” as a blues from New Orleans, originally called “Gambler’s Blues” but it’s probably based on an eighteenth century English ballad: “The Unfortunate Rake”. The melody to “Streets Of Laredo” comes from the same song. “The Gallis Pole” is strongly associated with Leadbelly but it’s from a traditional eighteenth century American song.

  The Devil’s
Music

  The only place where numbers of black people were allowed to gather was the church and for some this was a comfort and an expressive outlet. Mississippi Fred McDowell spoke of the origins of the blues in what was called a “reel” and how singing this represented a turning away from religion. This was why the blues became the devil’s music for some.

  The Blue Came From The Reel

  Now what you – what we call the blues now? At dat time you know what dey called ‘em? A reel. Tha’s what the blues come from, a reel...

  Now you don’ know what a reel is, do you? Okay. Aright is jus’ like a r- uh... Old people raised you when I was coming on. You go to church, you- you- you call yourself confess t’ ‘ligion. Okay. Well everybody had got confidence in you, y’understan’, dat you, you really done confe[ss]. Well you turn around? From the church song and start singin’ ‘at- well see, didn’ call it a blues then, you call that a reel, you understan’. Well that – the reel came from – the blue came from the reel. They change it, just to say blues…

  Fred McDowell. (3)

  Fortunately musicians found ways to get round the embargo on drumming: tapping on the guitar body, stamping the feet, using the voice and guitar strings rhythmically as well as for melody. This strand found later expression in the music of Bo Diddley and ultimately in rap, where the voice was stripped of melody and became an instrument of rhythm.