Crazy Man Michael – Fairport Convention

Pete Clemons looks at the tragic history of a promising 60’s Coventry band named after John Coltrane for his latest article in the Coventry Telegraph – The Trane…

THE year 1967 was in many ways a special one for the UK.

England was basking in the glory of the football World Cup win of the previous year, Radio 1 was launched at 7am on Saturday September 30 with The Move’s ‘Flowers in The Rain’ being the first record played and the first transmissions of colour TV pictures were being broadcast. This remarkable year also saw The Beatles release their iconic Sgt Pepper’s album, Pink Floyd released their debut LP and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were both jailed for possession of drugs. Locally, Coventry City was promoted to the old First Division (nowadays known as The Premier) and later that same year Jimmy Hill announced that he was standing down as manager.

What was happening nationally was being felt locally particularly by the youth at that time. It was a time of hope, inspiration and expression.

Many beat bands had sprung up in and around Coventry during the mid 1960s. But for one Kenilworth based band 1967 would have a tragic outcome with far reaching consequences and, for some, life would always be tinged with sadness.

The previous year, 1966, had seen the formation of ‘The ‘Trane’ named after jazz saxophonist John Coltrane who, along with Miles Davis and others, was a pioneer of ‘free jazz’ that inspired many a musician back then and continues to do so today.

The ‘Trane were John Green on lead guitar, Nigel Maltby rhythm guitar, Laurie French drums, Geoff Timms bass and John ‘Ned’ Foyle vocals. John, Nigel and ‘Ned’ had all been school friends at Kenilworth Grammar. Laurie had met John Green through John’s brother while Geoff was a friend and near neighbour of Ned’s.

After this coming together through their shared passion for music they practised hard as a unit and eventually felt confident enough to perform live. Stratford Rugby Club was the venue for their first gig and by spring 1967 they had secured their first paid gig at the nearby Chesford Grange Hotel as support to Coventry band ‘From the Sun’.

However, just when things had been looking good for the band and everything was beginning to come together, tragedy struck. On August 10, 1967 both Ned and Geoff, aged 18 and 19 respectively, were killed after the Bedford van they had been travelling in crashed head on with a lorry. The pair had been on their way to Hampton in Arden for band discussions and the accident happened just outside of Balsall Common.

According to a police statement at that time: “For some reason the van veered to the offside of the road while travelling toward Stonebridge’. It collided head-on with the seven ton lorry which was un-laden’. This was a very bad accident on a bad stretch of road.”

And had it not been for the fact that he had made an on the spur of the moment decision to take a holiday down in Cornwall then John Green may very well have been on that fateful trip.

The band decided to regroup and later the same year recruited the services of Bill Fielding on bass while John Green took over vocal duties.

During their short career The ‘Trane played a total of 55 gigs at venues like The Cheylesmore Pub (who once advertised them as The Train), The Navigation, The Plough on London Road and The Hotel Leofric.

Their set, typically, included songs by The Yardbirds, The Troggs, The Kinks and The Small Faces along with the more bluesy music of Chuck Berry, Howlin Wolf and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers whose tune ‘Lookin Back’ contains John Green’s favourite guitar solo.

The ‘Trane even secured a support slot to The Jeff Beck Group who appeared in Rugby on December 30, 1967. Later that same evening The Jeff Beck Group who included Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart also appeared at The Matrix Hall in Coventry.

But after the accident things were never quite the same again. The original spirit of the band had been lost and in 1968, shortly after gigs at the Co-op Hall in Nuneaton and further gigs at The Cheylesmore, The ‘Trane split up.

John Green, after a break from music, took up guitar again and performed with bands like Flat Stanley and Sugarcane. Nigel Maltby moved to the peace and tranquility of Cornwall while Laurie French trained to be a teacher. However the last few years have seen both Laurie and John strike up their musical partnership in The Skyline Band and both are now writing and recording their own song compositions in John’s state of the art home recording studio.

John Green himself leaves us with these last wonderful words: “What we all thought at the time to be a passing fad was actually a bug whose bite would last a lifetime. There is a whole generation of us 60s muso’s out there who still get a huge kick out of the music of that era and some of us are lucky enough to be still making and performing it.”

Oh, and one last fact of an event that also happened during the year 1967 – the world lost John Coltrane.

Nigel Maltby / Laurie French / Geoff Timms / John Green / Ned Foyle / Based in Kenilworth

John Green’s music website

In a few months I’d mastered a few chords and was starting to understand my way around the fretboard. There wasn’t a wide choice of tutorial books then. In fact there were none as I recall, except ‘Play In A Day’ by Bert Weedon, a popular guitar instrumentalist of the 1950s. Bert is 85 now and has a web site here where it seems ‘Play In A Day’ is still going strong, with over 2 million sold! It helped me a little, but I wanted to learn how to play the hits of the day not old standards like “Whispering”. But I found after a while I could listen to records and gradually figure out the chords being used, and then I discovered how the same chord patterns were used in lots of different songs. I either sold or swapped that first guitar and bought a new acoustic which was still only of ‘entry level’ quality. Necessity being the mother of invention I was going to sing folk music, which at the time was undergoing a big revival with the likes of Bob Dylan and Donovan. Anyway, I didn’t need an amp for folk music.

So in the Summer of 1966 we form a band with myself on lead guitar; Nigel Maltby, a school pal on rhythm guitar; Ned Foyle on vocals; Laurie French on drums and Geoff Timms on (home made) bass. We call ourselves “The ‘Trane” after John Coltrane the jazz saxophonist, emulating the Yardbirds who took their name from the sobriquet of another jazz saxophonist, Charlie Parker.

We practice hard, and place some ads: “Good beat group available for all kinds of bookings. Versatile and above all musical”, and print some cards: “The Beat Group for All Occasions” and start gigging in November. Our first gig is a dance at Stratford On Avon Rugby Club and our Dads ferry us and our meagre equipment to and from the venue. At our very first outing we manage to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. My amplifier expires after the first couple of songs – we grossly underestimate the volume required at a real gig – and I have to plug in to Geoff’s Vox AC30, the sound of bass and lead guitars through the same small amp not sounding good. The spring on Laurie’s snare drum breaks so the snare sound fails but he manages to do a running repair with string. But by the end of the evening with the audience liquored up and determined to enjoy themselves, we finish triumphantly on the Beatles’ sing-along “Yellow Submarine” which we’d never played before and hadn’t a clue how the chords went.

Spring 1967 and we play our largest gig so far at the Chesford Grange Hotel where we’re the support act on a double bill. Our fee: a princely £12.50 for two one-hour sets, £2.50 each. We come a poor second to the other band “From The Sun” and Ned and I lose our voices from not having a loud enough PA. It was as they say, a learning experience. The lead guitarist of the main band kindly points out to me after the gig that I need to use thinner strings in place of the ‘steel hawser’ tape wound variety I was using. I didn’t know that it was the judicious bending of light gauge strings that was enabling Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck et al to get those sweet bluesy sounds I liked. Not only was there a paucity of guitar tutorial books, there was no such thing as guitar magazines so we all lived in our own bubble of knowledge and didn’t know how others got their sounds.

I’ve finished school now and some non-band friends ask me to join them on a short camping holiday in Cornwall. On the spur of the moment I decide to go. The band had been thinking of approaching a girl we knew who we’d thought might make a good lead singer in the band and whilst I’m away Ned and Geoff decide to drive over to see her and discuss it. Together they set off towards Hampton In Arden on 10th August 1967 and just outside Balsall Common crash head-on into a lorry and both are killed outright. Ned was 18 and Geoff 19.

If I hadn’t decided to go to Cornwall on a whim I would have been with Ned and Geoff. There but for fortune. The condition of the van may have been a factor. A month earlier Ned and Geoff had holidayed together in Wales and Geoff had sent me a prescient postcard saying “..van’s OK (touch wood)..”

We reform the band in the autumn, bringing in Bill Fielding from Coventry on bass, but things aren’t the same and the line-up folds a year later in mid-1968. There’s a highlight in the last months however, when we play support to the Jeff Beck Group in Rugby on 30th December 1967. Jeff Beck is my favourite guitarist and I can’t believe our luck.

It’s 1973, I’m 25 and a qualified Chartered Accountant. I own a nice Les Paul Deluxe gold top and it’s the best guitar I’ve ever had, although one day I drop it and it suffers catastrophic damage of the headstock. But I send it off to Rosetti, the Gibson importers, and thanks to an insurance claim I get it back faultlessly repaired and re-sprayed in a beautiful sunburst. I then wish I’d kept the gold top finish.

Bob Sharp plays bass with us for about two years before getting married and going to America. His successor is John Rushton who stays for four years or so before moving away from the area. In 1974 we recruit Ian Boycott to take on lead vocals and he also invests in a percussion setup comprising congas, bongos and timbales. Ian stays for a about eight years and also becomes a close friend. Unfortunately Tony Lloyd leaves after nearly two years to join another local band “Vehicle” that has a more attractive line-up for him that includes brass and keyboards, and we then have an unsettled few months with different guitarists and drummers, none of whom are right for us.

In October 1975 the above lineup records ‘Pickup Queen’ at Bird Sound Studios in Snitterfield, Warwickshire. Written by Ian and myself, we had only an evening to set up and record it, including some rushed overdubs. Dave plays some great drums, which on reflection should have been higher in the mix, and John’s bass guitar lines are magnificent; driving the whole thing along nicely. Ian performs the lead vocal, but being a heavy smoker and asthmatic he runs out of breath a couple of times in the song! I wanted the guitar harmonies to sound like Thin Lizzy’s but there wasn’t time to get the right tones organised. Click on the button to have a listen:

YOU would be forgiven for thinking I had completely lost it if I told you that bands such as Free, The Pink Floyd, Taste, King Crimson and a whole host of others had once starred at a major music festival off Ashlawn Road, Rugby. But it is all true.

On the weekend of Friday 12th through to Sunday 14th September 1969 the Rainsbrook area of Rugby hosted a festival that can only be described, due to the constant rain, as a washout. And over time the event has largely been forgotten about. But in hindsight it had the potential to have been of epic proportions.

The weekend had been slap bang between two infamous events. The Rolling Stones Hyde Park concert held in July of that year and another Stones gig held during December at the Altamont speedway track in northern California.

I only mention The Rolling Stones because the event had been organised by the Rugby students RAG (Raising and Giving) charities appeal in conjunction with Sam Cutler, the band’s then tour manager. Sam had also been instrumental with, and had played a major part in, the organisation of both of the above mentioned events. He had also been master of ceremonies at the Hyde Park gig.

The festival itself ran over three days and featured a different form of music on each day, a similar format used on the early National Jazz and Blues festivals. The Friday, headlined by Alexis Korner and also included The Groundhogs, was the blues day. Saturday was progressive rock day and included The Pink Floyd, The Nice, Free, Taste, King Crimson and The Edgar Broughton Band. Sunday saw folk rock bands like The Eclection and The Strawbs and also included Roy Harper and Coventry’s own New Modern Idiot Grunt Band.

Cost of entry was 12 shillings and sixpence (65p) for day one, a pound for day two and 17 shillings and sixpence (87.5p) for day three. Alternatively, a weekend ticket was available for £2. Among the ticket outlets were Disci on the High Street in Rugby and Fennells on the Lower Precinct in Coventry.

However, to put the whole thing into a little perspective this was late 1969 and some of these bands were still in their infancy. The Nice were fairly well established having just released their third album during September. The Pink Floyd’s then current release was ‘Ummagumma’ and I am guessing that their set list would have been similar to the live disc from that set. King Crimson had yet to release their eponymous debut album. In fact they had been playing live since April.

Rory Gallagher and his band Taste were certainly in demand. After their Rugby gig they played at Mothers Club in Erdington later that evening. And Free, although on the verge of releasing their second album, were still a year or so from releasing their magnificent ‘Fire and Water’ album which would get them onto 1970s Isle of Wight festival, perform in front of an estimated 600,000 people, and propel them to worldwide success.

Seemingly it cost the RAG committee £3,000 to stage the event and the target was to make a £4,000 profit for charities. At its height on the Saturday evening there were around 2,000 people in attendance but at its lowest on the Sunday afternoon there were fewer than 200. But in the end, after the sums were calculated the event had broken even.

The revellers were described as parading in frills and furs, buckskins and blankets. Some were even bare-footed. However, regardless of how they looked the weekend was totally trouble free. Even the local police described it all as humorous and good natured.

Coventry Telegraph reporter Alan Poole remembers the weekend well though. At the time he had been working for the Leamington Courier and a friend of his, who was at sister paper The Rugby Advertiser, played quite a big role in organising it.

Alan saw an awful lot of live music back then but, as they do, thoughts have tended to blur over the intervening years. However, his most abiding memory was seeing King Crimson’s then bass player, Greg Lake, wearing a very eyecatching white suede coat with a white fur collar. He also recalls the dismal weather and the fact that it rained all weekend and the park being like a quagmire. No doubt because of the weather, the crowd was incredibly small bearing in mind how many great bands were there. But, says Alan, what a bill for two quid, eh? After Rugby’s extravaganza, Sam Cutler’s career went from strength to strength as he organised some of the largest rock and roll events in history. After the Rolling Stones had left him to sort out the aftermath of Altamont, Sam went on to tour manage The Grateful Dead and organised a number of their huge tours and festivals.

Plans to stage a second weekend event for the beginning of the festival season in May 1970 failed to materialise.

Back in the early 60’s the Ritz (in Longford Coventry) was the place rock it out. Pete Clemons takes you back there via his Coventry Telegraph article…

THE Ritz in Longford was another of those art deco style fronted buildings erected during the 1930s.

During its last days of activity it was a prominent Asian cinema and was the centre of the Longford community up until it closed. In fact it has remained empty and unused and was due to be demolished as far back as 1982.

But despite the various threats that have hung over it for over 30 years the building still stands on the Longford Road at the junction of Windmill Road and Dovedale Avenue although nowadays there is little more than the shell of it left to give an indication of its former life.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, and for the youngsters back then, rock ‘n’ roll was king and Coventry, like many other towns and cities up and down the country, was awash with teenagers forming their own bands and organising dances.

All manner of pubs and coffee bars readily accepted this trend and put on the bands. But one of the larger venues who were very accommodating was in fact the Ritz cinema. And for approximately a two-year period between 1960 and 1962 the front half dozen rows of seat would be removed in order to create a dance floor and a space for the bands to play in what became known as the Sunday Club. During the late 1950s The Ritz had been managed by Wilf Jones, the father of Beverley and who had also managed The Lyric in Holbrooks, but it seems that later on in the early 1960s it was taken over possibly by a Welshman known as Mr Powell. Either way each Sunday and on some Friday evenings a couple of bands would play after the showing of the film of the week.

SOME Coventry people might remember him more from when he ran the Alhambra pub in the city centre.

Others will surely know of him from his time at the Plough at Eathorpe. But one thing is for sure. This giant of a man and his achievements in the world of music will long be remembered. Over the years much has been written about Don Fardon. August 2013 will see him celebrating his 70th birthday so I think it is fitting to mark that fact by way of a brief overview of his musical career.

Don’s interest in music began at an early age when, on Sunday evenings, he would to go to the Coventry Hippodrome to see the big band concerts performed there.

Later on, when he had begun work as an apprentice draughtsman with an engineering company, he took on an extra job at The Locarno. It was there that he saw his first ‘electric band’ The Hawks. Soon afterwards Don became their manager. A month later he had them booked to do a gig in Rugby. The band’s lead singer failed to arrive.

Don duly took over vocal duties and when the singer did arrive he was sacked. During his time with The Hawks Don’s stage name was Will Pity.

Next up for Don was The Vikings, a band he had formed himself along with Coventry guitarist Jim Smith. Jim had contacts in London and was able to get them a gig at the 2i’s coffee bar in Old Compton Street, Soho. Known by now as Webb Stacey, it was there that he would rub shoulders with the likes of Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde.

After 18 months with The Vikings, Don was approached by the management of Coventry group Johnny and the Rebels who asked him to become their lead singer. This he did for the next two years but over time he found himself becoming more and more disillusioned. So he gave notice and left. Then came Rockin’ Lord Docker and the Millionaires who duly dropped the ‘Lord Docker’ part after a solicitor’s letter from Sir Bernard Docker, the then chairman of Daimler, threatened to sue if it didn’t happen. After this setback they simply became known as The Millionaires.

After Don formed The Sorrows in 1963 vocal duties with The Millionaires were taken over by both Beverley Jones and Ricky Dawson who went on to become known as ‘The Duke and Duchess’.

Don Fardon remained with The Sorrows for almost three years.

But after the groups reshuffle in 1966 he decided to give up the music business altogether. Shortly after though things became hard for him, and his family, so he returned to engineering. After a brief stint back in the factory he was persuaded to return to the music industry.

A debut single ‘It’s Been Nice Loving You’ was recorded for CBS but conflicts between past and current record companies frustratingly stalled things. However, despite the protracted start to his solo career things began to pick up very quickly.

Between 1967 and 1969 Don built up an incredibly successful solo career in territories like Europe the U.S. and Australia. He did particularly well in Germany and France. In fact the first three records he released in Germany were all chart entries and Don was now becoming a big name over there.

During ’67 and ’69 Don released at least 20 singles across several countries. These songs had that big dynamic feel to them which was so prevalent during the late 1960s and this was mainly down to the production skills of Miki Dallon. Miki had also produced The Sorrows 1965 hit ‘Take a Heart’. One of the earliest of those releases from October 1967 was called ‘(The Lament of the Cherokee) Indian Reservation’. Although some of these singles were being released in the UK on the Pye International label they were, by and large, going unnoticed, Where Don was scoring success in the UK though was with the very popular ‘Soul Machine’, the band he fronted between 1967 and 1969. Not only were they popular in the UK but they also secured some incredible tours with soul legends such as Otis Redding, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and many others. After Don left he was replaced by another Midlands legend, Chester Riggon.

1969 saw Miki Dallon start up a new record label called Young Blood. One of his first signings to the label was Don Fardon. August 1969 saw Don’s first, and the label’s third release, a cover of Tommy James and the Shondell’s song ‘I’m Alive’.

MUSIC historian Pete Clemons, from Keresley, looks back at how a change on the bill saw Coventry witness the shaping of one of rock music’s iconic albums.

AS many will know the Pink Floyd album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ was released almost 40 years ago, on March 1, 1973, and became one of the best selling albums of all time.

It was recorded over two sessions at Abbey Road studios during June 1972 and January 1973 using the then most advanced recording equipment available at that time with reportedly 50 million copies being sold worldwide.

However, the finished product that most listeners are now familiar with was far from how it sounded at its conception some eighteen months earlier. And Coventry had a very early preview of that now iconic album twelve months before its final release.

On February 3, 1972 the band stopped off at The Locarno for a gig in support of the Lanchester Polytechnic arts festival where Chuck Berry and others had performed earlier in the evening/night. And when, eventually, Pink Floyd reached the stage at around 2.30am they played a complete new album under the working title of Eclipse. It quickly became apparent to those who had attended the gig that they had truly witnessed something incredibly special.

Two weeks after that Coventry gig, and by the time the band had reached London, the same album was given its first airing to the press and media at the Rainbow Theatre. The title had been changed to Dark Side of the Moon – A Piece For Assorted Lunatics.

The music’s live debut had been at The Dome in Brighton on January 20 and the Coventry gig had been the seventh time Eclipse had been performed live. The Lanchester Arts festival date had been in the middle of a short British tour that culminated in several London dates. Comparing the ‘bootleg’ copy of the music that I have had for many years, and which I believe to be the Brighton gig, the main differences between those early outings and that of the album in its final form included: 

Pete Clemons with his article from the  Coventry Telegraph on the Lanchester Arts Festival 1972. The Lanch Polytech, now known as Coventry University. 


Parts of the festival were held at the Locarno in Coventry and this article concerns the recording of  Chuck Berry’s biggest selling record My Ding a Ling, recorded in Coventry at the concert.


Readable text below the graphics..

Chuck Berry owes his biggest selling hit to the Locarno; YOUR nostalgia ROCK fan Pete Clemons, from Keresley, looks back at the night at the Locarno in 1972 where Chuck Berry recorded his biggestselling hit, ‘My Ding-a-Ling’.

CHUCK Berry was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1926 and was an early pioneer in the field of electric guitar-led rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll.

His major breakthrough came in 1955 with the release of Maybellene and his stage presence, humour, showmanship and duck walk became the stuff of legend. As were his notoriously short gigs.

Chuck is also an incredible lyricist, constantly full of double entendre, and so it was a little ironic that his best ever selling single and his only UK and US no 1 would be a cover version… of sorts. Not only that but, as hard as it is to imagine, it was actually recorded in Coventry in what is now Central Library. A headline article in the New Musical Express dated January 22, 1972 proclaimed the forthcoming gig as ‘The Berry, Slade, Floyd sound scoop. It went on to report that ‘In journalistic terms, the LAF committee have a first-class scoop. Not only do they present the only British appearance of Chuck Berry, one of the great influences of rock over 20 years, but the only college appearance of Pink Floyd, who are at present on a British tour. As if that isn’t enough, they also have Billy Preston and Slade appearing at Coventry Locarno’.

And so it was on the February 3, 1972, as part of the Lanchester Arts Festival, Chuck Berry would perform the song ‘My Ding-a-Ling’, all 11 and a half minutes of it in front of almost 2000 fans. A few of the crowd were ‘old style’ Teddy Boys dressed in drainpipe trousers and bootlace ties. Chuck, dressed in multicoloured shirt and skin tight white trousers, introduced the song as 4th grade humour and the whole thing contains plenty of audience participation.

The full set list that night, as far as I can ascertain, was: Sweet Little Sixteen, Roll ‘Em Pete, It Hurts Me Too, Around and Around, Promised Land, Reelin’ and Rockin’, My Dinga-Ling and Johnny B Goode. The performance lasted around an hour with Chuck Berry being on stage for about 50 minutes of it which would have been par for the course for his gigs back then. A few years later when he appeared at Coventry Theatre he was barely on stage for 40 minutes.

Chuck Berry was backed that night by The Roy Young Band although Roy himself was never credited on the album. Roy, also a wonderful performer, was famed for his boogie woogie piano playing. He first broke through on TV’s ‘Oh Boy’ in 1958. By the 1970s his band was fluid and, depending on the kind of gig, he could pull a line up together from a pool of as many as 30 plus extraordinary musicians.

For the Coventry gig he used Owen ‘Onnie’ McIntyre on guitar and Robbie McIntosh on drums. On bass was one time Van der Graff Generator member Nic Potter and finally on keyboard was ex Rare Bird player Dave Kaffinetti. Onnie McIntyre and Robbie McIntosh would later that year become members of the newly formed Scottish funk outfit The Average White Band.

The whole Coventry gig was recorded on the Pye Mobile Unit by engineer Alan Perkins and it was rumoured on the night that an LP called ‘Chuck Berry Live in Coventry’ would be released but that never materialised.

However in July of that year a heavily edited 4 minute version of ‘My Ding-a-Ling’ was released as a single. It stormed the charts on both sides of the Atlantic in part due to an American disc jockey called Jim Connors who plugged it from his radio station in Boston USA. In fact Jim was credited with a gold record for his efforts. Mary Whitehouse who, at the time, was a staunch campaigner against the permissive society and social liberalism and who once led a crusade against the BBC, tried to get the song banned but to no avail.

Then, during October 1972, an album was released titled ‘The London Chuck Berry Sessions’. The album was intended as a double but was finally released as a single LP.

Side 1 had been recorded in the studio while side 2 was ‘live’ and contained the last three songs from the set list below.

At the end of Chuck’s performance the Coventry audience can be clearly heard chanting and shouting for more while the festival management struggled in vain to clear the Locarno so that the stage could be set up for Pink Floyd. And this is very evident on the album. ‘The London Sessions’ peaked at number 8 in the US charts.

My Ding-a-Ling had originally been recorded by Dave Bartholomew in 1952. When he changed record label Dave re-recorded it under the new title of Little Girl Sing Ding-a-Ling. In 1954 a band called The Bees released a version of the song called ‘Toy Bell’ and Chuck Berry’s first stab at the song was in 1968 under the title ‘My Tambourine’. He would call it his alma mater.

Despite the songs amazing success pop critics, at the time, disliked it. In fact a Coventry Telegraph reporter, on its release noted, “I thought it was easily the worst thing he’s ever done. It seems rather sad, after all the great rock classics with those sly, perceptive lyrics he has recorded over the years, that the song which really established him should have been a rather dubious, rehashed nursery rhyme” which of course is a fair assessment.

But I must admit to it being a guilty pleasure and every time I hear ‘My Ding-a-Ling’ it still brings on a chuckle and a wry smile.

Martin’s tonic of tunes still a Cure worth seeking out;  MUSIC historian Pete Clemons, from Keresley, looks back at the career of Martin Cure and the various bands he has played in.

Late 1968 and the band lost drummer Paul Wilkinson but replaced him with Gordon Reed. They also added organist Terry Howells. They then renamed themselves Rainbows.

Rainbows relocated to London where they recorded two singles for the CBS label. I cannot find a single gig date for Rainbows in Coventry. That’s not to say they didn’t play any but I do know that a lot of their live work was on the continent.

By the time Rainbows returned to England they had lost Roye Albrighton and Gordon Reed. The remaining three, Martin Cure, Graham Amos and Terry Howells then formed Still Life. This core unit were on a creative high and had written a clutch of really good organ dominated songs. Drummer Alan Savage was added to the mix and their one and only album titled ‘Still Life’ was recorded at the Sound Recording Studio’s in London during October 1970 and later released on the Vertigo label in 1971.

All looked good for Still Life as they had been expected to record up to six albums for Vertigo. But after that excellent debut the band simply drifted apart. So later, during 1971, Martin Cure joined Cupid’s Inspiration.

Cupid’s Inspiration had actually formed during 1967/68 in Stamford Lincolnshire and had had several chart successes early on including the huge hit ‘Yesterday Has Gone’. But the band was never really a stable unit. At one point they included bass player Gordon Haskell in their ranks who went on to great things in King Crimson. Other local musicians involved with Cupid’s Inspiration included bass player Keith Hancock and drummers Paul Brook and Ted Duggan.

By the early 1970s the Cupids had settled on the line up of Martin Cure vocals, Bob Poole bass, Paul Shanahan guitar and Andy Chaplin on drums and had effectively relocated to Leamington Spa. Between 1972 and 1978 they were an incredibly hard working band and were very popular throughout the length and breadth of the country. Locally they were particularly well received at the cabaret type nightclubs venues such as Mr Georges, The City Centre Club, The Robin Hood Club and Stables out at the Chesford Grange. However, from the mid 1970s, and in parallel to the activities of Cupid’s Inspiration, the same band was also playing a lot of pub rock gigs under the name of Four Wheel Drive. Four Wheel Drive was a high energy rock band who initially played a lot of covers, but at the same time, were also writing their own material and more and more that material was coming to the fore. They had also quickly gained a strong following within the rock loving fraternity.

Dancing after dinner at the Chesford Grange

ROCK fan Pete Clemons, from Keresley, this week looks back at dinner dances and live music nights at the Chesford Grange Hotel.

IT was great to see the Chesford Grange Hotel back in the limelight and feature so prominently in the news this year.

The hotel, of course, played host to the players of several footballing nations who had been appearing at the recent Olympic Games.

But it did have me wondering if those news stories would revive the memories, of many locals far and near, who made their way up and down the A46 to the many musical events that the Warwickshire hotel once played host to.

The original Chesford Grange was first built back in 1902 and its 17 acres of grounds stretch right down to the nearby River Avon. Despite some growth and extension the original building still forms a part of the development.

The Chesford opened as a hotel in 1938 however soon after, during the war years, the building was used as a research base by the ministry of aircraft. But by the early 1950s it had reverted back to being a hotel once more.

Then during the late 1950s the venue introduced dinner dances. For example in 1958 you could dine in the company of Harry Engleman and his orchestra with personal appearances by Ken Morris and Joan Savage of TV’s ‘Top Tune Time’ fame. For 17 shillings and sixpence (87 and a half pence) you could take up the meal option or you could dance the evening away for just 7 shillings and sixpence (37 and a half pence).