I started listening to Rock and Metal back in the mid 70’s when I was young lad in St Helens. They were all there in my album collection…Zeppelin, Purple, Sabbath, Rush, Lizzy and of course AC/DC.
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After years of listening to all this great music I thought it was time to unleash myself on the Town’s music seen, one problem, what instrument was I going to play? The Guitar…. I’d dabbled a couple of years earlier and couldn’t make head’nor’tail of it. The Bass…..NO, not with them thick strings ripping your fingers to bits. Vocals….That’s a laugh. Then it came to me, the Drums, the noisy bastard at back, that’ll do for me.
As luck would have it I left school and started my first job at the legendary Peter Darwin Music Emporium in George St, St Helens, so in my first week I bought a 5-piece Premier Olympic kit (no cymbals just drums) on the drip for £10 a week, which left me with £13 a week to buy fags and get pissed (it was 1981). My old fella nearly had a heart attack when I turned up with the kit because I’d forgot to tell him I was buying them!
Working at Pete’s shop was fantastic, not only was I hearing hundred’s of great muso stories on a daily basis but what an ideal place to meet all the local bands…..this was going to smoothly.
So, I was ready to rock and the first band I played with was the very short-lived David Vulture Band which did one gig at the St Helens Tech college in front of about 30 stoned friends. Rock’n’Roll madness.
After that it was the Steve Chainsaw Band, playing covers of UFO, Rush, Frank Zappa, The Tubes and The Cars. Great band, strange collection of songs. That was probably due to our singer being a 30 odd year old freaky teacher, but what a great front man.
Chainsaw split, but myself along with the guitarist and bass player, Ant and Andy Green, started a band called ASA. Basically we thought we were Rush, we had all the gear, double neck guitars, bass pedals, loads of drums and I think Andy even had perm (sorry Andy), what could go wrong. I’ll tell you what could go wrong, a thieving band from Yorkshire nicked Ant because they thought they were Rush as well and needed a bass player that could sing, so that was that.
After that I did a few bits and bobs with other bands and then the darkness descended in the form of cabaret, to be fair it was a great laugh and the lads who were in the band turned out to be great friends.
After few years of cabaret it was back to a few bits and bobs again. Then came the call of the Blues in the form of a band called Lawnmower R&B, yes I said Lawnmower, don’t ask.
Lawnmower were well established in the world of the Blues and their main claim to fame was that the original singer was, wait for it, Mick Hucknall, yes Mick ‘Fuckin Simply Red’ Hucknall.
I stayed with Lawnmower for 12 years and in that time played all the prestigious Blues circuit gigs including clubs, festivals and theatres. In 1997 we recorded an album, which was well received in the Blues music press and gained us some radio airplay in this country and abroad.
When Lawnmower came to an end I received a call from Steve Byatt (Angus) who had a 3-piece band called the Trubshaws which basically played loud hard rock and needed a drummer, he didn’t need to ask twice. It was just what I needed, covering numbers from Zeppelin, Lizzy, Sabbath, AC/DC, Purple, Hendrix even Mountain, fantastic. And I didn’t even have to put up with a sax player telling me I was too loud, bollocks.
So Ian (Cliff Williams), Ste and myself played loads of pub gigs and then it hit us, why don’t we look into doing the tribute thing, but who would it be a tribute to? We all agreed we wanted it to be loud, aggressive, no nonsense hard rock: there was no contest it had to AC/DC. There was one problem, whom were we going get to sing like the mighty Bon Scott? Ste said he new a singer who was a big AC/DC fan and was a great singer, so we invited him to a rehearsal, did two numbers and, as they say, the rest is history.
I hope you enjoyed my ramblings, but more importantly if you come to one of our gigs I hope you enjoy the show.
Cheers
