Now I want you to try to imagine how a young, enthusiastic and talented Rock ’n’ Roller looked at things in those days. You see, we knew the feel of our music, but we weren’t particularly masters of our instruments. We simply hadn’t been playing long enough to become so and any player that was nimble or ‘fast’, as we called it, gained our immediate admiration. But usually the ones that were fast didn’t have the feel and vice versa.
Anyway, I’m plugging in me bass, thinking about who can we ring tomorrow who might know of a lead guitarist, when I heard a sound that made me freeze. It really did. My life for two seconds was in suspended animation. I can remember how far the jack plug was from the hole and everything.
‘DIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY DUM BEOODLY BLAT BAP WEEDLY WOP’
I’ve heard a guitar run that was not only fast, and I mean fast, but had a real Rock ’n’ Roll sound. Now anything you experience in life that you don’t believe is possible, don’t register immediately. You know it happened but your brain tells you it’s impossible, so it tries to blank it out. I’ve looked round at the guitarist, he’s casually fiddling with the controls on his amp.
‘Do that again,’ I’ve said.
‘What?’ he said.
‘What you just did.’ So there he’s gone again:
‘DIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY DUM BOOBABABABLAT BLAT WEEDLY WOP’
‘What, that?’
‘Fuck me, yer! Let’s do a song, what do you know?’
I’d forgotten the piano player.
‘The piano player likes Jerry Lee,’ said the guitarist, lookin’ toward his mate who’s sat there at the piano motionless lookin’ like a shop window dummy that’s been on a hunger strike.
Alright, how about ‘I Could Never Be Ashamed of You’ I’ve said, at the same time tryin’ to think how I’m gonna get rid of the piano player and keep the guitarist. Bonk! We’ve gone into it.
The piano player from the back looks like he’s not started. His body and head never moved. But, am I imagining it, or is the most incredible noise comin’ out of that piano? It can’t be. He’s not movin’, I’ve walked over to the piano. Only his hands were movin’ but the sound they were makin’ were Jerry Lee! My favourite Rock ’n’ Roll pianist!
Now, like I said, you’ve got to realise that English Rock ’n’ Roll musicians were new at the game. American Rock ’n’ Rollers had the edge. You had to get near ’em before you ever thought of overtakin’ ’em. Here were two musicians that were not only near ’em, they topped ’em. We’ve gotta have ’em! What a band we’ll be!
But they never joined.
To this day I don’t know why, but they didn’t. Perhaps I was too enthusiastic, perhaps I should have been a bit more cool. I don’t know. They stayed with Sutch. Perhaps they got the hump when we said we didn’t want the piano player at first, and had just come down to taunt us.
Anyway they didn’t join. (The piano player, by the way, was to become a quite famous session man. Nick Hopkins. I did a few sessions with him later on. He played piano on John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. The guitar player was Bernie Watson. He was supposed to have turned towards classical music, but nobody ever discovered his whereabouts, so nothing was proved.)
No, they didn’t join us, but they suggested another ex-Sutch guitarist, Roger Mingaye or ‘Scratch and Scrape Bailey’. No one’s gonna top that Bernie Watson, I thought, but I was pleasantly surprised when Roger turned up. He wasn’t as ‘fast’, but he had a great sound and a good Rock ’n’ Roll feel.
He joined The Outlaws and once more we had a working band. Me on bass, Biffo rhythm, Scratch lead guitar, Don on drums and Mike vocals. One of the first tours we did was Scotland. We had ‘Just a Matter of Time’ out, which the new band was on.
Life on the road with a bunch of blokes you hardly know is always interesting, to say the least. You soon do get to know each other and have to learn to get along. It wasn’t unusual for a clash of personalities to be sorted out with a punch-up. Scratch used to have digs at Biffo. Poor old Biffo. Scratch would really give Biffo stick, about how his guitar was always out of tune, and how all he liked was the ‘Shads’.
We used to say to Biffo, ‘Stick up for yourself. He won’t let up ’til you do.’ But Biffo was too easy – until one day. We were sittin’ in a cafe. Scratch started on Biffo again. Right out of the blue (and we all sat back in amazement) Biffo said, ‘Say one more word, Scratch, and I’ll punch you straight on the fuckin’ nose.’ Well done, Biffo! Scratch was struck dumb. He made an attempt at a joke, lookin’ towards us for support, got none and bottled out. Biffo got no more trouble from Scratch. Scratch became a nicer bloke after that and we all got on better. But Scratch was to get that punch on the nose, only not from Biffo.
We were on stage somewhere in the middle of Scotland, setting up for a sound check. Mike Berry was in a bad mood about something. Don’t know what. But he came stormin’ on to the stage, said something to Scratch, Scratch called him a cunt, and Wallop! Mike had turned round about three times with his fist stuck out, caught Scratch on the jaw and sent him flying off the stage to the middle of the dance floor. I was shocked to see poor old Scratch flyin’ through the air. He wore glasses and was littler than Mike. I leapt at Mike and pushed him.
‘What did you fuckin’ do that for? He didn’t deserve that,’ I said.
Mike immediately felt guilty and we jumped down to see how Scratch was.
His glasses were all bent up, and all he kept sayin’ was, ‘I’ll fuckin’ get you, Berry.’
We straightened his glasses out as best we could while Mike was trying to apologise. But Scratch didn’t want to know.
‘I’ll fuckin’ get you, Berry,’ was all he kept sayin’.
That night Scratch’s face blew up like a football. The next day it was worse. We took him down the hospital. They x-rayed his jaw and found it was broken. They had to wire it up and he spent the rest of the tour like that, drinking soup. Mike had exhausted his apologies but every now and then Scratch would say through his wired-up teeth, which made it sound even more threatening, ‘I’ll fuckin’ get you, Berry.’
He never did, but Mike feels guilty to this day. So you should, you big bully!
(Mike & Scratch met for the first time since then, in 2004, over forty years later, at a Screamin’ Lord Sutch annual reunion memorial gig at the Ace Café. All was forgiven and they rocked well together on stage.)
Biffo was the first one to leave that band. Scratch suggested as a replacement a Canadian bloke he knew. Ken Lundgren. Ken was to become a big mate of mine and still is. Apart from bein’ good on the guitar (and steel guitar) Ken was good at organising things. This was what we needed. Ken drove the van (on the wrong side of the road at first!), rang agents, fixed gigs and did just about everything, and drank like a fish. I liked a couple of pints but I wasn’t in Ken’s class. We’d be drivin’ home from a gig in the ol’ Thames van. Ken’d have a crate o’ beer beside him to ‘keep me awake’. I’d be behind him with a rolled-up road map ready to whack him on the back of the head when he started nodding off, which was often. Poor ol’ Ken was the only one who had a licence to drive.
The Outlaws were now doing a lot of gigs on their own. We were becoming less available to back Mike Berry on his gigs so he formed his own backing band. With Ken as our new rhythm guitarist we recorded ‘Sioux Serenade’ and ‘Ku-Pow’. We spent about six months on the road with this line-up. The next one to go was Scratch. He announced one day, right out of the blue, that he was going to emigrate to Australia,