We’re all feeling the crunch. Here’s a song that will direct your anger in the right direction!

Lyrics

Now here’s a little story, to tell it is a must.

About a well respected man, who traded on our trust.

When bricks and mortor rocketed, he lent against the rise.

When property prices plummeted, foreclosed to our suprise…. oh,

My old man’s a banker,

he drives a brand new rolls,

he lives in a great big mansion and

goes on exotic hols.

He draws a six figure salary, with bonuses on top.

Remortgaging your house and home until the market drops.

Oh, the world financial meltdown has caused the credit crunch.

You have a wallet full of credit card that won’t pay for your lunch.

Go overdrawn a penny it will cost you 50 quid.

Cos borrowing from my old man’s worst thing you ever did!

My old man’s a banker,

he drives a brand new rolls,

he lives in a great big mansion and

goes on exotic hols.

I say, I say, I say!

What do you say?

How do you really get someone in the shit?

I dunno, how do you really get someone in the shit?

You let them remortgage they property at 7 times their salary!

*canned laughter*

That money that you borrowed at compound interest rates,

for home improvements, that new car, that holiday in the states,

you’ll never pay the interest off no matter how you try,

you’ll pay and pay and pay and pay and pay , until you die!

My old man’s a banker,

he drives a brand new rolls,

he lives in a great big mansion and

goes on exotic hols.

I say, I say, I say!

What do you say?

How do you get blood out of a stone?

I dunno, how do you get blood out of a stone?

I dunno, you’ll have to ask my Dad!

*canned laughter*

In store cards, car finance and credit loan debt too,

he’ll put it all together at a long term rate for you,

the compound crippling, enough to make you sob,

the credit crunch will make you homeless if you lose your job!

My old man’s a banker,

he drives a brand new rolls,

he lives in a great big mansion and

goes on exotic hols.

I say, I say, I say!

Not you again!

So how’s the credit crunch effecting you then?

My house is only worth half of what I paid for it last year.

Better keep up the repayments then or you’ll be living in a tent!

No my old man’s not a Lehmans but he knows about sub-prime,

his own cash is underneath his mattress,

does not bank a dime,

and when this swoop is full blown and all across the earth,

he’ll be buying up those houses at a tenth of what they’re worth.

My old man’s a banker,

he drives a brand new rolls,

he lives in a great big mansion and

goes on exotic hols.

Next time you see a banker, pretending to look sad…

Don’t tell he’s a wanker, he might be my old man!!!

YE-HAR!

Something Else by Eddie Cochran adpated to tell the tale of Dirty Dave and his doll…

Read the sections on History -> The Mind Machine for the full story!

I came home from London with my attempt to ‘make it’ as a guitar player completely disillusioned. Being a whizz on the guitar, tall and looking the part with my long hair and Carnaby Street clothes hadn’t been enough to avoid ‘the casting couch’. I just hadn’t, wouldn’t and couldn’t submit to being fucked by some fifty year old plus, fat and balding, cigar chomping impresario as the price of getting on in the music business. My refusal had meant nothing to them. London in 1967 was full of similar pretty and young men, many having hardly any musical talent but who were prepared to do absolutely anything to achieve success – so why should they waste any time on me? If it had been a woman the same age or even older making sexual demands and ugly as sin with the power to decide my musical fate I would have done anything she wanted, but not with a man. I had the talent and the looks, but that price was a price too high for me to pay. I knew that that was why I hadn’t ‘made it’.
I remember it was raining as I left the M6 and drove along Galgate Level as I returned home to dreary Lancaster and a family who I had last seen six months earlier when I set out for London with such high hopes and confidence in my ability as a musician. I was greeted by my mother who spelt out the conditions I would have to meet if I wanted to return to living at home - a short haircut and a regular job. All I had in the World was a fifteen hundredweight Bedford van, a Fender Tremolux amplifier, Fender Telecaster, my long hair and a pile of way out clothes I had bought in Carnaby Street during my time in London. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make and I chose to live rough in the van until I could get in a local group. Those days it was possible to earn more as a guitar player for three or four nights a week than it was working full time in some dead end job and I knew it wouldn’t take me long to find a group which would give me the opportunity to make enough money to rent a flat.

Things hadn’t changed much in Lancaster and Morecambe in the time I’d been away apart from the arrival of two wild, Irish brothers, Gerald and Derek Fitzpatrick who both had ginger hair even longer than mine. Dick Jones, from Morecambe who had peroxide blond hair with black roots the same length as the Fitzpatrick brothers and claimed to be Brian Jones’ of The Rolling Stones cousin, played bass guitar. Dick’s real name was Richard Noblett - hardly rock and roll - and I didn’t blame him for lying about his surname. Dave Winn, a weirdo with short dyed blond hair, a full set of false teeth and a protruding chin which had given him the nick-name Chinny was a decade older was the other members of The Mind Machine and their guitar player. Derek played the drums and Gerald, known as Ged was the roadie and owned an old two ton diesel ex post office van with dodgy brakes. The van was the same model as police ‘Black Mariahs’ that you see in old early ‘60’s British films.
Derek and Ged were orphans who had been raised by tough nuns in Ireland. They had gone on the run after Derek head butted a nun who was about to administer him a dose of the cane for some minor misdemeanour. Living rough and stealing whatever they needed they had ended up in Morecambe living a life beyond the law and any kind of conformity but with the same aim that had taken me to London. Just as I had been, they were convinced fame was just around the corner and ‘making it’ a forgone conclusion.
Dave Winn was the only member of The Mind Machine I already knew, having played the electric piano with him in a group called the Hideaways. He was a throwback to the days of The Shadows, echo chambers, tremolo arms when groups wore matching suits and did dance steps as they played. He was also a prolific scrounger and bit of a pervert and in my time with The Hideaways had had to borrow my Telecaster as he didn’t even own a guitar. The irony of this was that the Telecaster had originally been his when new and had been repossessed when Dave missed the hire purchase payments. I had bought it second hand from Fox’s, a music shop in Morecambe when I was seventeen.
The Hideaways had played seven nights a week to packed audiences in The Ship Hotel (now called The Mermaid) on Queen St and Dave used to turn up each night with his pyjamas showing below his pant legs and wearing a big, baggy trench coat. He really fancied our singer’s sister Irene and if she came to watch, when we took breaks, he would claim to be cold, put the coat back on and disappear to the Gents, returning shortly to sit with her and her friends with both hands in full view on the table and a faint buzzing sound coming from a Pifco massager inside his coat that he had adapted into a wanking machine. We all knew what he was doing but Dave didn’t know we knew. He was always asking you for a ‘spare cigarette’ – I used to tell him there was no such thing and often had to be paid extra money, which made everyone else’s share less, pleading he hadn’t enough to pay his digs and he’d be thrown out if he couldn’t. I didn’t like him.
It wasn’t long before Dick and I met up. He told me they weren’t happy with Dave and I told him about the trench coat and the Pifco massager. We had a laugh and he asked me if I would be interested in replacing him. I said I was and Dick told me to come to a boarding house they all lived in on Claremont Rd the following afternoon to meet the Fitzpatrick brothers and have a rehearsal.

I arrived and rang the bell. The door was answered by an oldish man who didn’t say anything. Behind him, I saw Dick coming quickly down the stairs with a big smile.
“Give me a hand with my gear Dick.” I asked.
“You only need your guitar.” He answered. So it was going to be a very quiet, unamplified audition. Understandable, Claremont Rd is a terrace of boarding houses and quite densely populated. I followed him up the stairs, guitar case in hand.
When we reached the top floor, one of the doors had been written all over in large letters with a felt tip pen and I read; ACAB (all coppers are bastards) and statements like, ‘PIGS KEEP OUT’, ‘ALL FUCKING COPPERS ARE TWATS’, ‘DC SMITH SUCKS COCK’, PC BROWN IS QUEER, PC GREEN FUCKS HIS MAM and a lot of other similar ones that named individual members of the local police force.
Dick opened the door and I followed him into a room about twelve feet square with a sloping ceiling and a cast iron roof light. The room was bare of furniture apart from a battered wardrobe. There wasn’t room for anything else. A grinning Derek was sat at a huge drum kit, a Marshall stack either side of him. Those days, Marshall stacks were state of the art amplifiers favoured by Jimi Hendrix, each stack consisting of two cabinets about three feet square and a foot deep stacked one above the other, the cabinets containing four twelve inch Celestion speakers and on top of them sat a one hundred watt amplifier (my Tremolux was thirty watts, had two ten inch speakers and was pretty loud). Each stack stood about six foot six inches high and had eight speakers. A two hundred watt Marshall P.A. and two big speaker columns completed the gear. In such a confined space it felt like I was in a music shop.
Derek played a loud drum roll on his snare and I realised that trouble wasn’t far away and asked Dick if could use the stack next to the wardrobe. Plugging in my guitar, unnoticed I opened the wardrobe door slightly.
Dick was also the vocalist and asked,
“Do you know Hush?” This was Deep Purple’s debut single. I nodded.
“In A.” He nodded to Derek who promptly counted it in with his drum sticks.
Loud wasn’t the word to describe it. We played Hush at the same volume that would be loud in a village hall. I got into it and played some flash guitar that I could tell impressed them all by the way they kept looking at each other.
‘Purple Haze’ by Jimi Hendrix was next then ‘Rock me’ by Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart. I could tell the guitar job was mine.
We were about to play ‘Hey Joe’, Hendrix again, when we heard a hammering on the door
“POLICE! OPEN THIS DOOR!”
I looked at the two small bolts on the door and mentally pictured the police standing at the other side of it more than likely reading their own felt tipped names. I unplugged my guitar, stepped into the wardrobe and pulled the door shut. In the total darkness I heard,
“POLICE! OPEN THIS DOOR IMMEDIATELY!” Then,
“FUCK OFF!” In an Irish accent followed by a loud crash as the door was smashed in.
I listened to the sounds of a violent struggle, noises I recognised as drums and cymbals falling about, then a huge crash that puzzled me, “Y’FUCKEN BASTARDS” again in an Irish accent and the voices growing quieter as The Mind Machine ‘accompanied’ the police down the stairs in handcuffs, then total silence. I gave it another minute or so before emerging from the wardrobe and looking at the devastation in the now empty room. Dick’s Marshall stack was lying flat on its back on the floor and accounted for the huge crash.
I put my guitar in its case waited five minutes before making my way down the stairs, letting myself out and driving away in my van.
I called round the following afternoon and discovered that they’d all been charged with causing a breach of the peace, Ged and Derek also with resisting arrest. No mention was made of my ‘disappearance’. Derek asked me if I wanted to join and I said yes.

Although I was now the Mind Machine’s guitar player, Dave hung onto his room on the top floor by saying he was looking for somewhere else to live but hadn’t found anywhere yet. For all their toughness Derek and Ged let him stay while he found somewhere, I think mainly out of guilt over the way they had replaced him so I slept in my van parked outside the front door as I waited for his room to come empty. Knowing Dave as I did, I knew he’d hang on as long as he possibly could because he was living there for free. How it was for free Dick explained to me a couple of days later as we sat on the front door step one sunny afternoon practicing the numbers we were going to be playing on our barely audible unamplified guitars.
“We all live here for free. Platt, (the old man who had answered the door on my first visit) bought the house when he retired and let out the rooms for an income in his retirement but keeping the ground floor for himself. He’d put a Room To Let sign in the front bay window and I noticed it one day as I was walking past. We needed somewhere to live as we had been thrown out of our flat on Alexandra Road.”
“Why did they want you out of the flat, Dick?”
“It’s a long story. Ged decided we needed a lighting rig, no one round here has one so he decided to make one.”
I’d seen groups using flashing lights when I was in London but it was in its infancy and I’d no idea how Ged could have made one. Intrigued I asked Dick if Ged had managed it.
“Yes,” Dick laughed. “He bought a load of 100 watt light bulbs and bulb holders, a few rolls of aluminium cooking foil and a dozen doorbell pushes, stole some shelving out of an empty shop and made four long boxes about a foot wide. He lined the boxes by gluing the foil to the inside faces and mounting the lamp holders on top of the foil. Then he wired them in groups to the bell pushes that he’d fastened to a board and put a plug on it. It’s pretty good. He just sits at the back of us on stage and presses the bell pushes like a typewriter. He always ends up with blisters on the end of all his fingers.” Dick laughed.
“How did it get you thrown out?”
“Well, he decided to paint the bulbs; some red, some blue and some green so they’d flash different colours and when he stole the paint from that decorator’s shop on Albert Road, the only tins he managed to get were gallon oness. While he was painting the bulbs on newspaper in the living room, he had the red tin open when Ken Peters came round with that crazy dog he’s got. Ken stepped backwards and accidentally kicked the red tin over and it made a huge red patch on the carpet. The dog stepped in it and when Ged lost his temper and started shouting, the dog got excited and started running all over, back and forwards through the paint and round the flat as Ged tried to catch it and we ended up with red paint paw marks all over the settee as well as the living and bedroom floors. When the landlord called for the rent he went nuts when he saw the paint stains and gave us a week’s notice.” Dick smiled.
“I called on Platt about the room and he said I could have it – it was that one we rehearsed in. I called round with Ged to move my stuff in and ask if Ged could share with me. We were all sleeping in the van by this time. Anyway, I had a key for the front door and Platt’s door wasn’t locked so we just went in without knocking and caught him messing about with two young boys. We all moved into that room without even asking him, every time he tried to say anything we just mentioned the kids and telling the police.
We made quite a lot of noise, the guy in the next room moved out and Derek moved into it, then the woman in the front top flat went and Dave moved in that. Slowly we took the whole house over as the other tenants left. Ged married Sue and they got the first floor, it’s a flat with a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room. We just let Platt have his ground floor flat. We haven’t paid him a penny apart from that first week’s rent I gave him when he gave me the key.”
“What about gas and electric?” I was truly shocked.
“Nope, not a bean.”
I’m no Saint but I couldn’t have done that. But they weren’t me and looking back I wish I’d left them right there and then. I was waiting for Dave’s room – what did that make me?
“How do you think we got all the amps and drum kit?”
I knew how I’d got mine. I’d saved up and bought them.
“No idea, Dick.”
“Derek stole Platt’s check book and forged his signature.”
“Surely….”
“Yep, kids and police. He never even mentioned it to us.”

“Dave’s out. Fancy looking round your future room?” Dick asked with a grin?”
I nodded and followed Dick up the stairs to the top floor front bedroom. As we passed Ged’s room, Dick stopped at the open doorway. Ged was sat at the table reading a comic book with concentration furrowing his forehead.
“Where’s Sue?” Dick asked him.
“Shopping.” Ged answered without looking up.
“Think we’ll just have a look at Chinny’s room.” Dick said turning to the stairs that led to the top floor. Ged didn’t even answer.
Dave’s room was the same size as the room we’d rehearsed in and just had an old fashioned cast iron bed, wardrobe and a table and chair.
“What do you think then? Dick asked me.
“A room’s a room, anything’s better than the van. But I don’t think you’ll get Dave out so easy. I know him too well.”
“You just never know.” Dick winked. “What’s this then?” He bent down and pulled a battered old suitcase from under the bed. He pulled a clasp knife out of his pocket and in seconds the case was open. Inside was a sliced white loaf, a felt tip pen, a spare set of false teeth, a pair of disgustingly dirty underpants, a hardback ruled writing book and an old head and shoulders, hollow milliner’s bust made from plaster and mesh. It was battered, old and extremely dirty. Its closed lips had been hollowed out with a knife into a circular hole about one and a half inches wide. The hole was lined with fur fabric. We both started laughing at the thought of what Dave used this dummy’s head for. Blow up dolls hadn’t been thought of when this had been made.
Dick handed me Dave’s felt tip pen.
“Go on, write on it. I’m going to read this.” He picked up the hardback book and opened it.
I couldn’t resist. On its forehead I wrote, ‘If your friends could see you now you’d feel pretty stupid’ on one cheek ‘Dave loves Dummy’ and ‘True love ways’ on the other.
I was admiring my comments when Dick burst out laughing.
“Listen to this: I heard Ged close the front door and went down stairs with my rock hard prick in my hand. I kicked Ged’s flat door open and stood there just staring at the whore.
“Thank God.” Sue whimpered, “A real man for a change.”
I walked over and stood in front of her and looked at her beautiful body.
“On your knees bitch,” I shouted and clicked my fingers, “NOW!”
“Yes Dave, anything you want I’ll do. I need a good fucking. I haven’t had one since you came down last week. I’ve longed to feel you thrusting into me. When I have sex with Ged, all I can think of is you.”
“Shut up and suck you dirty whore!” I ordered her grabbing her by the hair and forcing her head towards my prick
We fell about laughing at Dave’s fantasies with Ged’s wife. The book was full of similar fantasies many of which involved Sue.
“So you think we can’t get rid of Dave then?” Dick laughed. “Come on, let’s give Ged a change from Dennis the Menace. I think he’ll find this more interesting”
“No Dick, we can’t do that. Writing on the dummy’s one thing, Ged’ll kill him.”
“Do you want to sleep in your van forever? Come on.”
Dick turned towards the door and I called after him.
“Let’s put his stuff back first?”
“OK. It’s a shame we won’t be around to see him open the case.” We started for the stairs.
Ged was still reading the comic when we reached his open door.
“Ged,” Dick said in a serious voice, we were just looking round Dave’s room and found this. I think you’d better read it.” He handed the book to a puzzled looking Ged and we left him to it.
We went out for a walk. When we got back Dave and his suitcase had gone and I moved in.

We did quite a lot of playing. One night we were playing at The Tivoli on Morecambe prom and as were setting up the gear Ged said,
“Fucken low on diesel, I’d better go and get some.” As he left I couldn’t help but wonder just where he was going to find diesel at eight thirty. No all night garages those days and hardly any local garages sold diesel. The nearest place I could think of was Forton Service station on the M6 and that must be about ten miles from the Tivoli.
About an hour later we were playing the last number of our first set when Ged returned. He walked up to the bar and ordered a pint. We finished the number and went over to join him. I was shocked at his appearance: his denim jacket was badly torn and his left cheek had several deep scratches that had bled profusely onto his shirt. I noticed several deep cuts on his hands and his clothes were dusty with dirty marks all over them. Ged was drinking his pint as though nothing had happened.
“Where the fuck did you go for the diesel?” I asked my curiosity almost killing me.
“Dick Long’s fucken scrapyard.” He answered as though it was the most normal place to go for diesel in the world, no hint of anything out of the ordinary.
I’d weighed scrap metal in at Dick Long’s and knew he had probably the most ferocious and dangerous guard dog in Lancashire. It was big, mean, half starved and dusty and looked like a cross between a Great Dane and a werewolf. It spent all day straining at the end of a chain trying to get loose and kill anybody who dared enter the scrapyard. At nights, it roamed the scrapyard free of the chain intent on killing anything that moved. Dick could only get it back on the chain when he opened up by feeding it and slipping the chain on as it tore its breakfast lump of meat to pieces.
“No, that’s impossible. That guard dog is the meanest most dangerous dog I’ve ever seen.” I said, the thought of anybody foolish enough to enter that yard with the dog loose certain and extremely violent suicide.
“Not anymore it isn’t.” Ged said in a matter of fact, totally devoid of drama voice before taking another drink from his glass. “I strangled it with my two hands.”
And that was all he would say on the matter. Quite frankly I didn’t believe him. The thought of anybody killing it without a shotgun was unthinkable.
I was forced to change this view later after we’d finished playing and we loaded the gear into his van alongside half a ton of scrap copper piping that hadn’t been there when we unloaded it.
Theft was a way of life to that group. Even the lipstick scrawled messages all over the van were done by the group themselves with dozens of lipsticks stolen from Boots.

One Friday night we were supposed to be playing at Shap youth club when Derek finally got caught red-handed stripping lead sheeting off the roof of a shelter on Morecambe promenade. He had already stripped several others in broad daylight as well as collecting aluminium milk kits and flattening them with a sledgehammer, once even asking a man who was passing by to help him load up a dozen manhole covers that he couldn’t manage alone – all of this weighed in at Dick Long’s scrapyard! Even the food they ate was largely stolen from a nearby food wholesaler, the brothers taking it turn to nip in through the back door and grab the nearest box regardless of contents. One day they would be living on Mars Bars, the next tins of sardines.
Derek was held in custody till his trial and the jailed for six months. On his release Derek and Ged reformed The Mind Machine. Dick had left town and I was playing in another group so they teamed up with two twin brothers from Scotland on bass and guitar. The last time I played with Derek was my brother’s first gig at The King’s Arms in Lancaster, Ged roadied and operated his lights as we played. I never saw Derek again after that night and next thing I heard they had gone to London as I once had in an overloaded J4 van.
I saw Ged again once just a few months after I had left my brother’s group Chalk Farm to get married. Ged called on me unexpectedly and we went for a drink. I asked him who things had gone in London and he told me that when they arrived there they had been driving round Trafalgar Square when a continental coach braked sharply and The Mind Machine’s overloaded van couldn’t stop in time and crashed into the back of it. The police were called and Ged showed me a charge sheet that looked like a shopping list: driving without insurance, no MOT, no road tax, defective brakes, overloading, bald tyres, no driving licence, driving while banned, driving without being accompanied by a licence holder, jagged edges, no brake lights and quite a few more I can’t remember. The police had charged him and let him go.
“What did you get when you went to court?” I asked.
“I didn’t go to court.”
“How did you manage that?” I asked incredulously.
“The van had false number plates.”
A friend was hitching up from London when a group van pulled up and gave him a lift. The group was Hot Chocolate and the driver Ged.
The last I heard of Ged was from my brother John who told me he had met him when he was touring with Bad English. Ged was a roadie for the group that was their support band.
Platt died penniless in the local mental hospital a broken man in the vert early ‘70s. The house on Claremont Rd was totally derelict for a couple of years being restored to its former condition before The Mind Machine moved in. Dick was killed in a road crash in the late 70’s. Dave Winn died from emphysema in a cellar room in ’95 in Euston Grove, Morecambe. What became of Derek and Gerald Fitzpatrick I have no idea.

On the 12th of March 1971, my younger brother John made his first public
appearance. It was at The Royal King’s Arms, Lancaster. He was seventeen and
playing bass and singing in the hastily cobbled together Chalk Farm. It was a
dance in the hotel’s ballroom for the art school John attended. Lancaster
College of Art was The Storey Institute, just opposite the front door of The King’s Arms on Meeting House Lane. He’d managed to get himself elected as ‘Entertainment Secretary’ amongst his fellow students after pointing out there wasn’t one, and why shouldn’t the art school have rock concerts like the university did?
The first thing John did in this new role was come up with the name Chalk
Farm, which was the location of the The Round House in London, and then book Chalk Farm for a ‘Spring Twist’. I got roped in on guitar and asked Derek
Fitzpatrick, the wild Irish drummer who I’d played with when I was in The
Mind Machine, to play drums. His brother Gerald agreed to roadie with The Mind Machine’s two ton ex - post office van and all their gear. At this point, John didn’t even have his own amplifier! One of John’s friends at art school, Allen ‘Happy’ Harper, printed some posters and another David ‘Feggers’ Ferrington tool some promotion photos in Morecambe with a borrowed art school camera; at a fairground, at the Pier, and my favorite, lighting up cigs in the Clock Tower on the promenade. John produced some great silk screen prints in a variety of colors of the Pier photo. All we needed were some numbers! From then on, John always seemed to be skiving off art school and coming round my flat on Regent St. first thing in the morning knocking me up. I’d hear banging on the door and open my attic window. John would be standing there in the cold, clutching the home made Telecaster bass and waiting for me to throw down the key. We soon sorted out enough material to cover the approaching gig. I still have a tape of John and myself practicing for that gig made in my flat. We recorded it on my old Grundig so John could hear how it sounded. How it takes me back! ‘Fire and Water’ by Free gave me the most trouble. Although it was a dear favorite of John’s, I’d never heard it. John tried to show me how it went on the bass, but from a single bass note, it’s hard to get a proper idea of a song other than the basic chords. We worked out ‘Hey Joe’ and ‘Red House’ by Hendrix; ‘I Hear You Calling’, Ten Years After, ‘Night Life’, B. B. King and various twelve-bars including ‘Dust My Broom’ and ‘Mean Mistreated Man’ by Elmore James. Of all the numbers that we were to play at that dance, ‘Dust My Broom’ is the most evocative of John and the kind of music he was into at the time.
I’d recently left the heavy rock Mind Machine and was playing up round Newcastle Working Men’s Clubs in a three piece most weekends making just
enough to avoid getting a job. Looking back on my diary for 1971, I notice the
12th of March left free. John came round  to my flat that tea time and we got his bass and my Marshall stack and Telecaster down the stairs into Gerald’s van when he came for us. That night we were using the Mind Machine’s P.A., base rig and lights. The lights Gerald had made himself during the time I was there playing guitar. They consisted of dozens of colored 40 watt bulbs screwed into home made column trays surrounded by Bacofoil to reflect them; each bank connected to one of the a row of bell pushes on a board. In my days with The Mind Machine, Gerald used to spread the boxes of lights around the stages and then sit at the back fiercely pressing bell pushes in time to the music like a demented typist. I’ve seen him with blisters on the ends of all his fingers after many a gig!
The King’s Arms is in Lancaster  town center and we were soon unloading the
van round the back into the stage door of the ballroom. I noticed one of the
bar staff, a tall, thin, plain looking spinster with black hair and a long sad
nose stiffly eying up The Mind Machine’s ton of equipment. Times might
have been changing, but not for The King’s Arms; the bar staff might just
overlook accordion and drums at a wedding reception, but something about
her frowning expression promised trouble.
We set up the gear and as the art students started to fill the room I looked over to John who was sitting quietly alone with half of bitter and his roll up tin. He was lost in great introspection, and I wondered what was going through his mind. I could tell he was very nervous. Would he be up to it? He’d always been so shy and quiet. Now he was about to make his debut playing
bass and singing! There are no passengers in a three piece rock band and John was going to have to be front man and keep locked onto the bass drum
simultaneously without dropping a beat! And in front of his fellow art students, all his mates and his girlfriend. It was going to be a real baptist of fire for my brother.
Eight-thirty, the room was packed and it was time to bite the bullet! The lights went down and I felt for John as we cracked off with ‘Rock Me Baby’. Though I’m not much of a singer, I sung the first number to get us underway and John didn’t seem too fazed as his simple, but solid bass
patterns underpinned the riff. Derek lay heavily into his drums as though he
was auditioning for Ginger Banker’s job in ‘The Cream’ and his brother Gerald
enthusiastically stabbed away at the bell pushes behind us. As the lights
flashed and the volume started to edge up, The Royal King’s Arm Lancaster, a
staid old bastion of conservatism, almost belated caught up The psychedelic Sixties.
Nobody danced. Not that anybody ever does first thing. Most people need a few beers before they feel like boogying. As we finished ‘Rock Me’ the
audience clapped and all eyes were expectantly on John. Counting John and
Derek in in on four, I took a deep breath and launched into the opening triplet chords of ‘Dust My Broom’. What happened next amazed me! Within seconds, the whole room seem to be on its feet. Those who weren’t dancing were stood in a circle round
John watching every move as he sang and played his heart out. We seemed to
be getting louder by the second as guitar and bass struggled to keep abreast Derek’s very physical drumming. He wasn’t used to all the applause and was getting carried away. Usually when The Mind Machine played to teenyboppers in the desolate, God forsaken village halls of Cumbria, eyes narrowed and fingers went in ears. I know, that was why I’d left. Maybe it was because The Mind Machine never played on it’s own turf to appreciate fellow art students; didn’t have any mates and, any girls watching the evenings performance didn’t know they were going to be girlfriends until they were lured into the van after.
At the end of ‘Dust my Broom’, just as things seemed to be going okay, amongst the applause, we got the first complaint about the volume. I’d been expecting her and I promised the long nosed barmaid that we would indeed ‘turn it down’. We continued with a very slow and soulful version of ‘Red House’. John’s voice filled the ballroom as Derek and I played along quietly behind. Apart from ‘Night Life’, it would seem the only slow blues we played that evening. The nascent Chalk Farm continued in full tilt.

We played out the first set and Long-nose almost became part of the band as she constantly kept coming at me after each number and complaining. John seemed oblivious to her and was enjoying himself as his confidence grew. His voice got even stronger and his playing more adventurous and when we took a break amongst well wishing friends, all of whom were intent on buying him a drink. I got a visit from the hotel manger who told me in no uncertain terms that he wanted the volume reducing. Again I agreed to the demand. When we restarted it soon became obvious that we were never going
to match accordian and drums for sound levels. Long-nose kept on complaining, I kept on promising and John kept on playing and singing. Later, Derek launched into an impromptu drum solo. What he may have lacked in skill he more than compensated for in pure animal strength and enthusiasm. As he really got into it, he looked like he was trying to drive his drum kit into
the stage. In his fury, the rolled up right sleeve of his denim shirt came loose and fell round his wrist. Without a pause, he grabbed it with his other hand and ripped it clean off! John and I just looked at each other and cracked up. And so it went on. Towards the end, tired of my empty promises, Long-nose tearfully and dramatically jacked her job in. She had been hysterically demanding aspirin from the manager for a volume induced headache and complaining all night. I personally think she was a bit of a wet blanket.
The Spring Twist didn’t go full course. Someone, I can’t think whom, called the police. They arrived in front of the stage with a chatter of two way radios and a strong smell of blue serge and industrial strength disinfectant. A very large police Sargent viciously pulled the plug and made it abundantly clear to us what would happen if it was to be replaced. They left to booing of disappointed art students. Long-nose folded her scrawny arms and smiled triumphantly at the now silent Chalk Farm. A least everyone had had a moment of happiness that evening!
The Spring Twist might be over, but for John, things were only just beginning!