Why you know you need to be in a band…

Is there a defining moment in our lives when we suddenly know we want to be in a band? I think there is.

I was at school at Hampton Grammar, West London and I lived in a place called Strawberry Hill. Being quite normal.   Actually very normal – I had a model train set.

Then we discovered the Melody Maker and buying records…  I bought Led Zeppelin 2 and we poured over the cover for clues to coolness.  I even swapped my school satchel for a woollen shoulder bag (albums fitted in them). It was a descent into counter culture – I even knew someone who had read Oz magazine – but we’d never actually seen a real live band. Then one Friday during assembly, where we stood at the back, not singing and being rebellious, my  best friend Jasper (yes, that was his real name) told me in a hushed voice that there was a real live band on at this old Hotel Ballroom in our local town of Twickenham (good cos we could walk there). They were on..in this weird “place”… You had to cross the river over this narrow white wooden bridge to an island in the Thames. There was no other way – all the groups equipment went over this narrow bridge too, pushed in carts.  A hippy, in charge of Colonel Barefoots Rock Garden would take your money as you crossed. The “place” was called Eel Pie Island It was a place of dreams.

And there was this old ballroom, just like in an old black and white movie. We had to go there without telling our parents – it had a reputation for… oh oh… drugs! (it was scandal in the local paper) We knew nothing about drugs, we’d only just discovered beer and hadn’t really properly snogged a girl yet (although in years to come my friend Jasper would go off to Oxford University to study physics and be sent down in the first year for doing……drugs….).

I can remember the feeling as I entered this place..it was amazing…and, the music was SO loud..I had never heard anything like it. The support act were called Thunderzone and the main band was called Deep Purple. They played a really long track called Mandrake Root – It was amazing, I stood awestruck unable to move. Transfixed…

And in that moment, I knew I wanted it to be ME up there, not me watching… but up there on that stage  – in my own band. That was my moment and from that day onwards everything I did was about being in a band.

Well, once mum let me out of the house again, having discovered we’d been to the house of Satan. I was obviously possessed too – my hair just seemed to grow uncontrollably from that day.  She thought I’d caught something. I had…..rock and roll.

Postscript to 2008.….talking just before Christmas with Elton and he remembers playing there too!  With Rod and Long John Baldry – maybe I saw them… Funny to be chatting about it with him now – lovely moment.