Ray is Pete White’s pal. Pete you will probably recall is in the USA – Ray is now in Australia but he’s sent some good stories. Here’s the first one which leads to the early days of Heaven, one of Mick’s old bands:
“My old mate Ray Brook (ex The Royals tenor sax) and I put together a band with Ray Todd ( Ex Metors UK Bass Guitar ) Nobby Glover on drums and I recall a gig we did at HMS Mercury one night. ) I had an old Standard Atlas van and had picked everybody up and on our way driving through the dark country lanes to the gig when we caught sight of a mouse in the headlights. There was no chance of me stopping in time and I ran over it and killed it.
The group all called me “The Mouse Murderer” that night and somebody swore that the spirit of the mouse would come back to haunt me. We did the gig and on the way back home in the early hours of the morning we all heard a strange squeeking noise coming from under the van. Of course the boys all said it was the curse of the dead mouse haunting me. This noise went on for some time until I noticed the van started to labour and it wouldn’t progress very well so I pulled over, got out and looked underneath and to my horror saw not the mouse, but my complete front offside wheel hub glowing red hot in the darkness.
The wheelbearings had seized up. I managed to nurse the van back to Nobby’s Mum’s place at Bedhampton where we all dossed on the loungeroom floor that night. Everybody inventing songs and verse containing titles like “The Curse Of The Mouse” until we all eventually collapsed into sleep. It was my van, and I was an engineering apprentice so no guesses as to who had the job of fixing it.
So this band which contained me as an ex “Furie”, one ex “Royal” and an ex ”Meteor UK” member with the later addition of Ray King (Baritone Sax) and Dave Gautrey (Trumpet) morphed into “The Frenzy” and eventually evolved into ”Heaven”.
January 28, 2012 at 11:03 pm |
We were a 70′s band (Free Fall) but we had a 60′s van so I think this story fits. The van itself was a 63 Bedford Dormobile. It was rescued from a builder and decorator in Cosham I think. He had been using it for years as a shed and kennel as we found some petrified dog shit in it.Part of the deal was that we clean it out obviously before we moved it. Then it came time to start it. Well we tried pretty much everything but the solenoid or starter motor was shot. Fortunately the Bedford came with a starter handle. Well long story short we got it going and thru an MOT, even gave it a respray, metallic blue which we ran out of so the color kind of fades towards the back..if interested you can see a couple of pictures of it here https://www2.bc.edu/~emerypa/history.html just scroll down a bit. We used it for a good year and a half even went as far as Cambridge for one gig. It was on the home from that show that the carburator linkage broke. Fortunately as some of you will doubtless remember the Bedfords engine was mostly in the cab with access doors to things like, said carburettor on the passengers side. So for a third or so of the journey home I operated the carb by hand thru the open access door. One other feature was the sliding doors, of which the bottom sliding mechanism had rusted away. So they were just hanging from the top, take a corner a bit too fast and the door would swing out from the bottom. Ah fun times. Then there was the G reg transit we got off of a pig farmer..very distinctive smell to that vehicle. 1600CC V4 bandload of gear and 6-8 people…what a trooper.Then Shazam’s double wheelbase big white transit that came with airplane seats…bought from some other band in Pompey, never knew who. All 60′s vans so on topic.
January 29, 2012 at 2:07 am |
What happened to Ray King? I used to drink with him around 1978 in a pub in Drayon (at the end of Lower Drayton Lane) as I started going in there with a biker I knew, who knew Ray quite well. Think they might have been neighbours?
January 29, 2012 at 7:39 am |
He’s in Germany. Mick is in touch and has been to visit. I’ve met him a couple of times in the past year or two – as has Nobby. He seems fine