HISTORY

EXCALIBUR / BOBALOIS

This was really my first band, formed with some school friends. We called ourselves Excalibur and played anywhere we could, from fetes to working men's clubs and the local (Walton) hop. At some point, after I met Jimmy Pursey, he suggested a name change to Bobalouis. We played mostly 60s stuff by the Who, Stones, Kinks and an odd one of my early attempts at song writing.

Another band I was in around this time was called 'Hot banana' among other names. The guys in this group were all about ten years older than me and the leader, Don Hendry, became a life long friend and turned me on to much music that would have otherwise taken me many years to discover by myself. Sadly Don died just before Christmas 2005 leaving a huge gap in many of our lives. (see photo page)

SHAM 69

At this point Jimmy and I were both getting frustrated
with our own bands and decided to form a new band, Jimmies band was called ‘Jimmy and Ferrets’ but had recently changed it’s name to Sham 69, we toyed with a bunch of different names but eventually decided to keep the name Sham 69, We met drummer Mark Cain outside the Walton Hop, and after a quick audition in his mums
kitchen the band was complete.
Bass guitarist Albert lived on a pig farm and our rehearsals took place in a pig sty, it wasn’t long before we had enough songs to get out and start gigging. Our first gig was at Guildford university followed by a string of gigs at the Roxy club. Our first break came when Jim took a cassette of our demos up to Miles Copelands office at drysden chambers just off Oxford st. Jim told him we were the best Punk band in the country and demanded a gig, which to his credit he gave us, bottom of the bill at the Acklam hall supporting Chelsea, The Lurkers and The Cortinas.When we came out on stage the place was empty, every one drinking in the bars uninterested in the bottom of the bill. Anyway Jimmy wasn’t haveing this, he got on the mike and kept shouting until every

one came in to see what the hell was going
down - we then had ourselves an audiance.
Unbeknown to us Miles had brought along
John Cale, due to Johns enthusiasm for the
band Miles offered us a singles deal.
Soon after this we hooked up with our new
manager Tony Gordon who eventualy got
us signed to Polydor where we became
stable mates with The Jam.
After playing Bass on our first single Albi
left the band for personal reasons and

became our road manager, with Dave Treganna
taking over the bass duties. By the time we’d got
to our third album, drummer Mark Cain left the
band to be replaced by Rick Goldstein (formerly
of the Automatics), Rick joined us at Le Chatteu in
northern France for the Recording of the Hersham Boys album. The picture to the right is
from that session, L -R is manager Tony Gordon
Dave Treganna and myself at the desk. The studio was sepperate from the main house, at the
top of a huge five story tower, I had my main amp
and speaker set up in the studio with a feed down
to a 100w cab on the middle floor facing out to the stairwell and another cable down to a Fender

twin reverb in the basement, the picture to the
left shows the Chatteu with the studio tower to
the right. Our fourth album was recorded in the
south of France at a studio called Super Bear,
situated way up in the French Alps.When we
arrived Pink Floyd had just finished recording
The Wall there. About half way through the
session we had to fly back to London to do
Top of the pops, due to the French air traffic
control being on strike we had to fly via
Geneva, the flight was unbelievable with the
plane going into a vertical dive which still
makes me nervous of flying to this day. When

we finally got back to Jimmy’s place the next day we were picked up by a limo to take us to T.O.T.P’s, as it was pulling out into the road it was hit side on by an oncoming car writing both vehicles off. Anyway we eventually made it and recorded a performance of ‘Mr your a better man than I’, if anyone ever wondered why we looked so spaced out on that one, you now know why.
Jimmy was too freaked to get back on a plane, so I took the band back out to France to finish the album, leaving Jimmy to record his vocals back at Shepperton studios on our return. It wasn’t long
after that the band broke up.

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