Then I went on to university, and four of us in our hall of residence formed a band. As I was probably the inferior guitarist, I went on to bass, initially on the bottom strings of the guitar and then on a Hayman 40/40. The band, Cymex, managed two gigs, and then I dropped out of university.
After that, I didn't do anything with any bands for some time. Eventually I moved to Tamworth and decided to become musically active again, so I pimped myself as a bass/rhythm/lead player and got recruited to a band called BHX as bassist. That was when I started specialising in bass.
Keith wrote the heavier stuff, I wrote some ballads.
After a few months and a couple of gigs with them, I left and joined a club band called Night Music (though I did stand in for their new bassist when they got a gig supporting Scarab and their bassist was away).
Sadly, shortly after the band split up, Ann was killed in a car accident. And by curious coincidence I saw her mother on "Bargain Hunt" something in 2006.
Rachel came in as alternative lead vocalist after a while, but the band fell apart when I got banned for drinking and driving in 1984 - neither Steve nor Adrian drove, and carrying on just became totally impractical.
After a while, I took to bringing a bass down, and started backing Duke (and others). Then another guitarist joined in too, and after recruiting a drummer, another band was formed. However, I didn't last till the first gig, as the drummer decided he didn't want to play with me (partly because of my other commitments, playing with a couple of other bands too).
The material was mainly original (I was the songwriter), but with some covers.
Formed from Norman and my joint involvement in the Banned Wagon. Dean Cox had been Caprice II's drummer so I dragged him in. Subsequently Sharon joined on lead vocals.
We played one Tamworth Rock Festival (1986) - that was the memorable wet one, where we had to rapidly decamp with the gear, drumkit, PA, the lot, to the Rathole, a venue which was still very much in construction, and then persuade Dean to compromise one way or another (he'd just bought a nice new Pearl Export kit):
"Don't want to play anyone else's kit"
"OK, how about letting other people play yours?"
"Don't want anyone else to play my kit"
"So how about playing someone else's kit?"
Repeat ad infinitum...
He finally relented and everyone else used his kit.
I left a bit later that year to head off in a rather different musical direction...
Rather a different musical direction for me - Ruffian was more a soul band than a rock band. Joe was the lyricist and Heath and Grom the musical composers. As one of our little projects, we went to Portmeirion to try and do some sort of video.
I'm still not quite sure what caused us to break up - we played the Tamworth rock festival in 1987 and the band was mentioned in the Tamworth Herald as "Mike Fleming's band", due to the fact that I was well-known in Tamworth and the rest of the band were from Lichfield, and that seemed to dent an ego or two. Then Grom got married, and I think that was the final point.
Brian moved down to London and the band, once again, folded up. Bands seem to have a habit of doing that...
A venture back into heavy rock for me. We played a few places, including an incredibly misplaced booking in some trendy pub in the Black Country (yes, there is at least one trendy pub in the Black Country) where they were expecting us to play current chart covers. We were'nt best please with the agent that booked us that, as we played one set and then had to leave with no money.
We also played the 1989 Tamworth Rock Festival, and JBs in Dudley, so it wasn't entirely unsuccessful. However, we finally split up.
This was an originals band. Steve was the main writer, but both Martin and I contributed some songs. For some reason we played one gig in Lichfield on an indie bill, and got slated in the Lichfield Mercury for doing so (indie music at the time wasn't jangly guitars but inarticulate grunting by semi-evolved simians).
High point - playing live on national TV, at some ungodly hour in the morning, on Telethon 90. One of the other bands on was a prison band, and we heard later that two of the members had decided to make the next move in their musical careers and not return to gaol. I don't know whether artistic differences were cited.
Anyway, it all came to a grinding halt at some point. Gary and Martin formed another band, and Steve and I were to get back together somewhere further down this page.
Eventually, though, Kash had to leave to move down to London. I found a job in Portsmouth just after that, and so the band folded up.
The job in Portsmouth disappeared after six months, and I returned to Tamworth.
Sometime in the early 90s, I got a call from Steve Brown, who I'd played with in Naked Touch. He was fed up of playing loud music and wanted to form an acoustic duo. So we got together and formed Bleeding Hearts. We played at various open mic nights on the folk and not-quite-so-folk circuit, supported both the Strawbs and Edgar Broughton at the Breedon Bar before its demise, and even got an interview on Radio WM. After we become regulars at the Slug and Lettuce and the Catapult Club, a viola player by the name of Paul Miller asked if he could play along with us. We gladly accepted, and later recruited Tracy Smith after getting him to get his drums out of the loft where they'd been for several years.
This was the original four-piece Bleeding Hearts, and we went on to play a variety of gigs, mainly round Birmingham but as far afield as Bath. However, Paul had other commitments with other bands and lots going on in his personal life, and had to leave, and then Tracy decided he was not best pleased with Steve constantly swearing on stage (but had possibly also been recruited by another band) and left, and when Steve asked me if he swore too much on stage and got a non-committal answer, the toys went out of the pram and he advertised in the rehearsal studio for a drummer and bass player who, he said, would have to understand that this was a band with one man in total control. I didn't bother applying for my own job as Steve was getting further and further from the acoustic side and back to the loud side that he'd said he was sick of (and that's where he is to this day, with the current Bleeding Hearts).
It so happened that while on the folk circuit, Steve and I had encountered someone by the name of Kevin Haycox, and I started playing bass with him. We played regularly at the Roadhouse and at the WMC? Legion? on the Pershore Road nearby, and a few gigs at the White Lion in Stourbridge.
Then I had a bit of a rest from it all as I had to go to Scotland for work. After a few years of working all over the place, I got back into permanent employment and looked for another band.
Finally, in 2003, I joined another band. Andy and Lawrence had been working together for a while and wanted to complete the line-up - I joined, then there was a brief hiatus while trying to get a keyboard player sorted out (there was a new one every week), then we just went for a four-piece and recruited Mike, a drummer who'd previously played with Lawrence.
We had a mixed set of originals and covers, but although we were thoroughly rehearsed, we never gigged. Finally we did a set at the Tamworth music festival in 2004, and soon after that played for a 50th birthday party, but that was it. I wanted to be gigging again, so started looking for other bands in mid-2005 and eventually left in November 2005.
Looking back at my diary, I find that my first meeting with Denis and Bob was at the start of August 2005, then I auditioned with them on the 9th and played the try-out gig with the New Corona Band on the 10th. I didn't hear from Denis and Bob for some time and thought I'd been unsuccessful, but it turned out they did want me after all and I first gigged with them on Bonfire Night, 2005, at first as a 3.5 piece band (Sue plays occasional keyboards), and later, after recruiting Martin, as a 4.5 piece. More details of the band are on the Breakaway website.
In mid-2009, I decided to leave so as to play more rock-orientated music, and joined Licksntrix (see below).
You look for another band and then three come along all at once…
This is one of these stories that you hear of happening to other people and don't think could ever happen to you.
Back in 1977-78, I was going out with a girl called Karen Ivison. That was during my non-playing post-university period, and although I had a guitar knocking around, she never heard me play it. Her dad didn't approve of me and forced her to split up with me - the song that that inspired ("Love Lies Bleeding") has been performed by at least six bands plus me solo as of 2006.
Fast forwarding to 2004, for some reason I had a look for Karen on Friends Reunited, found her there, and got in touch. After a while, we got back together, and after another while, I heard her singing in the kitchen and realised she could sing. So I suggested that we try working as a duo. We tried a few John Denver songs, went to an open mic night at the Roadhouse, and Second Time Round was born early in 2005. So now we're performing the song that that break-up inspired, as well as "It doesn't matter", which is about getting back together again so many years later.
As a consequence of playing regularly at the Roadhouse, and the absence of a resident bass player, I started to play bass with the Roadhouse house band, and became a roaming bass tart with an eye for a chance. It's fun learning songs like "Comfortably Numb" live on stage - rehearsals are for wimps…
With my divorce, remarriage, and move back to Tamworth, and John Benbow's decision to stop doing the Roadhouse open mic nights, I haven't done much of that of late, though there has been the occasional openh mic reunion or party where the old house band or variants thereof have reformed.
Also as a consequence of playing at the Roadhouse, I met back up with Kevin Haycox (see Call Me Dan above and now do the occasional gig with him.
I decided after some years with Breakaway that I needed to get back to playing rock music, and happened to see an advert from Licksntrix, whose bassist was leaving. I had an audition that went well and was recruited, with the first gig about two weeks later.
I did a few gigs with them, and things seemed to be going well. Then out of the blue, I got a text from Gary the rhythm guitarist telling me that an old friend of the Wood brothers (lead guitarist and drummer in the band) had said he wanted to play in the band, and as a consequence they were sacking me. So that was that, a disappointing end to a good start.
However, a guitarist I'd played with back in the days of Caprice, Steve Shepherd, had contacted me as the bassist with his band, The Lightning, had retired. I'd originally said I'd help out with any gigs he had in the pipeline until he found a replacement bassist, but then I became the replacement bassist.
While I was looking around, I also auditioned for Different Glory, a duo who wanted to expand to a full band. After the audition, which went well, everything went quiet for a time and then Jason and Colin got back in touch, having recruited Ross on drums. We rehearsed for a few months and then played a number of gigs in Tamworth, then branched out to the Kasbah in Coventry.
Jason had a period of suffering with vocal nodules, so, rather than just put everything on hold, we recruited Nicky and Ryan and put together a covers band, Spiral Six. An initial gig at Tamworth's Casa Bar was well received, and we're moving on from there.