The Surrey Years

If you've plodded gamely through The Bournemouth Years, you'll be relieved to know that this section contains a lot less detail. That's partly because I've reached the age when I can recall what happened forty years ago but can't remember where I left my reading glasses, and partly because most (though not all) of the embarrassing moments took place in those early years. Anyway, here we go...

By 1977, living in Surrey and working in the City, I realised I wanted to get back into playing. Having made the decision, I suppose I half expected the phone to start ringing, as had usually happened in my Bournemouth days, but it sat there in silent defiance until I plucked up courage to approach Alan Swinden, a fellow parent at my children's school, whom I'd discovered played bass in a band. The band specialised in Shadows numbers - which tend to make a piano player about as useful as a fifth wheel on a sledge - but soon after I joined we teamed up with a brass section led by Tommy Cooper's nephew, John, and became The Savanna Show Band. John acted as agent, bandleader, and vocalist, and also handled trumpet. (I use the term "handled" in its literal sense, although the occasional clean note did manage to escape his instrument, albeit on a purely random basis.)

In addition to the normal round of British Legion clubs, works canteens and private functions, John's contacts through his agency soon started producing gigs at large and prestigious local venues, such as The Fulcrum, Slough and The Hexagon, Reading. (Incidentally, at the end of an evening, if they've got a snooker championship the following day, the entire Hexagon stage is lowered about six feet on hydraulic ramps -which can be a bit disorientating when you're packing up your band gear with five pints of beer inside you.)

As the gigs improved, so did our repertoire, helped by the fact that three new members - Dave Crabtree on sax, Barry Caws on lead trumpet, and Brian Kirby on guitar - could also handle lead vocals. That gave us a much greater range of potential material, and we gradually extended the sets to include anything from James Last to Stevie Wonder, which made a nice change from Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree and The Birdie Song. (Bet you don't remember who did that one - it was The Tweets, described in the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles as "UK, male feathered vocal/instrumental group.")

Where was I? Oh, yes, we were widening our repertoire. That's generally a good thing, but one can go too far, as I did with the Belgian National Anthem. We were booked to play at a function to celebrate (I think) a Buckinghamshire town being twinned with a Belgian one, (well not every town ends up with Rio or LA), and the Belgian Ambassador was due to attend. In such circumstances, their embassy sends you the music, complete with chord symbols, and (fortunately for me) a tape of the anthem - La Brabazone (sic). Now I don't subscribe to the view that "Belgium is boring", but, alas, La Brabazone does tend to undermine my case. However, I dutifully applied myself to learning it parrot-fashion, and at the start of the gig managed to get through it without His Excellency ripping off his sash in temper. Thinking all was now well, I applied myself with my usual gusto to the numerous pints that helped to make our gigs go with a swing, until, to my horror, at the end of the evening, as the last notes of God Save the Queen died away, I heard the local Mayor ask the audience to "please remain standing for the Belgian National Anthem." This presented me with two problems: (a) I'd lost the chord sheet supplied by the embassy and (b) I had absolutely no recollection of how the tune went. With sweat pouring off me, I launched desperately into the only sombre tune I could think of (I think it was the Masonic Grace, which does use some of the same notes, though not in the same order), and ploughed gamely on to the end. To his credit, the Ambassador managed to keep a straight face, and most of the British non-masons in the room probably never noticed the difference.

After three years we decided to part company with John Cooper, and in 1980 became "Tequila Sunrise," with Brian Kirby as bandleader. We managed to keep the connection with The Fulcrum, and a steady flow of work came in, often with us as the supporting act to "name" bands, such as Joe Loss, Victor Sylvester, Ray McVeigh etc. We'd always managed to hold our own against them, largely by switching the balance of our sets away from waltzes and quicksteps, (which they could obviously play better than us) towards more pop-orientated material. We were starting to get a bit cocky about it, and then one New Year's Eve we found ourselves supporting the Sid Lawrence Orchestra.

Spike Milligan once said "Sid Lawrence is the name of the German pilot who shot down Glenn Miller so he could steal all his arrangements." Wherever Sid got them from, the resemblance to the Miller sound was uncanny, and everyone who turned up at The Fulcrum that night came expecting just that. I suppose the first inkling we had that this wasn't going to be yet another successful support gig, came when we saw the size of the band. There seemed to be hundreds of them, and even though we'd set up in a corner of The Fulcrum's vast stage, they still had to wrap themselves around us. Our first set came to an end, still with a largely empty dance floor, and then it was time for me to step up to the microphone and say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, will you please welcome Mr. Sid Lawrence." As, all around me, the orchestra struck up their sustained opening chord, it felt like I was going down in a lift. Our second set went down no better than the first one, even though we played well, and we saw in the New Year in a somewhat restrained mood.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. Just remember Philip Larkin's comment that "history is another place".

At least, however, we actually had an audience (albeit not interested in us) that New Year's Eve, but it wasn't always so, at least up to a point. We'd been booked to play at a hotel somewhere near (I think) Dunstable. It was a ticket-only do, and the money was good, and if we did o.k. there was the chance of repeat gigs. The first hint that the evening might turn out to be somewhat short of a roaring success came when we spotted a hoarding advertising a free gala dance to celebrate the opening of a new leisure centre just down the road from the hotel. We thought no more about it, however, as we busied ourselves setting up the band gear and rope lights, and then chucked down a few pints as we prepared ourselves mentally for the usual influx of hordes of punters. With the tape deck playing in the background, (we took a less than evangelical approach to the Musicians' Union slogan of "Keep Music Live"), our unease grew as our start time of eight o'clock came and went, with no sign of an audience. By twenty past eight, two middle-aged couples had arrived separately and were clearly going through the first stages of denial that they had made a grievous error in paying for their tickets in advance. They were also drinking quite fast.

By half past eight, it was crunch time. No one else had turned up, and, if we wanted to get paid, we had to get on with the first set. We launched bravely into "American Patrol", the sound reverberating round the virtually empty room, and segued into "Greensleeves". Neither couple got up to dance the quickstep, but the braver (or maybe drunker) pair did finally attempt a waltz, and the remaining couple felt obliged to follow. It was becoming increasingly apparent, however, that our audience of four were soon going to up sticks and leave us with an empty ballroom, giving us the choice of playing to no-one at all, or packing up and risking not getting paid. "Why don't you talk to them?" eventually whispered the bass player, Tony Eden, in my ear. I could see the psychology of that - find out their names, get to know them, and pretty soon we'd be holding them hostage - each couple feeling too guilty to be the first to walk out on us. And finally, Stockholm Syndrome would kick in, and they'd come to love and admire their captors, and have a really nice evening. I wish I could tell you that that's what happened, and they came to know each other, and are to this day still going on caravan holidays together. The truth, alas, is more mundane. We did manage to keep them there long enough to justify our getting paid, but they finally left within a few minutes of each other. They probably went on to the free gala dance down the road.

By the mid 1980s, the sax player, Dave, and I had decided we wanted to turn our hand to jazz. We'd had some great times with Tequila Sunrise (for me, the most memorable was playing solo piano for Matt Monro singing "Birth of the Blues"), but it was time to move on, and we left, followed soon after by Mick, the drummer, to form a jazz quartet. (We got the original bassist, Chris Robin, by advertising.) Dave had by far the best jazz technique, but we all gradually began to improve, and a few pub gigs started coming in. It was when Peter Giles, (see The Bournemouth Years), took over on bass that the band - now known as Birdland, and which features on tracks 4, 6 and 9 of my Pure and Simple album - started moving ahead.

Palookaville finally closed when the lease was up, and the premises became a clothes shop. With the disappearance of our main source of gigs, Les Booth, who'd replaced Pete on bass, and Dave went their separate ways, and Mick and I teamed up with Tony Eden to do rock'n roll pub gigs under the name of Bus Pass. Jazz never went away entirely, however, and Mick and I continued to do the annual Jazz Day at my local pub, The Brickmakers, in Windlesham, Surrey, working with a succession of other musicians, until the line-up settled down to what became Four Way Split, with Phil Berry on bass, and Terry McAvoy on guitar, and occasionally flute. (Terry's played with just about everybody.) We've done some great gigs together, including the National Theatre, and the London Weekend Television studios, and that line-up is featured on most of the tracks on my album. The band continues to this day, sometimes augmented by Des James (who bears a startling resemblance to Colin Powell) on congas.

5 Way Split

That's about it, really. I haven't gone into much detail about Birdland or Four Way Split, because I hope the album tracks speak for themselves. If anyone's had the patience to wade through all this nonsense, then cheers for that. And if you want to drop me a line with your comments, I'm at al@alkirtley.co.uk

Thanks again,

Al Kirtley