At the Birth of Bowie--Life with the man who became a legend by Phil Lancaster

Author:Phil Lancaster [Phil Lancaster]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789460704
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2019-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

Although not lucrative, our south-of-England residencies proved a success for us in other ways as we built up loyal followings in both Bournemouth and on the Isle of Wight, much as we had at the Marquee. Again, this was encouraging as we knew we were always welcome, unlike some of the out-of-the-way places we played where we may as well have come from Mars for all the audience knew (though we probably didn’t play them ‘Mars’, being out-of-town folk and all).

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All the groups travelled with their equipment on the ferry, the gear having been loaded in to a removal van. We then all piled in the back of this removal van at the other end for the ride to the gig (often both bands and crew together). Bouncing about in the back, it was not unusual to see my drum cases used as a makeshift table to roll makeshift joints.

The man whose removal van it was (a company called Mews and based on the island) became our regular Mr Shifter and got to know us quite well in a bemused sort of way, for example calling me ‘the vicar’ because of the stand up collar on a ‘shorty-mac’ that I always wore at the time.

Our removal van man was not always so jocular, though, and wasn’t averse to creating a bit of drama. Around this time Dave was becoming more aloof and it had become his habit not to join in manhandling the equipment on to the van. On one particular hot Sunday morning it was time to load the van up to catch the ferry back to Bournemouth, and Dave was doing his latest not-doing-anything-to-help type of thing. I took exception to this and decided that, if that was how it was going to be, I wouldn’t do anything either. It was a sort of childish protest, but I felt I had to make a stand. As it turned out, I wasn’t very good at it.

The bloke whose responsibility it was to get us and his van on to the ferry before it sailed was slogging away, loading amps and shouting at me to get my arse in gear. When I didn’t respond, he flew at me, literally picking me up by my shirtfront to shake me into action. That did the trick. I’m pretty sure that Dave still didn’t join in, it didn’t register with him at all, and I lost half of my shirt buttons.

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