The thread in which PHers reveal tenuous links to famous people.
Discussion
Also saw Billy Connolly a few years back on a flight from US to LHR. Well, I saw him queuing to board, but not on the flight itself since we were in different cabins 
Surprising how few people noticed him.
Once through passport control I went down to the baggage collection area and while on the escalator, I saw he was standing there on his own waiting for his bags. As I was thinking of what to say and walking over to him, some other bloke got there first. Billy said hello very politely but was clearly very tired and a bit miffed being disturbed. I decided to leave him alone. Still kick myself missing the opportunity to say hello to a hero of mine.
Surprising how few people noticed him. Once through passport control I went down to the baggage collection area and while on the escalator, I saw he was standing there on his own waiting for his bags. As I was thinking of what to say and walking over to him, some other bloke got there first. Billy said hello very politely but was clearly very tired and a bit miffed being disturbed. I decided to leave him alone. Still kick myself missing the opportunity to say hello to a hero of mine.
Someone I know through work (tenuous I know) says he was in a restaurant and wanted the bill but couldn't remember which waitress served him. He saw a girl that looked familiar and tried to catch her eye but his wife who obviously had a better memory for faces stopped him and pointed out that the young lady was Kate Middleton.
I was at University (Swansea) during the late sixties and spent - OK, wasted - much of my time playing in a band, mostly on the student circuit and the clubs in the Valleys.
Our drummer just happened to be Entertainments Secretary at Bangor, and what do you know, we tended to get booked as support band for all sorts of up and coming acts. The best night was when we backed Joe Cocker & The Greaseband the same weekend as Little Help From My Friends hit No.1. We went front of stage (very uncool actually!) to watch them and they were stupefyingly good. After the show we stood around on stage while the roadies packed up and chatted with Joe for about half an hour. What a nice guy he was. That same night I saw their roadies unpack the van. As one of them opened the back door, a battered, uncased Fender Precision bass literally fell out the back. "Oh, this effing thing..." he said and propped it up against the wall. I went over and had a look at it, and the bridge pieces had all collapsed and the frets looked like they had been pulled out with a pair of pliers. An hour or two later I stood and watched Chris Stainton (who was not the keyboardist that time) get the most amazing sounds out of that same bass at the start of A Little Help!
Another good night there was with Pink Floyd. Their roadies turned up in the afternoon in a big Transit (we had a battered old Dormobile!) and got set up, and even played a few numbers as a sound check. They were probably better than us! When we went on for our set the Floyd hadn't even turned up and we were told to just keep playing until they arrived. We played just about everything we knew, some numbers twice, then got the nod from the wings to jigger off. As we filed off, they filed on, and as we passed I remember a comment of 'nice set lads' from one of them. Gratifying. We met them in the Union Bar at Swansea another time and asked them where Syd (Barrett) was. This was just after they stopped bothering to pick him up on the way to gigs. They told us the last time they saw him he was sitting on the floor of his flat with a light bulb in his mouth, waiting for it to light up.
We also played with Fleedtwood Mac once, and to this day I have some nice photos of us on stage with their Orange amplifiers set up around ours. They were very quiet and humourless backstage, all in separate corners of the dressing room about as far away from each other as it was possible to get.
At Swansea we were once booked with Adge Cutler and the Wurzels. What a night that was - I wish I could remember more of it! The first we saw of them was a brown corduroyed backside coming through the dressing room door, announcing the arrival of one half of a duo carrying a crate of brown ale.
Other memories of that period included Chris Farlowe (can't recall if this was when Albert Lee was with him), The Mindbenders (with Graham Gouldman) and The Tremeloes - now there's a band! The Taste were also another encounter. We couldn't understand how Rory Gallagher was getting so much noise out of a battered Vox AC15 standing on a chair on the stage. We didn't notice until much later it had one of the PA mikes strapped to its front and hanging over the speaker. (This was back in the days before bands started to re-route everything through a mixer box and back out of the PA system - we just used the ancient and time-honoured technique of all trying to play louder than each other - up to 11.) "It's just a good Vox," lied Rory.
Other encounters? There was one night with Love Sculpture in a recording studio near Ross on Wye. They were in a different studio. Dave Edmunds dropped by and sat around for a while. I think he was trying to score.
In the end we all got to the end of our university courses and had to make a decision whether to carry on playing or 'go straight'. It turned out to be the latter. I often wonder how things would have gone if we went the other way. I'd probably be either dead or rich a long time ago.
Our drummer just happened to be Entertainments Secretary at Bangor, and what do you know, we tended to get booked as support band for all sorts of up and coming acts. The best night was when we backed Joe Cocker & The Greaseband the same weekend as Little Help From My Friends hit No.1. We went front of stage (very uncool actually!) to watch them and they were stupefyingly good. After the show we stood around on stage while the roadies packed up and chatted with Joe for about half an hour. What a nice guy he was. That same night I saw their roadies unpack the van. As one of them opened the back door, a battered, uncased Fender Precision bass literally fell out the back. "Oh, this effing thing..." he said and propped it up against the wall. I went over and had a look at it, and the bridge pieces had all collapsed and the frets looked like they had been pulled out with a pair of pliers. An hour or two later I stood and watched Chris Stainton (who was not the keyboardist that time) get the most amazing sounds out of that same bass at the start of A Little Help!
Another good night there was with Pink Floyd. Their roadies turned up in the afternoon in a big Transit (we had a battered old Dormobile!) and got set up, and even played a few numbers as a sound check. They were probably better than us! When we went on for our set the Floyd hadn't even turned up and we were told to just keep playing until they arrived. We played just about everything we knew, some numbers twice, then got the nod from the wings to jigger off. As we filed off, they filed on, and as we passed I remember a comment of 'nice set lads' from one of them. Gratifying. We met them in the Union Bar at Swansea another time and asked them where Syd (Barrett) was. This was just after they stopped bothering to pick him up on the way to gigs. They told us the last time they saw him he was sitting on the floor of his flat with a light bulb in his mouth, waiting for it to light up.
We also played with Fleedtwood Mac once, and to this day I have some nice photos of us on stage with their Orange amplifiers set up around ours. They were very quiet and humourless backstage, all in separate corners of the dressing room about as far away from each other as it was possible to get.
At Swansea we were once booked with Adge Cutler and the Wurzels. What a night that was - I wish I could remember more of it! The first we saw of them was a brown corduroyed backside coming through the dressing room door, announcing the arrival of one half of a duo carrying a crate of brown ale.
Other memories of that period included Chris Farlowe (can't recall if this was when Albert Lee was with him), The Mindbenders (with Graham Gouldman) and The Tremeloes - now there's a band! The Taste were also another encounter. We couldn't understand how Rory Gallagher was getting so much noise out of a battered Vox AC15 standing on a chair on the stage. We didn't notice until much later it had one of the PA mikes strapped to its front and hanging over the speaker. (This was back in the days before bands started to re-route everything through a mixer box and back out of the PA system - we just used the ancient and time-honoured technique of all trying to play louder than each other - up to 11.) "It's just a good Vox," lied Rory.
Other encounters? There was one night with Love Sculpture in a recording studio near Ross on Wye. They were in a different studio. Dave Edmunds dropped by and sat around for a while. I think he was trying to score.
In the end we all got to the end of our university courses and had to make a decision whether to carry on playing or 'go straight'. It turned out to be the latter. I often wonder how things would have gone if we went the other way. I'd probably be either dead or rich a long time ago.
Roofless Toothless said:
We also played with Fleedtwood Mac once, and to this day I have some nice photos of us on stage with their Orange amplifiers set up around ours. They were very quiet and humourless backstage, all in separate corners of the dressing room about as far away from each other as it was possible to get.
.
Would have been reasonably disappointed if it had been any other way! .
Great post - wasted time my arse
Roofless Toothless said:
I was at University (Swansea) during the late sixties and spent - OK, wasted - much of my time playing in a band, mostly on the student circuit and the clubs in the Valleys.
Our drummer just happened to be Entertainments Secretary at Bangor, and what do you know, we tended to get booked as support band for all sorts of up and coming acts. The best night was when we backed Joe Cocker & The Greaseband the same weekend as Little Help From My Friends hit No.1. We went front of stage (very uncool actually!) to watch them and they were stupefyingly good. After the show we stood around on stage while the roadies packed up and chatted with Joe for about half an hour. What a nice guy he was. That same night I saw their roadies unpack the van. As one of them opened the back door, a battered, uncased Fender Precision bass literally fell out the back. "Oh, this effing thing..." he said and propped it up against the wall. I went over and had a look at it, and the bridge pieces had all collapsed and the frets looked like they had been pulled out with a pair of pliers. An hour or two later I stood and watched Chris Stainton (who was not the keyboardist that time) get the most amazing sounds out of that same bass at the start of A Little Help!
Another good night there was with Pink Floyd. Their roadies turned up in the afternoon in a big Transit (we had a battered old Dormobile!) and got set up, and even played a few numbers as a sound check. They were probably better than us! When we went on for our set the Floyd hadn't even turned up and we were told to just keep playing until they arrived. We played just about everything we knew, some numbers twice, then got the nod from the wings to jigger off. As we filed off, they filed on, and as we passed I remember a comment of 'nice set lads' from one of them. Gratifying. We met them in the Union Bar at Swansea another time and asked them where Syd (Barrett) was. This was just after they stopped bothering to pick him up on the way to gigs. They told us the last time they saw him he was sitting on the floor of his flat with a light bulb in his mouth, waiting for it to light up.
We also played with Fleedtwood Mac once, and to this day I have some nice photos of us on stage with their Orange amplifiers set up around ours. They were very quiet and humourless backstage, all in separate corners of the dressing room about as far away from each other as it was possible to get.
At Swansea we were once booked with Adge Cutler and the Wurzels. What a night that was - I wish I could remember more of it! The first we saw of them was a brown corduroyed backside coming through the dressing room door, announcing the arrival of one half of a duo carrying a crate of brown ale.
Other memories of that period included Chris Farlowe (can't recall if this was when Albert Lee was with him), The Mindbenders (with Graham Gouldman) and The Tremeloes - now there's a band! The Taste were also another encounter. We couldn't understand how Rory Gallagher was getting so much noise out of a battered Vox AC15 standing on a chair on the stage. We didn't notice until much later it had one of the PA mikes strapped to its front and hanging over the speaker. (This was back in the days before bands started to re-route everything through a mixer box and back out of the PA system - we just used the ancient and time-honoured technique of all trying to play louder than each other - up to 11.) "It's just a good Vox," lied Rory.
Other encounters? There was one night with Love Sculpture in a recording studio near Ross on Wye. They were in a different studio. Dave Edmunds dropped by and sat around for a while. I think he was trying to score.
In the end we all got to the end of our university courses and had to make a decision whether to carry on playing or 'go straight'. It turned out to be the latter. I often wonder how things would have gone if we went the other way. I'd probably be either dead or rich a long time ago.
wow Our drummer just happened to be Entertainments Secretary at Bangor, and what do you know, we tended to get booked as support band for all sorts of up and coming acts. The best night was when we backed Joe Cocker & The Greaseband the same weekend as Little Help From My Friends hit No.1. We went front of stage (very uncool actually!) to watch them and they were stupefyingly good. After the show we stood around on stage while the roadies packed up and chatted with Joe for about half an hour. What a nice guy he was. That same night I saw their roadies unpack the van. As one of them opened the back door, a battered, uncased Fender Precision bass literally fell out the back. "Oh, this effing thing..." he said and propped it up against the wall. I went over and had a look at it, and the bridge pieces had all collapsed and the frets looked like they had been pulled out with a pair of pliers. An hour or two later I stood and watched Chris Stainton (who was not the keyboardist that time) get the most amazing sounds out of that same bass at the start of A Little Help!
Another good night there was with Pink Floyd. Their roadies turned up in the afternoon in a big Transit (we had a battered old Dormobile!) and got set up, and even played a few numbers as a sound check. They were probably better than us! When we went on for our set the Floyd hadn't even turned up and we were told to just keep playing until they arrived. We played just about everything we knew, some numbers twice, then got the nod from the wings to jigger off. As we filed off, they filed on, and as we passed I remember a comment of 'nice set lads' from one of them. Gratifying. We met them in the Union Bar at Swansea another time and asked them where Syd (Barrett) was. This was just after they stopped bothering to pick him up on the way to gigs. They told us the last time they saw him he was sitting on the floor of his flat with a light bulb in his mouth, waiting for it to light up.
We also played with Fleedtwood Mac once, and to this day I have some nice photos of us on stage with their Orange amplifiers set up around ours. They were very quiet and humourless backstage, all in separate corners of the dressing room about as far away from each other as it was possible to get.
At Swansea we were once booked with Adge Cutler and the Wurzels. What a night that was - I wish I could remember more of it! The first we saw of them was a brown corduroyed backside coming through the dressing room door, announcing the arrival of one half of a duo carrying a crate of brown ale.
Other memories of that period included Chris Farlowe (can't recall if this was when Albert Lee was with him), The Mindbenders (with Graham Gouldman) and The Tremeloes - now there's a band! The Taste were also another encounter. We couldn't understand how Rory Gallagher was getting so much noise out of a battered Vox AC15 standing on a chair on the stage. We didn't notice until much later it had one of the PA mikes strapped to its front and hanging over the speaker. (This was back in the days before bands started to re-route everything through a mixer box and back out of the PA system - we just used the ancient and time-honoured technique of all trying to play louder than each other - up to 11.) "It's just a good Vox," lied Rory.
Other encounters? There was one night with Love Sculpture in a recording studio near Ross on Wye. They were in a different studio. Dave Edmunds dropped by and sat around for a while. I think he was trying to score.
In the end we all got to the end of our university courses and had to make a decision whether to carry on playing or 'go straight'. It turned out to be the latter. I often wonder how things would have gone if we went the other way. I'd probably be either dead or rich a long time ago.
Roofless Toothless said:
At Swansea we were once booked with Adge Cutler and the Wurzels. What a night that was - I wish I could remember more of it! The first we saw of them was a brown corduroyed backside coming through the dressing room door, announcing the arrival of one half of a duo carrying a crate of brown ale.
When I was at college in Bristol in the eighties I was in a band very semi-pro. We rented an old barn out near Easton in Gordano to rehearse in.There was a stage area with a huge backdrop as apparently they had barn dances there sometimes. The band listed on the backdrop was The Wurzels.
They were considerably better than us...
Of course, poor old Adge himself was long gone by then. He hit a tractor (ironically not a combine harvester) in his MGB on a roundabout in Chepstow in 1974. Their Swansea gig was memorable. They got all the students country dancing and generally acting as if music was supposed to be enjoyable. Remember this was at the time when all we did was argue about whether Eric Clapton or Alvin Lee could fit more notes into a nanosecond, try to look cool and say 'man' a lot. At the end of their set they wobbled off the stage and the euphonium player (no bass) unscrewed the big metal bell on top of all the tubing, presumably to make his exit easier. On leaving the stage he encountered the rest of the band coming back on for an encore. There wasn't time to put it all together again so he did the last number with just a big metal pipe sticking up over his shoulder.
I do have more stories about my band from that time that might amuse some of you, but can't remember much more to do with celebrities - so it would be pretty off-topic, and that's not respectful to the original poster. I could tell you if you want about the time we nearly killed the lead guitarist of a rival group at a 'battle of the bands' up in the Valleys, and perhaps add a few pictures for those who might be thinking about custard.
I do have more stories about my band from that time that might amuse some of you, but can't remember much more to do with celebrities - so it would be pretty off-topic, and that's not respectful to the original poster. I could tell you if you want about the time we nearly killed the lead guitarist of a rival group at a 'battle of the bands' up in the Valleys, and perhaps add a few pictures for those who might be thinking about custard.
Roofless Toothless said:
I do have more stories about my band from that time that might amuse some of you, but can't remember much more to do with celebrities - so it would be pretty off-topic, and that's not respectful to the original poster. I could tell you if you want about the time we nearly killed the lead guitarist of a rival group at a 'battle of the bands' up in the Valleys, and perhaps add a few pictures for those who might be thinking about custard.
Go for it. Roofless' Memoirs.Roofless Toothless said:
Of course, poor old Adge himself was long gone by then. He hit a tractor (ironically not a combine harvester) in his MGB on a roundabout in Chepstow in 1974. Their Swansea gig was memorable. They got all the students country dancing and generally acting as if music was supposed to be enjoyable. Remember this was at the time when all we did was argue about whether Eric Clapton or Alvin Lee could fit more notes into a nanosecond, try to look cool and say 'man' a lot. At the end of their set they wobbled off the stage and the euphonium player (no bass) unscrewed the big metal bell on top of all the tubing, presumably to make his exit easier. On leaving the stage he encountered the rest of the band coming back on for an encore. There wasn't time to put it all together again so he did the last number with just a big metal pipe sticking up over his shoulder.
I do have more stories about my band from that time that might amuse some of you, but can't remember much more to do with celebrities - so it would be pretty off-topic, and that's not respectful to the original poster. I could tell you if you want about the time we nearly killed the lead guitarist of a rival group at a 'battle of the bands' up in the Valleys, and perhaps add a few pictures for those who might be thinking about custard.
Please do carry on. Excellent stuff. I do have more stories about my band from that time that might amuse some of you, but can't remember much more to do with celebrities - so it would be pretty off-topic, and that's not respectful to the original poster. I could tell you if you want about the time we nearly killed the lead guitarist of a rival group at a 'battle of the bands' up in the Valleys, and perhaps add a few pictures for those who might be thinking about custard.
Roofless Toothless said:
You made me do it - I just opened a thread in the Music Forum with a long post. Hope you enjoy it.
Link...https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Roofless Toothless said:
Of course, poor old Adge himself was long gone by then. He hit a tractor (ironically not a combine harvester) in his MGB on a roundabout in Chepstow in 1974. Their Swansea gig was memorable. They got all the students country dancing and generally acting as if music was supposed to be enjoyable. Remember this was at the time when all we did was argue about whether Eric Clapton or Alvin Lee could fit more notes into a nanosecond, try to look cool and say 'man' a lot. At the end of their set they wobbled off the stage and the euphonium player (no bass) unscrewed the big metal bell on top of all the tubing, presumably to make his exit easier. On leaving the stage he encountered the rest of the band coming back on for an encore. There wasn't time to put it all together again so he did the last number with just a big metal pipe sticking up over his shoulder.
I do have more stories about my band from that time that might amuse some of you, but can't remember much more to do with celebrities - so it would be pretty off-topic, and that's not respectful to the original poster. I could tell you if you want about the time we nearly killed the lead guitarist of a rival group at a 'battle of the bands' up in the Valleys, and perhaps add a few pictures for those who might be thinking about custard.
I used to work with someone whose boyfriend was friends with Adge's family. Unfortunately her boyfriend was a tI do have more stories about my band from that time that might amuse some of you, but can't remember much more to do with celebrities - so it would be pretty off-topic, and that's not respectful to the original poster. I could tell you if you want about the time we nearly killed the lead guitarist of a rival group at a 'battle of the bands' up in the Valleys, and perhaps add a few pictures for those who might be thinking about custard.
t of the highest order so no good reason to ever meet them.I did see the current lineup of the wurzels a few years ago and they were brilliant. It was in a barn in a village in Gloucestershire. The drummer was 90 at the time and I have never seen someone that old with so much energy.
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff