Whatever Happened To …

Look out. Old Dive's feeling a bit maudlin about a bunch of has-beens.

Some of you may remember me talking about "sanity bands" in last Thursday's "Racket" post.
A "sanity band" is what musicians call those occasional bands of old friends you play in simply for pleasure between touring, recording and pro-band stuff (work).

The nice thing about Sanity Bands is that the band playing down at your local or at the village fête may well contain somebody whose records are nestled in your own collection, or at least the session players off their albums and tours.

And it's not just the background nobodies like Old Dive; Eric Clapton plays at birthday parties in his local village hall and will occasionally turn up at a blues pub, masquerading as "Dick And The Firemen".
Lots of famous folk have Sanity Bands.
Most use them for pre-tour try-outs in small clubs; REM used to play as the splendidly named "Bingo Handjob" before too many people found out; and metalheads Iron Maiden would play The Dial pub in Norwich (I helped out their soundman a few times there) or Steve Harris's bar in Santa Barbara do Neixe in Portugal as The Nodding Donkeys.

Quite a few famous folk stood in with us at the Sunday Blues club over the years and occasionally I'd bump into them at their own anonymous "sanity nights". I got a call a few years back asking me to stand in as lead guitarist for a heavy metal gig in the midlands and found myself playing with half of Whitesnake.
We were grinning away and thoroughly enjoying playing old crap like Boston's "More Than A Feeling" and Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" and having a fine old time. And all for a local charity.
It is so nice to see musicians having fun outside of work.

But then we come to the odder side of the music industry; that sad, flaccid tide-wrack washed up on the beach marked "Whatever happened to …"

Odd things happen to once-famous people when they drop out of the charts.
Some go on to open supermarkets or spend a few years hosting bitter little local radio shows.
Some have the sense to realise it's all over and get a job and start over.
But some just put their heads down and keep on going, defying reality with gritted teeth, usually playing the holiday camp circuit to a roomful of grannies who remember their hits and a bunch of kids who think them so naff that they're almost cool again.
Often, original members have died or want to kill one another, which leaves the door open for a bit of work for the likes of me.

Old Dive has wound up playing some fucking odd gigs with the has-been set.
Sheesh!

Here's a very brief selection of the odder ones:

Remember Errol from Hot Chocolate? I played a bingo hall (!!!!!) with him once. And the cabaret act had us playing a fifteen minute jazzy vamp of "Come On Baby, Light My Fire" … said cabaret act being a … ahem … fire-eating stripper.

I remember a horrendous holiday camp gig with Freddie And The Dreamers. Gack! I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but Freddie Garrity was a deeply unpleasant little shit whose idea of stagecraft seemed to revolve around swearing at the band and throwing the odd bottle.
Fortunately none of them came my way.

Some people are a lot nicer.
I played an Old Year's Night with The Bachelors once, and had a bloody marvellous time.
Our soundcheck consisted of Con and Dec (both virtuoso musicians, though you'd never know it from their hits) and ourselves thrashing joyfully through Stairway to Heaven and a bunch of REM numbers. Then we sat in the green room playing billiards, swapping Les Pauls and jamming for a few hours and reminiscing about "the old days".
I told them the first time I'd seen them play live was at Great Yarmouth ABC Theatre in 1964, when I was a nipper. They were on the same bill as The Inkspots (remember "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes? … No, you're all too young) and and their faces lit up. They remembered that tour as one of the high spots. And they had some great stories to tell about other famous folk of the time, some of which might leak out another day but most will go with me to my grave to give me something to giggle about when I'm dead.
That 1964 gig was a seminal moment for me. I'd just got my "Beatles" guitar and this was the first time I'd been to a real concert.
Bands were huge back then in a way that they can never be these days.

Probably the weirdest "has-been" gig I've ever played has to be a charity gig in a school hall with Ruby Murray (ask your grans … she was known as "The Irish Nightingale", though you probably know her as the Cockney Rhyming Slang for "curry" … Fancy a ruby?).
Phil was in the band then, too. Shit that was a long time ago.

Ruby - God bless her - turned up pissed as a fart at ten in the morning with her outrageously camp personal manager and proceeded to drink steadily all day, getting through at least two more bottles of scotch.
She was a trouper, however. Once on stage, she clung on to the microphone stand to keep herself upright and sang beautifully.
Afterwards, signing autographs, you'd have never guessed how totally shitfaced she was. It was only after the audience had gone home that she reverted to a drunken, Irish shouty-woman.
She must have been at least a hundred and thirty years old at that gig but she took a fancy to little Steve, our drummer, and snogged him horribly at every opportunity.

It's been an odd life …