From Aces to Angels

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  Back in Ireland it took us a while to come down and settle back into the old routine. The Irish scene wasn't quite as exciting as the German one but still it was good to be back home. It felt as if we'd been away for years. Each gig we did now was preceded by a blurb in the local press informing the dancing public of how well we went down in Germany. According to the papers we'd played in places we'd never heard of with little mention of the places that we had. Our first local gig was in the Strand Ballroom, Portstewart on 27th. December.
  On New Year's Eve we played at the Mayor's Charity Fund Dance which was held in the Guildhall. The admission fee on that occasion was the princely sum of 7/6 (about 37 and a half pence in today's money). It was a very prestigious event with lots of food and drink, and a generous helping of pomp and circumstance. It was also the occasion when some lucky girl would be chosen 'Miss 1966.'
  This particular band had been together now for almost a year, but then, for a variety of reasons, by early '66, Billy, Rocky and Noel had left (not all at the one time, but near enough). Their places were taken by Patsy Campbell (brother of Jimmy) on trumpet and Nigel Doherty on bass. We didn't replace Rocky, so now the band was down from eight members to seven. Without meaning any disrespect to Patsy and Nigel, I couldn't help feeling a bit depressed with these further changes in personnel for I thought that at last the Jokers had got it together.
  In the spring of that year Ken Gallaher embarked on a new enterprise. He aquired an old building in the Waterside and turned it into the 'Go-Go Club.' So as well as playing from eight until ten in the Casbah, Colm and myself, augmented by Tommy on drums, now played in the Go-Go from eleven 'til one in the morning (or even later) any night we were off. I will say a bit more about the Go-Go later.
  Around the same time, my father, who had been teaching me the finer points of driving, allowed me to take my driving test in his little Mini. I was cock-a-hoop when I passed it first time. I still recall the day clearly, for it pissed down rain and my right arm was soaking from giving hand signals. I remember also that I anticipated the examiner's slap on the dashboard and he almost went through the windscreen when I performed my emergency stop.
  This was one of Colm and I's most busy periods, for as well as doing our thing in the Casbah and the Go-Go any night we weren't out with the Jokers, we also did the odd gig in the 'Irish Kitchen' in the old Melville Hotel (now long gone). In addition to that, we also played the 'Foyle Club,' part of the Naval complex on the Strand Road which is now Fort George. In this latter gig we usually played on a Sunday morning and by way of a fee the sailors passed round the hat. They also supplied us with a few cartons of navy issue 'Senior Service' and some alcoholic liquor if you wanted it. We didn't do too badly out of it, but I felt pity for poor Colm who was usually suffering from a hangover from the previous night.
  During this period a few more members of my family had caught the music bug. A younger brother, Jackie, under my tutelage had taken up guitar about a year previously, and was doing well. My sister Elizabeth was also trying her hand at strumming and doing a bit of singing. Another brother, Liam, decided to try his hand at playing bass and even sat in with Colm and me up in Ken's. Meanwhile a third brother, Danny, was taking drum lessons from another well known Derry musician, Ray Gallaher, who'd had a couple of bands of his own. He owned a little drum kit which actually wasn't more than a toy.
  All this musical talent came together one day whenever Liz decided to enter a talent contest. It was held in the minor hall of the Guildhall and all four of us offered to accompany her. The songs she decided to sing were 'The Hucklebuck' and 'Save the last Dance for me,' two easy enough songs to play. Well it went very well and we got through that heat into the final a short time later. Sadly the final was a different story.
  Liz wanted to sing The Hucklebuck again, but me, being very experienced and all, persuaded her to sing a different tune, an Elvis Presley song called 'A Fool such as I,' which I thought she sang well. She wasn't entirely happy about it but went along with my idea. To be honest, it sounded great at the rehearsals, but not so at the contest. To cut a long story short she forgot all the words except the first verse, and as a result couldn't get into the chorus. I noticed Liam, who'd never been on a stage in his life and whose ear hadn't developed to an advanced stage, beginning to panic as we went round in musical circles. Danny, who was also new to show business, was throwing me anxious looks as well.                                                                                                                                                                                          I don't know how we did it but we managed to get through the number, albeit not without losing a     little sweat. Needless to say we didn't win, and to rub salt in the wound, the late James Mc Cafferty, who was one of the judges in both the heats and the final, informed us that we would probably have won if we'd done The Hucklebuck again. Well that was Liz's first public appearance, and almost her last.
  In early summer, about a week before we were due to go on one of our English sorties, Nigel decided to leave. It was too short notice to find a replacement which left us in a bit of a hole. All the bands were playing and there wasn't too many spare bass players about. Liam's name was mentioned but by this stage he had abandoned any ambitions to be a bass player and was now working in a factory making record players. Then somebody asked if Jackie could play bass. Well as I mentioned earlier, I'd been giving Jackie guitar lessons on and off for about a year but he'd never had a bass in his hand. Then I had an idea. Jackie had a fairly good ear and I wondered if I could give him a few quick lessons.
  I was no expert on bass either but I thought I could teach him enough to enable him to bluff his way. Besides the time element, there was just one other problem, assuming he agreed of course, and that was the little matter of getting a bass guitar and an amp. Well Jackie did agree and we were able to purchase both bits of equipment (albeit well past their sell by date) from that well known Derry fiddler, Gerry O' Neill.
  After strumming an accoustic for a year, he found it a bit different trying to play bass, but by the end of an intensive week of practising, ready or not, he was on the boat to England with us. My family by this stage had moved from Springtown Camp up to Rosemount, and I myself, because things were beginning to get a bit cramped in Wellington Street, had applied to be rehoused in the new Rossville Flats. I was informed that there was a long queue and even if I was allocated one it could take months.
  Jackie's first trip across the water was an eventful one. We did the rounds in England and then headed up to Scotland for a while. On our first gig in Liverpool, the amp that Jackie had bought from Gerry O'Neill began to fart and splutter and in spite of numerous attempts by Colm and myself to fix it, that's the way it acted up for the rest of the tour. Unfortunately, as well as being highly irritating for the rest of the band, it caused a bit of friction between Jackie and Colm.
  After an unsatisfactory ten days in England we started out on the long road to Scotland. On our first night there we were playing in Glasgow and Jackie went out to get cigarettes or something. He was gone for a long time and as it was coming near the time to start playing with still no sign of him, we began to get a bit worried. Glasgow in the sixties was not the safest place to be wandering about alone.
  Then we got a phone call. It was Jackie in a panic informing us that he'd been arrested and was being held by the police in one of their 'Tardis' type police boxes. He gave us the location, which was more or less just round the corner, so we headed out to see what was the problem.
  When we arrived, the police were quite aggressive and told us that he was being held on suspicion of stabbing somebody and was about to be taken into custody. It was obviously a case of mistaken identity and Jackie unfortunately answered to the description of the suspect. We argued and remonstrated with the police trying to convince them that we were a band and had just arrived in Glasgow, but they were having none of it. 
  Eventually we persuaded them to ring Tommy Toal, the manager of 'The Macushla' ballroom to confirm that we were telling the truth, and if they wanted us again that's where we'd be. They relented and phoned Tommy who was able to convince them that we were who we said we were. Reluctantly they let Jackie out of the 'Tardis' and we took him back to the hall a bit the worse for wear. As far as Jackie was concerned it certainly was a baptism by fire.
  While in Scotland we usually based ourselves in Glasgow and stayed in digs owned by a Mrs. Shaw. One night before we went on a gig to Coatbridge out on the west coast, Jimmy took ill. It was subsequently diagnosed as shingles, a quite painful but not, apparently, terminal ailment.
  The priest, who was running the dance, almost had a canary when we arrived at the dance with six members instead of seven. 'I'm not paying for seven when there's only six on stage!' He declared, 'Where's Johnny Starr?' he wanted to know.
  We tried to explain to him that we were seven, but Johnny Starr had taken ill. It was obvious that he didn't believe us and even went to the trouble of phoning Mrs. Shaw to find out if we were lying. Unfortunately at that moment in time Jimmy and Mrs. Shaw were sitting having a drink and Mrs. Shaw said so to the priest. The irate good father was not convinced that we weren't lying so he still reduced our fee.
  At the end of the tour (which turned out to be our second last) enwh it came to paying out the wages, Colm and Jimmy had a difference of opinion. Colm reckoned that  Jimmy wasn't as sick as he was letting on and was the cause of us having our fee reduced, therefore he wasn't entitled to wages for that night. Jimmy of course begged to differ claiming that he was genuinely ill and it wasn't his fault if we were docked. The upshot of all this was that relations between Jimmy and Colm became a bit strained and Jimmy even got a lift back home with a different band.
  Whenever we arrived back in Ireland, for various reasons which I'd rather not go into, there was a bit of a three cornered to-do involving the musicians union, the Campbell brothers and Colm. The outcome of this was that both Jimmy and Patsy no longer remained members of the band. When Jimmy went he took a fair chunk of the programme with him. It also meant that we were once again just 'The Jokers,' although for publicity reasons we adopted the title of 'The New Jokers.'
  Jimmy's place was eventually taken by a rhythm guitarist/vocalist called Joe Mc Cool, but I'm afraid Joe's repertoire in the modern pop field was limited and completely different from Johnny Starr's. To be fair to him, like Jackie, he didn't have much chance to rehearse. Patsy's place was filled by Noel Lindsay, another excellent trumpeter, but again, because of the timele ement, was forced just to busk his way through the programme.
  The only long term members left were the three Mc Menamin brothers and myself. Musically the band was once again in disarray and once more we had to go through the frustating task of building it up again. Like our penultimate tour, our final trip to England in either June or July of that year wasn't exactly without incident either.
  One night in London we had a night off so we all went out with a few friends to a pub. At the end of the night Colm took the van to run his girlfriend home, and we went back to the digs. Next thing we heard was that he had come off second best in an altercation with a telegraph pole and was now a patient in the local hospital. The van, we subsequently learned, was a complete write off and Colm had been lucky not to be more seriously injured than he was.  
  Well that was all we needed, for now we had to panic to find transport to collect the gear and take us to the following night's gig which, unfortunately, was a hundred miles up the M.1. in Birmingham. We ended up being driven there in the back of a big furniture van owned by a friend of the McMenamin brothers. While we appreciated the fact that the man had pulled us out of a hole, it was nonetheless a most uncomfortable ride.
  With Jimmy Campbell's departure our programme was depleted enough, but now with Colm out of commission it was even worse. I don't know how we got through that night but somehow we managed it. We had to pull out all the stops and play some shit. Luckily enough, the Irish Centre in Birmingham was a venue where country an 'come-all yees' went down well, so Frankie was in his element.
  If my old memory serves me well, Frankie's big numbers in those days were 'Walk Tall' by Val Doonican and a Jim Reeves number, 'Railroad Bum' (which we affectionately called 'Railroad Arse'). Our next gig, which was back in London's Camden town, was a different story and I certainly wasn't looking forward to it.
  It was every bit as bad as I thought it was going to be. Unlike Birmingham, it was a pop audience and I, and the whole band of course, were really under pressure. Colm and myself between us sung about fifty per cent of the programme and we'd managed to salvage a couple of Jimmy's numbers. With Colm incapacitated and Frankie and Joe just singing a few country and out of date pop songs, the gig was becoming a bit of a nightmare.
  We had been playing for about an hour when we became aware of a commotion at the back of the stage. We all turned around and couldn't believe our eyes. There was the boul Colm clambering through the little door onto the stage plastered (medically speaking) and bandaged. Even though he was half dead, boy was I glad to see him. To give him his dues, although in a fair bit of pain, he strapped on his guitar and did his bit for the rest of the night. It transpired that against the doctor's advice he signed himself out of hospital and got a taxi to the gig.
  Over the next few days Tommy and Colm bought another van. It was a weird looking second hand machine, smaller than the Commer and originally used as an ambulance. It was dark blue in colour and reminded me more of a Black Maria minus the bars on the windows. So off we went up the road to Scotland once again, and it wasn't long before problems started manifesting themselves.
  The first thing we noticed when we removed the engine cover was that the manifold was red hot. I was no mechanic but that didn't look normal to me. Then the brakes started seizing up and every now and again we had to stop and free them. By the time we got to Stranraer we were all nervous wrecks, but our troubles still weren't over, not by a long chalk.
  When it came to the time to drive the van onto the boat it just wouldn't start (the van that is, not the boat). When we turned the starter there wasn't a mute out of it. The battery was completely dead. We pushed it up and down the car park but without success. It made no attempt to start whatsoever. Eventually we had to push it on to the ship, a situation that the dockers weren't happy with, but we insisted, pleading that we needed to get home to fulfil some engagements.
  In the port at Larne it was the same story. We got a tractor to tow us off. We also made a few more attempts to start it, but it was pointless. Even being dragged around the car park by a tractor didn't make one bit off difference. There wasn't a peep out of it.
  Then the final torture. As a consequence of all the attempts at jump starting, we broke a half shaft. Well that was that. This van was definitely going nowhere now. Completely shattered we got out our cases, locked it up and we all boarded the train for home. There was a fair bit of vitriol and cursing directed at the man who sold us this disaster on wheels. Lucky for him he was hundreds of miles away in London.
  The next day Colm, Tommy and a mechanic complete with new battery and half shaft, headed off to Larne and fixed the van where it sat in the car park. There's a humorous little footnote to this story. Colm got a bill for œ40 from the G.P.O. to cover the cost of replacing the felled telegraph pole. In this instance I think he paid it.
  Shortly after we arrived back in Ireland Jackie left the band under less than friendly circumstances. To be precise, the tension which began in England between him and Colm finally came to a head and he skedaddled one morning as we were heading off to a gig. We had to panic and find another bass player which we eventually did. Joe and Noel soon departed as well once more leaving the workforce a bit sparse. After that we used several musicians including Christy Mellon, a bass player, plus a few others whose names I can't now recall.
  Colm and myself, influenced by the trends in London, were now sporting 'Mexican' type moustaches. We modestly claim to be the first of our generation in Derry to grow such facial appendages. We took some stick for it up in the Casbah and elsewhere. We were called 'Pedro,' 'Gonzales' and a host of other names. Colm also adorned himself in a cape which was the height of fashion in Carnaby Street but not as yet, in Derry. It earned him the nickname of 'Batman' among a few others and I admired his nerve for wearing it.
  During this period Nelson's Pillar in Dublin was blown up. Now the Yanks really had something to hit the Brits with, for they repeatedly requested the song 'Up went Nelson.' In fairness to the British sailors, they took it all igon od heart and frankly didn't seem to give a damn about Nelson. They even joined in the chorus sometimes.
  By summer the Jokers' ship was beginning to seriously take in water and I had a suspicion that we weren't too far off sinking. Even so, a young enthusiastic saxophonist/vocalist called Seamus Quigley (nephew of the famous Johnny Quigley) came on board. According to the miles of microfilm of the local papers I've viewed, the Jokers last gig, on the local front, was Sunday 25th June 1966 in the Borderland ballroom. I even remember the last song I personally sung. It was 'Got to get you into my Life,' by Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, which was released in August.
  By now the West End Hall had closed down and the bakery subsequently relocated to new premises in the ground floor of Rossville Flats. We now had to practice in the front room of the Mc Menamins' house in Bishop Street.
  On the 1st September my wife presented me with my third child, a girl, which sort of preoccupied me for a while. At this juncture, in spite of all my research, once more the sequence of events becomes a bit vague, but I've pieced it together as well as I can.
  The Jokers carried on, fulfilling outstanding dates (including at least one short trip to Scotland) until about the beginning of November. I remember vividly the topic of conversation at that time was the horrible disaster, one of the worst in Britain, that befell the small village of Aberfan in South Wales. It happened on the 21st of October when a mountain of slag collapsed on a school killing twenty eight adults and one hundred and sixteen children.
  As far as I can recall, the very last number the band rehearsed was 'Reach out I'll be There' by the Four Tops, and I don't even think we finished it. But trying to continue was pointless. The gigs were thin on the ground, and there was dissatisfaction in the band. There now was a definite feeling that it was only a matter of time and we were just going through the motions.
  The final nail in the coffin came whenever Tommy received a hefty bill from the government for unpaid National Insurance contributions which had been pending for some time and finally ended up in a court case. Deciding to cut his losses, he sold the van and the gear to Ken Gallaher and reluctantly called it a day. Ken in turn sold the old wagon and it lived out the rest of its days as an ice cream van. He installed the P.A. in the Go-Go.
  In these circumstances Frankie came off the worst for at least Colm, Tommy and myself, little and all as it was, had the Casbah and the Go-Go to fall back on. We might even get a few bob from the 'bru. All Frankie had was the depressing prospect of only the dole. It goes without saying that everybody was very sad to see the demise of Johnny and the Jokers.
  Severing your connection with a band, especially one like the Jokers whom I'd been with for almost three and a half years, could be quite traumatic. In this instance the knowledge that I was now in a position to pursue my objective of forming a blues band sort of helped to cushion the blow.
  I'll finish off this section on a lighter note with a little tale about the Go-Go Club. It seems funny now but at the time it had the potential to be more serious.
  It happened one night when we actually had the gear set up on the floor at the back of the club because they were fixing the stage or something. On this occasion Colm Tommy, myself and a very outgoing saxophonist/lead vocalist called Jackie Boyd were playing.
  One of our American chums was pestering us all night to let him come up and sing and play guitar. Eventually in order to get a bit of peace, we relented and up he comes. He barrowed Colm's guitar and Colm left the stage. Just as he was about to start crooning the rest of us decided it was time to take a break also. Well he didn't like that very much for he assumed that we were going to supply him with some accompaniment.
  He then refused to start singing and became very abusive calling us a few choice American names like 'mother f.....s.' Well there was a lot of gargle involved and Colm rather annoyed went back to retrieve his guitar. As he tried to pull it off him next thing we knew both of them were rolling on the floor with the guitar strung round the yank's neck. I jumped up and tried to pull them apart and at the same time tried to save the old guitar.  Jackie, as far as I remember, being a bit of a pacifist, kept a low profile. Then Tommy entered the fray and all hell broke loose.
  All his friends were now on their feet and about to get stuck in as well when just in the nick of time the doormen arrived and got it sorted out before any real damage was done.
  It was the only time that I recall when the band actually got involved in any trouble. Well relations between us were a bit strained for a while after that but by the end of the night I think we were all great buddies once again.

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