Guitar Gods in Beds. (Bedfordshire: A Heavenly County). Mike Buchanan

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СКАЧАТЬ Fletcher’s on Chiltern Radio in Dunstable, composing blues songs. The lyrics were along the following lines, to the tune of Alice’s Restaurant:

      You can get anything you want,

      In Fletcher’s Food and Wine Bar,

      In Queen Street, Rushden.

      You know where I mean.

      There’s even room to park your car.

      There’s wine and beer to put you in the mood.

      Just try our delicious home-made food.

      You can get anything you want,

      In Fletcher’s Food and Wine Bar,

      In Queen Street, Rushden.

      And to the tune of Nobody Knows You, When You’re Down and Out, I sang another advert:

      If you need a place to go,

      Just in case you might not know,

      Queen Street, Rushden’s where we are,

      Fletcher’s Food and Wine Bar . . .

      The funny thing was, it could be embarrassing. I’d walk down the road on a Sunday morning and people were washing their cars with the radios blaring out Chiltern Radio. When I did gigs, people would say, ‘You know, you sound just like that bloke who does the adverts on Chiltern Radio.’

      Nick and I got picked up in the mid-80s by a barn dance band, Bricks and Brussels. I did six years in it, and Nick’s still in it. Pete’s played in it. They just pick up people who can play all right. Nick and I would also play Irish clubs in Luton, all sorts of terrible fuckin’ places. But we also played in some good places, like the Civic Theatre in Bedford. I have a great recording of us playing there. The response was phenomenal.

      Nick and I – and sometimes Pete – played at The Angel in Elstow Road, Bedford. It’s no longer there. That was fantastic – it was like being a bloody pop star. Len Whale, the landlord – now deceased – invited Nick and I to play. So we went along to play one night, and it was shit useless. It didn’t work. Nick didn’t want to play again. He was coming to the end of his tether, he didn’t like playing in pubs. He didn’t really drink, unlike me. Then Len suggested that my brother Pete play with me. I said that Pete was rarely around, because of commitments, but Len was persistent. At first Pete and I just played again as a duo, then John Murray (on bass) and Jim Piggott (on drums) asked to join us, and we agreed, calling the band The Pump House Boys. We were incredibly successful. I couldn’t believe the response. We also played The Flowerpot, and I’ve got recordings from there.

      Eventually John and Jim faded away a bit. Pete’s mate Teryl Bryant, who played in Pete Murphy’s band, was a knockout drummer, absolutely brilliant. So we performed as a three-piece band. I played bass by using an octaver, and put the acoustic guitar through it.

      It worked, but it was loud, hard work. It was ridiculous really. It got more and more aggressive. Pete would do half-hour-long solos while I kept opening my gob, waiting to come in on the next verse. Fuckin’ madness, but most of the audience loved it because they were out of their heads.

      It was a period I didn’t like, and I always had tinnitus at the end of a gig. I used to put shotgun earplugs into my ears, stuff like that. I’ve played in a number of rock bands over the years, but I can’t stand the row, the sheer racket. I like good music, but not noise.

      This all came to an end in the early 1990s when I broke my left wrist in a pushbike accident in Chicksands Wood, near Clophill. It was smashed to smithereens, and I didn’t think I’d ever play the guitar again. So Pete took over the band, still calling it The Bonas Brothers, because our brother Brian played drums. But it wasn’t the same, partly because Pete isn’t an organiser. He couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. But his girlfriend – Sara Turner, who lived with him at that time – was good at organising. You know Sara, the one who plays the tea chest bass, the one you fancy like crazy. I remember you told me recently that you thought she was ‘sex on legs’.

      Pete’s current girlfriend, Carole Sproule, was then playing bass guitar in the band. But Pete then started dating Carole, which caused the break-up of the band, and obviously the end of his relationship with Sara.

      Sid Worth is worth a mention. A lot of local people remember him. He was a dreamer, a bit idealistic and trusting, totally uncommercial, and in the end he paid a high price.

      I knew Sid for a long time, starting when he was working for the Mr Music shop when it was down at St Mary’s, the other side of the bridge. Before that, it was run by ‘Black Cloud’ Martin Fallon, a good guitarist but rather a glum bloke, hence his nickname. Sid had been one of Joe Brown’s sound men. They closed down the St Mary’s branch, it wasn’t making money. I didn’t know why, at the time, but then they set up another branch of Mr Music in Bromham Road. Sid worked there too. He lent things out free to customers and sometimes didn’t get them back. The perplexed owner of the shop had faith in Sid, but it didn’t make any money, so it closed in the end.

      In 1982 Sid started working at HMV in Silver Street, Bedford. They had a pilot scheme, selling musical instruments alongside the records and so on. I then got a Saturday job with Sid, which lasted for years. I suddenly realised why the businesses he’d worked for before had got to their knees. Sid operated in complete chaos. You’d look under the counter and things which he’d promised people were stuffed under there.

      Eventually HMV closed that operation, so already Sid had been responsible for the closure of three or four places. Sid and Bruce Murray decided to set up a shop on their own, and asked me to join as a partner. Well, my aunt had previously offered me ten grand if I wanted to go into a small business venture, so I asked her for it, but she refused. She felt the business wouldn’t work. So I had to apologise to Sid and explain I couldn’t get the money. But Sid and Bruce asked me to join them anyway. Sid remortgaged his house to get the money.

      And so Union Street Music was born. Now I knew a local guy, Mick Newman, who did any electrical work I needed in connection with amps, speakers, and so on. So when I learned that Union Street Music were looking for someone to do electrical work, I recommended Mick to Sid and Bruce. He turned up, was asked if he’d come about the job, and when he said he had, he was told, ‘Congratulations, you’ve landed it.’

      Mick and I then started working together. I hired out PAs and Mick did all the electrical work. We started making some real money on the PA hiring.

      In the meantime Sid was spending all the profits, giving stuff away and lending stuff and not getting it returned. By this time I’d done years of it and I’d had enough of the fuckin’ place, so I jacked it in. It was at this time I smashed my wrist in the pushbike accident. The lease ran out on the shop so they moved to what is now The Music Centre, on Tavistock Street in Bedford. Bruce still runs it, and Mick still runs the electrical workshop.

      Bruce got so sick of Sid in the end that he told Sid one of them had to buy out the other. So Sid asked Bruce to buy him out. Sid then decided to buy a shop in Harpur Street, thinking he’d be viable competition to The Music Centre. He teamed up with Gary Clarke, who put up some money for the property. Now Gary was a clever businessman. He saw the benefit of Sid’s musical connections, but also saw that Sid wasn’t a businessman. So they came to an arrangement whereby Gary owned the property and Sid owned the stock.

      Sid tried and tried, but the business failed. This time it was on his head. And so in 2002 Sid killed himself; he hung himself. СКАЧАТЬ