Buzzcocks - The Complete History. Tony McGartland
who likes the band and offers them space on his father’s farm. During the summer, they rehearse in a cowshed at Naylor’s Farm in Astley, near Leigh.
Despite the play being over, they are determined to stay together. They call themselves Kogg and play several gigs, including an NSPCC benefit in a garden in Risley, an open-air concert in Bolton and a gig at the village hall in Culcheth, before breaking up.
Nov 28th
At the age of thirteen, Steve Garvey buys his first record, ‘Jeepster’ by T. Rex, which this week rises to No. 2 in the charts. Although he’s initially a Beatles fan, by the early seventies the Fab Four have been replaced as his heroes by Marc Bolan. With schoolfriend Geoff Foster, a Marc Bolan lookalike, Garvey starts playing guitar and trying to get a band together. Garvey’s best friends Martin Bramah and Tony Friel join the fledgeling outfit, but eventually leave to form a new band called the Outsiders, who later become the Fall.
1972
Feb 9th
McNeish buys a Starway electric guitar, which he had seen in the shop window of Magnall’s Music store in his hometown, complete with a cardboard case, for £18. Sometime later, he buys his first amplifier.
Meanwhile, in his fifth year at Leigh Boys’ Grammar School, Dave Peters and his brother Paddy are trying to form a band. Dave persuades his best friend Garth Davies to become the bass player, but he isn’t keen. Garth recalls, ‘I protested that I knew nothing about the bass, but his answer was that it had two strings less than a guitar.’
Garth pesters his parents and finally they buy him a second-hand Framus bass guitar on the ‘Pru’ (the Prudential finance company allowed you to spread the cost over weekly payments).
‘That’s when I discovered that playing bass was a whole different kettle of fish from classical guitar. Anyway, I learned a few basic runs and we formed a band. Dave on lead guitar/vocals, Paddy on rhythm guitar/vocals, me on bass/vocals and an old primary-schoolmate of mine called Neil Taylor played drums. We called ourselves Solid Gold.’
They play several gigs doing rock’n’roll, several Beatles songs and one or two original songs by Dave and Paddy at local workingmen’s clubs, at a church fête in the village of Culcheth and at a local school and youth club.
Garth’s time with Solid Gold is short: ‘Dave and Paddy fired me from the band because I didn’t sing loud enough, but really they had a good mate who they wanted in the band! I never bore a grudge, though, and am still good friends with Dave and Paddy to this day.’
May 16th
Peter McNeish is in the audience at Belle Vue, Manchester to see T. Rex, and is delighted to notice Marc Bolan wearing a guitar strap similar to his own.
Sep 3rd
Howard Trafford goes to Bolton Institute of Technology to study psychology and, later, the humanities.
Sep 11th
At the age of seventeen, Diggle starts work at Mountfords Iron Foundry in Bradford, training as a forge man. He is interested only in music, but needs the money in order to buy a decent guitar. Part of his training at the foundry requires him to attend day release, which, fortunately, means he can slip home at lunchtime to play his guitar.
Being a mod, and a fan of the Who, he is the proud owner of three scooters. After four or five months in the foundry he leaves and enrols at Oldham Technical College, where he studies English and sociology at O level.
1973
Jan 12th
In the aftermath of Bramah and Friel’s departure, Garvey settles for a three-piece band. He moves to bass and vocals, leaving Geoff Foster on guitar with Paul Adams on drums. Calling themselves Jawbone Hill, they play their first gig at a workingmen’s club in their hometown of Prestwich, Manchester. They play three numbers, comprising the two Cream covers ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ and ‘White Room’, and a third composition of their own.
Feb 26th
McNeish befriends a man at a youth hostel, where they sit around and make their own entertainment, usually playing guitar. McNeish writes a song about the man’s girlfriend, whom he had never met, called ‘Maxine’.
McNeish attends a lunchtime computer course at school. Most of the class drop out but Peter keeps going back.
Mar 17th
Diggle buys himself an Antoria Les Paul copy guitar and starts writing his own songs. He connects two cassette recorders together, enabling him to overdub a second guitar track. One of the songs he writes and records is called ‘I Might Need You’.
Apr 16th
As a member of the sixth-form drama group, McNeish is in the cast of a school play called The Bull Leapers, based on the ancient Greek legend of Minos, Theseus and Ariadne. The play runs for a week with McNeish acting the part of a guard.
McNeish writes ‘I Just Can’t Live’, which he describes as a ‘tongue-in-cheek love song’. Garth describes it as ‘a spoof country-type song, sung with a Tennessee accent. I can’t remember if we ever played that live.’
Apr 23rd
Garth Davies is fast becoming a competent bass player and, as word gets around the Leigh area, several keen musicians are talking about him.
‘Pete McNeish was in the year above me at Leigh Grammar, and so, as is I think usual, I had no contact with him in my first years at the school. He was quite well known by about everyone in his fifth year, as he’d been playing guitar in a school group, Kogg.’
Both teenagers had a small part in the annual school play, and Garth also volunteered to help during the play’s run. He was trying to get a band together at the time and act as makeup artist to the cast (which was mostly garish, Ziggy Stardust and glam-rock-type facial patterns).
‘My fellow makeup artist happened to be Pete, who was in the upper sixth, and we got to know each other during the play’s run. I was playing with a short-lived band backing a singer who sounded like Elvis, and was also starting out with another band at the time. Finding out that Pete was between bands, I invited him to one of our rehearsals at a youth club in Tyldesley over the Easter holidays, with a view to him possibly joining us.’
Pete didn’t turn up, but, when they returned to school after the holidays, he presented Garth with an alternative proposition.
“How do you fancy forming a band with me?” Pete asked. ’At this point neither of us had heard the other play! So I got a lift from my brother David one weekday evening with my Framus bass guitar and drove over to Leigh. Pete played a twelve-string acoustic with a pickup fitted and we played some Bowie and Velvet Underground songs in Pete’s bedroom, and from that came the band called White Light, after the Velvets’ song “White Light/White Heat”.’
Garth remembers the band rehearsing for their debut gig: ‘We practised initially in Pete’s bedroom, then in the front room of Steve Christie’s house in Mersey Street, Leigh. Steve was our first drummer.
‘Joe Naylor was a contemporary of Pete’s at Leigh Grammar School and he talked his parents into letting us use the first floor of an unused outbuilding as a practice room. It was hard work lugging the amps up the stairs! We practised there in the summer of 1973. Jets of Air only ever played about ten gigs, but we made a good impression around Leigh and Bolton.’
May 26th
White Light play their debut gig at All Saints’ Church