Tag: Me Myself I

(Previous: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5,  Chapter 6, Chapter 7)

Chapter 8:  The End Of Pussyfoot

I think that one of the definitions of a band is that it’s an association of people who are loosely attracted to each other by a love of music, bound together by affection and respect for each other’s musical ability, and driven by a common goal.

Now let’s parse those terms a little.

“Love of music” — What kind of music, exactly?  Classical musicians don’t form bands with rock musicians unless they’re called ELO, Jethro Tull or Genesis, etc.  Jazz musicians tend to group together with other jazz musicians and not blues- or rock musicians unless they’re called Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago.  Or if they do, they don’t last too long.  Country musicians… well, if you ain’t authentic, you ain’t country.  Rock musicians prefer to play with other rock musicians, but they’re all mostly scum, morons and psychopaths.  (Serious boffins like guitar virtuoso Brian May and his astrophysics doctorate are so far off the musical universe bell curve that they’re more scarce on the ground than unicorns.  The typical rock musician is going to be someone like Axl Rose, to be honest.)

“Affection and respect” — You can play with other folks whom you don’t like, but respect their capabilities;  and you can like the other guys despite the fact that they aren’t as good as you are.  But to find a group of guys whom you both like and respect — i.e. you’re more or less at the same level musically and you don’t want to punch them in the face every time you get together on stage or in the practice room — trust me, it’s a rare mixture indeed.

“Common goal” — Do you want to play together just as a hobby, jamming in someone’s basement or garage?  Or do you want to play one-night gigs, and if so, are you confined to a specific area by other life issues like jobs, family and so on?  Or do you want to play semi-professional, playing club gigs with lengthy contracts, but keeping your day jobs for the steady (or more remunerative) income?  Or do you want to become full-time musicians and dedicate your lives to playing music and looking for fame, success and wealth?

When you look at all the above — and there are probably a lot more combinations and permutations, by the way — it’s an absolute wonder that any band can stay together for any longer than a few weeks.  Even the Beatles went through a drummer (Pete Best) and a bass player (Stu Sutcliffe) before they settled on George, Paul, Ringo and John.  And even all that musical talent, artistic development, fame, success and wealth that the Beatles thing provided weren’t enough, at the end, to keep the band together for more than a decade.

In the case of Pussyfoot, I was the one driven to become a full-time professional musician, to play clubs all over the country, as was Kevin, I think (and future events would prove me right).  I think Mike would have come along with us, had the opportunity been enough to offset his day job’s income.  Knob might have gone along with the plan, provided that we only played in and around Johannesburg;  but he was driven by business success and not much else, so he wasn’t ever going to go along with that, long term.  Pro music in a small market like South Africa was never going to make anyone rich, unless the band was extremely talented and lucky enough to get the break they needed.

As it turned out, Donat didn’t want to do any of the above.  He wasn’t interested in turning pro (of any description) or playing gigs as often as we planned on doing, and I think with the routine of practice and time that the band was eating up, he had other plans.

So he quit.  But unlike with Cliff’s departure, there was genuine regret from the rest of us, because we’d all become friends at that point, and who wants to lose a friend?  (Just in the band sense, of course.  Sure, we were going to miss that lovely sound of his Gibson Les Paul and his excellent rhythm guitar, but that was just part of it.)  Now, of course, we had to rejigger the band a little, to replace his contribution.

We briefly discussed finding another rhythm guitarist, but ultimately decided against it because we’d earn more money individually, but not replacing Donat’s contribution just meant that Kevin and Mike had to play more comprehensively:  which they did, although our choice of new songs was necessarily more limited.  What helped was that Mike bought more equipment, notably a strings keyboard and later a massive synthesizer, which filled out our sound very well indeed.

And the gigs started increasing, too:  we were playing at country clubs, wedding receptions and towards the end of the year, even a couple of office parties, and our first New Year’s Eve gig.  The great thing about NYE was that there weren’t enough bands in town to fill the need:  everyone threw a bang-up New Year’s Eve party, and it seemed that every hotel was looking for a band for the occasion.  I don’t remember where we played, but it lasted until the wee hours, which meant a substantial overtime bonus.

Side note:  I forgot to mention that very early on I’d drawn up our contract so that we had some kind of legal protection in case the client stiffed us.  It took me an hour or two, and when I’d finished I showed it to my buddy Leosh, who was just wrapping up his law degree.  He read it, went pale and said:
“I wouldn’t sign this.”
“Why not?”
“Well, basically it says that you can play whatever the hell you want.  And the client has no say over anything you might not want to do.”
“Yeah, but it does guarantee that we’ll play 45 minutes of the hour, for four hours.”
“Yeah, and past four hours he has to pay through the nose.”
“That’s because if the gig ends at midnight we only get home well after 3, what with packing up and unpacking.  Truthfully, we don’t want to play after midnight;  so if they want us to play for longer, it’s got to be worth our while.”
“Uh huh.  Basically, if I read this right, when you play two extra hours, you double your take for the night.”
“That’s right.”

Most New Year’s Eve gigs, we played two and sometimes three extra hours.  And with Don quitting, that bonus was going to be split four ways instead of five.

And at long last, we were each starting to make money from the band — at least to the point where the income more than covered the monthly cost of the equipment payments to Bothners.  And speaking of Bothners, there were a couple of clouds coming over the horizon.

The manager at Bothners was a weaselly little shit named Rob Cameron.  Over the past year or so, Eds Boyle and I had become good friends, and he’d persuaded the manager that he needed an assistant in the department, but I suspected he’d kind of oversold me so that I could get the job — and the proof of that was soon forthcoming.  My take on my role was that I’d be the guy who would take care of all the one-time customers and small transactions that would free Eds up to take care of the professional musos.  But after only a few months at Bothners I was called into The Weasel;’s office and basically told off for my poor performance in sales.  When I pointed out that my sales numbers were pretty much the same as Eddy’s, only made up with much more transactions, Cameron yelled that I hadn’t brought in any of the “new, young bands”.  I was of course surprised, because this had never been part of my hiring — but it was, because that was how Eds had pitched me to Cameron;  he’d just forgotten to tell me about it.

Oh, shit.

Whenever I’m blindsided by events, my normal attitude is to respond aggressively;  and so it was in this case.  I snarled back at Cameron that I was doing the job I’d been hired for, my sales figures were good — the profits from all those “small” sales were far greater than my salary, for one thing — and the way I was going, I expected to make even more over the next couple of months, “And I’m going to beat Eddy’s sales figures for the first time.”

The result was that I was put on notice — basically, The Weasel told me that if I didn’t do what I said I would, he’d fire me on the turn.  My prospects, then, were looking bleak and I left his office steaming.

Three days later some young guys came into Bothners with an older man.  Eds pointed to them and said, “Some customers for you, Kims,” and scuttled off to “do a stock check” (our shorthand for “These idiots will be a waste of time — you deal with them”).  Well, it turned out that these four kids had started a band, and had worked so hard that their respective fathers had agreed to sponsor them and buy them all the gear they needed to put the band together, because they’d been booked to play at a small rock concert in a town to the west of Johannesburg and couldn’t do the gig with the paltry equipment they had on hand.

I told the father that they’d come to the right place, because my band had suffered through the same problems — only we hadn’t lucked out with a sponsor so we’d had to buy the whole band’s gear ourselves, pretty much from scratch.  And because we’d had to pay for it, we’d bought cheap equipment, then later finding out that we had to to replace it with better gear — in essence, buying everything twice.  (I was only exaggerating a little, but the crux of the story was quite true.)  The older man seemed impressed by my analysis, and said, “Well, I and the other dads aren’t going to pay twice.  What do you recommend?”

So I took the guys through the whole setup I thought they’d need, member by member:  bass guitar, amp, lead guitar, amp, keyboards, amp, and the PA system to bring the whole thing together — all top-of-the-range equipment.  (The drummer had a decent kit, so I told him not to replace it but just add to it with better cymbals and a quality snare drum.)  The father’s eyes widened when he saw the total, but I reminded him of buying everything twice;  and after showing Eds the total, he approved a five percent discount on the spot.

The total of this single transaction was greater than the department’s total sales had been for the past two months.

Even better, after the kids played their concert, a couple of other young bands came to me for help in improving their gear, with the result that my sales for the following month were equally impressive.

So after the dust had settled and the numbers added to the balance sheet, Cameron called me into his office to congratulate me on my success, and I handed in my resignation.  Why?

I don’t respond too well to an ultimatum at the best of times, so when I’d been told to sell more or I’d be fired, I’d started sniffing around at the other music stores in town for an alternative job.  And the manager of one such store — much smaller than Bothners, but wanting to grow — was extremely interested in having Bothners’ “top” salesman come to work at his little shop (yeah, I showed my sales results over the past two months, skipping over the earlier ones and making out that this was my normal performance:  remember I was a salesman).  I told him that I would have to work out my notice through the month of January 1977, but I could start in February.

What I didn’t tell him was that I’d just received my call-up papers for my National Service commitment — yes, the Army had caught up with me at last, and I’d been informed that I would get no more deferments:  “We’ll see you in July, and that’s that!” was the gist of it.  So I’d only be working for the small store for a few months until mid-year.

Anyway, when I presented my resignation to Cameron, he took it kinda badly.  In fact, he let me go on the spot.  So I’d miss the Christmas sales boom and the commission thereof.  Even though that was a shitty thing to do, I didn’t care too much;  my bonus for the past two very successful months would be more than sufficient to tide me over until I started my new job.

I’d heard through the grapevine that Shalima were once more playing at the Palm Grove in Margate, so as Pussyfoot was going through a bleak period with only two office parties booked for early December, and then no gigs until New Year’s Eve, mid-December found yours truly setting out for Natal’s South Coast in Fred — so my accommodation needs therefore quite adequate.  (I’d slept in the back on several occasions in the past, when visiting my girlfriend, over long weekends camping, and so on.)

I met up with the Shalima guys, and Max and I renewed our acquaintance with great joy, and a vast quantity of beer was consumed.  As it happened, I’d been misinformed:  the band playing at the Palm Grove was an Irish band called Kelly Green, who played mostly R&B songs.  They were brilliant, and I was most impressed by their vocalist — who had a voice that sounded like Dave Ruffin of the Temptations — and the lead guitarist, a Scottish guy named Alex Dawson who played like jazz great Larry Carlton.  Anyway, I spent a week down there, listening to Kelly Green and drinking with Max.  It was my first actual holiday in close to four years.

After that little trip, I went back up to Johannesburg for the New Year’s Eve gig with Pussyfoot — a great success in every sense because not only did our performance go down well, but we played until dawn, swelling that night’s fee almost indecently.  It’s a good thing too, because our bookings for the first part of 1977 were… let’s just say unimpressive — okay, pretty much nonexistent.

Anyway, flushed with all that earlier success, money and the fun and games of the South Coast, I went to see my new employers in early January to tell them I could start work before the agreed date in February — and was told they’d declared bankruptcy and were about to close the shop.

Oh shit, again.

For the first time since my student days, I was unemployed, with no prospects for another job — no one was going to hire me with a looming call-up in my future — and I had very little chance of earning enough to pay my bills with Pussyfoot gigs because as I’ve said, we hadn’t any bookings for at least the first three months of 1977.  Also for the first time in my life, I was on my own, with no prospects whatsoever.

I panicked.

The only thing I could think of doing was finding a pro band to play with — at this point, playing bass was pretty much my only marketable skill — and so I called Morris Fresco (remember him?) at The Don King Organization.  I told him everything that had happened to me with absolute candor, and ended up by saying, “Morris, you’ve heard me play and sing before, so you know I can handle myself on stage.  I’ll take any gig, anywhere in the country, with any band, as long as the money’s okay.”

Morris thought for a moment and said:
“Actually, I do have something for you, if you want the gig.  Ever hear of a band called Kelly Green?”
“Yes — I’ve just seen them at the Palm Grove.  They’re great.”
“Well, their bassist had to leave the band — something about his work permit no longer being valid.  Think you could fill his position?”

Fuck, no.

“Of course I can.  Are they still in Margate?”
“Actually, not.  They’re in Rhodesia — Bulawayo, at the Las Vegas nightclub.”
“Ummmm… okay.  What about a work permit for me?”
“Don’t need one seeing as it’s a short-term gig, only until the end of their contract.  Longer than three months, we’d have a problem, but not for this.  So… can I book you?”

I called Knob to tell him I was taking leave of absence from Pussyfoot, and two days later I found myself at the Las Vegas nightclub in Bulawayo, playing with Kelly Green.

Except that it wasn’t Kelly Green, at least, not as I knew them.  Apparently, the work permit problem had affected not just the bassist, but also the lead vocalist and keyboards player.  What was left was the drummer (Ivan), who for some reason no longer wanted to play drums, but be the lead vocalist, and the Larry Carlton-like Alex Dawson.

Who, I soon found out, was even worse than Dick The Prick from the Mike du Preez Trio.

Okay, this was the situation I found myself in.  Not only was the band essentially a three-piece affair — Ivan had found a drummer to replace him, except that the new guy was nowhere near Ivan’s ability — but I had to learn (again) a whole new repertoire of utterly unfamiliar songs.  It was Margate 1974 all over again, only this time I wasn’t going to play to an empty room in a sleepy little hotel restaurant in a remote vacation spot;  Bulawayo was a city, and the Las Vegas a serious nightclub that was open for business six nights a week from 9pm until 3pm.

It was, in short, the worst experience of my life.  My bass playing was totally inadequate for the sophisticated R&B and modern jazz music — I was moving from playing Credence Clearwater Revival and Uriah Heep to Stevie Wonder, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Tower of Power, for gawd’s sake — and I had to learn it all in a tearing hurry, and fucking Alex was being an absolute shit about it all.

He was a dour, unpleasant asshole, who regarded every other musician in southern Africa as “crap” (even those musicians I knew were anything but), and he was very much unimpressed by me.  Worse yet, he had the ear of the nightclub’s owner, another unpleasant piece of work named Bobby Fraser, who not only owned the club but who thought of himself as a Frank Sinatra-type singing star (he wasn’t), and on top of everything else I had to learn his material because he did a set every night at the club.

So all my efforts at playing bass at the Las Vegas were not only being subjected to constant ridicule and scorn from Alex, but that opprobrium was being relayed to the club’s owner, constantly.

Still, I was under contract for at least a month so everyone had to put up with it.  I was in a strange country on my own, no way to contact any friends or family (no Internet, of course, and the phone service was appallingly expensive and unreliable), and for the first time in my life I was lonely.  I couldn’t just mail in my performances at the club every night:  pride, and that stubborn credo of professionalism just made that impossible.  But when I wasn’t playing, there was nothing to do, nobody to hang out with and nobody to share in my misery.

Then, to my great joy, South Africa’s superstar rock band came to town on their tour of Rhodesia.  I knew all the guys from Rabbitt, of course, especially their (genuine) superstar lead guitarist Trevor Rabin (later of Yes and composer of Owner Of A Lonely Heart).  They played two nights over three days in Bulawayo, playing two concerts a night:  an early one from 6pm to 8pm, and a second one from 10pm to midnight.  I wangled a ticket from their manager Simon Fuller (whom I also knew quite well, thank you Bothners) for an early show, and went off to see them.  I’d seen them long before that when they were still the house band at the Take It Easy nightclub in Johannesburg, and they were good back then.  I remember having a jam with Trevor and a couple of other guys some time later at the club, and was blown over by their musicianship;  but now, some three years later, the band was an absolute powerhouse.

Of course, after their second show the guys had to “come down” and drink a few (okay a lot of) beers somewhere, and as the Las Vegas was literally across the road from their hotel, my place of torture and hell was a natural stop.

Aaaargh.  So that one night I stumbled through a set, and then went and sat with Trevor at a table.  Thanks to the booze, I was completely uninhibited, and I poured out all my troubles to Rabbitt’s virtuoso lead guitarist, telling him that I was total shit, and that this was probably going to be my last gig.

Trevor listened patiently, then said something that would change everything.

“Kims, listen to me.  You’re a bloody good bass player — I’ve seen you play, and I’m not lying now.  And I know you hate this shit music you have to play here — you’re a rock musician, not some R&B guy.  And you’re being an absolute pro:  let me tell you, I wouldn’t want to do what you’re doing, filling in with these other guys, playing music that you hate.  But you’re doing it, and you’re doing a damn good job of it.”

Here’s the thing.  Trevor didn’t have to say that.  He was a big rock star, and ten times the musician I was (and would ever be).  He could have just fobbed me off with some polite bullshit;  but he didn’t.  He sympathized with my situation, made me feel better about myself and my playing, and restored my badly-damaged self-confidence.  In retrospect, he gave me a second life and added eight years onto my musical career, and for that he will always be a special human being to me.  He has probably (and understandably) forgotten who I am, but I will never forget him.

All that didn’t matter, though.  The very next day Kelly Green (in its last iteration) was replaced by a new band called, I think, Tricycle;  Alex joined them — doubtless with the assistance of Bobby Fraser — and everyone else was canned.  The only good thing to come out of that was that I was paid in full for the duration of the contract.  (Thanks, Morris.)

So I flew back to Johannesburg, filled with excitement to be going home and rejoining my band…

…only to find that in my absence they had changed the name of the band to Atlantic Show Band, added a new guitarist from a well-known club band, replaced me with some other bassist, and were now playing a club gig at the prestigious Boulevard Hotel in Pretoria.

Now what?

Chapter 5:  Putting It All Together

As I’d managed to fail my first two freshman years at Wits University, utterly and completely without a single credit to my name, my long-suffering father decided (with some justification) that he was done paying for my tuition, and if I wanted to stay on and try again, I’d have to pay my own way.  That, or subject myself to my military conscription, which I’d thus far escaped with a student exemption.  The South African Army?  No frigging way.  So I launched myself into a series of dead-end minimum-wage jobs, ending up working at three or four simultaneously.  These, while earning me quite a substantial income, would leave me absolutely no time to devote to my studies, even if I wanted to study anything (which I didn’t).  So instead of beating my unwilling head against the wall of university, I took the low road instead and enrolled myself at the Johannesburg Teachers’ Training College.  My First from St. John’s College was an easy qualification to the TTC, but I had no intention of becoming a teacher, so I attended only as many courses and seminars to keep me from being expelled.  Most days, when I wasn’t working, I used to go back onto the Wits campus and hang out with my buddies.

If not there, I’d lock myself in my bedroom and practice on the bass.  I didn’t bother with scales or anything like that.  Instead, I set out to learn songs — i.e. to be able to play as many rock songs of the day that I could with some confidence  — by listening to music over and over, identifying the bass part and getting it down, note-perfect.  (It’s not as easy as it sounds;  even though I was quite accustomed to close listening from a classical music perspective, rock music was another story altogether — especially when a guitar and bass were playing the riffs together.)  But I stuck to it, starting with the simplest ones (50s rock ‘n roll) and rolling upwards into music like that of Credence Clearwater Revival and Status Quo, just as I had when learning to play guitar back at the College.  By the middle of the year I’d managed to put together a playlist of about fifty songs.  None of them were current hits, by the way, because who knew if I’d ever play any of them?

Then one day on campus I happened to meet a guy named Robbie Kallenbach;  a quiet, very gentle man of immense musical talent, he was doing a business degree while doing what he really loved:  composing movie scores.  A few weeks later, he asked me to give him a lift back to his apartment because his car had broken down, and I had a chance to listen to his latest work, which had been accepted for some movie (since forgotten).  Then as I was leaving, he said, “I forgot.  Are you still interested in putting a band together?  Yes?  Well, there’s a guy in one of my classes who wants to do the same.  He’s a drummer, and his buddy is a guitarist.  Let’s meet up soon and I’ll make the introductions.”  And thus I was introduced to Rob (or “Knob”, as we nicknamed him).

At the time, I was still living at home in my parents’ large house in Johannesburg’s eastern suburbs.  One feature of the house was that there was a thatched cottage beside the pool — actually designed as a party room, there was a bar counter inside, and lots of room for dancing.  My mom was using it for her yoga classes, so it was the matter of a moment for me to commandeer the place for band practices, provided that at the end, all the gear would be packed away and the dozen or so mats restored to their original places.

So that fateful Sunday arrived for our first practice.  Knob arrived with his guitarist buddy Don (“Donat”, spoken as though with a cleft palate) and their gear:  a set of British Premier drums for Knob, and a Gibson Les Paul guitar and some strange Yamaha amp for Donat.  And then there was a surprise guest: a chubby redheaded American named Kevin, together with his ’63 Fender Stratocaster and a Fender Twin Reverb amp.

“I just brought Kevin along for the jam,” Donat explained.  “He’s already playing with another band, but I thought it might be fun.”

We’re going to be spending a lot of time with these maniacs, so they each deserve a few words.

Donat was a student at the Tech, en route to his electrical engineering degree.  At the time , he bore an uncanny resemblance to Steve Howe from Yes (and still does, by the way).  He was, I soon discovered, a filthy perfectionist when it came to putting songs together, and any mistake, no matter how small, resulted in him stopping playing and raising his hand up in the air.  It pissed us all off — me most of all — but in fact, it was Don’s insistence on perfection that made the band better than any garage band.  He was not a good lead guitarist, but an excellent rhythm guitarist and his chops were both incisive and wonderfully clear.

Knob was not one of those powerhouse drummers, because he’d learned and practiced drums in his parents’ townhouse and thus never played loudly lest he irritated the neighbors.  But what he lacked in volume he made up for in technique:  he was one of the most competent drummers around, playing literally any kind of music whether rock, jazz or ballads.  He also had an excellent baritone voice, along with an astonishing falsetto which reached higher even than mine.

Kevin was a shy, self-effacing man of extraordinary talent.  An American by birth, he spoke with a soft Detroit accent, even having lived in South Africa for over a dozen years.  I was to learn that there was absolutely no guitar part he couldn’t play — Clapton, Beck, Page, Hendrix… it didn’t matter, Kevin nailed everything thrown his way with ease, on a ’62 Fender Strat.  And he had a very pleasant tenor voice, much suited to ballads and softer rock songs, and he could harmonize any part.  Alone among us, he had an actual job as a lab technician at a hematology business.

Of the four of us, I was by far the worst musician.  Fuck.  Still, I managed to keep it together by using my playlist as a basis for the jam, when we weren’t doing slow blues or Chuck Berry.  So I didn’t sound as bad as I really was.

What happened, by the end of this practice, was that we discovered that we simply grooved.  In some songs, it sounded as thought we’d been playing as a band for a long time, so well did we mesh together.

And when we finally decided to end, I did the first thing I could to stamp some kind of authority over the band.

“Kevin, you’re going to have to quit that other band,” I said firmly.  There was a stunned silence from the others, and then Kevin said, “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“I don’t care,” I said.  “This band is going to sound better than the other one ever will, and it’s going to get there quickly.”  Considering that I’d never before heard Kevin’s band play, it was something of a leap.  Kevin looked around at the other two, and to my surprise, both nodded in agreement.

At our next practice the following week, I waited nervously for the others to show up, and to my everlasting relief, Kevin came in with a sheepish grin.  “I told them I was quitting,” he said, and blushed.  So we jammed again, this time playing a few songs that we didn’t know all that well, or that only one or two of us knew, and I soon realized that I had a lot to do just to keep up with these guys.

Here we go again, Kim.

But to my surprise, the others didn’t treat me like Mike du Preez and Dick the dick had.  Rather, when I tried and failed to master a bass line, I’d say simply, “Sorry, guys;  I’m going to have to work on that one by myself.  Can we try it again at the next practice?”  To my amazement, they’d all agree, and we’d move on.  At some point, we ran dry of songs to play, so I decided to grab the bull by the horns.

Treating the lack of material as a fait accompli, I said, “We need a repertoire, because we’ll never get work playing the stuff we’ve just been jamming.”  And then I played my “I’ve played a pro gig before and you guys haven’t” card:  “When I was in Margate, we drew from a list of over a hundred songs.  We’re going to need at least that many if we’re going to cut it as a gig band that people will want to hire.”

So we sat around a notepad, and each of us took turns in suggesting songs we’d like to play.  I of course drew extensively from my old playlist, which was fine because while the songs were “old”, we were still in the early 70s so they weren’t that old:  Rolling Stones, Credence, Kinks, and other guitar bands of that ilk.  Those songs were also proven crowd-pleasers (e.g. Honky Tonk Woman etc.), so there was no problem there.

Then the others started in on the songs they’d like to play.  Whoa.  Curved Air?  Wishbone Ash?  Genesis?  Yes?  Led Zeppelin?  Doobie Brothers?  Lynyrd Skynyrd?

I was dead meat.

A lot of these songs, though, could not be played by our fledgling band because we didn’t have a keyboards player.  This shortcoming, it turned out, would soon be solved, albeit at a price.

Knob and Donat both suggested that we get a lead vocalist.  I was a little against this, because I thought that between the four of us, we had enough to carry most songs, especially those requiring lots of harmonies.  But they were insistent:  they knew a guy who had a fantastic voice, and they were going to invite him to join us at our next practice regardless of what I said.  Kevin, of course, went along with their idea, so I begrudgingly agreed.

Enter Clifford (Cliff).

Oh dear.  My problem was that I took an immediate dislike to Cliff — I don’t know why, but his whole attitude rubbed me the wrong way.  But there was no argument:  he did have a good voice, and it did improve the band’s sound.  So we started to put a repertoire together, and it was pretty good.  (See below for examples).

One song, by the way, caused us endless problems:  Zeppelin’s What Is And What Should Never Be (off LZ II;  use it as background to what follows).  Fortunately, John Paul Jones’s bass guitar part wasn’t too difficult (unlike almost all his others), so I managed to battle my way through this.  Of course, Kevin nailed the lead guitar solos (as he did every lead solo, regardless of whose), and Knob ditto with Bonham’s thunderous drum part.  Cliff sort-of managed Plant’s vocals, but after we’d gone to all the trouble of learning the thing and eventually being able to play it to Don’s satisfaction, I brought it all to a screaming halt by saying:  “I love the song and it sounds great.  But let’s face it:  it’s not a song we could ever play at a gig.”  (And we never did.)

But we all agreed, though, that just because there were songs that we might never play, we should play them anyway because learning and playing them would make us better musicians.

There were a couple of issues, though, that still had to be resolved.  Firstly, Don was playing on a borrowed amp which had been lent to him by a couple of his buddies — twin brothers, actually — who’d lent it to him without reservation except for one:  his band would have to perform at their twenty-first birthday party, which was due to take place in a scant couple of months’ time.  So if we weren’t to make complete fools of ourselves, we’d need to be able to play at least thirty songs — and I was insisting on forty — because we had to treat this gig as though it was a paying gig.  On that issue I was absolutely adamant, but fortunately everyone fell in with this so we set about doing that — I think we ended up with over two dozen songs, which sucked, but when we did the gig I lied like a maniac and announced over the PA:  “I know we’ve already played this one, but we’ve been asked to do it again.”  (I think we did the Doobie Brothers’ Listen To The Music  about four times, come to think of it.)  One song which went down really well, by the way, was Hendrix’s Fire, in which Donat did a very creditable rendition of Jimi’s voice — and his Mick Jagger’s Honky Tonk Woman  went down equally well.

There was a second issue which we needed to address really quickly.  In the previous paragraph I made mention of a “PA” system, which is not strictly true because we had no PA system, and had to plug our microphones into the guitar amps.  This proved hopelessly inadequate and we ended up screaming the vocals.  We were only saved by the fact that the 21st party took place at the twins’ parents’ house and we couldn’t play that loudly anyway.  But the screaming took its toll on us:  we were all completely hoarse by the end of the gig;  but to my horror, the worst casualty of all was Cliff’s voice, which had completely vanished by the end of the second set (of the five we ended up playing).

Side note:  the old Hofner Beatle bass was turning out to be a real problem.

Its neck had become bowed to the point where it was completely unplayable above the sixth fret, and I was in constant fear of it breaking completely.  I needed to get a new bass guitar, and quickly.

In the interim, I should mention that I’d finally found a decent full-time job as a computer operator at a Great Big Insurance Company, a job which not only paid well but which included many, many hours of overtime — so much so that at one point I was actually earning as much as my father — and this money was now going to help the band out, big time.

Anyway, I went to one of the few music stores that catered to professional musicians, Bothners Music in the downtown Carlton Center mall, and there I met Eddie (“Eds”) Boyle, who was not only a superb salesman but also the bassist for The Rising Sons, one of the country’s biggest name bands.  (Keep Eds in mind, because he will feature a great deal, further on in this tale.)

I ended up with a new bass — a Fender Mustang:

Like the Beatle bass, the Mustang didn’t have a full-size bass fretboard, but a ¾-scale one.  (I was under the — mistaken — impression that my fingers were too short to handle a full-size bass, hence that choice.  Also, it was the only one I could afford at the time.)

As a result of that trip to Bothner’s, the band also ended up with a PA system, or at least a PA amplifier, an 80-watt Dynacord Eminent II:

Like all German amps of the time, the Dynacord sounded wonderful:  warm tones, with a splendid frequency response.  Unfortunately, that 80-watt power amplifier would prove to be woefully inadequate for any large gig, as we were soon to find out.  But we kept it for years, only finally replacing it many years later with a 2,000-watt amp (but that’s a story for a later date).

We couldn’t afford proper PA speakers, so we ended up buying eight cheap 50-watt speakers and building our own cabinets.  (Actually, my father built the cabinets for us, but to our specifications.)  For speaker cloth, we used some ghastly curtains from a thrift store.

Anyway, we carried on rehearsing, twice or three times a week, building up that repertoire, but we kept banging our heads against a wall — that wall being that we didn’t have a keyboards player, which not only restricted the kind of songs we could play, but also the type of gig we could play as well:  you can’t play a wedding reception with a repertoire that includes Sweet Home Alabama  but doesn’t include waltz tunes and songs of the kind I played with the Trio in Margate.

That didn’t matter all that much for our next gig, which was arranged by Knob.  His old high school was putting on a fundraiser in the form of a dance marathon — the kind where the kids are “sponsored” by the number of hours that they can dance.  This was to be our first actual paying gig, so we approached it with great anticipation;  also with great trepidation because we learned that the actual marathon would last at least eight hours and we had, at best, enough material for three.  This gave us all the incentive we needed to practice still harder:  I think that by then we were doing three practices a week for the next three months.  We ended up with over fifty songs, a number which would have been a lot greater, except did I mention? Donat was a filthy perfectionist and his attitude had spread to Knob and Kevin as well.

Well, it would all have to do;  so on the appointed Saturday morning, off we went to that high school’s auditorium.

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

 

Chapter Four: How A Band Works

In case it hasn’t been clear in this narrative so far:  I had a dream and an ambition, but not a single clue how to make that happen. To call me “clueless” would imply that I had even the faintest idea of where I could find a clue, or any inkling of a clue’s existence.

But when I discovered Shalima, the Palm Grove’s resident band that year, I started to get the picture.

Let me first, however, list the dramatis personae who comprised Shalima, because almost all of them would be important to me (pics courtesy of Max):

Pete The Drummer

A rock-solid drummer who kept perfect tempo, and put down a lovely beat.

Richard The Bassist

Richard was a wonderful bass player. Good grief, looking at the ease with which he played his Fender  Jazz  Precision bass, sometimes so inebriated that he could barely stand (to be explained later), I nearly quit on the spot.

Jeff The Lead Guitarist

Jeff was just as good on lead guitar. It seemed like there was no guitar part he couldn’t play, note-perfect. If he had a fault, Jeff was shy and self-effacing, so much so that I think he would occasionally hold back a little with his lead solos – but when he did cut loose, it was an awesome experience.

Tommy Sean The Vocalist

Tommy Sean (whose surname I include because it’ll be important later) had a powerful and very distinctive voice, but which he seemed to lose as the evening went on. Clearly, he hadn’t been vocally trained at all, because he’d wear his voice out fairly quickly. The immense quantities of beer he’d consume during the evening couldn’t have helped much, either.

Rory (“Max”) on keyboards

Finally, there was Max. If ever I’m asked, as I have often been, who most influenced my musical career, it would be Max — not so much for his considerable musical ability, but through the way he managed the band and the different personalities to keep them on track.  Max had started out as Shalima’s bass player, but when Richard arrived on the scene he moved to keyboards.

 Sheila (the pregnant book-reader, and Max’s wife) featured occasionally on keyboards and vocals.

Now, their music; and man, this bunch of Rhodesians could play. Of course, as with all club bands in South Africa at the time, their repertoire consisted of covers of hit records, and only hit records. They didn’t play any of their own stuff (if indeed they had any), but what struck me the most was that every song sounded precisely like the original artist’s recording, with only the occasional variance being of course the vocal sound.

Incidentally, one of the first songs I heard them play was the 3 Degrees hit When Will I see You Again? and the (very) pregnant Sheila had a voice of lovely clarity, absolutely the equivalent of the song’s original lead singer. That was impressive by itself; but what stunned me was that Shalima’s backing harmony vocals mimicked the soprano voices of the 3 Degrees perfectly.

I told you earlier that I had no idea, and in this case I had no idea that male singers could sing female voices, in a rock context. Of course I knew about falsetto – I could sing pretty much any female vocal part myself that way – but I’d never known it could be used in performance, and especially in rock music. Like I said: no clue.

Anyway, the band played the first set, each song impressing me more than the previous one, and then they took a break, going over to sit at a table clearly reserved for their use on the side of the dance floor. And then they each proceeded to drink three beers during the next fifteen minutes.

Back on stage, they continued on with the performance, and more drinks during the breaks, and so on.

I wanted to talk to them, but I felt somewhat intimidated because, let’s be honest, I wasn’t musician enough to walk on stage with them let alone play what they did. Finally, though, as the evening started to wind down at about midnight and I’d had a couple beers myself, I plucked up some courage and walked over to Richard, having prepared a question about his amp and guitar as a conversation-starter.

He was polite but a little diffident, but when he asked me what had brought me to Margate and I told him, his attitude changed completely. “You’re in Mike du Preez’s band up in the hotel? Wow!” Clearly, I wasn’t just some fan-boy or drunkard off the street; I was a musician. “Come and meet the rest of the guys,” he said, and pulled me over to the band’s table.

And thus started a relationship which was to last years, and which helped me get into professional rock music more than just about anything else.

I learned so much just from watching these guys. From a playing perspective, they were consummate professionals: never late to get on stage, always playing the music most guaranteed to fill the dance floor, no messing around between songs, in fact they had none of the bad habits that bedevil “garage bands”, and I was extremely impressed.

Also, Max was the band’s leader and driving force: no arguments on stage, no nonsense of any kind: his decisions were policy, and the band had to fit in. As a keyboards player, he was more than competent, but considering that keyboards were essentially his second instrument, it should be known that he never held the band back, musically speaking. (That’s not always the case, by the way, as you will see later in this narrative.)  Unsurprisingly, he ended up being a piano teacher many years later.

Over the next few weeks, I learned from these guys how to play in a band — and more importantly, how a band worked:  not just the playing, but the management and attitudes.

In the first place, I was only nineteen, but all the others were in their thirties (except Jeff, who was a little younger), and they’d already been playing either professionally or semi-pro for over a decade.  I had no idea that one could do this.  I mean, I knew about other famous South African bands who’d been around for a while (the Staccatos, the Rising Sons, the Blue Jeans, Four Jacks and a Jill… the list was long);  but while they’d been around for years, they’d all had top 10 records on the South African hit parade, which to me justified their longevity.  Yet here was Shalima, of whom I knew nothing, and they’d been playing music as a full-time job in club after club, year after year.

You could have a career in rock music without having a record contract or hit record.

This made all the difference to me, because I’d always thought that a career in rock music required a hit record — and I also knew that the number of hit records (and the bands that played them) were only the top 2% of the bands.  (As with all things, whether sports, music or any activity, only a very few end up being truly successful.)

So one didn’t have to be a rock star to make a living.  You only had to be as good as, well, Shalima.  And all you had to do was get good enough to play on the club circuit.  Once again, as a teenager I’d been woefully ignorant of the club scene — thank you, boarding school — but listening to the Shalima guys talk, I realized that there were lots of opportunities around, far more than I’d ever imagined.

Then, a brief splash of cold water.

I mentioned to the others in the Trio how much I liked Shalima, how impressed I was with their musicianship, why I’d never heard of them before, and why they hadn’t played in Johannesburg.  Dick the dick scoffed.  “They’re what I’d call a good gig band,” he said.  “Maybe high school dances, weddings, that kind of thing.  But in a Joburg club?  No way.”  And to my amazement, Mike du Preez nodded in agreement.

I didn’t believe them.  So the next time I was down in the Grove, I asked Max why they hadn’t played in Johannesburg.  “We’re not good enough to play Joburg,” he said bluntly.

Bloody hell.  Clearly, there was more work to be done if I was going to make a go of being a pro. 

At this point, some two weeks after I’d started playing in the Trio, I started to get better on the bass.  No longer did I have to play “find the note” or search my memory for what song it was;  it all started to become a little easier, I stopped approaching each night with something akin to dread, and I actually started to enjoy myself.  Paradoxically, as I relaxed the whole thing came more easily.

But that “not good enough to play in Johannesburg” warning had stuck;  so I started to practice, really practice on the old Hofner Beatle bass.  One day I decided to teach myself how to play what’s known as a “walking” bass line, whereby the notes are played four to a bar, but “walking” up and down the scale.  (Ah, so this was why we had to practice scales:  now it all made sense.)  It took me more than a few days, because of course you have to learn the scales for each of the keys in the key signature (A, A-flat, A-sharp, B, B-flat etc. all the way up to G.  And then of course the minor keys thereof.)  But I stuck to it, concentrating especially on the more common keys the Trio was playing, and eventually I could play the runs with some confidence.  Then I taught myself the classic rock ‘n roll bass riffs — the Chuck Berry / Albert King / Bo Diddley standards — and with my newfound fluency, they came quite easily.

Then, kismet.  One of the songs the Trio played was the old Art Blakey song Moanin’.  (I invite y’all to listen to it now, as background for this part of the story.)  I’d struggled mightily with this one in the beginning, because Jazz.  But once I figured out the scales and walking thing, it became relatively easy to play.  So one night I asked Mike, ever so casually, “How about Moanin’?”  He nodded, and played the opening riff — then stared at me open-mouthed as I walked my way around the complex melody.  Even Dick was impressed when I managed to scratch out a rudimentary bass solo — the first I’d ever played.  For the first time since we’d opened, the Trio really hit a groove.

Unfortunately, this meant that Mike started to play ever-more difficult jazz standards, but to my amazement they weren’t all that difficult.  I’d figured it out.  That’s not to say I was any good at it, of course;  but I was well on the way to becoming somewhat competent.

Musical interlude:  One day I was sitting by myself at a cafe somewhere in “downtown” Margate (there was one main drag) drinking a cup of coffee when I happened to glance out the window and saw a familiar car being parked right next to the cafe.  I knew the car, a Mini, because it belonged to my old schoolfriend and GROBS bandmate Gibby.  So of course I raced outside, grabbed him and pulled him in for a cuppa.  His family owned a seaside cottage in a little town south of Margate, and he had come up to do some grocery shopping, I think.  Anyway, we spent the rest of the day together, and then I remembered that Sunday night at the Grove featured “talent” competitions — dancing on Sundays being streng verboten  in ultra-Christian South Africa back then — and so I dragged Andy off to participate.  I don’t think either of us cared about the competition, though:  it was just a chance to play on stage together.
Anyway, I introduced him to the Shalima guys, but Max didn’t want to let us enter the competition — “Kim, you’re a pro and pros aren’t allowed” — but I prevailed upon him by saying that I didn’t want to compete;  I just wanted to back Gibby and play on stage with him.  So Max relented, and we played, I think, Santana’s Evil Ways with Gibby improvising the whole thing on Max’s Hammond organ, and doing an excellent job of it, too.
As it happened, he didn’t win the competition;  it was won by a tiny, pint-sized girl named Ingrid (“Ingi”) who played a thunderous, virtuoso number on Pete’s drum kit, accompanied by the other Shalima guys.  (We’ll hear more of Ingi later.)

Then one Saturday afternoon the Trio was playing an “extra” set in the dining room — I think it was a wedding reception, booked earlier in the year — when the good stuff happened.

The Shalima guys had never heard the Trio play because our bands’ set times always coincided.  On this occasion, however, they had the afternoon off, they heard the music coming from the dining room and set out to investigate.

I’ve mentioned that our “stage” was really just an area between the small dance floor and kitchen entrance, separated from the latter by an indoor lattice covered with plastic ivy.  So it was behind this screen where Max, Tommy Sean and Richard hid, to listen to us play.

As it happened, Mike had just dropped a piece of sheet music in front of me and asked, ever so casually, “Think you can busk your way through this?”  (If memory serves, I think it was a pared-down version of Deep Purple.)  So seeing that it was a really slow ballad, I just nodded and made sure that I had the key established and off we went.  About halfway through the song I became aware of some half-whispered comments coming from behind the screen, and realized that the Shalima guys were there.  Of course, this made me sweat, but somehow I made it through the piece.

Then Mike winked at me, and launched into the intro to Moanin’.  (He has a special place in my heart for that little act of kindness.)

As it happened, that was the last song of the set, so I put the bass down and went to chat to my friends.  The first to speak was Tommy.

“You can read music?”  I nodded.  Then came Richard.
“Kim, you’re a fucking lying liar.”
“Why?”
“You told us you couldn’t play the bass, you asshole.”
“Eh, you caught me on a good night.” 
Then Max:  “Was that the first time you’d ever played that slow song?”
“Yup.  Mike likes to throw different stuff at me sometimes.”
“Cool.”

So my meager stock rose, at least with the guys I wanted to impress, and along with it, some small degree of self-esteem.  I was still very conscious of my shortcomings, even though I’d come quite a long way in the past weeks.

I’d settled into the life of a professional musician very easily, especially so in the company of the Shalima guys.  During the day we had nothing to do, so we screwed around, constantly:  darts matches in pubs, putt-putt competitions, girls, and always, beer in monumental quantities.  This was how we spent our lives together in Margate.  As the wedding reception had been a “side gig”, the Trio had been paid separately from our hotel gig, and to my astonishment I ended up with about 200 Rands as my share. This was more money at one time than I’d seen in the past two years, so of course I blew it all on the aforesaid beer with the guys, not to mention ill-advised bets on the darts matches (Tommy was an absolute wizard, I discovered to my chagrin, and I only managed to get a little back playing putt-putt because I was if not the best, then at least close to being the best player of all of us).

Then one night, after the Trio and Shalima had finished for the night, Max and I went out for a drive in my Fiat, just to chat away about this and that.  Then at about 3am I asked him, “Do you want to listen to some new music?”  His response was immediate.  “Of course I want to listen to new music.  This is my job.”  (Lesson learned:  if you’re going to be a pro, you have to immerse yourself in music and treat it as part of your job.)

I played him a tape of Bad Company’s first album.  Max listened to it without comment, then said, “Play that first song again.”  Then:  “Can I borrow this tape?”

The next night I went down to the Grove, and at the end of the song they were playing, Max said over the PA, “This next one’s for Kim,” and Shalima launched into a note-perfect cover of Can’t Get Enough.  They’d learned it already.  (Another lesson learned:  you’ve gotta stay current, and be good enough to learn a new song quickly.)

One side note:  just before Christmas, the Trio had a very brief hiatus.  Dick the dick went back up to Johannesburg to get married (!), and returned the very next day with his new bride, a pleasant, mid-forties auburn-haired woman named Moira, and his freshly-high-school-graduated daughter.  I took to Moira immediately — I had no idea what she saw in Dick — and as all four of us were now sharing that tiny cottage, I also took the opportunity to deflower his daughter one afternoon, because Musicians Are Scum.  (Moira will feature briefly later on, hence my mention of her here.)  Fortunately, I was able to keep away from the now-besotted daughter because the Trio was really busy, and when not playing I was always racing off to hang out with Shalima.

About two nights before the gig was coming to an end, I walked into the restaurant to find a stranger sitting with Mike and Dick.  “Hey, Kim, this is Barry,” was the casual intro, “He’s a bassist I know from Johannesburg.”

So I invited him to play a couple songs with the Trio, because that’s the gentlemanly thing to do, of course;  and Barry proceeded to play that old Hofner like it had never been played before.  Very humbling.

At the end of the evening, I was just getting ready to leave when I heard Dick whisper to his wife:  “If Mike had known Barry was available before we came down, he’d have fired Kim on the turn.  Hell, if we’d known he was available after the first couple of weeks we’d have replaced Kim anyway.”

Even more humbling.  Clearly, there was a cold-blooded side to professional music too.

At that point, though, it wasn’t that important, because the New Year came and with it, the end of the gig, my first gig — professional, even — as a bass player.  As I said my sad goodbyes to that ragged bunch of Rhodesians, I made them promise to look me up should they ever get a club gig in Johannesburg or Pretoria.

Somehow, I was going to have to get it together when I got back to Johannesburg, and I had no idea how I was going to do that.

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3