Ptolemaic Terrascope 27 Dave Brock Interview Part I

[andrew]

okay, here's the first bit i typed in:

Deepest Devon, Summer 1998

PT: You were born in Isleworth, West London and started playing the
banjo in Jazz bands. Unearth your past!

DB: Where shall I start? My uncle Maurice gave me a banjo when I was
about thirteen. I couldn't play it properly, of course, but I used to
plonk about on it and then my parents bought me a guitar when I was
fourteen. I used to like jazz - it was quite popular in the '50s. From
then on I learned to play the banjo and started playing with some
friends and we got together our own New Orleans Jazz band. I preferred
New Orleans jazz as it was a lot pokier and more powerful than
Dixieland.

PT: Do you come from a musical family?

Well Uncle Maurice was musical, he used to be the choir master at
Newport Pagnell? Stony Stratford? No it wasn't [deep thought] New
Bradwell, near Wolverton in Buckinghamshire. I'm just getting my brain
working this morning. But we used to have our little band and would
play a few clubs for nothing and nothing fantastic ever came of it
[laughs]. That was the Gravnier Street Jazz Band.

Did it lead to anything though?

Well, I used to play in a club in Twickenham called Eel Pie Island,
which was a very famous jazz club, quite a big place. I played in the
interval with a friend of mine, a piano player called Mike King. Mike
was, probably still is, a wonderful piano player who'd learned his
stuff from Pete Johnson, a famous boogie piano player, in Canada for a
few years, so he had this fantastic style. In the course of the
intervals, initially jazz then blues, we played with Memphis Slim,
Champion Jack Dupree, Sonny Boy Williamson and other famous blues
characters.

You lived in Amsterdam at one time.

I lived in Amsterdam for a while and busked on the streets there. I
went there with my friend Pete Judd who had an old Mercedes car. We
used to sleep on in the back, the other in the front - very
uncomfortable and jolly cold. Eventually we got a flat thereand played
with a wonderful piano player called Rob Hooker and a Dutch player
called Boy Van Delden. We played at the Harlem Blues Festival, which I
have a LP of which is a bit scratchy! I then lived in Putney where Bob
Kerr had a music shop at the end of the street - Gwalior Road, Putney.
I was busking in London and decided to get a band together. Bob kindly
let us his basement, which was a very small room where we rehearsed
with Mick Slattery, and occasionally in my back room which annoyed all
the neighbours - the whole street used to hear us playing!

By then it was what, 1966?

The late 60's, 1966 or '67. I frequented Middle Earth, a psychedelic
club. We used to have Arthur Brown and various playing there which was
very good. I think we played as "the Famous Cure" in some of these
clubs, I vaguely remember we had our own band playing psychedelia. I
toured Holland in 1967 with a circus, a rock and roll circus called
Tent 67. We were the B-band or warm-up band before they had the famous
Dutch bands playing. One night, or maybe we didn't [long pause], not
every night. We used to stay in one place 2-3 days and then take the
tent down and move on to the next place. It was a long time ago....

more to follow..

andrew