When I was but a young lad, a teenager in Yorkshire I had a friend called Dave , who I helped teach to play the guitar. We were music fanatics , mainly rock music - Free , Wishbone Ash, Led Zeppelin were favourites at the time. After a while we started a band and were joined by another Dave who played the drums and was a bit older , with a job at the post office. We were still schoolboys, in the fifth form, if I remember correctly. I can recall waiting for Dave number one one evening before we walked down to our rehearsal space in the drummers scruffy cellar. While waiting by the bridge on Barleyfields road that evening, my SG copy guitar and cheap Selmar amp in hands, I can clearly remember the thought entering my head that life would be very empty without playing music , and musing on how people could survive without it. That thought has stayed with me down the years.
We first met Dave the Drum in the cellar come crypt of the church in the town. After playing a Wishbone Ash song , I think it was ``Ballad of the Beacon`` with him on drums , Dave the Drum announced that we were now a band , eventually to be given the moniker ``Asgard``. Very 70´s , when all things Norse were the order of the day....
Rehearsals were Thursday and Saturday evenings , with another school friend, a guy called Haddle, on vocals. We were fairly listenable, mainly thanks to Dave the Drums sense of rythm, which was good.
We must have been quite loud though. Dave´s mother would sometimes call down from upstairs and request a Jim Reeves song. I don´t think we ever obliged, although our repertoir did extend to John Denver´s ``Annie´s Song``. After a while, Dave the Drum surprised us . He had obtained two Marshall 50 watt set ups for Dave the Bass and I to play through. He must have got them on hire purchase. This was an amazing thing to have done , in retrospect, and really raised our game. Or at least made us now very loud indeed.
Our first gig took place in the crypt of the church , which was probably just as well as it meant that the sound didn´t carry too far. . Clad in my yellow kimono resurrected from a primary school musical performance , I was joined by dave dave and haddle as we slogged through our limited repertoir. Unfortunately we were more than under rehearsed and led zeps the ocean proved a little too much, with its odd time signature . After several false starts we finally all remained in sync. My first experience of feeling that this was going to be more difficult than i had imagined... And so. Back to the rehearsal basement we went, tales between legs.
