A selection of prime cuts abbreviated from Boss's column in past issues of UHCK the mag plus additional material unique to this site.
Table of contents
- The transition from Deviants to Pink Fairies
- Of Paul Rudolph... lumberjack totes axe shock horror
- The big leg emma dilemma (the mick wayne trio)
- A bunch of peripheral sweeties
- Oink Oink
- Being a tribute to Captain Trips (in part)
- Motorway Madness
- Canned Heat play Dingwalls
Roadie, bon viveur, world class chef, promoter, human God, and Pink Fairy/Deviant mainstay from 67 to now Dave 'Boss' Goodman's Fairy Tails is a very popular column worthy of reprinting in totale or, as here, as a collection (with bonus extracts from his ongoing communiques with UHCK hq). For your reading pleasure here are a few samples from previous issues With some added word salsa on his meal of meat metaphors.......
Tail the first - The transition from Deviants to Pink Fairies
Boss relates times in hippy central - a brief excerpt from issue 4's terrible tail...
...(Having arrived in San Francisco late 69 and skint...)....Paul Rudolph stood up and announced us (to the family dogg commune) as the Deviants From England looking for somewhere to stay, gigs to play and chicks to lay... A band from Oakland, Mayflower , agreed to house us and a family dogg member proposed a gig... Unfortunately no girls were forthcoming at this juncture. It wasn't long before we were moved out of Oakland when Sandy was found knobbing The Mayflower's guitarists wife, but as if by a twist of fate it was the most helpful move we could have made - to this day I don't know who found us the House on oak street round the corner from famed hippie crossroads haight st And ashbury - but we were soon esconsed on the third floor of this gigantic House occupied by one wierd religious sect and a nameless group who allowed the band unlimited use of their rehearsal space. It was in this room under the influence of organic mescaline and not very organic pcp (angel dust) that the basis of the Pink Fairies show slowly evolved...... ..... Having seen two drummers in the Grateful Dead cause so much excitement live at the Filmore West, we phoned Twink back home and asked if he wanted to join the new band.... The rest is history.
Tail the second - of Paul Rudolph... Lumberjack Totes axe shock horror
...If first impressions glean subsequent appraisal, then cop this lot... I'd arrived at the Shaftesbury Avenue flat (above 'Hair' running in the theatre below) to check out the new boy and there slouched In an armchair in front of the telly was this horse cartwright looking lumberjack of a fellow wearing lime green elephant cord pants, an orange and black striped matelot t-shirt, long lank hair tied back pony tail style and in offering my hand in welcome noticed his left hand/arm pick up his right arm and hold out a perfectly formed fist for shaking attached to a totally withered arm from wrist to shoulder withered by polio in his youth. I mention this only becuase it gave him incredible impetus to succeed and flourish and extraordinary determination to be superior in all he went for, and when one considers that he had been bassist in all his canadian bands, he bluffed his way in replacing Sid Bishop in the Deviants on lead guitar. With hindsight his playing In those early days was pretty bloody wierd. We must have thought it was just his way of interepreting the west coast sound of Jerry Garcia, Barry Melton And Jorma Kaukonen. Mind you they all worked out of 'Frisco and Paul was from Gibson's landing, a small island north of Vancouver. However, within months his playing progressed out of all proportion to anything any of us could possibly have imagined... I can only speak for myself here when I say he played like one of the greats, and to quit when he did was a dreadful dissapointment robbing the band of it's leader, his fan's of his playing and himself of any chance Of fame. Clapton's Bluesbreakers and Cream era's sent shivers down my spine, Hendrix sent shivers down my spine (and then some) Paul Rudolph early Pink Fairies sent shivers down my spine. It probably had lots to do with expressing his emotions through his playing and living at such close quarters together I could identify with his emotional outpourings through his music. In simple terms if he was happy and we were happy it was reflected in his playing and liikewise if he or we were fed up he'd play with the blues... But the 'north And south' on it!!! Out of that gob flowed an incessant stream of conscious obscenities generally targetted at the opposite sex, most of it plain shocking, some of it hilarious but whichever way you looked at it he sure was hung up on women. Which brings us round to the reasons he quit when he did... His Jealousy of Sandy's ability to have girls falling over themselves craving for Sandy's bod knew no bounds, Paul's conquests being few and far between (but hey, Sonja Kristina was a good pull Paul!) his other probelm with Sandy, was his bass-playing. Paul was a certified tutor of bass guitar, Sandy looked good but could never match Paul's ability. He had other problems too... Russell's taste in drugs didn't gel with his, I was a useless fat tosser when it came to technical capability plus I couldn't drive then ... He had to drive the band to most gigs, had to not only play his guitar but hell, had to carry most of the singing too... And had to drive the others back from gigs as well. All these problems and more played on his lumberjack mentality and started his conclusions in leaving the band... Sob
(Excerpted from Boss's fairy tails UHCK issue 5)
Tail the third - The Big Leg Emma Dilemma (The Mick Wayne Trio)
Positively the most embarrassing tour the Pink Fairies ever undertook had ground to it's miserable ungodly end... Who was this geezer centre stage strutting his stuff and singing awful guff about "a big dilemma about the big leg Emma uh huh huh"???.... (clue - it was not Paul - i'm retiring to the saftey of my tape machine - Rudolph)
It came to pass that several weeks later we found ourselves booked to play the Robin Hood in Epping Forest. For a lark, Mick Farren, Steve Took and some bloke called Larry Wallis had been invited to come along for a jam. Larry had just lost his position in UFO and i'd been told to set up an extra amp for him, the rumour was that he was auditioning for a gig as our second guitarist to help bumph up the sound. (Here Boss recalls him and Farren as laughing at Wallis during Alice Cooper's party at Chessington Zoo where Lazza was giving Stacia (Hawkwind) a piggy back, in knee high spangled boots they didn't think much of him at first sight...) colour me absolutely astonished when it turns out that not only does he play an excellent line In guitar solos he also sings in tune and could harmonize as well! After the gig everyone went into a huddle and the outcome was that Larry didn't get the job as 2nd guitarist, he got the top job and Mick Wayne in anger, never played another note with the Pink Fairies.
From Boss Goodman's fairy tails uhck issue 6 - note Mick Wayne was a great guitarist who had played with Sandy and Russell on some sessions for Steve Took... Later, when Took was too "ill" to Join the pfs, Mick became Rudolph's inappropriate replacement, cut the single 'well well well' for Polydor and toured, but... It wasn't to be. Sadly Mick Wayne passed away in the mid 90s in the USA recording a solo album which will hopefully see the light of day in time. The famed Took/Sanderson/Hunter/Wayne sessions (Blind Owl Blues, Mr Discreet & Amanda - electric version) would be a wonderful release for us pinko's too !!!
The fourth tail - A bunch of peripheral sweeties
The original column featured Boss recalling sweeties like ex devies bassist 'Mac', Trev Burton, Steve Took, Martin 'Mad Dog' Stone and Dennis Hughes and has an hilarious and lengthy look at the infamous Trentishoe Festival, home of Norbert the Guru and 'The Magical Pinkwind' one-off. This extract recalls Steve Peregrine Took, founder member of the Pink Fairies Motorcycle Club and all star rock n roll band and sidekick to Nolab 'Ruthless' Cram.
...Tooky was never a full blown Pink Fairy, or Deviant for that matter (except in his own mind of course) oh and in his relevant behaviour. One could argue that his membership was secure being a third of the trio with Mick and Twink that 'played' the supposed 3 gigs under the pf banner in manchester and elsewhere in early 70 while the rest of us (Paul Sandy Russell and myself) were stateside still working as the Deviants. Anyway Steve was nearly always welcome in our camp except on those occasions when he was intolerably and uncontrollably out of his box. He was always ready, willing, but unfortunately not always able, to jam... Full marks for spirit though. Precariously tottering on them spindly legs of his and with his pixie Style vocals he certainly had no end of women on his tail.
...We first encountered his tookship in those heady drunken daze at the speakeasy late '68 and indeed he became a founder member of the Pink Fairies drinking club. Other members included components from bands working out of the Bryan Morrison agency, notably Phil May, John Povey and their drummer Twink from the Pretty Things, Syd Barrett from the Pink Floyd an assortment of devies and Took fresh out of Marc Bolan (nalob cram)'s popular Tyrannosaurus Rex. Further to drinking each other under various tables The drinking clubs' other major pursuit involved descending upon each others gigs where a spontaneous eagerness to 'jam' generally ended with an all out need to upstage each other in a frightful din of biblical proportions on unsuspecting audiences. This fun came to an untimely end at an all-nighter at the Lyceum in The Strand with the Pretty Things headlining and where muggins here was the stage manager for the night. The drinking club were guzzling themselves Into extremes of excess having one whale of a party. Come showtime dressing room one spilled out onto the stage and within 3 minutes it was all over... Set finished... The management pulled the plugs and one bamboozled audience, stunned by the godawful noise, were put out of their misery. The upshot of this was a tiresome communique to each band demanding on threat of excommunication That under no circumstances whatsoever were any members of the aforementioned acts allowed even to attend let alone play at each others shows... Bleedin' Spoilsports... But one could undersand their concern - the Floyd were gonna be but big (not that anyone had dared disrupt a floyd gig) and Marc Bolan had it in his head to be a super-duperstar, his management getting more concerned by the day at Steve Took's ever more outrageous behaviour... The Pretty Things were a good jobbing band but gord knows what they had in mind for us Deviants... We never did find out 'cos shortly we were off their rosta and in need of a new agency!
Tooky and I had a bit of a love-hate relationship: I loved him for the character he was but he could be infuriating at times... For instance a friend of ours, Hug, was moving out of the 'near mythical, 164 Lancaster road, Ladbroke Grove where many of the cosmcic family - as Mick'd have us known - resided from time to time. Took and his girlfriend Lou were living in the much smaller back room and couldn't afford the extra rent to move into the front room. Hug and I had spent the day moving his stuff out and mine in and had retired to Finches for a well earned bevvy or two. Upon our return I find half my stuff stacked up in the front garden and master Took dragging my sideboard down the front steps, in short he was moving me out!!! Needless to say I went berserk and punched him on the nose. The bloody drama that followed was typical, as he made a real meal of it. With no attempt to stem the flow of claret from his beezer. There was blood up and down the street, round the garden, all over the steps and daubed ostentatiously down the walls and floor of the corridor.... When Lou comes home from work all she sees is gallons of her bleedin' boyfriends blood splattered everywhere...'course she went bananas, what a way to move into a gaff! See what a bugger he could be?
Years later after our friend John Manley's funeral, Steve Mann, Russell Hunter and myself went into the cemetary office to get the location for Tookies grave. After hacking back the jungle that'd taken over his unmarked plot we cleared it up as best we could and made a cross From branches from a nearby tree and bet that his more than stupid wife Samantha - who incidentally nearly fell into his grave with Steve's coffin at the funeral - would never get it together to erect a tombstone... Guess we should've had A whipround
Tail the fifth - oink oink
This issue (no 8) saw Boss telling a variety of funny stories from altamont to Phun City via Detroit and the Angels. Here is the story of the launch party for the Kings of Oblivion album...
As record company sponsored press receptions go i've been to some classics down thru the years... Alice Cooper at Chessington Zoo, Patti Labelle at Thursdays Nite Club and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons at the Brown Derby in Hollywood, are just three that spring instantly to mind. Therefore the Pink Fairies had to come up with something to grab the imagination for the reception celebrating the release of 'Kings of Oblivion'... And it Had to be cheap 'coz polydor were cheap (not very cheerful though...) and the budget didn't amount to much. Eventually Polydor hired a trendy burger bar in Soho and it was down to us to come up with a stunt. And so it came To pass that Edward, Gez Cox and little Ian our roadie, were duly despatched to a farm in Kent where it was possible to hire a little piglet for the day.
Halfway into the reception there was still no sign of a farmyard animal and press-persons, getting restless, were starting to leave. As the reception was drawing to a close, edward arrived and took me outside to the top floor of a multi-story car park where a somewhat worried Little Ian opened the van's backdoor where a little terrified piggy ran screeching Into the car park leading us a merry dance around the cars until we caught the little blighter. Besides that it had done an enormous whoopsie in the back of the Plymouth Pixies Transit. Ed and Gez somehow fitted it with a dog collar and lead and off we all marched to the burger bar only to find the only press left to impress with piggy pictures were our pals from i.t.... But long before captain snaps could mustrer the boys together for family pics The bar manager had us back onto the street, you guessed - piggy had shat In the doorway. Nobody wanted to return to Kent where we decided to break into Robert Orbach's garage (he was the bugger who'd done us wrong - see the big Leg emma dilemma... Done ripped us off) where little ol' piggly wiggly spent The next week and a half pissing and shitting to it's litle heats content... Can't think of a nicer person to shit on! b
Tail six - Being a tribute to Captain Trips (in Part)
Boss recalls meetings with the Grateful Dead in between stories of Howard H Parker, Dingwalls, Bickershaw fest etc etc
Ican only imagine that the reason we all found ourselves at the Filmore West after the Dead's dissapointing showing at the previous gig, was because Steve Marriot's Humble Pie were in support. We brits had to stick together - I guess we were there to cheer on Stevie and Frampton's new band both having quit the Small Faces and The Herd respectively (Marriot didnt just fall asleep stoned with a lit ciggie and burn to death you know... Oh no, my man spontaeously combusted doncha know)
Somehow or other we'd managed to jib in on the guest list, next jib was to get backstage. With no money for drink or drugs our only hope was to join the elite backstage and take advantage of any hospitality that might be going. Boss of the jibbers soon found himself backstage taking advantage of the free beer and the joints of grass being passed around.... Lovely!
The backstage area was a long thin chamber with a central floor space and doors leading off the side to the artistes dressing rooms. Sitting around waiting for Marriot to tread the boards, aimlessly sippin' Bud and getting high I noticed that every so often a door down the far end would open and a person would emerge with a dazed expression on their brows, promptly tumble down the two steps and wander off with a stoopid grin on their faces. It wasn't until this door opened one time and our Sandy tottered out and stumbled down the two steps looking pleased with himself, that i had to find out what was going on. "Ok Sand" sez I" w' in it went.What's Going on in there?"
"Bosso you've just gotta check it out...ok?" Curiosity getting the better of me I took a giant leap forward for youthful endeavour and naively tapped on the door. No answer, but then the door opened, Some guy stumbled out and I was immediately ushered in. I couldn't have imagined what my innocent little brown eyes were now taking in even if I'd wanted to... A tiny room really, packed with about ten standing people each of whom had a long plastic tube protruding from their mouths..."funny" I thought..."funny" I was thinking as I traced the tubes back to their source. Just inside the door was one enormous cansiter of gas standing in the corner, a good five feet tall, and just behind it and equally enormous was a strapping great Oakland Chapter Hells Angel pulling the tangle of tubes from the tank and stuffing them into waiting mouths... And then 'plug' the angel rammed a vacant tube In my anticipating mouth.... I looked worriedly about me, wondering what the hell one did... Unworldly naive or what? Just as i'd sussed that one sucked like crazy it was gone, pulled from my mouth and given to another. Luckily, phew, everyone got to go twice , so when my turn came around again, I sucked For all I was worth taking as much of the gas as I could into my apprehensive lungs as the inflated organs of respiration in vertebrates would allow... If you catch my drift. I leant back against the wall simply because my knees were buckling under me, my head was suddenly alive with the humming of a thousand Bees, or ws that a dozen chainsaws, buzzing loudly in my brain.... My whole body tingled exquisitely... I'd died and gone to euphoric heaven...absolutely...fantastic. Long before i'd regained my faculties, the Angel gave me a shove in the direction of the gaping hole in the wall that used to be known as the door... And yes, like the others before me I lurched through the exit, tottered towards the two steps and stumbled down the landing looking somewhat bemused at the floorspace Below. Spotting our Sandy, I enquired "Sandy... What the hell was in that Tank?" "Nitrous Oxide old boy" replies Sandy, "and they say it's Garcia's personal canister for his guests to enjoy."
Tail numero seven - motorway madness
Boss recalls various fairy exploits on the road (in The same issue - 10 - larry wallis also relates a road story from 73) here Boss gives his version of the tail featured on phil franks website involving Twink and a strawberry milkshake...
The incident I presume Phil Franks was reminiscing about on his website, was again located in a north of England motorway service station. Again we'd finished a gig somewhere too far north of the Blue Boar Service Station to warrant hanging in there so we pulled into the first available God-forsaken stopover for your usual diet of greasy bacon and plastic eggs... On toast! The Pink Fairies were hungry and really in no mood to suffer any of the usual insulting stoopidity that was so often a feature up north of these places. All of us, except that is for young Twink, had bought and paid for our victuals, taken a table and were tucking in when Twink came in, dressed In his usual attire.... Nothing unusual for us but could prove headturning to straights not used to pink ackets, black tights, knee high boots coloured scarves and eccentric headwear (black leather wizard hat with magical symbols Oh yeah!)... And who needs it... There's a jerk in the 'audience' - this one's got a big mouth, a dodgy attitude and is full of booze to give his dutch courage A boost.
Twink goes to purchase his supper only to find himself bombarded with this idiot's slanderous banter, laughing out loud showing off In front of his pals. One insult too many finds our hero strolling casually towards numbskull's table where, without comment, he pours a large glass of milk all over his balding bonce...., perfect theatre, we are in tears as this guy goes berserk... However, his friends hold him back refusing to let him get to Twink who joins the rest of us to slaps on the back and major congrats. It really was a magic bit of Twinkism... And the blokes still steaming up with frustration unable to retaliate as we poke fun at him.
Sitting across the room, four motorway cops were having a teabreak and were simply not going to get involved. It became apparent however, that this might be the reason old baldie's mates are holding him back... Unable to control his anger any longer, and giving his friends the slip, idiot brains has a flash of inspiration... Blow me down what a clever Trevor if he doesn't go up and purchase his very own glass of milk... It wasn't to be his night however, no siree bob... Sneaking through the labrynth of tables he was headed For Twink with the obvious intention of doing unto others what had been done to him. God bless his friends , cos once again coming to his aid and long before he could reach us, they grabbed him and would you adam and eve it... spilled the milk all over him, down his jacket, on his trousers and shirt! Absolutely fantastic... As you might imagine with the whole comedy of the scene he went absolutely bonkers, screaming abuse at his friends and storming over to the cops' table, who it hadn't gone unnoticed were having a good old giggle themselves, demanded they arrest Twink, all of us, his mates, the staff of the service station and if they didnt, they could bloody well arrest themselves... The only person likely to get arrested of course was him and he was duly cautioned.... Brilliant!!!
Stop press!!! Scoop!!! Some fairy tails that have not appeared in print before!!!
Bless his cotton stockings, when the mood takes him Boss Goodman is a writer of superb and hilarious epic letters (i think 38 Pages is the record?) which are worthy of publication in their own right one day... For now here are a few choice extracts - any publisher willing to commission Boss's memoirs (working title giraffe - tall tails see?) with a suitable advance make contact pronto via UHCK - it will make a wonderful book when it finally Comes out
Canned Heat play Dingwalls - Oh all right... I booked Harvey Mandel and his band for Dingwalls for 2 nights ( I have got the right geezer here haven't i? He pioneered backward guitar solos) correct me if i'm wrong... He'd recently joined the 'Heat but was also on tour with his own band as support act on their tour of europe... Knowing full well that If I booked Harvey Mandel, i'd more than likely get the 'Heat down as well, which turned out to be the case..... They played for fuckin' hours and hours.... It was tremendous... Anyways The Bear (Bob Hite) took charge of proceedings, Dictating who took solos and when.... Mandel had a drummer who'd not toured Europe before so when it came for this poor bloke to take his solo, The Bear gave him the nod and off he went... A pretty good solid little drum solo... Now as i'm sure you're aware, drummers doing solos (unless one's a monster like Ginger Baker) can be a trifle boring most... So as this bloke brings his solo to an end, and the audience give polite applause, the bear and all the other road hardened heat men, don't pick up their instruments and just give this guy a "look" as to say "yeah 'son', not bad, but shit you're playing with us 'men' now, let's see what you're made of... Now go for it..." boom! And off he went again, this time for about 7 or 8 minutes And was noticeably more exciting than his previous solo... So thinking he'd passed his "audition" starts to bring it to an end... But starts to realise that the Bear and Henry Vestine and the Mexicans and his Mandel were all giving him the ol' "come on" as if to say "well kiddo, A bit better than the last solo, but shit boy you can do better than that so come on, give it some bollock son".... And so off he went... This time A good ten minute job, he was blinding, a truly great solo, the place went potty for him, 'cause we could all see what was going down and was a great lesson in why quite often British musicians are more complacent than our American cousins... And so this time he brought his solo to a close he looked around the stage to see how he'd fared and the bear and his heats gave him the big Thumbs up, metaphorical pats on the back, a mess 'o smiling faces and hand clapping not to mention the audience going ecstatic... "and yes son, you're alright by us" yells his Bear - brilliant, absolutely brilliant showmanship and musicianship, t'was truly one of those magic nights at good Ol' ding-dongs.
Be big, Bosso.
Why does a red cow & miss pamela - the shocking Truth...
"Why does a red cow?" - what? I used to be so fucking embarrassed, it was usually Rudolph, sometimes Farren, who beckoned me onstage to sing this bloody stupid ditty. You wanna know the facts? Well I must've been all of 8 or 9 years old when a kids show came and set up in The local park, Brunswick park Camberwell in fact (just another stoopid aside, Lazza used to go to the same sat morning pics as i did... The abc regal camberwell Green.... Obviously it was some considerable years later that we met!) anyways, Some clown or other amongst the punch and judies etc insisted us kids all sing along to his stoopid song...
"why does a red cow give white milk when he only Eats green grass
that's the burning question let's have your suggestion
i dont know you dont know dont you feel an ass
why does a red cow give white milk when he only eats Green grass?
dum de dum do...
Say no more OK? And as for the doo-wop stuff with Miss Pamela, it was all a bit of a non-starter really, I was far too shy back then. I never really felt at ease singing although deep deep down that's what I Really wanted to be... Now you've got me going... I used to be a drummer/rebel/mod At my boarding school (royal merchant navy school, bearwood college in between Reading and wokingham) anyway my last 2 years there, firstly we had a skiffle Type group, tea chest bass, washboard, acoustic guitar etc... And I played These 3 oil drums, no not the steel drums of carribean acts, these were more like large bins,we beat them to get different tones and painted them.... We were called the Trekkers.... Wow wee! Next year we evolved into an r&b band. Some kid had lent me his very basic drum kit, we had electric guitar and bass, and the singer, Chuck Stokes, (later starred in that superb tv rendition Of tom browns schooldays under his real name barry stokes, he played head boy) sang (thank god) and played harmonica (just`) I gave us the name the Hobo-Flats after the Jimmy Smith song. I used to get up and sing "maybelline" While chuck hit the skins.... Fab gear man, we got so carried away at the end of year school concert that the head had to interupt and stop us... Wo Fuckin wee!
