These were early days indeed. I had met John Crocker at London Rubber Inc and within a month, we had moved into a one room flat together and formed a great friendship. 'JC' ,as he became known to me, started learning violin in this room, and his folk friend , Steve Nice showed up , crashed out, and a band started to form...
https://www.harleyfanzone.com/70/Newnham/Newnham72.htm
This is a fascinating interview with the second guitarist the band ever had, Pete Newnham.
23 July 1972 The Roundhouse in Camden Lock and I believe the first live show that Cockney Rebel performed.
Jeff Beck was headlining, Home were in second spot and Nick Jones was on guitar. I was there as one of the two roadies. Implosion was a significant Sunday afternoon event for UK Underground music.
Click title or image to play
From left: Master Mascara, Simply Lorraine, Muriel, Queen Sagittarius, and Luigi Le Fou or otherwise known as John, Stuart, Steve, Pete & Paul
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
The double windows above the shuttered up shop is where John Crocker (JC) and I rented our first flat together. It was in Palmerston Road in Walthamstow, East London.
The 'flat' was one room with a shared toilet, no bath or shower. £5 per week rent each. We had a mattress each on opposite sides of the room.
It is also where a friend of JC's, Steve Nice, crashed out one night. Steve was already on the folk club scene, as was JC. Steve started talking to John about getting a band together. It wasn't long after this that John left London Rubber Coompany and joined Steve as a night worker cleaning factories, so in the daytime they could write and collaborate on what would become the songs for the first album of Cockney Rebel.
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Trigram was the initial management company for the band, based at a restaurant called Teddy Bear's Picnic on the Fulham Road that was owned by both managers, John Devereaux and Trevor Beeton. When I started full time as a paid roadie for Cockney Rebel in the summer of '73, I stayed for two weeks or so above the restaurant whilst I looked for more permanent lodgings.
Terry Pinnell visited me this year, 2015, and I hadn't seen him since 1974. Terry was Paul Jeffries best friend and they went way back to mates at school when they were 13 or 14. Terry tells me of his memories of Paul doing his Cockney rebel audition and then we talk through everything he remembers until the breakup in July 1974.
Late 2014 and my dear friend John Crocker is on a rare visit to my home. I take this opportunity to get a few memories out of him. It's been 43 years since we first met but some of us have brilliant memories, and JC is one of them. In this first audio file 'John Crocker in his own words' I ask him to tell me a little of his musical history before Cockney Rebel was created.
Click title or image to play
In his second audio file we get to discuss and reminisce on our shared time together in the flat in Walthamstowe, including the odd jobs he and Steve take to make ends meet...
Unfortunately for me I missed these two shows in the December of 1972 at the Kings Cross Cinema. I had been driving up to Newcastle for London Rubber Company as a trainee rep and ended up in hospital in Scotland, having driven my company car, a Ford Cortina Mark 3, into a bridge. I was lucky to be alive really and I broke my breastbone.....the safety belt saved my life. Anyway I didn't recover for a month or so into 1973......
