113 gigs in UK & Europe.....40,000 miles

1974 Cockney Rebel

John Crocker and I had just moved to a house by the river down in Hampton Court. I had my trusty BSA A65 as you can see in the picture below, and within a couple of months the house had turned into an episode of 'Friends' with John and myself joined by 4 girls, and most of the CR crew hanging out in the evenings together.

And now about this rare interview with John Lennon, it's recorded in 1974 so here it is on my timeline.

There are also new interviews, or chats really with John crocker, Stuart Elliott and some of the origianl crew within the audio clips below.

Early photos 74

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A picture of me with Paul Jeffries, Mike Collins, JC and Milton, probably taken by Bob Gross our sound engineer at the time. I'm not sure where we are, I have a hunch it is in Europe somewhere. Richard in Rome

front cover of my 74 diary

My 1974 diary, and it's the first time I have ever really used a proper diary. In the coming months I'll start posting pages from it. It is facinating reading it again after all this time, and it shows everyday life of my daily tales with Cockney Rebel as their tour manager and how hectic everything was at the time.

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Rome 74 in the Hilton hotel

Here is the band on our European leg in February. We stayed for three days and played a special press show in the Rome Hilton Hotel. Most of the band had food poisoning of some sort on the day of the show, so how they did actually finish this show was amazing really. I also remember Stuart became a dad for the first time while we were doing this promo tour of Europe.

To the left is an early pic of me in Rome at the Trevi Fountain. That jacket's back in fashion....

bikes

Me and my A65 BSA in the road where JC and I lived near Hampton Court Bridge. A great place to live at the time, we shared a room together again and we had three further bedrooms in the house with 4 girls in total. One of the amusing things to happen was my pot plant being nicked from our back garden. The whole household thought it was those damned Australians across the street!

It was strange in a way recording the second album whilst at the same time having a couple of hits off of the first album. Judy Teen being the intial hit after Sebastian didn't get off the ground in the UK. It certainly did though in Europe, especially in Belgium where it was number one for 10 weeks. In fact the Belgians took it off of number one in the end to give someone else a chance.

After having a producer contracted to the band for the first album, Steve got a little more say on the second album as Alan Parsons was to co produce it with Steve. I remember Mr Soft being recorded in Abbey Road studios, if for no other reason than being part of the backing voices on that actual track. I am on a top ten record for all eternity !!

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We came home to go straight into Morgan Studios in Harlesden, North West London to start the Psyschomodo album. I recall Jethro Tull was in the other studio there at the same time. Ian Anderson was trying to get an outdoor take of his voice around midnight one night, in the street next to the studio, with an extra long cable coming out of the building to a microphone on the pavement and everytime he tried to record it, a nightbus went by......

psychomodo album sleeve

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So here we all are in 2014, from left to right, myself, Robert Gross, Richard Garland and Mike Collins

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In these two photos, we have Richard Garland on top of the road sign, with Mike below him. On the van we have myself on the roof, with Mike hanging off the door and Robert hanging off the front windscreen. There is a funny story attached to this day, on the road between Plymouth and Penzance on June 28th 1974.

Rich and Bob June 74

Paris 74

Introducing the Crew

It was late last year 2014 when Robert Gross called me to say he was coming over from the West Coast of the Untied States for a visit, and could he stay with me a couple of days. Robert has lived over there for ages, having initially worked on a couple of tours in the 70's. It seemed a perfect time to try get together another reunion of the four of us. Robert Gross, Mike Collins and Richard Garland. The original road crew on the 1974 summer tour that Cockney Rebel did of the UK and the final shows, as it panned out, before the group self imploded at the end of July 74.

So in the next few audio tapes, here are those reprebates and some of their memories of that summer and the dates we played together.

Lightning