Actually, now that I come to think about it, the squirrel probably enjoyed it as much as we did. Maybe it had dropped its nuts when we started chasing it, and was just going back for them; or perhaps it just became annoyed that we had disturbed its breakfast. Trevor and I fell about laughing, but the four legged pursuee turned pursuer just crossed to the side of the road and continued its interrupted muesli, and looked at us as if we were daft. 

Later that morning, but not a lot later, we arrived in the town where we were to play, and it was only about 9 a.m. The lads wanted to go have a look at the (I’m not sure that the word Town is quite right, or whether Village would be more accurate) but anyway, off they went, while the owner of the place where the show was to be let me crash out in one of his bedrooms. I had been driving all night after all. And chasing squirrels too, remember: well, a squirrel, anyway. The lads woke me up late that afternoon, and I got our bits and pieces set up on stage, and I must admit, I can’t remember much more: I must have crashed out again.

I always remember the light blue amplifiers we got from JMI, aka Vox music in Dartford. The latest AC30 amps: super sounds. When I think about it now, my home sound system has a 280 watt amplifier and 300 watt speakers. They were very good at the time though: or at least, then, we thought they were the cat’s pyjamas.

The amps had arrived at our London residence; the hotel most bands gravitated to when in London, the Madison Hotel, in Sussex Gardens: not far from Hyde Park, but closer I think, to Paddington. When we first went to London, we stopped at a place called the Russell Hotel, I think it was, in Russell Square. This was prior to discovering the Madison. I had a rather strange room that later turned out to be Jimmy Saville’s pied-a-terre; his home from home while in London. It was also kitted out like a dark-room, something I became more than familiar with in later years; but at that time, it was a mysterious place full of strangely labelled bottles and boxes. Like the invisible man’s lab. Well, he wasn’t there, so he was invisible, OK? And it did smell weird.

Faron and I went around to a Turkish Bathhouse not far from the hotel. I just went to make sure he didn’t get lost. He had a habit of going missing; but more of that later. He had a steam bath, massage, and freezing cold bath, and came out not nearly as tired as he had gone in. I just slept through it. 

We were playing just outside London one time, and we had been invited to dinner at the house of the secretary of Faron’s Flamingos fan club. We had had a lovely day; home cooked food and a lie in the garden. And in the evening we took the girl and a friend of hers with us to the hall where the boys were playing. Of course, eventually, Faron went missing. Well, anyway, the time to go on stage was drawing nigh, and Faron was nowhere to be seen. It was my job to make sure that everything went like clockwork, and up until then, I had never permanently lost any of my charges.

I searched all over, and was beginning to panic just a little, when I heard noises coming from the van, which was also rocking rather violently. I opened the door, and there he was, banging away at our fan club secretary on the back bench seat. The pair of them were totally oblivious to me standing there, until I asked the time honoured question, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ In retrospect, it was a superfluous and stupid question really. I almost dragged him out of the van, I was so angry. We had some three or four minutes before he was supposed to be on stage. When I got him into the dressing room, his face was grey. I thought, God, No, he’s sick. But when I checked, I discovered that he was covered with a powdered hair colorant that the girl had been wearing, and that made him look as if he had died and been dug up again. 

He had terrible eyesight, but at that time, he was far too vain to wear prescription specs, only sun glasses, even in the evening. He actually got married to a girl called Margie, later divorced, and it was only years later that he admitted he did not know what she looked like. He was in a club in Liverpool with his brother Jay. Faron was wearing glasses by this time, but with blue tinted lenses, I think. Jay turned to him and said, ‘Guess who’s just walked in?’ ‘Who?’ says Faron, looking vaguely in the same direction as Jay. ‘Your ex-missus, Margie’ says Jay, pointing towards a girl by the door. She was a nice girl, Margie, even though she’d not exactly been endowed with film star looks, but to Faron, seeing her clearly for probably the first time came as something of a traumatic shock. ‘Good Grief’ he said, ‘I was married to that? It’s a good job I was blind’.

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