Being There, Or Not.

By some strange and entirely unintended coincidence the videos below are linked. At art college (Ravensbourne, venue of what has subsequently been described as the Sex Pistols' first gig - presented while I was a student there, and no I didn't go because I thought the name childish and supposed that the band was crap.) I was vaguely acquainted with a fellow who described my Royal Enfield as an oil slick and with whom I later worked, (for more than two years; my longest tenure of any employed position) in the art studio of a small leisure and trade magazine publisher. He was a drummer and a member of a band that was offered a contract by Chas Chandler, who had managed The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Chris, my fellow student and later colleague, was highly regarded and 'tipped for the top', with articles about him appearing in the NME and Melody Maker, if I recall correctly, comparing him with Keith Moon, John Bonham and Carl Palmer, amongst others. For a while he was favoured by a 'rock journalist' (?) named Chris Welch, by whom he was introduced to various contemporary notables, amongst them, Tony McPhee.

An unrelated Jimi Hendrix story concerns the eldest son of some family friends wh0, like his brother, was a pupil of the local grammar school, at which I was also a pupil, though a couple of years later. In what must have been 1967 he, then an upper sixth former, was responsible for booking the bands for that year's end of year 'concert'. The budget was, I recall, £50.00 and he had the option of two bands for slightly less than that or one band for slightly more. Naturally he plumped for the most noise for the money and opted for the two band package. A week or two later The Jimi Hendrix experience had their first number one hit and could not be had for ten times that sum.