( a musically influenced semi-autobiographical fiction )

It was way back in 1983, when inspired by the hard rock / heavy metal bands I liked and had seen live, I picked up a couple of flyers from my local record store advertising for vocalists for local metal bands. I fancied giving it a go, what did I have to lose?

 For years I had sung along with records at home, much to my parents’ dismay, (this had reached its zenith with a cracking version of Iron Maiden’s ‘Remember Tomorrow’, which the neighbours complained about, whether it was the volume the record was played at or my voice, I didn’t know), I had also sung in choirs in school and church, which of course was an entirely different style of music and of singing.

So, I was aware I had a voice, but could I cope with this, being in a band? I had seen some of the local metal bands who plied their trade on the local pub circuit, and thought I was probably as good as some of the vocalists I had seen in the Crescent Hotel, the Copper Beech, and other places around the city.  It looked easy, having a few beers, and getting up on stage, singing your way through the cover versions, with a few songs of your own interspersed into the set. I could banter away with an audience once I had drunk a pint or two, but sober I wasn’t sure, I would get there, surely. I didn’t have long hair, but what the hell, Rob Halford and Paul Di’anno got away with it so why shouldn’t I? Image wasn’t everything. Like those rock gods before me, I would get there. It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n’roll, as the song goes!

Anyway, I called one of the phone numbers, when my folks were out. The scene was set.  I would meet up with Bill and  Bob in Ma Cameron’s Bar where we would have a pint or two and discuss the potential band we could form, Bill played lead guitar and Bob played bass , they were still looking for a drummer for the as yet unnamed band, but Bill’s brother Andy would pitch up for a rehearsal if needed, and there was the matter of the second lead guitarist yet to be recruited .Evidently Andy  was a bit older, had seen Led Zeppelin at Knebworth , and Mark 2 Deep Purple live also, a bit more of a  hippy than a young up and at ‘em metal fan like me.

According to the flyer, Bill and Bob had similar musical influences as me , UFO, Judas Priest,  Whitesnake, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden being the main ones, I was not a fan of the new ‘thrash metal’ that was going about, with bands with like Slayer and Anthrax – that wasn’t for me, I was more into the melodic side of rock, maybe with two guitars playing in harmony with one another, like Thin Lizzy , and what the music papers called ‘soulful ‘ vocals, ( I’m thinking Paul Rodgers, David Coverdale and Phil Mogg here for examples) .

They had asked me what music I was into and I told them, they liked the same bands and LPs as me, so the ‘musical influences’ were there and none of us were into thrash, we had that much in common. Bill handed me a list of songs they had covered, some of which I had not heard, but UFO’s ‘Only You Can Rock Me’, Iron Maiden’s ‘The Trooper’, were favourites of mine, and strangely Tom Petty’s ‘Refugee’, jumped out at me, this music wasn’t metal, but I suppose his music was ok, I had heard ‘Refugee’ on the radio, so knew it vaguely. I told Bill and Bob, I could rehearse these ones at home, (the reality of this would be my singing along with the records at home, winding up the neighbours and my folks, and the Tom Petty LP would be borrowed from the Record Lending Library at the weekend). This was exciting, bloody hell, I might be playing at the Capitol this time next year, or at least the Music Hall!

My soon to be band mates, had discussed that my audition would be next Tuesday night, Bill would give me a lift to the rehearsal place, which was an old church hall in the harbour area of the city.

 ‘Have you got your own microphone?’, was Bob’s parting shot to me as we left Ma Cameron’s.

My own microphone? Surely, they had microphones. The only microphone I had was the one from the Grundig cassette player that my brother and me had shared in the 70s, the one I swung about as if I were, well, a rock star. Where would I find a microphone, I didn’t know anyone who had one, but in the end of the day, my future band mates would have one, I thought.

I told my folks, and brothers about my ‘audition’, and  this was treated with much mirth and derision, a lot of ‘you in a band?’, type comments, followed by guffaws of hysterical laughter.

Oh well, I would give it a go, what the hell, if at first you don’t succeed and all that.

Tuesday came around, and the doorbell went at around 7pm just after we had eaten,

My brother answered, as cheeky as ever,

‘It’s the guy from the band, he doesn’t look like a Rockstar’, more like a van driver or something!’

 Evidently Bill’s ‘day job’ was a van driver and here I was in the delivery van he was ‘borrowing’ from his work for the night. It was chucking down rain by the time we reached the rehearsal place, St Magnus’ Church Hall in a dark street near the harbour which was apparently the red-light district of the city. We had access to the hall for two hours, which would be time enough, said Bill, the Church Caretaker would be through at around 9.30pm to lock the place up.

My road to fame started here!

Bob and Andy were already there and jamming along to what sounded like ‘Doctor Doctor’ by UFO, with another lead guitarist, Paul he was called, he played very  proficiently , soloing away like Eddie Van Halen’s Aberdeen cousin, in fact the sound they were making was on a par with the bands that I had seen playing in pubs, and on the Queen’s Links during the summer months- quite impressive to my ears.

Bloody hell,  how was I going to manage here, in my head I was Phil Mogg, Bruce Dickinson, David Coverdale, whichever dynamic vocalist /frontman you wish to mention, the reality was something quite different in the cold light of the church hall.

Bill plugged in his guitar, and tested the microphones, announcing to the audience of none ‘One, two- one, two, Good Evening Aberdeen, we’re WolfClaw, welcome to our show, Bob’s going to introduce our new singer, Alan Wilson, and we’ll kick off with ‘The Trooper’, a great song by our pals Iron Maiden

Here was my chance, this was my cue, I guessed, the first step on the road to fame, it’s a long way to the top etc.

The drums and bass came thundering  in at a galloping pace and the twin lead guitars sounded like  a rough approximation of the Maiden tune, the lead lines interwoven with one another,  here was my big entrance, after this intro, where Bruce Dickinson comes in ‘You’ll take my life but I’ll take yours too’, I was making all the right moves holding the mic like a real Rockstar, but what was that wailing sound?, the yelp of someone in pain, the realisation hit me, it was my voice being heard for the first time through a microphone, and it wasn’t pleasant, I couldn’t scream like Bruce Dickinson, I didn’t have the voice for that.

I hoped the next song would be better, UFO, ‘Only You Can Rock Me’, the first band I had ever seen live, could I do this justice? It was easier, the tune, the vocal line, call it what you will was lower, so I didn’t struggle to reach the notes, my voice was getting hoarse, maybe I could have a raspy voice like Rod Stewart or someone. It was not a bad version of the song, even though I say so myself, but then came ‘Refugee’ which somehow brought out my Aberdeen accent, ok I clearly was not American, but anyway, whatever. Maybe I was in, maybe I was not, the doubts were kicking in, just like when I was back at school, being the last one picked for team games.

Throughout the audition, they all carried on without comment, real troopers,  aye right.

Bill told me that he would call me later in the week once they had auditioned the other two singers they had in mind, and of course the keyboard player.

He never did call me, and to be honest it was probably a good thing, I am not sure the Rockstar lifestyle and fame was for me anyway.

So, I went back to my hum drum life as an office worker, and Wolf Claw, does anyone remember them from back in the heady days of the Aberdeen rock nights and the NWOBHM back in the early 1980s?

I thought not.

As readers of this page will be aware, blues and rock are never far away from the top of my musical choice list, and David Coverdale’s Whitesnake, in their early days were a band who perfectly fitted this criteria for me.

It was back in 1980 , which with the passage of time really seems to have been a ‘ground zero’ year for heavy metal and rock music in general,  a pal invited me round after school to hear his latest batch of new albums , and also to boast about his record collection which was huge, and included many albums which would be worth a small fortune if sold online these days.

As I have said before, back in 1979/80 , money was in the words of the song, ‘too tight to mention’, this was the beginning of the ‘Thatcher Years’ , and if you were 16/17, someone with a large record collection had status, kudos, coolness in the playground or within your circle of friends outside school . My pal was an obsessive collector, and bought the 7 inch and 12inch single of his favourite bands if there was a chance of there being a live version of a song, or a b-side he’d managed to miss, he had to have everything the band had recorded, that was after all what collecting was all about. He was a big fan of Deep Purple , all their line-ups, and all the off -shoot bands that came from their number ; Rainbow, Gillan, and  Whitesnake. Being a part-time shop worker in the hours after school, he paid huge amounts of money for rare and hard to find early Deep Purple singles.  ‘Hush’ being one that comes to mind, which some of you might recall was memorably covered by Kula Shaker, back in the 1990s.

At the time I went to  his place, his collection was temporarily housed in the family caravan , outside the family home in a quiet middle class street in Aberdeen. Accordingly , he could play his music as loud as he wanted, with little or no comment from the neighbours, or so he told me. The albums he played selected tracks from that day were by ‘No Place to Run’- UFO, ‘Dynasty’-Kiss, ‘Pieces of Eight’ -Styx, ‘Unleashed in the East’- Judas Priest , and ‘ Live At Hammersmith’ , and ‘Trouble’- Whitesnake. ‘Live At Hammersmith’ was from the imports section at 1-Up Records, and was a bit pricey for me, at £8.99, but later on the record company would re-release it after the success of their ‘Ready an’ Willing’ album in November 1980, which was good for those of us with less money to play with.

My opinion was that Whitesnake’s were the best , they sounded quite like the later Deep Purple to my ears, but I suppose that’s because Coverdale, Lord and Paice were all ex-members of the band, so logic would say that they should sound similar. They weren’t a metal band, more of a blues-rock band, their metal years would come later with a change of guitarists and direction which pointed towards MTV, and music video stardom.

Hearing David Coverdale’s voice now on the aforementioned albums, as a seasoned listener, I hear the soul inflections and phrasings in his voice, similar to that of someone like Robert Palmer, rather than Robert Plant. perhaps a bit of both .Whitesnake were steeped in the Blues, their lyrics spoke of being ‘Born under a bad sign , left out in the cold‘, ‘walking in the shadow of the blues‘, clearly these guys knew their stuff.

One of my favourites from the ‘Live at Hammersmith’ album is ‘Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City’, as Coverdale says ‘a beautiful ballad, Jon’s going to introduce it for ya‘ was originally sung by blues/soul shouter, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, a big vocal influence on the likes of Van Morrison and US soul singer Johnny Sayles, it is indeed a beautiful ballad with Jon Lord’s introduction , and the crowd participation of the chorus adds a lot to it. Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody were both adept guitarists who worked well together, underpinned by the reliable bass of Neil Murray. Marsden had played in UFO earlier in his career, and was influenced by the blues, from the US blues players to the likes of John Mayall and Peter Green , whose work he would record an tribute album to later, and whose song ‘ Need Your Love So Bad’, Whitesnake covered when I saw them play at the legendary Glasgow Apollo in 1984 at the time their ‘Slide It In’ album came out.

Belgian Tom’s Hat-Trick is a bluesy instrumental on the ‘Trouble’ album, which to me sounds a bit like ‘Eric Clapton’s ‘Further On Down the Road’ , I recall hearing this on the Tommy Vance’s ‘Friday Rock Show’ back in the day. This piece really shows Marsden’s blues chops to great effect, and its good to know he is still around, and playing on the latest release ‘Royal Tea’ by blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa.

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1983 was the year I turned 20 , a time when I started listening to different genres of music, as I was free from the shackles of school and peer pressure, and had formulated my own ideas of what was good music and what wasn’t regardless of genre. Of course, heavy metal/ hard rock still figured strongly as it does to this day in my musical tastes, but I also listened to the likes of the Doors, Love, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits among others ,my tastes were widening, what with the assistance of Aberdeen City Libraries and their record section, and musically inclined work colleagues and friends

But in my heart of hearts, rock music still ruled ok (as we said back then) and in 1983 ‘Revolution By Night’ was certainly my favourite rock album, followed closely by Z.Z Top’s ‘Eliminator’ , a return to form for them, albeit electronically assisted, and Motorhead’s ‘Another Perfect Day’, a classier new sound, and a new guitarist, Brian Robertson ex-Thin Lizzy.

My top three bands were still producing decent, albeit more ‘commercial’, music in what was an ever changing music industry, what with music videos , and MTV, you sometimes encountered people who liked the video , but not the band or the song it was produced for, so perhaps what it was to be a music fan was changing also, perhaps the days of browsing racks of vinyl were coming to an end.

This was before the advent of CDs being mass produced; cds were something new, the latest thing in 1983, so all my choices above were vinyl albums. The Sony Walkman was a relatively new thing also, and hadn’t reached my family household yet, so cassette tapes were not something I actively bought, we still swapped mixtapes back then, but none of my peer group actually collected cassettes.

At this time, I-Pods, Minidisc and MP3 players, and internet downloads had not yet been invented, and were much a thing of the future , a wee bit like the jet-packs scientists said we would be buzzing about in the fabled year 2000.

‘The Revolution By Night ‘ was the album which saw Blue Oyster Cult take a more commercial direction, maybe looking for another big hit single like they had with ‘Reaper’ a few years before, and following the success of ‘Fire of Unknown Origin’ in 1981, they had Canadian producer Bruce Fairbairn at the helm this time, known for his production work for Prism and Loverboy, and on board this time were songwriting collaborators including Aldo Nova, Patti Smith, Ian Hunter, and Helen Wheels, to guide the good ship B.O.C into more commercial waters.

B.O.C’s blend of rock and pop really works for me on this album; one of my favourite rock critics described them as being a cross between the Doors and the Beach Boys, and I would say this is perfectly illustrated by ‘Eyes on Fire’, with its memorable singsong chorus; the darkness and light at the heart of their music.

At the time their music was criticised in the music press as being AOR, (Adult Orientated Rock) in the USA, but as it was the legendary Blue Oyster Cult, this was forgivable.

‘Take Me Away’ , my favourite track on the album is a tale of alien visitation, carries on the UFO theme which started with E.T.I.( Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) from ‘Agents of Fortune’ back in the 70s. ‘The Men In Black’ are named again, ‘their lips are sealed’ as to the alien visitations, and the narrator of the lyric wants to go with them .

I suppose like in the Spielberg movie ‘ET’, these aliens in the song are friendly and are not there for the purpose of abduction as we might think.

Anyway, as I said my life was changing, I was now into my 20’s, music still figured in a big way (as it still continues to), and I had a new interest, I was into running , long distance running. What had started out as a Sunday afternoon jog around the block, to collapse red faced , puffing and panting onto the sofa , had grown into a full blown obsession , of running longer distances, my goal being run a marathon. I was never competitive or remotely sporty in my life prior to this, but I had set my sights on completion of this 26 miles 385 yards of a race. Its strange when you think of it now, in these digital days where most folk listen to music as they walk or run through our cities. At that time , I thought of songs to spur me on, bands like Blue Oyster Cult, AC/DC tunes that rocked would do the trick, get me going faster and hopefully farther.

I was Sylvester Stallone in my mind, running up the stairs in ‘Rocky’, I was looking for my ‘Eye of the Tiger’, but my goal was the marathon, and the completion thereof.

I thought nothing of running from my folks’ house near Aberdeen’s Westburn Park, across the city to Kincorth and back on a given Saturday morning, sometimes after a night in the pub.

I attained my ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and completed my first marathon in 1984, and I subsequently ran many 10k, half marathon and marathons over the next 15 years, sometimes with a Walkman on, with suitable rock music accompaniment, but more often without.

In 1983, gigs were still a big thing in my life and in Aberdeen. I saw Motorhead, Big Country, Hanoi Rocks, Chris Rea, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Bauhaus in that year, a real mixed bag , like the Pick and Mix section at the sweet counter in Woolworths!

Blue Oyster Cult are still going also, they released a cracking new album in 2020, entitled ‘The Symbol Remains’, which was one of my favourite rock albums of the year, and a welcome surprise in the year of the Pandemic!