Dave Rhead, fighting cowboys and poisoning The Rolling Stones
Dave sat next to the sign from his old local ‘The Swan’, which he somehow aquired.
I recently sat down to speak with Dave Rhead, local folkie, the man who gave The Rolling Stones food poisoning in the 60’s, the man who played in a number of bands and supported a lot of big names. Here are a few stories from Dave, in his own words.
On the early days with ‘The Urchins’
I lived on Morley street til I was, can’t think now, think I was about 8 or 9 when I left market street, Our house got knocked down so we moved to morley street until my late 20’s. the good old days, sex drugs and rock and roll, all I got was the rock and roll!
I got into music by listening to the radio, Saturday morning programme, uncle matt used to have all sorts of stuff on, played Peter, Paul and Mary and stuff like that which I picked up on and started learning. I bought my first guitar for 10 bob from a lad at school, he brought it in at dinnertime and I had to sneak it into my lesson, I hid it in the corner and half way through it crashed down onto the floor, the teacher turned and said “dropped your pencil case have we Rhead?”. There was like a gang of us, we used to go to the church youth club at St Edwards, a couple of us used to go up there and we became ‘The Urchins’. We were about 15-16 I think, I could get a drink I know that, that was 63’ and I was born in 46’.
I remember once my dad had lent me £50 towards buying this guitar, then he started wanting it back like, so like you do stupid things, I says if you want your £50 I’ll sell it for £50, so I did, I sold the bloody thing for £50. I’ve got a photo of it, it’s worth about 5 grand now! So I never sold anything again after that.
We used go all over place… Halifax! We used to go on a Sunday night to a club in Halifax that Big Daddy (Shirley Crabtree) owned, he was a wrestler, you know, on the old wrestling circuits. It was a 3 story place, a blues band on one floor and a soul band on another, like the embassy club in Stoke. I think it closed down at 12 o clock, everyone had to go out into the streets and then come back in for another hour, because they couldn’t play on a Sunday legally. They only served coke and that, no alcohol.
I mean round here there was a youth club that you could play in every night of the week, you’d just offer to play the gig and that’s how you learned, by playing in front of people. – When we were playing in Halifax we didn’t used to get back until half 5 in the morning, then we’d just get changed and go to work.
On fighting with cowboys
We sort of, late 60’s, must have done 3 or 4 years of the urchins and it got to this point where it was like a sport, if we played in Cheadle for instance we’d get beat up by the Cheadle people and if Cheadle people played here they’d get beat up by Leek people. They’d wait outside until you started loading your van and then they’d get you, they wouldn’t rob you, they’d just beat you up. There was a famous one at The Wagon and Horse in Meir, it’s burnt down now since, thank god. We were playing there and it was at that time the D road was being built, there were a lot of workers over, Friday nights they’d go out and buy a suit, go out with their wives and babies and everything, pick on a place and beat everybody up. They came bursting into The Wagon and Horse, came in and ordered some drinks, this one fella picked his pint up and just poured it over this old guys head just to start something going. Anyway, this guy’s son was there, next thing you know he’s smashed a bottle on the counter and he’s twisting it in this lads face, it was a right mess. At this point, I’d unplugged and was behind the roadie. The landlord says, “ you’ll have to keep them here, we’ve rang the police, they’ve got to get here for them like”. So anyway, this bloke that’s been bottled with blood pouring out of his face comes over and says, “come on, get back playing, play when the saints come marching in”. I says “we don’t know it… oh yes we do!” and when the police came it started all over again, it was quite funny. I remember this big copper came through the door, it was like swing door type of thing and his belly came in first, this lad ran at him and he just bounced him with his belly. It turned out later that our bass player married that policeman’s daughter.
We were playing at Ipstones one night and there’s a gang called the Cheadle cowboys, I think I’ve told you the tale before. They turned up with cowboy hats, boots and fake guns. We just finished the first set and the said “we’re having you after” like and the lady working the doors was the famous Maggie Wilshaw, she used to work the doors at the town hall and anyone that did anything they were thrown down the steps, she was a tough woman and she’d disappeared! So we were there on us own and it came time for us to go back on stage and the doors burst open and income the cowboys striding down towards us, we were shitting ourselves. Then the doors burst open again and about half a dozen of the lads from the town hall, the fighters from Leek, Maggie had been down and fetched them in the van. So they pushed their way through and lined themselves up in front of the stage and said if “if you want them you’ve got us first, outside”. They all went outside and kicked the shit out of each other. When we were loading up later we were treading over bodies with hats over their faces.
On Van Morrison and The Hollies
In those days we were supporting people like Van Morrison, when he was with a band called ‘Them’. Because what used to happen was, on a Saturday night there was 3 places, Cheadle, Leek and Congleton, the town halls were booked by these two lads I used to go to school with and there’d be three bands on at each place, so there’d be your big star like Gene Vincent, he’d do 20 minutes in Cheadle, come to Leek and do 20 minutes, then go to Congleton. So one band would stay at one of the towns and the other would travel around. A lot of them were a bit heavy on your equipment, I remember someone split my speaker he was playing so loud. We ended up playing with Gene Vincent, Johnny Kidd and The Pirates and the Rolling Stones came but we didn’t play that one, we just watched (We’ll get back to that one).
One time we’d done our set in Leek and got to Congleton for the middle set and as you come down into Congleton there’s an Irish off-license called finnegans. The whole band (Van Morrisons ‘them’) were outside pissed as farts, rolling around with bottles of Guinness. By the time they got to Leek I think they were really far gone.
We met the Hollies early on when we were setting up as the Urchins, they stayed in Leek for a week with the famous Maggie Wilshaw. We bunked off school and spent the week with them, that’s where I got my first guitar lesson, with Graham Nash who showed me what I was doing wrong, never looked back since. About a year after, the Hollies were at Buxton Pavillion Gardens and we go the support job, they remembered us from Leek. They had a dressing room, we had to change in the corridor like, anyway, they invited us into the dressing room and caught up with us. “We’re Through” was number two in the charts then. We had to play some long sets and the promoter said it was the only night he could remember where there wasn’t a fight, maybe we didn’t fire them up enough.
On Folk
The folk side came from when I packed in with the urchins. I saw a programme on tele cause I had to stay in on Saturday night, it was a programme called Hullabulloo and there was a bloke called Martin Carthy doing folk songs, it enthralled me that a bloke could just stand there with a guitar and the whole audience would just sit there and look at him and then clap, rather than making a fuss and having a fight, so I thought id have a dabble at that. I’d be about 17-18 I suppose.
The biggest of the folk bands that I was in was called Parke, we did two albums, one in 71’ and one in 72’. There was a lot of folk clubs, you could go to one every night of the week in those days, people used to turn up to a spot to get a booking. We went up to Tideswell to watch two guys called Robin and Barry Dransfield, there was a girl doing the song spot and it was Barbara Dickson so we booked her for Leek there and then. We had her back for Leek arts festival 40 odd years after as well and she’d remembered playing in Leek.
Parke happened by chance, we were installing a computer at Tattons where I worked for a production control, wages and that, it was punch card operated, the machine was massive and slow. They sent a guy to install this machine, a guy called John Jenkins and at first we didn’t get on with this guy coming in and telling us what to do. Anyway, one diner time we got chatting and he said he played guitar so I told him to bring it along one day, he ended up staying over. Baz out of the Urchins was still itching to play so he came along, Johns fiancé at the time, Julie and a guy called Mario, Italian guy worked for the same company as John. We just got together and started playing in folk clubs and that.
One day we saw an advert in one of the folk magazines called folk heritage, anyone who wanted to make an album, there’d be no cost in making it but you’d have to sell 250 of them. So you got the album made but you didn’t make any money out of the album, they got the money because they’d spent the time in the studio. When the first album came out we sold 250 dead easily because we had contacts in Manchester and round here, one of them went on the internet a few months ago for £365. Somebody’s put a lot of it on Youtube and that. Anyway, because it went so well we did a second album. In the end we didn’t exactly split up, we were made to, Mario went down to Peterborough, John and Julie went to Cambridge so it was just me and Baz.
Then we started Cuckoo’s Nest with two other folkies and opened up the folk club at the rugby club one of the early guests was Barbara Dickson there again, we’ve had most of the big folk names at the rugby club, then we moved to The Swan which was really good because they let us do what we wanted, that’s where Leek Arts Festival started as well in 77’ I think, I think I’ve done about 45 years of the arts festival. We didn’t have an arts festival last year and we’re not this year, I hope to make 50 arts festivals before I pack in. Trouble is the artists that I get are sort of my age, so they’re packing in too!
Ah it’d be the late 70’s early 80’s, we did stuff up at The Highwayman, the guy there was doing folk nights on a Sunday. We’d formed a band, me John Bailey, Mike Gledhill (Who’d managed to get a day off from teaching, saying that it was ‘research’) and Cath Burn who used to sing for Cuckoo’s Nest, we used to do a residency up The Highwayman. Anyway, we got a call one day off the BBC, they were running a program called ‘Ballads of The North West’, the stipulation was the folk group had to have a girl and the bands would play a song while people acted out a scene from a period of history, ours was the battle of Flodden Fields. They’re all on BBC archives except for ours, there was a big storm that night, we couldn’t watch it in Leek, it was on BBC North. I was at Alsager college at the time and we managed to get a bloke to record it. When we went up to record it we did quite a few songs, we were quite close to where they shoot Corrie and on our diner break we went into the Rovers Return and had a game of darts. But like I say, the tapes got wiped and we haven’t got a tape of it apart from the one that the guy in Alsager made and I don’t know what format that is, so I’ve never seen it.
In the 80’s we got together as the Basement band, we just said ‘lets find somewhere where we can make a noise’, we practiced down the hockey club with the agreement that we’d do a gig and that, they do a festival every year and we’ve been in some states while playing in the marquee. The name came from practising in a friend’s cellar. We did an LP in 81’, we just picked a track each and did our own track up at this studio in Whitchurch. We played all over as the Basement, it was a bit of fun, we got t shirts made with the logo on, the trouble was if you wore a jacket – Dave picks up the LP in front of us and covers some letters to reveal ‘Semen Band’ - “so we couldn’t wear jackets, we’d never thought of that unfortunately”.
Fairport, that was a tale, we had Dave Swarbrick, the fiddle player, he came down with Simon Nicol, six months after we had the whole of Fairport Convention down, did a whole acoustic gig in Leek, they promised to come back every year and they have done, we’ve got them booked in for next year, obviously can’t do this year.
When the swan shut abruptly, I think it shut in April and the arts festival was supposed to be in may, we moved to The Foxlowe, they’d been trying to get us to go there anyway but the room at The Swan was so much better. At the time The Foxlowe was an old working men’s club, pretty grim room to go in to, acoustics were pretty bad, but they’ve done a lot since that first year. We tend to just put solo artists in there now, it’s too small for a big group.
The Ceilidh band was good because we did weddings and stuff like that, I don’t know how it happened but we were doing cuckoos nest and we started getting interested in the dance side of things, we played instrumental music anyway. There was this thing called the English song and dance society which all the folkies used be in it. We started going and playing live music for them and we went all over doing that sort of thing, it paid alright.
I think were one of the oldest folk clubs in England, so I’ve been told, there was a point about 10 years ago where we were nominated for being one of the best folk clubs in England but as it was coming up to this time The Swan had shut down so we lost out. I also got a certificate off the town council which gives me freedom of the town, so I can herd sheep down Derby street if I want to, I’ve got the key to Leek but no door to open!
On The Rolling Stones
Well, we played our first gig in 63’ at the town hall, at St Edwards church, the church was a lot bigger community thing then than what it is now. The Rolling Stones came in December, we wanted to do the support gig for them, but we only had about half an hours numbers, so another band from Stoke ‘The Escorts’ did it that night. We ended up helping out because it was a big thing like, anyway they turned up, white transit van as usual and Bill Wyman and Brian Jones didn’t get to the van in time. The van had left because they had to drive up with all the stuff, Bill and Brian ended up taking the train to Stafford and the other guys met them at Stafford and bought them over to Leek. They had Andrew Oldham with them who’d just taken over as manager and he wanted to tart them up a bit, they had to wear these blue waistcoats and things like that, they hated it but he made them wear them in leek so they could see what they looked like. Anyway, Brian and Bill had had nothing to eat, the others had stopped off at a motorway café, with it being Christmas eve there were no chip shops or anything open, so the only thing we could do was check the local pubs that had pie warmers on the bar. We went to the Roebuck and there was nothing in there, then we went to the Talbot and had a look and there were some pork pies, so we had a pint and Bill and Brian had some Amersleys pork pies, they did the gig and off they went. When Bill Wymans book came out, his first one, it went up to Christmas 1963 and the last bit of the book is, “play in Leek, why did we play in Leek? Why did we go, we had to wear those blue waistcoats and me and Brian got food poisoning, we were throwing up all over Christmas and boxing day”.
We met Bill another time, at this point he had a band called ‘Bill Wymans Rhythm Kings’, we went to see them. I managed to nick the poster from the front of the opera house, we went out the back and saw one of the other band members who we asked about getting everyone’s autograph. We went into their bus, there was a guy in front of us holding a Rolling Stones poster asking if Bill would sign it, Bill said “It’s not my facking band”, he wouldn’t sign it. Afterwards I went up with my poster and told him the rest of the band had signed it and he was happy to, I said “do you remember Leek?” he says “Christmas eve 1963, me and Brian had those two pies and were throwing up for days” I said “I’m sorry sir it was me who took you across to the pub to get them, but I do know the bloke who made them”, he says “do you see still see him?” I said, “yeah I see him most days”, he said “well if you see him will you facking hit him for me?”. So I got the poster signed in the end, I went to see him another time and got him to sign another poster, I’ve got one that says “forgiven for the pies”. It was on tele not so long ago, I walked passed the living room and heard Leek being mentioned, I stuck me head in the door and there they were talking about Bill Wyman on ‘The Last Leg’. Adam Hills had got that story from Dave Swarbrook when Adam had done a stand-up gig in Leek recently, I was expecting a phone call to get on tele but it never happened.
On Lindesfarne
At me funeral I want the quote, “he roamed the land with a guitar in his hand and his eyes ever open for some fun.” Yeah, ‘run for home’. Alan, he stayed he quite a lot, he drank too much and got depressed and did himself in, sad, very sad, he was a really nice guy. His wife used to come here you know and we’d get back after a night out and he’d polish a bottle of whiskey off by himself. We did try to get Lindisfarne to come and do an acoustic gig but in the end it was too late, Alan had gone. They carried on with another guy, they wanted like 4-5 grand for a gig and it was just too much then.
On Family
I met Lou at one of the arts festivals, first time I took her out the car broke down in Bakewell. Being married before I didn’t really want anyone seeing us and we had to get the car back to the garage at the top of Ashbourne road and of course everyone saw us, nephews and all this. Anyway, Sam came in 95’ and Rachel was a millennium girl, I just wish me mum would have been about to see the kids, me mum had died by then. I’d found my mum because she hadn’t turned up at her old age pensioners do. She used to really get on well with Lou but it’s a shame she never met the kids. Me dad wasn’t very well towards the end, when dad died, mum sort of came alive a bit, after looking after him so long and that. Dad was sort of losing it, you’d call it dementia nowadays.
On covid
I’ve been shielded most of the time, I can’t go out and see people, it has driven me mad, I’m suffering from depression with not seeing people, I’m still now conscious of going out, I’ve only had the one vaccination shot yet. I think I finish shielding tomorrow officially. Its like the whole music business has come to a standstill, how the guys are going on at the moment who it’s their profession, how they’ve managed this year I don’t know. Like Fairport Convention, been touring for 50 odd years and this years been a whole year of nothing. I’ve hardly had my guitar out the whole time, what’s the point in learning songs if you can’t play them to anybody? Then you just lose all motivation, I’ve been very like that and it’s a big job to get it back isn’t it. and to start up again, with the arts festival and the folk club, I suddenly realised in the first year of covid just how much time I put into them, because I suddenly had all this free time on my hands. Since this heart problem, I’m okay now but I don’t feel as fit as I did a few years ago, I don’t know if I could take it on again. It’ll be a while again until people feel like they can come out and trust going out with a load of people they don’t know, I think that’ll be a problem. The folk club’s audience are pretty much all my age, 60s/70s and they’re the ones that are more worried. A few days like this and you feel a bit better, I’m still wary of going to Morrisons or something like that, I’m still worried, it’s not over yet and if all this backfires then they might lock down again, most of the pubs and little shops just won’t survive that.