Patterns in the Chaos

Corky and daughter Deniz visit Tile Cross, Aug 68.

The horizon that beckoned was in a southerly direction, and I was propelled toward it by a girl I had met (a 'dizzy broad' Corky called her disapprovingly!). Sharon had in mind toasting herself in the Florida sun and away from the freezing Baltimore winter of January 1971. Together we planned a way to get to the sun via the auspices of a drive-away car (that's a car whose owner has jetted on ahead leaving it to be delivered to him. Only in America do such things exist it seems).
It took two and a bit days to ply the 1,200 miles down the eastern states of the Union in our posh 1968 Cadillac Fleetwood that I had been commissioned to deliver to it's owner in Miami. In Georgia, we passed a chain gang of convicts at the roadside, hacking at the verge with hoes and shovels while a couple of overfed foremen stood watching... At Daytona, Florida, we drove along the beach - the same hard shoulder of sand stretching for miles where Malcolm Campbell's Bluebird had pushed the world land speed record to over 400 mph in the 30s.

Just north of the city of Miami, in the coastal town of Fort Lauderdale, a little motel caught our eye: the 'Riptides' it said proudly on the high gaudy neon sign. We pulled in and rented a room.

That evening I found myself sitting around the pool beneath the mild tropical winter sky of Florida, strumming my guitar while the motel manager and a couple of other young guys listened. The manager immediately telephoned a friend of his - Ron - who had a late night show on a radio station in Miami (WBUS - 'Magic Bus') and got me to sing down the phone to him.
'Can you go down to the station and do a session for him?' the motel manager asked me.
'When?'
'Now!'

Miami
I spent quite a few late nights at the 'Magic Bus' station with Don the DJ. One time he got me reading the news over the air and I remember stumbling over the pronunciation of places in Vietnam that figured with sinister repetition in the news reports of the time. But the thing I remember most about that little closet of a studio is that that is where I met the Bird:
'Hi' he said, bursting into the room like a politician appearing from behind a curtain. 'My name is Warren but everyone knows me as the "Bird" - I just heard you on my radio and I wanted to come down and meet you in the flesh. So - here I am! Hello!'
'Oh wow, that's nice. Thanks. And yes, hello…'

Above: Magic Bus Radio station in Miami - Amazingly their flyer pictures the front of a Midland Red double-decker bus, a common sight in my home town of Birmingham.

The Bird on the balcony of our Miami apartment.

The 'Bird' looked like an American version of Confucius, his spindly frame animated with an elastic swagger bedecked by an ever-ready, knowing smile. Before he had left the studio that night he had offered me a place to stay and in a short order I had moved in with him, becoming the beneficiary of his home, his Volkswagon car, and really everything he had - except his girl-friends of course. I had entered into the pot-smoking hippy culture of America, where everything was communal property.
The Bird and I became staunch friends and allies. When the album that Lou had recorded was released in America he wrote the sleeve notes for it. He was a sharp, clued-in man always riding on the vim of a contagious optimism. It was also the first time I really got to know Jewish people - Warren was from a Jewish family and not unreasonably, happened to have Jewish friends. I quickly came to appreciate how dexterous and resourceful they all seemed to be, and to understand a little of how it was they had such a pre-eminence in business, especially the music business of course.

Somehow, I don't recall just how, I became hitched up to a local music impresario named Steve, and through him, I met up with a singer named Mickey Carroll. When we met, Mickey was sat with two other musicians high up on an elevated balcony overlooking the bar at the Rancher Motel, Miami, singing and smiling down at us through his Don Juan moustache, while delivering a Vegas ambience of musical cool.
After his set, we went 'backstage' to the changing room. Steve asked me to play him something and the song 'Oh boy I'm cold' climbed out of it's pram into instant fame: I had written it in Corky's basement just a couple of weeks before, and when I played it to Mickey Carroll, he gushed superlatives upon it so much that I wafted out of the Rancher Motel on a cloud of pure cotton wool. I guess the reason Steve wanted me to play a song was so that Mickey could vet me. Anyway, I must have passed because soon Steve swung into action as my manager and I had write-ups in the local papers, a TV appearance, and then a spot singing in a bar in south Miami. The bar was a tough job. Looking back, I think that my impression of Ritchie Havens - the flavour of the moment - was something of an acquired taste for the uninitiated and my impression of me was only marginally better.

In the Coconut Groves.

Looking Glass
Consequently before too long I was jobless and somewhat financially embarrassed. In March I saw an ad in the paper for a job playing bass with a group that had some kind of special programme and lots of work for the right person. I responded to the ad and met the group 'The Looking Glass' - Randy, Paul, Flick, and after a short audition, Dave from England - me! The programme certainly was special - they had been contracted to do evangelistic concerts at High Schools all over Florida! I had never heard of such a thing. An evangelistic show, playing rock 'n' roll and then giving the gospel? Paul, the lead guitarist, did most of the talking. They wanted me to have a go. I tried a scripted piece but quickly found out I was too nervous to say a word over the microphone if it didn't have a song attached to it. So I concentrated on playing, bought a second hand Fender Precision bass guitar and throughout May and June of 1971, The Looking Glass could be found playing to a captive audience of pupils at schools with names like Palmettos Junior High, and North Miami High. Some times we played three times in a day.

I ended up spending a year and a half in America in two visits separated by a short spell back in England in between. On both trips I played with 'The Looking Glass.'

I also appeared as a folk singer but I have to admit I was not wonderful at it. At one place I got booed off. Mind you, the crowd were waiting to see Eric Burden - the next on the bill - at the time. A roomful of seething rhythm and blues fanatics were greeted by Moi, with feeble acoustic guitar and wobbly voice and they were not amused. It was what you might call a tough assignment.
But thirty years later, my ragged experience folk-singing in America came into its own in an arena I would never have dreamed of in a million years - being a worship leader on guitar at Church on the Hill, Northfield, Birmingham, England!

The Looking Glass 1971-72

Flick (keyboards), 
Randy (drums), 
Paul (guitar) 
and me (bass) 
pose for the 
Looking Glass
group foto, 
Miami 1971.

Rum Runner
In the 70’s the ‘Rum Runner’ night club gradually took over from the ‘Cedar’ as the premier nocturnal hang-out for Birmingham’s musicians and the like. The Rum Runner could be truthfully described as an underworld joint as it did in fact occupy the entire basement of a disused Victorian workhouse on Broad Street. It was reached by a long alleyway which descended like a rickety slipway from street level down to the club’s dimly-lit entrance.

The subterranean world of the Rum Runner was perennially guarded by Big Albert and his team. Like a posse of preying mantis’s Big Albert & Co monitored the constant stream of revellers that passed before their all-seeing gaze with a special eye for their continued eligibility, or otherwise, of the Rum Runner’s grace, favour and festivities.

I would describe Albert as a large man and I can tell you that he kept order in the Rum Runner in much the same way that the Romans kept order at the farthest reaches of their empire: by a system of simple, well-understood rules. Albert’s rules were so simple that that anyone who got to visit the Rum Runner more than once could understand them perfectly:
‘You come in here causing trouble and I’ll break your neck,’ he would declare to the crowd waiting at the entrance, an announcement seemingly made to no one in particular but often magically zooming in to spotlight one who, Albert had already divined with his steely glare, was especially in need of that information. Even so, there was no undue malice in his tone, just a matter of fact helpfulness; a description of cause and effect as neutral as a professor explaining the law of gravity to his pupils.

As I became a regular visitor at the Rum Runner, I got to witness Albert’s rules in action many times: Often this would take the form of a rugby scrum surging through the labyrinths of the club - Albert and his crew motivating a ‘trouble-maker’ toward the exit like an army of ants would roll a piece of bread toward their nest, the crowd parting before them like the Red Sea as they inexorably progressed their quarry toward the entrance, and the final resting place of all ‘trouble-makers,’ the cold cobblestones of the  alleyway beyond.

I had worked at the Rum before, for four months in 1970 as part of the resident group, ‘Fred’s Box’ (just before recording my album with Lou Reizner). 
By 1973 - where we are now in this tale - guitarist Fred had left 'Fred's Box' taking his box with him. (Yes the 'box' actually existed - it was a piece of electronic wizardry, a sort of prototype guitar effects pedal that Fred had built. I am told the gadget became enshrined as their name one day when they had been casting around, looking for something to call themselves. But I never did get to know just why university graduate Howard Williams answered to the name of 'Fred!') 
Anyway, by 1973 the only one remaining from the original line-up was singer Bob Catley. Around him a new 'Fred's Box' had arisen with Tony Clarkin on lead guitar and Kex on drums - a group that would shortly be calling itself 'Magnum' .

At the time, the Rum employed two groups to play each night – one to do the early stint from ten to twelve and another to pick up the remainder, until two o’clock and closing time. In addition, the club’s owners - the ‘Berrows’ family (one of whom was later to taste fame as manager of the hit group ‘Duran Duran’) were employing the musicians of their groups in the daytime, as navvies working to build a new club. It was in the ground floor of an office block, a half a mile from the Rum Runner, a building that was now in the process of being gutted and refashioned into the night spot that would be one day be called ‘Snobs.’

Through my frequent visitations to the Rum Runner, I got offered a job with the other musicians as a labourer at the pubescent ‘Snobs’, a prospect I promptly said ‘yes’ to, being in need of the cash at the time.
And so I spent my days in the summer of 1973 covered in muck and dust along with the other Rum Runner musicians - banging, drilling, humping, fetching and carrying…  Still the indecorous work we did is not what I particularly recall about that time. What I remember best is how it became a comedy house of heinous pranks:

I remember the day that Kex found his brand new boots had been pinned to the concrete floor of our makeshift changing room with an industrial gun, and the fact that the same device was used later to nail someone into a toilet (I don't remember who it was).
And the afternoon when Grant (a musician in the 'other' band at the Rum) was using a power hammer to excavate a portion of the concrete floor... A ‘kango’ is a noisy thing even when used in the open air, but inside the shell of the new club, the din it made was absolutely deafening. Grant’s efforts went on for quite a while until finally, John (also from the ‘other’ band), unplugged Grant’s kango and cut the plug off the lead with a big pair of scissors.
For several minutes choice words of anger were bandied to and fro across the room, Grant arguing he had to get the job done, while John suggested he did it some other time when he wasn’t there.
All the rest of us agreed with John.
For the next twenty minutes a relative peace descended upon the workplace as Grant laboured to rewire the plug onto the severed power cord. Eventually it was done and he announced this fact loudly to us all, adding by way of disclaimer for any subsequent damage to eardrums, that he would now be continuing with extra fervour and intensity because ‘he had to catch up on lost time and get the job done.’
‘Oh Grant?’ the voice of John sang to him from the other side of the big room.
‘Yeah?’ said Grant, looking up as he reached to insert his newly wired plug into the socket of the extension lead.
In the distance, John held the far extremity of the coiled extension cable, offering it up like a bouquet of flowers, with its solitary petal, the electric plug dangling limp and helpless, while in his other hand he held the pair of scissors ….
‘No, don’t do that,’ pleaded Grant.
’Well, are you going to make that racket with that thing again?’ John rasped back firmly.
’You know I’ve got to get the job done,’ said Grant, appealing to John’s sense of reason. It was the totally wrong appeal to make at that juncture.
’Okay then,’ said John impassionate.
The scissors sliced through the wire and the plug fell with a plonk to the ground, and after John and Grant’s shouting and our gales of iniquitous mirth had died away we all spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of tranquil harmony, apart from the fumes of Grants’ displeasure hovering about us like a grey cloud.

I became pals with Tony Clarkin, the lead guitarist of ‘Fred’s Box,’ during that stint as a labourer.
One night after a days’ work at ‘Snobs’, I was in the Rum Runner as usual, standing by the stage watching him play, when Mr. Berrow came in and spoke with some visible stern-ness to the bass player (who happened to also be in charge of the musicians at the new club). The group took an immediate break and disappeared for high-level discussions.
Tony Clarkin reappeared a short time later and came up to me explaining that some administrative chicanery had come to light and the finger of blame had fallen heavily upon their bass-player.
‘The gaffer wants him OUT right away' Tony said.
’Oh.’
'You play bass, don't you Dave?' he added, more like he was telling me than asking me.
'Yes' I confirmed.
‘Do you want the job?’
'Er, yes.’
'Right, you're in.’
'Oh, er.. great, thanks - when do I start?'’ 
'In five minutes after I've had a wee and chatted up that bird over there.' 
That’s how I ended up playing loud bass guitar for ‘Magnum.’ I don’t recall the instance the group changed its name from ‘Fred’s Box’ but I do remember the new name being Tony’s idea.
‘What’s a magnum?’ I asked him.. Of course it was the gun Clint Eastwood used in ‘Dirty Harry.’

It was really the genesis of the heavy-metal group ‘Magnum,’ who were later to sell many tens of thousands of records and become a cult hit amongst Christendom’s head-bangers and leatherwear rockers, under the propulsion of Tony’s great songs and guitar playing. But back then they were still just a resident group at a nightclub, playing the flaccid hits of the day and being perpetually told to turn down because the waiters in the restaurant couldn’t hear what the customers were saying to them.

Mick
‘Gents must wear a collar and tie at all times’ the notice said in the foyer. It was something that Big Albert & Co loved to recite like a mantra to the crowd baying at the entrance.

One of Albert’s team of bouncers was a man named Mick Walker, erstwhile singer with the Birmingham group ‘The Redcaps.’ Mick managed to be both tall, relatively slim and yet still have the profile and aura of a bouncer but always with the addition of a mischievous smirk ready to break out into a grin at any moment. Pranks and humour were never far removed from Mick and in fact he divided his time between being bouncer and stand-up comic, as well as often indulging his musical bent by joining the groups in impromptu performances.
One evening, while the group were on break, the taped music suddenly stopped and Mick appeared from the rear of the small stage. The customers gasped. So did we. He was wearing nothing but socks and underpants and the collar of a shirt from which hung a somewhat poorly knotted tie. He strode up to the microphone:
'Ehem... Ladies And Gentlemen. Your Attention Please. May I remind you that Gents MUST wear a collar and tie at all times. If anyone in the club is not properly dressed they will be asked to leave. Thank you for your co-operation.'
Like a model on the catwalk, Mick whirled around and exited the platform with excessive feminine wobbles of his backside while we all roared with laughter and the girls in front of the stage covered their mouths and gawped wide-eyed at his spindly white legs.

Yes
It was an era where I was saying 'yes' to everything. So for example when a friend named Kim Holmes came into the Rum Runner one night and sidled up to Tony and I at the bar, musing aloud that he needed a carpenter to build his new recording studio on Bristol Street - and did we happen to know anybody who did that sort of thing? - I immediately said: 'YES, - we can do it!'
'Who is WE?' Tony asked as soon as Kim was out of earshot.
'You and me of course' I said.
'We can build it for him. You're good at building things and if you tell me what to do, I can help!'

Tony and I built 'Nest' studios for Kim. It took us about three months, working in the daytime while playing the Rum in the evenings and when it was complete, we used the studio to record many songs. Later in the 70s I recorded there with Jim Cleary, and also did the demo for my song 'Princeton' amongst others.

I was with Magnum for two and a half years and for most of it we worked as the resident group at the Rum. It was the musical equivalent of a nine to five job, steady and secure and forgotten about as soon as you went home. For six months in 1973 every last disposable penny of my wages was funnelled directly to the flying club at Birmingham Airport who taught me to fly aeroplanes, and thereafter flying continued to consume spare cash - albeit at a slightly lower rate - along with my interest.
After the job at the Rum Runner came to an end in June 1975, Magnum did some stints as a backing group on the cabaret circuit, providing the back line in turn for Eddie Holman, Mary White and Del Shannon, all of whom had at some point in time, been famous - in Del Shannon's case I think mega-famous is more appropriate. In 1975 we cut a couple of records which sank without a trace - 'Sweets for my Sweet,' an old Searchers hit from the 60's that we resuscitated with a manic beat courtesy of Kex, and a song I wrote called 'Baby I need' which was never released. I don't remember who the baby was, but my need at the time was for a change from strumming bass guitar as loud as possible. I didn't really feel in my heart that Heavy Metal was for me and so at the end of 1975, I left Magnum.

Magnum 1973-75



CBS's promotional Magnum flyer for the release of 'Sweets for my Sweet.' (28 Feb 1975). 
From left: Tony Clarkin, 'Kex' - Kevin Gorin, Bob Catley and myself.














Foto Copyright CBS

with Jim Cleary

One More Day released March 1980.

A little bit of knowledge
I've heard it said that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, but I know from experience that sometimes a little bit of the right information can go a long way, sometimes it can save the day.

In 1977, I was living with Sheila, in her house. Sheila worked, I didn't. I stayed at home composing songs and working on projects, a bohemian freeloader full of promises but without the wherewithal.
I was on the dole but they wouldn't pay me anything. Every week I went to the seedy office at Sheldon and sat in front of the grill with my complaint of poverty, and every week a girl stared dispassionately back at me and intoned the same words:
'I'm sorry Mr. Morgan but you are not eligible for unemployment benefit because your girl friend is working.'
In desperation I looked up the phone number for the Claimants Union. I telephoned and made an appointment. Sheila and I drove over to the address in Balsall Heath. We expected an office but the address was a terraced house. A big black lady opened the door holding a tea-towel in one hand:
'Yes, you got de right place, dis is de Claimants Union - come in!'. We were ushered into what was obviously her sitting room. She excused herself and went into the kitchen to finish up what she was doing and then came back wiping her hands on a towel and sat down:
'Now, tell me the nature of de problem?'
I told her about my weekly visits to the Sheldon benefits office and my unsuccessful pleas for help, and suddenly she exploded. Standing up she began to speak forcefully:
'You listen to me. You go back there again, and you ask dem to show you "where is the clause in de social security charter where it sez de woman must keep de man!" - The Social Security charter sez de man must keep de woman but nowhere sez de woman must keep de man! You sit there and you don't leave de office until they tell you where it sez this. - You promise me, you will sit until dey say where!'
She made me promise I would sit in the Social Security Office until they answered the riddle she had set.

The young girl behind the grill said the same as before:
'Sorry Mr. Morgan we cannot pay you anything because your girl friend is employed.'
I repeated the phrase as near exact as I could remember it:
'Please would you show me the clause in the Social Security charter where it says that a woman must keep a man.' The girl looked stunned. She stared at me silently for a few seconds and then got up.
'Hold on please.'
She disappeared behind the upright screen dividing the beggars from the kings, no doubt to ask the majesties beyond what manner of words, or what composure of clause or regulation, could be summoned to dispel me most rapidly from her concern, and her desk window. I looked around at the exhortations stuck upon the furnishings and walls: 'Don't forget you can claim for this or that benefit if you or your partner are this or that.…' The notices to the vagrant class to which I belonged, instructing all in what manner it was fitting to approach the throne. The begging bowls must be of certain dimensions and be proffered at the correct time, but the tinkle of cash was assured by royal edict.
Suddenly she called me: 'Mr. Morgan?' I looked up, her head was craned over the divider:
'Your case has been re-assessed and you will be getting £52 per week, back dated to when you signed on. Okay?'
'Er..Thank you' I said, but she had already slunk back behind the divider.

The Claimants Union didn't look like much, but that black lady sure knew her stuff.