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musician in the area would be in there if they weren’t gigging. There would be a sort of rota and then people did additional turns as well. Axe did a rendition of Edgar Broughton’s “Out Demons Out” and it created a riot, with people stamping and making a noise. We were subsequently banned from every working man’s club in the area.
Axe wasn’t really a family band!
Bubonic Monk
    You don’t often see someone wearing evening dress and sandals. When I saw a bloke wearing evening dress and sandals whilst riding a bike I was intrigued. I liked his style. I later discovered that I also liked his music. Pete Whittingham – Whitty – was to become my most important musical collaborator and friend.
    A daft little trio: Bubonic Monk, that also pre-dated my time at university and ran parallel to my solo work at various folk clubs, consisted of me, Pete Whittingham and John Billington. We all had pseudonyms: I was Rabid Wank’ard, Whitty was Foam Leg and John was Sir Bubon the Bongo, because he talked as if he had a plum in his mouth. It lasted about a year and during that time the band experimented with various types of instrument. As well as the basic guitar (Pete Whittingham) and slide guitar (me) there would be sitar, mandolin, banjo – a very rare four stringed banjo that Whitty eventually incorporated into the Skunk Band – and bongos (John Billington) all adding to the variety of sound textures. Whitty was far more folkie than me but not into that feeble crap that some people liked to listen to. He was more influenced by the Gaelic folk songs he had learnt in Ireland and also did a bit of contemporary stuff like Dylan and Neil Young. He had a fabulous voice; it sort of floated and the Irish Celtic flavours would come through, but he was also a great Stones and Pete Townsend fan so he incorporated this tremendous drive into his playing as well. He had less finesse than me but he was a fantastic singer-songwriter. We would also do a sort of acoustic psychedelic music with Pink Floyd songs from Atom Heart Mother. We took it in turns to take the lead in singing, depending on whether it was a hard, harsh song or a gentle melodic song, harmonising naturally and this also carried on into our later band: two different voices and two different guitars. The harmonies were instinctive; we never had to work anything out.
Brahms And Lissed
    I’ve subsequently done duos with Des Parton and enjoyed it but it’s professional hard work. With Whitty and the music and a bottle of cider it was a party. We had this musicians’ chemistry – we just sang like brothers having a bit of fun and the musical performance was almost a casual thing. Whitty and I started performing together in local pubs – the first acoustic evening being at the Chetwode Arms on Hightown, Crewe. Other places we appeared at included The Albion in Mill Street and the smallest pub in Crewe, on Wistaston Road. No payment was involved; it was just an extension of our social life but we soon built up a band of followers. Whitty would come to our house in Sandbach to put our set together and we eventually called our musical duo Brahms and Lissed, combining blues from my side and Gaelic and pop from his side. He had written some songs and I arranged them. We never had rehearsals because we rehearsed all the time, in effect.
Fellow Performers
    Pubs weren’t the only venues. The existing folk clubs were established before the folk boom and I had performed on my own in clubs such as the one held on Sunday nights at The Brunswick on Nantwich Road, Crewe and various blues venues. If I appeared at a folk club it would be as a floor singer; if I appeared at a blues club I would be a support act. I would have been about seventeen or eighteen at the time. How sniffy the folk aficionados were about music other than folk! I had to learn some folk songs in order to be tolerated. Yet modern folk music was allowed and I think Paul Simon once performed there in his “ Homeward