Pete Sears after a couple of years of hard living on the road. Photo taken between Sons of Fred sets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNFmDGJVR30&sns=em
“Baby What You Want Me To Do”
Pete Sears after several years of hard touring across the British Isles.
We were mobbed by a large group of screaming girls as we came out of the “Thanks Your Lucky Stars” TV studios (I doubt they knew who we were, but we were obviously a rock n roll band and were coming out of a TV studios…so that was good enough for them) there was a police cordon and everything…my jacket was ripped up pretty good.
We got into our old Mark 10 Jaguar that was covered in women’s lipstick (we actually had a lot of fans) and hightailed it to the M1. It was an old Jag but went like a bat out of hell…we had to hold the stick at 110 mph or it would slip out of top gear.
We performed primarily R&B music live, but our singles were a bit more pop except for “Baby What You Want Me to Do”.
Not sure where the money went…certainly not in our pockets, well not mine anyway.
Around 1965 we’d drive down Somerleyton Road in Brixton, South London and groups of African or West Indian guys, mostly Jamaican, would be standing outside each house with a giant chunk of Hashish each. They’d see a group van and run after us yelling for us to buy from them…“Hey mon…here, here, over here”.
We’d mostly come away with a good deal…I mean a very good deal, but sometimes we felt lucky to get out of there with our lives. This all happened a few blocks away from Brixton Police Station.
The old buildings in Somerleyton Road have all been torn down now. My dad used to drive my family through Brixton on his way to the center of London from our house in Bromley. I was a kid, and I’d hear this amazing music pumping at high volume out of “Desmond’s Hip City” record store underneath the arches. Blue Beat, Skar, Rock Steady then Reggae. Every time we drove past the shop I’d open my window so I could hear better…I was mesmerized.
The Sons Of Fred were getting pretty out there by this time.
Mick Hutchinson was one of the first guitarists to experiment with amp feedback sounds and incorperate them into his solos.
We lived pretty hard back then.
In spite of a strong fan base, “The Sons Of Fred” disbanded several months later.