Recently a childhood friend passed away very suddenly however, I got to communicate with one of his newer friends on Facebook about our mutual pal and share a few stories. I told him how I had first met Andrew Wells who was out our next door but one neighbor and how we had learned to play guitar together. A band resulted that at first was called Brutus and later Nemo (latinized ‘No One’ – we always thought No one in concert quite funny). The band initially comprised of Andy on lead guitar, me on second guitar and vocals, our next door neighbor, Tim Pybus on Bass and mutual friend Mike Smith on Drums. One sunny afternoon, we assembled our kit in the back yard. Andy’s dad had made him and I speaker cabinets and we had rented a PA systems as well and wanted to see how it all looked and how it would be assembled before we actually played live a few days later.
Now I am going to be honest. I had totally forgotten about that afternoon. It had gone completely from my memory until I saw the photo in a video montage created to celebrate Andy’s life. Of course, as soon as I saw it, the memories came flooding back from wherever lost memories go…..
So there we all are so many many years ago…..
That’s me on the left – shirtless as it was a hot summer afternoon. My legs seem to go on forever – no wonder my parents called me hollow legs! Next to me is Andy Wells, then Tim Pybus and finally Mike Smith standing on a chair with his drumsticks. Sadly, Andy is now playing concerts in the big sky now, but I did see Tim a few years ago at my Fathers funeral. Mike Smith I have lost track of completely.
We did plug in and play that afternoon but being outdoors we had to try to keep it down. Almost certainly we would have played a song called Big Fat Mama by Status Quo as we all rather enjoyed that one.
Happy days….
Thanks to Cliff for sending me the photo and giving me a long lost memory of Andy and the lads…..