by Greg Lake
I realised that rather than simply putting a few meaningless ticks on a page to satisfy some jobsworth careers officer, I’d had the courage of my own convictions. For the first time in my young life, I realised that I was going to make up my own mind about what I wanted to do, and that I was not going to allow anyone to intimidate me.
Luckily, my parents supported me in my desire to think like a free spirit rather than just following the pack.
Soon after I started playing the guitar at the age of twelve, I began taking lessons with my mentor Don Strike, who owned a guitar shop in Westbourne, near Bournemouth. Don taught a number of well-known people including Al Stewart, the Police’s Andy Summers, and Robert Fripp, who would later become my great friend and playing partner. Lessons with Don were extremely interesting, at least most of the time.
Prior to teaching guitar, Don was a professional banjo player and some of the techniques he used for that instrument such as cross picking, which helped speed up your playing, featured heavily in his guitar teaching. Robert, Andy and myself were all very influenced by this style of playing and you can hear this reflected in the music of all of our bands that followed. The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’, Robert’s solo on King Crimson’s ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ and my own Emerson, Lake & Palmer song ‘From the Beginning’, for example, all feature cross picking.
Don was a very kind man, but on lesson days he would stand no messing around. Each week he would give me a sheet of music to learn and when I came back the following week, I would have to play it back to him. The problem was that it was usually stuff like ‘Blue Moon’ or ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’, but when I got home, I just wanted to play Chuck Berry and Hank Marvin – rock and roll. So, the day before the class, I would just try and learn Don’s chosen song as quickly as I could by ear. When it came to playing it for him, I would usually get to a point where I didn’t get it quite right and he would know I hadn’t been following the dots on the sheet. He had a particularly effective remedy for slackers or for anyone not following the dots properly. This consisted of a sharp whack across the fingers of the left hand with the wooden ruler he used for conducting and keeping time. One or two of those and you would soon be right back on track, I can promise you. Don’s lessons were a true musical revelation, though, and those days we spent together were incredibly valuable for the rest of my life.
Don had his own philosophy about performing and I will never forget him sitting me down during one of my final lessons with him and saying to me, ‘Okay, now listen, son, I want you to understand something: whenever it comes to performing it is always four for them and one for you!’
I honestly had no idea what he was talking about and, with a rather vacant look on my face, I sheepishly asked him what he meant. He looked back at me with a really stern look in his eyes and said, ‘Look, it’s your job as a musician to entertain the audience. They haven’t paid their hard-earned money to come and watch you entertain yourself. For every four songs you play and that you are sure they like, you are allowed to play just one for yourself which you like even if they don’t, so it’s four for them and one for you.’
I have always remembered Don’s words of wisdom and can tell you that, after forty or fifty years of playing concerts, this balance is not far wrong.
Don Strike was a wonderful chap; he was an extremely conscientious teacher who took an extraordinary pride in all of his students and I consider myself very privileged indeed to have had the good fortune to have been taught by him.
I worked with Don for about two and a half years before deciding to follow my own creative path as a guitar player. The pull of rock-and-roll music proved to be so powerful I just couldn’t justify spending any more time learning formal guitar exercises or absorbing any more of Don’s crafty chord inversions. Now, of course, I wish I had, as it is not every day that you come across someone who is willing to offer you something that took them a lifetime to acquire.
■ ■ ■
During the very early days of being taught by Don, I formed a little band with two of my friends from school. We would go along to family parties and small local bingo halls and play a repertoire consisting of songs from the pop charts and some of the pieces I had learned during my guitar lessons.
Although we must have been pretty dreadful, people were still so kind, applauding enthusiastically after every song. That early encouragement was incredibly important.
One thing I discovered while playing at family parties was that I could earn money by doing the thing I loved. I made my first little bit of cash by challenging the guests to name any song from the charts and, if I could play it, they paid me sixpence, and if I couldn’t then of course I paid them the same amount. My repertoire of chart hits stood at somewhere around 220 songs. The problem was that after a while they began to wise up and became fed up of handing over the money. Still, it was great while it lasted!
From the age of twelve onwards, I would sometimes go to the local youth club or dance halls. The Teddy boys were the kings of fashion at the time: velvet collars, crepe-soled shoes, Elvis sideboards and a cowboy string necktie. The music was strictly 1950s rock and roll, with songs by Bill Haley, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and so on.
The bands that played in these venues invariably wore brightly coloured, matching sparkle jackets or alternatively leather motorcycle jackets and Levi’s, and you could always bank on some sort of a fight breaking out before the end of the night due to the atmosphere always being tinged with hostility. The catalyst was a combination of the teenage girls wanting to try out the effectiveness of their newly acquired attributes and the boys responding with a macho display of violence – a ritual that has probably existed since time began.
On one occasion, when I was fourteen or fifteen, I went further afield to a glitzy ballroom in Boscombe, a small town very close to Bournemouth and quite near to where I grew up. I went there to watch a ‘professional’ band, whose name I am ashamed to say now escapes me, that had come all the way down from London that night to perform.
From the word go it was obvious that they were in a completely different league to the local bands I had seen previously. I will never forget standing there being absolutely awestruck as the lead guitarist and rhythm guitarist strode on to the stage carrying their two matching Fiesta Red Fender Jaguars followed closely by the bass player carrying his matching Fiesta Red Fender Precision Bass. They looked terrific in their matching black Savile Row suits and they sounded great as well.
The glitter ball hanging high up in the ceiling began to spin as they struck up the first few chords and the girls below started screaming as the whole place erupted into a whirlwind of frenzied excitement. It was then, in the midst of all this rock-and-roll chaos, that everything seemed to fall into place.
Although I could see that the band were extremely professional, the fact was that after having had a couple of years of lessons from Don, I realised that I could play the guitar as well if not better than any of the professionals up on that stage. My destiny was cast.
I could see that with the right equipment and enough hard work, it just might be possible for me to have that same thrilling effect upon an audience, and perhaps one day even become a professional musician myself.
That night when I went back home I was completely unable to sleep. Again and again I could hear the sound of those Fender guitars playing round and round in my head.
A few days later, I heard the same unmistakable sound of a Fender guitar playing once again, but this time coming from a tiny little Dansette record player blasting away on a bare wooden decorator’s table stood in the corner of the local youth club dance hall near where I lived.
I immediately went up and asked the DJ what the record was. The answer that came back set me on a path that changed the course of my life as a guitar player. The tune was ‘Apache’, recorded by the Shadows, and the guitarist’s name was Hank B. Marvin.
Hank played a Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster
rather than a Jaguar but they are just like children from the same family: although there are some fundamental differences, those two guitars are unmistakably related to each other and you cannot fail to hear this reflected in the sound they make.
Hank was not only an inspiration for me, but for almost all of the great guitar players who followed after him: Jimi Hendrix, Mark Knopfler, Gary Moore, Ritchie Blackmore, Jeff Beck, Brian May – actually the list is endless. Most, if not all, of these players have openly acknowledged the influence and inspiration that Hank’s guitar-playing had upon them. It was not so much Hank’s speed, although he is a really good technical player, but his sound and soulful use of melody that captivated everybody.
Many years later, I met up with Hank in Brian Bennett’s studio. Brian was the drummer with the Shadows and Hank was there overdubbing some orchestral recordings of the band’s music.
The moment I entered through the door Hank smiled and shook my hand as if I were some long-lost friend.
‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ he said.
I nodded and smiled as he disappeared back through the control-room door.
A few minutes later he returned with a tray of tea and biscuits that he had prepared himself. I thought then: what a lovely way to greet someone and put them so completely at ease. It said a lot about Hank and why he is so loved and respected by his millions of fans.
After we had sat down, I explained to Hank that the reason I had come to see him was that I just wanted to thank him for being such a wonderful inspiration, and that he helped me to develop the vision for my career. He smiled and told me that he was actually a big fan of my own music with King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and thought that it was great that we could meet up together after all these years.
A little later on, I asked him how it was that he managed to achieve his very special sound and explained to him how, as young guitar players, we all went to extraordinary lengths to try and copy it. We all bought the same Fender guitar and the same Vox AC30 amplifier, we all used the same Binson echo chamber and studied the tunes he had written note for note, but no matter how hard we tried, none of us could ever get the sound exactly right.
At first, being the extremely humble person he is, Hank looked slightly bewildered and a little embarrassed. After a few moments, though, he turned and said, ‘Well, I suppose if I do have any sort of special sound, it is most probably due to the fact that when I first began playing, I held the pick totally the wrong way round.’
He then proceeded to demonstrate this by holding a plectrum in the same way that you hold a pen. We both fell about laughing because it is far easier to hold the thing the right way than it is the wrong way.
Apparently, young Hank continued using this wrong grip until one day when a friend who also played the guitar came up to him and pointed out the error of his ways. Hank said that he felt quite embarrassed at the time and from then on was determined to get it right. He explained that despite years of practising with the right technique, his grip never really became orthodox or normal, and in fact had ended up being a sort of halfway house. ‘That’s all I can put it down to,’ he said, as he handed over his original Stratocaster for me to play.
Unless you play the guitar, it is hard for me to explain to you how it felt holding the very guitar that shone the light of inspiration on my whole musical career, but suffice to say that it was a very special moment for me and one I will never forget.
During my meeting with Hank, I believe that I did find out what it was that made him sound so great. It was not the equipment, or even the way he held his pick. It was the spirit and the soul of the man himself.
Hank is extremely humble and gentle in his approach, but at the same time he is a very deep, spiritual person, and you cannot help but feel that he has some kind of inner strength and calm control. Somehow you get the feeling that, for him, everything is almost effortless. I am sure he would laugh at these words as, of course, life is not easy for anyone and no doubt he practised endlessly to became the great guitarist that we all know, but that is the impression I came away with.
Both as a person and as a guitar player, Hank is a star of the very finest calibre and all of us who play the instrument owe him a great deal. I still find it a rather strange phenomenon that Hank and the Shadows are so little known in the United States. I think many people there would be extremely surprised to discover just how big an influence he was upon so many of their all-time guitar-playing idols.
So, it was Hank who ignited my vision of becoming a professional musician and it was Don Strike who taught me how to do it. I owe them both a huge debt of gratitude.
CHAPTER 2
The Early Bands
Some of my memories regarding my early bands in the mid-1960s have now begun to merge into a bit of a blur, but I do remember travelling around in these old converted vans in what seemed to be like one long never-ending journey back and forth across England, sleeping in the van at night and always feeling cold and often hungry as well.
During those early years, the van was an extremely important part of the set-up. Not only was it our means of transport, but it was also the place where we ate, slept, talked and took care of pretty much everything else that life entailed.
I would estimate that somewhere around 90 per cent of our lives at that time were spent living or travelling in the van. It was something like being on board a pirate ship, where even though there was a certain sense of romanticism, freedom and adventure, it was nevertheless quite a miserable and hard way to live, and at times extremely dangerous. I was involved in at least five or six fairly serious collisions during those early years, most of which were sadly due to the fact that we would often drive all through the night and on into the next morning in order to avoid spending yet another cold night sleeping in some desolate, rain-soaked car park.
The technique we used for driving through the night was the sort of thing you might see in a cartoon but we really did it: in order to help the driver to keep his eyes open, we would break a couple of matchsticks in half and rest the broken end just below the eye on top of the cheek (to provide the required grip), and then have the smooth end wedged firmly underneath the eyelid itself. This, of course, was a very silly thing to do, but it always caused a lot of laughter and that, if nothing else, helped whoever was driving to stay awake.
Vans were so important back then that they were often used almost like a currency. For example, you would regularly see musicians placing adverts in the local newspaper, looking for a ‘job in a band’, and the advert would read something like, ‘Drummer looking for band, has own equipment plus own van’, in the hope that the van would act as some sort of added incentive to be chosen for the gig.
My first real ‘semi-pro’ band was Unit 4 (not to be confused with Unit 4 + 2, which had a big hit with ‘Concrete and Clay’ in 1965). Unit 4 was quite a good little band that I formed together with some of the local boys from near where I lived in Poole. Throughout 1965, we would travel around in an old converted ambulance to play shows all over the south coast of England. The ambulance turned out to be particularly useful whenever we encountered long traffic jams or queues as the emergency bell was still working.
One enduring memory I have of Unit 4 is playing the Lagland Street Boys’ Club in Poole. Our repertoire consisted mainly of material from the charts, which of course included many of the early Beatles songs, the Shadows, Motown and so on. We had started to become quite popular by the time we played the club and when we walked on to the stage we were absolutely deafened by all the girls screaming. After the show had finished, we went outside to discover that the girls had obliterated the windows of the van by covering them in messages and phone numbers written in red and pink lipstick. Needless to say, for young boys of sixteen and seventeen years old, this was a truly heart-warming sight.
Unit 4 often played at a local pub called the Oakdale, very near to where I used to live. Every Saturday night, just as in Elton’s song, it would be exactly the
same routine. We would play right up until the bell sounded for last orders, and then, as if it were by some pre-ordained signal, fighting would break out. Chairs and bottles would begin to fly across the bar as all the non-combatants scurried around, bent over double, trying to avoid the hurled debris as they headed for the door.
The problem for us was that, in the middle of all this mayhem, we still had to load out our equipment. In the end, we devised a clever little plan whereby my father would go outside and wait until the bell sounded and then, as soon as the fighting broke out, we would quickly hand the guitars and amps out through an open window conveniently located right behind the stage.
Another venue where we would regularly perform was in the Cellar Club, Poole’s equivalent of Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club. When Robert Fripp was a young boy at college with little or no money, he would climb over the wall of the Cellar Club to come and watch me play. We had often sometimes run through lessons together at his house when we were both being taught guitar by Don Strike. In fact, sometimes when I was playing in Unit 4, Robert – who did not have his own band at the time – used to come up on stage and we would play a song together, ‘Malagueña’, which Don had made us learn.
Every time we played at the Cellar Club, the place was so packed the sweat would literally run down from the walls in streams, and in the summer the temperature almost became unbearable with people often fainting or passing out through heat exhaustion. It is remarkable that we were able to perform at all in these conditions, but perform we did and often for three or four hours at a stretch.
After Unit 4, I was in a band called the Time Checks in 1966, and later on I had a short stint in the Shy Limbs, but the other early band that really stands out in my memory is the Shame. This was the first band I had formed that had real attitude. Apart from myself, the band consisted of the late Malcolm Brasher on bass, Billy Nims on drums and Jon Petterssen on rhythm guitar, and later John Dickerson joined on keyboards. The Shame were not together for very long but there was something about the personalities of the people in the band that still keeps its spirit alive in my memory to this day.