One of the threads on 5Live UK News yesterday mentioned David Bowie's Space Oddity and it reminded me of a place and time far, far away.
Before Punk came along Prog Rock ruled the evening airwaves, even the young John Lydon enjoyed it, Morrissey quoted Amon Dull as one of his favourite bands. For me Yes and Genesis of the Peter Gabriel era were two of my guilty pleasures.
When I was growing up our neighbour was an inventor, the mad sort with a workshop at the end of his garden where he made things. It was because of him that my brother became interested in electronics, actually building a synthesiser for himself back in 1973 and the age of 11!. Now my neighbour, Mr Bailey, made electronic equipment for musicians and one day, when I was 10 or 11 he gave to me a copy of Space Oddity by David Bowie on the Phillips label. He said he'd been given it by a grateful musician who had played keyboards on the record. This didn't really mean much to me at the time but about three or four years later when I started to get into Yes I found out that the long haired keyboard wizard and the guy who gave Mr Bailey the record were one and the same.
Last year I was watching a programme on one of the satellite channels and Rick Wakeman was on there and he happened to mention he had a website and people could contact him if they had any questions that were music related. I made a note of the address and sent him an e-mail which I kept and is posted below exactly as it is in my inbox:
Mr Wakeman
HI PAUL
I have a copy of Space Oddity on the Phillips label
VERY RARE ....IT'S THE FIRST STEREO SINGLE MADE IN THE UK
that was given to me by my neighbour in the early seventies, I was 11 or 12 at the time. He was an electronics engineer who was developing synthesisers and he told me that you gave him the single as a thank you for his help with your synthesiser. I haven't been able to verify the story, is it likely that you did this?
I HAVE TO BE HONEST AND SAY I CAN'T REMEMBER THAT FAR BACK, BUT IT SOUNDSLIKE SOMETHING I MIGHT HAVE DONE!! THAT'S THE BEST I CAN SAY I'M AFRAID.
I was living in Dorset at the time, on the same estate as your future wife!
EX "FUTURE WIFE" ...MY THIRD AS IT HAPPENS! WE PARTED FOUR YEARS AGO!
and the engineers surname was Bailey.
DOESN'T RING A BELL, BUT VERY LITTLE DOES THAT FAR BACK!!!
Any light you can shed thirty years on would be welcome.
SORRY I CAN'T BE OF MORE HELP, BUT IT DOES SEEM LIKELY ...ALL THEBEST....RICK
What a nice guy eh?
As a postscript his wife who is mentioned above was Penny Mallett, known in glamour circles as Nina Carter. Although originally from Solihull she was living locally at one time and she was chosen to open the show house for our estate. Me and a mate had snuck into the house before the official opening and found ourselves hiding in the bathroom when Nina Carter and another famous model, Linzi Drew, changed from swimwear to evening wear.
4 comments:
Close Encounters of the page 3 kind.
One of our programmers had written a program on his Sinclair to process Nina Carter's knitting patterns for cashmere tops which she was having made when she lived in Camberley. Unfortunatey I was down the pub when she came in the office.
I was a fan of Genesis and Yes. in fact Seconds Out was the first album I ever bought (that was after PG's time though), I also used to draw the Yes logo all ove rthe palce whilst singing "I woke this morning, love laid me down by the river..." also the Knights of the round table RW albuma nd anothe rthat slips my mind were never far from the (High)Fidelity record player.
I seem to be ahving trouble with the space bar...mind you so does Rick, or was that baldy error at the end? :-)
That was Rick's lack of space bar control Span.
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