Read Online Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd by Mark Blake - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark Blake
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, music, Genres & Styles, History & Criticism, Composers & Musicians, Rock
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experimenting with oil slides. Leonard’s house in Stanhope Gardens, Highgate, was large enough to double as a rehearsal space, but he also needed tenants to help pay the mortgage. Mason and Waters were the first to move in.
The arrival of guitarist Bob Klose, David Gilmour’s childhood friend, in the summer of 1964 proved timely. Klose had been playing regularly in a Cambridge band, Blues Anonymous, and had become a highly rated guitarist. However, his arrival prompted Clive Metcalfe and Keith Noble to return to working as a duo. ‘Bob was one of those guitarists that I thought got overly clever,’ says Metcalfe. ‘With me and Keith in the band the sound really wasn’t gelling.’ Metcalfe and Noble would go on to write ‘A Summer Song’, a US Top 40 hit for Chad and Jeremy later that year. Klose moved into Stanhope Gardens and took over as guitarist, while Waters switched to bass.
Bob Klose wasn’t the only Cantabrigian to move down to the capital. Since enrolling at the Camberwell School of Art, Syd was now in London permanently, sharing a bed-sit with David Gale in a decrepit house in Tottenham Street, where another of the Cambridge gang, Seamus O’Connell, was already living with his mother.
‘It was this rundown crappy tenement block just off Tottenham Court Road,’ says Seamus now. ‘I did well at the County up until O-levels, but then I went a bit off my nut due to family troubles. My mother decided to move to London and I went with her. So I was living in this place and studying for my A-Levels, when David and Syd moved down.’
While Barrett disappeared each morning to Camberwell, Gale was studying film at the Royal College of Art and working part-time in the Better Books shop on Charing Cross Road, then the capital’s main emporium for beat literature and magazines. At night, they would repair to what Gale remembers as ‘our scummy little room’ with a mattress either side. As one visitor recalls, ‘While domesticity was not a priority in any of the places we lived, that flat in Tottenham Street was the only one I recall in which there were cockroaches.’
Inevitably, Barrett soon found himself drawn to the Highgate lodgings of his old schoolfriend Roger Waters. Within months Syd had moved to Stanhope Gardens alongside Klose, Waters and another Cambridge deserter, Dave Gilbert. Wright had moved in with Juliette Gale, while Mason had returned to the relative sanctuary - and swimming pool - of his parents’ Hampstead home.
For the Cambridge contingent, their first visit to the drummer’s parents’ home came as surprise. ‘The band barely had any money for petrol to make the journey,’ recalls Libby Gausden. ‘When we arrived at Nick’s we were made very welcome by the sort of people you didn’t think would make you feel welcome at all. There we were, all black clothes and hair, thinking we were beatniks. I recall Nick had a very good drum kit and money for amplifiers and his parents were quite happy for him to be playing in a group. It seemed to us coming from Cambridge that London people had money.’
Mike Leonard’s house was an Aladdin’s cave of exotic musical instruments, suits of armour, beatnik books and jazz records, shared with his cats Tunji and McGhee. The set-up appealed to Syd’s sense of the bizarre. While Leonard lived and worked on the upper floor, Barrett, Mason, Waters and Klose rehearsed below. ‘The noise was phenomenal,’ Leonard said in 1991. ‘The neighbours sent round the police and council officials. Then they had a lawyer’s letter saying someone’s health was being damaged.’ Undeterred, the band, now calling themselves The Spectrum Five, continued the din, while a fascinated Barrett and Waters helped Leonard with his prototype lights machines. The group would also supply the music for Mike’s experiments at Hornsey College of Art’s Sound and Light Workshop.
Mike would sit in on some rehearsals and play organ, but, despite a couple of performances
The arrival of guitarist Bob Klose, David Gilmour’s childhood friend, in the summer of 1964 proved timely. Klose had been playing regularly in a Cambridge band, Blues Anonymous, and had become a highly rated guitarist. However, his arrival prompted Clive Metcalfe and Keith Noble to return to working as a duo. ‘Bob was one of those guitarists that I thought got overly clever,’ says Metcalfe. ‘With me and Keith in the band the sound really wasn’t gelling.’ Metcalfe and Noble would go on to write ‘A Summer Song’, a US Top 40 hit for Chad and Jeremy later that year. Klose moved into Stanhope Gardens and took over as guitarist, while Waters switched to bass.
Bob Klose wasn’t the only Cantabrigian to move down to the capital. Since enrolling at the Camberwell School of Art, Syd was now in London permanently, sharing a bed-sit with David Gale in a decrepit house in Tottenham Street, where another of the Cambridge gang, Seamus O’Connell, was already living with his mother.
‘It was this rundown crappy tenement block just off Tottenham Court Road,’ says Seamus now. ‘I did well at the County up until O-levels, but then I went a bit off my nut due to family troubles. My mother decided to move to London and I went with her. So I was living in this place and studying for my A-Levels, when David and Syd moved down.’
While Barrett disappeared each morning to Camberwell, Gale was studying film at the Royal College of Art and working part-time in the Better Books shop on Charing Cross Road, then the capital’s main emporium for beat literature and magazines. At night, they would repair to what Gale remembers as ‘our scummy little room’ with a mattress either side. As one visitor recalls, ‘While domesticity was not a priority in any of the places we lived, that flat in Tottenham Street was the only one I recall in which there were cockroaches.’
Inevitably, Barrett soon found himself drawn to the Highgate lodgings of his old schoolfriend Roger Waters. Within months Syd had moved to Stanhope Gardens alongside Klose, Waters and another Cambridge deserter, Dave Gilbert. Wright had moved in with Juliette Gale, while Mason had returned to the relative sanctuary - and swimming pool - of his parents’ Hampstead home.
For the Cambridge contingent, their first visit to the drummer’s parents’ home came as surprise. ‘The band barely had any money for petrol to make the journey,’ recalls Libby Gausden. ‘When we arrived at Nick’s we were made very welcome by the sort of people you didn’t think would make you feel welcome at all. There we were, all black clothes and hair, thinking we were beatniks. I recall Nick had a very good drum kit and money for amplifiers and his parents were quite happy for him to be playing in a group. It seemed to us coming from Cambridge that London people had money.’
Mike Leonard’s house was an Aladdin’s cave of exotic musical instruments, suits of armour, beatnik books and jazz records, shared with his cats Tunji and McGhee. The set-up appealed to Syd’s sense of the bizarre. While Leonard lived and worked on the upper floor, Barrett, Mason, Waters and Klose rehearsed below. ‘The noise was phenomenal,’ Leonard said in 1991. ‘The neighbours sent round the police and council officials. Then they had a lawyer’s letter saying someone’s health was being damaged.’ Undeterred, the band, now calling themselves The Spectrum Five, continued the din, while a fascinated Barrett and Waters helped Leonard with his prototype lights machines. The group would also supply the music for Mike’s experiments at Hornsey College of Art’s Sound and Light Workshop.
Mike would sit in on some rehearsals and play organ, but, despite a couple of performances
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