Ex-MUNGO JERRY roadie, backing singer and recorder player on 'Memoirs Of A Stockbroker', recalls some of the stories from his time on the road with the band - (1970-1972,1976,1980).

I was born in Ashford, Middlesex on the 12th of July, 1943 and educated at Twickenham School Of Commerce, and on leaving school, became a printer. As I lived in Ashford, I knew Ray slightly and had seen him playing locally with THE TRAMPS. In 1969, I met Paul and went to see him and the band at the Master Robert motel, a pub on the A4 in Hounslow. They used to play there every Sunday night for £12 a night, always packed the place out. They were called MUNGO JERRY then, just changed their name from THE GOOD EARTH. They'd recorded some stuff at Pye studios, 14 or 16 tracks, three were chosen for the single, the rest went on their first LP. The name MUNGO JERRY had been written on a piece of paper, along with lots of others, and that was the one that was chosen in the end. They were almost, THE INCREDIBLE SHARK but MUNGO JERRY was finally the choice.

Not long after first going to see him there (Paul), they needed someone to drive them to the Hollywood Music Festival, and I agreed, and took the band to play there over the weekend. They were one of a number of small acts that were there with the RED BUS CO, that were being used as support acts on the weekend bill. My 1965 MK1 GT Cortina was used for that trip, and for every booking for the next year, clocking up 60,000 miles during that period.

They went down very well! They came on, I think it was late afternoon/early evening and they followed THE GRATEFUL DEAD, who'd been on stage for about three hours, and I think in that time, had done about three numbers and most of the audience, if not all of them, were fast asleep. When MUNGO JERRY came on, and Ray sort of launched into 'MIDNIGHT SPECIAL', everybody sort of..."Oh hello! This is good", and away they went. Because they were so popular, they were asked to go on again the following night, at the later slot then, which meant we had to stay out overnight, and they had to hurriedly book us into a hotel. I think it was The Metro, Stoke-On-Trent that they pushed us into. As I remember, there was holes in the sheets that your feet kept going through when you were in bed. When you went down for breakfast in the morning, the waiter walking around there, if you asked him for a menu, he just sort of looked at you and tapped the side of his head. So I said, "could we have a menu?" He tapped the side of his head again, so we suddenly realised that he'd got it all in his head. So we said, "OK, what have you got?" And he launched into the eggs, bacon, cereal, toast, marmalade, coffee, orange, etc, etc, which you then chose what you wanted. So I'm sort of saying to him, "have you got a knife please, I don't seem to have one?" "Get it off another table!" I thought, if this is the start of staying in hotels! Luckily, most of them were a bit better than that after a while.

The band went down obviously, very well, and the music papers were all full of success, with the MUNGOMANIA headlines. I've still got the MELODY MAKER, I've still got it at home somewhere. When they got back to the Master Robert motel the following Sunday, the chap who ran the place had the stage decked out, 'cause the single had been released that weekend and had started to be played. They were playing 'IN THE SUMMERTIME' on the pirate radio stations, but the first record to be played on Radio 1 was, 'DUST PNEUMONIA BLUES'. MIKE RAVEN on a Sunday night, I think and anyway, back to the Master Robert motel. The record had come in at No.13 in the charts, and they went there on the Sunday and as I said, it was all packed out. With it being a picture sleeve, he had these single covers all around the stage and the place was even more packed out than usual.

He said to them, if they were going to continue to play there, and they thought, 'why not'? They could use it to try out some new numbers, he said that he would put their money up from £12 a night to £18 a night. When they went to see him afterwards to get the money, he only gave them £12! "Oh, I meant from next week". So they said, "I don't think there is going to be a next week". So that was it, a bit of a mistake for him really. The band were No.1 the following week, but anyway, they never played there again.

The first, I think it was a couple of weeks after that, the best part of a month that I packed the job in that I was working at and started to go round with them properly. It was a three day tour, starting at a place called Seahouses, The Viking Club, right up by Berwick Upon-Tweed. A very old stone hotel that we stayed in, we actually went back there a bit later, but that was the first time. We played at this Viking Club, the promoter had laid on this great big meal, t-bone steaks, the lot, and I thought, this is it! This is really what it is all about if we're gonna get this all the time. I think we only got it on a couple of occasions throughout the couple of years, but a good start! The next one we played at was, The Winter Gardens, Cleethorpes and there, the roadies had been setting up the equipment in the afternoon, down at the seaside resort. They came back to the hotel that we were staying in and we sorted ourselves out, ready to be on stage, just after 9 o'clock. We arrived, seven of us and as we walked in, Paul carrying his guitars, the bouncer on the door said, "just a moment, how many in this band?" So we said, "four of us, there's the driver and the two roadies". "Oh, no,no,no", he said, "the four members of the band can go in but the others are going to have to pay". So Colin said, "I think it looks as though we won't be playing here tonight!" So the bouncer said, "just a minute", and he went off to see the manager who must have told him what an idiot he was and out he came, "No,no, it's alright, you can all go in". We had quite a good reception, the fact that these were all early days. What did get me, I think the band were going out for £250 a night then. At the end of the show, the manager of the club came on and said, "Yeah, thanks MUNGO JERRY, good show, good show, I'm afraid you're going to have to pay more to come in next week, we've got FREE playing!" Now MUNGO JERRY were No.1 and FREE were No.2 with 'ALRIGHT NOW'. "We've got FREE playing next week and we're going to have to pay them £400, so you're going to have to pay more to come in", and I thought then, the management, there's something not quite right here. The last one of that three day tour was the Civic Hall, Dunstable, and we had trouble getting the money, we only got half. Anyway, that was the end of my first tour on the road with them. Three days!

Moving on from there, things gradually improved. After the first six months, when they came back from America, JOHN GODFREY came in to replace MIKE COLE on bass. I did not know MIKE COLE at all, he seemed to be full of the joys of being a 'pop star' and he did not stay long, but I got along fine with Ray, Paul, Colin and John Godfrey.

We played lots of places in Wales and Scotland, as well as England. One of the particular things that we used to do when we were on the road was to stop for games of football. We'd go to a park, even over a fence onto a school field and play on their school pitch 'til we got slung off! It happened on a couple of occasions, just something to do while we were on the road, 'cause we'd be sent out of the hotels at about midday , and then if you were only travelling about 70 miles, we'd stop on the way. I remember when we were up in Scotland, I think it was Paisley. We started a small game with another band that were on the road with us, a Scots band at the time, and we started playing football there and more and more people came from the area, and it ended up about 25 people a side playing, and it was absolutely deadly, boots flying everywhere! One of the AGATHA'S MOMENTS, the Scots band's players got hurt and Paul hurt his arm. I remember, there was a picture of him in the Daily Record with his arm in a sling, and he had a bit of a job playing the banjo that night.

One of the first times that I went abroad, I went over to help the roadie, it was a trip to Sweden, about a week. Absolutely freezing cold out there! We went to Immingham to catch the boat and as we went through, this old boy asked for our tickets and said, "band are'ya?". And we said, "yeah", "we get a lot of bands coming through here, what band are you?" "MUNGO JERRY!" He thought for a minute and said, "Oh yeah! I know MUNGO JERRY, tell me, why does that guy always stand on one leg when he plays that flute!"

Every single night was played outside, it was a five day tour. We played in fairgrounds like Tivoli Gardens. The fair was on and they'd shut the fair off for an hour and the band would go on. We did about five of them, driving up all over the place. The last one was at a place called Skilevti, or something like that, it was only about 150 miles from the Arctic Circle. It was one of those places where it was dark for six months of the year and light for the other six months, and we were there when it was light. So there we were, half past two in the morning, up on stage and it was still fairly light - absolutely freezing!!! The whole country was just...cold!!!

We hadn't realised, we just dressed up in our normal, trendy little jumpers and t-shirts that were out at the time. The little zipper jackets. I think JOHN GODFREY on a couple of occasions, had to give up playing, his fingers were so cold. He kept trying to play with gloves on because it was so cold outside. So much for that Swedish tour.

After a tour in Germany, we had to go straight to a gig in Bury St.Edmunds. When I arrived, the roadie was already there. We emptied all the stuff out and set it up on stage to play. We had a hell of a wait for the band to arrive to play that evening, so we went out for something to eat and a few drinks...you know, more and more. I was in quite a 'happy' mood by the time they arrived. Halfway through the act, Ray did this number, and I used to have this microphone at the back where I sang backing vocals and he always used to hop over round the stage doing his little thing, doing the solo in the middle and sang the last four lines on my microphone. I used to get the microphone and swivel it towards him. Anyway, I asked Colin what the last four lines were. I can't remember the name of the song, some blues number. It ends up something like, "She treats me like a king and I treat that woman like a Queen". So he comes over, and starts to sing, "She treats me like a King"...and I swivelled the microphone back to myself and sang, "and I treat that woman like a Queen"...his mouth sort of dropped open as the microphone swivelled away and he walked backwards to his seat, you know, the way they sat down on stage, with his mouth open, just looking at me. He couldn't believe what had happened. It was quite funny!

It was in Bury St.Edmunds where we met Patrick, the night porter. he was quite good, most of them aren't very good at all. He told us if ever we stayed there again, just to let him know in advance and he'd go all around the town, in Woolworth's and all the other places, telling all the girls that he had MUNGO JERRY staying there. And when you arrived at the hotel, they'd be loads of girls waiting for you. "I do it for all the bands, so next time just let me know!" He also showed us downstairs in his wine cellar...this was after we'd finished playing! He showed us where the walled up passageway was, that used to go right under the road to the monastery or something, that was there. We had quite a time down there! I don't know if there was as many bottles of wine down there after we returned to our rooms, as there was when we first went down there, but...still! JOHN GODFREY used to sit up most of the night drinking scotch for scotch with most of the night porters.

We did a Red Bus 'special', where we played at two places on the same night. We'd driven from where we lived, in the Middlesex area to Newcastle City Hall. We played there, in fact it was the only place where anybody ever requested 'MEMOIRS OF A STOCKBROKER'. When we finished there, we drove back a bit to Spennymoor, Co. Durham. We played at the Top Hat Club, Spennymoor and we then drove from there, by then of course,it was getting late, it was probably three o'clock in the morning or whatever, on to Seahouses to stay in this hotel. We met a girl who said her name was Lisa at the Top Hat and she decided to come on to Seahouses with us. I think it's about a 70 mile journey and for about 50 miles of this journey, she was sitting in the car with us, squashed in, she was pretending to be French! She was talking pigeon English, she said her mother was French and she was brought up in France. We listened and talked to her on this journey and all of a sudden, after about 50 miles, she suddenly broke in, talking in her native Northern tongue, and we didn't realise at first. It was a case that she'd been having us on but still, It was quite good!

We got to this hotel that we were staying in at Seahouses, and we couldn't get in. It was about half past four in the morning and it was getting light then, and there was no way we could get in . We banged, knocked, tried everything. We were booked in, but it was so late, nobody had bothered to stay up, and there was just no way we could get in. Anyway, Paul managed to find a restaurant window open and he climbed in, and coming down some stairs, in the half light, was this stuffed Lion that frightened the bloody life out of him! Anyway, he managed to get into the booking area. We had been booked in, the MUNGO JERRY names were there and he let us in through the front door and we took our keys for various rooms and went up to bed. When the cleaning women came in in the morning, they would have got the surprise of their lives finding us in there. One of them had this little terrier and it tore all around the room, all over JOHN GODFREY, waking him up. He was probably in a bit of a whisky state, asleep there. That was the second time we stayed there and we did go back there some time later.

The recording studio was a place that was pretty boring if you're not involved in it. Luckily, we didn't do that many rehearsals when we were on the road, 'cause that's another thing that's a bore if you're not really involved. Proper rock'n roll bands, as they say, don't rehearse, it's all the raw live sound which they always produced well. I did like the bands sounds, but it came over better during live performances than on records. Not having a drummer, and with Ray and Paul seated, the line-up was different from the usual group. Also, the mixture of old blues, negro songs, jug band music plus Ray's and Paul's numbers. There was quite a good variety.

Ray is a very good rhythm guitarist and his harmonica playing is basic, but a lot of the old blues players were the same. The songs that he writes are very good and have varied a lot over the years.

Paul prefers acoustic instruments and his blues harmonica playing is one of the best that I have ever heard. The songs that he writes are generally suited to a bigger production.

Anyway, as I say, the recording studios, if you're just sitting there for hours on end, and they often went on to the early hours of the morning, it can become a bit of a bore. My particular bits that I did, backing vocals and the recorder bit on 'MEMOIRS OF A STOCKBROKER'. That was obviously a bit frightening if you're not a musician, everybody looking at you through the glass at the top. I didn't get paid a session fee for doing it, when it was mentioned to BARRY MURRAY, the producer, he said as it took so long to do it, I should pay them!

I felt that the management were lucky to have MUNGO JERRY, rather than the other way round. The band and 'IN THE SUMMERTIME' were successful at the Hollywood Music Festival, and from then, received other bookings. When they had a record in the charts, people would phone the management to book them. When they were not in the public eye, the management did very little to get them work. Also, tours were not arranged in a sensible order. The band had to travel from one end of the country to the other on successive nights. I left the band at the same time as Paul and Colin in February 1972. I went with them when they formed the KING EARL BOOGIE BAND, hoping to work for them if things worked out.

In 1976, when I went back working with MUNGO JERRY, it wasn't as enjoyable as it was in the first couple of years, different members of the band, not that there was anything wrong with them. I didn't know them immediately, we had some fun with them. The bass player, CHRIS WARNES and PETE SULLIVAN (drums), and the other roadie, 'NIPPER', a young lad who used to work with STATUS QUO, he was good fun! He and the bass player came from the Norwich area and we used to have quite a bit of fun with those two on the road. They used to stay out more than the others, who used to go straight home.

We did a week up in the Newcastle area doing working men's clubs and that was just absolutely terrible! You literally went on between bingo sessions and, the bingo was more important! They did the bingo session and they'd stop and say, "right, Mungo Jerry now", On come MUNGO JERRY for half an hour or so, and they'd say, "right, you've got to stop dead on 10 o'clock, that's when the next bingo session starts". Then, at 10 o'clock, there's a bloke waving at us, "right, that's it, bingo!" One particular case, we had the classic thing, Ray's half way through a number, on came this bloke, "excuse me Mungo, sorry about this, OK lads, stop, stop!" Up to the microphone, "Would the owner of car number so and so move it as it's blocking the car park! OK lads, away you go, sorry about that, carry on". Ray and them just burst out laughing, it was unbelievable! Not quite what we were used to.

L-R; BIZZ, NIPPER, RAY"CLEGGY"CLEGG & PETE SULLIVAN

I can remember we stayed in a hotel in France there, that's it, we were waiting for the band to arrive. We'd got another roadie on the road with us, a great big fat chap, about 15 or 16 stone, called 'BLOB'! I remember he didn't feel very well and he was having something to eat, the rest of us went to our hotel and went to our rooms. The next morning, we got a phone call from the reception, to go to him. "Oh, I feel terrible!" We pulled back the bedclothes and he was wearing this pair of pants. I've never seen as many spots in all my life, he was literally covered head to toe in these spots. It was absolutely unbelievable to see the poor sod! He said, "I can't understand it, I don't know what's the matter with me". I think he'd thought he'd caught something. He said, "I haven't been with any girls or anything like that". So anyway, we called the reception and they got a doctor, who couldn't speak English, and he's trying to tell us what it was. He's saying, "It is, how you say, a disease d'enfants", and he's walking down the room..."cluck, cluck' cluck, it eez chicken...", we got the idea in the end that it was chickenpox! So they had to cart him off and he was in hospital for about two weeks, poor sod!

The time when I actually left them in '76, they'd got quite a large van then, with all the lights, all the stuff. 'BLOB' wasn't with us then, there was just me and 'NIPPER'. We were playing a pub, up in London. We'd dumped all the gear in and they wanted the van changed over, I can remember, later on that day, otherwise they'd have to pay more for the rental. They wanted me and 'NIPPER' to go to these studios in the Edgware Road. We humped it all out to play that night, put it all back in by about three in the morning, drive somewhere and hump it all out. We're talking about four or five tons of stuff now, leave it in these studios, then go over to Rickmansworth, get another van, come back, hump it all back into this van, ready to play somewhere the following night and, you know, I was probably getting too old, but I'd had enough! And that was my last time working with them for a while.

Anyway, I went back in 1980, did a few, but the tours then were few and far between, bits here and there. We played in Marseilles, I remember going there, spent a nice week or so there in a few places. The old harbour there, the old fish restaurants. That was quite enjoyable.

Course, we'd got another drummer then, BORIS BRANSBY-WILLIAMS, and EDDIE QUINN, the bass player, a Scots chap. I can remember Boris telling me about one band he'd gone to join, an American band. Now he was a very good drummer and he'd done the show for them, the rehearsal I should say, and the bloke came up to him and said, "Yeah, pretty good", this Southern American bloke. "Yeah, pretty good son!" "What's your name?" "BORIS BRANSBY WILLIAMS". So this bloke says, "Boris, Boris! I don't want no goddam communist in my band!" So Boris sort of laughed, thinking he was joking. Anyway, he wasn't! I thought that was quite funny!