.I walked out through the gates of Vickers for the last time at Christmas in 1969 and in the new year of 1970 I headed for London and the big time. In Barrow I had been some kind of minor celeb, but London was to be a big awakening, here I was just one of thousands of wanna bes'. It was going to be much harder than I had imagined, but I was full of confidence and excited by the prospect of being at the centre of the music industry, for the world, London was still the epicentre of where it all happened.

In those days the way to get into a band and break into the biz was through the musicians wanted pages of a weekly magazine called the Melody Maker. It came out every Thursday, but if you went into the centre of London, Soho, you could get it on Wednesday. So that's what any aspiring musician would do, and You'ld buy it and take it round to the Giaconda cafe in Denmark street and sit and comb through the ads in the back of the paper.Denmark sreet was the street known as "Tin pan alley", just off the Charing cross road, about 50yds long and the home of the major publishers. The Giaconda was a place that you just might get discovered, you know bump into some star producer or writer looking for a new bass player for their next hit record. I never met anybody famous or otherwise but I would sit there with my copy of the Melody Maker and check the ads anyway.

Auditions were the order of the day, and I'ld never done an audition in my life. They were scary, but it was something if you even got to do one, so it was pretty amazing when yo got one in a rehearsal room in Sheperds bush with a new band that was just forming and I was offered the gig. The guy that was forming the band had been with a band called Episode 6, and their old singer had just left the band to become the singer in Deep Purple, a huge band at the time, so I thought I must be on to something here, this must be a ticket to the big time.Deep Purple were to figure later in my career, but for now I'ld got a job with this new band that called themselves Hassle, crap name but who cares, this was at least recognition that I was an OK bass player.

They were a serious band insomuch as they wanted to practice every day, or at least 5 days a week, 10 till 6pm. We didn't have any gigs, but Tony, the leader had good connections, and I felt we were going to go places, and go places we did.After about six months of rehearsing original material we auditioned for a gig in a casino in the Lebonon. Tony knew an agent who pulled this gig for us, it would pay us each £50 a week,probably the equivelant of £250 nowadays. we could continue our rehearsals out there, doing covers at the gig, and make money at the same time.

So in November 1970 we flew out to Lebonon to do a three month residency,which turned into a six month stint, and eventually broke up the band, but thats another story. The place we played was seemingly the biggest casino in the world, and Lebonon was like the Switzerland of the Middle East, not at all like the strife torn place it is today.We lived in apartments right on the beach and had a great time, and made lots of money, this seemed like an ideal way to make a living to me. But all good things come to an end and in April 1971 we flew back to London, but the band broke up shortly afterwards. Back to the back pages of the Melody Maker