circuit.
The Yardbirds’ ‘Heart Full of Soul’ and ‘I Wish You Would’ had now crept into the set, while Brian’s lightning-fingered rendition of ‘Happy Hendrick’s Polka’ gave the audience something to gawp at when they weren’t dancing. ‘Thousands of people must have seen Brian May playing these small clubs,’ reflects Dave Dilloway, ‘and not had the slightest idea that he was later in Queen.’
Throughout the year, though, it was still a juggling act to rehearse, play live and find time to study. Dave, John and Brian’s parents accepted their sons’ musical hobby, but Tim’s were less impressed by what they called ‘that band nonsense’. At the end of 1965, after a year, Dave Dilloway quit Southampton University and opted for an HND electronics course at Twickenham College of Technology. Being back in West London sped up the process of getting to and from gigs.
May’s college connections also brought 1984 bookings at Imperial, including one at a fancy dress party in the spring of 1966. The following year found them playing marathon sets in an upstairs room at Imperial, keeping the students dancing, while, as Dave Dilloway explains, ‘the main band played the main hall downstairs’. Dashing between the two rooms during the interval, they found a way to sneak into the main hall without paying, to catch snippets of their rivals’ sets.
During their final years at school, the band members had been regulars at Eel Pie and Richmond’s Station Hotel, watching The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, The Tridents and The Yardbirds. ‘I saw The Yardbirds at the Marquee, soon after Jeff Beck joined,’ recalled May. ‘Eric Clapton came on and jammed at the end. I’ll never forget it.’ Clapton’s next band, Cream, would make an even greater impression. The trio made their live debut in the summer of1966, unveiling their first album, Fresh Cream , in December. Like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with whom they seemed locked in a dead-heat musical race, Cream’s freewheeling sound and virtuosity spun the blues off into myriad directions. Between them, Clapton and Hendrix opened up May’s eyes to a world of musical possibilities.
Not long after Brian saw Hendrix blow The Who offstage at the Saville Theatre, Dave Dilloway witnessed Jimi up close on 1984’s home turf: Hounslow’s Ricky Tick Club. ‘A club smaller than the local village hall,’ says Dave. ‘The PA was a pair of four-by-twelves and a Marshall stack. Incredible.’ Before long, Clapton and Hendrix’s influence would be felt in 1984, with the latter’s ‘Stone Free’ stripped into the set. ‘Brian’s influences changed dramatically from The Beatles to Hendrix and Cream,’ remembers John Garnham. ‘But I still had this thing in 1984 that we should do songs that people could dance to, which wasn’t true of, say [Cream’s] “Sunshine of Your Love”. I played that crash-bang-wallop Chuck Berry style. I couldn’t play the fancy Eric Clapton stuff, but Brian could.’ As we had a guitarist who could play Clapton and Hendrix, that’s what we did,’ adds Dave Dilloway. ‘We muddled along, gradually moving with the music of the time.’
A February 1967 article in the local newspaper, the Middlesex Chronicle , found Tim Staffell in an effusive mood, proclaiming that ‘psychedelic music is here to stay’. In keeping with the psychedelic era, electronics whizz Dilloway was now experimenting with a primitive light show, inspired by the up-and-coming Pink Floyd. But 1984’s student grants would hardly run to the oil slides and projectors Floyd were using. ‘Our lighting rig was very basic. We had the ideas and the technological know-how, but we didn’t have the money,’ laughs Dave. ‘We couldn’t afford bigger bulbs! We used to get paid peanuts but everything we earned we ploughed back into the band. All the time Brian was with us, we didn’t even have a PA: just two AC30 amps.’
If, as they freely admitted, 1984 was
The Yardbirds’ ‘Heart Full of Soul’ and ‘I Wish You Would’ had now crept into the set, while Brian’s lightning-fingered rendition of ‘Happy Hendrick’s Polka’ gave the audience something to gawp at when they weren’t dancing. ‘Thousands of people must have seen Brian May playing these small clubs,’ reflects Dave Dilloway, ‘and not had the slightest idea that he was later in Queen.’
Throughout the year, though, it was still a juggling act to rehearse, play live and find time to study. Dave, John and Brian’s parents accepted their sons’ musical hobby, but Tim’s were less impressed by what they called ‘that band nonsense’. At the end of 1965, after a year, Dave Dilloway quit Southampton University and opted for an HND electronics course at Twickenham College of Technology. Being back in West London sped up the process of getting to and from gigs.
May’s college connections also brought 1984 bookings at Imperial, including one at a fancy dress party in the spring of 1966. The following year found them playing marathon sets in an upstairs room at Imperial, keeping the students dancing, while, as Dave Dilloway explains, ‘the main band played the main hall downstairs’. Dashing between the two rooms during the interval, they found a way to sneak into the main hall without paying, to catch snippets of their rivals’ sets.
During their final years at school, the band members had been regulars at Eel Pie and Richmond’s Station Hotel, watching The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, The Tridents and The Yardbirds. ‘I saw The Yardbirds at the Marquee, soon after Jeff Beck joined,’ recalled May. ‘Eric Clapton came on and jammed at the end. I’ll never forget it.’ Clapton’s next band, Cream, would make an even greater impression. The trio made their live debut in the summer of1966, unveiling their first album, Fresh Cream , in December. Like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with whom they seemed locked in a dead-heat musical race, Cream’s freewheeling sound and virtuosity spun the blues off into myriad directions. Between them, Clapton and Hendrix opened up May’s eyes to a world of musical possibilities.
Not long after Brian saw Hendrix blow The Who offstage at the Saville Theatre, Dave Dilloway witnessed Jimi up close on 1984’s home turf: Hounslow’s Ricky Tick Club. ‘A club smaller than the local village hall,’ says Dave. ‘The PA was a pair of four-by-twelves and a Marshall stack. Incredible.’ Before long, Clapton and Hendrix’s influence would be felt in 1984, with the latter’s ‘Stone Free’ stripped into the set. ‘Brian’s influences changed dramatically from The Beatles to Hendrix and Cream,’ remembers John Garnham. ‘But I still had this thing in 1984 that we should do songs that people could dance to, which wasn’t true of, say [Cream’s] “Sunshine of Your Love”. I played that crash-bang-wallop Chuck Berry style. I couldn’t play the fancy Eric Clapton stuff, but Brian could.’ As we had a guitarist who could play Clapton and Hendrix, that’s what we did,’ adds Dave Dilloway. ‘We muddled along, gradually moving with the music of the time.’
A February 1967 article in the local newspaper, the Middlesex Chronicle , found Tim Staffell in an effusive mood, proclaiming that ‘psychedelic music is here to stay’. In keeping with the psychedelic era, electronics whizz Dilloway was now experimenting with a primitive light show, inspired by the up-and-coming Pink Floyd. But 1984’s student grants would hardly run to the oil slides and projectors Floyd were using. ‘Our lighting rig was very basic. We had the ideas and the technological know-how, but we didn’t have the money,’ laughs Dave. ‘We couldn’t afford bigger bulbs! We used to get paid peanuts but everything we earned we ploughed back into the band. All the time Brian was with us, we didn’t even have a PA: just two AC30 amps.’
If, as they freely admitted, 1984 was
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