Month: August 2019

TYNE DOCK BORDERS -stories from the documentary.

/ Alikivi
11880844_501112830048283_848214020_n

Looking down Slake Terrace, Tyne Dock. Photo by Amy C. Flagg.

It was a cold, damp, windy day. I could hear the foghorn. Looking out the window I didn’t fancy going outside. If it clears up, I’ll go out later. 

First, I’ll have something to eat and listen to the news. I heated up a tin of pea and ham soup and turned the TV on.

Flicking through the channels I came across When the Boat Comes In. Never seen it before but within minutes I’m hooked. The writing was sharp, the story was great and central character Jack Ford, was the man.

Also recognised a few locations around Tyneside so next time in the Local History library I’ll search and see if there is any reference to the program.

There was, not only was the writer, James Mitchell from the North East, he was born in Tyne Dock, South Shields. And this area featured heavily in his and his father’s story, who was also a local councillor for the Tyne Dock ward. 

This was the catalyst for making a documentary about the area. I rang up Jarrow playwright Tom Kelly, we had a get together, threw some ideas around and started work on a script.

Using archive material and personal interviews with people who lived there, we look at the changes made in Tyne Dock. These are short extracts from some of the interviews filmed in 2012.

Tyne Dock Arches….

Kennie Chow: One of the major dare’s that we had was that along the arches was a ledge and above the arches was several little arches which you can get inside. But the only way you could actually get inside was to actually physically shimmy across the ledge.

Stephen Wilson: Used to play in the arches a lot. Was a great playground, very dangerous. We used to climb to the top and go into the little arches at the top. Which were yer access point, you could climb and go down but was quite a big drop. And inside it was chocka block with bricks and rubble.

Sheila Ross: The arches we thought were exciting cos you could get an echo in them. They were long, dark, very dingy. I mean they went for quite a distance. That distance from where Jarrow and Tyne Dock are, is quite a distance.

Paul Freeman: They were quite busy cos they were for taking the railways in and out of the docks. So, the road went through the arches and the railways went over the top, so they were filthy. But as children they were fantastic things to play in.

Olive Pinkney: As you get older you tend to reminisce about when you were young and of course Tyne Dock was a very close-knit community. And the arches were always our familiar focal point. If we had any family come from all over, we used to say you come through the arches and you are at Tyne Dock.

When I retired, I started doing watercolours and painted places of Tyne Dock where I remembered, and the arches was one of the main one’s.

Slake Terrace….

Alex Donaldson: For all the old, dilapidated houses, no bathrooms and outside toilets I think there was still a comradeship, a friendliness about the place. People were very close then, you knew who your neighbours where they were just next door living on top of each other (laughs).

In the ‘60s the River Tyne was still quite as busy as when I lived in Hudson Street. I can remember foreign seaman coming out of the dock’s during the day or later in the evening. They used to board the trolley bus that was stood there. I’ve still got happy memories of old Tyne Dock.

Sheila Ross: But it was all pubs. And they were not pub’s we would go into. Me motha’ wouldn’t even go into them, they were men’s pubs. For the dockers and the sailors who would come from all over the world.

Derek Pinkney: Well, Slake Terrace was one of the busy roads at the edge of Tyne Dock. Actually, it was full of public houses, that was its mainstay. There were pubs like the Green Bar, The Empress Hotel, The Banks of Tyne, The North Eastern. The Grapes which was on the corner of Hudson Street. And then round the corner was The Dock.

The best place where we used to get a good laugh when we were boys was a café called the Café Norge. And it was supposedly a place of ill repute. Because in those days there was lots of Norwegian and Swedish ships used to come into Tyne Dock and the crew’s used to frequent that place.

Paul Freeman: Now if you carried on up Hudson Street you came to another boarded out shop and a house where all these ladies used to live. Me sister Sheila and me used to get pennies off them, they were a lovely set of lasses.

Sheila Ross: So, we used to sit on the step at the bottom of the flat and there was some ladies used to come past, always very nice, give us sixpence each.

Paul Freeman: Just up Dock Street one of the first buildings was the spiritualists.

Sheila Ross: That was a big meeting place on a Saturday night because they used to faint and pass out with all these messages they were getting. And they used to lay them out in the street. Just lay them on the pavements ‘till they come round.

Paul Freeman: You had a right mixture of the one’s that had been talking to the dead and glory to God on high and the other’s stinking of the other spirit’s and beer then you had the other ones who had been looking after more than the spiritual welfare round the corner at the brothel. It was quite a place to be actually.

James Mitchell and When the Boat Comes In….. 

Roz Bailey: I don’t remember meeting him when I was first cast as Sarah Headly. I didn’t think I was going to be in When the Boat Comes In because I remember when they were first casting it, I was going to go up for the part of Jessie. Obviously didn’t get that but a year later my agent rang me up and said there’s a part that they are casting for. I got it but didn’t know how it was going to colour my life.

I remember filming outside The Customs House which is now a theatre it must have been derelict then. They had set it up with the old cobble stones. The characters were so well written by James Mitchell, particularly for the women. Which you don’t often get now. And the attention to detail. Looking at them the great humour in his writing, the calibre of it. Very, very special.

Second Time Around Record Shop…

Alistair Robinson: Shields in the late ‘70s and ‘80s was well off for second hand and collector’s record shops. There was one halfway down Imeary Street in Westoe in the ‘70s, there was the Handy Shop just off Frederick Street in Laygate and there was Second Time Around in Tyne Dock. I didn’t know the guys who run it cos they maybe had a deal somewhere where they could get some quite rare material.

Stewart Cambell: I opened the shop in 1975 until 1985. We sold loads of Jazz in French and German imports. We had big Elvis fans come to the shop, we had imports from the States, Uruguay, most countries. Some people bought the same Elvis album with five different covers.

Tyne Dock Youth Club…

Stephen Wilson: We would play on the railway line from Tyne Dock until it crossed Eldon Street, then all the way up to Trinity High Shields. We played in the old shed’s when it closed down. We used to walk along the lines and play on the lines behind Tyne Dock Youth Club. We used to put screws, nuts and bolts, two pences on the lines and when the trains went past, they flattened them.

Kennie Chow: Tyne Dock Youth Club was a massive part of my life. Through personal reasons my family were split up at the time and I managed to join the youth club and I must have spent about 10 years of my life there. It really helped us pull through the bad times I was going through, and I became club DJ.

Paul Dix: I was a bit nervous coming to the club, but we were welcomed by Jack and Betty Inkster who ran the club then. We knew Kennie he was a great lad, he done the club discos.

I think the French trip was one of the biggest things that the club had done for years. We went in the minibus and piled it with kid’s, tents and sleeping bags and as many tins of beans and sausages as you can get in the back of a van.  Drove off down the motorway, down to Dover and on the ferry. We drove from the top of France through to Paris and Jack was using his cine camera and documenting the whole of the trip from start to finish.

Jack and Betty on the trip were fantastic. They done everything for us, Jack helping putting the tents up and Betty all those sausages and beans. We washed up and everybody chipped in. When you look back at the cine footage you can see how great a care they took of the kids. It was a real privilege to have been on that trip.

DVD copies of Tyne Dock Borders (70mins £10) are available to buy from The Word, South Shields. A short version is available to watch on the ALIKIVI You Tube channel.

Gary Alikivi    August 2019.

WAR STORIES – experiences of World War Two on Tyneside

/ Alikivi

During spring 2012, Jarrow playwright Tom Kelly and I made a short film about the impact of World War Two on South Tyneside, North East England.

Using archive material and personal interviews we revisited the past and spoke with people who shared their memories and experiences of war. These extracts are taken from some of the interviews.

12004062_975203375871747_1592481803776567623_n

Photograph by Amy C. Flagg

In the air raid shelters….

Doreen Purvis: My cousin Anne who was 3 or 4 year old used to insist on being taken outside to look at the stars in the middle of bombs dropping around and German planes overhead. This child would have to be taken to the door of the shelter and shown the stars to stop her crying.

Derek Hutchinson: We were all sitting in the air raid shelter and the bombs were coming down and everybody’s ducking from the bomb blasts, but I’m rubbing my hand’s thinking well if this air raid goes on after 3 o’clock I won’t have to go to school. If it stay’s this side of 3 o’clock I’ll have to go to school.

Doris Johnson: I was at the Glebe Church and the siren went. So my friend Jean and I decided we’d run home to Hyde Street just a short distance away. So we ran and went into our respective homes and my parents said we would go into the shelter. My neighbour called out to me did I have anything to read. So I ran round into my neighbours shelter and the man of the house moved to let me sit down.

Then the bombs started to fall and I was blown out of the doorway. My mam and dad who I loved dearly, were killed. My dad was found later that night, then died. But my mam didn’t survive at all. That was a day, a night, that I’ll never ever forget.

Derek Hutchinson: The last bomb of the raid was a whoosh, then a (whistle noise) louder and louder. Louder than I’ve ever heard before and then…bam. The wall’s of the shelter shook, the ceiling shook, bit’s of dust came down, the candle fell of it’s rack and went out. Then the all clear went.

So we clambered out the back door, forced it open cos there was stones in front, the air raid shelter was actually in the backyard. We went through the house, through the kitchen, as we walked along the passage a big wall of dust came along the passage. When we finally got to the front door it was leaning off it’s hinges.

Outside where there had been houses there was now a hole. It was a bomb crater, they had bombed our street and six houses had gone. We went into our front room and on the mantelpiece were two ornaments, very delicate. My grandmother’s pride and joy. She was really horrified ‘Oh my God, my ornaments’. She was clutching the ornaments saying they were alright ‘apart from a little strap on one of them was broken by Hitler’.

So these figures survived the war and I went on the Antiques Roadshow with them and I showed them a picture of the bombing which was horrifying. He valued them which wasn’t very much and then said ‘Well you know why they survived don’t you’. I said I had no idea. Well he said ‘They are made in Germany. If you look on the bottom you can see the makers mark’.

Maureen McLaughlin: We were at school and the teachers were trying to persuade everybody to go onto evacuation. But I didn’t want to go and leave my mam cos I was the only daughter and just had one brother. But my friends were all going so I said yes I’ll go.

They gave us a list to get, my mother had a job to get them because you had coupons. I had to have new pyjamas, jumper, skirt, shoes, wellies, slippers, yer case had to be full of these new things. But when it came to going I wouldn’t go, I started crying so she took me home.

Memories of food rationing…

Doris Johnson: My dad was a grocer and food started to get scarcer, you got your ration book and you had to abide by that. There were queues for anything which wasn’t rationed. Then sweets were rationed you were very lucky if a shop had a bar of chocolate in.

Maureen McLaughlin: I’ve been asked where you hungry during the war well I wasn’t as the rations were enough for us. Then again if we were short of butter or sugar some of these people in the street with big families would sell you their coupons. You’d take it to the corner shop and they’d sell you the butter, sugar, meat or cheese.

Doreen Purvis: In those day’s everybody took two or three spoonful’s of sugar in their tea so sugar was a very precious commodity. My mother said a cup of tea got knocked over into a sugar bowl and they were so concerned that they actually dried the sugar out on the top of the stove so they could use it again.

Dave Bell: During the war when there were shortages my Granda loved pea’s pudding and found out there was some available in Ferry Street in Jarrow. Now he lived in Nixon Street which is two or three street’s away and he sent my Aunt Joyce, his youngest daughter to go and get him a bowl of this pea’s pudding.

Well she got it and coming back she was just crossing the square in front of the Empire cinema when a dog fight broke out overhead. A German plane was being attacked by a spitfire and the two of them were swirling about and opened fire.

As the bullets were overhead, in fear she threw herself down onto the cobbles and the pea’s pudding went flying amongst all the horse muck. So that was the finish of me Granda’s pea’s pudding.

Picking up shrapnel…

Maureen McLaughlin: We used to go around in the morning after the air raids had been, that was our past time. All the young ‘uns hunting for bit’s of shrapnel in the street’s. We all had a tin and collected bit’s of shrapnel to see who had got the most, bit’s of bombs and aeroplane an’ that.

Derek Hutchinson: Of course it really was called looting. All the thing’s we picked up off the bombed street’s had presumably belonged to somebody. We had photographs and ornaments, it was stealing but we didn’t know. So a lot of my time was spent running away from long legged policemen.

Doreen Purvis: My Grandmother lived in Thornton Avenue just beside the dock gates and of course there was lot’s of bombing raids during that time. Under the cover of the bombing the docker’s would often liberate various items from the docks, climb over the wall with them and stash them in my Grandmothers house. Usually as a reward she might get a bottle of whiskey or something similar.

One night a German war plane came down over the South Marine Park and lake in South Shields…..

Bob Robertson: My parents then lived in Eleanor Street. One of the plane’s I believe came down in one of the parks. But on it’s way it jettisoned two or three 500lb bombs and did an awful lot of damage.

Derek Hutchinson: A plane flew very close overhead on fire. It crashed at the right hand side at the bottom of Beach Road and blew up. Killed the airmen, blew down the building that houses the little boats. And just created mayhem.

If you could grapple in the lake with bent coat hanger’s and pull something out with German writing on this was a swappable article – well I pulled out a flying boot. ‘I’ve got a flying boot’ I shouted’. So they all came running along ‘Hey that’s great’. Then I put my hand inside the flying boot and pulled out what appeared to be cooked tripe. This wobbly, jellified, whitey creamy skin.

Of course it was the poor man’s foot – it had been blown off. ‘You’ll never do any swaps with that it’ll stink. Chuck it back in’ they said. So I threw it back in the lake.

Doreen Purvis: The radio was a great source of information during the war but the Germans also used it for propaganda purposes. And there was a broadcaster called Lord Haw-Haw who used to home in when there had been a raid the night before.

On one occasion he was talking about South Shields and he was talking about people in the ruins of their houses starving to death, well just at that point me Grandma was dishing up stew. So she thrust a plate of stew in front of the radio and said have a smell of that ya’ bugga’.

I am looking to add to these stories so if anyone would like to share their experience of that time just get in touch at     garyalikivi@yahoo.com

A short version of the film is available on the ALIKIVI You Tube channel.

 Gary Alikivi   August 2019.

ZAMYATIN The Russia – Tyneside Connection film research & script

/ Alikivi

On the 7th & 21st August 2018 research for a short film about Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) is featured on this blog. On today’s post I’ve added the script from the film I made about his life.

The narrators were North East actor’s Iain Cunningham and Jonathan Cash. Recorded by Martin Francis Trollope at Customs Space studio in South Shields and excellent soundtrack from North East musician John Clavering.

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin

Start.

Russian born Yevgeny Zamyatin lived with his wife in Paris until his death in March 1937. Their last few years were lived in poverty and only a small group of friends were present at his burial. His death was not mentioned in the Soviet press.

Zamyatin was an author of science fiction and political satire. Famous for his 1921 novel ’We’ – a story set in a dystopian future – the book was banned in Russia. In his novel ‘1984’ George Orwell acknowledged his debt to Zamyatin.

But how does Tyneside fit in this story ?

Zamyatin was born in a small town 200 miles south of Moscow on 19th January 1884. He had an educated middle-class background, his father was a teacher and his mother a musician.

Zamyatin studied Naval engineering at the St Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. He spent winters in the city and summers enjoying practical work in shipyards and at sea. The Middle East being one destination – a rich experience for the future writer.

He was a supporter of the revolution and joined the Bolsheviks, attending demonstrations and meetings. But he was arrested during the 1905 Revolution – for this he was sent to prison for several months. His time there was spent learning shorthand and writing poems.

He completed his course in Naval Engineering and was employed as a college tutor. He was also writing short stories and essays – his first published in 1908. Zamyatin immersed himself in the bohemian life of St Petersburg and was an important part of the cultural scene in Russia.

At the time of the First World War Russia were having ice breakers built in UK shipyards. Zamyatin was sent to North East England in 1916 to work as a Naval engineer for the Russian Empire.

He supervised the construction of the ships on the River Tyne. While there he lived in Jesmond near Newcastle and during his eighteen months stay, he was reported to travel around Tyneside and improve his knowledge of the language.

“In England I built icebreakers in Glasgow, Newcastle, Sunderland, South Shields, and looked at ruined castles. The Germans showered us with bombs from airplanes. I listened to the thud of bombs dropped by Zeppelins”.

ophn16w copy

Laurence O’Shaughnessy lived in South Shields and worked there as Customs Collector on the River Tyne. His daughter Eileen married the author, George Orwell. Was there a connection to Zamyatin ? Leslie Hurst from The Orwell Society looked at the possibility.

‘Would the Russian ships have been checked by customs before leaving the Tyne ? When Orwell learned of the existence of ‘We’ he might have discussed it with Eileen and heard her say that her father had met its author. When Orwell died, Eileen’s library was found mixed with his.

Might Eileen have read Orwell’s copy of ’25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature’  and mentioned the Russian engineer who visited South Shields in her childhood? It is an intriguing possibility’.

When living on Tyneside, Zamyatin wrote two short stories ’The Fisher of Men’ and ’Islanders’. After a day at the shipyards, he would sit at his desk and write about the blinkered and pretentious world of the middle class.

‘By Sunday the stone steps of the houses in Jesmond had as usual been scrubbed to a dazzling whiteness, like the Sunday gentlemen’s false teeth.

The Sunday gentlemen were of course manufactured at a factory in Jesmond, and thousands of copies appeared on the streets. Carrying identical canes and wearing identical top hats, the respectable Sunday gentlemen in their false teeth strolled down the street and greeted their doubles’.

Both stories were published on his return to Russia. But by then, the 1917 revolution was burning. He regretted not witnessing the start of it.

“I returned to Petersburg, past German submarines, in a ship with lights out, wearing a life belt the whole time. This is the same as never having been in love and waking up one morning already married for ten years or so”.

The famine, war and economic collapse of the country had a major influence on his literary career.

“If I had not returned home, if I had not spent all these years with Russia, I don’t think I would have been able to write anymore. True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics”.

In 1921, ‘We’ became the first work banned by the Soviet censorship board. In 1923, he arranged for the manuscript to be smuggled to a publisher in New York. After being translated into English the novel was published.

With his political satire, a number of essays that criticised the Communist ideology and dealing with Western publishers, Zamyatin has been referred to as one of the first Soviet dissidents. As a result, he was blacklisted from publishing anything in his homeland.

The English writer Harold Heslop had seven books published and his first was in the Soviet Union. In 1930 he was invited to the Ukraine to speak at the Revolutionary Writers Conference. While there he also travelled to Leningrad to meet Zamyatin who he wanted to help promote his latest book.

Harold was born in Durham but for many years lived in South Shields. He was a miner at Harton Colliery before winning a scholarship to Central Labour College in London.

 (Zamyatin to Heslop) “I cannot quite place you. Are you a Geordie may I ask. I catch the Tyneside dialect in your speech. Am I right ? I know Tyneside well. I liked the people very much. I also liked their strange, musical dialect.

Often, I found it most amusing. South Shields… Sooth Sheels! I never learned to sing the Tyneside speech!”

Zamyatin read lectures on Russian literature, served on boards with some of the most famous figures in Russian literature, but by 1931 he was experiencing difficulties.

Under the ever-tightening censorship and becoming unpopular with critics who branded him a traitor, he appealed directly to Joseph Stalin requesting permission to leave the Soviet Union – a voluntary exile.

“I do not wish to conceal that the basic reason for my request for permission to go abroad with my wife is my hopeless position here as a writer, the death sentence that has been pronounced upon me as a writer here at home”.

Eventually Stalin agreed to Zamyatin’s request, and he and his wife left for Paris, where there was already a small Russian community.

While there he wrote new stories, most of his earlier work was translated around Europe, but a notable piece of work was his co-writing of a film with French director Jean Renoir.

Just before his death he had told a friend…“I had to leave Soviet Russia as a dangerous counter revolutionary and abroad I hesitate to approach the Russian community, while they treat me coldly and suspiciously”.

He lived out his last years with his wife until his death from a heart attack in 1937, and a final resting place for Zamyatin can be found in a cemetery south of Paris.

End.

Research:

Zamyatin – A Soviet Heretic by D.J. Richards.

Islanders/The Fishers of Men – Salamander press Fiction.

We – Yvegney Zamyatin.

Out of the Old Earth – Harold Heslop.

 Gary Alikivi  2018.

DESTINY CALLING – in conversation with John Roach guitarist with North East metal band Mythra

/ Alikivi

On February 13th 2017 an interview with North East heavy metal band Mythra saw the first post on the Alikivi blog.

Over 75,000 views later and for the 250th post is appropriately an interview with John Roach…

Last year our vocalist Vince High left the band for personal reasons, but we’re still mates. I met Vince when I was 16 in the training school at Swan Hunters shipyard in Fisher Street, Wallsend. We liked the same music and hung around together at work.

I was in a band called Zarathustra with Maurice Bates, who was originally the singer now current bass player with Mythra. Vince was in a band called Freeway and eventually he joined us. Pete Melsom was on bass.

53719219_2164098597236599_4408484686087585792_n

Where did the name come from ?

We needed a shorter name really, one that was easier to remember so after a few ideas were thrown in the hat I came up with the name Mythra. We went with that one and around the same time Barry Hopper joined. Our original drummer Kenny Anderson wasn’t really 100% into the band so Barry stepped in.

When Barry first came to audition his brother dropped him off in his car. We took one look at his beautiful silver Tama drumkit and said ‘He’s in’ (laughs).

As the original four piece Mythra, we all went to gig’s together. Not just Purple or Sabbath at Newcastle City Hall but local bands Warbeck and Axe with Keith Satchfield, Southbound and Circus. There were some truly great rock bands around at that time.

Watching them saying ‘this is what we want to do, this is just like Top of the Pops… but real’ (laughs). Axe were probably the most influential band for us they had a huge p.a. and lights and they wrote their own songs, that’s what we wanted.

We were all learning from each other really because we knew the lads in other local bands Saracen, Hollow Ground, Hellanbach.

It was like ‘Dawsa (Steve Dawson, guitarist Saracen) has got a Marshall stack…What, really…let’s go an’ see it. Or ‘Metty (Martin Metcalf,  guitarist Hollow Ground) has got a Les Paul. What, a real one ? (laughs).

The band were all around 18-year-old, we had bought a Bedford van, our own pa and started earning money from workingmen’s clubs in the North East. Getting our own van was a milestone really instead of our dad’s dropping us off in their cars.

We gigged from Hartlepool, Teesside right up into Northumberland. Maurice got us tied up with Ivor Burchill the main agent in Newcastle. We were getting loads of gigs right through ’76-‘80.

We played Sabbath, Wishbone Ash, Humble Pie rock stuff like that. I was earning more money from playing than I was for being an apprentice fitter in the shipyard. You can’t do that anymore (laughs)!

We had a couple of roadies helping out with the gear plus Lou Taylor came along with his homemade lamps, lights, flares all sorts (laughs). He was always singing in the back of the van.

He used to do these Rob Halford screams and they were spot on. I think Vince thought he was auditioning for Mythra. Lou ended up singing in various bands like Saracen, Satan and down London with Blind Fury.

52762406_2024617097652306_4576230401973944320_n

In 1979 Def Leppard released ‘Getcha Rocks Off’, Iron Maiden the ‘Soundhouse Tapes’ and Mythra recorded the Death & Destiny ep at Guardian Studio in Durham making them one of the original NWOBHM bands. …

Yes, we never said we were the best, just one of the first. The single was recorded around September or October and we released it in the November. Actually, we just wanted to record a demo at first, put it on cassette, send it around record company’s and hopefully get a deal.

The producer and owner of Guardian Records, Terry Gavaghan, said for the same money you can get it on record and it will look more professional than tape.

So, we bought 200 records at first. We sold them and went back a fortnight later to order more! We sold most of them at Second Time Around Record Shop in South Shields.

Gavaghan got us a distribution deal with Pinnacle Records so it was sold all over the country. Rod MacSween at International Talent Booking agency heard Death and Destiny on the Friday Rock Show hosted by Tommy Vance. That opened a lot of doors and got us bigger gig’s nationwide.

By the time 1980 came around we had done a lot of gigs and recorded the EP but I couldn’t see the band going any further. After five years, I felt as if I had enough, so I left in the February.

The rest of the band got a guy in called Micky Rundle to replace me and he played on the Headbangers Ball in July ’80 at Stafford Bingley Hall with Motorhead, Saxon and a few others.

Looking back on the EP, we are really proud of it because we were the first of the bands like Fist, Hellanbach, Hollow Ground and Saracen to release a record. We were at the front of all that.

Did you work with any other musicians ?

I had a break for a few months then started rehearsing with Saracen. Lou Taylor, Les Wilson, Dave Johnson – and Steve Dawson was the other guitarist. But Steve and I had different playing styles and it didn’t work out. I don’t think Saracen was destined to be a two guitar band.

Around six month after that Harry Hill (Fist drummer) got in touch and I joined them. We played the Gateshead Festival with Diamond Head, Lindisfarne, Ginger Baker and headliner Rory Gallagher.

Did you have a manager in Fist ?

Our management team were based in Manchester and were called Rhino Promotions. I think they had a clothing company making jeans – which were like Geordie Jeans here on Tyneside.

I remember a gig in Manchester when the back window of our hired car got smashed and they pinched everything from the boot including my leather trousers, cowboy boots and skimpy black t-shirt that I wore for the gig. They also took a pair of red shorts and an orange bag belonging to Harry Hill. He was livid!

And I’d only wore the leather pants once. We drove back to Tyneside with Glenn Coates, Norman Appleby and me in the back, freezing our arses off sitting on tiny bits of glass from the back window (laughs).

How long were you in Fist ?

I was in Fist for about a year and a half, originally with a singer called Colin Johnson before Glenn Coates joined. We recorded the album Back with a Vengeance and played a few gigs.

The rest of the guys decided they wanted to be a four piece so after a rehearsal in Felling – Glenn and Norman came to my house and told me I was out. It was a bit of a shock!

We had a side band going called Centrefold – Harry, Glenn, me and a great guy called Peter Scott – who sadly died very young of a brain tumour. This continued for quite a while after Fist so there were no real hard feelings.

After Peter died we were going to start Centrefold up again with another bass player but my heart wasn’t in it – I think Steve Dawson took it on – small town Shields !

61546111_10211159663346540_864351645650124800_n

Bringing your story up to date, what have Mythra planned next ?

Well, we are all just enjoying it. Earlier this year we were at the Grimm Up North festival and Negasonic in Belgium, where we showcased some new material.

We’re currently finishing pre-production on 12 new songs, and we are going to record a new album for High Roller Records with our new singer Kev McGuire later this year. Kev is a great guy with a lot of live experience on stages in the North East and he has a great rock voice.

Our next gig is in France at the South Troopers Festival in Marseille on 21st September.

Contact Mythra on the official website http://www.mythra.co.uk/

or through their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mythranwobhm/

 Interview by Gary Alikivi    July 2019.