“ON THE ROAD” WITH KEITH MOTT.

‘Impalas’ re-union in Covid 19 lockdown!

I think it is common knowledge amongst people who know me that I have a very low boredom level and climb the walls if I’m doing something. I’m retired now and with being grounded my ongoing leg problem, I spend a lot of my time these days writing for the British Homing World and playing with photographs and my YouTube channel. With being ‘banged up’ for over nine month with the Covid 19 virus lurking outside my front door, even all these actives were not quite enough to take up my time. I’m not a great fan of social media and got rid of my short lived ‘Facebook’ account many years ago, because of the rubbish that came through to me on a daily basis. During the ‘lockdown’ I had a conversation with my granddaughter, Katie, who is wiz at the internet and she suggested that I start a new account, but this time be more selective and stay away from ‘Facebook’ groups. I thought to myself, with a new ‘Facebook account I could make up some photo shows to put on and get some of my massive archive of photograph out there on the internet for people to enjoy. At the time of writing this article, I have put on 130 photo shows (3,000 photographs) in just under six months and the response has been over whelming! It’s been great fun and helped me through the Covid 19 ‘lockdown’. Of course most of the photos have been based around pigeons, but I did do some large photo shows of my time when I was ‘rock’ drummer, which were brilliant received. I had comments and messages from musicians and fans that I haven’t had contact with for fifty years. I had messages from old band members, four different musicians I have worked with that have had number one hits in the ‘hit parade’ and fans that were at the London Palladium gig in 1969. I spent many hours messaging them back and a couple of times stayed up half the night in conversation with them.

I had a wonderful surprise one morning in September when we had a knock on our front door and my great friend, Keith Read, was standing on our door step. He had popped around to give me a copy of his CD of our rock group 'The Impalas'. Keith and I had six great years playing together in the band in the late 1960's and early 1970's, and this was the first time I have seen him for 50 years. We had a great hour catching up and I must say it was brilliant to see him looking so well! We both went to Richmond Road School and as kids we were always messing around playing music together in different groups. We finely both joined the Impalas and hit the ‘big time’. Music was our lives then and if we were not on the road with the Impalas, we were out recording or jamming in clubs and pubs with other musicians. We were always playing music! After about four years with the Impalas, Keith left to join the ‘Wild Angels’ and about two years later I left and joined the brilliant ‘Rockmobile’. Keith Read is still playing in the pub and clubs today and has a regular radio show with his wife, Pam, on ‘Angel Radio’ on the south coast. ‘Rockmobile’ was a hard working trio, with Tony Collick on lead guitar and vocals, Terry Glasse on bass guitar and myself on drum, and we played the club circuit alongside top acts including Shakin’ Stevens and ‘The Houseshaker’. At that time I owned a very good portable tape recorder and one night in 1974 we were playing at a bid gig at the Telegraph in Brixton (London) and Betty recorded us playing 22 number from the front of the stage, including a five minute drum solo. That tape recording has been in a cupboard in my office for nearly 50 years and while in Covid 19 lockdown, I dug it out and played it. Raw and unproduced it might be, but to hear it again was great, all those wonderful memories came flooding back! I must say the whole experience of seeing Keith and hearing that old ‘Rockmobile’ tape was wonderful and it certainly helped me through the Covid 19 ‘lockdown’.

I have been asked  many times to put pen to paper and record some of my best memories of the 1960’s when I played drums in a rock group, so I’m going to give it a go! I was born in Feltham, near Heathrow Airport in 1950. I can remember my dear late grandmother, Caroline, telling me at a very young age that her brother was a drummer in a dance band. I  played the drums and was very involved at the time with the top rock n’ roll band, ‘The Impalas’, and we played with  many top artists, including, Dave ‘Screaming Lord’ Sutch, Shakin’ Stevens , Heinz Burt (The Tornados) and  two sold out shows with Gene Vincent at the London Palladium in 1969. I was 11 years of age when my parents, Fred and Iris, purchased my first drum kit and I used to practice in the back bed room to all the old Beatles and Rollin’ Stones records. I attended Rivermead Secondary School in Kingston and I did my first drum solo in public at a big school ‘gang’ show, when other local schools, and all the parents attended. Our next door neighbours, in Chestnut Road where we lived soon got fed up with my drums beating out to the best of the 1960’s music scene in the spare bedroom and called the police in a couple of times to shut me up. My dad couldn’t wait for me to join a band and was highly delighted when I finally took the drum kit on the road. I was soon sitting in on recording and television dates playing the drums, and was lucky enough to record tracks at ‘Morgan’ studios, which was one of the best recording studios in the UK at that time and Shakin’ Stevens was recording there that same day. One of ‘The Impala’s’ tracks was played on BBC Radio One several times at that time.

As I’ve previously stated, I have been asked many time by friends through the years if I would do a write up on the 1960’s, but really it was all traveling up and down motorways, playing cards in the back of a van and playing. They say if you remember the 1960’s you weren’t there!  As the saying goes, it was all drugs, sex and Rock n’ Roll for some, but I not for me, I never went near or took drugs or alcohol. I still don’t drink or smoke today! I played with several top groups in the 1960’s, with the main one being six years with ‘The Impalas’ and for most of the time, the line-up was Tony Claiden on lead guitar and vocal, ‘Charlie’ Chaplin on rhythm guitar, Keith Read on bass guitar and vocals and myself on drums. In the early days Tony’s wife, Oonagh Ellis sang with us and she was a ‘world class’ singer, but in the late 1960’s she had to retire from the band, when the Claidens started a family. We had one or two changes in personnel through the years, one of note, was the classical trained pianist, Johnny Hawken, who came in and he was formally with ‘The Nashville Teens’, who had  had a massive number one hit record with ‘Tobacco Road’. My first drum kit was my white ‘Olympic’ set up and I learnt on that great set up, and used it on the road for several years after going on the road. The second kit was my big blue pearl ‘Premier’ kit which consisted of bass drum, snare drum, two mounted tom toms and two floor tom toms, the same as used by Keith Moon of ‘The Who’ at that time. That was a lovely kit and I used that one on the London Palladium in 1968. My third and last drum kit was a mixture of what I thought was the very best in percussion at that time, with the main kit being a light blue ‘Hayman’. At that time the George Hayman were the very latest in top drum design, along with ‘Ludwig’, ‘Rogers’ and ‘Slingerland’.

The Impalas played all over the UK, every night of the week if the work load required it and we had our own club at ‘The Swan’, Mill Street, Kingston, where we played every Sunday night and practiced there on a Monday night. That brilliant club ran for many years and it got so packed on a Sunday night, the sweat ran down the wall of the dance hall. Wonderful days! We played at most of the big venues in the UK, including several times at the Nottingham and Swansea universalities, which were two of the biggest gigs at that time and I can remember we played on several pleasure boats on the River Thames in central London, and we played while passing all the famous land marks, including Tower Bridge and The Houses of Parliament. I did a drum solo at every gig to a number called ‘Manhattan Spiritual’ and on one practice night I did a sponsored none stop five hour marathon drum solo for charity, which raised funds for an electric disable wheel chair. I had known a wonderful girl named, Betty North, for a few months in 1970 and I asked her out for our first date while at the big Gene Vincent gig at the Kingston Coronation Hall, when we were playing on the same bill. I knew she was there that night and I went out in to audience to find her. My life started on that night in 1970 and we got married in May 1972!

It was a great time in my life, but as you get older you want different things. Music was my life in the 1960’s and early 1970’s and is still very dear to me today, and I still derive a lot of pleasure from listening to all types of music, but love ‘rock’ music’. When I was a kid and was kicking a drum kit all over the UK, I always maintained that to be a good musician you had to appreciate all types of music. The main music we played was ‘rock’, but in our spare time our bass player, Keith Read, and myself used to sit in on jazz jam sessions around the London area. The best drummer I ever heard was the late great John Bonham of Led Zeppelin and he was everything I wanted to be as a musician!

That’s my article for this week! I hope my reader have enjoyed this little walk down ‘Memory Lane’! Betty and I would like to wish all our many friends and associates in the pigeon racing and showing world, a Merry Christmas. Have a great time! For the first time ever, we are not sending out Christmas card this year, but donating the money to Jo Cuthbert’s ‘Ollie’ appeal. This poor little boy is fighting cancer and need a lot of money to fund the treatment he so desperately needs. Love to Ollie and his family!  

TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT (www.keithmott.com)