local band history 1976

One evening in 1974 after lessons a pupil at Batley Grammar school was entertaining his schoolmates by playing T-Rex songs on his guitar. His name was Paul Beever and one of his schoolmates there that evening was me. I thought "I want to be able to do that."
By 1976 we had left school but remained friends and since by then I had learned to play it was no surprise that we decide to form a band. Another schoolfriend Matt Parkinson was press ganged into singing, Paul's friend Rob Wells had some drums so he was in, in fact the pair of them had done one gig together as a pre-tribute band T-Rex, but we had no bass player. Then along came Steve Davies who we got to know since he regularly collected his girlfriend from the place we worked. He couldn't play bass but said he would like to, so that was good enough for us. We should have been called Asda Morley since we all worked for, or had connections there but the DIRTY DORIS BAND! was born.
DIRTY DORIS (1976) me and:

• Matt Parkinson - vocals
• Paul Beever - guitar
• Steve Davies - bass ( later to play with BEWARE THE DOG and 25 RIFLES)
• Rob Wells - drums (later with GULLIVER, SLY FOX/ONE ADULT, THE DENTISTS, THE SNOOTS and DIRTY MAX)

We wrote our own material with Rob and Paul being the lyric writers and Paul and I doing the music. Rob's religious and mythical lyrical overtones spawned such greats as Jesus don't you p*** on me and Knaresborough Zoo. We never did any gigs, pehaps because we never knew how to get one. We really were crap and things fizzled out but we had a few laughs.

Later that year through both Asda and nights at the local hostelry, The Fountain Inn in Morley I got to know Les Johnson who played guitar in a band with friends, accomplished folk singer songwriter Robin Buttrey, SimonVerity-Mills and Charlie James. Not sure how, but I managed to jump aboard and played my first ever gig at no lesser place than Hull University. This band was PRINZ EUGEN.
PRINZ EUGEN (1976) me n:

• Les Johnson - guitar and vocals (later formed the HAIR RESTORERS and now with the BARE ESSENTIALS - see links)
• Robin Buttrey - acoustic guitar and vocals ( later with GULLIVER then the HAIR RESTORERS)
• Simon Verity-Mills - bass (later SLYFOX/ONE ADULT)
• Charlie James - drums( later GULLIVER, HAIR RESTORERS and currently with CHEESY RIDER)

A mixture of covers and original material written by Les and Robin. Not long after, Les appeared to retire to his bedroom and the band was no more. When he came out the three piece HAIR RESTORERS (see above) started growing..............next episode soon.