band history 1982-1984

Unfortunately by December 1982 Steve Taylor had fulfilled his ambition to be singer and frontman of a band and decided to leave, taking his vocal talents and combining this with acting in an amateur dramatics group.
Drummer Pete Knapton felt confident in being able to carry the vocal duties as well as drumming. Unusual but not unique in those days...remember Phil Collins in Genesis after Peter Gabriel left. The three piece Beware the Dog was born.

Not having Steve Taylors pop influence anymore this line-up developed a much heavier sound and within a few months the band produced a far rockier three song demo tape featuring three original songs......the title track Victim along with CrimeDoesn't Pay and the superb Lose Control which stood the test of time and featured much later on the Tiger Bay CD in 1995.

Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds, Bradford and Hebden Bridge regularly had their collective ear drums excercised by this line-up. The highlight being a support slot to Hanoi Rocks in Bradford. We had learnt through previous experience that on such occasions it was the norm for the sound engineer to bypass several of the PA speakers when the support band was playing so as to make the headline band sound far better. Being wise to this we decided to cross the sound engineer's palm with a couple of notes in order to ensure we got the full PA sound during our set. The success was confirmed when next day when I saw a friend of mine who had been to the gig and his first comment was "you lot were F****** loud last night weren't you"!! ........Yeeeehah!

After a time and probably in the search for something new we tried once again to go with a second guitarist. Steve worked with an accomplished guitarist Dave Pinder who joined us. We worked a few things out and a few gigs ensued until on a Saturday night whilst setting up for a gig at the Royal Park in Leeds we were concerned about the non-appearance of our second guitarist. Just before we were due to start the pub recieved a phone call from the Huddersfield Police to inform us that Mr Pinder was detained there for the evening on suspicion of SHEEP RUSTLING!!!!! Cracks were beginning to show. Steve had increasing family commitments and to his credit he tried to recruit a replacement so as not to cause a break up of the band. However this did not work out. This left Pete and me with no more mates to complete the band so by mid 1984 Beware the Dog was no more.