OFFICIAL PAUL SAMSON WEBSITE- KELLY

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THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE FOR PAUL SAMSON AND SAMSON

KELLY
Earlier this year, I had the good fortune to be contacted by Terry Jenkins, who played in Kelly with Paul. I asked him if he had any memories that he could share, or if he could verify the information that I already had, and I was amazed when he sent me the following document. I felt that the story was of such interest that I have reproduced it below, virtually unedited. There will be some pictures in due course.

My Kelly Days 1974-1975

By Terry Jenkins

Band members Feb1974 – Early 1975
Tom Kelly-Drums
Paul Christodoulou (Zavva)-Bass / Backing vocals
Paul Sanson- Guitar / Vocals
Terry Jenkins-Guitar / Vocals
Rick Weeks- Vocals
Jeff Ball-Vocals
Ben (surname not known)-Drums
Barry Mitchell-Drums
John Goodsall-Guitar / Vocals
Colin Wilkinson-Drums / Vocals

In late ’73 I had been on tour supporting Hawkwind in a band called Fandango and when there seemed to be nothing on the horizon for us after the tour finished the enthusiasm for the band just fizzled out and we split.
Early ’74 I started to look for a new band to join and searched through the Melody Maker for ‘band members wanted’ in the classifieds. I saw amongst the dozens of ‘2nd guitarist and back-up vocals sought’ usually followed by ‘must have Gibson and Marshall’ this advert which had a local number, I rang and spoke to Paul Chistodoulou (later changing his stage name to ‘Zavva’. He told me he chose the name because it was a bit like ‘Zappa’ and people would remember it!), anyway we arranged an audition and I duly went along, as nervous as hell.
The band used a rehearsal room in a youth club near Archway, I seem to remember it was called the Alderney youth club. They had seen about 3 other guys before me and they were getting a bit tired of it all. Anyway I was called into the rehearsal room where I was introduced by Paul Z to Paul Sanson, Tom Kelly and Rick Weeks, I plugged in and we got going on ‘Walking the Dog’ and the whole thing seemed to gel, they offered me the gig after 2 numbers and I said yes straight away.

They told me that Tom had formed the band because he had an offer to take a band for a residency in a hotel in Durban, South Africa. He had worked there previously in a trio (the other two guys, a bass player and a pianist, were both blind!) doing covers of current pop songs but wanted a more hard-edged band to take back there. He then recruited Paul Z. who had played with him in a band called Grit, they auditioned for a guitarist and found Paul S through the Melody Maker and he brought along his mate Rick Weeks who he’d been in a band with.
They had been together only a couple of weeks and felt that they needed another guitarist to beef up the sound when Paul S took his solos, what happened though was that from the day I joined and given the egos of lead guitarists we became the typical twin lead guitar outfit that was very popular at that time, it was very generous of Paul S to share solo duties as the intention was that I was to be 2nd guitar and him as the main soloist.
We rehearsed the next day and when I told them I had an Akai 4000DS reel-to-reel tape we set to work on preparing a tape for sending to South Africa. I think we recorded the first songs about a fortnight after I joined. The numbers we chose were the usual fodder for a quick set in those days, standard rock tunes like ‘Walking the Dog’, ‘It’s All Over Now’, ‘I Shall Be Released’ etc. plus a couple of original numbers, ‘Wrong Side of Time’ and ‘Athens Hotel’ written by Paul Z, both which we continued to play all the time I was with Kelly.

We recorded the backing tracks and added vocals later using the ‘bounce’ sound-on-sound feature of the Akai, which meant the tape is in mono (although the later 4 tracks we recorded were made with 2 Akai’s so we could record in them in stereo, putting a live band track down on one machine and adding vocals with the backing track onto the second tape machine). We were very pleased with the results and I arranged to have my girlfriend take some publicity photos to send off with the tape.
We chose the Tower of London as the location thinking that it would give a good backdrop for the pictures. The results were pretty good making us look like a typical pub rock band of the time, which is probably why the guys in South Africa turned us down thinking that we’d probably scare the children!

With the SA trip now off the agenda we needed a new strategy. I’m not sure how it came about but we became involved with a ‘manager’ an Irish guy called Pat (no, really!) who held out the promise of a tour of the US air force bases in Germany, the only drawback was that he was used to dealing with country and western bands and we had to learn a few C&W tunes to satisfy the punters over there. It was awful because none of us like that type of music, we were a rock and roll band. Anyway we learned a few tunes and everything was in place for our first tour. As I subsequently found out, promises in the music biz mean bugger all until you’re up there on stage doing your stuff, because right up to the morning we were due to leave we had been strung along by ‘our manager’. After many frustrating phone calls trying to contact this guy it was as if he’d just disappeared, leaving us high and dry. Germany was off.

We then concentrated on doing the job ourselves and tried to get on the ‘London Pub Circuit’ which was the best way at the time to get regular work, but there was a lot of stiff competition around with the likes of ‘Kilburn and the High Roads’, ‘Ducks Deluxe’, ‘Dr Feelgood’ and ‘The Kursaal Fliers’ amongst the many hundreds of others.
Paul Z did all the ringing around for us and what’s more he had a Ford Transit van and half share in a P.A. What more could an aspiring band want?
We played a few gigs with Rick Weeks and just as things seemed to be going well (Paul Z had even managed to blag a couple of gigs for us in the ‘Lord Nelson’ and ‘The Brecknock’ both in North London and both very prestigious!! ) he suddenly decided to leave the band citing his girlfriend as the reason?? We were in shit street, what were we going to do?

Now with the ‘big time’ gigs only a month away we thought that we would try to manage the vocals between us, with Paul S taking on the majority of the vocal lead parts. I ‘volunteered’ to do ‘Long Train Running’ by The Doobie Brothers and ‘Free ride’ by the Edgar Winter Band and one of my songs, ‘Who’s Crying?’
Paul Z took the lead on ‘Highway ‘61’ by Bob Dylan, this was a song that we played all through our pub rock career and was more or less a 10-15 minute jam with Paul Z. rattling off a few lines here and there.

During this time I got to know the two Pauls very well I think we were all pretty close, we all had similar musical tastes, Paul S, I remember was very influenced by Jimmy Page, he even wore his guitar strap far too low for his own good in honour of his mentor. He also liked Rory Gallagher and his favourite band was Trapeze led by one Mel Galley who was a great singer/guitarist. He once took us all off to the Marquee club in London (then, the premiere London gig). The band was very impressive, with Galley more than capable of holding the audience in the palm of his hand. Paul S was slack jawed through most of the set, obviously humble in the presence of such greatness.

Paul S bought himself another car at this time, an old Mini. He said he was trying to sell his old Ford Zephyr 4 (826 XJ) and couldn’t find a buyer, when he told me I could have it for £5 I jumped at the chance, I still don’t know why I bought it as I couldn’t drive, and no-one was willing to teach me, so it sat outside my flat for months until a scrap merchant offered me £5 to take it away, I happily agreed!
I also got to learn what a horny devil Paul was. In rehearsals he would tell us of his exploits, he revelled in the details of a weekly encounter he had with a married woman who he would call round to see in the course of his work, (he worked as an electrician for the council) I think. even boasting one day of the ‘carpet burns’ he’d suffered from that afternoons romp. There was also the time when I had a thing going with the girl who lived opposite me and when she turned up at on of our gigs while my girlfriend was there I had a hasty word with Paul S to ‘help me sort out this mess’ he duly obliged and ended up taking her home.

Paul Z became a close friend of mine mainly because he lived nearby to me, I was in Crouch End and he lived near Archway. The kind of music he listened to included Elton John and Wings he also liked Demis Roussos, he was probably the most mainstream pop fan in the band. Tom was a different matter, he never really struck me as a natural rocker, he worked as a council official and was preparing to get married to a girl who never approved of his musical exploits. She was Jewish and as a condition of the marriage, Tom had to go and have the unkindest cut of all, that’s right the dreaded circumcision, we can only wonder what that feels like but at 27 (he was an old man by our standards), OUCH.

The bookings came and went and we had at least one a week for a couple of months, we always had the same routine after the local gigs, we would head off to the Pizza Hut in Islington and it was always 3 or 4 pints and the 18” pizza challenge where you would have to eat the whole pizza yourself and you wouldn’t have to pay, I only managed it once and felt ill for days after.

Paul Z had booked us a couple of gigs in the Leeds area, it was one of the rare occasions we played outside London, the only other places we played were The Leas Cliff Hall in Folkestone and the Target club in Reading. When we set off for Leeds we decided we would all sleep in the van and make a weekend of it. Tom wasn’t too keen on slumming it and decided to sleep on the roof of the transit while the rest of us decided to put up with the smell of the booze and farts that are the signature of bands on the road.
The first gig was in a small mining town outside Leeds in a working mans club, and as within the hour we attracted the attentions of the local (and we thought unattached ladies) one of them persuading me to back her up as she explained to some local gorilla that we were engaged and had known each other for ages, I like a soft southern fool, agreed. It could have turned nasty if it wasn’t for the diplomatic skills of Tom Kelly!
Me and Paul Z (who’d also pulled) managed a quick getaway at the end with 2 women while a group of local blokes were waiting for us at the other door. While we were parked up outside their houses having a quick grope they both confessed to being married, goodnight and thanks, but no thanks.
Paul S in the meantime had sneaked off with a local girl and when we caught up with him an hour later told us they’d been in her kitchen when her Mum and Dad came home while they were at it. . He looked visibly shaken when we saw him and was pulling out chunks of his tousled hair where the bloke had manhandled him.
The next day we all went off to Leeds Market (after a quick game of footie – see photos) for some grub and then went to find a public bath as we were all pretty grubby by now and finally killed the afternoon by seeing ‘The Exorcist’ which was doing the rounds at the time. I don’t remember the gig that night or the drive home.

We sank into a routine of weekly gigs not really going anywhere, we had no ambitions except to keep ploughing the pub rock circuit, when out of the blue, Tom said he was quitting as ‘he was too old!’ and that he was getting married next month anyway.
We put an ad in the Melody Maker and prepared to go through the audition thing, it was fairly straightforward and we found a great drummer from Crouch End called Ben (I don’t remember his surname) he was a really funky player unlike Tom who was more solid rock. This line-up lasted for a month or so fulfilling our gig obligations, when Paul S started missing rehearsals, I don’t think he missed any gigs but Paul Z and I thought his heart wasn’t in it anymore, it was probably the direction we were following with Ben. Paul S wasn’t too keen on the funky thing he just wanted to play rock.

Paul Z had the unhappy task of sacking Paul S, there seemed to be no other way forward. Paul Z, me and Ben now needed a new lead singer and help came in the shape of one Jeff Ball who was the singer with Grit for a time, he used to come to some of our rehearsals and was not a bad singer so we thought we could make a go of it.
We decided to get another guitarist/ singer and after seeing dozens of guys we found John Goodsall (who called himself – Johnny Mandala) then, he’d just left Atomic Rooster and was glad of a place in a gigging band. The direction of the band really changed now as this guitarist was phenomenal, he played like a cross between John Mclaughlin and Al DiMeola, he was so fast and fluid and probably the greatest single influence on me of any musician I had ever played with. I took a back seat on the guitar duties and let him fly away! He showed the whole range – a feel for the blues, fluid jazz playing and very melodic- no wonder then that Phil Collins snapped him up for his jazz rock band ‘Brand X’ .

Anyway, Ben left, he just never showed up for rehearsals anymore so I rang Barry Mitchell, the drummer from my last band and we did 2 shows with him and then he was sacked when he never showed up for the next gig or any rehearsals. John offered his mate, Colin Wilkinson, who also sang lead vocals, the job and we carried on gigging for a while until the bookings ran out, so did John and Colin. That then is the story of my time in Kelly.

The last time I saw Paul S was about a year later when I got a call from Paul Z (this is a bit hazy, but I think what happened was - ) he told me that Kelly had reformed with himself and Paul S and at the time Chris Aylmer was roadying for them. I was invited down to a rehearsal for a blow, which was great fun. I’m not sure, but I think I played at least one gig with them after they had come back from a week in Utrecht, Holland and Paul S wore a weird kind of jesters hat that he’d bought in over there. That was the last time I saw any of them.

(Update – through the good offices of Rob Grain and the Paul Samson web site I got in touch with Paul Zavva and we met up in late 2003 for the fist time in nearly 30 years. He came up with his partner, Ange to spend a lovely Sunday with me and my family, we reminisced for hours talking about the band. To cap it all he still had Tom Kelly’s phone number so we rang him and had what amounted to a Kelly reunion, a truly memorable day!)

I went on to have career in music until I retired in 1981 and set up a photographic business that I still run today.
In my post Kelly days I was in several bands and projects. I had a 6 month spell with the pop band Pilot, where I fulfilled one of my ambitions and played ‘Top of the Pops’ and ‘Supersonic’ then I spent a while recording with the likes of Rod Argent and Jeff Seopardi . I then played in various bands until I joined a band called Hi-Fi who had moderate success in Germany where we made 2 albums and toured throughout 1979-80, also at this time I was involved in writing, playing and producing film and TV music with a guy called Bob Painter, we made one album as ‘Self Defence’ and continued up to the time I set up the photography business.
I can’t believe it but I still get moderate royalty cheques from the TV music we made over 20 years ago.

I would like to add a couple of notes to this. Paul had often told me a bout the Trapeze gig at the Marquee. They had taken along a stereo cassette recorder to tape the gig, and ended up holding a microphone each, and had to make sure that nobody got between them. The original tape is still in existence.

The line-up for the Dutch gigs that Terry mentions was Paul S, Paul Z, Roger Hunt on Drums, and Richard Amey on 2nd Guit/Keys.