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The Liberators
Rugby’s Liberators would forever be linked with being the source material that created Chart stars Pinkerton’s Colours. But before Pinkerton’s it was The Liberators who were to dominate the East Warwickshire music-scene.
Tom long was a member of The Liberators, and a budding Rugby musician, takes up the story. “I used to work at Associated Electrical Industries (who would eventually become the GEC) and I had messed about with a few bands. But I decided to strike out and put all the money into buying a Gibson guitar, which was very serious stuff in those days, and much coveted. Many local musicians were using copies at that time. I was just getting used to it and trying to improve myself to get into a more serious band, when one day Tony Newman approached me at work and asked would I like to join a band? This was The Solitaires and had revolved around the original lead guitarist Chris Pottle. The band had finally broken with Chris and so I joined. They had a gig that weekend. I practiced every night and although the first gig wasn’t very good the next one wasn’t at all bad. We stuck at it and improved steadily, talking all the time about name changes. We had about 3 short-term names before settling for the Liberators sometime early in 1964. Ironically about the same time English Electric announced their new washing machine of the same name!”
The Liberators began to take shape, with Tom on lead guitar, Tony Newman on Rhythm guitar and vocals, Sam Kemp on vocals, Pat Sammon on bass and John Walbank on drums. They hooked up with local entrepreneur Reg Calvert. “In the summer of 1964 when we were well established with Reg” reveals Tom, “Pat Sammon had a personal crisis and left the band suddenly” recalls Tom “We were at Kettering Central Hall and I had to switch to playing bass that night at a few hours notice. I managed to teach Tony a couple of easy numbers so I could play lead for some of it. Then we did the rounds of Coventry and district and picked up Barrie Bernard. We carried on and went from strength to strength and by early 65 we recorded the single ‘It Hurts So Much’ under Shel Talmy and engineered by Glyn Johns with Jimmy Page on extra guitar. It was done at IBC Portland place, the B side was entitled ‘You Look So Fine’”.
“When the recording deal with Shel Talmy came to nothing” said Tom, “we had started serious negotiations with Reg Calvert, right at the last minute when we were about to start signing things, John the drummer decided to pull out. We had a bit of a panic, as it were, and auditioned drummers all over the place, even in London. But someone we knew recommended to us a drummer Dave Holland who we’d met not long before in a band from Northampton called The Linton Grey. He was technical and precise, with a very good kit, but could be a prickly character when things didn’t go very well. A bit of a perfectionist, he was quite a nice guy most of the time, but when he got into his finicky perfectionist mood he was not easy to live with”.
In November 1965 The Liberators under the guidance of Reg Calvert became Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours and scored the massive hit Mirror, Mirror penned by Tony Newman. One interesting piece of ‘you wouldn’t know unless you were there kind of trivia’ comes from Tom Long. “Later as Pinks, we still used some of the same old rehearsal rooms round Rugby and one was The Bilton Church Hall which has just been sold off. One day we had reason for a routine session with (Coventry born) Tony Clarke from Decca. It was easier for him to come up to us on the train, so we rang round for a hall, nowhere was free. We rang Bilton, they said sorry were all set out for a jumble sale. I asked, is the stage empty? That’s all we need, and only for 2 hours. They said OK as long as we didn’t touch anything in the hall. So we got set up on this stage with the curtains closed and Tony Clarke came along and brought Jimmy Page with him. Jimmy Page picked out a couple of kerosene bicycle lamps out of the jumble and left TEN SHILLINGS for them. That was a fortune then and the jumblers were more than happy with that. But Jim was no fool, I soon learned that the lamps were worth about £5 down the Portobello market!”
Liberators Trivia
Go to www.covmusic.net to access the Walk of Fame site.