Sheila

We had now finished at The Gun after some trouble that was to change Tony Watts’ life, he was glassed in the face and scarred severely, we didn’t go back after that. We had also come to the end of another long residency, playing once a week at The Fortune of War, a local music venue. This was again, a very rough pub, highlighted one evening by a massive fight between a brewery beano and the pub staff. I was splashed with blood sitting behind the drums. While trying to get the gear out the side door I remember Conk ducking as a pint mug still full of beer flew out toward his head. We were called as witnesses in court for that one, a lot of blood and glass. We now needed some better gigs.

        The stage at the Fortune of War

Conk was a good friend and enthusiastic, but wasn’t really cut out for management on the level we were aiming for. We had to spread our wings and Sheila soon took over as our manager, believing we were good enough to turn professional. In those days about the only way to do this, without a hit record, was to get a good full time residency, the best of which at that time was with Mecca, our local being Basildon Locarno. Sheila approached the manager, Roy Winkfield. How she did it we don’t know, but we were booked for an audition. After Dave Clark had left in early 1964, when his hit “Glad All Over” reached number one, another band had taken over the residency who weren’t that good. We played a set in their break as our audition and stormed the place. We were then the regular relief band for a while and soon a contract was signed.  

Real promotion, our new card and matches

This coincided with a bit of a shock, July 1966 and a group with our name got into the charts with “Wild Thing”. All of a sudden we would be signing autographs at gigs to ‘fans’ who thought it was our record, we had to change our name. Mecca manager Roy Winkfield came up with the name “Expression”.