Free Ain't Bad for a Pink by Sandra Gibson Page B

was a communist at heart in those days. I’d leave Whitty in charge and he’d sell one packet of strings and then disappear to Holland’s to buy cooking sherry or I’d arrive back to be told by Shep and Dean that he’d gone across to The Barrel. On one occasion I got them to dress up in white coats and go and fetch him as if they were carting him off to an asylum. There were always practical jokes going on. But the work got done; the music got played.
    Phil Grice – Gricey – is a good example of what I mean. He was a good guitarist who stuck with pop and didn’t become part of the Skunk Band but he worked at the shop. He was possibly the laziest lad I’ve ever met, and I had to go and dig him out of bed, cup of tea at the ready, if I wanted him to come to work. I am, and was then, very tolerant of erratic timekeeping as long as the priority work was done. Plum was similarly poor at morning timekeeping. Once the business was really up and running you had to have a bit of a hierarchy though the rules weren’t conventional. They were based on friendship and good will and flexibility.
Making A Snake
    I recall the amount of preparation that had to go into equipment for gigs. One night we were making a “snake” for an important gig the next day. It involved 32 channels, 64 plugs and 3 soldered joints per plug. We were doing this upstairs at Nantwich Road and it was going to take all night.
With a big bag of grass.
    Anyway – it got late and I had to let my wife know I wouldn’t be home. We didn’t have a phone so I had to phone the old lady next door. She was religious and squeaky and I got the old spliff giggles and I couldn’t communicate with her for laughing and in the end I couldn’t leave the message. I think it was a crucial moment in relation to my wife. We were in two different worlds. There are pivotal moments when you start working in the business. You get a different outlook on life and that separates you from other people.
    Wayne Davies (Slim). (3)
Plum: Not One Drop Spilt
    I had a long acquaintance with Plum; he went in and out of my life even after we had split up as business partners. I admired his practical skills and thought his strengths were complementary to my own; the original partnership was a sound idea in more ways than one. Unfortunately he didn’t know how I operated. He thought my lucrative visits to cities like Manchester, Liverpool and London to buy stuff for customers were pleasure trips and believing this he rightly felt resentful. He certainly hadn’t rated my input – in fact he probably thought there was no input from me. So he wanted to split up. Plum kept Hewitt Street and I had Nantwich Road; I retained the Custom Amplification trade name and Plum renamed his section: Air. We had a share-out of stock and there was some animosity between us, but only initially. He continued making and supplying cabinets and if I wanted a cabinet I might have it off him but I was much more interested in retail than manufacture. Hewitt Street was in effect a wholesale factory shop. If Plum had listened to me I could have made it into a manufacturing unit but at the end of the day Plum was only interested in having just enough money for his present needs and never worried about the future: he just spent the money without considering tax or VAT or money for materials. Unfortunately his practical excellence was not enough to compensate for his lack of business acumen and he went bankrupt within six months. Meanwhile I had a growing business in vintage guitars which Gordon-Smith was advertising.
    Plum could be very generous; he had a heart of gold and a head of lead; if you needed £100 he’d give it you, but he might have to consider robbing it from someone else! He was very keen on live music and would both perform and encourage others to perform. Everyone remembers the famous occasion when Plum was playing at The Royal. The worse for wear – he fell off the stage onto the dance floor –