Free Is This The Real Life? by Mark Blake Page A

schoolboys, bassist David Dowding and guitarist Mike Dudley. Calling themselves, variously, The Cousin Jacks, Beat Unlimited and, possibly, The Falcons, the trio rehearsed in a barn on Dowding’s parents’ farm in neighbouring New Mills; working out passable covers of The Shadows hits ‘FBI’ and ‘Apache’ (just as Brian May and Dave Dilloway were doing at the same time) and Taylor’s pièce de résistance , a snare-drum heavy cover of Surfaris’ ‘Wipe Out’.
    At some point, the trio were joined by a singer and began playing school functions, private parties and a fundraising gig for the TruroYoung Liberals, organised by Roger’s schoolfriend, the late Liberal MP David Penhaligon. ‘I was involved with that gig, and we lost money on it, which might be more of a reflection on the Young Liberals,’ recalled Penhaligon. Others from Taylor’s school days recall a boy that was simply ‘mad about drums’ with, as Penhaligon said, ‘a fetish for wanting to be a pop star’. ‘I always wanted to be in rock ’n’ roll, but not necessarily a rock star,’ claimed Taylor in 1999. ‘But I used to listen to the music and watch the singers and think, “I want a bit of that.”’
    Come 1965 and both Taylor and Mike Dudley had outgrown Beat Unlimited. Through Truro’s musical grapevine, running from the town’s nightspots to Ford’s Music Shop via the coffee bar on Old Bridge Street, a connection was made. Roger and Mike were approached by local musician John Grose, aka Johnny Quale, and asked to join his backing band. Described by Mike Dudley as ‘an Elvis-cum-Billy-Fury clone’, Quale had the Presley quiff and tried to sing like his hero.
    Billed as Johnny Quale and The Reactions, Taylor and Dudley (now playing keyboards) joined bass guitarist Jim Craven, guitarist Graham Hankins and saxophonist John Snell, nicknamed ‘Acker’ on account of his love of Acker Bilk, trad-jazz’s ‘Grand Master of the Clarinet’. In March, after a few weeks’ rehearsal, they made their debut gig at the annual Rock and Rhythm Championship at Truro City Hall, serving up a mix of Beatles, Roy Orbison and Elvis tunes, and coming fourth (out of fifteen) in the contest.
    Fellow Truro School pupil, Geoff ‘Ben’ Daniel, was playing guitar in another local band at the time. ‘There was the West Cornwall bands and the East Cornwall bands, so there were these two cliques,’ he explains. ‘It was highly competitive. I think Roger was pissed off that they didn’t win the championship that day. His favourite saying was “I’m gonna be a pop star”. He said it all the time and it used to drive everyone mad.’ Taylor was already thinking ahead and displaying an ambitious streak. ‘He came to see the group I was in play a gig in Camborne,’ recalls Daniel, ‘and he came up to me at school the next day and said, “If you ever get fed up of being in that band …”’
    Daniel would follow up Taylor’s offer, but not until the following year. In the meantime, Johnny Quale and The Reactions saw out the summer with regular gigs around Truro, Penzance and Falmouth. Listening at home, Taylor was inspired by The Yardbirds and The Who, coming to The Beatles only after 1966’s Revolver . Onstage, his confident drumming style was an attempt to ape his hero Keith Moon of The Who. ‘Moon had a totally unique style,’ said Taylor. ‘He didn’t owe anyone anything. The Who were outrageous: real energy, real art.’ When his heroes played Camborne Skating Rink that autumn, Taylor took his girlfriend to see them, trying in vain to catch Moon’s drumsticks when he threw them into the audience. Later, Taylor would begin a relationship with a Truro Grammar School girl named Jill Johnson. Jill was part of a female folk-rock trio sometimes known as The Three Jays that also included Mike Dudley’s girlfriend. Somewhere in Truro exists a reel-to-reel tape of Roger backing the three girls on drums and enjoying a rare excursion into folk