Fanatics

Fanatics

BAND INDEX

Bob Tibbitts, vocals and guitar, Derek McConkey, bass, Steve Buckley lead guitar,  Roger Mann lead guitar) Jeff Wilson (Original drummer) Iain MacDonald as vocalist when Bob Tibbitts left and they became The New Fanatics and at this stage Steve Buckley and Derek McConkey left the band to be replaced by John Duggan bass and Ted Duggan drums.

John Morley - Manager

The line up changed, following several name changes including The New Fanatics, Purple Haze, Sabina, Rogation Sunday, Acorn

Memories from Bob Tibbitts (From Rex Brough site)


" I have always been full of music since my piano lessons, I played a trumpet and an E-flat bass in the school brass band (led by Mr Pepper, non-the-less). Well . . . to the point. I started a band at around the '64-'65 period called The Fanatics. We played a lot in the north side of Coventry and into Bedworth and Nuneaton. Pubs and social clubs. Mainly covers of Kinks, Yardbirds, Animals and Beatles but some of my own numbers which usually involved a type of feedback freakout. (It was the beginnings of psych then, mod music slowly morphing into psych). I remember contemporaries of ours were The Flamingos and Susy's Boyfriends. Our manager, John Morley, I believe has since passed on. When I left the band (trouble with losing my voice, we advertised for a lead singer then and we got a chap who I forget his name) the others went on to become Purple Haze with the new lead singer and then later The Drops Of Brandy, I believe they played around Brum for a while. The only recording was at the Grapes Pub on the Radford Road and this has been lost. I really enjoyed those days. Never to be replaced."

Bob Tibbitts and Iain McDonald have recently added some comments.. he explores the development of this group through several follow on groups.

THE FANATICS Here is a brief history of The Fanatics. My band from the sixties! It all started in a garage (yes, really). There was me, my friend, and a girl that lived in the entry (that is a place at the back of houses where the garage usually sits). She didn't actually live in the entry, by the way. Music all began when my dad bought me an acoustic guitar for my 14th birthday. I taught myself how to play listening to the Kinks, Yardbirds, Animals, Beatles and the like. I was already musically inclined as I was taught classical piano by an old lady in our street (playing an incorrect note garnered a stroke across the back of the hand with a knitting needle!). I also played the trumpet and e-flat bass in a brass band. My friend had a plastic guitar. This I broke while trying to tune it. He then bought a 'proper' one. The 'entry girl' was Susan, a very tall-for-her-age girlfriend (I was required to stand on a house brick in order to kiss her!) accompanied our attempts at singing Peggy Sue and other standards using a baby's plastic rattle! Then one day 'electricity' entered our lives and my friend acquired a bass guitar. We knew a kid who thought he was Hank Marvin and he had a real Fender! His dad had a van and all we needed was a drummer Ð Sue couldn't quite 'make it' on the rattle! I bought a Japanese guitar (I think it was an Arbiter or something like that). This I played through a box that had an electric tremolo which was always ON. We practised. The 'Hank Marvin' kid (I recall his name as Gerald Mann) left the group and his dad and van went as well. We acquired a new lead guitar attached to a chap called Steve Buckley. He was the guy who looks like Bert Weedon on the right of the photo. Derek McConkey on bass (at the back of the photo), Geoff Wilson on the drums and myself, were by now playing in pubs and clubs on the north side of Coventry and in Bedworth and Nuneaton. Our manager (John Morley) came with a bigger van and a drum kit that our drummer utilised quite niftily! We played a lot of Kinks, Beatles, Yardbirds and Animals numbers plus a few that I wrote. I used to sing 'The House of the Rising Sun' with passion. I was told I did it well!! One bar staff lady at a club commented that she couldn't understand how I could reach the low notes like Eric Burdon (Animals) being that I was such a 'skinny runt'! We did make a reel-to-reel tape recording at The Grapes pub at the time but that has long since turned to dust. My lingering memories involve me always trying to play louder than the lead (much to his disgust) and flicking the two pickup switches on the guitar on and off (a la Pete Townshend), while inducing howling, morse-code feedback while we did one of our own numbers. (A sort of 'Yardbirds' freakout based on the chord D). Psychedelia was just being born. I also remember during one experimental frenzy, our bass player forcing his bass signal through a tower of small radio speakers, just to relish the sight of the cones popping out and distorting! The photo shows us at the New Inn pub in Longford, Coventry, sometime in 1965/66. We used to play a weekend - Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday lunch and Sunday night for about £25 between us all. Not a lot and most of the monies went on paying back loans on our equipment. The chap on the left of the pic was a guest. He used to show up at our gigs and sang with us. He worked in a circus as I remember. He performed acrobatics up and down the floor in front of the stage while we played. Great times. Sometimes there were fights on the floor, (The Navigation Pub was one particularly nasty one) but we just played on. Blood on my shirt and bits of glass all over the floor! I 'lost' my voice on several occasions probably due to most venues being smoke-filled! Can you imagine how embarrassing it is to loose your voice when you were the principal singer and you had the rest of you set to finish! On one occasion the second half of a set in an Ansty pub had to continue by inviting people to come up and do the singing! So we auditioned a front man to take my place. We got one after several applied at the Radford Social Club, Iain McDonald, - soon after I left the band. The Fanatics later became The New Fanatics, Purple Haze, Acorn, Rogation Sunday and then The Drops of Brandy, who played around the Birmingham area. I am aware now, that at the time there was a band in the US using the same name and also, later in the 80s, a band from Solihull called the Fanatics that became Ocean Colour Scene (if I am correct). We did have an audition booked for the TV on 'Opportunity Knocks' (Hughie Greene's show), but sadly that fell through after I left. Some of the venues I remember playing are: The Navigation Pub, The White Lion (Bedworth), The Rose & Crown in Ansty, The Furnace, The Grapes, The Cedars, The Radford Social Club, ROAB Club, Parkstone Club, Unicorn WMC, The Plough on London Road, The New Inn, Stoke Ex-Servicemen's Club, and many others that I can't quite remember. We played an outside gig once at a fete. I also remember being approached by a chap from Roach Enterprises who offered to get us bookings but we declined, opting for our own manager to get us work. Great old times. All gone now, I am afraid. But fond memories. 

Iain McDonald’s memories from the early period of his musical career.... “After you (Bob Tibbitts) left, Dek (as we called him) found John Duggan for lead guitar and I think Jeff stayed on for a short time and John Morley continued to be the manager. But at one point we got in trouble with the law, we played at the Cross Keys in Bedworth and there was another band that rehearsed there regularly and used to leave their gear there. I didn’t know anything about it until we were on our way home but John Duggan and Dek took a guitar and an amp from there. John gave me the horse brasses from the guitar strap so I got done for receiving stolen goods, we all ended up in court even John Morley. Dek found out the police had been to his house so he took the stolen amp over to Radford Common and smashed it up. Can’t remember all the individual sentencing but I got 2 years probation. John Morley was disgusted about the whole affair and he gave up managing us after that. John Duggan could already drive by then and bought a Commer van and Dek started getting all the bookings. We ended up playing all over the country because wherever we went we would stop at a phone box and Dek would rip out the “entertainment agencies” page from the yellow pages, the further we travelled the more agencies he got in touch with and got bookings…… we even played way down in Devon and Cornwall, out in Suffolk and way up north as well. I think at first we were called the New Fanatics, then Acorn, then Purple Haze and Optical Illusion, etc etc, so many names. I can’t remember how it ended but I think I was the first to leave as I had done quite a few times before because the gigs had turned into outings with all the girlfriends in tow and I didn’t care much for that at the time. I got married to my first wife and then I met up with Ray Harte who I had known since we were about 10 years old, he was a great guitarist by the time he was 14 or so but he got his girlfriend pregnant and got married at 16, so he had been out of the scene for many years by then. He wanted to get back into it and he had met up with Neil Richardson cos he worked with his sister. Neil was jamming around with Loz Netto so he came along as well, so then we needed a drummer. I got Ted Duggan to come along and John Duggan came along to the rehearsal as well. During the rehearsal John, Ted and done a couple of things we used to do with Acorn and Ray was blown away with Johns playing so shortly after we parted company with Loz Netto and that band became Drops of Brandy.”

Trev Teasdel adds

" Rogation Sunday rings a bell - I was putting on the bands at the Coventry Arts Umbrella Club in Queen Victoria Road back end of 1970 and in 1971. Derek McConkey sent us a letter asking for a gig for Rogation Sunday (complete with 6 Go Go dancers!) I booked them - the letter is below.

Also the mention of Neil Richardson and Loz Netto rings a bell. I'd written some lyrics for the Mick Green Blues band - with Tony Morgan on bass and Steve Harrison on drums. The band split up but by May Steve Harrison was in a new band called Nack-ed-en and Steve invited me down to the Queens pub in Hillfields, to their rehearsals one Sunday and asked me to bring my lyrics. I did so but Steve was no longer the drummer by then, replaced by John Bradbury - some 10 years before he joined the Specials. The band was a 3 piece with Loz Netto (later of Sniff n the Tears,) on lead guitar and Neil Richardson (later of Drops of Brandy) on bass. they were a tight rock blues band. After they finished we went to the Dive bar and met up with blues guitarist Chris Jones. John Bradbury had a look through my lyrics and Loz expressed interest in putting some music to some and so did Chris Jones. Nothing came of it though but I became friends with Loz Netto for a while before he left Coventry to join Moon. He was studying drama at Brooklands Annex. 

The band complained about the high cost of hiring the Queens to rehearse so i suggested they join the Umbrella Club. For a one off subscription they could practice there free and they did. I used to watch them, Brad used to take the songs apart and work on the changes between verse chorus and bridge and he was a tight drummer, skilful no long boring drum solos. In August 1970 Neol Davies organised an all night Blues rock jam session at the Umbrella and as they were practicing at the Umbrella John Bradbury and Loz Netto were invited to join in. This was the first time that Neol Davies and John Bradbury played together, some 7 years before the two produced The Selecter track that eventually became the B side of Gangsters. Loz joined drummer Al Docker's new band Tsar, Neil Richardson joined Drops of Brandy - a covers band - and John Bradbury was in several bands there after and by 1978 was in Transposed Men with Neol Davies and Kevin Harrison before joining The Specials in 1979.

  Bob Tibbetts also writes poems and lyrics and has sent a few for this page.

HARVEST OF THE SHEETS

Oh! flaming red

You have gone

Not from my heart

But from my bed

This crop of senses

Harvested apart

No longer ours

But theirs's instead

The awkward miller

Who grinds the flour

He laughs at us

And bakes the bread

The lack of you

This lonely hour

I curse the fields we grew

And mouths we fed

What of this mildewed plan

Sewn in sheets on my divan

With love that lives

And hope that's dead

Your fields lay burning

Screaming red

It's harvest time

And love lies dead

Bob Tibbitts '04

A CHAIR FOR JESUS

I put out a chair

For Jesus to sit in

I watched and waited

And wanted to greet Him

I'd been as patient as could be

But the seat is still empty

I looked to the night sky

And soaked in the bright sky

Looked for strangers

That might swoop down

And stop by

I've gazed into bottles

Into glasses of wine

Breathed in the Holy Smoke

And struggled with Time

Read mysteries and theories

And between the lines in the books

Set a place at my table

With every breath that I took

Been searching in vain

For water in rain

And woods for the trees

To switch comfort and pain

I guess I'll write a letter to heaven

But won't sign it

Again

RWT 2004

A CRAZY SKY


Curiously ripe on a planet of mistakes
She touched her belly, smiled
Then pointed to the crazy sky
She gave birth to a blue-skinned child
A web-footed baby that nobody wanted to buy


Her little pet dog was found later
Something had taken its eyes
And the sheep up there had little holes
Drilled into their heads
No-one knew why


It was '67—
In a distant world that NASA proudly owned
Where lost children were already growing old,
This was nowhere close to heaven . . .


Trying to capture what had been
And what was to be
Those haunting words from yesterday’s dreams
Like a manitou growing . . .
Stretching for the light from that distant star


She gazed down at her newly-born
And sang a mournful lullaby
Of a fresh and safe life
On a bright blue world — La La La . . .


RWT 2004

LAND OF NOD

Would we sleep

The velvet, dream-filled sea;

Get lured far out of depth

To worlds that may not be?

This lifeless fleet

Of empty vessels with hands complete

They form the waiting cast

A faceless gang procession

And voyage that may not last.

Crimson sails unfurl

Each restless sleeping hour

With silver surge of moon

And stories told anew

The ghostly faces drawn

To join the eager crew.

A stormy rain, ever-changing stream

Busy with dread and alien cunning

Performing stealth on ancient screens

They crowd this tidal void

Anticipating their awful climax . . .

The ending of the dream?

                 Bob Tibbitts 15-3-10

A CLOCK IS A TIME MACHINE

Today becomes yesterday

As tomorrow becomes today

Time arrives as a flow

And is gone before you know

Don’t ask me how

There is no such time

As now

So we walk that narrow line

Between yesterday and tomorrow

A master known as time

Our lives will always borrow

Tic Toc Time travels backwards

While anticipation lives

We sense and always follow

The hands of the clock

Wear our lives away

And in an instant moves on

To yesterday

Bob Tibbitts 2004