Herbie Flowers

Херби Флауэрз

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Bass and Tuba. Herbie met music quite by chance. He applied for early call-up. In 1955 absolutely every young man of 18 had to serve two years' National Service. After square bashing (learning to be a good soldier) and several months of egg frying he pleaded with the careers officer to help, who showed him a list of alternative trades available and at the bottom was 'bandsman' with the figure NINE in brackets after it. Herbie told his first fib, saying that he'd played tuba in the school band. A week before the audtion, he drew a tuba (E flat Bombardon to be exact) from the stores; one day later, his first note. The day after that, the scale of C.

The NINE in brackets by the way was the number of years one had to sign on for to join that particular trade group.

The band, twenty-five blokes, was the worst band you've ever heard. After several years in Singapore (where he met his wife), he was posted to the RAF Central Band and then gradually got sucked into the West End circuit of theatre pit work, night clubs, etc., and the occasional recording session. By then, he'd learned the scale of C on the String Bass and the scale of E on the electric bass. The scale of E was necessary on the electric bass because almost every piece of pop music is in the key of E.

1970 saw Blue Mink, a 'session' band, which lasted 5 years. He left to tour America with Bowie (Diamond Dogs tour). After that, he sank myself into session work again; played on quite a few hits (C.C.S., Lou Reed, Nillson, etc!) and thirteen thousand flops.

Not many people know that the largest (and thankfully long-forgotten) hit for which Herbie was responsible was the novelty song "Grandad" which he wrote and produced.

One batch of sessions was for Marc Bolan and T. Rex. "GREAT rock'n'roll; way in front of all the others. So for two years, until his sad and untimely demise, we went slumming."

SKY was the next adventure, and after several years of recording sessions and tours with the band, he retuirned to session work. He also set up and still runs a school for aspiring rock musicians in Sussex. He spends a lot of time on the road with multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Mike Hatchard and apart from his occasional one-man show of anecdotes and music from forty years in the music business, he can be seen with Mike every month on the stage at the Komedia Theatre in Brighton.