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FEVERTHEREWASABANDTHAT should have set the world ablaze it was Fire. Their debut single, ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’, found them standing on the
shoulders of giants. They shared a label with The Rolling Stones and were part of The Beatles’ mighty Apple Empire. But despite more than their fair share of great songs, success eluded them. However, thanks to a timeless single and album, The Magic Shoemaker, the band has achieved cult status among those with an ear for classic late ’60s rock. In December 2007, Fire reformed to play their rock fairytale for the first time in 37 years. A live recording of these shows has recently been issued on CD and, to celebrate its release, Shindig! spoke with Dave and Bob to get the inside story.
Dave Lambert, singer, guitarist and songwriter with Fire, was immersed in a world of music from an early age. “I was brought up in a house where music was always playing,” he explains. “I was also brought up to go to the variety theatre every Friday. So from a very young age I was drawn into a love of theatre. My dad said I just used to sit and stare into the orchestra pit, which is probably when I first decided what I wanted to be.” It wasn’t long before he formed his first skiffle group, but it was the swirl of the pipes and beat of the drums that caught his imagination. “Two of my uncles were top Scottish pipe band drummers. They would teach me by rote really, because I used to sit and listen to them play at the lunch table with knives and forks, so I would pick up all the basics.”
Lambert joined The Boys Brigade where he played snare drum and met future Fire drummer, Bob Voice. At the same time he was introduced to rock ‘n’ roll by his elder sister. While she was swooning over Cliff
Richard, her younger brother discovered Eddie Cochran. “He still remains a big influence on me now. I’ve always considered him to be the father of what we now call rock,” he says.
An interest in rock ‘n’ roll inevitably led to the blues. Working backwards, Lambert discovered Howlin’ Wolf and Leadbelly. “One of the early things I [heard] was the Smokestack Lightning EP, which I got hold of, and has some tracks I still adore now. And then I got into Leadbelly, and that again has remained with me.” He formed his first band, The Hangmen, at school with two friends. The first of several three-piece bands, it was followed by The Syndicate; later renamed The Chains.
Three-piece bands were a novelty at the time, they still are, but for Lambert they offered far greater musical freedom. “If I felt like changing the mood I could do it immediately,” he explains, “I didn’t have anybody else providing harmonic structures that I had to stay within so I could wonder off if I wanted. And also I like the sound of guitar, bass and drums.”
By the summer of 1966 Lambert and Voice had become fully fledged Mods. “We were of that stuff that Quadrophenia was made of,” reminisces Bob Voice. “The Who was the band that really made me want to go out and buy a drum kit. We were going out on our scooters, going down to The Ricky Tick or The Crawdaddy and places like that. We’d turn up at these incredible clubs, where we’d watch bands like The Graham Bond Organisation. Those sorts of bands were really the ones that steered us a bit, and that’s why Dave was sitting at home playing his guitar. That’s where our interests were.”
However, Lambert was still more interested in playing with The Pride Of Murray Pipe Band than throwing shapes as the front man in a rock group. But all that changed with a phone call from Voice.
Voice’s cousin was running The White Bear pub and had been let down by the group hired for that night’s entertainment. “I walked in there one night; I suppose I was just about over age, and he said, ‘the band hasn’t turned up. You can play drums can’t you?’ I said, ‘No, not really.’ I used to play in The Boys Brigade but I can’t play a kit,” explains Voice. An evening of snare solos was hardly good drinking music, so Bob called his mate Dave and we did a few cover things, ‘Got My Mojo Working’ that sort of thing and one thing led to another after that. We got a bit carried away because things went so well, and Bob and I both said we should form a band and get a bass player.”
With their first gig behind them Bob and Dave began rehearsing in earnest. Luckily they had access to a garage where they could make as much noise as they liked. “My old step father, bless him, was a caretaker at Lampton School so we used to practice in the garage there, which was great because there weren’t too many houses around it being school grounds,” recalls Voice. “We’d get in there and make the most dreadful noise. We were dead keen. We used to go in there in the dead of winter with Dave trying to warm his fingers over my mum’s old paraffin heater.”
Although they’d acquired a bass player, by their own admission he couldn’t play. They eventually found the bassist of their dreams while looking through the local paper. Dave and Bob were searching for a bass amp and Dick Dufall had one. “We went to this house and it was Dick,” recalls Voice. “He demonstrated this amplifier, and Dave and I looked at him and thought, this guy is brilliant. So we grabbed him.” With Dufall onboard Friday’s Chyld was born. A little bluesier than Lambert’s previous bands, they gigged locally performing a mix covers and originals. As Voice recalls, “In those days there were so many live gig opportunities around for young aspiring musicians. There were loads of these little clubs, art centres and art labs springing up all over the place. So we would play a couple of times a week.”
The teenage Fire: “We were the stuff that Quadrophenia was made of”.
Thanks to Lambert, Fire had a regular supply of original songs. “I started to like the sound of what we were doing and I got some ideas for different things and from then on it was just flowing out of me,” he recalls. Although they were still semi-professional, having original material gave them an edge, particularly once Lambert began writing songs like ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’. Unbelievably he found inspiration in the sound of a Mini Cooper’s engine. “I wrote both ‘Treacle Toffee World’ and ‘Father’s Name Is Dad’ to the engine of a Mini. I was working at Heathrow Airport in those days. I frequently had to drive round the airport to the different airlines, and the gearbox made certain rhythms. As I was going along and when I got a really firm idea I’d pull over and write something down.”
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