We used to practice in our Uncle Dewar’s garage and I remember I bought the Beatles complete song book, so we were trying to play all the Beatles songs, we did pretty good and in our hearts we were going to be Big and make loads of money- think every young musician thought this, other wise why would we spent so much time rehearsing and rehearsing and scaring the neighbors !!!
I think out first ever real concert was at the Woodside community center, there was a disco there every Sat and occasionally a live band – so we got a chance to play there a couple of nights – don’t think we ever got paid anything- but it was the beginning of Earthquake.
Most of the time we were 5 members, but the band members came and went, don’t think we ever had a line up that were together for too long.
I think why we started the band was we were wanted to be the new “Bay City Rollers ” – the Rollers were huge and most of our music was really pop music, with a wee bit rock & Roll in there from Status Quo, the Stones, The Eagles and ever song was the easiest to learn and we sounded good playing it- if the song was difficult to play, we never played it – we were good musicians, but never brilliant ones – so we had to concentrate more on our vocals, and me, Rab and Kenny certainly had this – we should have been the Bee Gees.
Anyway, we did eventually get the band very popular and started playing up and down the country, but we never ever made any money- as when we did get paid, we spent every thing on drink and fish and chips on the way home
Then we met up with Tam Paton the Bay City Rollers manager & we thought this was it – the big money is coming !!!!!
Tam sent us down to London to record a new demo tape, but I think when we came back and took the demo tape to his home and he listened- he said you sound too much like the Rollers – don’t know if that was a good or bad thing , anyway he promised us a tour of Japan being the support band for the rollers and that hit the newspapers – but unfortunately the tour was cancelled as the Rollers split up and once again we went our own way.
We did eventually end up with a record contract from a Glasgow record company, but we kind of messed that one up as well – it’s a long story.
Then after another trip to London, going around all the record companies with our new video demo, we thought we had secured another record deal with Magnet Records and were told a 25,000 pound record deal was coming our way – so we headed home and once again thought we were heading for the big time – but we never heard back from Magnet records and our video demo disappeared along with our dreams.
So enough was enough ! after so many years of disappointments- blood, sweat and tears, we finally called it a day and gave up on our hopes of being a Mega pop star !
Some of my songs that I have wrote are on this web site- please do check them out.
