Iron Man Read Online Free

couple of times. I was incredibly nervous sitting in with these guys, but it was just something I would do then.
    â€˜Blimey, a gig! In a pub!’
    I wasn’t even old enough to be in a pub, but those were the first gigs I ever did.
    Ron and Joan Woodward lived a couple of doors away from our shop. Ron visited us a lot. Him and Dad would be chatting and smoking away just about every night. He spent more time at our house than at his, and he became like another adopted son. He was probably ten or fifteen years older than me, but somehow I became friends with him. I talked him into buying a bass guitar. He started to learn to play it and we actually did a couple of little gigs. And everybody was going: ‘Well, he’s a bit old, isn’t he?’
    I’d just say: ‘He’s my mate and he wants to be in the band.’
    That’s how it was then; your mate would be in your band.
    â€˜Can he play?’
    â€˜Oh no, he can’t play but he’s my mate!’
    We had a rhythm guitarist and a drummer playing with us. We rehearsed about three times a week at this youth club. It was great. From piddling around by yourself in your room to playing music with other people was a fantastic experience. Nigel, the rhythm
guitarist, was a bit cocky. One day he was singing and the mic suddenly stuck to him, because it wasn’t earthed. He went rolling around on the floor and got a bad electric shock. Because nobody liked him, we all thought, it serves you right. But in the end we did unplug him, so he survived. As a matter of fact, he was right as rain afterwards, better than ever in fact. It was like it had done him good. But he didn’t last that long, and neither did that band.
    I couldn’t wait to leave school. I didn’t like it, and I don’t think it liked me very much either. Everybody left school at fifteen, unless you stayed on and went to a college. Fifteen and that was it, you were out. And so was I. It was a great relief. I started looking for a job and I applied myself to playing the guitar even more.
    Because I practised all the time, I was getting much better than people like Ron Woodward, so I joined this other band which I thought was very good, The Rockin’ Chevrolets. It must have been around 1964 so I was sixteen or so. To my mind they were really professional. They could play all The Shadows’ songs perfectly and, because a couple of the guys were older than me, they also did a lot of rock ’n’ roll. I’d never been a big fan of Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent or Buddy Holly, but I now got into that music as well.
    The singer, Neil Morris, was the oldest guy in the band. There was a chap on bass called Dave Whaddley, the drummer was called Pat Pegg and the rhythm guitar player was Alan Meredith. That’s when I met Alan’s sister, Margareth. We were engaged to be married, actually. Our relationship would last a lot longer than The Chevrolets did.
    I don’t remember how I got into this band. I probably saw an advert in a music shop window. That was your life; you’d hang around a music shop or you’d go to see another band playing and you’d meet people through that.
    My parents were wary of me playing with this band in pubs. I even had to be home at a certain time, but after a little while they were okay with it, also because I brought some money in. The
Rockin’ Chevrolets made things easier for me as well by meeting Mum first. They came down and she made them bacon sandwiches. As she did in later years with Black Sabbath, the same thing: she’d always ask them if they wanted something to eat. Always. That’s the sort of mother she was.
    The Rockin’ Chevrolets started getting a lot of work. We all had the same red lamé suits, so we wore those at every gig. I didn’t really have any money to spend on a suit, but you had to look the part. At the weekend we played in pubs. One pub was in a bad part of Birmingham