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 Factory played a few support gigs at Leas Cliff Hall in Folkestone. Geordie were one of the bands we supported and was Nazareth one too? And also Khan, from the Canterbury Scene, with Steve Hillage and Dave Stewart (keyboards). Lol left early after our first set that night, having been offered a lift, and we were told we had to play another set after Khan. Of course we couldn't be Factory without Lol, so Khan kindly agreed to jam with us! Imagine: two bass players, two keyboards (Andy and D.Stewart), two guitarists (Tone and S.Hillage) and their drummer. I don't remember what it sounded like, but it was great fun! (Tone met Steve Hillage years later and he remembered the night!) Anyway, another band we opened for was Fleetwood Mac. This was during their interim period, post-Peter Green and pre-Rumours. For some reason, unusually, we turned up late and Mac's gear was set up on the stage, drumkit nailed down, leaving little room for us. We |
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to get our stuff on the stage and a Mac roadie, who could only be
described as obnoxious, told us we couldn't play on the stage and as we
were late we had to play on the floor infront. We were having none of this and continued to set our gear up on stage. As our roadie, (shall I name him? Yeah!) Dave, was setting the drums up by Fleetwood's kit the obnoxious one warned him that if he touched Mick's kit he'd be over the cliff outside! Things weren't good between the sets of roadies! And so it continued. We did our set, and cleared our gear carefully off the stage. I remember as we were doing this John McVie and Mick Fleetwood at the side of the stage, clearly well lubricated, Fleetwood hitting everything around him with his sticks. I don't recall enjoying their set much; they did what many bands of their era did at the time and rattled through their hits at breakneck speed. The fun started, though, as we were packing up. The niggling continued between the two factions and soon became threatening. The obnoxious one, who had a scar on his face pointed to it and told us a guy gave him that in Chicago. Someone (it could have been me) said, "Pity he didn't have a gun!" and that's when the fracas started. To be honest, I think it was all 'handbags at dawn' and no-one was really hurt. Anyway, our Dave was fuming and as we sat in the van ready to set off, he said, "Hang on, there's something I need to do....." He got out, returned after a few minutes and as he turned the ignition said cryptically, "Right, they're going nowhere in a hurry". A few weeks later we met some friends, the roadies from a band called Hustler, at the Speakeasy or somewhere. They warned us that the Fleetwood Mac roadies were after our blood as they believed we slashed their tyres on Folkestone! What, us? -Jaffa |
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