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Memories of Heron
Huge Thomas remembers a great
band
In 1975 I became a
student at St. Andrews University on the windswept east coast of
Scotland. Free at last from the shackles of a sheltered childhood in a
rural (ugh) village called West Linton in Peeblesshire (where? –
exactly), I went really rather wild. I squandered my grant on playing
pinball and table football, eating pizzas, going to the cinema twice a
week, drinking fizzy lager from plastic glasses and sometimes staying
up till gone midnight. Mad times.
Another of the
formative events awaiting me was what was to be my first-ever live
rock gig. This must have been autumn/winter ’75, and if memory
serves me correctly the bill topper was one Bryn Haworth and band. A
Welshman who’s since gone on to the religious rock circuit, he had a
catchy turntable hit at that time called Give All You’ve Got to
Give. On this tour he was accompanied by an all-star backing group
including a former Them guitarist and a funky bassist ex of Traffic.
Before they took the
stage though we had a warm-up act in the persons of a band called Heron.
I had no knowledge
whatever of Mike Heron at this time, although when I heard he had been
in the Incredible String Band this did ring a few bells. Hipper kids
back in our sixth-year common room had often talked about the ISB.
Chance meetings – probably much exaggerated - with members of Led
Zeppelin in the nearby Innerleithen area (presumably occasioned by
collaborative visits to the locally based ISB members) had been
recounted.
By this time the ISB
was long gone though. Heron took the stage a full-fledged rock band
with Mike every inch the confident front man. Seeing him nowadays,
hiding shyly behind his music stand with the reformed ISB, it might be
hard to picture him in this role. But believe me, he was every inch
the consummate rock front man.
The band with him were
also dynamite, with ex-If jazz-rocker Mike Tomich on bass, bearded
guitarist Frank Usher (still about I believe, playing recently with
Fish out of Marillion I’ve heard), the late John Gilston on drums,
and one Malcolm LeMaistre on vocals and (ulp) dancing.
Heron took the St.
Andrews audience by storm that night; so much so that they were soon
back topping the bill at their own show.
LeMaistre was a
quirkily entertaining member of the band, doing his
dancing-performance with the more theatrical numbers like Nijinsky
(about the dancer) and a song called (I think) Lamplight that utilised
an on-stage lamppost prop. I also recall a number that culminated in a
custard pie being catapulted into his face . . .
He also did some dryly
amusing little between-song chats: “Good evening,” he’d deadpan
before commencing some mock-interesting anecdote while the others were
re-tuning behind him. One story was of how they had spotted and
rescued a tangled bird on the way to the gig that day: particularly
intriguing in that the bird was . . . a heron.
I’ve since come
across LeMaistre mentioned in the media when a theatre he ran in
Innerleithen was looking like having to shut down because only about
three people a night were coming to the performances. No surprise to
me that: Innerleithen was a tough mill village and the kids who came
from there to Peebles High were mainly psychos and hoodlums.
I’ve also found a
‘90s solo LP by LeMaistre, so I guess he’s still about too.
I looked for Heron
records of course and managed via mail order to find a copy of the
already obscure then Mike Heron solo LP Smiling Men with Bad
Reputations. This turned out to be disappointingly folksy for the 1975
me, apart from the track Warm Heart Pastry featuring the Who. The Mike
Heron’s Reputation album was more like it though, with tracks
including my stage favourite Residential Boy: “We weren’t ready
for the country . . .”
It was the 90s before I
got my own copy of Diamond of Dreams (on CD). Included are great
tracks like usual set-opener Draw Back the Veil, although I’m not
sure the album quite captures the magic of the band’s live quality.
On their third visit to
St. Andrews it was the Christmas ball and the band were introduced by
then-rector Frank Muir of Call My Bluff fame. I recall his
introduction exactly: “And now . . . Hewon!”
I went to the ball even
though I’d never been out with a girl and had no one to take (I was
a late bloomer OK?).
The band unveiled a new
member that night in front of the dickey-bowed audience in keyboardist
Dave Sams. He filled out the sound wonderfully and added a whole new
dimension to Hewon’s – er sorry, Heron’s – sound.
They went down a storm
again, probably the best reception any pre-punk band with the possible
exception of Neil Innes & Fatso got at St. Andrews while I was
there.
Around that time, Heron
appeared on a Radio 1 In Concert session split with the Lew Lewis Band, with
whom they were touring Europe at the time. I probably still have the
ancient cassette somewhere.
Mike Heron’s songs
were getting recorded by the likes of Manfred Man’s Earth Band (Don’t Kill it
Carol) and Bonnie Tyler (Baby Good Night). It looked
to me like Heron were gonna make it real big for a while there, but
then all of a sudden it was 1976 and New Rose came out and that was it
. . .
Too bad: they were an
excellent band and they gave me my baptism in great live rock music at
a time when – or at least so the conventional wisdom has it – rock
was in the doldrums.
And I still have the
records . . . and my collection of Heron posters and Diamond of
Dreams LP covers torn off the student union’s display boards
after the gigs.
I can still picture
Mike on stage, saying: “Come on – it deserves a bigger cheer than
that!” when that custard pie hit Malcolm in the face, and Mike
talking about staying back at his mother’s house on the Scottish leg
of the tour and “slopping out of the house after a high tea”. Mad
times indeed.
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