Don't tell me; know the face, just can't....

April 19th – I always thought he was neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat, but my goodness he could play an organ.

Alongside Georgie Fame I consider him to be one of the better keyboardists to come out of the 60’s pop boom. I think it was because of his association with The Animals and his apocryphal solo on The House of the Rising Sun that first branded him on the pop-scene consciousness, and maybe he suffered a little from that ‘cos I guess I and many others thought we’d captured his essence; got that wrong then. Turns out he had far more arrows in his musical quiver. As the Alan Price Set he graced the charts with diverse productions and his rendition of Randy Newman’s ‘Simon Smith and his…’ (see, you can fill the dots in yourself, that’s how it’s stuck) is still a standout piece of his pop years. He teamed up with Georgie Fame in the 70’s – Georgie Fame…now there’s another keyboardist of note – and together they recorded a half-decent album. It was his work on movies that took him beyond our primitive understanding of what he was all about, and his work on the musical, stage play and TV adaptation of Andy Capp was a real turn up.

It was odd that we, as in, the band I was touring with at the time, never shared a stage with him as support act as we were all on the same circuit in the 60’s and we supported a good many of the popular current acts, but to make up for that we did share a forecourt, me and Alan Price; in Stirchley, Brum. 

It was probably gone two a.m. and I was putting ten shillings worth of petrol in the band’s Bedford Dormobile van (ten shillings worth, that’s 50p’s worth to you post decimal lot…and a Bedford Dormobile was, until the Ford Transit began production, the van of choice for bands…and yes, you could actually buy 50p’s worth of petrol…which we had to do with monotonous regularity; but then, when you were earning £25.00 per gig between five of you, well, what can you expect?)…anyway, I was in Stirchley putting ten bob’s worth of petrol in the band’s Bedford Dormobile van when a Mini Cooper ‘S’ (British Racing Green body and a cream roof, if memory serves) pulled in alongside me and out of it, dressed in a pale fawn/cream fur coat that would have decently covered eight Olive Oyls, stepped Mr. Price. Inside the car (I couldn't help but notice, honest) was a girl that I could only describe as pretty bloody awesome…but that’s by-the-by… He could see that I was involved in some capacity with the owners of the van as the name was plastered all over the side as well as posters and such.

“Gigging?”

He asked as he filled his tank (key word here; “filled”)

“Yup.” I replied.” Just finished at the Cofton. Come across to pick up chips…down the way, Stirchley chip-shop.” (Goodness me, if it wasn't for the glamour...I was gabbling...shut up, Peter). “You?”

“Yeah.”
I’d finished my use of the pump, well there’s only so long you draw out the addition of ten shilling’s worth of fuel to your already dry tank without it turning you into a stalker, isn't there? So I wished him goodnight and we parted; me to the chip-shop for what constituted to what I laughingly refer to as my nourishment for the day and Mr. Price probably to his pied a Terre in Lunnun for a meal of best steak and sex; met-but-missed if you get my drift.

Still, anyone who's still touring, can play an organ like that and have one of my all-time singer-idols (Maggie Bell, her of Stone the Crows fame) touring with him as well still commands my vote.