Sunday 31 March 2019

Mercury's first gig - April 1 & 2 1976


Though not celebrated in pictures, and indeed no photos of the event exist, deep in the text of April 2nd 1976 you'll find the first and only gig by our band, then called Mercury. (Later that same year we became the legendary Walter Tottle).

Though my diary is more concerned with how hectic my day was - and it certainly seems to have been, from waking up with a killer cold, slogging through school, getting notice of the gig on the day, doing a paper round in the day, then playing in the school hall in the evening and not getting home till 10.30 - I can actually remember how the gig went.

We played House Of The Rising Sun, as an instrumental, because at this stage none of us was brave enough to sing, and at one point Nick's guitar fell over and he said 'shit' in front of the vicar. Why that didn't make it into the diary I do not know.

Check out that marvellous panel from On The Buses by Harry North, by the way. My Look-In comics, from which most of the illustrations in my diary, are going on eBay as I type and some buyers are expressing surprise that when I tell them the comics are cut to pieces, that they in fact as cut to pieces as I said they were. I eviscerated those magazines, all for the sake of a diary that no-one but me has seen until now.

My Records For The Day were minor classics that still leap immediately to memory, from the Carpenters and (maybe I wouldn't have recalled the name) Barry Mann.



Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries & art centres. email for details. Facebook, Twitter. Promo video here


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