Is This The Real Life? by Mark Blake Page B

Family’s Music in a Dolls House .
    A trip back to Truro for the summer holidays in 1968 found him reviving The Reaction, with whichever local musicians were available. Inspired by the musical ‘happenings’ taking place in London, Taylor struck a deal with his friend and marquee-hire company owner Rik Evans to stage a few of their own.
    Billing these events as the Summer Coast Sound Experience, The Reaction would provide the music, Rik would hire a doorman, and the proceeds (‘five shillings on the door per person’) would be split. ‘We’d take our marquee to different locations around Cornwall,’ says Evans. ‘The best one we did was on Perranporth Beach. The local life-savers club had a barbecue and The Reaction provided the music. Unfortunately, the council didn’t want us on there, so we never came back. There were times when we’d just set up in these little coves, not even knowing who owned the land, and they’d just plug in and play, and we’d make a few bob. It was all very seat of the pants.’ One such event in a secluded cove at Trevellas Port near St Agnes coincided with a massive thunderstorm, and only a handful of paying punters turned up. ‘I think I saw five teddy boys dancing in a puddle,’ laughs Rik Evans.
    With the holidays over, The Reaction drifted apart for good: wives, families, proper jobs and universities all playing a part in its demise. Mike Dudley returned to Oxford, continued to play music but went into a career in insurance; Rick Penrose played in a cabaret band before becoming a photographer; Geoff ‘Ben’ Daniel worked as an engineering consultant and, later, moved to Hong Kong. Rik Evans still runs the marquee hire company in Truro. When asked about his days in The Reaction, Taylor has always seemed coy. ‘My friends and I started a band at school. It built up from school until, finally, the bad bands became good bands,’ he said once. ‘I was always the leader. I must have been the pushy one.’
    Back at the London School of Medicine in the autumn of 1968, Taylor’s pushiness would come to the fore. Playing again in Truro had given him a taste of what he’d been missing. On top of this, he was fast losing interest in the dentistry course. ‘I only went out of middle-class conditioning,’ he claimed. ‘You had to get a proper job and make a good career … And it was a good way to stay in London without having to work.’ Eager to put together a new band, he even contacted Rick Penrose and invited him up to London: ‘But I said no,’ explains Rick. ‘I have no regrets about that. I sometimes think your life is mapped out for you.’
    Taylor wouldn’t have to wait long to find new players. In autumn, his flatmate Les Brown spotted a postcard pinned to a noticeboard at Imperial College. The request was simple: ‘Ginger Baker/Mitch Mitchell-style drummer wanted’. It would mark the beginning of a new life for the nineteen-year-old drummer. ‘Playing in a group was always a dream for me,’ insisted Taylor years later. ‘I always wanted to do it, and eventually it got the better of everything else. I broke out, and that was it.’

CHAPTER THREE
A Happy Accident
    ‘In the beginning I was quite prepared to starve. You have to believe in yourself no matter how long it takes.’
    Freddie Mercury
     
    ‘I just want to go home and be a milkman.’
    Mick ‘Miffer’ Smith, drummer in 
Mercury’s first band, Ibex
    I t was while studying at Ealing Technical College and School of Art that The Who’s Pete Townshend first felt compelled to destroy an electric guitar. Pete, a student for two years until 1964, enjoyed his Eureka moment while listening to lecturer Gustav Metzger expound his theory of auto-destructive art. Metzger was one of a handful of Ealing lecturers gifted with what Townshend admiringly called ‘wild thinking’. Among his similarly-minded Ealing colleagues was Roy Ascott, who once shut a group of students in the lecture theatre, bombarded them