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Paul Middleton - A Life!
words by Graham Rhodes pics by Anthony Springall
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It's amazing who turns up at Indigo Alley. Take Paul Middleton and his band Angst for instance. Any East Coast livers who might have ventured as far as Harrogate will no doubt know the name of this great and unique blues player through his long time residency at the towns Blues Bar. Older music lovers might also remember him as a member of Wally, one the finest bands ever to make it out of the North back in the early 70's. Led by singer songwriter Roy Webber, Wally came out of Harrogate and after playing the usual northern pub rock circuit that included venues in Manchester, Harrogate, Leeds, Bradford, they entered the Melody Maker competition and made it through to the finals at London's Roundhouse. They didn't win, that dubious honour went to a "prog rock band" named Druid.
They did however catch the eye of one of the judges, a certain whispering Bob Harris. He took the band under his wing and soon they had a recording contract with Atlantic records. "Wally", their eponymous named first album was produced by (Whispering) Bob Harris along with Rick Wakeman and was released in 1974. After its release the band (now managed by Brian Lane, famous for managing Yes) took off on a series of tours that took in most of Britain, Japan and the USA. Before their second album was recorded they changed keyboard players with Nick Glennie-Smith replacing Paul Gerrett. However by now touring had taken its toll and by 1976 the band had begun to fall apart to eventually split sometime around 76-78.
The band members drifted apart. Roy headed up his own graphic design company, mainly working for Yorkshire Television. You can see his work on Heartbeat, and in the displays inside Leeds Royal Armouries Museum. Pete Sage the fiddle player ended up in Germany working as sound engineer on the Bony M hits, and made so much money he ended up buying the studio. Nick Glennie Smith became a leading session musician. The last time I saw him he was playing with Roger Waters at the Wall gig in Berlin. God only knows whatever happened to Roger Narraway the drummer, but Pete Cosker the guitarist succumbed to a drug habit that eventually hastened his death in 1990. Meanwhile Paul retreated up into the North Yorkshire Dales venturing out occasionally to play with Roy in crazy country rock band called Freddie Alva and the Men from Delmonte. But that was then and this is now ..... But that was then and this is now and now Paul plays a great mixture of original blues tunes in his own unique style that is best described as a hybrid between Howling Wolf, meets Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. If you'd got yourselves down to Indigo and seen him - you won't have been disappointed, get yourself a copy of Paul's CD &endash; you'll find it gets better each time you listen to it.
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