The Story of The Floox

The Floox were formed in Basingstoke in 1965 by guitarist Terry Gresswell, bassist Bob Kiddle, drummer John Walker and singer Phil Snow. They added Overton organist Ray Taylor shortly afterwards.

In April of 1966 The Floox undertook a tour of Germany; backing a singer from Havant named Barbara Routley. The tour was cut short and the group fizzled out.

They weren’t together very long and left no traceable recordings but they gained a following in Basingstoke and rubbed shoulders briefly with the big boys before refracting into quite different musical spheres.

To get a better idea of their story, I traced drummer John Walker, who has supplied me with excellent information and unique photographs.

The Floox’ known local gigs are listed below but they performed at least twice with The Small Faces and on several occasions at the Galaxy’s ‘sister’ club in Chertsey:

September 9^th 1965, Elizabeth Hall, Hook with The Other Versions

September 23^rd 1965, Oakley Village Hall with The Other Versions

October 18^th 1965, Town Hall (Galaxy Club) supporting The Bo Street Runners

October 30^th 1965, St. Peter’s Hall, Pinkerton Road ‘Halloween Night’

November 1^st 1965, Town Hall (Galaxy Club) supporting The Sorrows

November 29^th 1965, Town Hall (Galaxy Club) with Earl Richmond Show

December 20^th 1965, Town Hall (Galaxy Club) with Kenny Everett Show

January 29^th 1966, Town Hall (Galaxy Club) (as headliners, no support named)

The route to John Walker’s door is an odd and rather sad tale. I began my search for information about The Floox in June 2013 when I found their names in an article in the Hants & Berks. Terry Gresswell was easily found on Facebook, living in Cambridgeshire, but the social networking site would not allow direct messaging. I was able to message a friend of Terry’s who ran a tuition school. His name was Dave. He told me that Terry had died just a few days before (on 17^th June 2013).

Not having known Terry myself, it seemed an inappropriate time to be asking questions but I figured it would be a good idea to inform the Basingstoke Gazette as there would certainly be people here who knew him; not least any surviving Floox. The subsequent letter to the paper’s editor which included a plea for memories or memorabilia, appeared without an e-mail address to respond to, but nevertheless reached John Walker and a friend of the band from back in the day; Chris Ross. My own friend Jill Murdoch is Chris’s sister. She introduced us. The pair came round for a chat during which Chris became quite emotional as he recalled his days as a roadie for The Floox. He also gave me John Walker’s phone number and I was then able to arrange a meeting with an actual, original Flook.

John Walker is NOT John Walker from The Ten Feet Five (nor of The Walker Brothers either, for that matter). He agreed to meet me at Basingstoke’s unimaginatively-named ‘Tea-Bar’ for coffee and a chat that lasted far longer than either of us would have anticipated.

He’s a big bloke. He walks with a slight but discernible limp. A motor-cycle accident when he was eighteen damaged his right leg which has been the subject of a number of operations down the decades. He recalls the moment in chilling detail and acknowledges the impact the injury has had on his life but is nonetheless pleased with his lot and proud of his musical endeavours. Remarkably, he has retained a passion for motor bikes. I ask him if he knew Robbie Fraser. He didn’t.

John Walker was originally from Derby. His Father came to the area in search of work which was being offered at the time by the Aldermaston Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) now called AWE. John remembers attending Fairfields School for a couple of years before commencing an electrical apprenticeship at fifteen with building firm Musselwhites.

John became involved in at least two musical acts long before forming The Floox. He learned guitar initially and in the late fifties joined a local group called The Page Boys who were managed by Jim Miller who also managed, amongst others, a pop mime act named The Mimets (pronounced Mime-ettes).

The Page Boys were John Walker – guitar, Roger Broad – vocal, Jimmy Holmes – guitar, Nick Leavy – lead guitar, Malcolm Miles – ‘sort of double bass’ and Roy Smallbone – drums. John remembers playing gigs at Park Prewett with some friends from Brookvale called The Sunnysiders.

At the beginning of the sixties John joined Billy Taylor & The Drifters who were managed by Bob Potter.  John says they appeared at The Haymarket with Gene Vincent in 1961 and also featured on the bill with Kerry Rapid & The Blue Star Rockers, about whom John says:

“They were great; great sound, great singer… I really looked up to him.”

(His view of Bob Potter is not as glowing).

Kerry Rapid was front-man and singer Alan Hope who teamed-up with Screaming Lord Sutch (musically and ‘politically’) and became Howling Laud Hope; leader of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party following Sutch’s death in 1999. John had not been aware of this and is pleasantly surprised. Billy Taylor is still around. John stayed in touch with him. The other (Basingstoke) Drifters were bass player Dave Wiltshire (from Whitchurch) lead guitarist Ian Shepherd (or Sheppard) and drummer Roy Smallbone, who had also been in The Page Boys.

John bought a Rosetti Solid 7 guitar during his time with Billy Taylor:

“I went to Bell’s Accordions in Surbiton. I wanted something really flash. The Rosetti jumped out at me. It looked great but it was a pile of crap; painful to play because it had really high action.”

A certain Paul McCartney fell into the same trap. He bought one (from Hessy’s in Liverpool) in 1960 to take to Hamburg, according to McCartney’s Guitars 2, thecanteen.com:

“It was a terrible guitar. It was really just a good-looking piece of wood.  It had a nice paint job, but it was a disastrous, cheap guitar.”

Macca goes on to describe how the band (The Beatles) smashed it to pieces.

John Walker’s Rosetti cost him about £20; the going-rate for the instrument. However, in 1960, for personal reasons, John jacked-in his apprenticeship, sold his guitar and took himself back to Derby where he still had friends and family, but after only a couple of months, came back:

“Derby just wasn’t the same. Things change, people change; I’d made a big mistake”

Oddly, the Rosetti turned up again in 1963, in a second-hand shop in Cross Street. John bought it back but by the time he got together with Terry, Phil and Bob in 1965; he had decided he wanted to be a drummer.

They began rehearsing; Thursdays and Saturdays in a long-since demolished building in Hackwood Road which was the base for a local cycling club.

“Although Terry was a brilliant lead guitarist, we thought our sound needed fattening up a bit so I introduced the band to a bloke I knew; an organ player in Overton called Ray Taylor. He was gifted, clever, and good at crafty stuff. He was searching for that Jimmy Smith sound.”

Although Ray had yet to replicate the Jimmy Smith sound; after some encouragement from his sister Ruth, he joined The Floox. Where did that name come from?

“The name was Terry’s idea. Flook was a cartoon character in the Daily Mail. I don’t know why Terry chose to spell it with an x. We could have done better with the name.”

Indeed, the ad in the Hants & Berks for their first known gig (September 9^th 1965 with The Other Versions at Elizabeth Hall in Hook) calls them The Flooks; erroneously, John thinks.

Their lead guitarist Terry Gresswell died on August 17^th 2013, a few days short of his 69^th birthday. He married Cheryl on November 25^th 1971. They had two children; Danielle and Toby. A half-baked plan for Chris Ross and John to attend Terry’s funeral in Cambridge came to nothing but John e-mailed Cheryl; introduced himself and conveyed his best wishes. She was grateful for the communication. Terry’s own Facebook page says that he had ‘a sewing machine and embroidery business. John remembers that Terry had worked in a branch of Singer’s in Wote Street in the early sixties. He believes that after the Floox broke up in 1966; Terry went to London in connection with his abilities with needle and thread. It was possibly there that he met Cheryl; wife for 41 years.

The Floox’ rise to local prominence came with assistance from the Galaxy Club’s founders; Gordon Gray and Ted Lilley. Gray ‘helped’ The Floox to record a demo (that they pretty-much paid for themselves). John says that they were booked in at a studio in Holland Park. This was very possibly Lansdowne Studios which opened in 1958 and closed in September 2006. They recorded two numbers. One was a rendering of Work Song (written by Nat Adderley and Oscar Brown Junior). The other was an original song called Every Single Night.

“The playback at the studio sounded great. They pressed it on a few acetates.  We all got one copy. The sound from the record was crap; all thin and weedy. You could hear me and Phil and hardly anything else.”

Nevertheless, John regrets being unable to locate his disc:

“We’ve moved house several times” he explains.

In the 1965 Basingstoke Review, in respect of the Galaxy’s 1966 beat contest, Gray says:

“Basingstoke groups The Floox, Galaxy’s recent discoveries, and The Evil Eyes have been accepted for the contest, and Mr. Gray thinks that one or other of them has a fair chance of reaching the finals. “

Little is known about the outcome of the beat contest. More information about the Galaxy Club is given on the page ‘Clubs, promoters and venues’.

John Walker admits there was a certain amount of rivalry between the Evil Eyes and The Floox but recalls sharing the bill with them on New Year’s Eve at an event in Hampton Court:

“We played first followed by Evil Eyes. Some of the locals got a bit unruly and started giving them some stick. We got involved and backed them up. Relations were better after that.

We were different musically anyway. They were more into R&B where we were more into the soul music that was coming through; Otis Redding, James Brown, stuff like that.”

The decline of the Galaxy Club (its last event was June 20^th 1966) forced both bands into action. Evil Eyes floundered until their Swedish adventure in 1967. The Floox responded to an advert in the Melody Maker for a band to tour Germany.

An agent/entrepreneur from Havant by the name of Ken Crawley was looking for a group to back a singer called Barbara Routley. According to the Hants & Berks, Barbara had already toured in Germany. The new partnership rehearsed and set off for Germany in April 1966. Their first fortnight stint was to be in Wiesbaden. They had been re-christened ‘Barbara & Her Boyfriends’, that being the name of the group that had just returned from Germany (see; post script).

Inevitably or just ironically; one boyfriend became her husband. It was bass-player Bob Kiddle. There was lots of bickering and arguing mostly between the band and its manager. Their agent in Frankfurt was called Hans Reich. He fixed a number of gigs for them.

“The best ones we did were in Mannheim where there was a big US air base. The G.I.s loved it but Germany was three years behind the US and UK. They weren’t ready for the soul-based music we were playing.”

The tour descended into ill-feeling and led to ‘a bust-up’ after two months or so. The promise of further tours of Italy and France crumbled to dust and the Floox returned home with the exception of Bob Kiddle, of course. “We left him in Dover!”

Bob moved to Reading which is where he is today, running a company called Berkshire Portable Appliance Testing.

Phil Snow had been a pupil of the Charles Chute School. He emigrated to New Zealand. He now lives in the Bay Of Plenty state on the North Island.

Perhaps as much as four years after the split, an attempt was made to re-form The Floox but without Bob who couldn’t be traced (although he was only in Reading). Terry gave it up and went to London. Ray and John formed a duo called Jus Blue in which John was the singer. By 1971 Ray had found a satisfactory replication of the Jimmy Smith sound, but then without much of a warning; abandoned the act, leaving a disconsolate John Walker with a full diary of events that would have to be cancelled. Ray had planned to work on ferries or cruisers but suddenly changed his mind. He bought a disused railway station in Scotland.

John played briefly with a Tadley-based band called Cross Section. This group recorded a self-funded single in 1974 on their own Cross Section label (Lovin’ Song/Rock ‘n Roll Queen).  John was not involved with them by then and their line-up may have mutated in the few years they were together but known members are Allan Astley-Morton (singer) brothers Joey & ‘Nippy’ Savage, Chris Jeffery, another singer remembered as Greg Carter and possibly a drummer called Tyler or Taylor.

John then joined a local band called Reunion which centred on Terry Jones – guitar and Terry Osborne – keyboards. Jeff Byng sang with them at some point. The group had started in 1972 and called it a day after a New Year’s gig in 1978. John felt he had lost something musically; his timing or his speed. He wasn’t doing justice to himself. He effectively retired from music and entertainment.

Now being of pensionable age, John does three days a week delivering hire cars just to keep him active. He met Sally back in 1965. Their 45^th wedding anniversary is rapidly approaching. They have two kids; a boy and a girl. John likes to play guitar for his own amusement at home in Basingstoke but he no longer owns a drum kit.

John last saw Terry Gresswell in 1981. He last saw Phil and Bob in 1991. Phil’s intention to visit the UK sparked talk of a reunion of the three surviving original Floox in September 2013 but a personal loss led Phil to postpone his visit.

Bob Kiddle became a partner in Acorn Records in 1987 but Mark Orlog had assumed full control by 1989.

Post script: an odd coincidence

Whilst idly browsing the Pompey Pop website I lighted upon this image of a poster for a gig by Barbara & Her Boyfriends.

I then got into correspondence with a gentleman named Paul Morehead who now lives in Woking. Paul had been in the band that was to be completely replaced by the members of The Floox. He told me:

“Hi Raz, many thanks for your email, I didn’t want to clog up the PompeyPop blog with all this stuff. And very many thanks for sending the cutting.

I assume you live in Basingstoke? Good to hear you are documenting music history; I think it’s very important to get it written down now while we can. I am writing a book on my life in music, and Barbara and The Boyfriends are a large part of it (we always hated it when we were called Barbara and HER Boyfriends).

 

They started out in Cornwall. I joined on lead in 1964, as did my mate Ray on bass, when they wanted to turn pro. Ken Crawley was the manager who gave us the job. We played all over Cornwall.

This part of the story is on-line at http://www.kernowbeat.co.uk/

Go to THE BANDS tab and then down to Barbara and The Boyfriends.

There is one small error: she wasn’t a farmer’s daughter, it was her aunt that owned the farm and she ran it for her. (She originally came for Shamley Green near Guildford.)

 

As you said, Ken was from Havant, his family all lived in Leigh Park, and we all moved to Southsea to play in the clubs along the south coast. After a while Barbara left and went home and we backed another singer but she left just as we got a contract to tour Germany.

This part of the story is on-line at: http://michaelcooper.org.uk/C/pmsindex.htm

Go to the box marked THE SIXTIES ODDS. (We are near the bottom of the page, so it’s quickest to use the slider to the bottom and then scroll up.)”

 

Barbara rejoined us and went with us to Germany. I last saw them at the beginning of 1966 in Germany, when they were heading home and I wanted to stay out there. I have often wondered what happened to Ken Crawley and Barbara. The Boyfriends held a reunion last year, but sadly we couldn’t trace them.

 

After I came back from Germany I eventually settled in Woking and have been here ever since, and I’m still playing – I wouldn’t know how to do anything else!  I also contribute as much as I can to 60s music blogs, websites and Facebook groups. I’ve had such a great life that the nostalgia is very important to me.

“Paul.

——-

As we exchanged Emails it became apparent that something quite remarkable had happened. Paul’s friend Ray Jenkins, the original Boyfriends bass player, had later joined the RAF and was stationed in or near Cambridge. By chance Terry Gresswell (by then living in the area) was the man who stitched the badges on Ray’s flying jacket. They got talking about music and apparently had some jams together, but it was not until Paul Morehead and I began corresponding that any of us realised that representatives of both generations of Barbara & THE Boyfriends had met; oblivious to the connection between them!

Paul has asked me to convey his best wishes to The Floox :-]