Greg invited me to lunch, this came about through Brett Morgan. We had a lovely lunch in a fantastic Italian. He was putting a band together and wanted to see if we got on. We did, from the start. I have always been happy to speak my mind when asked and he seemed to like that. With Brett’s recommendation he asked me who I would choose for keyboards, I put him on to Dave Arch and with the German guitar player he already had his eye on, Florian Opahle we were a band. The man backing this project was comedian Jim Davidson, he was putting the money up and was one of the producers. Of course I’ve heard many negative stories about Jim but I was always taught to speak as you find. I found him to be a gentleman, hard business man (I did the negotiations with him for the band money) funny, but mostly passionate about the music, he loves ELP’s music and he did everything he could to do what Greg wanted. Unfortunately he and Greg fell out after to first gig and we didn’t see him again on the tour, although we drove around the country in his range rover all tour! The gig’s we did together were brilliant, he was the best of company. Our journey’s from gig to gig were planned out according to where we would stop for lunch, tea or a nice glass of wine.
We were in rehearsals for our second tour when there was a falling out with the promoter. We tried everything we could to save the tour but nothing could be done. We kept in contact through out the years from time to time and last year he invited us all to dinner in London. Just the band and Regina his wife. He told us he had cancer and didn’t have long. We were all devastated to hear this as you’d imagine. He spoke of the whys and wherefores about why he was stopping treatmeant and many other things. We had a wonderful meal together remembering old times and adventures. If the occasion wasn’t so sad it was the perfect meal. We had a couple of e mails after this but a few months later we were at his funeral. We used to call each other the ‘great one’, is was a fun “know you are” ”no you” exchange. But he was the great one and is much missed.