October 13, 1974 (Sunday)
The Greyhound
Croydon, England, U.K.
(I was at the) University of New Hampshire at the time, and I took an exchange program,
which found me in college in the small town of Arundel, almost on the coast (of England),
two miles from Brighton, and just through the music papers, I became aware that Badfinger
were going to be playing. They were actually the support act to a group called Man.
One song blew me away, and I hadn't heard the album yet. I can't remember if the
album was just released. The song that had so much power to it was "Just A Chance."
It was just a wall of powerful guitars. It was just beautiful. It was amazing. I
remember the equipment. I remember a lot of Sunn amps. I remember HiWatt amps. From
the pictures, it's easy to see that Pete was playing the SG that George Harrison
gave to him. Joey was playing a reverse Firebird and Tom was playing a Fender bass.
I remember the Badfinger performance, that's all.
There was a fifth member on stage, Bob Jackson. I was a little disappointed in that.
I remember that because all of a sudden, I'm like... I was very loyal to the core
band and all of a sudden the band was changing and it was a little upsetting to me.
I almost felt like I didn't want any outsiders to become part of the band that I
loved. That was very selfish of me, but I saw them as a foursome, and I just didn't
like this other guy, but I gotta tell you he was a sweetheart. After the Croydon
show, after they finished, Mike Gibbins and Bob took me out to the bar and we had
a couple of drinks. They were just so friendly, and it was actually Michael that
invited me down to Portsmouth, but they were interested in what I was doing, just
very, very sweet people.
I remember I talked to Pete a couple of different times. He kind of remained aloof.
Joey was very friendly. Pete was kind of off to the side and I think when I saw them
in Croydon, this was before the show, I think I had heard that one of them had left
the band for a short time and I asked Pete about it (not realizing it was him), and
he was very abrupt with me and didn't really want to talk about it.
Chris Makris
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