8 - Back In Orbit!

This time the band had no ambition to make it big. They were together to play Rock’n’roll and, the key-word for this come-back was fun with a capital F. As Danny puts it “After all we tried taking it seriously before, it just led to ‘artistic differences’”.
Ricky agrees “It was MUCH more fun, being with the band on an amateur basis freed us up a lot more. I really enjoyed our gigs which were pretty wild, I also enjoyed the camaraderie of the boys on tour. We had a whole lotta laughs with some VERY eccentric behaviour - those memories will live with me for a very long time!”

Gardner also remember this crazy times that included “a lot of farting; the «embarrassing noises» club (making the loudest most embarrassing noise you can in a restaurant or on a train, and pretending it was not you, the «keel over» club (which involves suddenly collapsing in front of people), the «tuneless whistling» club; Pete Davenport walking into a grocer’s shop saying «could you give me some dietary advice please»; Pete asking how many chips he would get if he ordered double egg and chips; Pete spilling hamburger sauce down his tee-shirt on the first day of a German tour and then wearing his shirt back to front and pretending the stain wasn’t there; Krumme curly cigars in Switzerland; Tim Purkess walking into a hotel going up to someone to shake them by the hand, thereby walking straight into a mirror; Chuck Berry running away from Ricky Lee Brawn who was trying to shake his hand; Linda Gail Lewis’s husband throwing a wobbly because the promoter had abandoned them in a Spanish Town without money or transport, whereupon she marched him upstairs to their bedroom saying «I know just how to calm him down” Fun, indeed…
The first gig of the newly reformed Stargazers took place in Stourbridge and was a huge success but it was nothing compared to the mini tour of Switzerland that followed “The public’s reaction to those early shows was terrific and from ‘88 to ‘91 we were having a whale of a time! The Stargazers had been away from the scene just long enough for people to really start missing them. Also, as with a good wine, we were maturing (I mean musically of course - there were no other signs of maturity!). They were crazy days indeed, and I couldn’t have enjoyed them more.” remembers Tim.
During the summer of 1989 the band started to record what would become their second album at Summertime Studios in Luton, with Pete Gage in the producer’s seat. John Wallace returned for this session and with Clive switching to steel they recorded the Walking Beat (Bill Haley), Feeling Happy (Joe Turner and Bill Haley too) and the jazz standard It’s Only a Paper Moon.
Rick: “When we reformed in 1988, we made a conscious decision to play more Jive material, and Haley is the style most suited for this. I wanted to also play some of our more popular material from the Watch This Space album. However Peter did not want to do this as he did not play on them originally.”

When Clive left and before John rejoined the band full-time, Big Al Mumbray (a friend of Tim and sax player for Red Hot) joined with the band for a couple of gigs. Tim points out the difference between the two players “Al’s an old school R’n’R man right through to his bones and has a much more aggressive sound than John. Rudy Pompelli obviously influenced both men to some degree, but Big Al plays like a cross between Rudy Pompelli and Danny Flores (aka Chuck Rio) of The Champs. John has a more cerebral, laid-back feel, half way between Rudy Pompelli and Stan Getz.” The bassist also remembers one occasion when both sax players showed up for the gig and how strong the band sounded with that line-up.
In September, Wallace was back for good (“I went to see the band play, after five years it was very exciting to here the sound again and I wanted to join the party”). More gigs followed, including the third Hemsby weekender in November. But the end of the year saw the Stargazers facing two major events, a happy one and a painful one.

Playing with the jodimars

In November 1989, Ricky, Peter and Chris fulfilled a childhood dream. The recently reformed Jodimars were coming in England to perform a special show at the Brean Sands Rock’n’Roll Weekender and they needed a drummer, a pianist and a guitarist. Who else could be more able to complete the band than them? Chris knew Dave Hirschberg, a Bill Haley fan who was at the origin of the gig, and sent him some Roofraisers and Stargazers tapes, and, after a little persuasion the three Stargazers got the gig.

Marshall Lytle, bass player for the Comets and the Jodimars, remembers the event in his autobiography: “When we got to England, we had a list of songs we were going to do, but we did not know the arrangements. We had recorded the songs so many years earlier that we had simply forgotten how we had played them. So we hired this young group called the Stargazers to back us up and show us how we did our songs. At some of our rehearsals the Stargazers would do our songs and then say ‘that’s how you did it’ and then we’d try them and they’d say ‘No, no you’ve got the guitar part wrong or you’ve got the saxophone part wrong, or you’ve got this wrong.’ They showed us what we used to do when we recorded. So there we were, learning how to do our songs from a group of youngsters.”
With the three original Jodimars in white tuxedos and the three Stargazers in black, the visual impact was terrific and the show went down like a storm and everybody enjoyed every minute of it. The audience couldn’t believe they were watching musical legends, the Jodimars were amazed by the response and Chris, Peter and Ricky had to be pinched to be sure they weren’t dreaming.
Chris Gardner “(It was) unbelievable. The whole experience which lasted about four days was awesome. I couldn’t believe I was working with such legends. They were amazingly good musicians and great fun to be with.”
Ricky “Without doubt this Jodimars gig was the most exciting gig of my life (and still is)! It was like being in a fantastic dream playing in a band with your heroes. The rehearsals were amazing and the audience reception was unbelievable.”
“Pete Davenport looks just like a young Billy Williamson. He plays like him, moves like him. Seeing him out of the corner of my eye, I kept thinking it was Billy” added Dick.
Later that year Peter also played steel guitar for the Comets and shared the stage with one of his all time hero: Franny Beecher.

Ricky’s illness
Sadly this moment of joy was mared when Ricky was diagnosed with cancer. He explains “I was asked to play a gig for Rockhouse in Holland with Clive’s Jive 5. Half way through the gig I dropped a drum stick and leant down to pick it up, the drum stool collapsed and I fell backwards into what I thought was a wall, it was a curtain and I fell through it and landed on my back onto the concrete floor 3 meters below. I had an X-ray at hospital a couple of days later and they told me I had fractured my hip in the fall, but they also found something else in my hip that was already there and was nothing to do with the fall. I went to another hospital 3 months later, after some checks they told me that I had a rare type of bone cancer in my hip called an Austeosarcoma, and said if I did not have it treated I would be dead in 2 years - this was in 1990 ,I was 28 at the time!” With the illness in mind, Ricky decided nonetheless to complete the album and in January 1990 they recorded the remaining songs at Survival Studio, in West London.
“There was nowhere near enough preparation for Back In Orbit! Poor old Ricky was very ill at the time and the future looked uncertain, to say the least. Peter (just like Danny, Ricky and me) was keen to keep the sound and the feel of the album (as well as the live shows) within the generally accepted boundaries of mid ‘50s Jive music, or Big Beat Rock’n’Roll as some would call it.”

After this act of bravery, Ricky played his latest gig with the band at the Dublin Castle on January 27th 1990, before leaving the band to follow his treatment: “I spent the next year having treatment, including very strong chemotherapy. In the end they said that I was cured which as you can imagine was quite a relief!” During Ricky’s road to recovery, Gary Richardson, who had already played with the band during one of the early reformations around 1986 replaced him on drums until his return in late 1990/early 1991.