Midnight Shadows - Dave Holbrook

Midnight Shadows : Dave Holbrook.
Drums.

Born in Bristol on 19th July 1948, lived and worked here all my life. My first recollections connected with music were in senior school when someone came up to me and said, “Have you heard, Cliff’s record Living Doll is at number one in the charts. My first reaction was ‘Who’s Cliff?’ my second was ‘what chart?

So as you can see I missed the rock ‘n’ roll era and had no idea who this singer was, that I was, in one way or another, to be involved with for the rest of my life.

By the time I left that school I had managed to acquire all the Cliff and Shadows records, had attended quite a few of their concerts and had joined my first group.

Unfortunately this had not been inspired by The Shadows, but by The Beatles, and my decision to play drums was made by my three friends, who all played guitar.

However between 1963 when I hired my first Gigster 3 piece drum kit, until 1973 when I hung up my sticks and sold my double bass drum, 7 drum Premier kit, I had only ever played a couple of Shadows numbers. The Rolling Stones, Beatles, Who, Animals, Kinks etc, were the order of the day, not The Shadows.

My decision to hang up my sticks came about when my wife (then girlfriend) moved to London, and my only opportunity to see her, was at weekends, and of course weekends were when groups played the most.

Still in London I found, RECORD SHOPS. Hundreds of them, and most of them were selling cheap import records by The Shadows, as well as all the other groups and singers I was now collecting.

I was now well into collecting anything by The Shadows and along with the collecting I was meeting and corresponding with many other’s like me from all around the world. In 1985 I met, and subsequently helped to form, The Jet Harris Fan Club, which is still running today.

Also one of the many people I met, at that time searching for a particular Shadows recording, was Dave Wilkins, and as he lived fairly close, we became firm friends.

However it was with some hesitation when, in 1998, Dave rang and asked if I would like to practice with them, as their drummer had gone to work abroad, they were due to play at a local pub and needed a drummer and they even had a drum set that could be used, so I said yes.

I did warn him that I had never played Shadows music before. So we practiced, we played the pub gig, a name was given to the group and, thanks to Dave, Brian, Glenn, James and Dale, here I am eight years later, still playing drums for Midnight Shadows, enjoying every minute, and once again with my own kit, this time a Pearl Export 4-drum set.

Contact Dave on jetharrisfanclub@hotmail.com

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