Crawler, Boxer & Moon Newcastle 1977
At first glance this may not seem a particularly strong line-up. However, if you dig a little deeper it was actually a pretty interesting collection of bands. Crawler had morphed out of Back Street Crawler, who were Paul Kossoff’s post-Free band. After Kossoff’s sad passing, the remainder of the band continued as Crawler, recruiting Geoff Whitehorn (who had just left jazz-rock band If, and is now in Procol Harum) on guitar. The rest of the line-up was Terry Wilson-Slesser (local Newcastle hero and ex-Beckett) on vocals, Terry Wilson on bass, Tony Braunagel on drums, and John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick (ex-Free, and, until recently, of The Who) on keyboards. Boxer were a later version of Patto, fronted by Mike Patto, and originally had the late great Ollie Halsall on guitar. However, by the time of this package tour the Ollie had left and the line-up was Mike Patto vocals, Eddie Tuduri drums, Chris Stainton (Joe Cocker’s band) on keyboards, Tim Bogert (Vanilla Fudge and Beck, Bogert and Appice) on bass, and the late Adrian Fisher (ex Andy Fraser’s Toby and Sparks) on lead guitar. So between these two bands there were some very respectable musicians. Moon were a seven piece funk-rock band who opened the show. I remember going to the gig with Marie, and that the City Hall was about half full. I don’t recall anything about Moon, but do remember watching Boxer (I thought Mike Patto was a great singer) and Crawler. Crawler delivered a solid blues-rock set, with Slesser doing the business vocally and as a front man. Good values for £1! Actually looking back at this lineup in retrospect some 40+ years later, there were some amazing musicians on stage together that night: the excellent local singer Terry Slesser, Rabbit, the wonderful and very underrated Mike Patto (ex Time Box and Patto), Chris Stainton and Tim Bogert! Boxer were on paper sensational! I wish I could go back and relive this one!
Archive for the ‘Crawler’ Category
2 Aug
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