Cliff is the Guitarist/Singer/Song writer & founder member of Eat This. When he left school he hit the ground running by landing a job as ‘Go-Fer’ for Marc Bolan and T.Rex.  In short this came about through his friend John Bindon who was a good friend of Marc’s manager Tony Howard. whom through John, Cliff was acquainted with.


“After an impromptu meeting/interview I was employed and introduced to the man who kept me in a job many times over, Marc’s tour manager Mick O’Halloran, Mick was a great mentor, showed me the ropes and taught me people skills for which I am eternally grateful”.


“Rock n Roll was an unbelievable experience and a complete blast. Working with people who were larger than life characters and going around the world with your pals and getting paid!! What more could you ask for? Marc was adored by his army of fans who had all manner of ways of finding out when and where he was going to be”.

Tragically Marc was killed in a car crash on September 16th 1977.


“After Marc died I continued to work for Tony Howard who also managed Hawkwind, I was on the backline crew for their ‘Atom Henge Tour’ later parodied in ‘Spinal Tap’. Atom Henge was designed, built and illuminated by Jonathan Smeeton known as ‘Liquid Len’.  Robert Calvert was singing lead vocals with the band but he lost the plot in Paris, went onstage singing Hawkwind but listening to David Bowie through headphones on a portable cassette player (the iPod of it’s time). So Hawkwind regrouped. I went on to work for another band Tony & Jeff Dexter managed ‘Alphalpha’ with Nick Laird Clowes, Sam & Andy Harley”.


“Touring dried up for a spell but as luck would have it I landed a job working for Ian Gillan. This came through Herbie Flowers. He’d played bass with T.Rex and I called him to see if he knew of any ‘gigs’ going. He gave me a number, mentioning no names and said that this band needed a guitar tech and were going to be touring all over the world. I used to go to The Music Machine in Camden town where I’d seen a band who were reminiscent or reminded me of The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton all in one unique style of their own, The Bernie Tormé Band. What a small world it is, it turned out that the Tormé band were supporting Ian’s band ‘Gillan’ Bernie was poached from his own band and his fellow band members Phil Spalding & Mark Harrison, by some strange turn of events, would go on to play a big part in my life. More about them later....


Whilst in Europe Bernie walked off mid tour and was replaced by Janick Gers. Jan had supported Gillan with his band ‘White Spirit’ who had disbanded since their support slot. Another support act was ‘Samson’ who’s lead singer was Bruce Dickinson. In 1980 with Samson supporting, Ian invited his friend Randy California and his band to be special guests, Randy formerly of Spirit had been on tour with Deep Purple in the states when Richie Blackmore quit. I was told Randy played guitar with DP so they could finish the tour. I inadvertently guitar teched free of charge along with the rest of the crew, unbeknown to the crew Ian wanted to repay Randy for helping Deep Purple out and said to him “my crew will take care of you” after some ‘Herumphing’ we duly obliged. To be fare to Randy he wasn’t aware that Ian’s generosity knew no bounds.  When Gillan split up at the end of 1983 Jan had made friends with Bruce and used to play football with him and the lads from Iron Maiden this led first to Jan playing guitar with Bruce when he quit Maiden. They recorded Bruce’s solo album ‘Tattooed Millionaire’. I bumped into Jan out of the blue and went to see him and Bruce at their Astoria show in London, it was rammed full and they were very good.  After Gillan split up I went on tour to the far East with The Climax Blues Band whom Ian Gillan’s manager also looked after. When the tour with the Climax’s finished Gillan’s tour manager ‘Tops’ Henderson who had been working with Peter Waterman got me a gig as guitar tech for Musical Youth a band that were great musicians and a laugh to work for.


Sometimes if there wasn’t too much going on with Gillan opportunities to work for other bands arose, XTC, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Simple Minds were a few I worked for. John ‘Rhino’ Edwards was with Dexy’s when I worked for them and he was also in the Climax’s later on for the Far East Tour.


My very good friend and fellow band member of ‘The Split Knee Loons’ and latterly of Eat This Chas Watkins was the studio sound engineer for Ian’s studio Kingsway Recorders formerly De Lane Lea  He co-Produced the Gillan albums with John McCoy and mixed Gillan’s live performances. Most bands that performed on Top of The Pops had to re-record their hits for the show and mime or play live for the visual performance, either way Chas always managed to get into the control room to mix or supervise because sound engineers at the BBC were used to mixing voices for plays and film which meant most of them were shite when it came to getting a decent sound for a band. When Chas could he would either do the mix or to avoid upsetting the union at the Beeb, ‘Oversee’ the proceedings. Chas toured with the Climax’s and Musical Youth before going on to manage ‘Virginia Wolf’ with the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham’s son Jason pounding the skins.


Whilst Chas Managed Virginia Wolf, I managed ‘The Dirty Strangers’ 1st with a colleague and then I flew solo, with the colleague and I toured Europe with Glen Branca who was over from New York performing with his orchestra which had Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth playing guitar. At around this time I was combining management with work as a guitar tech to Tears For Fears I had time to work for The Thompson Twins mainly because TFF were incredibly thorough and took a long time recording their albums. I toured with TT’s in 84 popping back and forth to Bath or a studio somewhere in England to carry out duties for TFF, when time allowed. Quite incredible really, whilst TFF were in the studio I did two world tours with the TT’s and some studio and live work as guitar tech for Julian Cope. I carried on managing and working for Tears For Fears who also managed Julian Cope, I did some dates with another of their bands Ellery Bop who were from Liverpool. In 86 I decided to manage full time and had the help and use of Tears For Fears management co. Outlaw. I was not successful in getting a deal for the Dirty Strangers but stuck with them in the full belief they had what it took to “crack it”. Times were lean so I took a job, through my lifelong pal D’arcy  Whiting as guitar tech for the  Psychedelic Furs.

More to follow.....................