Wales October 1970
Subject: Re: Support to Slade, Deep Purple at University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST) in October 1970.
Slade and Deep Purple, same building, same day, but not the same stage. The personal memories of John Lunn, the bass player from Warlock.
"Hi Mark,
I've been thinking about that night and remember that Warlock and Slade played a room on the ground floor and a Band called Gypsy played on the floor above with Deep Purple. We were on first and stayed to listen to Slade. This was just before their first big run of hits and we were well impressed. They were so tight and sharp with a new sound, we thought they would go far and, of course, they did!
There were two things that I remember well that night. The first was the cheek of our singer, who went to Slade's dressing room and asked if we could borrow Jim Lea's bass guitar. Obviously the request was denied (and rightly so) but it must have given them a laugh. The other was that we only did covers and we had been opening with Deep Purples' "Black Night". We had quite an argument before going on as to whether we were going to do it at all. In the end we opened with it and the audience loved it.
If you google Warlock you get a band but it wasn't us. We were a local South Wales band who played mainly in rugby clubs and social clubs. That is why we were so 'chuffed' to get the gig. We were a 9 piece band with two trumpets, a tenor sax and an baritone sax in addition to an organ, bass, lead guitar, drummer and singer. When I joined the band in 1968 they were mainly a soul band, but we started doing our versions of songs such as Black Night and Paranoid, adding the brass to make a difference. We never did any Slade covers because our singer couldn't even get close to Noddy Holder's amazing voice.
I am trying to get in contact with the other members of the band in case any of them has anything to add. The agent who got us the gig was Joan England agency in Cardiff, I'll see if I can get more info there, although if she is still alive she would be about 90."
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