A LEGENDARY Darlington rocking rhythm and blues band formed nearly 50 years ago are playing their first hometown gig for nearly a decade at the end of the month.
When the ten-piece Mighty Smokin’ Spitfires take to the stage at The Forum on March 28, it will be a throwback to an era of live music every night, of battles of the bands, of packed pubs and working men’s clubs, of steamed up windows and condensation running down the walls…
“It was a different time for music,” says singer songwriter Neil Hunter. “When we first started out as the East Side Torpedoes, we would do workies and would then go on to play in pubs and nightclubs all over the place – we could do a Tuesday night residency in a pub in Cockerton and stow the place out.
“It was much more vibrant then, and there were many more bands, but many of those places have shut now.”
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, just about every working men’s club had its own band which provided the backing for a big name singer who would be touring clubland. The Torpedoes were formed out of that scene so they could play their own material, and held their first gig in the summer of 1978 in the Black Swan in Staindrop – a pub that closed a couple of years ago.
Initially a five piece, they quickly grew to 10 or 12 members with a horn section, and they established themselves with a Tuesday night residency at the Travellers Rest.
“They used to queue down the stairs, along the street and round the block, there were that many trying to get in,” says Neil, who attended Abbey Road school in Darlington but moved around as his father was a Methodist minister.
With their reputation growing, in the summer of 1979, they won through to the final of a Melody Maker (a weekly music newspaper that ran from 1926 to 2000) battle of the bands contest, which was held in London. The judges included Radio 1 DJ Paul Gambaccini and an up-and-coming musician from Tyneside, who had just had his first hits with Roxanne and Can’t Stand Losing You, called Sting.
The Torpedoes came third out of nine bands. First were a Glasgow punk outfit called Bite the Pillow and second were Splodgenessabounds who won a recording contract. The following year, their first single, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please, about the frustration of trying to get served in a crowded pub, made it into the Top 10.
“We did well out of that because we got £350 prize money which helped us buy our first PA that would accommodate all of the band,” says Neil.
They returned home in triumph and played an open air gig in South Park, which made the news pages of the Echo and its evening sister paper, the Despatch, because piano player Steve Coley learned while on stage that his wife, Moira, had gone into labour in Greenbank Maternity Hospital. He finished the set and then went to meet his new son, Robert.
“Bob is now happily married and living in Australia and doing rather well, I believe,” says Neil, who for many years lived in Langholm Crescent.
The PA helped the Torpedoes establish themselves as one of the north’s top live bands, always dashing back from their Saturday night gigs to play their Sunday lunchtime residency at the Newcastle Playhouse.
“I remember playing the Cooperage in Newcastle,” says Neil. “It had steep steps to go in and there were that many people in there, you could watch the condensation running down the brick walls.
“That night, we had 12 people on stage – well, the stage wasn’t big enough so many of them were on the floor. It was great.”
Their live reputation led to Hilton Valentine and Chaz Chandler, of The Animals, taking an interest and helping them record their debut album, Coast to Coast, in London. It was played by John Peel and John Walters on Radio 1 and was even a powerplay on Radio Luxembourg.
The album’s release coincided with the Torpedoes recording a live set, in front of 300 fans, for Tyne Tees Television’s Come In programme, which was screened it at 10.32pm on October 28, 1982.
“The theme of the programme is that a band as talented as the Torpedoes would probably be household names if they were based in London instead of their North East homeland,” said the Despatch in its preview of the programme.” And anyone who saw them playing their former residency at the Traveller's Rest in Cockerton would agree. With a line up of guitar, keyboards, bass, drums, trumpet, trombone and two saxophones, the Torpedoes are an irresistible force.
“To be unable to tap your feet at a Torpedoes’ gig is as sure a sign of brain death as a pathologist's verdict.”
The morning after the TV show, Neil was back out reading electricity meters for NEEB in Newton Aycliffe.
For four years, the Torpedoes toured. They played the Knebworth jazz festival to 11,500 people with Ray Charles, and three times at Newcastle City Hall, once supporting Alan Price.
But then, tired and frustrated, they split, and Neil moved away.
He returned in 2003 and with Steve Coley and original trombonist Terry “Ernie” O’Hern reformed as the Mighty Smokin’ Spitfires. Now a 10-piece, they’ve been playing at the Cluny in Newcastle on the first Sunday of each month since 2013, raising thousands of pounds for the Bubble Foundation, which helps babies born without an immune system.
“We now play one or two gigs a month,” says Neil. “We do a mixture of originals and a few covers, some soul, R&B, Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, Stax but we are not smooth enough to do a lot of Motown.”
The show at The Forum will finish with one of Neil’s own songs, On Such a Night As This, which has been the traditional finale since the very early 1980s.
“I wrote it in Easter 1980, about an Easter bender with a friend spent in Notting Hill Gate,” he says, “and I wrote it on the National bus coming home. It’s a song about friendship and the spirit of friendship, and a lot of people have taken it to heart so it is tradition that we do it now.”
From Notting Hill to Darlington, it contains the lines: “I wandered back through the Pembridge Gardens/Got my mind on Stanhope Road/200 miles of separation/Nothing breaks this bond we hold.”
Neil says: “It was easier to write a line about Stanhope Road than it was about Langholm Crescent and, of course, Abbey Road had already been done.”
- The Mighty Smokin’ Spitfires play at The Forum in Darlington on Saturday, March 28, with doors at 7.30pm. Tickets are £12, from the theforumonline.co.uk, in person at the venue or from 01325-363135.
IT is perhaps only an article like this that reminds us of the immense social changes that we have lived through.
Neil Hunter’s father was a Methodist minister, working at the churches in Corporation Road and Cockerton. In the 1960s, we reckon there were more than 20 Methodist churches in Darlington; now there are five.
But there were even more smokefilled pubs and working men’s clubs – the Echo 40 years ago, had a full page every week listing all the live bands that would be playing in them. Can you still find live music on a Tuesday night in Cockerton?
It all started for the Torpedoes in the Black Swan which in 1978 was one of Staindrop’s three surviving pubs. Indeed, according to Jim Pearson’s pamphlet, The Lost Pubs of Staindrop, back in the 19th Century, it had more than 10 named pubs.
Since 1978, Staindrop has lost the Royal Oak, a three storey inn which dated back to at least 1828 and was favoured by the Cyclists Touring Club (CTC) at the start of the 20th Century. It closed in 2012, but you can still see its CTC metal plate on its wall.
It has also lost the Black Swan, which was on the corner by the church. It dated back to at least 1819 and had once been thatched. It closed in 2013.
Which leaves the Wheatsheaf Inn, which opened in the 1830s. It was once known as “the top house”, but now it is the only house.
