When I first met Wal I have to say he frightened me a bit. We were in our teens. I was struggling to grow some flimsy facial hair whereas Wal, although a year younger than me, already had a thick ‘Zapata’ style moustache. He also had one of the deepest voices I had ever heard. How wrong I was with those first impressions. For nearly 50 years he has been my friend, constantly standing beside me on stage, as he did in life. In fact the word friend doesn’t do justice to the way I felt about him and my other musical brothers.
Wal on bass, Tony Kiley on drums
This is going to be a very difficult week for so many of us. On Thursday we will say goodbye to Wal, someone who left an indelible mark on all of us.
When I heard he was unwell I put together a WhatsApp group of close friends who loved him and wanted the latest news. Before long the group exploded with so many people from all over the country and beyond wanting to have the updates. I was in my studio when the massage came through that he had gone. Like so many others I sobbed and sobbed hoping it was just a bad dream.
Tony Kiley and I had been part of the Dynevor School House Band. At 14 he was an exceptional drummer. It was he who introduced me to 15 year old Wal. We started rehearsing in Tony Kiley’s kitchen. Tony’s kit had some curtains draped over them to try to dampen the noise but with Wal on bass and me with my electric guitar and piano it was still pretty loud. There were never any complaints from Mr and Mrs Kiley, only the offer of egg and chips and the instruction to fill our boots.
Wal after working on a building site all day with Viv Jones and Mal in the garage
Even with such a warm welcome we soon realised that we needed somewhere of our own. That’s when we really became a garage band. My dad said we could take over the garage at the top of the garden and we started collecting carpets to hang from the walls to try to dampen the sound and not aggravate the neighbours. As soon as we were ready we started ‘gigging’ in local pubs like the Rock & Fountain in Morriston and the LA in Hafod. We knew most of the crowd as they had all been in school with us.
We needed to find a name. This was before the days we would be known as the Jacks. It was Wal who suggested Malvin Bishop’s Originals. From then on I would often be known as Malve and Wal would be Walve.
Me going away to university didn’t help with continuity and Wal was a man with a plan. He knew what he wanted, and nothing was going to stop him. Last week I spoke to an old school friend who told me once that when one of his teachers questioned Wal’s commitment to the world of academia he replied,
‘I don’t need O Levels, I’ve got a bass’
During all these years Wal was gigging in the nights and renovating a house in the day time. As soon as the house was ready he sold it, packed up his little family and moved to London. That’s another thing about Wal he was always a hard worker.
Tony also moved to London and before long both boys had got really good gigs, Tony as the drummer in the pop band The Blow Monkeys and Wal as bass player for Gary Numan. But we always kept in touch.
Wal smiling in between Tony Kiley and Terry Williams
It was back in the early 1990’s that I started picking up TV work from HTV Wales. It was in 1993 that we had the chance to put the band back together. I had been given my own late night music series on HTV and Tony and Wal would be part of the House band. In the meantime I’d started working with a guitarist from Llanelli and soon Tim Hamill or ‘Timve’ became one of the Jacks.
As I’ve been thinking back this week one of the things that really struck me is how confident we were in each other. We had some of the biggest stars of the 90’s join us at the studios, and we would play with them without a single piece of music paper between us. We would meet for a day or so before the show to learn the songs before stepping out into the studio to play them live on the night.
I remember when Sandi Shaw’s Musical Director started talking to us about how we should play ‘Always Something There To Remind Me’. After a little while I suggested we play it for him to see what he thought…I still remember the shocked look on his face and the satisfaction on the faces of the band as he seemed lost for words.
Its at this time of year I always remember looking at Wal from the piano as we played the final song of the Christmas Special. We had The Jacks, Dave Edmunds and Micky Gee on Guitar and Terry Williams playing a second set of drums. Wal was stood between Tony and Terry with a massive smile on his face. He later told me it felt like riding a massive express train.
The Jacks with Gary Lineker
When my run of TV and Radio shows came to an end we decided to take the band out on the road. Wal was back home in Wales looking for a regular gig and I was broke. I’m pretty sure Tony had introduced me and Wal to keyboard wizard Nigel Hopkins back in the ‘garage’ days but by the end of the second TV series Nige was one of the Jacks. Tony Kiley couldn’t leave London, so we needed to find a drummer.
It was at a Battle of the Bands that we came across Ryan Aston. He must have been at least 17 because he had a car, but he wasn’t much older. We asked him for an audition, made him wait a day or two before finally calling and offering him the gig. Then the ride never stopped. We played every club up and down every valley. We played weddings for Linda Luscardi and Rob Brydon, birthday parties for Simon Mayo, charity events for Joan Collins.
The Jacks in Amazing Grace
We toured the country in musicals and on TV shows and all the way Wal never missed a beat, always there, always strong, always driving the band and quite often the van as well!!!
Mal and Wal in the studio
I asked the Jacks for Wal stories and there are just too many to include but we all remember at a Christmas residency we had Wal had his bass stack topped off with a microwave for him to warm his Rissoles mid show…or the moment he climbed into the Coal truck in the middle of the musical Amazing Grace popping out to scare the living daylights out of the actors in a mining disaster scene.
This year at the Swansea Arena
It was years into our friendship I found out Wal’s real name was Andrew. I never called him that, none of the Jacks did. I’ve been thinking a lot about the bond between us band of brothers and there is a Bible Verse in Proverbs that says,
‘there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother’.
For us that was Wal and this week, in between the tears, we will smile as we remember what made him so very, very special.