I can't remember the exact date -- I'm sure I've got a diary somewhere with this information! -- but I do remember that I had just moved to England for two years, to do graduate school, and I was walking around London in September and looked over at some boardings around a construction site and saw a large black poster with the words Alan Price written in huge gold letters. (I immediately took a photograph of it!) I could scarcely believe my good luck -- here I had been in the UK only two days and already I was getting a chance to see Alan Price live, which I had never done before. He was playing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall over on the South Bank arts complex, and I went straight there and bought tickets.

By the date of the concert, I was up at Oxford in school, but I took a train down for the night, fluttering with anticipation the whole way. That huge, sleek concert hall, where I had previously seen only classical music, seemed an odd place to see Alan Price, whom I still pictured as the rough-and-ready musician traveling around in a van in O Lucky Man!. There was an immense black grand piano set center stage, and when he came out in a formal black dinner jacket, it scarcely seemed like the same man -- until he cracked a goofy grin and muttered a few caustic remarks in his thick Geordie accent, and then I knew I had the right Alan Price.

He began with a set from O Lucky Man! and then a couple of songs from Between Today and yesterday -- music that I had been playing nonstop in my college dorm room for about 2 years. But then he went into some of his older hits which, being from America, I had never heard before, like Hi-Lili Hi-Lo and Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear (until Alan mentioned it on stage, I'd never known Alan recorded songs by Randy Newman, another musician I listened to a lot). By the time he got to "I Put A Spell On You" I was completely mesmerized. Smitten. Addicted.

Despite that great imposing hall, his self-deprecating humor, witty charm, and obvious love of the music shone through. I was just sorry that my seat was so far back, and that I was too shy to hang around the stage door afterward hoping for an autograph!

Did anybody else see any of the concerts from this era?

(*sighhhh*) :( Do you sell time travel machines by any chance???
You would be a millionairess in one month time!!! color.gif

Snuss x

Yes "Guest"/ Snus

That would be great - would be nice to go back even a
year or two when Alan was touring with a live show :eek:

Oh, snus, if I had a time machine, I wouldn't share it with the world at large -- just me and a few select friends could sneak back and enjoy times like these.

Of course, we'd have to be sure that the time machine made US look younger too!

Holly,

As it turns out, I DO have a time machine! And although I wasn't at that 1975 concert....yet, I will be soon.

Would that it was true!!! At least we can attend vicariously through your postings. Thanks for all of your generous and kind efforts. Tony

I have been browsing through the forum and just been reading your post Holly.
It reminds me of the first time I saw Alan which was very different to
your experience. It must have been 12 years ago - like you I have a diary
somewhere if I want to look it up.

We had booked to go to a leisure centre for the weekend - swimming pool
sports equipment, lovely country walks, cabarets and all the food you could eat!
I had specially chosen this date as I knew Alan was doing the cabaret night.

When we went to the hall which was a ballroom with a stage at the end,
it was crowded and we had to sit at the back near some slot machines.
Shortly before the show was due to begin two guys appeared and started
shovelling all their cash into these machines - hoping to win the jackpot no doubt
- must be Alan's roadies I thought, but they made such a noise I almost told them to
go away as I was thinking they would spoil the music.
But they went away when the lights went low and as we looked to the stage - who
should walk on but these two guys - Peter Grant and Bobby Tench
Then somebody else walked on and sat at the keyboard - no announcement and
no applause when he appeared. I couldn't believe it. Yes, it was Alan.

He started with a thundering rendition of "Arrival" and several of the
older people got up and walked out. Oh dear I thought, how awful that
they should do that, but at least we managed to get a seat at the front of the
balcony and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the show.

Since then I have seen Alan about a dozen times and now I am
keeping my fingers crossed that I can get to see him this year.

Wonderful story, Jean! I can just imagine Peter and Bobby getting rowdy at the slot machines. :biggrin:

The last time I saw Alan was in 2005 -- coincidentally my two younger kids' church choir had been planning a trip to England for about a year (oh, how many bake sales it took to raise that money!) and it was planned for February 2005. At Christmas time, I happened to get a book for my husband about Monty Python, and as I was browsing through it (I always read the books I give as presents before I give them ), I read that when the Monty Python guys went to the Bahamas to write Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Alan Price showed up and hung out with them. I sat bolt upright at that -- I hadn't heard anyone mention Alan Price in years!

Suddenly it occurred to me that I should look him up on the Internet. And so I did, and found his website with tour dates listed. Lo and behold, he was playing Cheltenham the very night our choir was scheduled to stay there! Well, I knew that was fate.

I figured out how to order tickets for that venue on line (not easy, I tell you) and organized a train ticket from where our kids were singing in Salisbury back to Cheltenham in time for the concert. Then I went on line and purchased all the Alan Price CDs I could find to replace all my vinyl, and bought an iPod so that I could load it up with Alan's music. By the time we got to the UK six weeks later, I was as hopelessly in love with Alan Price's music again as I had been throughout the 1970s.

I think I was the first person to show up at the venue in Cheltenham that night. :oops: But after all, I'd waited a long time for this concert -- I truly never dreamed I'd get a chance to see Alan live again, and it had worked out so much more easily than I had any right to expect. At long last the lights went down, and -- just as you described, Jean -- suddenly Alan just walked on stage, casually dressed and carrying a bottle of water, hopping over a bunch of cables on the floor, heading straight for his keyboards. No big ego-trip entrance or anything. The crowd reacted with a spattering of applause, as if they weren't quite sure it was him. He looked up, gave a self-effacing little wave, and sat down to play. And I was in heaven!!