How We Met: 46. Georgie Fame and Alan Price.
I was doing a residency at the Flamingo in Wardour Street in London during the winter of 1963, when I heard about this band from Newcastle called the Animals. In my break I walked over to the Scene Club to hear them. Eric Burdon was jumping up and down on this black baby grand piano singing a John Lee Hooker song called 'Big Boss Man'. Alan was seated at his organ, a Vox Continental. I think they were wearing dark three-button Italian suits with black ties, which was de rigueur for lots of groups at the time. I went and knocked on the band room door to say hello, and said I'd meet Alan the next day at this pub called De Hems in Macclesfield Street, where you could get steak and kidney and oyster pudding, as well as good beer.
After that we lived out of each other's pockets for a while. We had the same love of sport as well as the same kind of music. We both came from Northern backgrounds, so drinking was a social interest, to say the least - though we'd never get deliberately out of it. Sometimes we'd go off at short notice and while away the hours in Paris discos. They had a bit more class than the English ones.
We started working together in the early Seventies. One evening, we were both on the same bill at Bradford University. We were in the urinal, and that's when we said: 'Let's form a band.' The catalyst was when we appeared on Lulu's live TV show together. We shared a piano, wore rented tails, and sang 'Back in the USSR', the Beatles song - so we had this crazy idea. We got the strings in the orchestra to play the theme from Dr Zhivago, while we staged a mock battle and interrupted each others' playing. We ended up rolling on the floor pretending to fight. Word has it that Billy Cotton Jnr was strolling along the gantry at the time and said 'Give these boys a series.' This became The Price of Fame.
(Full version: www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/how-we-met-46-georgie-fame-and-alan-price-1539225.html)