Part 2:

I think it was a Thursday night, when John, Ian, Phil Smith and his brother Maurice, Fiona and I drove off, with Norman Hood at the wheel, to the club that was situated under the train lines at Snow Hill, Birmingham. People were only just starting to enter and I approached John Mayall who was standing in the middle of the club surveying the ‘battlefield’ it seemed! He was aware that we were to play between his sets.

Then I saw Peter Green, wearing a brown double-breasted jacket over jeans, sitting surrounded by fans (mostly young men), among whom was Clem Clemson, the guitarist in our local ‘rival’ blues band called ‘Bakerloo Blues Line’. Clem hailed from Tamworth, a town near Lichfield, and later went on to be the guitarist for John Hiseman’s Coliseum.

I walked up to Peter and introduced myself … well, I was about to introduce myself. He said ‘Jeremy? Jeremy Spencer?’ before I said anything.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you listen to Elmore James?’

He said, ‘Yes, all the time. Do you listen to B. B. King?’

I said, ‘Yes,’ and we chatted until it came time for their set. I had seen John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Peter Green some months previously at a Birmingham all-night venue, and had enjoyed it. Peter played his Les Paul with a pickup missing and suffered nothing from the lack! I had even asked John to play Otis Rush’s ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’ that night, and I was impressed that he acknowledged my request.

And I was impressed with John’s first set that night at Le Metro as Fiona and I stood at the front of the stage on which Peter gave a stellar performance. Then we, the Levi Set played for about half an hour and Peter played harmonica on the first number: ‘Dust My Broom’.

John Mayall then played their second and last set, during which time I had pretty much discounted any idea of Pete wanting me in his new band. I was happy that a good time had been had and that was it. To my surprise, however, after their set, Pete asked if I wanted a drink and we stood by the bar, where he talked as though I was already in the band! He was saying stuff like, ‘Well, you can do a couple of Elmore things and then I do a couple of B. B.’s and so on like that…’

I finally said, ‘Are you serious? Do you like what I play?’

He said that I was the first guitarist that made him smile since Hendrix! Can you believe it? Then he showed me a page that he had written in his notebook while on his way up to Birmingham. It was like a prayer that said something like, ‘I can’t go on with this music like it is. Please have Jeremy be good, please have him be good.’

Needless to say, I was dumfounded and left Le Metro that night in a daze, sitting speechless next to Fiona in the back of Norman Hood’s car.