21 May 2021
Written By Matthew Eastley
The Barons and meeting The Beatles
Mike Moore (St Mary’s 1954 to 1961) is pictured here with his band The Barons at the Railway Tavern Hotel, Dartford. Mike is fifth from the left playing the white guitar.
In the first of a series of occasional features on bands and musicians that came out of St Mary’s, we start with early 60s band The Barons which featured Mike Moore, who arrived at St Mary’s in 1954.
It was Mike Moore’s enquiring, scientific mind which first drew him to music and the guitar, deciding that it was a matter of mathematics, coupled with dexterity.
Mike first started making skiffle music with another St Mary’s lad, Jim Simpson, from the year above who played guitar, while Mick played a tea-chest bass.
He started playing guitar around 1956, a year which coincided with the arrival of a certain Elvis Presley.
Mike’s first public performance was with another St Mary’s lad, Dennis Stockton, where Mike used an old acoustic guitar with a clip-on pick-up and a self-built amplifier.
Jim Simpson then got Mike into a youth club in Northumberland Heath (between Bexleyheath and Erith) in around 1958: “You were supposed to be 16 to join but Jim got me in as I played guitar. We played regularly with a bunch of members including two drummers, a pianist and a budding saxophonist,” says Mike.
“One evening the saxophonist brought along a guitarist/singer Colin Bourner. We then had enough players to form two groups I joined the one that eventually became The Barons. I was by far the youngest in the group.”
This was just as Mike was taking his O-Levels in 1959, after moving to the new purpose built St Mary’s Grammar School, opposite Queen Mary’s Hospital:
“After that, I think my academic work went downhill,” says Mike. The music was taking over and early in 1961 we had got well enough known to record our first single, Cossack.” (You can hear Cossack below)
Things then started moving for Mike and the band as they went full time and backed a lot of big name acts including Bert Weedon and Eden Kane (below) and Mike switched to bass guitar.
“In 1962 we had a real winner. We had booked Crayford Town Hall for a gig and booked Joe Brown to play. Between the booking and the event, Joe had a hit with “Picture of you” but his agent, who was our agent, agreed to keep the original booking fee. We had a sell out of some 550 tickets and we provided the rest of the show. This was a good night for us.”
In the summer, Mike and the band backed Bruce Channel who was over from the States promoting his hit number Hey Baby, with its distinctive harmonica sound played by Delbert McClinton.
One engagement was in Liverpool: “At lunch time we played at the Cavern and that evening at the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton,” he recalls. “We shared a dressing room with four young lads. One of these brought out a mouth organ with a slide and said: ‘Guess where we got the idea of this from?’ and played a piece that turned out to be from Love Me Do. The young man was John Lennon and the group was The Beatles.
“Soon after came the end. We had a gig in Ripley. We found three such places, one in Surrey and two up north so we set off into Yorkshire. There was no such venue in Ripley. By the time we got back to the correct one, in Derbyshire, we were too late and the management were fuming. That was it for me; if I had been a bit older, I may have been able to face it out but, as a callow youth, I quit straight away. My bass guitar went back to Jennings in Bexleyheath as it was still on HP. So ended my career as a rock and roll star.”
Yet it would be wrong for Mike’s story to finish here as he went on to have a fine career as a highly-respected engineer and I hope to be able to feature him in a future ‘Where Are They Now’ article.
Group recorded samurai…whirlwind…and a demo night rider…jericho. they recorded for the small oriole label in London. Paul meters owns the only copy of that demo.l have a fully autographed photo of the band.