Once again, I find myself writing another obituary for an old friend who had significant impact on my formative years. Whilst I come to terms with the painful and shocking loss of someone I was close to in my younger life, the comparison cannot be made with the immeasurable grief experienced by his family.
First Meeting & Early Bond
Dave Taylor and I first became properly aware of each other in the early days of 1981. We were both fledgling drummers, Dave being about 18 months older than me. We both attended the same school where my mum was one of his art teachers – though I wasn’t too aware of him then. I knew he was one of the ‘hippy types’ in the school, often ridiculed, but the tribe I wanted to be associated with.
Our worlds pleasantly collided because we both had valuable currency as potential drummers for the wannabe rock stars in our shared peer group. In fact, it could be said we were the only drummers in town. We weren’t of course, but we were the ones people seemed to want.
And so it began, our mutual peers being the catalyst for our almost brotherly friendship.
Music, Drums & Art
Dave (like me) was obviously OCD (though the condition in adolescents was years away from being accepted) and we obsessed about our craft. Whilst I absorbed the simplicity of the drummers of the heavy rock genre, Dave was ahead of the game with his musical sensitivities. For a start, he could play guitar – very well – which immediately put him in another league. It would be at least a decade before I attempted dabbling with six strings of blistering steel wires.
When it came to music, Dave was without a shadow of doubt, West Wirral’s number one tribute to Neil Peart! He idolised the Rush-meister as much as I did Clive Burr, the man in Iron Maiden before Nicko McBrain. We both desired the huge drum sets of our heroes but equally lacked the fiscal power to buy them.
Although I was a student of art with some skills, Dave was already proven to be naturally advanced in that department. He must have been aware of his abilities – which would have stood out from his high school art lesson classmates. But he never used it as a weapon with which to berate the lesser skilled of the student artist fraternity. Besides which, my bag was creative photography which was a great shelter to hide in, having realised the limitations of my pencil and brush skills.
By 1982 we had both whored ourselves out with the best of the grammar school educated musical talent. Our paths crossed not only musically, but socially. Dave was a great raconteur and could easily take centre stage at a teenage gathering (of which there was many). He was more than just a little bit outgoing and earned the occasionally spoken title of, ‘Dave the rave’. Yet behind the jocular bravado, there lay a serious thinker. Maybe this is why he had a fascination for Neil Peart beyond the drumming and music of Rush.
Peart’s huge lyrical contribution for the trio is well documented, helping create songs with deeper, challenging meanings. Dave had tapped into this, whereas I was still trying to fathom out what was going on behind the drums!
Looking back, he was by far the more intellectually gifted out of the two of us and I still wonder why he gravitated towards me for friendship. But Dave was wired for semi-intense camaraderie. He could certainly dominate and command your undivided attention, but not in any way maliciously. It was almost like we were collaborating in a shared learning experience, with him as host of the topic up for examination. He was like an older brother in that way – and not just for me. This was a trait of his personality with which he shared with others.
Darts Nights of Musical Discovery
Believe it or not, Dave and I had a shared interest in the game of darts. Back in the day, the game was still in its infancy and a far cry from the professional sport we see today. It had not long emerged from its primitive roots in the British pubs, evolving into an opportunity for the best throwers in a local league to give up their day jobs. We had no dreams of becoming the next Keith Deller, but we certainly spent some serious hours slamming our tungsten arrows into my new bristle board.
It was during these throwing sessions Dave would expose my ears to his latest vinyl acquisitions. We’d listen our way through games of 501 to albums from the prog-rock era. Unusually, it was very rare for Dave to bring a Rush album. During this period, Rush released ‘Signals’, marking a musical departure for the band. I have fond memories this vinyl under the needle of my mum’s domestic turntable whilst our steel points pierced the compressed sisal fibres from the agave plant.
I recall quite a few spins of the live UK album, ‘Night After Night’, featuring Terry Bozzio on drums. Dave would often pause our game to point out parts of musical excellence on this recording. Whilst I could obviously hear the performance value, I could only dream of having the musical capability to execute any of it! Despite his best attempts to educate me, I was still limited to my obsession with Iron Maiden and all things heavy metal.
But what of our darting skills? Where did it take us? Well, it took us as far as being members of the darts team for a local Hoylake pub, The Lake. Dave was much better at darts than me and especially where it counted – on the finish. He could hit doubles and check out quicker than me. Even if I could score higher, he could catch up and finish quicker.
The darts team in The Lake were much, much older than us, but they welcomed the new blood and made allowances for our long-haired appearance. Whilst Dave could legally drink, I was still under-age and confined myself to pints of orange cordial. We weren’t the most experienced players, but Dave’s limited alcohol intake combined with my sobriety made us some of the most consistently accurate throwers on the team! We even helped contribute to a few successes in matches against other local pubs.
Our pub-darts diversion was short lived and although we continued the ‘play and listen’ nights at my house, neither of us wanted to be old men before our time. Back to the music it was.
In terms of embracing change, Dave was more mentally equipped to embrace ‘the new’ rather than roping himself to the past. When Rush released ‘Signals’ in September 1982, it was the subject of a lot of negative fall-out from within the Rush fanbase. Their change in direction and image was too much for some die-hards, but not for Dave. He welcomed their musical risk-taking much like he did in his own creative projects. Dave Taylor was not about staying in the safety net of the past.
When The Police released ‘Synchronicity’ in June 1983, Dave was immediately onto the album. I had always been a closet Police fan, secrecy being necessary, having publicly nailed my colours to the mast of heavy metal. Dave had no such self-limiting rules. Remembering the aftermath of one of our Saturday morning record buying trips to Liverpool, I can recall Dave proudly walking up Forest Road back to his mum’s house in Meols, unashamedly cradling ‘Synchronicity’, out of its bag. Once inside, it went on the turntable at least twice. He even liked (or willingly accepted) the ‘challenging’ Andy Summers avant-garde contribution, ‘Mother’! Fortunately, I had ditched my allegiance to all things heavy metal a few months earlier, leaving me free to openly absorb the band’s magnum opus.
Due to his naturally explorative nature, Dave managed to spread himself around a handful of different local bands. He seemed eager to move quickly from the safety of familiar faces into the unknown. I can’t remember how he discovered them, but a Liverpool based guitar and bass duo of songwriters called Martin and Pete (or ‘Mask’ and ‘Pesk’ as he christened them) needed a drummer to complete their trio. With ‘Synchronicity’ never being off Dave’s turntable (I’ll warrant more than Rush’s ‘Signals’) Dave had pretty much toned down the old Neil Peart replication and taken a gravitation towards Stewart Copeland.
This was perfect for Dave’s new band, Frequency, now a power-trio trying to make their mark on the Liverpool music scene. The early 1980s was a particularly fertile time for Liverpool’s emerging musical artists and having attended a few Frequency rehearsals at the old Argyle Street Bridewell prison, I was convinced these guys would go all the way.
Frequency were one of a few bands Dave would be involved with during the first half of the 1980s. Whilst being a great drummer, I guess his urge to work with ink and paint was stronger. My own belief is, drums were probably too limiting for someone with his creative force.
Dave’s unyielding creative engine meant he was more of a natural leader than a follower. He could take the attention of the room without even trying, likely a result of the sheer enthusiasm he would put into the simplest of ideas. New music, art, photography and even film were never off Dave’s radar. His mum ran a boutique interior design shop in Hoylake (Saje) and because she bought screen advertising with the local cinema, Dave was on the receiving end of free tickets. He regularly badgered me to go and see a film I didn’t fancy watching, purely on the basis of expanding my mental horizons – plus it cost us nothing!
Another time he had me traipsing around the streets of London trying to find the legendary Covent Garden Asian musical instrument shop near Neal Street (Ray Man?) which apparently, supplied Neil Peart with genuine Chinese cymbals. We were supposed to be visiting the London art galleries on an art college trip, but Dave had other plans… He was determined to buy his own Chinese cymbal and we simply had to find the place. Lacking a London A-Z, we had to rely on asking for verbal directions and eventually found the shop. Unfortunately, a student grant didn’t really provide the budget for a large cymbal like Peart’s, so Dave left with a mini-China, around 12 inches in diameter. Nevertheless, it was a victory for him and another component for his expanding drum set, complete with an associated tale for its acquisition.
A Baked Potato Gets me a Ride Home
This is another ancient memory straight out of Dave’s mum’s very modern kitchen. It involves cutting age technology, the humble British spud and a small group of soon-to-be spellbound teenagers.
It’s another Sunday night social gathering at our usual host’s house in Devonshire Road, West Kirby. Chas Hudson has been providing a place for us to hang out on Sunday nights during the summer and winter months for a while now. My memory is hazy, but I believe everyone else had gone home and there’s only me, Dave and fellow bass playing friend, Will Stephenson remaining. It must be late because we’ve missed the last C22 going to Hoylake and we’re faced with a 2+ mile walk home. Dave has other ideas.
Chas has not long passed his driving test and has regular access to his sister’s Ford Fiesta, which just happens to be available. Now, I can’t remember exactly how Dave put his proposition, but it was something like this:
“How would you guys like to eat a baked potato right now?“
A strange question, but we were open to the possibility, but how was this going to happen in our present position in West Kirby just minutes before midnight?
He continued, “You’ve all heard of microwave ovens, right?“
This was 1983 and we’d seen the microwave oven and how quickly it could cook food on shows like Tomorrow’s World, but we’d never seen one in the flesh.
“My mum’s just got one and if you give us a lift back home Chas, I’ll cook you all a baked potato in the microwave!“
Dave’s powers of persuasion combined with a space-age reward secured us the lift home we needed. The air of anticipation within the rudimentary interior of the vehicle was electric. Dave commanded our undivided attention as chief alchemist over his waiting students.
Dave’s mum didn’t keep late hours; in fact, back in those low-tech days, few stayed up to see Sunday night roll over into the small hours of Monday. But we were teenage dreamers on the cusp of a long summer. Dave made his silent entry first, then summoned us into the kitchen via the back door. Keeping a shared silence, we entered to stare in wonder at the large beige metal and glass monster dominating the work top. Thanks to the ample separation between kitchen and the sleeping lady of the house, we could relax and assume a normal level of conversation. Dave began to explain the vague science he’d learned about how microwaves messed with molecules to produce cooked food without the aid of a conventional oven. We’d all Seen microwave ovens demonstrated on TV, but to see one charge into life when all Meols slept was pure science fiction.
Two large potatoes were produced, washed and pricked with a fork, before being placed in the beige monster’s mouth. Dave set a timer and our conversation stayed with the rotating root vegetables making a 360-degree journey to an edible state. How could they possibly cook turning a continuous circle on a glass plate?
‘Ping!‘ and it was half time. The machine stopped, the door was opened and Dave grappled with the steaming spuds, turning them over for the last stage of transformation. Another 10 or so minutes and the job was done. Taking a sharp knife, Dave sliced into the red-hot skin revealing the soft white flesh of the still cooking interiors.
An act of witchcraft, no less!
Plates, butter and cutlery were produced to conclude the electromagnetic sorcery. The only thing left to do was to consume the moist sacrifices. One half each was the earthy reward for our patience and although I will always prefer the taste of a baked potato cooked slowly in a non-microwave oven, these mouth scalders were a game changer.
Driving back towards Hoylake, Chas concurred Dave’s ruse to get a lift home had been worth the small debt of fuel now owed to his sister. I can remember recounting the tale to my mum the next day, still blown away having eaten a baked potato from raw to cooked in under 30 minutes. It would be another 12 months before I was able to experience the same microwave magic happening in my house, but it could never match the shared experience of discovery created in Dave’s kitchen during the wee small hours of a Monday morning in ’83.
Dave The Rave’s Double Dares!
Having long since left social media, I didn’t know about Dave’s predicament until our mutual bass playing friend, Mart Byrne, filled me in on his bad luck. I had put Dave and Mart together back in the 1980s when Mart’s band needed a drummer. They worked together well as a rhythm-section and another lifelong connection was made. Mart told me about Dave’s Facebook post, so I broke my self-imposed ban and logged in to read it.
Shocked by his explanation about how he had lost mobility below the waist due to the removal of what I guess now, must have been secondary cancer in his spine, I started to consider my private message of support. It’s hard to know what to write in these circumstances, because there’s nothing anyone can say to change things. So, I decided to share a cherished memory many summers in our past, when anything and everything seemed possible, if you dared to dream.
We’re back to a summer’s evening sometime after 4th July 1983 (because I am not accompanied by a girlfriend!) It’s another Sunday night gathering when our regular group of friends meet up to make the most of what would otherwise be a boring end to the weekend. Our activity this time, was an impromptu trip to the shore at Caldy cliffs for what I guess, was a ‘middle-class’ teenage beach party.
We actually used to do this fairly regularly, making our journey on foot to descend the steps at the end of Croft Drive, laden with adequate amounts of alcohol and Chas Hudson’s much coveted ghetto blaster. Being away from the major bus routes, the place was guaranteed to be deserted leaving us free to build driftwood fires on an almost private patch of white sand. With the North Wales side of the River Dee silhouetted against the setting sun and the fading light compensated by our ambitious fire, we were cocooned in the simple perfection of our own creation.
As always, there reached a point in the evening when thoughts reluctantly turned to the task of getting home on a restricted Sunday bus service. As mentioned earlier, for those of us living a couple of miles down the road, the last C22 from the beacon bus stop on Column Road was our ride home. On this particular night, time was not on our side, but the skies were clear enough to give Dave an idea for his first dare of the night.
Despite our fast pace, there was simply too much pavement to cover to reach the bus stop in time. Our normal route took a long circular path around the National Trust land of Caldy hill, which formed a barrier of sorts between two of the major roads in the area. Whilst the hill has aways provided an ever-evolving network of easily accessible pathways during daylight hours, it becomes less hospitable terrain at night. Add to this, the adolescent mind with its child-like fear of the dark, Caldy hill at night was the stuff of horror movies. I certainly wouldn’t have made Dave’s next suggestion.
“There’s no way we’re going to make the bus at this rate, so who dares to walk over Caldy hill as a shortcut?“
Our initial collective response was “no way!” but Dave managed to talk us out of our reluctance to face our supernatural fears. Whatever he said, it managed to convince us to enter the obscure paths I know so well today, with Dave leading the way like some sort of Indiana Jones character.
Despite an almost cloudless sky, the light reaching earth was scarcely enough to illuminate the walls of wild foliage shrouding our visibility. Eventually, we came out onto a deserted Column Road, Dave triumphant in completion of his conquering adventurer’s quest.
At this point in Britain’s social history, TV had only just elevated itself to four channels – all with a curfew at around midnight. The pubs shut at 11pm, car ownership was an expensive luxury and the 24/7, always-on and connected world we know today, didn’t exist. People in respectable towns like West Kirby did not keep late hours and slept very soundly in their beds. Whilst CCTV existed, it was years away from being installed to watch over today’s anxiety-ridden suburban dwellers. With such primitively tranquil conditions set, it made the perfect backdrop for Dave’s second dare of the night.
Maybe we’d missed the bus or just had time to kill waiting for it, but whatever the reason, something gave Dave a rush of athletic inspiration to air a suggestion befitting of his tall stature.
“Who dares me to jump over the fences of those houses?“
He was referring to the ones on the opposite side of the road from our waiting point – a prime example of the mid-century, grammar school catchment area detached variety. All had generous front gardens gifting the occupiers the type of privacy expected for the price tag. The type of privacy which would allow Dave to use them as a stage for his covert performance of gymnastics.
Dave’s statement wasn’t really a question, because we instinctively knew he’d do it anyway. He had a sense of mischief about him that night which didn’t need our approval – but it was polite to warn us first!
We watched him walk across the road and disappear into a driveway at least three houses further down from the one he would emerge. With only obscure orange light from the streetlamps aiding our vision, we tried to connect the audible sounds of disturbed shrubbery and occasional grunts, with a moving human shape. Dave had no idea what obstacles he had to scale and had next to no natural light to guide him. We found his prank hilarious, trying to keep our laughter to a minimum for fear of seeing a light appear from one of the upper windows. Dave strutted out of the driveway opposite, proudly presenting the twigs and leaves he’d acquired, like a Roman emperor with his laurel wreath.
I’ve been walking this area with my dogs for most of the decades which have passed since that night of mild mischief. It’s half a lifetime ago, yet I can still relive the memories as if I’d stumbled into a time-slip. Some things are etched for eternity.
Judging by his reply, my message with this memory hit the right note with Dave:
“If I were remotely religious I’d probably say, “Bless you, my friend!”
I’m grateful for both your intent and for the memory. I’ve talked briefly with my wife and daughter about my past but always feel a little silly sharing my ‘brave Dave the rave’ stories, as if I were just imagining them. But here you are reminding me that I was indeed a very silly person! Truth be told, I very often felt that life should be more of an adventure, that the folk around me would often hold me back, as if I knew anything at all! Turns out maybe I was right!
The times I took risks in life were usually the times that in some way paid off. If I’d not taken risks I don’t think I’d have had the good life I feel I’ve had (so far!)”
Beyond The Eighties
By the end of the 1980s my life and Dave’s had gone in different directions. The fact is, everybody outgrows their roots; especially the driven creative types. Whilst I followed my ultimately futile musical pursuits, Dave put his on a backburner and made good as an illustrator. We lost touch for 25 years or more, before the Facebook experiment put us back together on the same mutual friends list.
Reconnecting with Dave after so long wasn’t hard. Whilst his status in the world as a successful illustrator had opened new opportunities, the old teenage friend remained. We chatted over email and messenger platforms, sharing our interests in the mystery of UFOs due to both of us being witnesses to the phenomena. He filled in the missing blanks of the previous years, telling me about his double-edged work experience in America, a marriage that didn’t work out and finally settling in Liverpool with a wife and daughter.
Dave invited me over to his place in Liverpool to catch up in person sometime during 2016. We hadn’t seen each other for many years but it was the classic case of meeting up as if we’d never been away. Dave had an incredible conservatory building next to his house, which I guess was his working studio/man cave. There was a small 4-piece drum set in there, but he said he didn’t play as much as he did years ago and when he did, it was jazz inspired. The rest of the space was filled with the artistic and sometimes stranger reflections of his personality – a real Victorian female human skeleton no less!
Seeing his post-adolescent artwork for the first time was astounding. I’m not a comic art aficionado and I didn’t realise the meticulous detail it demands, especially when you see an original up close. I was in no doubt he’d found his true calling in pen and paint.
We talked about where our lives had taken us and he told me he always knew I’d do something with music. To my surprise, he was very frank with his own admission of not being as driven musically. I always thought he’d go the distance behind the drums – he was talented enough for sure. But after all these years, he was telling me he’d recognised the depth of my youthful ambition. He said out of all our group of music dreamers, he knew I was the only one who had what it took to have a musical career. I was both surprised and flattered by this revelation and went home feeling like we’d closed the final part of a circle of our past. Anything from now on would be filtered through our collective life experiences and a mutual respect of where our journeys had taken us.
The Dichotomy of Quitting Social Media
It was around 2011 when I started to recognise the mental toll social media was having on me. By 2017, Twitter had burned me out and even trying to use Facebook purely for promoting my musical activities was testing my limits. I even tried Instagram and that become toxic very quickly. It all had to go.
The mixed blessing of living without social media is two-fold. Whilst you get your life back without the extra anxiety caused by doom scrolling, you also lose contact with people you enjoy interacting with in the online world. This is where my decision to choose isolation often works against me. My contact with Dave became intermittent and we only spoke by messaging when there was something of mutual interest worthy of discussion. It was most often about UFO research and never about drums or music. Our last such exchange was after the death of Neil Peart in 2020. Then came the pandemic and that’s where the trail goes fuzzy.
Instagram caused the return of a lot of anxiety during the lockdown period, when it finally succumbed to occupation by extreme conspiracy theorists. After lockdown was over and no sign of things returning to its pre-pandemic calm, I closed my Instagram account. By the time Dave had announced his illness on Facebook, I was likely the last of his old friends to find out.
Dave’s Facebook post gave me the impression surgery had given him a chance of a future – albeit from a wheelchair – so I made plans to visit him. As fate decided, this wasn’t to be. Obviously, things were worse than expected and another beacon of light from my youth was extinguished.
A Farewell to Friend
The Dave Taylor talked about on the internet and on his Wikipedia page tells of a life beyond our brief teenage years. Hopefully what I have written here will give those who knew Dave as the successful and gifted illustrator, a small glimpse of where he came from.
Dave will be remembered not only for his art, but for the friendship, adventure and creativity he shared so freely. The only thing left for me to say is bid farewell to my old friend, borrowing the last line from the film, Gladiator; “I will see you again, but not yet… not yet!“
Well written, Squire!
Grazie signor Smith!