Tony ricorda John Mayhew

[genesisforever]

We were very sorry to hear about the death of John Mayhew, who had only recently appeared back in our lives after over thirty years. His time with the group was short, but it was a very crucial period and his contribution was very important.
After John Silver, the drummer who had played on 'From Genesis to Revelation' decided to leave we rehearsed for a while as a four-piece before auditioning for a replacement. The trouble was we didn't have a full drum kit for them to use. I remember one poor chap having to play with the cymbals hanging from the ceiling, almost decapitating himself every time he used one. When John Mayhew arrived he had the great advantage of owning a kit as well as being a very competent drummer. At the time, one of our favourite drummers was Rob Townsend of Family, and when John showed he could reproduce a few of his riffs he was hired.
How we must have appeared to him I hate to think. We had all been to the same school so we were a very closed unit with our own language and humour, and we were very inexperienced both in the business and in life in general. John was a bit older than us and had played live in the group 'Steamhammer" so had some knowledge of what was expected on stage. I remember him at the first show changing to go on stage; this had never occurred to us, strange since later we became almost better known for Peter's costumes than anything else. For this reason he was a very important factor in those early days on the road, having already been there before.
During the few months we worked together, writing music for the 'Trespass' album, John became very much part of the group sharing everything from the legendary immortal yoghurt through to the first experience of Monty Python. His carpentry was a great asset in these early days; he built me a copy of the Leslie style speaker I had, (still in existence I think) and put a seat in the back of the bread-van we used as the group's vehicle amongst many other things. He was a very solid drummer, but not really a writer, a lot of his parts came from the rest of us, particularly from Ant. This was really why we decided that if we were to continue after Ant left, we had to find a more creative drummer, a hard decision because by this time John had become a friend.

Tony Banks

[smiroldo]

ne parliamo qui
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