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The Story So Far.......
The Bridge were formed in 1989 when I met Peter Hale, whilst working in a Junk Mail Factory in Northampton. We decided to get together and write a few songs in our spare time. After all, there must be more to life than packing magazines into polythene envelopes.
Me and Pete would meet once a week in his flat and, using an old Yamaha keyboard (with a built in drum machine) and speakers rigged up as microphones, we wrote and recorded about eight original tunes together.
In 1990 I was introduced to Pete's brother-in-law Richard Baldwin. He, like Pete was a Piano player; he listened to a tape and wanted to get involved. Richard persuaded us to get a drummer and bass player, he would play Keyboards, Pete would play the Guitar and I would be the lead singer. The search was on.
I heard about a drummer that was doing a twelve hour marathon drum session, in order to raise money for children in need. Me and Richard went along to hear him play. The drummer Nick Holder, was given a tape to listen to and eventually decided he would like to get involved.
The drums wouldn't fit in Pete's flat and I don't think the neighbours would have appreciated the noise, so we needed to find somewhere else to practice. My aunt had a clothes shop (Bargain Basement) in the basement of an old clothes factory in Northampton town centre, this would become our rehearsal room for the next few months.
The Bridge's first live performance's were during jam sessions at The Brewer's Arms, Northampton during 1991. The first time, I remember, we played three tracks using other musicians instruments; a cover of the R.E.M. classic Losing My Religion, Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting and one of our own compositions (Someone Else) Living In Your Soul. Pete turned the guitar up full blast, Nick played too fast, Richard couldn't keep up and I couldn't hear myself singing. We were terrible , more practice was definitely needed.
During the next six months Pete decided he didn't like playing the guitar anymore and left the band. I'd left the factory and started working in computers. A new colleague of mine, Paul Aspinall, played guitar and he had a friend known as "Spanner", who played bass. They were in.
Our next gig was for a friends birthday party at The Friendlies WMC, Northampton (now the Soundhaus) in March 1992. We played for about 45 minutes doing mostly covers and a few of our own songs. I remember we did a cover of Live And Let Die, the problem was that me and Richard liked the Paul McCartney version but Nick (the Drummer) insisted on playing it in the Guns 'n' Roses style. After the gig we decided he would be better of joining a Metal band and we parted company. The rest of us continued to practice and Paul found us another drummer, a friend of his called Pete.
During 1993 Richard found out that a work colleague had his own recording studio so we decided to record the songs that I had written in '89 with Peter Hale. The first song to be recorded was called TIME OUT. It turned out that this would be the only thing this line-up would ever record. A few weeks after recording this for "Personal Health Reasons" Paul decided he wanted to leave the band taking with him "Spanner" and Pete. At this point myself and Richard decided that having a five piece band was proving too difficult to manage and completed the recordings on our own.
In 1994 the owner of the studio decided he wanted to sell all the equipment. He offered it to us at an extortionate price. When we told him that he was charging too much he said we obviously had no idea what it was worth and therefore wouldn't take care of it, we weren't allowed to use the studio any more. I bought a P.C. along with some recording software and we began recording backing tracks with the intention of playing live again.
Our first outing as a duo was at The Collingtree, Northampton in 1995, this was to be our first paid gig. When asked by the landlord how much we wanted we said we weren't in it for the money and twenty quid would do. He said that he thought he could do better than that. We played for about an hour, again mixing covers with original compositions. After the gig the landlord said "What was it ,twenty quid ?".
Anyway, that night the place was packed with friends and relatives, one of them was Andre Dobrovczech, a guitarist, he wanted to join the band. We started rehearsals and played a few more gigs, the highlight being the Derngate Beer and Music Festival in 1998.
Since then we have spent most of our time in the studio concentrating mainly on writing and recording.
Gary Kelly
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Credits: Gary Kelly / Richard Baldwin |
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