JUNE 27, 1964 fell on a Saturday and the third of the Galaxy Club’s live music events was held at the Town Hall.

It featured Rod Crisp & the Falling Leaves with support from Lester Square & the GTs. Both groups have interesting histories.

Rod Crisp & the Falling Leaves were put together in 1964 by Oxford promoter Adrian Hopkins, so they were a relatively new group on this; the first of eight appearances in Basingstoke for the Galaxy Club; one of which was at North Warnborough Village Hall on November 22, 1964. The group twice supported the Rolling Stones.

Rod Crisp was their vocalist and harmonica-player. The rest of the line-up included Larry Reddington – drums, Neil Robinson – keyboards with guitarist William Jarvis who had appeared on the bill with the Beatles in Oxford as a member of the Madisons the previous year. Jarvis died in 2011, aged 65.

As ‘the Falling Leaves’ they recorded a single for Parlophone in 1965 and one for Decca in 1966 but called it quits the same year.

Lester Square & the GTs had been formed a year earlier by John Dummer, who went on to a distinguished career in the music industry. This and his later bands were breeding grounds for budding musicians. In the seventies he wrote hits for the Darts, for whom he played the drums.

John moved into property development and today lives in France. He kindly responded via Facebook to questions about their line-up.

Fifty years on, would he remember one more gig in another one-horse town? After a brief consultation with his life-long friend Chris Trengrove, he said: “Surprisingly enough I do remember the gig and the Falling Leaves.

"They were far more experienced than us and went down a storm. I believe it was the very first gig we played as Lester Square & the GT's. As far as I remember, the line up at (Basingstoke) Town Hall was me - drums & vocals, Chris Trengove - Alto Sax & vocals, Elton Dean - tenor sax, Top Topham - guitar, Alex McCleery – organ and Stewart Jowsey - bass guitar.”

This was possibly Elton Dean’s first band. He would later join Long John Baldry’s Bluesology where he met and clearly influenced the young Elton John, who was then called Reg Dwight (from Guardian.co.uk obituary 2006):
“Being a jazz musician - and thus inclined to the wry world view - Elton Dean appreciated the irony that he was better known for giving Elton John half his name than for his own superlative saxophone playing.”

A review in the Telegraph of a 2013 book by Keith Hayward ‘Tin-Pan Alley’ gets closer to the story: “He (Reg) announced he was leaving Bluesology, and planned to take the name of Elton Dean, the band’s saxophonist – before Dean told him to ‘f--- off’.

"As the group’s drummer Pete Gavin recalls, ‘Reg just said: OK, I'll use your name and John Baldry's then'. When he told us that he was going to call himself Elton John, we all fell about laughing and said: 'You must be mad'."

Elton Dean worked on various projects with experimental pianist Keith Tippet. He played with jazz-rock pioneers The Soft Machine between 1969 and 1972, during which time they recorded their third, fourth and fifth albums. He was born in Nottingham on October 28, 1945 and died on February 7, 2006.

Top Topham (real name Anthony Topham) went on to become a session musician for Blue Horizon Records but is perhaps best remembered as the ‘original’ lead guitarist with the Yardbirds (before his stint with Lester Square & the GTs).

He was forced to pull out of the Yardbirds when they turned professional whereupon he was replaced by his schoolmate Eric Clapton.

Topham is quoted on Wikipedia: "I was only 15 then, three or four years younger than the rest, and there was no way my parents would let me go out five or six nights a week to play music, even though I was already bringing home double what my father was earning. I was going on to Epsom Art School and they wanted me to take it seriously. Eric Clapton was the obvious person to replace me. Later on I didn't regret leaving because they'd moved away from the blues music that I was interested in.”

More information about the Galaxy Club and Basingstoke’s music scene from the sixties to the present day can be found at http://razrazzle.wordpress.com/