There were only three of them in the band, really, but you weren't accepted in the ballrooms unless there were six in a band, so they added three tambourine players to make the numbers up. We were, he says, regarded as a beat group masquerading as a showband. Still, they played Walking The Dog , with one sax player putting a lead round the neck of another sax player and walking him round the ball, and if you look zealously enough around the second-hand shops you might bump into a couple of Pickwick albums that bear witness to this wondrous group. In order to gain a residency in Hamburg they enrolled a non musician friend to pose with an organ for publicity shots, and on arrival explained to the bemused promoter that their organ player had contracted appendicitis, but they would nobly carry on without him. Even Taste starved quite frequently when they first came to England, before scoring with two hit albums.
People still ask about Taste, though they split nearly eight years ago.
It was a couple of steps, is Rory s practical summary of their career, though he adds, wIth marginal wistfulness, I think had we stuck together with the right variety we could have done well in America, because that was around the time bands were breaking over there. But then he's never been one to calculate his career coldly. It was a more naive world in those days, I just wanted to do as well as I could. But then I still do. I d still like lots of hit albums and a bigger audience.