The tension erupted almost immediately, as the band came on and tore
into the Bo Diddley scorcher, ‘Roadrunner’, turning the song on its head, with
Phil May’s inarticulate vocal and screaming harmonica pushing the number into
accelerated chaos. Phil May was characteristically dressed all in white, a
white crew-neck jumper, white hipster jeans, white socks and white slip-ons.
The two guitarists, Dick Taylor and John Povey, the bassist, Skip Allan, and
the confrontationally wired drummer, Viv Prince, were dressed respectively in
blue, pink, burnt-orange and scarlet ruffled shirts, typically from John
Stephen’s Carnaby Street shops, with the dandified, mouthy drummer wearing a
dark-blue, silk-banded pork pie, a cigarette posted at an angle in his mouth. The
band meant trouble from the first moment, and stormed into their hit single, ‘Don’t
Bring Me Down.’ The
Face was so pulled into the music’s raw power that he temporarily forgot all
about the ugly incident out in the yard involving Terry, and felt his stomach
tighten as the band broke into ‘She’s Fine She’s Mine’, with the drummer, Viv
Prince, suddenly deserting his kit to crawl across the stage, unlit cigarette
in his mouth, to request a light from the front row. Only he stayed there, on
all fours, fixing the crowd with his demented look, and holding out his hat
like he was begging for money. The band ignored the drummer’s pathologically
aberrant behaviour, and kept on playing without him at his stack, with May executing
a backwards somersault, while keeping perfect timing.
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