I hope you have enjoyed our final interview by Aymeric Leroy with Pete Lemer. In it Pete says he is not sure what channels Phil went though to contact him initially. I can clear this up:
It was Phil’s brother Steve who told Phil that Pete Lemer had bought a house in Great Hallingbury. Steve knew this because he had friend called Reg (I forget his surname) who was an extremely able builder who was good at everything – from plumbing to roofing and everything in between and was doing work on Pete’s house in Great Hallingbury (which featured in the very first episode of our Pete Lemer Interview). Pete had recently moved into this house which they had divided into four flats. Steve Cook was one of the other sharers. Phil was familiar with the work of both Pete Lemer and Steve Cook.
Phil, who had grown up in Hertfordshire, knew the area that Pete had moved into, had known of Pete Lemer for some time and admired his playing. When he started to form his own band in ’82 (initially called the Phil Miller Quartet) he asked Pete if he would consider joining. Dave Stewart had moved to Cornwall and he was looking for a local keyboard player. Phil had already asked Richard Sinclair to play bass, he was joined at the hip with Pip Pyle so he had a drummer and Elton Dean lived very close to where Phil and I lived and had been jamming with Phil for some time.
When Phil was invited to bring In Cahoots to Japan in 2001 for the Tribute to the Love Generation it was assumed that he would bring the quintet without Pete which was the current formation of the band at the time, but he decided against it. He said to me “I’m going to bring Pete. I know my music is safe in his hands and if necessary he can play all the parts!” I think this shows how much he admired Pete and his tremendous musical ability.
Pete says in the interview where he reveals that although he enjoyed playing with In Cahoots, he did not enjoy being with the band when they were not actually playing but “didn’t want to go into that”. I’m sorry to say that he was referring to Elton and Pip, who as well as ganging up against Phil, also ganged up against Pete. Nobody else ever joined in but the more that Pip fell under Elton’s thrall the more the pair of them behaved like a couple of school bullies. I have written about this in my “Rotter’s Club” pieces. (See under MORE on this site)
It was shortly after this Japanese adventure that Pip quit In Cahoots to form his own band BASH.
Here is the video of In Cahoots at the TRIBUTE TO THE LOVE GENERATION 2001
Phil Miller guitar, Elton Dean saxes, Jim Dvorak trumpet, Pete Lemer keyboards, Fred Baker bass, Pip Pyle drums. We have this already on our site although it must be said the video itself is pretty rubbish. We recommend you go to our site, go to MUSIC – LIVE PERFORMANCES: & scroll down to: In Cahoots Tribute to the Love Generation 2001 to hear both performances day 1 and day 2 with extra tunes. audio only (also downloadable)
HERM