Growing up, Gary had certainly been influenced by constant exposure to music in the household, with brothers Tom and David constantly gigging and rehearsing, and Alan Jones recalls teaching Gary some of his first chords. Little wonder then that the allure of becoming a rock musician was so much more enticing than any other potential vocation.
Attila did not, however, score a recording contract, and the band eventually went their separate ways. However, like his brothers, Gary wasn't going to give up on the music business so readily.
After the demise of Attila came Firefly, lasting from the summer of 1976 through to the summer of 1978. Drummer Graham Martin is still drumming today, and still in the Midlands. The rest of the line-up consisted of Pete Lowen and Malcolm Bowcock on guitars, and all four members of the band sang vocals, just like Blackfoot Sue. Roadie for the band was a guy called Arge, who, Graham reports, in exchange for beer and cigarettes, drove them to gigs in his battered Bedford CF van, complete with beer stained seats and overflowing ashtrays!
Firefly played a mixture of covers and original material, much as Attila had, and used to rehearse in the Quaker rooms in Edgbaston, Birmingham. As Graham recalled, "We used to call it "The Thieving Quakers" because for a religion, they were not very charitable to musicians using their hall!"
After Firefly came any number of bands, with the versatile Gary able to play both guitar and bass as well sing vocals - including some lucrative trips to Dubai to entertain the expats working there. It was there that he began a clothing tradition which soon carried over to his brothers and Eddie Golga - ripping the sleeves out of T-shirts to create D.I.Y. muscle shirts. (This is why, they tell me, that few or no intact Outside Edge T-shirts exist.)
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ATTILA were: John Overton (guitar), Tony Boden (drums),
Gary Farmer (bass), Mick Smith (rhythm guitar) |
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Gary even very nearly ended up in Black Sabbath! However, he was pipped at the post by the ever-so-slightly more well-known Neil Murray. He spent the best part of 8 years with B.C. Sweet (Brian Connolly's post-Sweet gigging band), from 1984 to 1992, in later years with brother David in the drum seat, and simultaneously also spent a six-month stint with Mud. Their paths had first crossed when B.C. Sweet played on a double bill along with Les Gray's Mud, promoted as "Monsters of Glam Rock". Gary declined, however, to make the job more permanent when it was offered to him. This decision might well have had something to do with the fact that he was juggling no less than three bands at the time!
