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Funk Skunks

The HISTORY of the Funk Skunks - Part 2 (1988 to 1991)

The Hare & Hounds Days!

(by Tony McCormick)

Once Blood Brothers opened in London, I had a lot more time to spend on doing new material for the band. We were blessed by having a fantastic landlord in the pub in the shape of Steve Eltringham. Steve couldn’t have been more helpful (probably because we used to spend our whole wages on take-outs after the gig to take back to Bob and Kim's place, so he effectively got the gig for nothing). He even put us up sometimes so we didn’t have to go straight back to London.

This period was very productive I was introducing two or three new charts for each gig and we were doing gigs at least every two weeks, usually at lunchtime on Sundays. In those days pubs on Sundays were only open from 12 noon till 2pm at lunchtime so it was quite a feat doing them at all, as myself and Terry didn’t finish the 2nd show of the day in London the night before until 10:45pm and Bob and Kim were famed for not getting up till 2pm every day! Nevertheless we were all there setting up at 11am and rehearsing the new material.

We were building up a fan -base again now, which was greatly helped when Bob Croucher introduced me to his local barman Kerry Chapman. Kerry came to one of our gigs and loved it. He then went back to the Hollingbury pub and told all his customers and friends, which resulted in the Hollingbury pub being virtually empty each time we played, which didn’t go down well with the owners Mick and Jan Haddon (the latter of whom delighted in whacking me round the back Miss Piggy style every time I went in there.

These were fantastic fun times for the band and punters alike - the gigs were great and the hospitality shown to us by the fans was fantastic. Hardly a Sunday afternoon passed without the band being invited to someone’s house for a party. This went on for about three years until I went with Terry one night back to the Hare and Hounds in the evening after a party somewhere and Steve the landlord told us he was leaving in three weeks. My heart sank - all the hard work building up the band’s following was going to go down the pan. Steve had been an integral part of it all, a fantastic bloke, I knew it wouldn’t be the same again with another landlord and it wasn’t. As it turned out we never played there again because a little side project that I had started called the Blues Brothers came into being and I couldn’t do another Skunks gig for four years.

this website was cobbled together by Ada, masterminded by Tony McCormick 2008