NOTTINGHAM EVENING POST 1979
Superstar Dave Rocks Finland's Pop Music Fans
by Richard Harris
WHEN Dave Taylor goes into a pub in Finland he can hardly move for grabbing, idolising female fans. When he does the same in England, he stands there, rocking on his feet, looking around for someone to talk to.
The contrast, even he admits, can be a bit disconcerting. But that's nothing compared with the difference between his lifestyle now and the one he left behind just a few years ago. In those days he was an assembly worker "putting parts on something or other" at Raleigh.
Boogie Style Sonata
Today this lad - who was once disqualified from a children's music competition for playing a boogie-style Moonlight Sonata - is one of the hottest properties in Finland, regularly appearing on the radio and television, selling thousands of records and earning £1,500 a night playing in packed dance halls wherever he goes.
"He is the most sensational act in Finnish show business today", says one top Scandinavian journalist.
"The secret of his success is his first class showmanship, excellent musical ability and a touch of rock feeling in the true 50s tradition. This little giant is without doubt the most promising and talented performer in years on the Finnish rock scene."
His success is even more marked when you compare it with what might have been…
When he returned to Nottingham the other day he found that, of his old friends, three were dead - two killed in road accidents and one in a fight - and several had unhappy marriages behind them.
Invited to London
"It wasn't easy fitting in when I came back," he says. "They have all sort of changed, all married and that. They were different people.
His story - a mixture of luck, talent and hard work - is the sort of thing to inspire any of us who feels that life is no challenge any more.
It all started conventionally enough: A teenager from Arnold playing for fun in bands with names like Rip It Up, Twice On Sunday and Rave On is eventually invited to London to take an audition with a (comparatively) big-name band called the Hell Raisers.
"They were wanting a sax player", Dave recalls. "My manager hadn't bothered to tell them I could only play the piano."
It was only afterwards, when Dave had quietly told them he hardly knew one end a of saxophone from the other and when he had spent an hour or so playing rock'n'roll on the piano of a nearby pub, that the group decided he was so good that maybe they could increase their line-up to accommodate him.
"They asked if I'd like to play with them and could I go to Denmark tomorrow. I had never been out of the country - I'd hardly been out of Nottingham before."
The band had their first rehearsal together on the ferry to Denmark - a journey that was to take them on tours of Britain and Europe, supporting the really big stars like Bill Haley.
"I thought that this was the happiest moment I could wish for, Dave says. All over Scandinavia and Europe. It was great."
"Then I began to get a little bit restless. I began to wonder if it was the end of the line and got a bit depressed."
After two years, when Dave was still only 18, the group split up, leaving him experienced, bewildered and, to some degree, disenchanted.
Once he was a Raleigh assembly worker - now he can earn £1,500 pounds a night playing in packed dance halls
"I thought it was time to get my own band together. Dave Taylor and the Dynamites. They are still going, you know - they're very good. Now."
Didn't work out
They did a couple of tours of such places as Holland, France and Denmark, but again it didn't work out.
"The lead guitarist said his wife didn't like him going away all the time and the bass guitarist had a job. They were going nowhere. So after two months I got out."
Dave, in the best tradition of rock stars who've never quite made it on their own, then started doing session work, backing others singers, playing in a casino and around the clubs before admitting defeat.
"I got a job making biscuits just mixing the stuff - in London. It was horrible."
All the money he made at the biscuit factory he ploughed into a demo tape, but he lost the lot, the money and the tape, when he was conned by "a man who said he'd make me a star". But then… a slice of luck.
"I started getting letters from a man in Finland who wanted me to make a record. He was the only person who even wanted to know me."
Biggest slice of luck
"So I made a single for him. It didn't do very well. It wasn't very good. But we made another and that didn't do very well either. It sold 25 copies, I think. Even so, I got some gigs over there and things started going better for me. I was working; things were going all right."
But then… disaster.
The Finnish police discovered he'd outstayed his work permit and they gave him 24 hours to leave the country.
And then came the biggest slice of luck in Dave's extraordinary story. While he was on the ship taking him from Finland, he received a cable from one of his old friends.
He told me to go to a hotel in Hamburg, where a room had been reserved for me, and I was to stay there until I heard more. There was £ 500 waiting for me with a note saying "sit tight". I just drank beer and sat there waiting - though I didn't know what I was waiting for.
Eventually his friend turned up and offered him the chance to make a record in Finland. So, with the prospect of some real work ahead, the authorities let him back in.
The record sold well and we did a TV show and several radio interviews. Another LP followed which did quite well; it was even released over here (it sold about 21,000 copies) and in the USA, Spain, Portugal, Germany, France and Holland.
Since then Dave's success has snowballed, with hit albums, television shows and radio interviews and a new single, "Lonely as I Can Be", just released.
He has four part-time backing groups scattered in various parts of Finland (it works out cheaper than having one full-time band that follows him from gig to gig), he has bought his own recording studio and he lives on a picturesque island not far from Helsinki.
Students carried the piano
"They take their music more seriously over there, he says. The crowds are more ecstatic. They go more crazy."
One of Dave's favourite stories concerns the night when he was playing at a small town in northern Finland. He was lying across the top of the piano, leaning over and playing it in the best rock'n'roll style when his excited fans picked the whole thing up and carried it around the hall. He fell off and broke his arm.
"I am insured against accidents now," he says.