It’s a criminal shame that in their lifetime Home Counties’ quintet Bleak House recorded just two singles – albeit two extremely good singles – to bear testament to their abilities. With a name drawn from a Charles Dickens’ novel the band was one of the many that actually pre-dated the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal but who only came to prominence once the spotlight had been turned on the new breed of metal bands. The foundations of Bleak House in fact date back to 1972 when Graham Killin, Paul Hornby, David Alexander and David Riddell came together to form their first band. “We were all at the same school and were about 16 at the time,” recalls Killin. “It was funny really because there was only one amp and all three of us were plugged into it, and it was an almighty racket really! We just used to practice and try to copy other people’s music, or try to come up with ideas, just jamming really, trying to get a feel for it. No-one had ever played with electric guitars before; we’d had acoustic guitars, and been in each other’s bedrooms and that sort of thing, but this was like ‘let’s do it for real!’ and give it a try; and we found it was a bit harder than we’d thought!” he laughs. As fledgling musicians the four schoolfriends were not short of inspiration. “If I remember rightly, the likes of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Yes, Wishbone Ash were early influences. But being in St Albans we were lucky back then as the City Hall pretty much had bands on all the time: people like Vinegar Joe, Elkie Brooks, Robert Palmer, Edgar Broughton Band, all that sort of thing. We used to go every week and you saw people up there and you wanted to do it yourself. And that’s how it started to come together really.” But the more you start to strive for something, the more the cracks start to show. “David Riddell,” starts Killin, “well, he was more of a classical guitarist. He was properly taught, and I think he found it difficult playing within a band set-up. If you play classical guitar it’s more of a solo thing, I would have thought, so he left. And David Alexander… David was a really good friend, and we were always good buddies at school, but he found it very difficult to hold a rhythm down. And it was very painful because Paul Hornby and myself, we were starting to get our own music together and were desperate, desperate, to do this; and we needed somebody who could, well, actually drum without watching our hands going up and down and copying us, drumming along to us strumming.” He laughs again. “It was bloody hilarious, really!”
