Slung Together in memory of Al

This year in his memory we will be naming the Main Stage “ The Al Rideout Stage”. Fitting also that his son Toby Rideout will be performing on his dads stage 1pm on Sunday with his band Clarkesdale Contract, also Toby will be inviting friends of Al on stage in the skittle alley 6pm -7pm later that day called ”Slung Together”.

It will be a fitting tribute to the man who dedicated his life to live music and in particular young musicians. A glass will be raised and we will be “ Rocking in the free world”

A few words from Sue Holman about the origins of Slung Together.

Many of you here will have played with any number of versions of Slung Together and I thought you might like to know how the name came about.

Pete Holman met Al Rideout in late August 1978, when Toby was just a few weeks old, when Pete auditioned Al for his band Target as the lead guitarist was emigrating to Australia.
As Al played guitar better than Pete he got the job!
Over the next three years there were several changes of line up and name but always with Pete and Al at the core of the band.
They played mostly middle of the road in the local pubs and clubs with a few rock numbers at the end of the evening to get the crowd dancing.
But towards the end of 1981 things had pretty much disintegrated.

19th December 1981 saw the tragic loss of the Solomon Browne lifeboat with all hands and the village of Mousehole was plunged into deep mourning.
However, a few days,after Christmas the villagers felt that they needed something to break the atmosphere of despondency and the band was asked to play a gig in the village.
Panic ensued as there was only Pete and Al left of the band and they felt their usual set wasn’t what was needed.
The boys frantically practiced all the rock numbers they could think of and a fantastically wild night followed, as loud and drunken as could be, with the people of Mousehole finally able to let their hair down and let their emotions run free.
The boys were hailed as Gods and were revered in Mousehole for the rest of their lives.

The next day Pete recounted the triumph of the gig to me and my response was
“You mean they loved that set that you just Slung Together?”

The name stuck and Pete and Al’s rock act went from strength to strength.
The boys were always keen to help youngsters who wanted to play like them and so they often had various young musicians with them and the line up was different every time
so the name Slung Together came to represent any line up that included Pete, Al and anyone else they had Slung Together!