Happy Birthday Burke Shelley

[alembic1989]

Its Burke's birthday today.. Happy birthday to a great bass player, whose bass lines with Budgie were a great inspiration to me when I was starting out.

Any other fans here?

[Burns-bass]

I played with him a couple of times. Thoroughly lovely chap, and very very funny!

[Raymondo]

Count me in!

I found Budgie by accident.. I had tickets to see Stan Webbs' Chicken Shack at the Boat club in Nottingham in either1972 or1973 and they didn't turn up. We were all given free tickets for the next gig which was Budgie.

It was the "Never turn your back on a friend" tour I assume because they played Breadfan.

I ended up buying all their Albums up until  the late Eighties when I couldn't afford to keep buying albums any more ( Kids hey....who'd  'ave 'em ?😜)

I learned bass by trying to copy his bass lines. 

I still love listening to their music and I still love Burke's bass lines.

 

[Marc S]

Happy birthday indeed.
I was playing an open mic sometime back, in the 147 club in Cardiff
Our singer guitarist was chatting to this guy, who had been sat watching us
"Well played guys" he said..... Turns out it was the man himself

 

I must admit, I wouldn't have recognised him, as I hadn't met him before, or seen a recent photo of him.
But he struck me as a really decent sort of bloke, great player too

 

[bertbass]

Supported Budgie many times, a great band and a great bass player.  I don't know about the drummer at the time hitting his bass drum non-stop for an hour because there was allegedly a rattle on his monitor which only disappeared as the doors were opened for the audience and we were then allowed on stage to setup and soundcheck! 

[Davo-London]

Massive Budgie fan here.  He was one of my early inspirations.  Absolutely great P-bass tone.

Total dude.

Davo

[Monkey Steve]

Love them - in fact (in my recent "got to re-buy all the old vinyl I used to have on 180g remasters" I got three of Budgie's in the last week, Power Supply, If Swallowed and Nightflight).

Only saw them once, at the tail end of Deliver Us From Evil, about the time that they lost their record deal and just before they packed up, at the Clarendon in Hammersmith.  John Thomas in full flow, brilliant night.  My only regret was not buying a T-shirt

[Mickeyboro]

I wrote for a national rock mag a decade and a half ago, and was bending the editor’s ear about a feature on Budgie.

I spent time on the road with them and turned in a piece, only to have it rejected. ‘I thought this was a band worth writing about...boring!’ said the editor.

A paragraph in the middle of the feature concerned a support tour with Ozzy Osbourne, when he would use their dressing room to have a sly puff and hide from Sharon. I cut and pasted this to make it paragraph two and re-sent the piece, otherwise as was.

Back came the immediate response: ‘Great! Why didn’t you write it like this before...?’

😂

PS Happy birthday Burke

[ezbass]

Another Budgie fan here too. It puzzles me that they never really became huge, given the success of Rush (the Canadian Budgie).

[dmccombe7]

Many Happy Returns to a UK legend on bass and vocals. My older brother bought In For The Kill album and i was hooked. 

Fantastic sounding band well ahead of their time. And all that from a trio.

And just to make me feel good here's the very song.

Dave

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by dmccombe7