All the bands knew one another and we would hang out together. It was like a big pool of musicians. We would all assemble in these different places and there would be jams going on. We would go to clubs like the Cromwellian club in the Cromwell Road and Scotch of St James, which was actually in St James.

One of the jams that I remember, I was playing keyboards with my band and there was Eric Clapton on guitar, Stevie Winwood singing, Chas Chandler from the Animals on bass and Mickey Waller, who was part of my trio but who went on to play with the Faces and also with Rod Stewart, on drums. Those were the kind of things that were going on before anyone got mega-famous.

Ginger Baker used to come to this little club where I had a trio just off Cambridge Circus called the Cottage Club, and I remember hearing that Clappo had put a band together with Ginger and Jack Bruce and called it the Cream. I’d also played with Jack at the Flamingo; he was a great upright bass player.

We would also play in another place just off Regent Street called the Speakeasy. We all had our own night there. I had the Trinity with Julie Driscoll, and the next night it would be Procol Harum, and the night after that it would be Ten Years After and acts like that. We were all on about 25 quid a night for the whole band! It started to get really out there when Procol Harum had a hit with ‘Whiter Shade Of Pale’ and leapt from 25 quid a night to God knows what and going over to America. And the same thing with Ten Years After, who went from the Speakeasy, which held probably 120 people, to going out to the States and playing in stadiums to 25,000.

In the middle of all this, there were clubs like the Ad Lib just up the road from Leicester Square. You’d go in there and the Beatles would be sitting having dinner and if you were somewhere near them, Ringo might say, “‘Ere, Bri, I’m not going to eat that baked potato - do you want it, mate?” When I think about it now, it seems absolutely absurd, but that was the kind of camaraderie that we all had.

That scene was all a kind of groundwork that led to recording and if you got something going, like when Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames had their hit with ‘Yeh Yeh’, suddenly people started to point their energy at doing something that would get them out to a wider audience. The British recording industry started to really get going, and then broke into the States and across the world.

Coming soon - in the next instalment of his Sixties’ memories, Brian recalls how he met Tom Jones when he was still an unknown singer.

Where did you like to hang out in the Sixties? Did you see any well-known musicians jamming together before they got famous? Share your memories here: