They say it’s always a mistake to meet your heroes.

Well what do “they” know? In the however few years I’ve scribbled for the Terrascope it has been my pleasure to have met and talked to a number of musicians and characters who, during my formative years and since, have exerted such an influence and fascination over me and without exception they have proved to be affable, informative and good company. Surely there would come a time when this run of good fortune would come to an end?

Well not on this occasion I’m pleased to say. Deke Leonard is an institution, a national treasure, musician of some standing and a writer and raconteur of great warmth and humour. He spent more years that he would care to remember or possibly can remember as guitarist/singer with the legendary Man, only occasionally being sacked, where he served as a perfect foil for the late, great Micky Jones. As such he is a big favourite of Phil McMullen who places the Manband as they are often called, not least by the members themselves, on a pedestal above all others. We’ve great taste here at the Terrascope as you well know dear reader. Deke has also at various times over the last 40 years fronted his own band, Iceberg, even making the Guinness Book of Records for the wrong reasons having spent but one week in the Top 50 (something 99% of acts fail to achieve and would probably sell the odd spare vital organ for a share of Deke’s “failure”).

While Deke continues to play despite the odd health set back, he is perhaps more widely known these days as a writer of three autobiographies and a book on his favourite guitarists which doubles up as a potted history of popular music with a dollop of autobiography thrown in. His writing is shot through with warmth, irreverence and frequently hilarity. He is often opinionated yet self-deprecating, scathing and unforgiving of those he does not consider worthy (corporate types, Tory politicians and quite a lot of people in the music business) yet unstinting in his admiration and support of those he considers to be the good guys. Thankfully there are lots of those. A good man to have on your side is Deke and bloody good fun to boot.

He also has a new book out and there is an exhibition of Man related memorabilia coming up at the Swansea Museum, so we thought now might be a good time to catch up with him.

Deke Leonard, musician, writer, raconteur, legend. So how the devil is he?

“Still above ground”. Well there’s something to be said for that then “I used to think I was ahead of the game but I’m, not so sure these days. I’ve just had my 70th birthday”. Three score and ten assuming you ascribe to the scriptures. Not that Deke usually does, mind you. “Well in that case my allotted span has gone and I’m winging it from here on in, although to be honest I’ve winged it all the way through”.

Deke has a new book out entitled “Maximum Darkness: Man on the Road To Nowhere”, which for those not in the know represents both an album title and a line from one of his song title in one strapline. “With titles I just make a long list and then agree on one with my publisher”.

However before we talk about that, I wondered how Deke became a writer having cut his teeth as a musician. “It’s all Michael Heatley’s fault” he explained. “Michael Heatley is my publisher. In fact I used to do a bit of writing for Vox magazine, reviews and a magazine called New Hi-Fi Sound which I did record reviews for. Then Heatley suggested we run a Man fanzine and that I write a piece for it every two months – the fanzine was bi-monthly. After a bit he said “why don’t you write a book”, so I agonised about my voice so to speak and he said just write a long article and so that’s how it happened”.

That book was the first of Deke’s three autobiographical tomes (the second in chronological terms) entitled “Rhinos Winos and Lunatics” a title once again lifted from a Man album, considered to be among their best. It dealt with the original Manband era from 1968 to 1976 and is a roller coaster of a ride spanning the occasional highs but all too frequent lows of an ever changing and constantly warring band of brothers forever the next song away from hitting pay dirt. The new volume by contrast spans around a quarter of a century from the first dissolution of the Manband through to the time Deke left for good in 2004. However, despite this coverage it is a shorter book this time around and especially when compared with “Maybe I Should Have Stayed in Bed” which chronicled Deke’s formative musical years in the 1960s.

“When I split what was left of my career as it were, it seemed to come out either too long or too short so I just kind of hit on an arbitrary length”. It’s certainly easy on the eye and an enthralling read. I mentioned to Deke that I’d breezed through it twice in the week or so in which it had been in my possession. “Tragic, I thought you were looking a bit pale” he countered. As with Deke’s other works it is humorous to the point of side-splitting in parts with highly entertaining anecdotes tempered by a raft of missed opportunities, some seemingly self-inflicted and others karmic or corporately induced. Deke concurs. “The Manband seemed to be subject to law of diminishing returns. I stuck with it until the last tour when for the first time we lost money and that seemed to me to be a terrible portent”.

After Man reformed in 1983 (and your scribe can still recall taking time out from his university finals to attend the second night of the “comeback” Marquee gigs) it seemed strange that for years no new material was released other than the live tie-in “Friday the 13th” recorded at the first of the Marquee gigs. How much of an impediment did this prove to restarting Man’s career once the initial excitement over their reformation amongst the fanbase had died down? “Honestly? There just wasn’t any interest. I assume we were perceived as just some band trying to recapture past glories and all that sort of stuff which in a way we were. As I explain in the book we did record an album for Klaus Shultz who had been a big fan of ours but which was never released. Klaus had some strange ideas about what he thought we should be playing and what – and I use the term loosely – “image” we should adopt. Suffice to say that it was a classic example of a sense of humour failing to cross international borders and of Klaus then losing his. I presume he still has the tapes or else has destroyed them”. [Klaus Shultz unfortunately passed away a few days ago, so we'll probably never know - Phil]

Man captured live on stage at Terrastock III, August 1999, Deke Leonard centre stage with his trademark zebra striped telecaster, flanked by Mickey Jones and Martin Ace

However Man continued to be a popular draw on the continent and especially in Germany which was something of a second home to them, helping to sustain the band throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Read the book dear Terrascopean, it’s all there or at least as much as would fit or has been committed to memory, which brought me to my next question. When it comes to autobiography and bearing in mind a lot of events happened long ago and in often testing or excitable circumstances to what extent the writer relies on his or her memory of events and how much licence is taken in order to tell the story.

“It’s all me”. Deke is quick to assert. “I’ve asked different people, Phil (Ryan, keyboards) and Martin (Ace, bass) for example if they have memories but theirs are totally different to mine. It’s all so long ago. I can’t recall verbatim conversation but I can recall circumstances and so I just move the story on, you know”. And it’s probably a damned site more entertaining the way Deke puts his words into others’ mouths.

This is Deke’s third autobiographical book and presumably he’ll be concentrating on other projects. “Well I’ve run out of life to write about that’s for sure. Since the Manband I’ve been writing and just doing occasional gigs. I resurrected Iceberg but unfortunately that’s been shelved for the time being. Will Youatt (bassist and former Man and Neutrons alumna) is the heart of the Iceberg, he is my rock. He was a very good cricket player, he used to play for Glamorgan, and he refers to himself as my vice-captain which I think is rather nice. Well, Will has had an accident which means he’s currently in a wheelchair. I tell him that never stopped Robert Wyatt, so now that Christmas and New Year is out of the way I’ll be going up to do some songwriting with him. So anyway Iceberg is off the road but George (son of late Man mainstay Micky Jones) asked me to do a couple of gigs with Son of Man last year and I’m scheduled to do a few more this year. But with Iceberg, replacing Will would be like replacing the irreplaceable so that’s definitely on hold”.

Moving on to guitar playing, Deke’s “other book” is “Twang Dynasty” a well-researched, highly informative and typically entertaining account of his favourite guitarists from Scotty Moore to Micky Jones. Was there anyone who, in retrospect Deke, feels he should have included or left out? “There are...but I can’t remember them now! At the end I realised I’d missed a few and so I put a list of those who should have been included. Now and again a name will pop into my head and I think “why did I leave him out”. I left Buddy Guy out for a start and he was an amazing influence on my life”. The trouble is you can end up with something the size of an old fashioned telephone directory. However Deke’s love of guitars and guitar players shines through like a beacon and, told in Deke’s distinctive witty and irreverent style, “Twang” (again named after a Man album) makes for an energetic and enormously enjoyable read.

Unfortunately Deke’s own iconic instrument of choice, the zebra striped Telecaster, was stolen some years ago. He has a Gibson with a similar paint job but that Telecaster was a creation of beauty. Whoever you speak to that has been in the music business for any length of time will have a story to tell about nicked gear. One imagines a vast repository of stolen instruments somewhere in the criminal underworld or hidden away in countless lockups and bedrooms. “I was lucky” says Deke “I only lost the one. Micky had six guitars stolen. All of them were Stratocasters or Gibsons. It’s just the luck of the draw but while I only had the one stolen it was the one closest to my heart”. The problem is that these classic guitars are so difficult and expensive to replace what with Fender and Gibson having outsourced production to other countries. “When I went to get a replacement for the Telecaster I went around all the shops in London and all they had were Mexican Teles. The one I have now is the first one I came across which was a US model”.

I broached the subject of Deke’s own guitar playing which he immediately parried with “oh, the stroke killed that off!” Deke mentions this unfortunate episode and its lingering effects in the new book but morbid curiosity compelled me to clarify one point. When Deke says that he had to relearn from scratch how to play the guitar did that mean going all the way back to day one and buying a Bert Weedon Play In A Day book (in fact a Mel Bey one in his case)? “No, no, I knew how to do it” he replied, pointing to his nearest cranial lobe “but my fingers needed to relearn the actions. The legacy is this. I came from such an improvising band, sometimes I’d look up at Micky and he’d look back as if to say “go on carry on, I’m enjoying a rest here” and I could go on for as long as I like. Now, my improvising skill has been shredded because my fingers still won’t respond spontaneously. I have to work it out before hand, I can’t do spur of the moment it just doesn’t come out right, it’s not as accurate as it was and that’s just how it is. So I’m faking it at the moment and probably will be from here on in”.

The improvisational quality of Man is something that has always intrigued me. If you look at the basic songwriting structures, Deke tended to write rock and roll numbers with salacious lyrics (he didn’t disagree with that hypothesis by the way), Micky’s songs were more soulfully constructed and delivered and then there would be this cataclysmic coming together of labyrinthine three day guitar interplays which would take the basic songs into whole different dimensions. Where did that come from? “Straight off the top of our heads really. Micky more than me. Micky was one of these people who could improvise for hours and not repeat himself. We spent thirty odd years in the same band and every night he’d come up with something totally new that sounded like he’d been working on it but I’d be sharing a room with him and I knew he hadn’t. He was an astonishing guitar player. I know I wasn’t fit to lick his boots but still like to think I added something.” That he did. While there were a lot of very good Man line-ups they were never better than when both Jones and Leonard were at the helm sparring and duetting vocally and on guitar. Not for nothing were Man sometimes referred to as the “Welsh Allman Brothers” by eager promoters.

Mention of the late Micky Jones, who died in 2010 of a brain tumour was a reminder that in recent years the Man family have lost some key figures: Clive “Clint Space” John; Spiv; Micky and most recently Ken Whaley (Man, Help Yourself and Green Ray). “When you are in a band with somebody, someone you like, it leaves a terrible feeling of regret especially when someone goes before their time. We all have to go and shuffle off this mortal coil but it’s just sad because Ken, for instance, was such a lovely man. He was so bright and sharp and funny. I do a bit in the one man show where I say “why do they always take the good ones, why couldn’t they have taken so and so” and I name someone who I don’t particularly have much regard for. I was going to say Phil Collins at one point but I had to change that. The Manband concert sound crew, after we broke up, went out as an independent company and did top of the range events, working with David Byrne and Live Aid with Bowie and Queen and all that stuff. They were working with Phil Collins on this European Tour during which he had to go to America for three days on business. He says to the road crew that he had nothing to read and did they have any books – I mean road crew and books? Surely no, but then Jeff Hooper said he’d got Deke Leonard’s Radio Shows CDs and Phil Collins loved them so I feel I can’t take his name in vein. I’ve substituted him with Bryan Ferry and Chris De Burgh”.

Deke’s radio shows were for Radio Wales one which he read extracts from the first two autobiographical books for a series of programmes entitled It's Crazy Man and which were nominated for a Sony Radio Academy "Special Music Award" in 2006. “Julian Carey – not Clary I might add– who was in charge of BBC Wales Drama or something at that time asked me to do it and he was a lovely man to work with and it was such a buzz doing it. I’d had the stroke and so after three or four hours I tended to start slurring. Now they don’t mess about at the BBC. You get so long to do something and then you’re out. I had to slur my way through it but I don’t think anyone really noticed”.

In an age where even the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy somehow make good livings from broadcasting without the aid of subtitles then maybe Deke is still ahead of the game after all.

We touched on Deke’s second book, the prequel in fact to “Rhinos”, entitled “Maybe I Should Have Stayed in Bed?”. “Some people say it’s the best one”, offers Deke. I’m inclined to agree, not just because it is superbly written with anecdotes that would be hilarious if transferred onto screen (in fact the Fiction Factory have acquired film rights to the book) but because everything seems so fresh and adventurous, describing as it does first gigs, first forays into the London scene and early foreign tours. It’s that sort of rite of passage that we can all identify with and root for whether we’ve done it or not. One thing that Deke did at the end of that book was to provide a little glossary explaining where the various people were now and what they are doing. He hasn’t done that this time. “There’s a sort of semi glossary but not in one place. Where someone has died, for instance I mention it. I did it in the first one because I think we’d all started out, Mike (Rees), Geoff (Griffiths) and the rest, people who I see a lot of now I’m living back down here, and it was nice to do a where-are-they-now after so much time had elapsed”. I was reminded about when I asked Mick Farren the same question some years back as to why he hadn’t included a glossary with his acclaimed autobiography “Give The Anarchist a Cigarette” and he replied that so many people hated him already that he didn’t want to add death threats to the list of things he had to worry about.

In fact Deke has a Farren connection even though the two never met. In the late 1970s Deke worked with Larry Wallis on an album which in an ominous portent of Man’s fortunes a few years later, never saw the light of day although certain tracks did materialise on releases a number of years later. There is no mention of this in “Maximum Darkness”. “I forgot! It’s one of those things where there was so much stuff I had to leave out anyway as there would have been no room for it”. In fairness, though, Deke does devote a couple of pages to “Lazza” and their brief collaboration in the “Twang Dynasty”.

Wallis is another of the great nearly-men of rock; member of UFO before they hit the big time; ditto Motorhead. He was the man responsible for “Kings of Oblivion”, the only Pink Fairies album which in my humble opinion still stands the test of time, before they imploded and is also the “forgotten Stiff” from that now legendary tour that brought Ian Dury and Elvis Costello to the attention of the masses. “He did a lot of writing for Dr Feelgood” chimes Deke. “Apparently they were Princess Diana’s favourite band and her favourite song was “As Long As The Price Is Right”. The last batch of songs he wrote for Dr Feelgood he played to Lee Brilleaux who usually received Larry’s songs enthusiastically and he seemed non-plussed. Larry asked why it was he didn’t seem to like them much and was told that they sound too much like Dr Feelgood! Apparently Lee wanted to take the band in another direction. Alas my association with Larry was for but a brief but highly entertaining period. He was a sweetheart and a right funny bugger, I think he ought to write a book because he’s got great stories. Superb guitarist too, very melodic. He had it in him to go far but it’s very often the luck of the draw and a matter of circumstances as to whether or not you catch the ear of the public”.

Indeed one of the notable features of our conversation – and this comes across in this writing as well – is how quick Deke is to praise whom he regards as the good guys and that includes former band mates Terry Williams and John “Pugwash” Weathers, drummers of rate pedigree and quality but who have both suffered with health issues in recent years. Deke has also had a lot to say about his home town of Llanelli over the years and not much of it has been so complementary. The aforementioned glossary at the back of “Maybe I Should Have Stayed in Bed?” includes a savage and no doubt wholly accurate critique of town blight and the way in which municipal mediocrity and ineptitude coupled with corporate greed and muscle has laid low his and I daresay a great many other towns and cities across Britain and which should be part of the curriculum for aspiring planners. Prince Charles would love it but I didn’t have the heart to mention that to Deke who is not known for his fondness of things blue-blooded.

Has he changed his mind now that he’s living back near the scene of former glories? “Not really, no. If you go into town now you won’t recognise it compared to what it was. All the old shops have gone, it’s all concrete and charity shops now and the heart has been ripped out of the place. There again the people with whom I’ve reconnected since coming back are brilliant, terrific mindset, quietly whacky”. So Deke wasn’t tempted to do a Martin Ace and move over to Germany then? “No, no. Martin met a girl called Duli and they had a child and so he moved out there, while Phil married a Danish woman, sadly no longer with us and based himself in Denmark. They actually don’t live that far from each other despite being separated by national borders and Martin and Phil still play together and keep the Man flag flying. In fact they’ve just brought an album out entitled “Reanimated Memories”.

From reading Deke’s work it is clear he still holds strong socialist principles “I’m afraid I have. What depresses me most especially with this general election campaign coming up is the nebulous common ground that each party seems to be fighting for. It’s all reactive politics too, if the Tories, who are ideologically committed to a tiny state and no welfare, do something ghastly then all Miliband seems to offer is a watered down version of the same thing”. We spent a few minutes putting the world to rights and which need not trouble this feature too much, although the reader is directed towards Deke’s indictment in “Maybe I Should Have Stayed in Bed” of a fellow Llanelli Grammer School student Michael Howard (a Home Secretary under Margaret Thatcher). It would make a fitting if somewhat acerbic Times obituary. “He was two or three years old than me so I never knew him but I do have one of those panoramic school photos of 800 boys at Llanelli Grammer School and he’s in there all right”.

Man’s line-up was extremely fluid over the years and especially in the 1970s. In fact one of the supreme ironies is the fact that both Man and Hawkwind were signed to United Artists when neither of them seemed capable of maintaining the same line-up for two successive albums. Why the constant transfusion and what did it bring in terms of artistic creativity? “I don’t know if this is retrospective justification but other bands seemed to make an album, then the difficult second one as they say and then wait for inspiration. Some did that very successfully, the Beatles for instance. However rather than hit that lull of “where are we going” we’d break up and get somebody new in, fresh blood so to speak. It wasn’t really a conscious thing but you’re living in somebody’s pockets and you just think well it’s time for a change and there would always be somebody lurking in the wings. Barrie Marshall our manager would say that every time we established a momentum we’d split up and we’d say no we need new blood and fresh ideas, which was crap really. We were just lazy”.

I have fond recollections as a young lad of seeing an HTV documentary of the final Roundhouse gigs of the old Man band in 1976 or thereabouts and was pleased to see that it had been given a DVD release a few years back, something which was news to Deke who probably isn’t receiving much if anything in the way of royalties as a result although at least two of his songs, “7171-551” and “Born with a Future” appear in the live footage. That was when the Roundhouse was a dirty, cold and thoroughly atmospheric concert venue. Now it is reopened as a rather higher brow arts and theatre venue and is more than a little anti-septic to my mind. Deke hasn’t been there since it was re-launched. He hasn’t missed much.

Of the many interesting characters who feature in “Maximum Darkness” none is more colourful or larger than life than John Eichler who apart from managing Help Yourself with whom Deke did a stint and whose Malcolm Morley and Ken Whaley ended up in Man at one point, ran the famous Hope and Anchor pub during its heyday at the forefront of the pub rock, punk and new wave scenes in the mid and late 1970s. The pub was subject to a buy out in the 1980s, the new owners seemingly unaware of what they’d acquired and that was the end of that. Why does this happen so often with rock venues? It wouldn’t be countenanced had the Hope been a classical or opera venue for example. “It’s corporate thinking”, suggests Deke. “They didn’t know what they’d taken on. To them it was just a pub. They changed the name to the George Robey and then back to the Hope and Anchor and put a few discs and posters up. Such a shame”. The Hope later resumed live music and continues to host gigs and theatre but very much more low-key than when Eichler was at the helm.

Deke and Eichler also embarked on an ambitious and what could have been a best-selling book on the pub rock phenomenon and amassed hours upon hours of interviews with the likes of Ian Dury and Elvis Costello. At the time it would have been fresh in everyone’s memories having spawned the likes of Dury, Costello, the Clash and other punk/new wave lumaries just a few years earlier. Eichler of course would have had first hand access to all the main players and memorabilia. However in what was becoming something of a familiar pattern for Deke the project ended up being shelved. “It was a great shame because it was such an entertaining period. I was approached by Vox magazine’s editor, Roy Carr, who suggested I write a 5,000 word piece, split over two editions of the magazine and which I did using the notes. So I got an article out of it but no more”.

Turning our attention to the Man-themed exhibition at Swansea Museum due to run for two months from late January through to late March, what can we expect to see? “Well it starts on 23rd January and the following day I am due to perform my one man show at Cranes music shop in Swansea. As regards the exhibition itself it’s all a bit nebulous. A guy turned up with a portfolio of pristine Man posters and artwork and so they thought let’s exhibit it. I’ve no idea who from Man will show up, although I do know they are aware of it. Phil’s either in Denmark or London, Martin is in Germany and so I don’t know if they intend making the journey. It’s a nice bit of nostalgia and nostalgia’s pretty much all I’ve got left. Anyway I’ll be there at the launch on 23rd after which there is a gig featuring Son of Man, George’s band. I expect I’ll put in an appearance for a few numbers”.

Deke also puts in a regular appearance in at the Laugharne Weekend Festival each April. Held in the village where Dylan Thomas famously made his home for many years, the festival’s mix of music, art, literature and comedy renders it a sort of mini-Hay Festival.

“As far as I know I’ll be there this year. Richard Thomas who organises the festival usually rings me up at the last minute and is always very vague. The last time he asked me to come down because Topper Headon the Clash’s drummer (and big Manband fan) was writing a book and he wanted to interview me. I thought OK well he hasn’t mentioned a gig, fine, I’ll just go down and do the interview and I won’t take my guitars down with me (we were living up in Chester at the time). So I came down and when I got there he tells me I’m on at 4 o clock on Saturday. I assumed this is when I was to be interviewed by Topper, but Richard said “no, your set”. He’d thought I would have assumed I would be playing. So I had to borrow guitars off George to do the gig and the upshot was that Topper Headon didn’t turn up anyway! But it’s a really good event with some top people. Howard Marks is usually there which is great and you get people like Mark Thomas performing – this year they’ve got Mark Steel. I’ve been trying to get Richard to book Jeremy Hardy but he hasn’t done so yet. Last time we stayed in the famous Browns Hotel which was brilliant and John the current owner wants me to come and do a one man show sometime in February or March so I’m really looking forward to that”.

So does the one man show involve a mixture of readings, anecdotes and music? “Reading doesn’t work, I’ve tried it. It’s basically a mixture of storytelling and songs”. It’s a path trodden by quite a few venerable old turns and I was reminded of Nik Turner’s impromptu set at Sonic Rock a few years back when Andy Kershaw was booked to give a talk about his autobiography but took one look at the venue and decided to cut out before his show. Nik trotted out a mixture of old Hawkwind stories, other tales of counter-cultural daring (recounting three near death experiences in the process) and songs from his back catalogue. It worked like a charm and went down very well. “Nik’s a jewel, he’s a fucking great guy and I get on very well with him. My favourite Nik Turner story is when Mary and I were in Cardiff when the Rugby World Cup was on and I remember walking through the centre of town and it was packed with rugby fans. I could hear this saxophone playing Waltzing Matilda and I turned around and it was Nik. I said “Nik what are you doing here” and he said “I stand here all day playing Waltzing Matilda and the Australians keep filling up my cap” He was coining it”. Deke also has a similar philosophy to gigging as another old mate of his Edgar Broughton, often working out the cost according to what people can afford and staying in people’s homes overnight where travelling would otherwise be prohibitive.

His association with Michael Heatley and Northdown Publishing has clearly been a beneficial one. “It’s been a very productive relationship. I owe to Michael not only for his support of the Manband through the fanzine but he’s been my publisher all these years. I’ve written four and a half books with him now. I’ll explain a bit about the half. Michael does a lot of work on commission and was asked to write a book on Elvis Presley in three weeks. He asked me to help and we ended up splitting the book with me writing the second half dealing with the period up until Elvis joined the army and we did in three weeks. Then the company who commissioned Michael went to the wall. We got paid a fee, no royalties or anything and I thought that was the end of that. Then it appeared translated into Finnish of all languages so it’s still vaguely active”. Which raises the surreal proposition of a one-man tour of Finland. Just imagine getting to grips with that strange and singular language.

So what’s next for Deke? “Good question, if Will gets better maybe put Iceberg back on the road but in the meantime I’ll do gigs with George. The thing is Michael Heatley is semi-retiring this year so I think one of the reasons why this book appears a bit condensed is that it had to be done before Michael retired. So I’m not sure whether that is the end of my literary career now. I’ll see what inspires me and if anyone else wants to take me on. Who knows?”

Who knows indeed? However it would be a crying shame if, having read any of the Deke Leonard books, and they are thoroughly recommended reading for anyone with an interest in rock music and all who sail with her, whether or not they are familiar with Man- someone else doesn’t snap him up. There again there are always those interview tapes with iconic pub rock and punk rock figures out there somewhere...

Deke Leonard’s books are available from Northdown Publishing

http://www.northdownpublishing.co.uk/

You can also follow Deke at:

http://www.dekeleonard.com/

And on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/twangdynastybook

The Evolution of Man exhibition runs from 23rd January to 21st March 2015 at the Swansea Museum. Visit http://www.swanseamuseum.co.uk/ for more details

The new Man album "Reanimated Memories" which is referred to above, together with Deke's two Iceberg albums which are being reissued, will be released by Esoteric Records (a branch of Cherry Red) on 23rd Feb 2015

Phil McMullen's Micky Jones eulogy can be found here

 


Feature interview: Ian Fraser. Photos: Deke by Ian Fraser, Man at Terrastock 3 by Scott Sterbenz (from the Ptolemaic Collection). Artwork & layout: Phil McMullen © Terrascope 2015