Nick Diss was the drummer of an incredibly powerful and original group called Egor from 1969 to 1971. Diss went on to play in Aspex and is currently playing in a group called Nine Way Spin to this day. Mike Foster, the bass player, would go on to play with the latter hallf of T2 and until the recently, their history was merely a legend. That is until Ancient Grease Records’ Adam Bennati released the devastating single ‘Street’ on his new label this Summer. This is an incredible look into Nick’s life and his musical journey that has been growing strong for decades. Enjoy!

When and where were you born? Are you originally from the UK? What was growing up like for you and when did you first begin to play music? What was it about the drums that inspired you to learn how to play? Do you have any siblings and did they pursue music as well?

I was born in East London in 1952, I Was always into drums/drumming from an early age my parents told me that at the age of three I was allowed to sit behind the drum kit of a dance band at a family wedding (which I have a very hazy recollections of) from then on all I wanted to do was play the drums... I was bought my first snare drum at around 5 or 6, It was 14x6 Autocrat in ivory and I played along to the radio with it every chance I got, by the age of 8 i had managed to assemble a kit from various sources, an uncle gave me an old 24'' big band bass drum (he had played in a jazz band in his youth) and my dad found me an old floor tom and a hi hat and some very basic cymbals and I was all set!! I played constantly just by listening to records and trying to copy the drummers.

This was mostly big band stuff and I loved Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, this was the early fifties so Rock and roll hadn't really happened yet! I have added some pics and the oldest one is me with my first kit taken when I was probably around 11 and playing at home in my school lunch break (still in the school uniform)... Around this time 63/64 I formed a band with some guys from school and we used to cover the hits of the day playing in my fathers garage, we did manage some gigs, I think I played at my school a couple of times with this band (very average, some early Beatles and Stones songs you know the kind of stuff ) by 64/65 I was getting heavily influenced by the Who, The Kinks and the Small Faces these bands had a real edge then for me, to see someone as flamboyant as Keith Moon was so incredible and I tried to emulate him as much as possible…

One of me as an 11 year old playing in my lunch break from school (in school uniform)

What was the music scene like in your hometown in those early days? What bands did you see play and who left a heavy impression on you? Where would you see them play and who were some of your favorite groups both local and out of town?

Around 66/67 i got a gig with some older guys we played a lot in my local town mainly Who and Small Faces covers I considered myself a mod, but the guitarist was a greaser by the name of George Fitzgerald and he introduced my to a wider range of music Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran to name a couple, so we would be playing a strange mix of modern (at the time) mod type anthems The Who’s'' Anyway anyhow anywhere ''My generation" and then early Rockabilly stuff that George was into... Eventually I left this band because I wanted the band to be louder with more feedback!! And got together with some Art school guys it was very arty and we played a combination of Floyd type numbers with a lot of Hendrix covers thrown in... I had decided that Mitch Mitchell was the drummer for me, he had a great Jazz swing (Gene Krupa) with the explosive speed of Keith Moon…

Around this time I began to realize that Although Moony was great to watch he couldn't really keep time and i started to play a lot less busily after seeing Free play at a pub in Edmonton (just outside London)... I saw Free probably half a dozen times and Simon Kirke became a huge influence for me (its more about what he doesn't play that i find so good)... I still try to this day to create the space of Simon Kirke with the occasional pushy jazz fills of Mitch Mitchell… I saw Free play as I have said in The Cooks Ferry in London but I also saw Cream in Hyde Park in London also the first performance of Deep Purple in Hyde park, plus I used to go to the Marque in London to see bands like Family, and Stone the Crows, I think I might also have seen Jethro Tull there as well...

Were you in any outfits prior to Egor? What were those bands and the gigs you played like and can you tell me about some of your fondest memories while participating in them? What were some of your favorite past times as a kid?

By now I had a regular gig with a band called the Substitutes we played all over east London and they where a really good tight band and we had lots of work but it was still the same old covers, things like Midnight Hour and Knock on wood... Pastimes as a kid was only playing the drums or trying to build cars, from an early age I was into American Hot rods and by the time I passed my driving test at 17 and managed to get a car I was forever trying to modify it in some way (I finally managed to build some real rods in my 40s when i could then afford it) I have built a couple of Model A coupes, one open wheeled and one full fendered, plus a 1929 Tudor sedan open wheeled (surf style show rod)...

When, where and how did you initially meet Mike Foster and your other fellow band mates? How did you guys decide on putting Egor together? What mutual interests did you share and how did the band decide on the incredible sound that we all now know as Egor? How did the name come about?

I had a friend who wanted to put together a blues band, he played (very basic six string) his friend was a bass player and he knew a keyboard player and then I think we placed an advert in the local paper for a blues singer which is how I met John Flite (Fat John) (who was to become Egors singer)... This Blues outfit played together for a few months and we used to rehearse above a pub in East London called the Red Lion, Every week more and more people who were drinking downstairs in the pub used to come upstairs to check out the racket, so we decided to call it a blues club and charge admission on the door, we gave a percentage to the landlord so everyone was happy!

John was a lot older than the rest of us and he was really into his blues. We would be playing some really obscure delta blues type things and I enjoyed it for a while although explosive drum fills don't really slide into 12 bar songs, so I was for ever holding back… This is where it becomes a bit hazy, but I remember we decided that the guitarist (who I think I mentioned wasn't great, in fact he was crap!) we decided to audition for someone else, I think this is how I met Mike, we found a guitar player called Phil who was marginally better than the guy we had and we did a few evenings at the blues club with him... I think Mike came along to one of these as Phil was a mate of his... Of course this meant that that bass player (a friend of the first guitarist got pissed off because we wanted to hire the new guy) so he left along with the keyboard player and it all sort of fell apart…

But Mike and I had hit it off so we decided we would form a much tighter HEAVY blues band!!! Mike was a much more accomplished bass player than the previous one and we did a few rehearsals with Mike, John, Phil and myself to come up with some new material... We all liked Blues but preferred the heavier stuff (Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Sabbath)… We then realized that Phil couldn't really cut it as the sort of guitar player we needed and although he was a nice fella we advertised in the music press for a new guitar player which is how we met the brilliant 16 year old Eric... He turned up to the audition with his battered old Strat under his arm (I don't think it had a case) and just blew us away!

The name came about because we used to watch lots of horror movies ,in the early B/W Frankenstien film Boris Karlof had an assistant called Igor... We liked the name but of course didn't realize it was spelt with an I... Igor... So we became Egor... We used to try and get Fat john to open our set with the words ''They broke my neck... But I didn’t die"… Which is the famous Igor line from the film... Not sure he was that keen, but I think he did it a couple of times… We also had a rubber stamp made with EGOR on it and we used to go around stamping our name all over the place, other peoples posters, lamp posts, shop window, anything was fair game!

We used to try and get Fat john to open our set with the words ''They broke my neck... But I didn’t die"…

What were those early rehearsals like and where would you guys practice? What was the band’s process for writing songs and when did you play your first show? Can you walk me through writing and recording the number ‘Street’? When and where did you guys record that?

We used to rehearse In Mikes Basement flat and we quite quickly got a set together with a few standards of the time. Things like Whole Lotta love and Paranoid, our original songs came about from extended jams that started to work and then we would add lyrics to them, I seem to remember some of them would be quite anarchic sort of sticking to to the man type of stuff!! Street came about from two of those jam type sessions, they where separate songs, but as we used to play them live they just used to get rolled into one track hence the tempo change towards the end)....

We got ourselves a residency at the Plough And Harrow in Leytonstone East London (see pic) and we played Friday Saturday and Sunday nights every week for probably 6 months, to be honest I can't remember how long exactly but it was a great gig we had a great crowd every night the place used to be heaving! The rehearsals in the flat where so loud! We had a large PA... Mike had a 100 marshal amp with x2 4x12 cabs and I think Eric had the same, drums were never miked in those days even at the gigs, so I had to really lay into them to make myself heard! We also had an old strobe light which didn't have a back on it, it nearly electrocuted me one night when I put my hand on the back of it while it was on... Sparks flew off of my wire frame glasses!!! Madness… Also really hurt!!

How did the ODDSOCKS compilation come about? Who was J. Bolton, the producer of the comp, and can you tell me about him recording you guys and what that whole experience was like?

The Recording for Street came from one of the nights in the Plough, a guy was in the audience one night from a local sound studio and said he was making a record of local bands and said he wanted to record us, he came back the following week and set his gear up and recorded the whole set, as I remember he just stuck a mike above us and let us rip, I know he didn't mike the drums up as you would today which is why I hate the drum sound on that recording! Anyway a few weeks later he came back and gave us each an acetate of the Oddsocks Compilation...

I'm not sure I ever met J. Bolton unless he was one of the guys that night in the pub, I always thought they were something to do with Alan Gordon Studios which was a rehearsal and recording place in Walthamstow East London, but I could be (and probably am) wrong. The experience at the time was fine we didn't think anything of it, we were just doing our normal set so what went down on tape was our usual set warts and all!! Not like today, I’ve done sessions for people and other bands (and I know Mike has) where producers are worrying about every single note and you do take after take until someone deems it good enough that was not that night, it was just how it went down!!!!

Photo courtesy of Ancient Grease Records 2021

We were just doing our normal set so what went down on tape was our usual set warts and all!!

Can you tell me about the band’s performances at venues such as White Elephant Club, BridgeHouse, The Roadhouse and The Rainbow Rooms? What were those times like and are there any shows hows that still stand out in your mind till this day?What was it like to open up for Black Widow?

We played lots of venues and I'm sure you will understand that after fifty something years it all becomes a bit of blur, and of course there has been so many shows in between for both myself and Mike with loads of different bands that its hard to remember where when and who with!! I remember the White Elephant club because I think it was a fairly exclusive place and i think we were out of place there, I think we went on early and there wasn't many people in the audience and I'm fairly sure they didn't appreciate the volume... Likewise the Rainbow rooms...Mike remembers a bouncer jumping on stage halfway through our first number to tell us to turn the "?>>@ down… I sort of remember that but what I didn't remember (and Mike did) was that we went on about 7 in the evening and the place was full of tables and chairs with couples having romantic evening meals?? How we got hired for a gig like that I don't know...

The Bridge house canning town was always a riot, the place was always jammed and the audience loved what ever we did , but again Iv'e played there many times with different bands The Substitutes and Egor to name but two and I know Mike played there with T2... I remember playing on a private party boat on the River Thames (it could have been with Egor, or may have been the Substitutes I really can't remember, it was so wild that they turned the boat round twice so that the crew could pick people up who had fallen overboard from dancing like drunken idiots... The Roundhouse Chalk farm was a great venue and supporting Black Widow was a big deal as they were huge at the time probably as big if not bigger than Sabbath... The audience loved us and yelled for more I think we might have played our set twice!! Also I think that was the night that Elton John was the first act on much like a warm up, I remember thinking he wasn't that good, (just him and his piano) I don't think he was well known then though... I'm still not a fan!!

Can you tell me about uncovering the Plough & Harrow tapes and working with legend Adam Bennati of Ancient Grease Records? After all these years, what's the experience been like for a whole younger generation to take an incredible, historical interest in the music you created so long ago? And wanting to help bring it into the light for others to see and hear?

Working with Adam as been an absolute dream, he has been fantastic and really supportive of us through the whole process... I found the missing Plough and Harrow tapes on an old audio cassette (I think Mike had a reel to reel of it at some point and the audio cassette was a copy from that) it was at bottom of a brief case that I was just about to throw out, most of the other cassettes in the case were just some random things I'd thrown in there and put up in the attic, I only found them as I was throwing stuff out getting ready for a house move. It’s amazing to us that people are so keen to hear it after all these years...

It’s amazing to us that people are so keen to hear it after all these years...

What eventually happened to Egor? Did you pursue music after that group? What other passions do you have outside of music?

Egor eventually disbanded mainly because we couldn't get a record deal, there was so many bands around at the time, for instance where we were playing in The Plough and Harrow less than a mile away was the Cart and Horses where the early Iron Maiden had their own residency, there were great bands playing everywhere!! I was asked to join a local band called Tinted Aspex as their drummer a friend of mine from school wanted to leave to join a Eurovision band called Coco they went on to become Bucks Fizz... He is still receiving a decent royalty check every year for their one hit... Tinted Aspex played all over locally until Terry Rance the second guitarist joined the fledgling Iron Maiden... I eventually left Aspex and played with various bands… Mike as you know joined the brilliant T2... We have played together since though most notably in a very busy Pub rock band in the early Nineties we played most weekends and the money was good... Until the singer/slide guitarist had to retire to a warmer climate because of ill health...

The remaining members of Egor are just Mike and myself... Fat John the singer wasn't called fat for nothing and died from a heart attack in his fifties... Eric the brilliant guitar player has disappeared without trace all efforts to find him have been in vain and we can only assume he met an early end, he was very fond of chemicals, so probably became an acid victim. Today I am still playing and gigging (at least until the pandemic hit) I play in a real sixties style band called Nine Way Spin we are similar to the Brian Auger trinity… The main lead parts are taken on Hammond, the keyboard players wife is the singer but also a great sax player so a lot of what would normally be a guitar solo is crazy sax... The bass player also plays a sort of lead type bass.. We don't need any of those prima donna guitar players!!! We play a combination of early Sixties covers (Zombies,Brian Auger,) and a lot of originals written by the keyboard player) which means I get to do lots of jazz type swing with some Mitch Mitchell fills... It’s all good!!

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Dakota Brown

Nick Diss - Egor

Alex Wilson - Iron Claw

Robert Sakell - Flasher