In Memoriam - Bob Fish

B.B. Skone

Anyone with a passing interest in pop music knows that rock ‘n’ roll revivalists Darts were one of the most successful chart acts of the 1970s. Between 1977 and 1980 they had twelve hits with their brand of rock ‘n’ roll known as doo wop – the distinctive vocal harmonies of which gave the genre its name.

Bob Fish, who sang falsetto on all Darts’ records and lead vocals on some including their self-penned hit ‘It’s Raining’, which reached number two in 1978, is a resident of Narberth. I caught up with him at his home where he showed me the fourteen gold and platinum discs he earned as a member of Darts. Equally importantly, he brewed an excellent cup of tea before giving me a personal concert featuring his new love, the auto-harp.

Essex born baby boomer Bob fell in love with American doo wop records whilst at art college, that birthing pool for rock stars from John Lennon to Jarvis Cocker. Later, when working as a graphic designer, Bob sang in several bands. It wasn’t until he was asked by legendary local songwriter Mickey Jupp to join his band that Bob’s musical career took flight. Mickey had had songs recorded by successful chart acts from the Southend scene including Dr Feelgood, The Kursaal Flyers plus Eddie and The Hot Rods and was determined to taste some of that action himself.

In the mid-1970s Bob began singing in Mickey’s band on the London pub and college circuit at the height of the pub rock phenomena which itself would give birth to the punk rock movement. At one gig, the band were asked to be their support act by, according to Bob, “some scruffy urchins; they were so bad they were brilliant”. The name of the band? The Sex Pistols!

Pub and punk rock were at the time an ‘underground’ movement. Rock ‘n’ roll revivalists like Mud and Showaddywaddy were achieving chart success. One similar band, Rocky Sharpe and The Razors, had also become popular. A favourite of Bob’s, he got to know them shortly before they broke up. One day Bob returned to work after lunch to find a note on his desk that read “Ring Den Hegarty – this could change the rest of your life.”

Den Hegarty had been one of Rocky Sharpe and The Razors and was forming a new band called Darts and wanted Bob to join them. For the next four and a half years Bob was in the band, gaining all those aforementioned discs and hits as well as many wonderful memories. Bob recalls working with Monkees producer Tommy Boyce on their first album and laughs when he remembers scouring charity shops for old Zoot suits to wear on stage – a style that avid fans The Coolers (named after the Darts hit ‘Daddy Cool’) began to emulate, often ripping their clothes off and throwing them on stage during the performance.

By 1980, Darts was disintegrating due to internal conflicts that centred around financial and management difficulties rather than musical ones. Disillusioned, Bob left the band. That year was not all doom and gloom for Bob married his sweetheart, a young nurse from Tenby named Heather whom he had met in London. They bought a house in Abercastle and a year later their first daughter, Scarlett, was born and in 1985 their second daughter, China was born.

Bob had a short career as a solo artist but, despite his self-penned song ‘Hotel’ being voted one of the Top Ten Tunes of the year by Face magazine, that career never really took off. He also spent three years managing Roman Holliday but the band broke up following successful Japanese and US tours. Why? Those old financial and management problems again. By now thoroughly disillusioned with the music business, Bob took his young family to Spain where he worked as a graphic artist for two years. Even there he couldn’t resist the buzz of live performance and formed a five piece band, The Sol Searchers, with ex-Wings drummer Geoff Britton.

Whilst in Spain, Bob met a businessman who offered him big bucks to get Darts to reform for a few gigs in France. The other former band members showed little interest so Bob formed Darts II, an accomplished band that included TC Anderson (previously bass vocalist with The Chi-Lites) and Mel Collins (a sax player who had worked with Dire Straits and Eric Clapton). But as Bob says “they were a great band but we were unable to recreate that spark and passion we had when starting out”.

Painful ear problems and a fear of developing tinnitis forced Bob to abandon singing and return to Wales. As his hearing improved, Bob considered performing with a quieter line-up. A duo came to mind and following a chance meeting with guitarist and computer wizard Dave Bates in Narberth, Electric Fish was born. For several years the pair played gigs around Pembrokeshire and occasional bigger venues – I recall them headlining a Hot Air Balloon Festival near Cardiff and giving the several thousand people in the audience a bigger lift than any of the balloons could have!

I asked Bob if he missed being in Darts. “When a whole audience is going mad, dancing on tables or whatever, it doesn’t get any better than that, whether it’s a big stadium or a small pub,” he replied with a chuckle. This is clearly a man who enjoys his music but doesn’t relish the shallow intrigues of fat cats who too often call the shots in what passes for the ‘music business’.

Whilst playing in Electric Fish in 2001, Bob bought an auto-harp, reacquainting himself with an instrument he had discovered as a teenager but had abandoned because “whoever heard of a doo wop band with an auto-harp?”

The auto-harp is an unusual instrument, rather like a traditional harp played on its side. Invented in Germany in the late 19th century it is a chorded zither and features often in American traditional music. In the 1960s Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours had a hit, ‘Mirror Mirror’, that featured an auto-harp but it is best known for its use in the songs of The Carter Family, one of whose members, June Carter, became Johnny Cash’s second wife.

For the past nine years Bob has developed his skills on the instrument and has become so proficient that he regularly leads workshops and performs using the auto-harp at gatherings in the UK and even in the USA where his imaginative and passionate shows have gathered him critical acclaim from musicians such as Darrell Scott (currently in Robert Plant’s Band of Joy) and Ralph Stanley (whose music featured in the ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ movie).

Typical of Bob, he gives this old instrument a very modern twist – he occasionally uses a wah wah pedal with it and covers rock tunes more usually associated with the likes of Metallica, Neil Young, and Little Feat. This is what puts him at the cutting edge of the auto-harp revival.

Bob is currently seeking collaborators to form an acoustic trio (no drums, he still wants to protect his ears!) and has jammed with another local roots musician Ian Cal Ford and his band The Railmen.

I saw Bob this summer at The Queens Hall in Narberth where he supported US Western Swing exponents The Quebe Sisters. He was exceptionally well received, his own compositions, such as The English Cowboy (about his father) went down particularly well. He was joined on stage by his daughters Scarlett and China who sang backing vocals.

Before I left, Bob made another cup of tea and told me a rather touching tale. A year or so ago he discovered an auto-harp in a Narberth antique shop and it turned out to be one of the earliest ever made! The inscription inside reads ‘Zimmermann’s, patented 1882’. Knowing how much this meant to him, his daughters bought it for a birthday surprise and it is now over in the USA being refurbished. Some things are just meant to be!

It was lovely to be in Bob’s company – he is so enthusiastic about his music, and he’s a perceptive man too. Seeing my eyes glazing over as he described the differences between chromatic and diatonic auto-harps, he picked up the instrument, strapped it high onto his chest like Johnny Cash’s guitar, and launched into a sublime version of ‘Cannonball Blues’ and hit the bull’s eye. He no longer needs the other Darts.

BB Skone

BB Skone presents the local music show on Radio Pembrokeshire at 7pm every Sunday.

Pete Daigle

My heart is heavy with the loss of a wonderful friend, Bob Fish.

Bob has been more than a friend for over twenty years. He bought his first autoharp from me back then, an OS Reissue 21C. He had been in music all his life, as a lead singer in more than one band, and it was with the doo-wop revival band Darts (not The Darts), with which he achieved fame fronting several top 20 hits in the UK. The group was based in London, and in the late seventies and early eighties, they were well known in the UK and Europe, with eyes on a USA tour before a break-up over management. Bob was always the singer, never the player, until he discovered the autoharp years later.

We began an email exchange that revealed common interests and philosophies. Playing the autoharp came naturally to Bob, and he soon met up with the UK Autoharp group. Here he met many wonderful musicians, and in very little time he developed a unique style of playing to complement his performing and singing. Being a natural-born stage performer, it was not long before Bob was forming groups and duos, playing in dance clubs and other venues, including his participation in UK Autoharp events. It was also not long before he graduated from the Reissue to a d’Aigle Cascade.

I had only heard casual reference to his work in graphic design until one day we received an email from Bob containing the now famous (in the autoharp world) Mona Lisa artwork holding his d’Aigle Cascade, and the caption “The Secret Of Her Smile”. My Polly and I were immediately sold on this, and it now shows up in our advertising, on our website, on ‘T’ shirts and book bags. His fun had only just begun, and this was followed up with a series of artful ads which we still use today.

On my first trip to the UK Bob drove from his home in Wales to show me around London. Before long I was able to meet the love of his life, Heather, and his two daughters China and Scarlett, whom I had heard so much about for several years.

Bob’s pride and love of his wife and family were always at the center of his universe. They welcomed me into their home as though I’d always been there. Heather loved to tell stories, and the girls sang like birds. Bob and the girls could make music together any time, anywhere. I’ve often joked about how I will sing a line of a song to answer a question. That happened at the Fish residence too, but when the girls were home it was in three-part harmony!

It seems like many years ago, but just yesterday, Bob came to stay with us in Seattle and rode with me to the California Autoharp Gathering. We were pulling our little teardrop trailer. Bob had a fascination with American semi-trucks and took plenty of pictures of them along the way. I’ll never forget the looks on some of the driver’s faces, wondering why this bald-headed guy was taking pictures of them.

On this trip, I would sleep in the trailer, and we’d set up the screen room, attached to the trailer, where Bob slept on a cot. When we reached the festival and were setting up camp in the field Bob asked one of the caretakers what all these holes in the ground were. “Oh, rattlesnakes. We killed about 150 of them out here last week.” Bob slept in the back of the truck at that festival. It was a fine festival though, and Bob made great friends there, especially making music with folks such as Karen Mueller. The two of them hit it off immediately, both as friends and as musicians.

Coming home, we found a nice RV park in Redding, CA. Not only did it have a swimming pool, but there was also a nicely mowed grass area alongside the trailer for the screen room. I went for a dip to cool off, Bob set about getting comfortable for the evening with his autoharps set up in the screen room where he’d do some playing. I’d barely got wet when he showed up at the end of the pool, “Pete, Pete, We’ve got a problem!” Two hidden sprinklers had popped up INSIDE the screen room, drenching his gear and his instruments.

That same year Bob made his way from our place to the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering, where again Bob established relationships and had fun showing his unique musical style with voice and autoharp.

There was one sour note there, which I’ll never forget. Bob had never smoked, or taken drugs, or even drank much beyond a glass of wine with dinner, this despite the wild parties which would break out during his years with Darts. He just wasn’t into it. But as I’ve said, he had a fascination with American trucks and truckers, as well as with the folk songs surrounding them. On stage, he sang the trucker song “Weed, Whites, and Wine”. His set went over very well, except with one misguided soul who chose to scold him afterward for singing such a song at the family-oriented MLAG festival. Bob, being an extremely sensitive person, could not get past this incident for the rest of the festival, though everyone else was glad he was there.

During his long ordeal with cancer, there was an experimental treatment that showed promise but was not covered under the UK healthcare system. We wanted to help when daughter China began a funding program. Polly decided to auction her autoharp, a d’Aigle TLC. We did this on social media, mostly Facebook, and we raised over $2,000. In a twist of stories, lifelong friends of ours who did not know Bob except by my stories, Debbie and Robi Ishii, won the auction. The music carries on, as Robi begins to learn the autoharp, never having played an instrument.

The pandemic prevented us from going to visit Bob, who has been fighting this disease for many months. The pandemic has prevented so many “hellos” and “goodbyes”. We were able to talk with him online and through Zoom, where Bob never let on that hope for a cure was slipping away. Instead, Bob continued to talk about Heather and the girls and continued with his long-standing passion for working for justice for the Palestinian people. To see people anywhere treated with injustice riled him with no end.

Bob’s passion for music lives on with everyone he has touched. There are several songs that I can’t hear now without thinking of his unique autoharp version. Darts songs live on Youtube, along with several autoharp performances. The memory of Bob Fish will be one to live on for all who knew him.