No, the Loyalists did not play the Trips Festival. Our manager, Jerry Kruze, put on most of the psychedelic events in Vancouver at that time, with the result that the Loyalists were involved with most events. But the Trips Festival was organised by a different group of people. I didn't attend the Trips Festival but I believe no local acts played it besides Al Neil. The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters came up from San Francisco for that show. Jerry Kruz went to the Trips Festival and met all the bands and invited the Dead to play at his club the following weekend which they agreed to do. Jerry put the Dead up in a motel for the week and they played at the Pender Auditorium that weekend. The Loyalists opened that show.

Your band started out as the "Molesters", playing a lot of Stones material. You were teenagers then - What started your musical oddessey and what type of music were you listening to then??

I was 15 and had been playing guitar for a couple of years in some garage/surf bands which all ended up disbanding. Mike Trew, the singer and keyboardist for the Molesters, and I went to the same high school and I guess it was through Mike that I ended up auditioning for the group, as they needed a rhythm guitar player.I have no idea how such a geographically disparate group of teenagers ever came together since Anton lived in Kitsilano, Bruce Dowd, was from Burnaby and Richard Cruickshank was from West Van. Mike and I however, lived in Marpole, only a couple of blocks from each other. Collectively we were listening to the Stones, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, the Animals - any of the rougher English bands, which we tried to emulate. But privately our tastes were more eclectic. My record collection included a lot of Thelonious Monk and Mingus, et al. and also some really avant garde stuff.

You took part in some CBC television sesions in the 60's and later returned there for a reunion concert. How did the reunion come about?

The 1990 reunion was a project of Rocket Norton Seeds of Time turned impresario. He produced the show for the CBC and it was thanks to Rocket and Colin Preston, media librarian for the CBC, that the archival film of the 1960's CBC show Enterprise, featuring the UEL, was dug up out of the CBC vaults and resurrected. Colin at the CBC has been very helpful and generous in providing copies of that classic show, which was one of the very memorable events in the Loyalists' career.

Did you have much local airplay for your single titled "No No No" ?

As far as I know we received no airplay for our single 'No No No'.

You've been compared to Country Joe & The Fish, Captain Beefheart and the Mothers of Invention. Like the Grateful Dead, you were also into improvisation. Did you listen to these bands' material and pick up some influences?

Certainly. When the Dead came to town for the Trips Festival and stayed in town for a week to play the Pender Auditorium the following weekend, Anton spent time with Jerry Garcia, who coached Anton with his guitar playing. It was from them too that we learnt the song No No No (You Don't Love Me) which became our signature song. We listened to the first Dead album quite a lot and were quite influenced by their improvisational style. We also hung out with Country Joe and the Fish in Vancouver and also in Seattle and learnt the Otis Redding Jam from them. We weren't influenced so much by Country Joe as by the Dead. And personally I don't think we sound at all like Zappa. I can't say if we sound like Captain Beefheart since I haven't really listened to his music.

Relix magazine describes UEL as "the premier psychedelic band of Vancouver" What other groups would you say were psychedelic on the Vancouver scene?

There were My Indole Ring and Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck. These were the two bands that most easily fit the description of 'psychedelic'. Painted Ship, Mock Duck and Hydro Electric Steetcar were prominent bands and probably could be called psychedelic. Seeds of Time were straight ahead rock and Black Snake Blues Band was more or less straight ahead blues. There was also the Collectors and Spring, but I don't think they could be called psychedelic. In addition to being a psychedelic band, the Loyalists thought of themselves as an Underground band. As such we shunned commercial viability. Being an underground band was as important a feature of our identity as being psychedelic. Once Terry Jacks came to a Loyalist rehearsal, possibly with the idea of producing us or something, and declared that the Loyalists had no commercially viable tunes and no commercial potential.

Could you tell us a bit about the "PNE Battle Of The Bands" - The atmosphere, how many competitors, what you performed.

The PNE battle of the bands was a long time ago and I can't remember who else competed or what we played. We had not even started writing original material at that time. To my knowledge we didn't win and I'm not sure if we even placed. The only thing I remember is the guy who ran the music store who supplied the amps. He seemed very uptight about us turning the volume up on his Fender amps. He had a strong European or Scandinavian accent and every time we played he came over and said 'the Loyalists are too loud', and turned our amps down, which we proceeded to turn up again as soon as he had gone. For a long time after that we would imitate him and say 'the Loyalists are too loud' - it was a standing joke.

You made several road trips up to Edmonton, Alberta where there was another "counterculture" scene, based around the University - Was the overall vibe similar to Vancouver?

The Edmonton vibe was very different from the Vancouver vibe. Vancouver had an intense and focussed psychedelic scene geographically concentrated on Fourth Avenue. Edmonton's scene, by contrast, was very tame. There were a few vegetarian restaurants and shops scattered around, and some bands, including Willy and the Walkers, and that was about it. We had a great relationship with the Edmonton counterculture scene. We liked them and they liked us with the result that, as you mention, we went there several times.

Opening for Cream in June of 1968 - How long did you play? Any comments on your performance/theirs ?

We played probably a half hour to forty five minute set, as I recall. For that gig we had borrowed the horn section from a prominent R&B band, the Spectres, that included the late, great Bruce Fairbairn on trumpet. With them we played a blues shuffle called only: the Horn Song. I remember walking out onto the stage of the Coliseum and standing on that small, brightly lit stage and gazing out into a vast blackness. We played adequately well. Our on stage sound was good but I can only speculate what we sounded like to the audience because our small amps were miked throught the Coliseum PA system which was designed for hockey announcements, etc. When we finished our set we descended the stairs at the back of stage and standing there were Eric and Jack and Ginger waiting to go up. The Cream's performance sounded routine; Eric stood facing his amp a lot, with his back to the audience, unmoving. The sound of all those Marshall stacks in the cavernous Coliseum was a massive roar. But despite the drawbacks it was still the Cream and I was a 17 year old kid who had just played on the same bill.