They were and probably still are deeply strange. They fit into no category, didn't play by the rules, and I have concluded that they came from another dimension.

Wherever they went, I was there. In the orange Transit up the M1, in the coach in snowbound Berlin, and waving at the NYPD from a corporate limo. With Tim Rose, Joan Armatrading, Supertramp. With Cecil Taylor at Scott's, and Roland Kirk in Boston.

I looked on when Mike Willis chucked a sofa five floors down a stairwell of the Griffin Hotel Leeds missing the chef by a whisker. Laugh? Oh the shame. Yes we did.

I always wondered what they were about, and I'm still not exactly sure. All I know is - I owe them a lot.

So it's time to pay a little back.