Reaction reaction

The four-track disc was made in 1980 at Tudor Studios, the town’s first recording studio, and sold by the band at holiday camp shows.

We managed to track down producer Ted Ludford, and Ted in turn was able to get in touch with guitarist Roger Saunders, the only band member with whom he remains in contact.

Roger is a 63-year-old electrician and former professional musician who joined Reaction in 1977, five years after it was formed. He lives in Penhill and is married to Ina. The couple have two children and six grandchildren.

He still plays occasional pub dates as one half of a duo with fellow musician Mick Januszkiewicz.

“The day before the article went in,” said Roger, “I was cleaning out the shed and I found a box with the last copies of the record there. I showed my grandson the record sleeve and I said, ‘Who do you think that is?’, but he knew. He said, ‘It’s you, grampy.’”

Roger has some happy memories of his years as a professional musician on the road with Reaction.

There was the November night when they stopped their Thames 1500cwt van to help another band in another van who’d run out of fuel. The other band was Mud, the 1970s rockers whose hits included Tiger Feet and Lonely This Christmas.

“I think it was near Warminster,” Roger said. “I’ll never forget the night because we were siphoning petrol and somebody started throwing fireworks about.

“They lit a jumping jack and then a banger came over I jumped in the hedge.”

The were summer seasons at the Perran Sands holiday camp in Cornwall. “By the time you got to the bar during the interval it was too late to be served, so we started making home brew in the dressing room.

“During the summer season we used to have to back two cabarets and junior and adult talent contests.

“One woman came in for the talent contest and was really nervous, but when she came on stage she was a bit wobbly. She’d drunk the sediment of our homebrew.”

Our original article about Reaction also brought happy memories of the band’s keyboard player, Bryan Stratton, who died aged just 26 in a canoeing accident in Germany in 1982, and who was godfather to Roger’s children. His death was the end of Reaction.

Roger said: “I joined in 1977. Bryan Stratton was my best mate. We were a three-piece then. There was me, Bryan Stratton and a drummer called Steve Foskett. I left, I suppose, in 1980, because my children were growing up.

“We used to play friday nights at The Piccadilly, which is now the Messenger, as a trio.”

Reaction also played the nationwide nightclub circuit.

Before joining, Roger was already a respected figure in the Swindon music scene. He still keeps scrapbooks dating back to the 1960s, when he played in bands including The Soulsmen and The Purple Rainbow. It was an era when young music fans flocked to venues such as The New Yorker Disothqeue in Milton Road to hear the latest sounds spun by dj Baron Von Muller.

It was also an era when Swindon music fans could go and see the Alan Price Set for nine shillings (45p), Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas for four (20p).

One October evening at the New Yorker in the late 1960s, fans with two-and-sixpence (a little over 12p) to spare could see a newish band called The Cream, featuring a promising guitarist called Eric Clapton.