le Roberts I first met Nev when I was 21 years old, one of a number of tuba players on trial with the Hallé. Ian Bousfield was the 1st trombone at that time and another wellknown player, Phil Harrison, was on 2nd. On the first day of my trial at the Hallé there was only a few minutes before the start of the rehearsal. Everyone was in place ready to play, except for Nev. He arrived with about 30 seconds to spare then busily occupied himself getting his trombone out of the case (no gig bags back then) and set about putting the instrument together. After two or three minutes, in which he spoke and joked with Phil and Ian, he still had not acknowledged me yet. In truth, Nev always had real disdain for ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ players and I was certainly one of them then, being a 3rd-year Guildhall student. The rehearsal began and I had a loud, long pedal D to play, which I really wanted to play well - first impressions and all that! I took a deep breath, played the note and was quite pleased with things. Nev immediately turned to me and talking quietly as if taking me into his confidence said: “Good job there’s no smell with that son!” He spoke just loudly enough for everyone in the immediate vicinity to clearly hear, immediately raising a laugh with this comment. That was my first encounter with Nev. We played together for the next 13 years. Looking back and thinking about all of the jokes, all of the laughs and all of Nev’s freely given (and sometimes wonderfully contradictory) philosophy on ALL aspects of life, I have to say that these are now very cherished memories. I was in my early 20s when I first met Nev and he was in his early 40s, and it was a surprise to me to find a middle-aged man so full of mischief, put-downs and one-liners who was so disdainful about conductors. He told me (in very serious tones) that conductors were the enemy, and that I must never forget that! One thing about Nev was his almost obsessive love of pork, and I always wondered if this was a sort of ‘forbidden
TRIBUTE
Autumn 2013 The Trombonist
fruit’ thing with him, as he was half Jewish. He would invariably always order a pork dish of some kind when we ate together, and he especially loved those large pork knuckles that they serve in Germany and Austria. Nev joined the Hallé in the 1960s when there was lots of work and lots of sessions around Manchester - which according to his stories were always paid at the end of the session in cash! The 1960s were times of plenty and were good times for the Hallé, and went hand-in-hand with a strong drinking culture, which was very prevalent in orchestras at the time. By the time I joined the Hallé in 1984, the drinking culture was starting to disappear, and I well remember the rush at the 11.30 am break in rehearsals when a group of players would habitually run over to Cox’s Bar for a quick ‘first of the day’, and a common derogatory term that Nev and some other older players would use to deride someone was “he’s a non-drinker!” Nev, it has to be said, really enjoyed his beer. He would wax lyrical about the most ‘wonderful’ pint of Bass in Handley and the most ‘monumental’ pint of Tetley’s in Leeds. The implication being that with beer this good, it was your duty to drink up as much as you could! We seemed to be on tour a lot in the 80s and 90s, and some of my fondest memories are of unadulterated hilarity after a concert or at a reception somewhere with one of Nev’s long stories being relayed to the company. At their best, these stories were so side-splittingly funny that it really did hurt. I well remember being doubled over with uncontrollable laughter at one of Nev’s highly exaggerated stories at the British Ambassador’s residence in Rio de Janiero. Nev was, and still is to my surprise, much impersonated. His unique Salford/Jewish/ Lancashire accent was perfect for the acidic put down, and he revelled in the opportunity to do this at a conductor’s expense, causing a mass outbreak of laughter from the brass section so that the
conductor knew he was being laughed at, but did not know why. Ian and Phil both moved on from the Hallé after a few years, and I suppose that my abiding memory of my time there is of playing in a section with Nev, Andy Berryman and Stuart Kempster. As a section we were together for about eight years then Benny (Adrian Morris) replaced Nev on bass trombone and a year later Stuart left and Ros joined on 2nd trombone. Nev belonged to an era where there was no such thing as ‘sexism’ or ‘political correctness’, where everyone was a character and (according to his many stories and tales) everyone (including some very famous orchestral conductors) was constantly drinking. His stories were very funny, very sentimental at times and he was a good friend. He is sadly missed. Andy Duncan These tributes were collated by Adrian (Benny) Morris, the current bass trombone of the Hallé Orchestra.
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