From: "C.T. HINGLEY" Date sent: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 14:01:45 +0000 Subject: LepNet: 'Atomic Mass Incarnation'. To cut a very long story short, I've been speaking to a guy named Pete Doubelday who as all you die hard fans know, used to be in Atomic Mass during 1977 as a guitar player before Pete Willis joined. (Check out Animal Instinct's first few pages). I was asking him a few questions about the band before Pete Willis, Steve and Joe even joined and thought you'd be interested in his response. He starts with a hello and then goes on..... ' I guess there aren't too many Pete Doubleday's about and yep that's me'. (I asked him if I'd got the right person..... duh) 'Sav, Nick(Mackley), Tony(Kenning) and I were all in the same year at Tapton School in Sheffield. You must have got this stuff from the book 'Animal Instinct', in fact Nick's last name is Mackley and the publishers must have made a typo. I think Nick still lives in Sheffield to my knowledge but I don't know where Tony Kenning is now. He was always known as 'Reuben' in the band as it was his middle name. I actually played guitar with Sav. We both bought cheap guitars from his Mom's catalouge. We both had little 10 watt amps and originally no bass player. Sav learned a few chords from his brother if I remember correctly, which he taught me. The first bass player we had was Andy Nicholas. We practised in the basement of Nick Mackleys house. We didn't really know what we were doing. I remember going on holiday in France and by the time I got back the other four had learnt White Queen by Queen. I think I realised then that they were better off without me and so for some reason me and Nick left Atomic Mass and the others went on to get Paul Holland on vocals (briefly) and eventually went on to learn how to play properly when Paul Hampshire and Pete Willis hooked up with them. Pete was in the year above us at school and Paul worked at a hi-fi shop in Sheffield. The next time I saw them, Sav, Tony and Pete had formed Def Leppard with Joe on vocals. I don't know when the last time I saw Sav was. The last time I saw them rehearse was actually on Steve Clark's 18th birthday. I was in the 6th form at Tapton School and Sav turned up one lunchtime and invited me down to the rehearsal at the spoon factory. Shortly after that they made the Def Leppard EP and the rest is history. Incidentally, Sav and I were looking for a name of the band just after I joined and we came across it in one of our O-level physics books. Atomic Mass sounded good and we even had a logo before we bought the guitars.' He then goes on to agree with me that Leppard are a great band and wishes me good luck with the book I'm writing. I didn't want to ask him how it felt to be in the position of looking at Leppard now when he could have quite easily been a part of it. I bet it's a bit of a bummer to say the least. Hope the story has a bit of interest for most of you Lepnetters who are into reading about the early incarnation of the band. See ya later Lee (Switch625 on the irc)