Bev Bevan Diaries: I was penniless and catching the bus despite Move success

DESPITE all the attention The Move were getting early in 1967, we were still penniless.

We'd play gigs in London and then motor back to Birmingham in the early hours of the morning because we couldn't afford to stay over.

Our van was owned between us and wherever the van went, we went.

It used to be embarrassing at times. I was banned from driving for quite a while after an accident.

My girlfriend Val, now my wife, used to work at the Cedar Club in Birmingham and whenever we had the odd night off, I'd have to get the night bus into Birmingham to meet her.

I was very conscious of the fact that here I was, a pop star, having to use the bus!

I used to pull my collar up and pray that no-one would recognise me as the guy in the gangster suit with the Rolls Royce they'd seen in the press.

It was like living another life. The fans saw you on 'Top Of The Pops' and assumed you were millionaires.

If you did it these days, you'd probably be canonised as a man of the people, making a virtue out of the situation. I bet that Bono still uses the buses from time to time. It's okay to do that sort of thing when you can afford NOT to do it.

So when Woody wrote I Can Hear The Grass Grow it really had to be a hit. We were petrified that we might become one-hit wonders after Night Of Fear, which we'd released in December 1966, had got to No 2.

I used to save as much as I could because I was terrified that even if we had two hits, then we might become two-hit wonders and so on.

The whole band was very conscious of the need to save some cash. Money was the last thing that hip bands were supposed to be interested in, but we had a reputation for being careful.

Photographer Bobby Davison gave Roy the title for I Can Hear The Grass Grow. It was a line out of the Tennessee Williams play Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Everybody assumed it was all about drugs and smoking grass. It wasn't. Woody wouldn't even smoke a Woodbine, let alone anything like that!