Bob Klose | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Rado Robert Garcia Klose |
| Born | Cambridge, England |
| Genres | |
| Occupations |
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| Instrument | Guitar |
| Years active | 1964–present |
| Formerly of |
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| Website | radoklose |
Rado Robert Garcia Klose (born 1945) is an English musician, photographer andprintmaker. Between 1964 and July 1965, he was the lead guitarist of the rock band the Tea Set, an early incarnation ofPink Floyd. Although he recorded a few songs with that band, he left before their transformation into Pink Floyd. However, on the band's official Facebook page, he has been repeatedly mentioned when discussing the band and their tenure as the Tea Set.[1][2]
Klose's full birth name is most often cited asRado Robert Klose orRado Robert Garcia Klose, with some authors citingRadovan[3] as his full given name. During the 1960s he was commonly known asBob Klose, which was often misspeltBob Close or occasionally evenBrian Close. On the official Pink Floyd website, he is listed asKlose, Radovan 'Bob'.[4]
Klose was born in 1945 inCambridge. His father was a refugee fromNazi Germany and a veteran of theSpanish Civil War, and his mother was an EnglishLand Girl. Due to their poor financial situation, the family lived in a fieldtent on a farm where Klose's father worked for a couple of years until moving to a smallCambridgeshire village.[5]
After several village schools, Klose attended school in Cambridge, where he metSyd Barrett andRoger Waters. He later moved to London to study architecture and then science at theRegent Street Polytechnic, before abandoning studies to completely devote himself to photography in the late 1960s.
During his architectural studies, Klose started playing lead guitar in a band with Roger Waters (guitar),Richard Wright (rhythm guitar),Nick Mason (drums), Clive Metcalfe (bass guitar), and Keith Noble and Juliette Gale (vocals). The band performedrhythm and blues under various names ("Sigma 6", "the Meggadeaths", "the Abdabs", and "the Screaming Abdabs"), during their run with manager Ken Chapman, who also wrote some early material for the band.
Metcalfe, Noble and Gale left the band (though Gale would go on to marry Richard Wright). By the time they left, the line-up includedSyd Barrett (rhythm guitar and vocals) and Bob Klose (lead guitar and vocals), with Roger Waters on bass and vocals, Richard Wright on organ and vocals and Nick Mason on drums. This new group used various names, often fluctuating between "Tea Set" and "the Pink Floyd Sound" (named after two old Carolina bluesmen,Pink Anderson andFloyd Council). The word "Sound" was dropped from the band's name, with the definite article disappearing a few years later.
Klose was more focused on his studies than on the band and was more interested injazz andblues than Barrett'spsychedelia and pop, so he left the band sometime around July 1965. Barrett assumed lead guitar, lead vocals, and the bulk of the songwriting, while Klose went on to become a photographer and print maker.
'While we were at the Poly (Regent Street Polytechnic) we had various people in and out of the band and one particular, very good guitar player Bob Klose. He was really a far better musician than any of the rest of us. But I think he had some exam problems and really felt that he had to apply himself to work, whereas the rest of us were not that conscientious. And so he was sort of out of the band and we were looking for another guitar player and we knew that Syd was coming up to London from Cambridge and so he just, well he was just co-opted into the whole thing.'
Klose confirmed in John Edginton's BBC documentaryThe Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story (2001) that his guitar can be heard on the unreleased early acetate single "Lucy Leave"/"I'm a King Bee". In the documentary he also talked about Syd Barrett: "If you had said to a young Syd, 'Look, this is your bargain in life, you know, you're going to do this fantastic stuff, but it won't be forever, it'll be this short period. There's the dotted line, are you going to sign for this?' I suspect, maybe, a lot of people would sign for that, for making their mark." The two songs were eventually released, with Klose credited as "Rado Klose", in1965: Their First Recordings (2015)
In 2006, Klose wrote an accompanying essay for a picture book of previously unpublishedRowland Hilder'swatercolour paintings, entitledRowland Hilder's British Isles.
Klose appeared as a guest performer onDavid Gilmour's 2006 albumOn an Island (credited as "Rado Klose" rather than his former professional name "Bob Klose").[7] The same year, he appeared on Paul "Mudd" Murphy's albumClaremont 56,[8] as well asChico Hamilton's albumJuniflip, on which he is also listed as a co-writer of one of the songs ("Kerry's Caravan").[9] On both of these albums, he is credited as "Bob Klose".
In 2007, he took part in BBC Radio 2's programmeDays in the Life, which was dedicated to Pink Floyd. In the first part of this show, he spoke about early days with Barrett.
He also played onBlue River, a 2007electronic album by Smith & Mudd, a collaboration between Paul "Mudd" Murphy and multi-instrumentalist/producer Benjamin James Smith.[10]
In 2015, Klose appeared as a guitarist on David Gilmour's albumRattle That Lock.
