Quill’s Bev & Joy Bevan interview: Barnoldswick shows, East Germany tour & Art on Ice

Quill has been a band proudly representing the West Midlands for over five decades, blending their own materials with covers that celebrate the heritage of the Midlands’ finest bands and artists - The Electric Light Orchestra, who Bevan co-founded alongside Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood, Black Sabbath, Duran Duran, Slade, The Move - another band co-founded by Bev and Steve Winwood to name a handful. So much so, the band paid tribute to the area’s musical heritage with their ‘Midland Beat’ album - a record with covers, but one that was done with Quill adding their own “flavour” to it, according to Bevan.

“I don't know where the idea came from originally but sometimes when Quill goes out of the Midlands people don't really know what they're going to see,” Joy said. “Sometimes when you can put a little bit of an angle on it they've got more of an idea of what they're going to come to see and that has enabled us to spread our wings a little bit further as well, hasn't it? So basically people know they're going to hear songs from the Midlands bands,” Joy finished.

Saturday’s double-header, which will celebrate Quill’s legacy, longevity, and the Birmingham & Black Country songbook inside the intimate Music & Arts Centre. But what made Barnoldswick the perfect choice to stage a rare double concert?

“We love the venue, basically. We think Pete's done a sterling job. The people that go there are real music lovers, and they're a perfect audience because they're very attentive, they've come to see you, and we just love the vibe in the place,” Joy said.

“Rock and roll heaven”

The Music & Arts Centre, owned by Pete Barton, has hosted the likes of Massive Wagons, Dave McCabe, Guy Davis, Tyketto’s Danny Vaughn and many more household names in recent years. Even for Bevan himself, who has achieved global success with the ELO and headlined the Reading Festival with Black Sabbath, walking around the intimate venue is like being in “rock and roll heaven”. "It's such a treasure trove of memorabilia,” Bevan stated, “I mean, I've lost count now, how many times we've been. But whenever I go, I always spend at least an hour, during soundcheck time, just walking around the place, reading the walls. The amount of music books that he's got is incredible. And photos. It's just rock and roll heaven, really,” Bevan added.

Bevan launched his professional career with Denny Laine & the Diplomats In 1963, supporting both The Beatles, Stevie Wonder and The Rolling Stones before co-founding both The Move and the Electric Light Orchestra. Following the ELO’s split, Bevan went on to join Black Sabbath, touring in Europe and North America in the 1980s, further cementing his status as one of the faces of British Rock. Needless to say, Bevan has enough memorable stories to last a lifetime, jokingly suggesting that his history goes “back to the Middle Ages sometime”, but nonetheless, he promised to share “lots of anecdotes and stories” at the Music & Arts Centre tomorrow.

“One of the stories I'll tell is in Denny Laine and the Diplomats. We all had peroxide blonde hair, elevator-skinned suits and things. We opened for The Beatles back in 1963, so that is some time ago. We opened for The Rolling Stones, and little Stevie Wonder, as he was at the time, didn't realise how he'd grown into this magnificent musical animal,” Bevan reminisced. “So yeah, they were great times, and the coincidence is that we opened for The Beatles, met them, they were very nice guys, very friendly to us. And then I think it was almost exactly ten years later, Denny joined Paul McCartney in Wings. So that's a nice tie-up to the story,” Bevan finished.

The history of Quill

Since their formation over 50 years ago, Quill has undergone numerous line-up changes. “They’ve had more drummers than Spinal Tap,” Bevan said with a laugh. “Actually, probably more guitarists. Not so many drummers as guitarists. We've had lots of guitarists,” Joy added. Among the guitarists who’ve performed in Quill are, Diamond Head’s Brian Tatler, who performed with the band in the 90’s, Ric Sanders and Tony Kelsey, who has since joined Robert Plant’s project - ‘Saving Grace’ alongside banjo/string player Matt Worley. However, the one constant has been Joy, who founded the band, fronts the band and also manages the band.

“We even had a stint of putting little coach parties together, so we'd perhaps hire a venue in Ireland or Jersey or Belgium and take a couple of coach loads of people from the Midlands and then involve the local people in the area as well and put on a really lovely weekend's worth of entertainment. So you have to think a little bit out of the box, because as Bev said, we never had national success, we never had record success,” Joy said.

“Really, we had to make a decision in the early days, were we going to try and write? We did start writing, but if you were going to earn a living without having a successful record, unfortunately you tend to have to do covers. So that's the route we went, because we'd all got houses that we were renting or mortgages and stuff, so we needed to earn a living. But we always put our own style into the songs, into the covers that we did, we made them our own. It's been a really, really good way of making a living and doing the thing you love,” the band’s frontwoman and manager finished.

In the early days of Quill, the band had the opportunity to head out to East Germany, just prior to the destruction of the Berlin Wall, performing in front of thousands of people. In a time plagued by political instability, food shortages and mounting protests, it’s easy to think that it would have been a nerve-wracking experience, but for Joy, it was an experience that she remembers fondly.

“When we came back, we had enough money to buy ourselves our first caravan. And the rest, they paid us in local money. So Deutsche Mark,” Joy remembered. “But we played at the most amazing venues. We were playing in the big arenas where Hitler used to hold his speeches. So I walked to the back of the room once and honestly, we were tiny, we looked like two inches big off the stage. It was quite scary, really, at the time. But it was a wonderful experience and we went down very well. It was really bizarre, because we didn't know how we were going to be received.

“But no, it was a wonderful experience. And we were very popular because we had all this German currency that we've got to get rid of because it was no use to bring it back. So we were tipping everybody that did anything for us. So we won a lot of fans that way.”

The arrival of Bev Bevan

Despite never having “national success” in the UK as Joy attested to, Quill has developed a loyal fanbase across the UK, especially in their native Birmingham. “Although they're (Quill) not known nationally really that well, but around the Birmingham area, they are incredibly well known. And they used to have a residency at a place called the Three Crowns, near Birmingham. And I was a fan, I used to go and watch them. I fancied the lead singer, mainly,” Bevan said with a laugh.

In 2014, Bevan joined Quill and also performed alongside his current bandmates in several other side projects. Phil Tree, who serves as Quill’s bassist, performed alongside Bevan in the Bev Bevan Band starting in 2004, toured with The Move alongside Quill bandmate Abby Brant and featured in Jasper Carrott’s Stand Up and Rock alongside Bevan and Brant. Both Lee Evans and Joy herself starred in Carrott’s production as well. In essence, the event tied the Quill bandmates together in a way.

“It did,” Joy admitted. “Kate really was probably the only one at that time who wasn't involved in that. But she's such a lovely person. She'd get on with anybody. She's just a little star, really is. She's a fiddle player and not that many bands use a fiddle player, so she's a bit restrictive, but she's excellent,” Joy added.

Eight years after joining Quill, Joy and Bev ended up getting married in 2022, enjoying a fabulous wedding with a special best man. “Tony Iommi, from Black Sabbath was my best man and it was only just, if you remember, it was just after the Commonwealth Games and Tony had played at the opening and the closing of the Commonwealth Games to literally millions and millions of viewers and he was as cool as a cucumber. But when it came to making a speech to 80 people he was so nervous I can't tell you,” Bevan said.

The pair will celebrate their four-year anniversary as husband and wife in September and later this year, they’ll embark on what is their most unique experience to date. Alongside Boyzlife - Keith Duffy and Brian McFadden, Quill will hold live musical performances on the ‘Art on Ice UK Tour’ - a spectacular live event that fuses world-class ice skating with live music.

“I think quite a short set 45 minutes, maybe an hour at the most but with professional ice skaters so that'll be very different and it's at Christmas so we'll have some Christmas songs in (the set) too which will be lovely,” Bevan finished.

Quill will perform at the Barnoldswick Music & Arts Centre this evening. Tickets are available at https://www.barnoldswickmusicandartscentre.com/bev-bevan-and-quill-2026