Description
It all started with a 5 piece band called AXE VICTIMS who formed in 1978. They played a few gigs in and around the Cirencester area, attracting a predominantly ‘biker’ audience. By 1979 two members had fallen by the wayside and life-long friend of Trevor’s; Pete Gentil took over on the bass. With Pete came his brother Chris, who took over the management side of things. It has to be said that, any success the band had was VERY MUCH down to him. With the new line-up (now just a 4 piece) came a new name LONE WOLF, which was short lived as a certain Mr Diano had the same idea for his new band after his departure from Iron Maiden! So DEALER it was. Shortly after this, original drummer Malcolm Hanselman was replaced by Andy Powel and the line-up finally settled down. Chris Gentil worked like a trojan and got the band gigs all over the UK, the more notable of these being supports to Motorhead and Gary Moore and a TV appearance on HTV’s ‘Best Band West. They released a single ‘Better Things To Do’ which sold well. Around ’84 the competition was starting to ‘hot up’ so the band decided to look for a lead guitarist to spice things up a bit. So Irishman Andy Dunne joined and on the strength of a demo recorded with him Dealer got the deal with EBONY. Unfortunately things didn’t work out with Andy so someone else was needed and fast! That’s when 17yr old Ashley Jon Limer joined and subsequently played on the FIRST STRIKE album which was released in 1986. They toured the album for about 6 months or so but were sadly quite disillusioned with EBONY and in order to get out of the contract had to officially fold. What actually happened was, they changed their name to VANDAMNE, and that….. is a whole other story….
