The Beginning

The year was 1986 and I was 19 years old. My old drum teacher had given my number to a band called Pretty Boy Floyd, I received a phone call from one of the guys and asked if I'd be interested in trying out for the vacant drum spot. At the time PBF was a pretty happening hard rock cover band and had a good name for themselves and a cool gangster shtick image. I was elated to get the call as I was in between bands at the time. PBF was ready to make a full change from cover band to an all original foursome. I met with the guys Tommy, Pete and Steve "Walt" and gave them a demo tape I had and arranged to come and jam with them. They gave me a recent studio demo of theirs to learn which I listened to about a hundred times before my tryout. My memory fails me, but I think I did alright and I ended up getting the thumbs up to join the band. I was really excited.

All the guys in the band were very ambitious and gung ho on taking this to the next level. Tommy in particular was a one man marketing machine. I did a lot of marketing stuff in my old band, so him and I really hit in off in that respect. We started off rehearsing in Steve's uncles garage in White Rock to work on a bunch of new songs and get me up to speed with their other originals. We also did a few covers, Baby Please Don't go and Long Cool Woman by The Hollies which was a rather rocked up version. This is going back 22 years ago so memory is failing me a bit how long we jammed there.

I remember getting a call from Steve one day and telling me the practice place burned down. Tommy having some good insight, invited the City's biggest newspaper "The Province" to come down and do a story on us about local band loses all gear in fire. They did and printed our picture, that started the PBF PR machine going. What was to follow was a merciless onslaught of whoring, PR, in your face marketing that would have made any ad firm proud. We were relentless and had a unified vision of becoming rockstars!

After a bit of searching we found a new rehearsal place in Richmond, just outside Vancouver.
We must of jammed for a good 6 to 7 months before we were ready to do our first full on gig at club. We did a few showcase gigs incognito and played at some Indian reserve on the back of a flatbed truck. Those shows were to work out all the bugs. We got a show at this new happening club in this crappy hotel. It was called "The Hotel California" but the rock club downstairs was the Malibu Pub, It soon became a big hangout for rockers and a showcase venue for up and coming original rock/metal bands in Vancouver.


Our goal was to create a huge buzz so the place would be packed. We came up with an idea of these high gloss posters with our logo and some shlocky phrase like "lock up your daughters"
Pretty Boy Floyd coming soon. The posters were damn expensive for the time, but we thought we should do everything pro, nothing chincy. We put these posters everywhere, all over the downtown core and in record stores that would take them etc... We also wanted to look over the top, we used my Mastercard and spent about $1000 on getting some proper stage clothes to match our gangter image. Steve and Pete made a life size coffin for Tommy to come out on stage in. The final touch was to be one of the first people in Vancouver to get hair extensions. The technology had just come out, and we went and got the longest, biggest hair possible. We were ready to rock. The night came to play the Malibu and it was packed, along with a few rock luminaries like the guys from Kick-Axe. We played a great show, had an encore and started down a 5 year path of lows, extreme highs, and lowest of the lows. I'm Sandy Hazard, I played drums for Pretty Boy Floyd (Canada) and Tommy Floyd and this is our story.