Guiseley Brass Band: Roy Stevenson looks ahead to special concert for his 80 years in band

When Roy Stevenson put his lips to the mouthpiece of a cornet aged 10, it was a year after the Second World War had ended, the local mills were going strong and everyone in his community seemed to know each other by name. Times have changed and he knows much fewer of his neighbours now, but he retains an important social link through his unstinting commitment to Guiseley Brass Band.

Roy is 90 now and has spent 80 of those years in the band, most of them as conductor after taking over the role aged just 24 after his father, Whybert, died in the summer of 1960.

Is that a record? “I wouldn't think there would be many who’ve done more,” says Roy.

And still, “the band is what I call a big family. We don't contest anymore – we used to but we gave up after we came second out of two.”

Concerts and care home visits keep them happy, however, and there is a very special one on Friday. Guiseley Brass Band will perform a celebration concert marking Roy’s milestone 80 years at Guiseley Methodist Church on Friday at 7.30pm. Admission is free but attendees can pay as much as they would like, with proceeds going to the band and the church.

So the band are therefore making a big fuss of Roy.

The widower, who has one son, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, says: “Part of what I do is being daft. I’m normally very shy and retiring.”

Get him on stage and it’s a different story. His career as a chemistry teacher means he can project to an audience and the energy to do so remains with him even in his 10th decade.

He says: “It's relaxing. The main thing about banding is, you can have a terrible day at work and go to the band reluctantly, because you think I can't be bothered to go, and within 10 minutes of going to the band it all disappears, and you go home happy.”

With a musical upbringing, there was always a good chance that Roy would hold a tune.

His grandfather, Walter Wade Yeadon, father of Roy’s mother Clarice Yeadon (they lived, wouldn’t you know it, in Yeadon), was a comedian-singer.

“My mother's favourite story was ‘Houdini came to tea’,” he says. “They were performing at the Empire in Leeds together.”

Clarice herself was musical and, of course, his father Whybert – which is also Roy’s middle name – was the bandmaster.

Roy says: “When I was 10, I was in the church choir. I didn't enjoy it very much and I went home one night and I said, I really don't like it, and my dad, who was conductor of the band, said, Well, you can join the band.

“I thought, oh, it's bound to be better than the choir. Oh yeah, I'll join. So he produced a cornet out of nowhere, and said you've heard me give lessons, you don't need me to tell you anymore, you know what to do, turn up on Thursday, that was it, so I've had no lessons at all, so I went to the first practice, and that was awful, the noise was just ridiculous and and I couldn't keep up. I wasn't fast enough at reading, so I went home, and my mother said, What was it like then? I said, It was awful. I'm not going again. So she said, You are. And that was the end of that. So I just went. Next week was a bit better, week after, and after about a month I was settled. It was right for me.”

A couple of years later he was joining in with the band’s well-known Christmas Day marches around Guiseley.

He remembers his first one aged 12. “We went and played at the police station, which was just opposite the Station Hotel,” he says. “The sergeant opened the window, threw half a crown at us, swore, and then we were off. We walked up to Harry Ramsden's (chip shop), and he lived just behind the shop, so we played for Harry Ramsden, walked down, played for Mr Wilson at Silver Cross (pram business) and then on to different parts of Guiseley, all walking. So we started at seven o'clock in the morning and we finished at three o'clock in the afternoon. It was a long, long day, it was too much for me, really. My dad didn't get home till about five, but that's another story.

“And we've done it every year since then. One side of the A65 is Christmas Day. The other side is Boxing Day.”

By 14 he was performing the Last Post for the community’s war commemorations. This Remembrance Sunday distinction is something he has kept up every year except for 2024 – he was hit by a lorry but made a remarkable recovery after spending seven weeks in hospital. Since 1952, the band has taken part in rogation performances to bless the crops in the countryside, initially in Carlton but now in Esholt.

When his son Simon was eight, rogation was his first job in the band and it “poured down” – but he wasn’t deterred. Another young starter was Edwin Van Lopak, who Roy taught cornet from the age of five and he went on to play with the National Youth Brass Band.

Roy, who was head of Guiseley Music Centre for a few years in the 1970s, credits Gail Partington and Joan Hey with keeping the band going after his accident.

But when it comes to deciding what they play – his favourites include William Rimmer’s march Slaidburn and A Winter’s Tale – it’s pretty much one man’s choice. “Everybody has an equal say, whether they're 12 or 80,” says Roy. “And when they've all had a say, I tell them what we're doing.”

Dissent? They wouldn’t have the brass.

The free concert celebrating Roy’s 80 years as conductor will take place Guiseley Methodist Church on Friday at 7.30pm