‘Never as popular as pie and peas’: Trevor Beales, Hebden Bridge’s lost musical son

‘He was self-effacing but ambitious’ … Trevor Beales. Photograph: Courtesy of Christine Beales

In the early 1970s, life in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, was dreary, says Christine Beales. “It was dead. Growing up there you just had to get out.”

So she did. Christine lived in Rome between 1972 and 1974; and upon returning began a romance with a young folk singer named Trevor Beales, who had also felt the need to escape. He had been travelling in Europe and America; on the latter trip he carried stacks of demo tapes of music he’d made in the early 1970s to take to record companies. “He always had this strong belief in himself and that it was going to happen,” says Christine. “I loved his drive, zest and enthusiasm.”