Eric Snowball (Maidstone. Kent)

[Bob Adams]

Eric Snowball, PSG importer and well known character in the UK music field died yesterday after some years of ill health. Eric played a very large part in early days of lots of the guys over here and I know his musketeers, Frank Bloomfield, Ken Byng and Gerry Hogan will be sorry at his passing as will your own Roger Rettig who flew the flag for Eric in the 70s. I think it would be fair to say Eric was the UK’s Bobbe Seymour! He will be much missed by the steel community. R.I.P. Eric

[Allan Thompson]

So sorry to hear of Eric's passing. Bought my first three guitars from him. He along with Gordon Huntley helped a lot of UK players in the early days.
R.I.P. Eric.

[Ken Byng]

This is tragic news. Micky Byrne has just emailed me to make me aware. Eric had been ill for quite some time I am given to understand. Eric was Mr ZB Guitars in the UK in the 1970's, and he put a number of us on a road that set us up for life in the music business. May he rest in peace and hopefully making music somewhere with Gordon.

[Roger Rettig]

Well put, Bob! That describes Eric very well.

Frank told me yesterday but for some reason I was unable to log on to the Forum and share the sad news.

Eric was a kind and generous spirit who was endlessly helpful to me during my first steps on steel. I always felt so welcome in his shop - even when I was just tyre-kicking! (I did eventually buy four different ZBs from him, though.)

I'm deeply saddened that I didn't get to see him in recent years; he'll be very much missed.

[Ken Byng]

A day out at Eric's shop several times a year was a must for my mates and I some 40 plus years ago. We would pile into my Mini (4 of us) and travel down to Maidstone. No motorway back then. Just bliss to chat with the man and find out the latest gossip. If I was short of stock to sell, Eric would let me take a couple of ZB Student models, and maybe an S10 or SD10 pro model. He was a good man.

Here he is in his prime with a beautiful natural finish Sho~Bud. (I wonder where it is now).

[bruce fischer]

RIP Eric.

[Gerry Hogan]

I'm very sad to hear this news. About a year ago, I heard that Eric hadn't been well, but I had no idea that he was so ill. Like Ken and Roger have described, he was a very generous man and in the early '70s, he gave me, as one of his "demonstrators" a couple of ZBs on extended loan. I bought the second one off him.

He was the first person in the UK, to seriously promote the pedal steel guitar.

Condolences to his family. RIP, Eric.

Gerry

[Micky Byrne]

Eric was a wonderfull humourous man and very generous. The times he'd tell me to take something and try it on the road and pay him when I could afford it. I was so lucky to go and visit him in Maidstone a couple of years back as I hadn't seen him for some time with my own health problems. I phoned him and it happened to be a day off but he said to me "Come down mate it will be great to see you again" We had a couple at the pub across the road. When the Roland Jazz chorus's first came into the U.K. he told me to pick one up from the Roland company and take it on a short tour I was about to do. That was the kind of man he was. When I got a ZB guitar off him, we had just got back from touring Germany. The band dropped me off at his shop, and even though it was a new guitar, he worked on it for a few hours, by which time it was 3am in the morning. He then got one of his staff to drop me home in London, as the band were told that he'd spend sometime on it to get things "just right" Eric....may you R.I.P mate. You will be so missed.

Micky "scars" Byrne U.K.

[Bob Adams]

A couple of messages from Annie Marie! who worked with Eric!

http://www.pedalsteel.co.uk/guestbook

[Alan Brookes]

I never met Eric in person but I'm sorry to hear of his passing.