Dave Ball

David J. Ball (30 March 1950 – 1 April 2015) was an English guitar player. He was a member of Procol Harum from 1971 to 1972, playing on the group's highest-selling album Procol Harum Live: In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

Biography Early life Ball was born on 30 March 1950 to a musical family in Birmingham, England. Ball was raised in a Catholic household, but became an atheist at age 15, stating in an interview that "when I stopped believing in Christian religion, I started looking for something else to belong to, so at a very young age I started reading things like Marx and Eastern philosophy and theology books that I didn’t understand a lot, and I started reading very widely: Jungian philosophy, Wittgenstein and Kant".

Ball joined his first serious band, The Rockin' Perfidias (later renamed The Deadbeats), in 1963, which included his elder brothers Pete and Denny; while initially wanting to be a drummer, Ball ended up as the group's rhythm guitarist. Ball later played in various bands in the Birmingham scene, including a Cream-inspired power trio called Ideal Milk, which included his brother Denny on bass and Cozy Powell on drums. Explaining the Ace Kefford Stand's downfall in a 2015 interview, Ball asserted that "we never got the material with Ace, we didn’t have a good set of songs to do, so that was one of the major reasons why that failed – none of us was writing." Ball co-founded Big Bertha with the intention of creating a melodic, harmony-rich, and pop-oriented sound similar to Vanilla Fudge and The Zombies, thus bringing in his brother Pete on Hammond organ.

Ball personally suspected that his hiring was less due to his musical abilities and more so due to his jestful personality. As he detailed in a May 2012 interview, He then reunited with his brother Denny and Cozy Powell to form a new group called Bedlam, which also included Frank Aiello on vocals. In 1973, Bedlam released an eponymous album produced by Felix Pappalardi on Chrysalis Records, then embarked on an American tour supporting fellowing Birmingham band Black Sabbath. Turning down an offer to play with Peter Frampton and wanting to change his currently self-destructive lifestyle, Ball decided to join the Army, ultimately serving for five years and being stationed on St Kilda. In 1988, while working in Oman, he performed in the band Rashid Goes To Nizwa.

He last played with Gary Brooker of Procol Harum in London, in July 2007. He also sometimes played with the Procol Harum tribute band, The Palers. In 2012 he released a solo album titled Don't Forget Your Alligator.

Three years after being diagnosed with the disease, Ball died of bowel cancer on 1 April 2015, two days after his 65th birthday. Ball died in Melbourne, Australia, leaving behind two sons and one daughter.