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happened next. We were offered a gig at Brunel University (again!) supporting The Prisoners, big favourites of mine. I was naturally very excited about this and the rest of the band did their best to be equally excited – except for Gary, who said he couldn’t make the gig as he was going to, of all things, a barn dance!
He had to go, so he had to go. Which left us bassist-less. Again.
Proof (were it needed) that none of us had any friends comes with the fact that the only person any of us knew who could play the bass was Mark Wyeth who, you’ve guessed it, was in the last line up of The Others with me. Mark did a stirling job at the Prisoners gig (wearing a suit that caused Steve Lamacq to remark that he looked like one of The Adverts-presumably not their bass player) and at several subsequent shows including a one in Harlow supporting local heroes Real By Reel which was videoed and the earliest film of The Price.
In the meantime we made the heroic step of placing an advert in Melody Maker. It read something like “Bass Player wanted for gigging West London rock/reggae band” with my phone number as our contact-meaning that every bass owning nutter from within a 200 mile radius of Heathrow who could manage to read a one line ad phoned me within eight and a half seconds of publication. I still wonder who they all thought we were… anyway good job we used my number as Huggy later told me that the main reason he called us was that he recognised the telephone code. He came to see us at a gig at Bumbles in Acton, liked what he saw and after getting a tape of our stuff turned up at rehearsal the next week with our set learned. When he revealed to us that ha had an HGV licence and could therefore drive our (at that point imaginary) tour bus – he was in!!
First gig was to be – surprise! - Brunel Uni supporting Paul Fox & co but Queeen were playing Knobworth that night and he had a ticket so went there instead. Bizarrely so did Wyeth so we played the gig with the aforementioned Tony McMahon on bass meaning that Huggy’s first show was at the splendidly named Snake & Gooseberry in Bishops Stortford. The scene was set for World Domination.
1987 saw our first vinyl appearance, a track on the ‘First Wave’ compilation LP. Malc made the contact, we tarted up a demo of Too Many People and sold the album at our gigs. We played anywhere that would let us, occasionally at places other than Brunel although a particularly memorable night there involved us playing an MS research benefit with The Neurotics – animal rights activists threatened to blow the place up!
As Steve Drewett put it –“sorry about the Bomb scare but no band wants to be blown offstage”. We also began writing songs with Huggy contributing lyrics – previously Malcolm and I handled most of the writing – with Between The Lies among his earliest pieces. Mind you Malcolm was writing stuff like The Price You Pay so he wasn’t about to be left behind.
As 1988 dawned we decided to produce our own single, a common practice in those days. We recorded The Price You Pay and The Man With The Smile in Beckenham and then realised we didn’t have any money left to take it any further. Naturally we started borrowing money left. right and centre (Hi Dave T, Sean and Steve) and with Andy Peart’s help – he designed the sleeve and label and came up with the suitably immodest So What Records name-, released our first single. Lamacq reviewed it in the NME (he’d gone up in the world hadn’t he?) and we even recorded a promo video for ‘Smile’ with the help of Craig Jones, a mate of Mr Wyeth’s who worked in the broadcasting industry. As if that wasn’t enough proof of our rocketing fame we then blagged our biggest gig so far – inevitably at Brunel but this time with Transvision Vamp, in the charts with ‘I Want Your Love’. I remember Brunel Social secretary Andy Stubbs (who now runs Uxbridge!) calling me a few days before the show having just found that the band weren’t bringing their own support – a lucky break for us. It was sold out before we went on, we played The Buzzcocks ‘Ever Fallen In Love’. Sold loads of singles, and I spoke to Wendy James – a great night all round. And we attracted the attention of a ‘manager’ so everything was going well, what could possibly go wrong?
Well…
The manager was called John, was of no fixed surname and liked Malcolm.. A lot! Incredible as it now seems Malcolm left the band onstage at The New Merlin’s Cave in North London (hilarious!) and went off to find fame, fortune and…actually he phoned me a few weeks later and told me that John (his manager, remember) had a huge photo of him, dressed as a choirboy on his wall.
(At that point I must say that even today I hope he made that bit up, but even if he didn’t it means that Malc must have posed for it)
It seemed that things weren’t quite going to plan…
(Enter Mad John on vocals for one unforgettable gig at a club in Rainham and later Neil Simpson and his mate Silas from A Better Mousetrap for a gig at The Square).
Anyway after much soul searching on both sides he rejoined the band just in time for1989 which turned out to be rather a good year for us, as we shall see..
1989 then..
Whilst most of us had spent most of 1988 acting like idiots, others hadn’t been quite so foolish. One listen to ‘Miles Apart’ by the Mega City Four told you that. I’d heard from the likes of Peart and Lamacq that they were good (and that there were other bands like them and if only The Price were still playing etc.etc.) but they were a bit better than that. And it turned out that they weren’t alone – the likes of The Senseless Things, Carter USM and the intriguingly named Manic Street Preachers (who’s going to get anywhere with a name like that eh?) were all re-affirming a lot of peoples faith in what could be done with an electric guitar, and we were just sitting around moping…
Actually we weren’t. Malcolm had rejoined, we’d demo'ed some new songs and we were out blagging gigs again. Also, on the back of our first single we’d received an offer from Link Records to record two tracks for their upcoming ‘Underground Rockers Vol 2’compilation LP. (Volume 1 featured MC4 and Red Letter Day amongst others). So things were definitely looking up.
We decided on ‘The Cover Up’ from our earliest days and a brand new song ‘Shattered Land’ both of which turned out pretty well considering what went on in the recording session…these tracks bought us to the attention of Vince Mortell whose Released Emotions label was making a small but significant inroad into the current scene (well he’d released a Red Letter Day single anyway!). He offered to release our second single; again we paired an older song –‘Between The Lies’-with a newer song – ‘So What About Love?’-and the recordings were produced by ex Ruts guitarist Paul Fox – great for me as a fan although when I spoke to him the other day he barely remembered it – “never meet your heroes” as they say.
These releases helped our gigging schedule no end and we were out and about with the likes of The Chairs, TV Smith’s Cheap, Red Letter Day, The Shout, we even managed another Brunel gig this time supporting Wilko Johnson, one of my all time heroes. A better year than 1988 then ending with us supporting The MC4 and The Senseless Things at Guildford University – excellent!
The Nineties dawned with us being contacted by George Wolter, neo legendary East German good guy who offered us a tour – so off we went to Checkpoint Charlie and beyond providing us with a list of barely printable anecdotes which anyone meeting us was bored to death with afterwards. Sadly it was to be the groups only visit there – a great shame.
No sooner had we returned home than we were back in the studio recording tracks for a mini album which Vince thought would be a good idea for the band, what wasn’t a good idea was recording it in Leicester – nothing wrong with that as such except that we weren’t staying up there and gags like: “it’s a long way to work every morning”.. had stopped being funny by the second day. For whatever reason ‘The Table Of Uncles’ disappointed a lot of people at the time - although it doesn’t sound too bad now.
No time to worry about that though as the Autumn saw us off on tour with The Lurkers (great stuff) and playing a BIG GIG supporting Carter USM at the Guildhall in Gloucester, a fine night generally remembered as one of the highlights of our time together. Once again the scene was set for us to move onwards and upwards to bigger and better things – so obviously it all had to go wrong…
Thinking back 1991 began with something of an odd atmosphere- things were a bit darker than before. The band wasn’t getting along together all that well (again not necessarily an unusual situation) and something was going to give. I remember Andy Peart attempting to manage us – I don’t think he realised just what he was getting himself involved in at the time. Whatever, after a bizarre performance at the Old Fire Station in Oxford I awoke the next morning to a note coming through my door from Mick saying that he was leaving the band. Not that surprising with hindsight, but his departure slammed the door on what the band was, and opened the door on what we could have been…
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