I think the reason that I wasn’t aware of a lot of music in the mid-late 80’s was because I no longer avidly read the New Musical Express and Melody Maker from cover to cover, and because I was in a band. Oh, and maybe Stock Aitken and Waterman had rather poisoned the rock chalice for me, into the bargain. You all paid for his train hobby, you know, every time you stuck your hand in your wallet for the latest Kylie….
I always felt it was important to not listen to too much current stuff lest you plagarise. As Morrissey said, Theres always someone with a big nose who knows, who trips you up and laughs when you fall. A truism, as it turns out…
We’d been in the studio (“we” being “Another Country”) and time was running out [2] – everyone else had done their bits and finally it was down to me to do the lead bits (which were never my forte) in the 30 minutes left. By my own admission, I am no Steve Jones (the Pistols guitarist is renowned for being the most accurate studio guitarist of the 70’s…and to this day, if ‘Fire and Gasoline’ is anything to go by) and I’d got nothing prepared so I busked it. I rattled some bits off – nothing coherent, but the nods from the other site of the plexiglass window made it all seem like I’d done an OK job. In today’s vernacula-transatlantica, I believe I ‘nailed it’ (which used to be a euphemism for something quite different back then, but I digress).
I got the thumbs up from the rest of the band and settled down to listen to a fairly crude mix in the control room, and then we were off into the warm Sarfend (thats Southend on Sea, for those of you that don’t frequent the Canvey Delta) night with two tracks on a cassette. We used to rehearse at Lee Brilleaux’s rehearsal place (yes, there was a mezzanine bar, no we never did. Not ever. All we ever did was admire the records set into the walls) and got a reasonable facsimile of the studio tape into the live version, and it turned out that the song, “Ring Out”, was a firm favourite at the weekly gigs we were doing around Southend. [1]
Another Country were taking the Sarfend scene by storm according to our own well-oiled publicity machine (4 pints of Stella is a brilliant journalistic lubricant – ooh, a new word – Journolube. Now is that a verb or a noun? I am getting to the point of this, trust me) and we landed a big gig supporting The Bible at the Cliffs Pavilion (I think it was The Bible – or The Christians, I’m not sure). We went on, and pulled the old Faces trick of owning the stage (helped by the fact that our ‘following’ had nothing else to do that sunday evening) and played an absolute blinder. I wouldn’t say it was our best gig ever, but we did rather blow the main band away. The £30 we slipped the sound engineer to turn us up louder than the main act was the first in a litany of dirty tricks I learned….
Afterwards, we were hobnobbing with the quite multitudinous audience when some spotty oik came up to me and asked if the Easybeats tribute lick was intentional. Oh yes, I’d absorbed at some point in my teens, ‘Friday on my mind’, (most likely the Bowie version on Pin ups, as I used to fall asleep with the headphones on with that album) and spat the lick onto tape in my hurry to get something out. And of course, the spotty oik scored a good three points there, because I hadn’t got a clue what he was on about. Of course, my position is quite different (22 years to form a riposte helps) now inasmuch as I take the view that Good Artists copy, Great Artists steal. In my case, though, I’d add a subnote to the effect that Mediocre Artists absorb Mick Ronson licks in their sleep…
[1] The provisional title of the as yet unrecorded album was “Kiss me where it smells”, the punchline to the band’s favourite joke. A young couple were parked up and steaming up the windows. As things progressed, she whispered “Darling, kiss me where it smells”….so he jumped into the drivers seat and drove her to Canvey Island.
[2] Sorry, that wasn’t meant to read like ‘Smoke on the water’; I shan’t insult your intelligence by editing it – Canvey is so very like Montreaux, no?