35

IN WHICH… MUSIC IS MY FIRST LOVE

In the late 1970s to mid-1980s, I was writing features and interviews for the weekly rock paper, Music, after meeting up with the editor, John Shotton. ‘House’ style was perhaps summed up by the intro to an article I wrote about the Thompson Twins, which was shown on the page by reproduction of the editor’s memo to me: ‘Provide me with 1000 words about the Thompson Twins – and make it snappy.’

My response was: ‘About this Thompson Twins piece, I’ve got a bit of a problem with the introduction – do we assume that all our readers are aware that the Thompson Twins aren’t twins and that there are three of them, that they aren’t called Thompson, that they are named after the Detectives in the Tin Tin cartoon strip? Or do we have to go through the rigmarole of explaining all that?’

Memo from editor to GS:

‘Provide me with 1000 words about the Thompson Twins – and make it snappy!’

So I did.

It ended with another memo to the editor:

‘Please find attached 1000 words about Thompson Twins – I’m a bit stuck for an ending – how about doing something contrived like rounding the piece off with a memo from me to you asking how to round it off?’

And that’s how it appeared.

Sometimes we did conventional interviews and actually managed to give readers a little informative insight. Paul Weller, during his Style Council era, revealed to me, ‘To be quite honest you can’t keep me away from my axe, it’s an extension of me – it’s the smell of the crowd and the roar of our agent that flips me!’ While Bruce Foxton confided he’d written a song called ‘Freak’, having ‘tried to put myself into the Elephant Man’s shoes.’ Steve Harley surprised me when he admitted of one of his best-known songs, ‘Sebastian’, ‘I don’t really understand what the song is about. I thought I did when I wrote it, in my naivety, but really I’ve been performing it under false pretences for some while now.’ Rat Scabies of The Damned claimed in 1984, when they were struggling to be heard and release new product, ‘If what we believe in has to suffer then I’d rather do without commercial success. One of our problems with getting a record deal is that many people won’t touch us because of our name – how did we get a reputation like that? We’ve never gone around raping women or molesting children, have we?’ I took it that was a rhetorical question. I concluded that the band ‘are worthy of note because of what they are, rather than what other people think they should be.’

Articles were commissioned and written about many other groups and individual artists. Guitarist John Sykes, of Whitesnake, told me of his failed audition for Ozzie Osbourne’s band: ‘He turned up one and a half hours late, well oiled, and fell in the door, so nothing came of it.’ I also asked him about Whitesnake’s sexist reputation as a result of album titles such as the then most recent, Slide It In, (there would be others such as Slip of the Tongue and Come An’ Get It) and a penchant for blatantly sexual record covers. ‘I think it’s all basically tongue in cheek,’ he responded in what I hoped was not intended to conjure up a literal image in the mind of readers.

I enjoyed meeting one of the few all-girl heavy metal bands out there, Rock Goddess. Reading my piece back, I think I just may have fancied one (all?) of them a little, but I didn’t allow that to influence my feature – oh, yes, other than saying ‘they’re bloody lovely, I’m captivated’ – and I think I drew a nice comment from guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Jody Turner when I asked her who was the driving force of the band. ‘There’s no leader in my band!’ she insisted.

Rick Wakeman’s new LP ‘1984’ was issued in 1981 with a press function held bizarrely enough in a tube train parked in an underground station. I asked him why but never got a plausible answer. I only recently parted with the 1984 t-shirt I was given. Hell-raising drummer Cozy Powell unexpectedly revealed that he had recently moved to one of horse racing’s longest established strongholds, Lambourn, where he’d ‘become friends with Johnny Francome, champion jump jockey, who is into his music as well’. Powell also owned a racehorse called Drummer Jess, which ‘did nothing until we sold him, then proceeded to win twice’. He also spoke of his love of scuba diving and motor racing – both as a participant. He was modest about his career: ‘I make solo albums for the Japanese market. The last two have gone gold over there… and cardboard over here!’ Cozy died tragically early in a shocking 1998 car accident.

I learned from Robert Palmer, also now departed, how he came up with the title track for his album, ‘Pride’, when he told me: ‘The ambience of the song was created by singing phonetically – to sing appropriate vowels to a series of spontaneous melodies. I then discovered a strange harmony, listened to the results on a tiny distorted speaker and imagined what the words might be.’ I’m not sure I followed him then, let alone now.

We record collectors would imagine that members of bands we like are well aware of their recorded output, but an interview with Simon Kirke, drummer of Free and Bad Company, saw me surprise him when he was explaining how he’d first teamed up with doomed guitarist of genius Paul Kossoff in the mid-1960s outfit Black Cat Bones. He had seen them play at the Nag’s Head in Battersea: ‘I was very impressed with Paul’s playing and plucked up courage to speak to him, and said, “Your drummer’s not up to much.” This cheeky approach worked. Koss told me they were auditioning for a new drummer and invited me along. There was one snag. I had no drum kit! I ended up playing on the outgoing drummer’s kit and getting his job.’ Black Cat Bones split, apparently without ever telling Simon that they had released an album earlier in their existence. He was amazed when I told him.

Simon and Paul heard Paul Rodgers singing in a band called Brown Sugar and brought him into the fold. Then Alexis Korner recommended bassist Andy Fraser and also suggested the name Free. Simon remembered Paul (Koss) being ‘a fantastic driver – he used to drive the band everywhere, he’d drive all night – trips of two or three hundred miles. He could have been a professional driver.’ He and Simon both had their flaws. ‘I hit the bottle – but Koss hit the pills – and worse.’ Simon cleaned up his act; Koss couldn’t, and it did for him, firstly affecting his playing, then leading to his tragic death in 1976. Simon climbed back to success along with Paul Rodgers in Bad Company despite revealing that he fancied an alternative career as a travel journalist. ‘I’d love to have Alan Whicker’s job.’

I interviewed the late Errol Brown for a Hot Chocolate feature to mark the fact that 28 of their 34 singles had been chart hits, most of which he had at least a hand in writing. The one he was there to plug in 1983, ‘Tears on the Telephone’, just about kept the run going by reaching Number 37. Errol told me about an unusual collaboration between him as a pop-soul artist, and Adrian Gurvitz, lead guitarist in hard rock trio Gun, along with brother Paul, whose biggest hit, ‘Race with the Devil’ was written by him. Errol and Adrian were recording for the same label and ‘kept passing each other in the corridor and mentioning that we enjoyed stuff the other had done. Eventually I rang Adrian, said I was a little bit short of material and would he consider helping me out?’ The result was Hot Chocolate’s next single, the Brown-Gurvitz track ‘I’m Sorry’. It is probably fair to say this gamble by keen poker player Errol (‘I’m good’) wasn’t a huge success – reaching Number 89 in the UK and 57 in Germany.

As a postscript to this story, I was at Second Scene and noticed Julian had put an original copy of the first album by the Gurvitz brothers’ band, Gun, on his wall of fame. I wondered whether it was the British release, as I’d bought one on a trip to Amsterdam (no pun intended) in the early 1970s. ‘Yes, a British release,’ confirmed Julian. ‘But you’d never guess what happened recently. A lady came in – very attractive – and introduced herself as Adrian Gurvitz’s wife. She was absolutely astonished when I told her how much the Gun albums were worth. She seemed genuinely shocked that they are worth serious money, at least three figures. She also said that her son is a budding musician – but wouldn’t tell me his name or that of his band, as she wants to see him make it through his own efforts.’

To do that it would help to have the kind of charisma effortlessly displayed by a gentleman I saw in a Beckenham record shop…