3 SUPERGROUP
IT WASN’T JUST THE WINNERS who won the Second World War. Even the world’s most-bombed rose again to become giants of globalisation. The new mix had less space for the British stiff upper lip of optimism, tinted with colours of fresh beginnings. Instead Vietnam brought a nastier type of peace and love, an unhappy aggressive love that bordered on refusal to accept the human condition. In the world of rock’n’roll, people didn’t want to wear uniforms and sing about summer any more. They knew they were poor.
It was the arse-end of the ballroom days, but the scene was still vibrant. A good night was about how busy the hall was – which is to say, how many girls were in. You paid 10s to see a band if they were sexy enough to pull the burds in; then in second place you considered their talent and stage act. Chris McClure and the early Bay City Rollers were putting on some of the best shows in town. Dance halls heaved with sexual excitement and physical danger.
You arrived at a pub near the venue and had a few drinks until it shut at 10pm, then moved to the no-alcohol-served hall as it opened for the evening. You took stock of the support band, considering whether to approve, trying to be pretty vocal about your decision. You waited for the main act to come on and moved up to the front, scanning for the best gear, the best lights, the best outfits, the best girls.
Then the show, and usually the barney, kicked off. You had to watch yourself because you got chucked out for anything – anything. The bouncers took no prisoners, and it was a real and regular scunner to be ejected without seeing the band you came for, wasting all that money while your pals lived it up. For better or worse you’d end up outside the hall just around the end of the night, waiting for the chance to pull anyone you’d either already got off with or fancied a go at. If you’d somehow been separated from your pals, or it was a particularly violent evening, single girls would try to make themselves available to you: the not-often-broken rule being that a bloke with a bird was exempt from a kicking. A friendly girl was your ticket to the bus or taxi in safety. Try to make sure your suit survives the night intact, and see you all next week.
But these days were passing. Disco was coming in and live music was becoming something you sat down at rather than danced to. It was all prog rock’s fault. Well, and television’s.
The new, smaller scene consisted of outfits like the Verge, Agatha’s Moment and HiFi Combo – the latter being the only band in the world that went to the butcher before every gig. They’d buy a bag of offal and place it in a coffin with their singer, then carry it to the centre of the stage. Covered in flour, they’d begin their show as the singer stood up, pulled the entrails out of his shirt and threw them into the audience. Which was alright if you happened to be hungry and had a portable barbecue with you.
But this was where it was at, and a good deal of the paying punterage voted for disco. Those who were staying on the scene wanted to stay still during the show; they wanted all senses entertained by the guys up front, and weren’t going to do half your job for you by dancing. The best bands on the scene were beginning to embrace theatrical shows. The rest were becoming pub rock bands.
CHRIS GLEN was of the opinion that was most bands were fuckin’ mingin’. He got himself round the circuit and spent a lot of time naked; he made his own clothes and they were so much better than his mates’ they borrowed them to wear on stage. And as he waited in the dressing room for his gear to come back, he’d listen to the shows – even big-name act performances – and think:
CHRIS: I can do better than that and I can’t even play! So I borrowed a bass and tinkered for a while, and decided I was into it. I sold my scooter to put the money towards a bass, my dad signed the credit deal in McCormack’s, and I ended up with two Vox Foundations, a Vox 100 watt and a Gibson EBO bass. Thing was, because of my size it was like a banjo on me, so I immediately traded it in for the Fender – the one I’ve still got.
Then I started Jade with a few mates from Pollokshields. We got a wee carrot-heided guy called Jim Diamond to sing for us – and he ended up becoming Jim Diamond. And then Eddie Tobin approached me about joining Mustard. But I wasn’t into it because they’d been the Bo Weavles, and that had been a harmony band. Eddie told me, it’s okay, we’re going to become Tear Gas…
ZAL: Mustard was our big transition. Woodstock had been part of it – people decided they weren’t going to be tainted with the word ‘pop’ any more. They wanted to be seen as progressive.
Everybody started aspiring to the big names that had come to the fore as exponents of their instruments. Everyone was trying to be virtuoso, whereas before that everyone had been playing as a backing group from the soul era. Now we had driving forces – your Jimmy Pages, Hendrixes, Claptons… It was a really big change. It wasn’t like the Beatles any more. We’d all moved on.
The lineup changed with the name and the music: Andy Mulvey came in from the Poets to sing, and Gil Lavis (later to join Squeeze and currently in Jools Holland’s band) became the drummer. Meanwhile a character by the name of Dashing Dick Darleson (from Dawlish in Devon) played bass for a short while. It was a very unhappy lineup.
TED: Bubbles supported that lineup at the Electric Gardens. I’d been talking to Gil before he went on and I was really into what he was saying – he was a real drummer’s drummer. But now Andy was shouting at him on the stage. Gil was taking pelters off the singer… Then when they came off Andy punched him.
DAVE: We were very cruel to Gil. He wore a Dr Kildare-type collar with a button on the side and a silver lame suit, and played like Buddy Rich with a big smile. But it was wrong for us. Andy used to scream at him to play louder, hit the things, and his hands were so blistered he had to wear gloves.
CHRIS: Gil’s favourite trick was he could do a shite without using toilet paper – he’d stand up above the pan, pull the cheeks of his arse apart and fire a shite out, then run a bit of toilet paper through to prove there were no marks on it.
TED: He saved a fortune…
Eddie Tobin recalls the night Andy punched Gil was the night he knew he wanted Ted in the band; but Wullie Monroe from Ritchie Blackmore’s Mandrake Root was next on the drum stool. He’s remembered as a wonderful wee guy, but mental. Clad in a black holocaust cloak, round glasses and a wide-brimmed hat, his half-Terry-Pratchet, half-Harry-Potter look matched the confusion of his social presence. After seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey, he built himself a Tycho Monolith and placed it in his room, which had been painted black. Including the windows. Wullie clearly shared thoughts with Blackmore – no one else knew what they were, but they shared them. Nevertheless, he was a stunning addition to the band:
DAVE: The first time we saw him we were impressed. He was a bit like Ginger Baker, with a real rolling style and big heavy rock galloping.
EDDIE: He was like Animal from the Muppets. A very bizarre person – he’d take any drugs in any orifice. He was a nice drummer to watch, though. There was a very visual aspect to his playing.
Eddie also maintains the only reason he asked Chris to join the band was because he owned a six-wheel transit van. This was more than minutiae: his bass playing wasn’t in doubt but the van made him essential to the plot. There was something awe-inspiring about these vehicles, with their stickers and their scratches. You’d arrived – you were in a higher league than the poor souls with short-wheelbase transits. And the more beaten-up looking it was, the longer it had been on the road, the more rock it was. And it had to be primer grey too, so it looked the part when it was parked outside McCormack’s music shop.
The huge changes on the scene were making people take stock of more than just the music they wanted to play. Andy Mulvey decided to set out for a new life in Africa, and so Dave Lennox was lined up as his replacement. But just before a tour of Germany, Dave pulled out at the last minute; and, jammed in panic-mode, the only solution for the newly-named Tear Gas was for Dave Batchelor to take over the mike, and ex-Beatstalker Eddie Campbell to come in on keyboards.
DAVE: I was in at the deep end. It was all a blur. I can’t remember any of it at all, except that the gigs were fantastic.
EDDIE: Dave didn’t get a lot of say in it – he was the only option. We looked round the band and pointed the finger, and that was it. Fortunately, he was brilliant! And fortunately, dope was coming in then so everyone was happy and everything was calm…
From the outset Tear Gas were on a mission to be the loudest, hardest, riffiest band in the country. Clad in their not-a-uniform-but-still-trademark outfits (leather, Afghan coats, ripped jeans, Beatle-boots) they gallivanted across the prog rock circuit giving it utter utter laldy. The first song they performed together was Born To Be Wild, a sensational rip-roaring opener, the effect of which was slightly dented by Wullie slamming his bass pedal right through the drumskin, requiring a pause-and-reset after 4.08 bars of the band’s career (‘Here we are… Tear Gas! Oh, fuck… Start again…’). Meanwhile, Eddie Campbell would treat the punters to his Jimi Hendrix impersonation during Purple Haze, taking his false teeth out and playing guitar with them.
The transition was nearly complete. Mustard was Tear Gas and the lineup was Batchelor (vocals), Cleminson (guitar), Glen (bass), Campbell (keyboards), Monroe (drums) and Tobin (management). The matching-suit look had gone through an interim shirt’n’tie phase and wound up in the long-hair look. The harmonic pop had been dumped in favour of progressive rock. The smiley-smiley row of glittery crooners were now a shoe-gazy assemblage of cutting-edge artists. The optimistic schoolboys were battle-hardened rock musicians, aware that life was shite. It was time for the band to leave their parents’ homes and go pro. And it was time for Al to become Zal.
ZAL: Going pro meant leaving your job and signing on. I didn’t have a job – I sat my Highers, jumped on the train, went to Aberdeen for a gig, and that was me. Davie worked in an architect’s office and Chris was a quantity surveyor – he still talks about his theodolite with relish. It was big decision, but it was like, you have to jack it in because there isn’t time to play, rehearse and get to gigs and still be home in time to get up for a job. And Eddie would push us on, saying, you need to be pro. And you’d look over your shoulders at other bands who were getting more gigs, going further by being more pro. It takes on a little more attitude. Your parents look more askance when they realise you’re not going to get a job. I was on the dole when I married Sandra. But the only really big difference between amateur and pro was that we now rehearsed instead of practicing…
We couldn’t live at home any more, so the band took a flat in Battlefield. It was now a proper, progressive rock group, loud as fuck and hairy as coconuts. By this time I’d been renamed Zal – I think Dave came up with it, maybe because of the Lovin’ Spoonful guy. But I liked it – it had an unusual sound. No one knew if you were from Manchester or Mars, or better still, a Hungarian dissident whose family had joined a circus to escape the troubles. I became Zal.
TED: I became Ted about then too. I’d always been Eddie – although come to think of it there were enough Eddies around. Then we were in Arran, playing football with Midge Ure’s Slik, except they were called Salvation; I got the ball and someone went, ‘Haw, big Ted’s got it!’ And the whole music fraternity just went with it…
ZAL: Not quite as good as ‘Zal’, though.
TED[singing]: Zal kills germs, just kicks them out
Zal’s the thing to pine about
For that zingy zingy scent of pine
Zal disinfects it every time!
ZAL: Aye… Then there’s Izal toilet paper, that horrible shiny tracing paper you got in the public baths. It didn’t absorb anything - it just spread the shit all over your arse and you had to make a crisp-poke shape and scoop… I, Zal…
TED: I think I had an easier time with my name.
THEY BECAME the rock giants of Scotland, and in some circles became known as Fear Gas because of their sheer volume. Eddie took the recently made-it Nazareth to see the band in Strathclyde University, but despite the Fife rockers owning a huge WEM sound system, they couldn’t believe the noise level Tear Gas attained.
They supported Deep Purple at a time when they were a moderately successful rock group, the size of Slade or Status Quo; and they recall the evening they heard Black Night for the first time and knew Purple were about to be huge. They lived through Marc Bolan’s Tyrannosaurus Rex era, when the future glam god inscribed a circle on the floor and sat down in it to play. In the Electric Gardens he did it so far back on the large stage the seated audience couldn’t see him, prompting a very polite heckle: ‘Excuse me Mister Bolan! Can you draw yer circle at the front o’the stage please?’
Life consisted of constant concerting, and a drinking marathon every dole day – certainly for those members who lived in the band’s flat – involving Tornado tonic wine mixed with Scrumpy from the infamous Saracen’s Head (‘Sarry Heid’) pub. Chris’ six-wheel transit rolled from venue to venue with Eddie Campbell’s giant Hammond B3 on the roof-rack, attracting the attention of the authorities from time to time. In one instance, roadie John was accused of drunk driving, the constable’s justification being: ‘You’re staggering’. ‘You’re not too bad yourself,’ replied John as the handcuffs came out.
Tear Gas acquired a reputation for mooning, in one famous incident spending 40 minutes stuck in traffic in Edinburgh’s Princes Street, taking turns to ensure there was always an arse in the van’s window. During a fire alarm at Jonesy’s in Ayr, the 600 fans waiting outside for the all-clear were treated to a ringside view of the Cleminson rear from the window above the main entrance. Among the viewers was the club’s regional manager, who banned the band from ever returning.
While it was the ambition of every pop group to cut a single, rock bands aimed for recording an album, and in 1970 Tear Gas headed to London to do just that. Piggy Go Getter was created in a pokey basement while the band stayed together in one room at the Grantleigh Hotel. The general feeling is it doesn’t stand the test of time too well – and it didn’t even then; but one’s first album will always hold a special place in one’s heart.
CHRIS: It was done on a double-four-track studio. We had to do four tracks then bounce them onto the other four-track, so you had to mix as you were going. You really had to think ahead because once you committed it that was it. It didn’t sound that bad for the time, but because it was done on a tight schedule and to a strict budget it was very weak to me. It sounded very compressed, not like us at all.
DAVE: The producer, Tony Chapman, was into the Band and that kind of stuff, and the album came out with that kind of energy, flat and boxy, whereas we were nothing like that. But we were naïve.
ZAL: There’s some good hard riffs going on, but it’s done in a running-through-the-fields airy-fairy Mamas-and-Papas way. It was the production that made it not happen. At the time I was chuffed to bits at doing it at all – you think, you’ve made a record, so that’s the best you can do. I wrote a song, it got recorded, fantastic. Later on you think, ouch! But there’s a great kind of naïve charm to it – the music has a texture you could use today. But the thing was, it wasn’t up to you whether you’d played well or not. The producer decided how good you’d been. You didn’t get the chance to say, I like that take, or, let’s do it again. He decided and that was the end of it.
TED: I was surprised by the album – I didn’t think it was anything like the band I heard.
Piggy Go Getter only sold a few thousand copies, and if you’ve got one today you’re minted. The relative dissatisfaction with the end result led to lineup changes. Eddie Campbell headed for pastures new, which, on the bright side, meant no more lugging the Hammond up to his high-rise flat at Moss Heights. Then Wullie moved on in a manner that left the Dream Police reeling.
TED: I’d been in London for about six months and we’d done a bit of recording. Then one day I was suddenly told that Hamish had quit, and he’d taken Wullie from Tear Gas and they were starting a new band. Hamish didn’t say anything, he just walked out – actually I’ll need to see him about that… So I knew Tear Gas needed a drummer, and I phoned Eddie and told him I’d be right up. The next day I was heading back to Glasgow.
They were a band that had an album behind them and they were very different from the other bands around – for a start they did their own tracks. They had a style and a sound about them. They’d gone from being the teenybopper boys to being the bad boys – they had a dangerous image, while we were all still poppy. That appealed to me. I’ve always liked a bit of danger in my music. My first impression was, who’s this big posin’ bastard Glen? He was at it with me from the start…
CHRIS: Ted arriving was a major change for us. It was a big thing. I’d only seen him in Bubbles, doing covers, no originals, playing and singing harmonies and all that… he looked pretty straight compared to the animal we’d had before. Ted was all nicey-nicey and Wullie came out with the big rock gallops… So I went up to him on the first day and said:
CHRIS: Can you do a gallop?
TED: What do you mean, a gallop?
CHRIS: Well, a diddly–rumpity… you know…
TED: What, like this? [plays ferocious big fuckin’ monster riff]
CHRIS [to band]: He’ll do for me.
For just about the first time since the beginning, the band was without a keyboard player, and this was the lineup that recorded the second album, Tear Gas, in 1971. Again, Stones manager Tony Calder was behind the scenes, showing a lot of interest in the band and bringing big names into play for them. Two London studios were used this time: an eight-track room at London Weekend Television and a sixteen-track setup at Island Studios, Basing Street.
It was a difficult time for Ted. It was his first album experience, and as the engineer adjusted the drum setup he realised it was being ruined.
TED: It was a traumatic experience. London Weekend was a huge dead room, terrible for ambient drums. But on top of that, Tony and his engineer took the front head off my bass drum, took the bottom heads off my toms, put tape all over the heads – and it didn’t sound like me. My drums were always open and ambient, the way Bonham sounded, but these guys had other ideas and I was just choked. It made me overplay to try and get some life out of them. It ruined my playing and I didn’t think it was anything like my best work. When we moved to Basing Street they set the drums up right, but by that time I was so tense and nervous about the whole thing I overplayed again – and I kept making mistakes. If you listen to Tear Gas you can hear all those mistakes, just from the sheer mental mayhem in my head. I remember going onto the roof and thinking, I can’t play any more. But… All things considered it was an interesting album, and it stands up today.
If it had been hard for Ted, it was tortuous for Dave, who by now had realised he was out of his depth on vocals.
DAVE: Both albums were very strange for me. I know it’s a cliché, but it just freaked me hearing my own voice back. I was terrified. I couldn’t get inside the song because I was hearing this voice coming back and it didn’t sound like me. I’d just become a singer – a brand new job to learn, and I was trying to sing like Stevie Winwood, Sam and Dave, people like that. I knew something was wrong but it was only years later I realised that stuff didn’t work with my voice, and I shouldn’t have been trying it. Hamish came in to do backing vocals and there was an outro that needed a bit of vocal work, and he was telling me, try it, let yourself go. And I just could not do it. It wasn’t a pleasant experience at all. I can listen to it now and find a lot of pluses, but not then. In my naïveté I was blown away by the Tony Calder big business connection, and the brilliant album cover by Hipgnosis, who did the Pink Floyd stuff.
CHRIS: We did Jailhouse Rock and All Shook Up in Basing Street. It was called a live version but the truth was we only had the studio for a day and there wasn’t time for overdubs – so we had to do it that way. We did play those songs very well. I don’t know how well it works on the album but we did them brilliantly. It was really great fun and I enjoyed every minute. I can honestly tell you I don’t hear the album when I play it – I remember the way we used to play those songs live, and it was amazing. A very good album. We never got any money for it, of course, as was the way of all things…
TED: Where is My Answer is a good one, a slow one. It sounded like Dave had drunk a bottle of Benylin before he sang it, it’s so soft and easy. It was so quiet we got the benefit of the studio’s sound quality. There’s a lot of things on that album that are really really good. When I forget what I don’t like about the drums I can enjoy it. Piggy had sounded too nice. Wullie was the best drummer in Scotland in my book, although he used to hate me doing all the rudiments because I knew that shit and he wasn’t that disciplined… But he had great riffs, and then on Piggy he’d sounded too nice. Very disappointing.
EDDIE: The first album didn’t represent the band at all… but the second one was there, it was them, and I mean that as someone who knew them onstage and offstage. I think Jailhouse Rock is a sensational track for today – it would make a great single. I wish someone would release it…
ZAL: The two Tear Gas albums are like opposite ends of a very bad perm. The first one starts off in the basin, with lots of hot water, shampoo and fanciful patter. The second is when you emerge from the drier and stare, catatonic, into the mirror.
TEAR GAS did a lot better than Piggy Go Getter and it carried the band onward, if not quite upward. Perhaps the Fear Gas reputation did as much harm as good. Zal and Chris were using 200 watt amps they’d had modded up to 250 watts, using two and four cabinets respectively – which was a huge huge sound back then. After a double-header with Berserk Crocodile, Hamish and Wullie’s new band, Hamish told them: ‘Here, boys, that’s just out o’order – ye just canny play that loud…’
In any respect, the absence of keyboard was an issue. Zal realised later that because his style was an undisciplined mishmash of rhythm and lead, he needed the structure provided by the keys; at the time he just wanted them because he liked them. Meanwhile, Ted felt the music needed another dimension, and so for the second time he pushed Hugh into the situation.
HUGH: I wasn’t really into heavy rock at all, not even Zeppelin and people that size. I’d done Who stuff, but that was about it. I liked a lot of singer-songwriters at the time. I didn’t have a record collection – I had to like something a lot to actually buy it, and anyway I didn’t have any money. But I thought Elton John’s first album was very good and I liked Joni Mitchell a lot. Yes was the first album I bought. Having been through SAHB I think I’d like Tear Gas a lot more now than I did then.
It was the end of the road for Dave’s vocal career, because Hugh took over that role as well. In some ways it was a relief for Dave, who set about taking over some management chores and also becoming the band’s sound man, putting himself on a second steep learning curve for Tear Gas. It can only have been an uncomfortable situation - although Eddie points out since there wasn’t any money in the band it wasn’t as big a deal as it could have been.
ZAL: It was a very odd political moment – I cannot see how that all brought itself about, who made those decisions. We must have talked around it for a long time, but someone must have made an executive decision. Probably Eddie, which would have been weird because they were best mates. I think I was very subservient at that time, I just went with the flow. It all had a democratic feel. I think Dave himself had made the odd comment about not feeling right anyway – we were looking for a Robert Plant, but Dave wasn’t that. He’s a good looking guy, he definitely had the look, but it just wasn’t coming across and projecting. The thing is, it’s all very well being mates and everyone getting along, but you become too subjective about it and that’s why a lot of people don’t get anywhere.
DAVE: It was a continuation of the team. I didn’t know much but I knew what we should sound like so it was just a matter of getting there. I was used to being in at the deep end by now, so I got there quite quickly!
TED: We were always very aware of the fact that generating a good sound was an important part of moving an audience. And the louder you are – and no one was louder than us – the more important it becomes. The confidence of knowing we sounded great out front made a big difference.
The difference was clear to audiences all over the country, who revelled in the band’s shock factor while, hopefully, getting into the musical expression too. The rocky road was long, never-ending, and countless hours in cooped up in the back of the van developed the band’s team spirit and sense of discipline. And in the spirit of alleviating the boredom, their sense of humour developed too.
ZAL: We could be quite daft. We’d turn up for our residency at the Electric Gardens, do half a show as Tear Gas, go off, shave off our heavy metal beards, and dress up as Johnny Rocket and the Zoomers then go back on as this different band…
TED: Roadies John and Rab played these two characters, Sid and Bovey. John used to wear a mask on the top of his head so he was looking down but the mask was facing forward – it was quite freaky. If Chris and I were sitting in a transport cafe, and there were people we didn’t know sitting nearby, Rab would come up to us as if he was a stranger and he’d say, ‘I’m skint, are you finished with those beans?’ We’d say, ‘Aye, help yourself,’ and he’d rub them into his hair…
We used to make up these games to relieve the boredom on long journeys. There was one where you had to substitute a word in a movie title with the word ‘frog’. You had ‘Ben Frog’ or ‘Frog Hur’ but every now and again someone would come up with the one-word title ‘Frog’… They knew where they were in their head… The worry was if you got it too. But there was always something to talk about, and always loads of scud books lying around the back of the van…
It was this final Tear Gas lineup that headed to London in early 1972 to play a gig with Alex Harvey. The Marquee show came about because Eddie was working for Bill Fehilly’s company, Mountain Managements. Mountain looked after Nazareth and Alex at the time, and were thinking about spreading wings. It may well be that the notion of a tie-up had already been discussed.
ZAL: No one had primed us about this, though. As far as we were concerned it was a gig in the Marquee and it didn’t matter who was headlining. Eddie will have had something to do with it – typical underhand political subversive capitalist shit. Chess with real people. I felt like a bishop a lot of the time – well, I didn’t want to be a knight, did I? Or a pawn…
TED: You might have made a good queen after the tights experiences.
ZAL: I know about tights. Extra-thick gusset, I’ll have you know.
TED: Well, it had to take a sock, didn’t it?
ZAL: A hiking sock…
It was an interesting evening. The club wasn’t particularly busy, and consisted equally of Alex fans and Tear Gas fans. During set-up and soundcheck Ted became aware that Alex was wandering round about them, asking what keys they played in, what they thought of their gear and so on. Looking back, he’s sure they were being sussed out.
Tear Gas played their set and then it was the turn of Alex’s three-piece outfit, whose primitive progressive sound turned out to be very unconvincing, although ideas like Isobel Goudie and Hammer Song were in there. In the natural way of things, each act had an opinion of each other; but maybe Alex’s was more important at the time.
He would later say: ‘I think they can play and I know they can sing and write songs. The problem was, when I met Tear Gas they were playing a thousand different things at the same time. I try to be simple and strip things down to the basics. There are so many ideas you can’t use them all – you have to skim the cream.’
EDDIE: He was doing all that hippy stuff, the Giant Moth era and afterwards… but he was loved. You have no idea how much Alex was loved in London, even then – everyone who was anyone knew Alex Harvey.
TED: At the soundcheck Alex came up on stage and he walked among us. Yes! The Faith Healer walked among us!
ZAL: I don’t remember that – I’d have ignored him anyway. I was very shy.
TED: I was disappointed how watery his band sounded compared to us – but I was impressed with Alex. I remember thinking, there’s something about him, something dangerous and attractive… I didn’t go looking for this kind of stuff so I was surprised to find myself thinking it. Charisma’s the easiest way to describe it, but it’s not quite there. Still, his band weren’t doing anything for him - it wasn’t a musical experience for the boys. But he just captured me. I remember a mate of mine was in the dressing room asking me in a loud voice, ‘So who the fuck’s this old bastard Alex Harvey meant ti’ be?’ and Alex was standing behind him. I should have introduced them, really…
CHRIS: I don’t remember much of his set – I was probably away posing somewhere. And you have to remember I was deaf for two hours after our set! But it seemed very… polite, and it was all bluesy. Later on Alex told me, if an audience aren’t listening to you go up close to the mic and start muttering, and people will shut up to try and hear what you’re saying. That’s how to get attention… Mind you, it seemed a bit strange that he knew how to get attention, but once he’d got it his band weren’t worth it. I think he maybe realised he could take our in-yer-face thing and make anything out of it. I think he saw a bigger picture than any of us, and he’d have seen himself in front of it, and thought, if I can put a brake on this runaway train we can go places. We were just blasting out of control down the track while Alex saw all the branch lines – if you can play this then you’ll be able to play that, and so on.
That show, however, was just another one in thousands, and Tear Gas thought no more about it at the time. They had something else on their minds anyway: their future. Hugh had brought that vital missing element into the music. Dave had written some lyrics and Hugh and Zal had begun working on music. There was a new creative energy. But it was going to be strangled at birth, because the band were about to split up.
TED: Hugh in the band made things a lot better. The elements were all there – the four-stroke engine was running at the right kind of, em, engine-type thing…
ZAL: Oh aye, nepotism rears its ugly head! Actually, what’s sad about that is we never got the chance to record with that lineup, take the four-stroke out for a spin and see what it could do.
HUGH: I introduced a lot of Tamla Motown – Hugo decides Motown’s coming back! The management of the Electric Gardens wanted people to be dancing all night, and I thought Motown would keep them on their feet. We spent about a month learning about 20 of them. In the end it didn’t make people dance any more or less, but there you go.
CHRIS: I remember we did Cleethorpes, supporting the Pink Fairies, then when we went back we headlined and a band called Jude supported us – Frankie Miller, Robin Trower, Jimmy Dewar and Clive Bunker – supporting us! So that’s an example of how successful we were. In a club of four or five hundred people it was fine, we could get away with it. But in bigger venues it became obvious we had limitations. We didn’t have a PA system for a start.
ZAL: We’d done the teenybop stuff in the Bo Weavles – we didn’t want to be popular and do singles. We wanted to record albums and never come out of the cellar for months. But we were doing the same gigs! Some of the fans migrated with us, the ones who could stomach it… But as we started getting darker, getting into that groove, we had fewer girls and more guys coming to see us. Everyone would sit down, get stoned and watch. No one was dancing. A real different scenario. People were waiting for the dancing to start, no one was smiling at anyone, and the venue wouldn’t have us back. It became limiting: the gigs became more elitist. You were thrashing out your own little thing, you had your blinkers on and your head down because you wanted to be in your own world… You get your bit right, I’ll get mine, and it’ll be okay. Listen to Hendrix – it’s disparate, people are going for it all over the place.
And some of our material didn’t come up to scratch, never mind the other pressures. It wasn’t strong enough to be big league. At the time we were giving it pelters, doing the right thing. But there was a lack of originality in a lot of what we did. We couldn’t see the light of day, while more and more people were saying to us, we don’t want you back here because people can’t dance to you.
They were still making up to £400 per show, but once the gear payments were made there wasn’t much left. Out of the remains, a lot of it went on funding shows in England, where the band slept in transport cafes and did anything else they could to keep expenses down. They paid themselves just £8 a week (Zal took a little more because he was married) and found themselves in stalemate.
At a make-or-break meeting, Eddie told them they’d come to the end of the road. If they played 20 more gigs they’d have the gear paid off, but there was nothing else positive to be said for playing 20 more gigs in the fewer and fewer places that wanted them. The musical potential wasn’t going to be realised. Tear Gas was over.
EDDIE: By 1971 the band were on a plateau. They were incredible, they’d played everywhere, but they just weren’t making it. Everyone was just waiting for something to happen. Bill Fehilly had already taken Derek Nichol to London with Nazareth, and he was pouring money into them. Then Bill asked me, can you find a band for Alex? The band he had was terrible. He knew it, he was pished, he was offending people, but there was something about him even in that condition. So I thought, Tear Gas and Alex Harvey? Nooooo… And Bill said, I’ve got millions – I’ll support the band. So I thought, Tear Gas and Alex Harvey? Sounds like a great band!
TED: Eddie told us, we have one possible avenue of salvation. Remember that guy Alex Harvey? you’ll be taken on by Mountain. You’ll be on a retainer – a retainer! – of £15 a week. And your gear will be paid off. And Alex has a lot of experience, he knows everyone… I remember standing on the platform at Anniesland station, waiting for the train home, and saying to Hugh: ‘Well, at least it’ll keep the band together.’ Because we’re assuming we’ll have to play stuff we don’t want to play. It was the only positive thing I could hold onto, because I remembered what his band was like at the Marquee. I was confident we could handle it somehow. Somehow…
