4 TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME
STATISTICALLY 1975 was the band’s biggest year. They became the biggest-grossing live act in the UK and experienced their highest-ever chart placing. Both achievements came about for the same reason: they spent almost the entire year on the road, clocking up over 100 dates in nine months. That’s nearly a gig every two days from March til December – and doesn’t make any allowance for time spent writing, rehearsing, recording or sleeping.
The first US tour of the year was in the company of The Tubes, with the bands taking turns headlining depending on popularity – in Cleveland, for example, SAHB sold more records than Elton John that year. Tubes’ backing singer and dancer Le Roy Jones recalls being surprised the two bands got on: ‘I loved SAHB’s show but I think Alex thought we were a big-budget act at first,’ he says. ‘Once he realised we created everything ourselves and got very little support he reacted differently. The Tubes didn’t have that much in common with SAHB – they were hard Glasgow and we were young, rich white Utopia nightmares… but when he saw us doing White Punks on Dope, our take-off of British rock stars, he really got it.’
Alex took their new relationship to the extreme, as ever, marching onto the stage during their set with the pipers, singing The Gallowa’ Hills and stopping the show in its tracks. The overdressed overblown Tubes loved it. The pipers trick became a standard Harvey sketch wherever the band went.
TED: It didn’t matter – all we needed was the pipers and as many of us as we could muster. When we were rehearsing in SIR in New York, Dylan, Baez and Ronson were using it. So we all got into the freight lift and went up and down singing the Gallowa’ Hills, pipes blaring, feet stamping, making a right fuckin’ racket. Alex said, these fuckers’ll never forget us! Then we were staying in a Holiday Inn somewhere and there was a house band playing away in the corner of the cocktail bar. Alex marshalled us together, got the pipers ready and we stamped through The Gallowa’ Hills again… Everyone fuckin’ loved it – it was drinks on the house!
CHRIS: We were playing the Palladium in New York, and there’s three or four Arnold Schwarzenegger types in the front row, muscles rippling, and they all had these t–shirts on with ‘MY GAL ZAL’ written on them! Zal’s just like, aaaaw, fuck’s sake… He had to have heavy security coming off, he was shitting himself! These guys where huge – don’t shoot them, you’ll only upset them…
ZAL: They tried to jump in the limousine: ‘Come on, Zal, we’re going to a party!’ No we’re not.
Fan Todd Miller remembers more or less having given up hope of ever seeing SAHB. ‘We somehow found out they were playing in Chicago with the Tubes. The marketing line was, if this is not the most outrageous show you have ever seen, you can ask for a refund. The gig wasn’t crowded but the guys were outstanding, so we moved up to the second row and I seem to remember we stood out as far as our enthusiasm for the show… But then the Tubes came out – talk about going from amazing to awful in twenty minutes! We went to the ticket window, told them it was not the most outrageous show we’d ever seen, got a full refund and happily drove home back to Bloomington, Illinois.’
CHRIS: There were all these silly games we played at airports… We had this game, RugWatch, where you had to try to spot wigs. Zal was shite at it. I’d quietly say: three o’clock, forty feet away, syrup… But he’d see someone right up close, and start pointing at them shouting: Wig! Wig! Wig!
Alex had a great thing for when the Mormons and that started hassling you. He bought this huge Bible, the weight of two engineering bricks, and he carried it about with him. And in his bag he had this fuckin’ awful smelly cheese – this stuff had a half–life. Whenever he saw Mormons or Adventists or whatever he’d go, you’re just the guy I want to talk to… He’d eat some of the cheese and start quoting from his Bible at them with his garbage–breath. They’re like, no it’s fine, and Alex would start chasing them round the airport. Of course when we got on the plane Alex had a row to himself – the stink was mingin’…
A photo around this time shows the band lined up in front of their aircraft, each happily holding a paper bag like a purse. Each bag contained a stack of hash cakes – but by the time they settled in the plane, someone had managed to eat their way through the lot. Identifying the culprit was simply a case of waiting until the guilty party blurted out: ‘Oh man, the colours on the seat are too much!’ and promptly went Zal-white.
Zal himself had a similar escapade in another US airport, overdoing the recreational substances until he no longer needed makeup. Chris tried rushing him to the toilet but they only made it as far as the balcony, from where Zal projectile-vomited on a passing group of businessmen below. Then they did a runner.
SAHB’s US publicist, Barbara Birdfeather, enthused about life on the road with the guys in a cleaned-up article for the fan club.
Seven-thirty a.m. – an ungodly hour at best, made unnaturally uncomfortable by the incessant ringing of the bedside telephone. Eyes barely opening, I grope for the phone, slowly realising I’m in the Holiday Inn of the city where the Sensational Alex Harvey Band is playing tonight. It’s a call from London, someone inquiring whether they could do a phone interview with Alex later that day. Relieved it wasn’t a major catastrophe, we arrange a mutually convenient time, mutter pleasantries about the weather and hang up.
I turn over, then sit up, unable to get back to sleep. The excitement of the upcoming gig is already getting to me. A headline date in an industrial, middle American town wouldn’t normally seem important, but this is a place that is just crackers over the band – SAHB sells more records here than the States’ top record seller, Elton John; gigs are sold out just about as soon as they’re announced; the kids occasionally spray ‘Vambo Rools!!’ on back street walls. You had to know tonight was gonna be something special!
Grab a fast breakfast, thoughts racing – get the final touches together, make sure everything works, make the difference between a good gig and a great one. Joining me were Dick O’Dell, tall, blonde, tour manager and Dave Batchelor, sound man and album producer for SAHB since its inception.
More brief discussion – ‘Do those front monitors really work?’ – slurps of coffee, echoes of ‘see ya la-ta,’ and we were all off, not to see each other til early evening. Up to the room, endless phone calls to the outside world all day. A look in the mirror, check my bag for stickers, the extra pen and the backstage list, a last call from the Atlantic Records promotion man assuring me everything’s just swell, and down to the lobby where the band is slowly assembling to go to the sound check for the gig.
HIT THE ROAD! Ted McKenna is down first, tuxedo in one hand, the other raised in a gentle wave. Hugh McKenna, Ted’s keyboard cousin, wanders in. ‘Have ya seen ma new shades?’ he says, posing a bit. The lobby light catches the navy glass, making it seem for a moment that Hugh really does have stars in his eyes. The Gas guys, zippo guitarist Zal Cleminson and Scorpio bassist Chris Glen, are next, carrying stage gear in cases, wearing long silky white scarves and oh-so-tight blue jeans, with Alex himself, looking somewhat sleepy and definitely dishevelled, in the rear.
‘Wot time is it?’ Alex yawns.
‘Time to go – into the limos.’ It’s tour manager Dick O’Dell, ushering us into the waiting autos, motors running. Doors slam, and we’re off to the gig.
The hall is cool and draughty, cables crossing the stage busy with roadies as SAHB members pick their way to the amps and plug in. A few tentative chords at first. Ted picks up the tempo and leads the way through a funky jam. Alex, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, does a ‘Test, test’ through the mike he’ll be storming songs through in just a few hours.
The sound check over, it’s off to the dressing rooms for a bite to eat and the spectacle of Alex and Chris exercising, kind of slow motion kung fu that seems to involve Bruce Lee imitations! The stark walls echo with roars of laughter and encouragement to the semi-Samurai Scottish warriors. Our clowning about ends, though, when diligent Dick swings the door open with, ‘Thirty minutes! Get yer makeup on, Zal!’
I exit, check out the crowds (excited, they’re bubbling with anticipation), and the burly security dude stationed at the back door, and find myself a place among the large speakers at stage left. Just enough time for one last cigarette and…
Houselights off. The vibrating pulsing electronics of ‘Fanfare’ as spotlights sweep the audience, and suddenly there he is.
HIT THE STAGE! ‘Good evenin’ boys and gurrls’ – Alex in inevitable striped vest, pirate jacket and well worn jeans. ‘It’s lovely to be here tonight and I’d like to introduce you to ma band, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band!’
The crowd noise becomes deafening, the intro to Faith Healer heard over the wild applause as Ted, Hugh, Zal and Chris take their places, pick up “Faith Healer’s” mesmerising beat – and they’re off. At an almost dizzying pace SAHB virtually tear through their set. Before the frenzied applause for “Faith Healer” has a chance to die down, Midnight Moses (with Zal, Alex and Chris leering over the stage monitors) takes us on that wild ride. Cries for Vambo ring through the hall and sure enough, Alex whips up to the mike with the thick black Vambo book held high.
‘This is a tale of two cities … my city and YOUR city.’ Snap. The book slams shut, house lights out and Ted’s tom-tom beats in time to the hearts pounding and kids shouting right along and right through Hot City Symphony. Whew! Before anyone can recover we get Delilah, Gamblin’ Bar Room Blues, the epic Framed, and finally Anthem.
The slow and pompous strains reach through the hall. ‘If you don’t put me on trial, then why don’t you turn me loose?’ Alex pleads and the kids respond. When he raises his arms high, fingers in the victory V, they do so too, standing unhesitatingly and swaying in rhythm, the dance of ages. The pipers march stately on stage, their minor harmonies blending beautifully with the electricity of SAHB’s majestic music.
All too soon it’s over. SAHB bow in smiling unison and leave the stage to thunderous applause, returning to rip through Gang Bang and Jumping Jack Flash for an encore. Exhausted but beamingly happy, they file off.
HIT THE BOTTLE! Back in the dressing room it’s cheerful chaos. Alex whooshes open a beer can that explodes its foamy contents not only over himself, but gives Chris and Dick a thorough soaking as well. The pipers are divesting themselves of their woollen uniforms while Zal cold–creams his makeup off. Outside press and radio people are eager to say hello to the band, and after giving the lads a chance to ‘get decent’ I usher them in. Gushing groupies look on adoringly, but as always their chances with the SAHB are nil.
Slowly the band winds down. The last of the goodies are eaten, stage gear is safely tucked in cases, glances between the assembled company indicate it’s time to take our leave of this place that’s been so good to us. Back into the shiny limos, back to the Holiday Inn.
In the hotel lobby nobody notices us. Sure there are glances at the strange gear and all, but SAHB are not the heroes they were just a few minutes ago. That’s OK though, ‘cuz we know that the band brought a little Scottish magic to the sons and daughters of some of these very people. Alex made their kids happy.
CHRIS: When we came home we landed at Heathrow. I’m coming down the stairs and Alex is at the bottom near these three cleaning ladies, who are wondering if they recognise me because of this brilliant tigerskin jacket I’m wearing. And Alex goes, you must remember him – he’s Glen Benson. Remember? The housewife’s dream, they called him? They’re going, I think I remember the name… Alex says, yeah, don’t you remember his big Number One? The Dreams My Heart Can Build? So I get to the bottom of the stairs and they put down their cleaning machines and ask for my autograph. And Alex is grinning his head off – gotcha!
At last there was a break in the gigging schedule – but only to work on their fourth album. By now the creative process had been honed down and work went smoothly. The result was Tomorrow Belongs To Me, featuring a daring rip-off of the title track, perceived as a Nazi anthem.
CHRIS: Alex gave us free reign to bring musical ideas in, then he’d say yea or nay to them. If he liked something he’d open the big book with stickers and bits of cheese and chewing gum all over it, and find a lyric that would work with the music. Or he’d say, listen, I need a bit of blues, and we’d play about til we were doing something he liked. He’d chip in with arrangements and that but the music mainly came from us. There was stuff like Stone Eater, ten songs in one, that disappears up its own arse. But it was great fun to play.
Making things up off the cuff was always fun too – that’s how we wrote Ribs and Balls. It’s about that thing where you start taking the order for the Chinese and by the time you get to the fifth guy the first guy says, yeah, I want that instead… so we said, fuck it, five portions of ribs, five portions of balls, and that solved it for ever after.
HUGH: Chef was a very intense job. It worked well though. It was worth it.
Fan Michael Hightower recalls running into Tomorrow by accident. ‘I couldn’t stop listening to it – the strength of the performances, combined with Alex Harvey’s impossibly strange and powerful voice; Zal Cleminson’s balls–out guitar; and the loopy arrangements of completely unexpected songs hooked me.’
The epic ambitions of Chef and Stone Eater are reflected in some of Alex’s comments in the press around the same time. Perhaps it was that he’d turned 40 that February, but there was a little more lecturing than usual in his interviews.
‘Suddenly, freedom is hard to get,’ he told the Glasgow Herald. ‘I’m losing touch with what gave me the first trigger to get on in this business. ‘I think I might make a real attempt to retrace the footsteps of my youth – I might take a tent and spend some time camping around the Highlands. I’ll go alone – I need some time to think.’
He told Simon Clarke in Disc he didn’t find any other musician particularly influential any more. ‘I can admire a group like the Bay City Rollers and I can even admire a punk group that can’t even play – as long as they believe in what they are doing.
‘People have said to me I should have made it a long time ago,’ he went on. ‘I don’t really know what they mean. Made what? Maybe made a hit single? Maybe I’d have been a big star in 1963 or something. But maybe I’d have cracked up in 1964.’
WITH just four days off, SAHB began another UK tour, which was to be immediately followed by another US outing, this time supporting Jethro Tull. The band’s position at home was secured, with many dates selling out three weeks in advance. The tour also included two stadium supports with Yes (tickets £2.50).
CHRIS: The Birmingham Odeon was a steep hall running down the stage, which wasn’t raised because with the angled chairs it didn’t need to be. Near the end of the show this guy grabbed about a dozen t–shirts from the merchandise stall and started throwing them into the audience as he took a runny onto the stage. It was the time of the show where Alex had two or three people up anyway, so he just welcomed the guy onstage and put his arm round him, and the security guys were fizzing… Later on I found out John Taylor, who would end up in Duran Duran, dogged school to get my autograph at the soundcheck that day. It turns out Andy Taylor did the same thing at Newcastle once.
Fan and photographer Peter Ball attended the Southend Kursaal two nights later. ‘It was one of the best-ever gigs in my life,’ he says. ‘I’d got into SAHB about nine months previously after hearing Ding Dong and then Next. I’d only just started taking a camera to gigs and I hadn’t had many decent results up til then. So I made sure we were right up at the front and I’m glad to say I took some great shots.’
A week later SAHB appeared at Hammersmith Odeon. It was the day Scotland were playing England at Wembley, and the band came on in football strips and kicked balls into the audience. The show was being recorded so the band could have one of their regular listening sessions, to make sure they still sounded as good as they could be.
During this tour Charles Shaar Murray asked Alex what rock and roll was. ‘A young man’s view of the future,’ he replied, ‘accompanied by an incredible energy. The next twenty minutes, the next twenty years – just the future.’
The Tull US tour was yet another gigantic undertaking – 22 dates over 29 days, including the 95,000–seater New Orleans Superdrome. (Alex planned to get a shark tattoo in New Orleans, but didn’t find the time.) The cut-short support set was Faith Healer, Tomahawk Kid, Delilah, Gang Bang, Framed and Anthem. Delilah, a rip of the Tom Jones hit, quickly became a fans’ favourite, complete as it was with Zal and Chris in another SAHB dance routine.
CHRIS: Delilah was chosen purely so we could do a dance, with the aim of replacing Runaway, which had been overplayed because we gigged so much. God help us if one of us got the dance wrong, though – because the other one would kick him up the arse… Zal was an awful one for changing it – as soon as we got it right he’d get it wrong, so I thought I was getting it wrong, then we’d get it right again and he’d change it. It was just a good laugh.
The Tull tour really didn’t work at all – it was a profile thing. I think their music is incompatible with almost anyone else – it’s not a slight, but I can’t imagine who your second-favourite band is if they’re your favourite…
Tull fan Danny McMillin agrees. ‘I saw SAHB open for Jethro Tull in Seattle, Washington. I never heard of them before or since. They were the absolute without-a-doubt worst band I’ve ever had the squirming misfortune to see and hear. During the middle of the set, a kilted Alex ripped off his shirt, took a can of spray paint and wrote ‘Vambo Rules!’ on a fake wall. I’d have to say that was the high point of their musical abilities… After a concert of boos and yells to get off, Alex profaned the uneducated American audience in an extended colloquy, before leaving the stage after about 20 minutes of “music.” I guess we just didn’t get it.’
Alabama DJ Lee Moore did get it, though: ‘I was at least partly prepared for the experience, being a big fan of the band on record. But nothing could have prepared me for Harvey’s enormous charm. He was a master showman, a thorough professional, and his stage persona managed to be alternately intimidating and avuncular, and sometimes both at once. At one point he actually delivered a brief chiding lecture – I can’t think of a more appropriate way to describe it – in the course of which he told the audience we were “very lucky boys and girls” to be living in the USA. My overall impression was that he genuinely cared about the audience on some level. He was in loco parentis, doing his part to help us shape up. The show was one of the most cleverly theatrical rock performances I’ve seen – Alex Harvey was right up there with Bowie – and Ian Anderson – as a consummate showman.’
Alex’s ‘chiding lecture’ on this tour was based around the idea of America as a young nation: ‘You’re barely 200 years old and you have every ethnic group under the sun here,’ he’d say; then, depending on how the show was going, he’d finish with, ‘Don’t fuck it up’ or ‘And you’re acting like a bunch of babies’.
In the middle of the tour Mountain released the version of Delilah recorded at Hammersmith. It was probably an attempt to resolve the continuing business issue of representing the band on a single; but the recording had never been planned for release.
An eight-digit calculator with memory cost £12.95 and bargain wigs started at £2.50. Billy Connolly raised a court action against a shop calling itself ‘The Big Yins’ but the judge pointed out other people in Glasgow could be called ‘Big Yin’, recalling the phrase from a Dave Willis song. Muhammad Ali announced he’d defend his world boxing title against Jean-Pierre Coopman. And SAHB made the top ten with Delilah.
TED: We got a telegram from Bill saying, congratulations. I didn’t know it was even being released. We were surprised it had been, and they did it while we were on tour. It did always go down well live…
ZAL: We got stamped with it, though – in a lot of ways it was a bad song to have a hit with. If you didn’t know what the band was about it gave you a certain message. Although to be fair it actually was a fair example of what the band was about… if you knew what you were talking about.
CHRIS: Oh, aye, it stamped us alright. The next congratulatory telegram was from Les Reid and Barry Mason, who wrote Delilah, saying, well done on your hit and here’s the sheet music for She’s A Lady, Tom Jones’ next single, if we wanted to do that…
EDDIE: But everybody loves success, and Alex had an ego the size of Glasgow… he loved glory. I don’t know why it is, but when people from Glasgow make it they enjoy it all the more. I think it’s because you’re not expected to make it. Everyone who knew Alex, friends and family, all basked in the reflected glory.
ZAL: Financially it made no difference at all… I don’t remember a big difference. There was a lot of momentum at the time. We were constantly working, touring, recording. But we were getting nearer the front page. Occasionally we’d be on the front page.
CHRIS: And they went, look, we’ve put it in a picture sleeve. Oh, that’s great, the first 10,000 have a picture of the band on it – but what they didn’t say was you lose a point of profit for a picture sleeve! And you lose a point when they do a gatefold sleeve for you – they never told you these things. And now we had a pressure we’d never had before. The record company wanted a follow-up hit straight away.
SAHB were rushed back to the UK to make an appearance on Top of the Pops. It wasn’t a moment too soon – because all their gear, and the truck it was stowed in, had been stolen in Miami, two dates before the end of the Tull tour.
CHRIS: Alex’s jeans were ripped up the middle, and sometimes he’d hang out of them – you could see the front row going, oooooh…. We came off after a show and everyone’s body temperature is in the hundreds – and I’m like, has someone fuckin’ shat themselves? And Alex goes, it might be me… and the inside of his jeans is all full of shite.
The next morning our truck was gone – the mafia stole our guitars. That’s when we had to fly back for Delilah being in the charts. But we had to fly to New York first to get new guitars. So for once we were travelling first-class via Delhi to London. In those days it was £1200 a ticket. I woke up in a drunken stupour on first class, and I opened the window shutter and saw this beautiful sunrise. But the stewardess closed it again, and I’m like, twelve hundred fuckin’ quid? I’ll fuckin’ have my sunrise… Then the senior stewardess comes up and says, sir, you can’t do that – there’s the Indian Ambassador sitting opposite you. I say, fuck him, he pays the same as me… So they gave me the entire upstairs bar to myself to get rid of me!
With Delilah peaking at Number 6, it was inevitable that the rest of the show was released, and the Live album came out in October. It only featured six tracks (not including the fanfare): Faith Healer, Tomahawk Kid, Vambo, Chef, Delilah and Framed – subsequent bootlegs of the whole show suggest that tinkering with the sound system rendered most other tracks unusable. All this enclosed in a sleeve which can best be described as ‘shite’. Nevertheless, it had something to say for itself.
CHRIS: Sometimes on albums we gave into the temptation to do overdubs that would never be there when we were playing live, and it just cluttered things. Everyone knows you really had to see us live before the album would make sense, but concentrating on overdubs didn’t make that any easier for people. That’s why Live really worked.
But the thing was, the American label refused to release it, saying live albums didn’t sell. Next year Peter Frampton came alive and that was it. But they’d never take a risk, that was the thing. We weren’t big enough to do our own headline tour in the States and we couldn’t get our message across… Live would have helped – and I’m saying that even though we never wanted it released.
Having said all that, I only realised how big we’d been in America when I played there with other bands. The thing is, we didn’t get the chance to play with other people, jam with them or anything. That only came later, like when I was with Michael Schenker and I was in the biggest band in the world: me, Angus Young, Malcolm Young, Robin Zander and Rick Neilsen – but we were all playing the wrong instruments! But playing with the guys from Cheap Trick, I found out how big SAHB fans they were. When Schenker supported Cheap Trick there was this banner hanging off the balcony: Cheap Trick You Suck, Bring Back SAHB! Robin and Rick were fine with it, but I was like, what the fuck’s going on?
The testament of fan Jon Macleod proves Live would have worked in the States. ‘It was fall 1975, and I had just become a raving Kiss fanatic – I’ve since learned better, but hey, I wasn’t alone back then! Some rock mag ran an article on freak bands, leading with Kiss, so I had to have a look; and they included SAHB, a name I filed away for future reference. Shortly after that, I tripped over Live in the record store. The cover immediately grabbed my attention – believe it or not – and I scanned it closely. These were those guys, huh? I still remember the thing that hit me hardest was the spreadeagle photo of Zal on the back. I thought, these guys have got to be cool.
‘So I got it home. Fanfare came on… uh-oh: horns! For a moment I was afraid this was a big mistake – I wanted rock. Horns don’t rock. But then, of course, Faith Healer started up – and there was my rock. God, the impact of that song for the first time still resonates after fuckin’ decades! The spooky throbbing intro – never heard anything like it – that opening riff, Alex’s incantation, more spook, Ted’s double drum roll… and then Zal hit that two-string-chord riff for the first time. And I knew true awe!
‘I hung amazed on every note for the rest of the song. Hugh was the first rock keyboardist I’d heard who was actually an asset to the band. Alex’s performance was chilling. I was in the presence of an instant classic and I knew it! The rest of the album grabbed damn near as hard, and I got a feel for the unique story-music world of SAHB. This band was powerful, accomplished, inimitable, entertaining and inspiring in a way no rock band was before or since. Chef was strange and epic, Delilah and Framed were hilarious. I played the album nonstop for days afterward. I lucked out big-time finding it.’
By this time SAHB were back in the US of A again, on a tour that included two dates with Tear Gas idol Frank Zappa – an idol Zal was too scared to meet.
CHRIS: Alex and I spent half an hour in his dressing room. He was great. He talked about the most mundane things and the most interesting things. He was tuning his guitar the whole time but he was saying, I don’t know why I’m bothering, I got the best neck, the best strings, it’s half an hour from here to the stage and the temperature’s different – so I hit the first chord and the fuckin’ thing’s out! I remember he wanted to hire our pipers. It might have been the only reason he was talking to us… But he didn’t realise we only used them for Anthem, that it wasn’t easy to make them part of a tune, and they didn’t just jam along. I think he was quite disappointed.
TED: I wasn’t ready for the strength of some of the stuff we smoked in America. We were in New Orleans with Zappa. When I turned up there was a wee guy playing my drumkit – he must have been about 8 or 9 – grooving away and it sounded great. At the time I just went, wow that’s fantastic… but after the show photographer Chuck Pulin gave me something to smoke and my paranoia kicked in. I thought, are they going to replace me with this wee guy, just for sheer sensationalism? At the time I thought SAHB could do anything, and WOULD do anything to get attention, so this made perfect sense to me.
Then I realised they’d need to get rid of me first, and I became convinced they were going to have me shot! So Dick O’Dell said it was time to go, and I followed him out and realised it was just him and me in the car park… And I just knew: Dick was going to shoot me so they could get the wee drummer boy in. It made so much sense to me I agreed with the sentiment – the album sales would go through the roof!
I believed I was gettin’ it right up to the moment Dick opened the boot – and no shotgun! So we went back to the hotel and there was a guy in a big raincoat in the foyer and I thought, aaaah, HE’S gonny shoot me! By this time I was feeling so hyper I wanted to be shot! Birdfeather was a Sicilian who might well have mafia connections, and again it all made perfect sense…
Well, after a while I felt better and told Birdfeather and Chuck what I thought was going on – and of course they just dismissed it. We headed out to a club and I sat on my own, and again I became convinced they were going to shoot me. I think Birdfeather was feeling sorry for me because everyone was having a good time and I wasn’t, so she came over and did the worst thing she could possibly do. She kissed me. The mafia kiss of death! So this is it – they’re not gonny shoot me, they’re gonny haul me across the pool table and stab me through the heart!
I can only call the whole episode a momentary lapse of Coatbridge.
It may have been a relief – certainly for some blood-sweating band members – to head home again, but there was one more trick to be pulled out of the hat in 1975: the Christmas gigs. These seven sell-out shows – four in the New Victoria in London around Christmas and three in the Apollo in Glasgow around Hogmanay – are legendary to this day, and were the crowning glory of the band’s live performance. The published intent was to thank the fans for what had arguably been a stunningly successful year – and in the event the band lost £100 over the series of gigs.
The Bay City Rollers were at the top of the US charts with Saturday Night and the top twenty albums of the year included Tubular Bells, Dark Side of the Moon and Atlantic Crossing. The Sex Discrimination Act became law while Chrysler bosses told the unions if they didn’t accept 8500 job losses the company would go under. Scots queued for over five hours to see Jaws, Bing Crosby appeared in a TV add for Tennents Lager and European secret services were ordered to assassinate Carlos the Jackal. And meanwhile, SAHB’s Christmas concerts were truly, genuinely, unforgettable and irreplaceably sensational.
ZAL: That was the pinnacle. Everything focussed on that. We spent loads of time rehearsing, we had the dancers, we had this phenomenal stage set. Nothing was ever better than that. It was meticulous, like rehearsing a west end show. That was the culmination of our choreography – you be on that mark at 45 minutes in and pull this face, you be up the ladder on the hour, that light’s going to come on then so be there for it… And it all went like clockwork.
TED: The Apollo had the warmest, most emotional audience you could get. And we had the show just right, the talent contest and everything. People had a whole night’s entertainment – there was never a pause. And it was all three balconies then, with the top one going doing–doing–doing… The message was strong. Alex was very strong. The saddest thing is it was never filmed.
ZAL: He was in his element. You could see him strutting around the place, conducting, directing, kissing the dancers’ arses, performing at his peak, on top of it.
EDDIE: There’s a lot of dominant characters in that band. Zal become one – even though he’s seen as a quiet man he could be quite vociferous at times. I never saw them that good ever…
The main element of the stage set was a Christmas present, which opened and folded down to reveal the band. The show featured bare-bum dancers who flashed their assets during Dancing Cheek To Cheek (two of them later appeared in the UK sitcom Hi-De-Hi), an ambitious live rendition of Stone Eater, and a hilarious piece of theatre known as the talent show.
CHRIS: It started off with Zal tap dancing on a metal tray, reciting the soliloquay from Hamlet. Then big Robbie, the six-foot giant with the PA company, would come on with a leotard and a crash helmet on. Alex would say, this is an illegitimate son of Lord Longford, who was expelled from Eton for palming a jockstrap during a game of strip poker… And Robbie would do the hula hoop. I had to come on as Glen Benson, with a big cowboy hat and boots up to my knees, and sing Laughing The Blues. Then Hugh would come on with the accordion and give it the folk music treatment. It was always rigged so Hugh won it…
We had boxes for our parents in the Apollo. Ted gave his parents earplugs, the pink wax ones you got from Boots. During the second song Ted’s dad leaned over to his mum and said, they sweeties were horrible!
I sent a limousine for my mum and dad but my dad told the guy to go away because he hadn’t called a taxi! So I sent the same driver the next night, and during the show we let him stay in the dressing room. He was sitting in a big huge bubble chair with its back to the room so you didn’t know he was there. The three dancers came off to change and just as they’re all stark naked he rotated the chair round to be confronted with three six–foot blondes. They weren’t bothered at all – they were like, how’re you getting on, pal? So he wouldn’t take any money from me at the end of the night. He was like, I’ll dine out on this for ever…
Zal’s guitar fucked up during Dance to the Music and after the show I came into the dressing room and Zal’s face was tripping him. I said, okay, the guitar broke down – no big deal. He said, it’s nothing to do with the guitar breaking down. It was the first time I heard you all playing and you’re going like a train! And here’s me thinking it was all down to me! I’m overplaying! And when I wasn’t playing it didn’t make a difference!
And during Framed Alex asked the crowd, do you believe me? And someone shouted back, Naw – you shagged my sister in 1971! The Apollo… what a place. Dougie was getting the guitars set up, coming back and forward from the tuning room, so he’s on his way back and he sees this bloke coming down with one of our guitars. Who the fuck are you? he asks, and the guy answers, Oh, I’m taking this guitar down for Dougie… He goes, I’m fuckin’ Dougie… Smack! But they gave us an award for being the first band to sell out the Apollo three nights in a row.
Paisley boy Jack McDougall is one of many SAHBsters who remembers that Christmas fondly. ‘My neighbour, Charlie, knew Alex very well, and one night I sat and listened to his stories when they came back from the pub. He had hundreds – he’d go off in a tangent telling other tales, but he always came back to his original story, a–la Billy Connolly. I took them all in, although whether I believed them or not is another story… I never asked him if he’d really been a lion–tamer but I did ask him to tell me the story of Isobel Goudie. After a lesson on the history of witchcraft he said he’d tell me where to find the spot where the last witch was burned at the stake in Scotland. He said he’d tell me at the Apollo.
‘So at one of those three shows he sat down at the edge of the stage and told a witchy story. It was a three–thousand sell out, but I felt the story was only for me. Then he explained where to find the spot. Next day, I headed to the crossroads beside the Maxwellton Bar, waited for a break in the traffic, ran into the middle of the road – and there it was: a horseshoe embedded in the concrete. Alex’s story had been true. Again. I still look at the horseshoe every time I pass.’
