It’s been an unbroken spell of music for as long as I can remember.
My father would play Classical records, along with Tom Lehrer, Bing Crosby ,Frank Sinatra. My mother was heavily into poetry and the theatre. My Grandfather had an interest in electronics and built us a speaker cabinet, and added a lot of diverse songs on old 78’s. (The Andrews sisters, Swing tunes from the 1940’s, Cab Calloway, Louis Prima, etc. I would play all these, as well as soundtracks like ‘The sound of music’ and ‘West side story’).
Bit of George Formby too! We all need a bit of that. Don’t we?
My sister got hold of piles of old singles from the 50’s & 60’s and I immersed myself in it all. I knew every line of every song in the charts, and I was simultaneously learning every thing I could about Pop history,Rock‘n’roll, R&B and Soul.
I started making up tunes and putting terrible rhymes to them when I was about nine. I had a born talent for it. Then I
decided I should make up tunes and put good rhymes to them. I didn't have a born talent for that.
Marc Bolan was my first pop hero. Something about 'Ride a white swan' captured my imagination like nothing else had, and for the next few years, T.REX were the backdrop to my little world. Les Paul guitar boogie and stars on his cheeks.
Then came David Bowie and Ziggy stardust. And that was Glam rock all sewn up.
For a birthday present I asked for piano lessons, trying to get my stumbling musical ideas into some form that I could remember them. I was taught by the Polish musician and composer BM Macievsky (the sort of gentleman who kissed the hands of ladies upon introduction) for a couple of years, until it all became about rock bands and girls.
I was discovering a world of new music, a world that I had only glimpsed for years through intriguing record sleeves. Progressive rock was a journey, and I soon learned to filter the good from the, frankly, awful. GENESIS were the band that particularly captivated me, (until they abandoned their peculiar, beautiful and utterly unique musical world for a less unique and not so beautiful world of 80's pop.) At the same time, I had an interest in punk (I bought a Deep Purple album and a Sex Pistols single on the same day), and an ever-present eye on the pop charts. Confused, but in a good way.
Just before I left school, I formed my first band with a couple of friends. OASIS was the name, and I played drums. A singer into obscure mad German progressive band Amon Duul II joined, and we became OASIS II. As you do.
I was a hippie and a romantic: the yearning songs of Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson, the strange world of Peter Gabriel, the countryside & campfires of Jethro Tull, myths & legends and girls in flowing skirts & cheesecloth.
A colourful, sexy little world, really: Patchouli oil, grass, faeries, goblins, King Crimson jazz, Californian harmonies & old English folk.
This band evolved into HOBGOBLIN, when I teamed up with guitarist and school friend Steve Shoebridge.
I emerged from behind the drums to become a singer at this point. Long epics about distant planets, mystery tale goings-on in old mansions: folklore, mellotrons, : stories, make-up, masks and all!
When this lunacy came to an end, it couldn’t have been more different. I was listening to Greg Edward’s radio show and for a while everything was Jazz-Funk and Soul, and then Adam & the Ants (echoes of T.Rex), and New Romantic.
17 pleat trousers, pointy suede shoes and, er..scarves. Lots of them. The aroma of patchouli had been replaced by the aroma of hair gel.
And before long it was Joy Division and New Order and Echo & the Bunnymen and The Cure and The Teardrop Explodes and the Psychedelic Furs and Bauhaus…,
I formed THE CLOCKHOUSE, with guitarist John Taylor. From an ad in ‘Melody Maker’ came bassist Bogdan Blawat and we found Jon Marsh playing drums for another band (he went on to form The Beloved and had a few hits in the 90’s), before replacing him with local hero Dave Berk (from punk legends Johnny Moped and The Damned)
This was ‘alternative’ post-Joy Division stuff, and we released a single ‘Vanishing Point’, before splitting up when I decided to be a solo artist, more fool me.
I had come under the Bowie spell again, and my solo years were very influenced by his 60’s & 70’s period. We used to call them Bowie victims. Dear reader, I was one.
As getting into the Stones would lead you to discover Muddy waters and Elmore James and back further if you were open to it, Bowie always led you into other things so there was suddenly the Velvet Underground and Iggy & the Stooges, and eventually Brian Eno and then Phillip Glass and on and on.
I worked at the Marquee club when it was still in Wardour street, for a couple of years so I watched bands every single night of the week. Then it would be on to the St.Moritz across the street to drink with those same bands. Soho was a lot of fun then.
I stood on that stage so many times, but I never did get to play on it. Before I left I was one of those who helped to move the club to it's new premises on Charing cross road, and it was there, a few years later that I finally got to play the Marquee club. It was supporting Glen Matlock from The Sex Pistols, and he said something nice about my songs and I was one happy little rock & roller!
My backing group were named The Children of the Revolution, in a nod back to Marc Bolan, and we played all over. My songs were getting better but I wasn't comfortable as a solo stage performer at that time. I was … what’s the word? Terrible. That’s it.
My managers were Andy Fergusson, who had been behind The Undertones, and Nancy Phillips (who went on to
look after The Spice Girls), but stardom did not materialise (honest, it didn't), and I wanted to do something quite different.
SHOWGIRLS were quite different. Begun as a bit of light relief from the struggle of trying so hard, it was very rough and ready, initially, punk and mod-inspired. My then wife, Justine, whose idea it was, fronting it, and four blokes in eye-liner.
Targets and Telecasters.
I was on one guitar, Boggy (who had been in both The Clockhouse and The Children of the Revolution) on the other. (Today he is back on the bass in Hipster Ray)
Gary Crowley played our bish-bash-bosh ‘Pink Guitar’ demo tape on his GLR show and we began to attract attention.
From people. Real people. And some music business types, as well.
Jez Miller answered our ad for a drummer, and things got underway. One of my favourite people. (Today he drums for Steam-Punk kings The Men who won't be blamed for nothing).
“Blondie on amphetamines” said the music press, who had come up with ‘the new wave of new wave’, in their silly way, and we were coming across other bands with a similar attitude. A scene was forming, as scenes will. Blur were star-shaped.
We put out a single ‘Saturation Saturday’ on our own Explosion! label and it began to be played on the new XFM station. We worked our way through one manager and Jungle records before signing with Poppy records, started for us by Tot Taylor (Mari Wilson, Advertising).
The music press soon snapped their ironic fingers and renamed the scene ‘Britpop’. OASIS - not my Oasis but (the cheek of
it!) a different one - had turned up, and within a year the party had gone a bit national newspaper. This obviously did us an
awful lot of good. Ha! Did it…,!
One of the bands I have always loved to read about are The Who, and Pete Townshend was probably my main influence at
that time. I was always fascinated by the tensions within that group. In Showgirls, I understood it. We had a lot of fun in that band. It could also be a war zone.
We recorded though, with producer Mick Glossop (Waterboys etc) in Japan and played some fabulous shows over there, but on our return, following another round of gigs on the university circuit, the band began to fall apart. A new line-up with John Spooner and Ben Ellis played some shows, but it was short-lived. (Today Ben plays bass for Iggy Pop).
The band had released five singles, but our album (Secondary Modern) remains unreleased. EMI had put us into the studio with a view to signing the band, our single was on national radio, but business was done, perhaps, in a way differently to that which it could have been (how’s that for plain speaking?!)
Mr. Taylor went off to run a Soho art gallery.
By spring ‘98 it was all over, as was the Britpop era, and before long my marriage too. I spent the next few years picking up the pieces, concentrating on being a dad, and didn’t write a song again until 2001.
It was called ‘So good to see you’, and it made me finally realise that it was Songwriting, far more than performing that I cared most about. I had had a lot of fun with bands, and gigs, and clothes, and images, and haircuts and attitudes.
But now, purely as a writer, no longer having to conform to attitudes and images, I could write whatever I felt like.
Very liberating, that!
I had long since begun to loathe the music business, but when I finally began to write seriously again I found that the music business as we had known it was no more. Today it is a very different beast. (Not much of a beast at all really.)
My heart had found a home at last, in 2003 when I met Elle, and songwriting soon jostled for time with being a Dad again. And before I could say “I appear to now be a father of three!” I found I was now a father of three.
I began demoing songs for an album that began as an attempt to showcase my songwriting for other artists.I put together my studio and spent the next six months recording an album I called 'UNCHAINED', which I put out for free streaming in the summer of 2011.
A lot of the songs I was writing I realised were very, y’know…me, so I decided to put my own album out with myself as the slightly reluctant artist. And make the best album I could make.
For now.
So 'WAITING FOR A MIRACLE' was bashed into shape, over many months and the odd year or two and you can finally get to hear it here.
It took longer to make than it's taken you to read this, probably. I had the odd distraction.
So why do we feel the need to work away for so long at these projects?
I know I do it because I want to, and I love to, but mostly because I have to! It’s just who I am.
It’s just who I am? Did I just put that? Oh dear.
But then I did decide to call a song ‘Back in the day’.
No matter how bad or good we think a song is, it’s the great songwriters, and the magical musicians and artists who inspire us to do it. For me, everyone from Rogers & Hammerstein and Lennon & McCartney; Bjorn Ulvaeus & Benny Anderson; Elton &Bernie, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and Jimmy Webb and Lamont Dozier, Harry Nillson, Ray Davies, Brian Wilson and Pete Townsend and…the list is long, and we can all add or replace our own.
In the end though, it’s all subjective and you just like what you like and love what you love.
I never feel tied now to one thing in music anymore, so don’t expect the same thing all the time.
I hope you find something you’ll like. Or even love.
Love is better.
