I'd had the odd smoke before, but I had decided to make a concerted effort to get hooked and see what all the fuss was about. I'd spend my school lunchtimes in the local independant record shop. "Discovery Records" was the place to be seen. Anybody who was anybody in the Stratford music scene could be found there thumbing through the singles, listening to the latest releases, talking music with the owner, and generally being cool. I'd stand around in my school uniform, smoking Menthol Dunhill Extra Mild, hoping some of this cool would rub off on me. Choosing menthol cigarettes and wearing a suit from Burtons wasn't a good start.
Word got around that I had a kit. Not surprising really considering a) the noise levels and b) I lived yards from the school gates. And, being in the music department, I got to witness the birth of such seminal bands as 'Lush Pal' and 'Hosia Silt' ( 'Phallus' and 'Halitosis' - transparent illustration of teenage, middle-class boys' preoccupations) whose heroes all were in famous bands where the guitars had two necks, tracks lasted six minutes minimum and the drummers, who couldn't be seen for tom-toms, needed an extra leg to play all the bass drums in front of them.
I remember one Stratford drummer who practised in his village hall - such was the enormity and volume of his kit - in front of four huge cabinets through which he played impossibly complex tracks from various prog-rock, super-groups. He knew every ting of a bell and tock of a block in these tracks and would reproduce the drum track as the record blared through this uber-pa system, while we stood round him in teenage awe at his second-hand skill. The highlight of the school disco one year was when this long-haired one took to the kit and played Aqualung with the rebels - soon to be accountants, speech therapists and civil engineers - of "Hosia Silt", complete with flashing lights and smoke machine. I watched, green with envy - and blue and red from the lights - rooted to the spot, engulfed in the smog like some panto villain.
So it was I found myself being driven one night with my own little kit to some house in rural Warwickshire to meet up with my new mate from the music lab, David, and some friends of his, to create some magic of our own. (My other mate, Dave, I hadn't seen for weeks. Rumour had it, he had completely disappeared up the music masters back passage, so we had given him up for dead.) The evening went well. The main man was four or so years older than us two and talented. He'd actually been involved with the guys from "Lush Pal" so had a musical pedigree that ensured total respect. The other member of our fledgling band was, wait for it, a girl! Yes, a girl. And not only a girl, but also a girl who had more street-cred than the rest of us put together. She mixed with the cool crowd and lived on a farm where all-night parties were a regular feature and, more to the point, she had the aura of someone who'd actually had sex. During one of our long Wimpy-based band discussions, John came up with the band name, "The Three Virgins" so no-one would know who the saddo's were - although, you would have thought, using that name in the first place invited unnecesary attention to our predicament. Sophie, of course, wasn't present at these meetings. She was always be off somewhere else, doing something impossibly cool, with a crowd we could only dream of walking on the same side of the street with, leaving us three lads free to talk utter drivel and weep into our milkshakes. David and myself were sixteen, John, the driving force, was twenty and Sophie must have been eighteen or so - although it seemed to me she could have been twenty-five, such was her sophistication and maturity compared to our utter hopelessness - so it was only a matter of time before I fell head-over-heels in love.
In a more lucid moment, John had decided - and we had agreed - to call ourselves "The Ideal Husbands". The literary reference was lost on me and I thought it was simply an ironic, social statement. It sounded good though and seemed to reflect our music; slightly intellectual and distinctly more tuneful than the current crop of post punk school-boy bands who were screaming into microphones in all the local pubs. Our songs were about the nuclear threat and the boredom of teenage country life, a refreshing alternative to the general hurling of abuse that constituted lyrics in those days. One band, The Verucas, had a ditty which went:
We dont need no (Bish Bash Bosh Bash)
Ed you ka tion (Bish Bash Bosh Bash)
You can stick it (Bish Bash Bosh Bash)
Up your arse-holes....
A strangly prophetic little number written three or so years before "The Wall ". Mind you, since these words were simply shouted and not sung, the case for plagiarism would be very shakey indeed. Rumour has it, the drummer now teaches in a Birmingham polytechnic and the singer (shouter) is a relationship counsellor working in Somerset.
We started rehearsing. John would arrive and play us whatever he had been working on and David and Sophie would join with him, creating chord sequences and a backing vocal - remember I was in my miming period - and then work a structure to the song as a whole. During this, I would be sitting at the kit doing what I jokingly called a roll on the drums. Drum-sticks weren't needed for this, merely a packet of liquorice papers and some tobacco. You would have thought I'd have already vicariously injested enough nicotine to last me a life-time through my piano teacher, but such is the power of peer mimicry, I had decided to take it up for myself.
I'd flirted with the evil weed before. This being Stratford, and us being idiots, our version of a 'Number 6' behind the bike sheds was a Slim Panatella in the beautiful New Place Gardens over the road from school. Why we chose to smoke cigars, I'll never fathom. Maybe, as there was always just the one smoke, there would never be any need to hide the eight or nine unsmoked fags in our uniforms. I certainly can't remember anyone else smoking anything so ridiculous, so the mimicry theory sort of goes out the window. And to be seen smoking such thing in public, would surely invite a severe kicking from local hard nuts. Be that as it may, I'd had the odd smoke before, but I had decided to make a concerted effort to get hooked and see what all the fuss was about. I'd spend my school lunchtimes in the local independant record shop. "Discovery Records" was the place to be seen. Anybody who was anybody in the Stratford music scene could be found there thumbing through the singles, listening to the latest releases, talking music with the owner, and generally being cool. I'd stand around in my school uniform, smoking Menthol Dunhill Extra Mild, hoping some of this cool would rub off on me.
Choosing menthol cigarettes and wearing a suit from Burtons wasn't a good start. I decided my presence in the shop wouldn't be missed so gave up on it for a while. The fags I perservered with, ditched Dunhill, flirted for one bronchitic month with Capstan Full Strength, and ended up with my own Sophie's Choice - the adored one smoked them: roll-ups with liquorice papers. And did I get through them! After one particularly long night, I scraped black bitumen from the inside of my nose. No doubt my lungs still retain the odd patch of tarmac within their delicate airways somewhere.
So I would sit there lining my nostrils with tar while the other three worked their alchemy. They would then leave their musical scrum and we would all play the new song together. Boom, Crack! Boom, Boom Crack! I was the back-bone of the band. Great.
And so it was. Each rehearsal, the huddle, a rolly, and my turn...Boom, Crack! Boom, Boom Crack!
Each new song would tackle different issues, have different sounds and arrangements, and, to each song I would add Boom, Crack! Boom, Boom Crack! I began to think that the only way to make life a bit more interesting was to get some more things to hit. I began to see how easy it was, as a drummer, to travel down that road, the end of which you had a seven foot diameter gong behind your head.
I took a trip to Birmingham and entered the world of the musical instrument shop. Torn between feeling legitimate and a complete fraud - sure, I was in a band, but they only had my word to prove it - I would browse nervously trying to look as though I was a musician of means and pedigree. The shop would be full of young guys probably pulling the same stunt, but to me, each of them exuded the extremely laid back style only supreme confidence can provide. Some of them even had the bravery to pick something up and play it, such was their unshakable sense of self-belief. The only thing I believed was that I looked a complete mummy's-boy-country-bumkin amid these fashionably scruffy, horribly trendy, metropolitan Brummys. Still I managed to nail my courage, Peter Rabbit style, and left the shop with the goodies.
Back in the rehearsal, I incorporated the new stuff in with my kit and sat behind it all, for the first time partially obscured by the hardware - the flashing lights and dry ice were only a small step away - and began to play. Boom, Crack! Boom, Boom Crack! (Pling!) Boom, Crack! Boom, Boom Crack! (Boing!) Boom, Crack! Boom, Boom Crack! (Patang!!) You get the picture.
The whole point in playing the drums, as far as I can see, is to be able to show off while being completely hidden. It's tight-rope walking with a safety net and harness. It's glory-getting with an out-getting clause written in. It's a roll of heavily loaded dice. All the gain with very little pain. Having said that, a drummer's cock-up is very hard to hide, especially live; and in those days of studio drum-kits, the whole drum track had to be recorded in one take, without any edits - still, at least no-one saw you make an arse of yourself stuck in your one-window, recording-studio apartment...Over a seven or eight month period, we played The Toll House, The Green Dragon, The Methodist Church Hall (David's parents pulled a few strings); an Anti-Racism thing in Sparkbrook, Birmingham; Marlborough College, Brenda's party ( lucky Brenda!) and Henly ("in Arden", not "on Thames"), ending this period of gigging at the Crown Hotel in Leamington on 6th August, 1980.
Marlborough college was a particularly memorable one. God knows how we ended up there. Maybe a friend of ours knew people there, but blimey what a night! One of our lot,"Boris" - so called because his surname was Colloff (natch) - swallowed seven pints of Stella and a couple of Tamazzies he'd taken from his gran's stash earlier (allegedly) and had to be restrained by "security" (three Marlborough College posh-boy prefects) after he'd completly lost it and tried to fight everyone within a hundred yards of him. The gig went pretty well but the real fun started afterwards.
I can't speak for the others, but I must admit I felt a little ill-at-ease, socially, among these supremely confident types. The plan was to stay over night in the place and make a week-end of it. Despite being seventeen at this point, I hadn't really done much overnighting, apart from at Sophie's farm, when band rehearsals (them) and unrequited love (me) went on into the early hours, and we all crashed out on sofas in various rooms. Well, I crashed on sofas. One morning I was horrified to learn that John and someone else had actually shared Sophie's bed and had taken photographs to prove it. There they were, laughing and horsing around in their t-shirts and pants (knickers). God how I envied their joie de jeuness, their laissee faire attitude. I was still so riddled with sexual tension, if Sophie slept within ten feet of me I could hardly breathe. One night it all became too much, and I decided to end it all in the farm's living room by drunkenly tying a large rope around my neck and asking my drinking partner, a denim-clad heavy metal biker in hiding from the police, to pull it - Oh, how we all laughed!
So, we all found ourselves in someone's dorm. It must have been quite big because there were at least twenty of us in there, all the band, loads of other people, a girl called Naomi who wouldn't stop talking to me for some reason and this smallish impy sort of guy with black permy, gypsy hair, who's cockiness both intimidated me and annoyed me at the same time. We'd all piled in there and Mr. Cocky got out two or three bottles of Vodka and Gin and, what was worse...much worse...his guitar.
With Naomi in my left ear and "hey jude" in my right, I was finding it impossible to get to be with the one girl in the room who mattered, not least because Mr. Impy was dominating proceedings and monopolising her company, dazzling her with his wit and whisky, singing bollocks at her for hours. Now, I know my hatred is completely unfair and he was probably a really nice bloke, but I doubt it.
Eventually, Naomi gave up, the strumming ceased and we all lay down for some kip. Through the course of the evening, I had managed to get myself pretty near to 'she who must be adored whole-heartedly' and, imagine my joy when she lay her head in the small of my back as we lay next to each other on the floor of laughing boy's room. I threw caution to the wind and gently stroked her hair as we both fell asleep. She didn't pull away. I was ecstatic. I lay there cradling her head in the darkness and gently drifted off. No man could have been happier. I woke a few hours later in the grey, morning light and again felt for her hair. She was still lying with me as she had been the night before. We had shared our first night. I opened my eyes and turned to see if she was awake. Sophie was still asleep, but the impish, gypsy-haired tosser lying on my back was very alert and looking as though all his ships had come in at once...
The Toll House was a venue on the outskirts of Stratford used as a disco-club for the over- twenty-fives. What was great about it was that the stage was very high up and the dance floor was huge so it felt like Madison Square Gardens in there when the house-lights were off and the coloured ones on; and you couldn't see out past the front where tens of screaming fans stood nursing their ciders and nodding. In a lovely twist of fate, David actually did play Madison Square Gardens twenty years later in his capacity as rock star. Apparently, it really was just like the Toll House on the Alcester Road!
Our slowly building reputation around Stratford meant that we came to the attention of Discovery Records, the small record shop where we all began our smoking habits. The guy who ran it felt that he could make some money out of us and decided to finance the recording of an album.
So it was that we found ourselves in Wellingborough in the same studio where Frank Ifield had yodled his way through many a hit. Not exactly an astonishingly rock and roll pedigree I think you'll admit, but, hey, we weren't complaining.
Surprisingly, I was the only one of the four who had had any recording experience. A couple of years previously, I had helped my uncle realise his dream of vinyl immortality by playing drums on the six or seven tracks he had written while working at EMI helping other people become famous. The highlight was a track called Desdemona. It was quite a slow track with a strong rthym (I can never spell that word, let alone hold it!) I had read in some music magazine that Phil Collins could alter the feel of a track by deciding to play on the beat, behind the beat, or just ahead of the beat. Well, I decided to play just behind it. Unfortunately, I also played before it, after it and also missed it completely throughout the painful two and a half minutes. How the recording engineers kept a straight face when I came back in from the drum booth I'll never know. The song is a family classic now and I can only apologise to my uncle whole heartedly for ruining his one shot at fame and forcing him to become a successful TV Producer.
Listening to the Ideal Husbands stuff now, it is surprising how accomplished it actually turned out to be! A single was "cut" and sold like hot cakes. The album was never committed to anything other than tape for some reason, although a London record company heard it and offered us a list of famous producers to choose from, but, by this time, David had had to leave us to concentrate on his A Levels and John was beginning to crumble under the pressure...