I had a phone call off my old friend Tony Potter in December 07. He was on a drunken night out with the No Exit boys, and I spoke to Tony, Graham and Dave Evans. I was touring at the time with pop combo Take That and was surprisingly sober, wishing I was with them. Some of the sense I managed to get out of them was that Tony was still involved in Health & Safety in Dubai, which always makes me smile because Tony was never healthy and definitely not safe. Dave was still a laird on the banks of the North Sea and also there was a new No Exit/The Vow website and the release of the ‘Songs from the Wilderness’ cd which Graham kindly dropped off the next day or so. A few days later I had a spare couple of minutes, so I had a look at the website. 3 hours later I was still there, looking at 25 year old photos and reading Graham’s and the band’s history, which was absolutely fantastic and only a few pages short of ‘War and Peace’. I was surprisingly pleased to come out of it in good stead and not the treacherous ship jumper I probably was.
Seeing the pictures of all of us looking young and trim, had me holding back the tiers. I wasn’t upset. I was in a wedding cake shop and there had just been an earthquake. We were pretty lucky having Dave and his camera around to capture the moments - photos of a young Leon, who is still my closest friend, but especially photos of my mother, Rosalie, who died in 1984. We haven’t got too many photos of her. Thank you for that. During my conversation with Graham, he asked me what I had been doing all this time, and I thought “Fuckin’ hell - what have I been doing?” 25 years - age 20 to 45. How do I begin to remember? Graham said to write it down; so here goes. I’m making a start now. Let’s see how far I get……..let’s see how far I get. Let me know if I start to repeat myself.
I got my first big break with Graham and Martyn - no doubt about it, my first band that played its own material. Late teens, early twenties, walking tall, you felt special. You never knew what was round the next corner, didn’t care about money, didn’t care about the outside world. You were in a band and it sounded fuckin’ great. Graham poured his heart into every song, pumping bass lines, great choppy guitars by Martyn in his dodgy shirts, and me growing up and learning about life behind a drum kit. I loved it all.
I had been in a band called Protégé, playing mainly covers with old school friends John Widders, Ray Shepherd and Sue McCormack singing, and a big bass player with an Orange amp whose name I can’t remember - although I remember the name of his amp. Our first gig was in Morrison school hall (now Tesco’s, Mather Avenue) in January 80. I just missed out playing in the 70s by a month (the decade not the temperature). It was like a school talent show, even though we had left by then. Equal Temperament, who were the early Christians, played on the same bill but, unlike us, their amp never blew up mid gig. We played ‘Brown Sugar’, ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ and a version of ‘Purple Haze’ that was way beyond our musicianship. Maybe the amp blowing was an act of God or the vibrations of a shocked Jimi Hendrix turning in his grave.
I went along to the Ministry studios for the audition with No Exit and was immediately impressed with the proper rehearsal studios, even though in months to come I was to get the band into trouble for covering the freshly painted walls with No Exit graffiti. Don’t know how I intended to get away with that. The guys and I had to repaint the studio to avert a hefty charge. Previously, with Protégé, we had rehearsed in a room above Ray Shepherd’s dad’s pub in Tuebrook. Auditions were hard for drummers. A guitarist can generally walk up 2 flights of stairs with a guitar in one hand and an amp in the other. You’ve passed or you’ve failed. “OK. Goodbye”. The poor drummer has four trips up the stairs with drums, hi-hats, stands etc…Then he’ll take 20 minutes to set the kit up. If he fails, its another 15 minutes to take it down, four journeys back down the stairs - all in an uncomfortable atmosphere of nobody knowing quite what to say. “You were a great drummer, but we have a strict no mullet rule” etc….. I think that’s why someone invented Simmons kits - those little hexagonal electronic things favoured by eighties legend Kelly Maries’ drummer who, if you remember, stood up (which is very wrong) when the line ‘my heart it beat like a drum’ came in the single ‘It feels like I’m in love’ and bashed his Simmons kit to simulate a heart beat. Why do I remember this and forget important things? Anyway, I passed the audition and was in a proper band.
Graham documented the gigs we played really well in the No Exit band history on the website and has a far better memory than most. I remember going from a clean cut young man to wearing a scarf around my head, make-up, leather trousers (well, plastic - I couldn’t afford leather) and dodgy string vests. Also during my No Exit years I went from a not very good motor mechanic living at home to having a flat in Lark Lane, having my first taste of proper freedom, parties, girls, clubbing, smoking pot (even though Zammo advised me not too). Good times!
Since Graham and Martyn gave me my first taster of the music industry, I have climbed many hills, slipped down many a slippery slope and reached many crossroads (Aigburth Road/Mersey Road being one) but, luckily enough, I have stayed in the music industry whether it be as a drummer, percussionist, drum roadie (or drum technicians as they like to be called), lighting designer, tour manager or merchandiser (textile technician). As Dick Emery & Richard Burton would have said: “25 years in show business, darling.” Throughout my journey I have come across some of the greatest people you would ever wish to meet, with a liberal sprinkling of arseholes thrown in for good measure. I have been involved with 3 bands who had record deals and, bizarrely, all 3 bands peaked at number 87. So I have been at number 87 in the charts not once, not twice but thrice - fucking weird. I have heard some great stories, like Hank Marvin turning up at a venue on the first day of a Shadows tour and saying “I’m me, where’s catering?” I have also sat in a catering room in a venue in Helsinki when on tour with Eric Clapton. The great man came in and started to make a speech and finished off with “Tonight will be my last ever gig.” Eric Clapton just retired in front of me. I thought “For fuck’s sake, Eric. Get a move on. My steak’s getting cold.” Anyway, I shall try to fill in the blanks between No Exit and Take That…..It’ll only take a minute.
My dates might be all over the place. My memory is not as good as it should be, but I can get Leon to check times and dates - he has a far better memory than me. As Graham said, I drifted away in 83. There wasn’t any animosity between us. I just had to try new things. I had recently left home and got my first place, which was chaos as you would imagine. I was going to The State Ballrooms on a Thursday and downstairs in Jody’s on Stanley Street where it didn’t matter which toilet you used, men’s or women’s, make up on stage - the whole 80’s hit, where you weren’t anybody unless you had an industrial sized can of hairspray in your pocket.
In 83 I joined up with ex Visual Aids singer Peter Carroll and his new band Danse Macabre as a percussionist. We had Paul on guitar, Graham Gallant on drums, Pete Chegwin (Keith’s cousin) on keyboards and Karl (Anthony) Green on bass, and we were managed by a record shop in Bootle. Bricks and mortar don’t make good managers - everyone knows that, so we eventually got the shop owners involved (Billy & another good guy –not sure of his name). They couldn’t have been that good at managing because they failed to tell us that we had spelt ‘dance’ wrong. Peter was a bit of a poor man’s Pete Burns and liked to make out he was far more important than he really was, and was prone to telling a few porkies, but he was a bloody good singer. Graham got very paranoid, thinking I had been brought in to replace him on drums. We assured him not. His job was safe. He mentioned it again so we sacked him for being paranoid, and I was moved to drums. Sometime later outside Planet X in Concert Street, disgruntled ex drummer Graham came at me with a knife, intending no good. It was a lucky day for me because as he approached me, knife in hand, a car screeched to a halt, and 4 of the biggest bouncers you have ever seen got out. I knew one of them, and they had witnessed the whole thing. Graham scurried off - never to be seen again and I realised what a lucky bastard I was. We released a self financed single to make us feel important with our relatives and small fan base, played lots of gigs at The Warehouse (Wood Street), The System (Temple Street) and even one in Middlesboro, which we travelled up to locked in the back of a Luton van. We played the hopping game, where you had to hop up and down but couldn’t touch each other or the sides of the van or the equipment on the floor. With 10 of us it was a bizarre sight.
We eventually sacked our management because we needed a scapegoat. We got new management based in Penny Lane called Ettinger and Ettinger who, funnily enough, were brothers. God knows where they came from. They didn’t have too much musical knowledge but seemed to be able to talk the talk. Their only other client was Worzel Gummidge - a TV scarecrow played by Jon Pertwee who was enjoying a prolonged summer season popping up at the Liverpool garden festival asking for aunt fucking Sally. So, picture the scene: these two managers at the head of a conference table, five weird 80’s looking guys in full make up, and a life-sized statue of Worzel at the other end of the table. The time had come to move on…….
I joined up with No Exit enemies Dark Continent, later DDA Seeks (can’t remember the spelling but he was a French footballer). They were all great musicians and I felt privileged to be on the same stage. Gordon Longworth, formerly in a band I used to see at the old Star and Garter (a place we once played with No Exit and we had to do 3 sets instead of 2 because of my dodgy stomach/arse combination) whose name escapes me, played guitar. He then, after a trip to Germany, changed his stage name to Gordon Morgan, which I thought was great. He just needed to meet a girl called Alice Klarn and it would have been a match made in Hebron, wherever that is. Paul Polturak played bass and was fucking brilliant - didn’t say much, didn’t need to. John Geddes sang and, I think, was involved with Extremes boutique in the basement off Button Street. I can’t remember why I stopped playing for them. Maybe they split? I don’t know. Their almost claim to fame was that The Smiths were due to support them at The Warehouse in Wood Street, but broke down on the way over from Manchester - their fucking loss.
In 85 ish I remember being involved with Joey Musker and the drum marathon - a 36 hour gig at the Royal Court where the drumbeat couldn’t stop for 36 hours. All the top Liverpool bands played - Bunnymen, Pale Fountains, Icicle Works. It was a drugs awareness gig, although you needed to be aware of drugs to get you through 36 hours of drumming. I played with a host of bands as a second drummer which meant you had to keep a hi-hat beat between the bands’ songs; hence the 36 hours non-stop drumming. I did play a proper set at the show for La La Bam Bam with Jeff Skellon and Mark Kemp, who later I was to join up with on the People Get Ready project a few years later. I still keep in touch with Jeff who’s a fellow merchandiser with the same company. Later that year, through a friend, Phil Coxan (later with OMD), I played with This Island Earth at Liverpool’s version of Live Aid at the Empire. This Island Earth had just gone top 40 with a single called ‘See that Glow’ which was more famous for being Gary Davies’ jingle on Radio 1 …..Alas this was the last time I played drums; the flag on the town hall went to half mast - a bit like Bay City Rollers trousers but without the tartan...
I tell a lie. There were a few more performances via rock ‘n’ roll / punk band Shattered Dolls. Goff and Lou took ‘living the life’ to excess. They were brothers, mad as a box of frogs and great fun. They would call round to my flat and say “We have a gig tomorrow. Will you come and play?” I would tell them that I didn’t know any of their songs. Their reply was always “Neither do we. We’ll get you mashed.” “OK - count me in”, I’d say. So I had a set list with the names of the songs and fast, slow or mid tempo next to them. We did some great gigs….or did we? We always got mashed before the show. Once we played a show somewhere in London. We were all in the back of an old transit van along with the equipment, and we were parked in an alleyway behind the gig. We had finished playing and had the van loaded when I noticed that Lou had the promoter against the wall by his throat. He was trying to stiff us with the money. The shaky promoter handed the cash over and ran back into the club. We all jumped into the back of the van and accelerated off up the alleyway just as an angry mob stormed out the back of the club and started chasing us. It was like a scene from an Indiana Jones film. We got a safe distance away when Lou suddenly shouted “Stop.” We screeched to a halt and Lou jumped out of the back. Now, not a lot of people know this, but when being chased by an angry mob, there is always one who is faster (not necessarily harder) than all the others. Lou, having realised this, flattened him a right hander, jumped in the back of the van and we screeched off again, all in the blink of an eye. The mob must have been only three foot from the door as we accelerated off. Lou was always entertaining. I hadn’t seen them for a few years, and I was sitting in my flat when the bell went. It was Lou. “Do you want a goat?” he said. “I live in a first floor flat. What the fuck would I want with a goat?” I pointed out. I asked where this goat was and he said “In my car”. So I looked out of the window and the goat was sitting in the back seat of an Austin Maxi, with the radio on.
In the summer of 86 Leon and I worked in a number of bars and eventually got entrusted with running a wine bar in sunny Aberystwyth. It was a beautiful bar on the quayside. The two of us, along with Paul Gibson, trundled off to Wales for a summer of madness in Paul’s Austin Princess with the keys to the wine bar firmly in our pocket. We opened the door, checked the place out….and had a few drinks. The next day, the cleaner turned up to find the three of us asleep on top of the bar. “Good morning. We’re the new management.” We found out that the regular clientele was in the 30-50 year bracket, an age alien to us. We realised that a quarter of the town’s population were students, so we set off on a mission to rid the place of old fogies and to get the students in. The Sex Pistols and The Clash played full blast soon solved this problem. We turned down many requests to lower the volume. In fact, it was our policy to turn the music up when a complaint came in - much to the amusement of the students who’d started to come in. The clientele soon changed.
For some bizarre reason, we told the locals that all of us were called Malcolm, and what a strange coincidence it was. Amazingly we kept it up for 2 months. The three Malcolms of Aberystwyth had arrived. We had a good summer. We were even extras in a movie about First World War Canadian soldiers, starring some bloke from Alien 3. Leon once walked the length of the high street inside a fridge / freezer cardboard box, stopping on the zebra crossing until the drivers left their cars to move it. Then he would run off like a version of frozen chicken. My brother Jimmy came down from Yorkshire one weekend in a minibus with 15 friends all wearing all-in-one Victorian stripy bathing costumes. They went out and hit the town, all still in their swimming attire. When they returned, some of them thought it would be a good idea to borrow a boat. They found an old rotted rowing boat and set sail up the estuary. Unbeknown to them, in deepest Wales, especially a seaside town, they don’t look upon this too kindly. So, at 2am there was this boat in the middle of the river with 5 drunken Yorkshire men in it, all in old fashioned bathing costumes, and a police van on either bank with searchlights and megaphones. “Come in. Come in”, the megaphones screeched. By now the rotted boat was taking in a lot of water. Ankle deep in sea water, the Yorkies (being good seafarers) decided to go down with their ship. All stood up rigid, their bodies in full salute, they slowly went down with their ship. We picked them up, still shivering, from the police station the next day.
We used to hold regular music nights with local bands and bands we would bring down from Liverpool on a petrol money / beer / somewhere to crash type of deal. I remember how Suicide Stars with their totally naked drummer, Stuart, always went down well with the old fogies we were trying to be rid of. My cousin Andor and his jazz band used to be frequent visitors. They would pitch tents in the beer garden, play a couple of sets over the weekend and busk on the high street in the afternoon. I would sometimes join them on bongos - my first taste of busking, and I liked it……
Throughout the next year, I went busking with Andor quite a lot. He had a boogie box he had made himself out of a car stereo, kick ass speakers and various motorbike batteries. We had drums, keyboard and bass on the backing tapes. Andor played a mean sax and I learnt percussion until my hands bled. We played jazz standards, bebop and a bit of Rolf Harris and called ourselves Malcolm and the Tree People after my Welsh name and a full size hollow tree that I kept in my flat, for emergencies. Because I had been in a band, I felt a bit weird about busking (musician’s ego and all that), so we solved this problem by busking with brown paper bags over our heads. We cut holes for the eyes and mouth and travelled the country. We played in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and London; just about anywhere we knew someone would put us up for the night. We would sign on, tour the country for a fortnight then sign on again, making just enough for food, petrol and a night on the piss. Good simple times. Leon played with us in the early days on wobble board. We would always have a chair, kettle and a selection of cakes, and we would randomly pick out a pensioner, sit them down and give them a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake - all with the bags on our heads, of course. Once, in Liverpool, some kids started throwing bottles as us. We chased and caught one of them, unscrewed a bin on Bold Street, put the kid in it and screwed it up again so that just his face was showing where you put the litter. We kept him in there for 20 minutes while he put on a great show shouting abuse at us. It was like a busker’s Guantanamo Bay.
We got quite a few offers of gigs while busking and always turned up “fully bagged up”. We once got an offer from a university which wanted us for a ball. They said if we get a band together we would get £50 a person. So we rallied round and got a band together including four percussionists. The compere introduced us. The curtains came back and there we were - all nine of us in paper bags, and a very confused audience. “Anyone here from the dole?” Andor opened with…fucking priceless. It was thanks to the busking that I am doing what I do now. A guy called Dave Murrant who was the bass player with the European Boys, stopped and asked me to come down to the Ministry for an audition. So off came the bag. I passed the audition and joined a band again. Wide eyed and bagless!
It was just into 87 that I started working behind the scenes as well as playing. Alan Lynch, who I knew from playing football with the ad-lib PA crew, had just started tour managing a band called Jo Jo and the Real People who had Gordon Morgan and Phil Coxan in its ranks. He knew I had played drums, so he and Phil suggested me for the drum roadie job. I would be working for a drummer called Dave Riley, who was a great drummer and very patient with me. Sarah & Tina, otherwise known as the Creamy Whirls, were the backing singers - and very young. Chris and Tony Griffiths were the song writing force behind them. They were a great pop band, and their first single was a cover of ‘Lady Marmalade’, which I had various Stock, Aitkin and Waterman white label versions of, even before any of those fuckers had heard of Michaela Strachen. The second single, ‘One by One’, was turned into a worldwide hit by Cher ten years later. The Griffiths brothers got a nice little studio out of it, and Cher got her cred back…for a bit!
The band eventually split, with Dave Riley joining a band called 2am along with a guy called Mark from out in the sticks and Dave Lloyd, who was a rocker of high calibre and famous for singing on the flake advert “Only the crumbliest flakiest chocolate, tastes like chocolate…….” Anyway, you get the picture. Also by a strange quirk of fate they asked cousin Andor to play sax, and Alan Lynch became their tour manager. Bring it on! So now, armed with a tuning key and a mini maglite I embarked on my first tour - 2am supporting Chris Rea all over Europe on a six week tour. Fuckin’ ell!.....More like “The Road to Fuckin’ ell”. Speaking of which, in my time, I have been on the road to Hull, the road to Rouen (pronounced ruin) and the rocky road (Colorado). Anyway, I’m di-gressing, which is a Welsh name; a bit like di-rea which brings me back to Chris.I learnt the job pretty fast, thrown in at the deep end. Alan taught me the ropes. He used to work for the Q-tips back in the day, who were Paul Young’s first successful band. Andor and I made full use of the queue each night and couldn’t quite shake off our busking roots. Once we went busking outside our hotel in Paris. It was a five star job opposite the Louvre, A stuffy concierge in a top hat came out and tried to move us on. We pulled out our key cards and said “Residents”. He scurried off looking very confused .We had a great time travelling round Europe in a dodgy mini bus with a dodgy clutch. It was our first proper European experience and, when I came back, I was a European Boy. Excuse the fucking cheese.
The European boys were Alan Currie (and his two piece kit) on drums, Dave Murrant on bass, Peter Suffield on guitar, Martin on keys, my friend Sue Forshaw on backing vocals and Jerry Valentine on vocals. I don’t think Valentine was his real name, as Perry Pineapple, which I had recently changed my handle to, wasn’t mine. I had my photo taken in Rudys’ for the Merseymart, and the photographer asked my name. I said the first one that came into my head. It was a plot to confuse the DHSS which may or may not have had a blitz on percussionists earning £10 a night. When I was a kid there used to be rubber people fruit that you put over the end of your pencil -Cecil Corncob etc... There was a Percy Pineapple; hence Perry Pineapple; hence my childhood nickname of Piney.
Karen was the manager of the band and had a vibe of Margaret Thatcher about her. She could have a bit of a temper. You couldn’t stretch your arms in front of her in case she closed your pits. She cared deeply about the band and worked tirelessly to not much avail. There was a lot of talent round at the time. In a make or break move, we booked into Nomis rehearsal studios in Shepherds Bush, and spent two days playing in front of various A & R guys. Nobody came in for us but, on a positive note, next door were Status Quo. I remember phoning my brother Jimmy when Francis Rossi was standing behind me and giving him the “Guess who’s standing behind me” sketch. We were quite the fans in our early life, sad fuckers. We played Rudy’s, Daley’s Dandelion and the Firehouse in Bootle amongst others. If there is one thing I am eternally grateful for, it is the fact I met my wife, Donna, at one of the gigs in the Firehouse. Her brother, Terry, was a mate of Peter Suffield, and Donna had been dragged down to the gig with the lads because a mate had let her down. We have been inseparable ever since. Thank you for that European boys.
When Andor and myself returned from the 2am tour, we found ourselves in an audition with 16 Tambourines who I vaguely knew from practicing in the Ministry. We were both on a high from touring Europe, and turned up with a litre of whisky which we finished during the course of the audition. We hit the last note, collapsed on the floor and looked up to see Steve Roberts shouting “You’re in.” Steve was the singer, with Tony Elliott on bass (‘Welly it Elliott”, as he was called on the football field) Tony MacGuigan on drums, Mike Moran, guitar, the enigmatic Dave Oliver on keys and Sue Forshaw once again on backing vocals. 16 Tambourines were a power pop band who some people would compare to Deacon Blue who were at their peak at the time. With the Tambourines I felt the most confident of any band I have worked with that we were going to make it. We were ready for the big time. We had record company interest. Even though I had heard that line before, I believed it this time. We had sacrificed our jobs in readiness. “Let’s be ‘aving yer” as the great Delia Smith would say in years to come.
Instead of following the normal route and going to London to chase the deal we got the record company to come to us, instead of booking the premier venue in town, we chose my local, the Botanic pub in Wavertree. We put a lighting rig and a pa system in, and nearly blew the fucking roof off. The man from Arista loved it, and we had a deal. We’d made it! No more rehearsal fees. New equipment all round. We had Andy Docherty doing the sound (who was and still is one of the best around) and Woody, (aka Mr Fantasy) who we knew from the party circuit, on lights. We went to The Chapel studio in Lincolnshire to record the album - the first time any of us had been to a residential studio. We came back with ‘How Green is your Valley’ which still sounds good when you play it today.
We toured the country 88/89. We supported Dion at the Old Town and Country club in London. We toured with Squeeze - the last tour Jools Holland did with them. We toured with Hue and Cry and we toured with Wet Wet Wet on an arena tour. We played the NEC in Birmingham three times and the SECC in Glasgow five times, as well as Wembley arena twice. Looking out to crowds of 10,000 was an amazing experience. One of our claims to fame is that we were the first band to play at Aberdeen Arena. It was Wet Wet Wets’ gig but we were the support band. So, technically…….
I had one of my rare TV appearances with 16 Tambourines on Granada reports, the local evening news show hosted by the legendary Bob Greaves. We mimed along to ‘How Green is your Valley’ on Fort Perch Rock in New Brighton. I nearly missed it because I was returning from one of Jimmy’s legendary parties in Yorkshire, and got the call as soon as I got back to my flat in Botanic Road. I had half an hour to get to New Brighton. I put on a daft shirt, hopped on the bus to town still smelling of Yorkshire. I just about made it but I looked rough, which wasn’t all bad. We came across really well and Steve looked like a pop star waiting to happen during the interview. At least it gave out parents something to video, although you had to edit out the bit where Bob says something about 76 trombones. I think there was a writers strike or something!
Touring was a joy; all crammed into our tour mini bus with Kathy, our Manchester tour manager, at the wheel; a new adventure every day. It was a very ‘Smokey’ bus, and we had to cope with Woody’s magic tree addiction, but we laughed hard every day and played some great shows. We also had some great parties in the basement rehearsal room. Woody would set up his solar 250 projectors and we would have almighty jam sessions. We once came back from a gig to find the basement under 3 ft of water, with all of our equipment floating around. The porn cinema next door had burnt down, and all the firemen’s water had run into our basement. Never did smell the same - the rehearsal room as opposed to the porn cinema.
We released the singles ‘(Baby) There is Nothing Going on’. At least I think ‘baby’ was in brackets (what does that mean in a song title?) and also ‘How Green is your Valley’ (no brackets) to great critical apathy, and one of them peaked at number 87 in the charts - I can’t remember which. Unless you were a subscriber to industry magazine, Music Week, you might have missed our climb up the charts, but still, we recorded and released a bloody good album. I think in hindsight, or foresight, (Bruce foresight) the timing was all wrong. Musical tastes were changing, the whole Madchester scene was happening, nobody wanted nice clean pop bands anymore. But hey, what a great time was had while it lasted, and great friendships were forged - especially with Steve and Tony. We still meet up regularly. Steve is still singing and writing amazing songs and has a very successful acoustic network. Tony Mac is drumming with the Real People, Dave is a pilot (flying planes, as opposed to singing ‘January’) and Tony Elliott runs an acoustic night and is also in a U2 tribute band and he’s living close to the ‘edge’.
The musicians’ hangout at the time was Rudy’s on Cumberland Street - a venue that could possibly squeeze in 150 people. Les and Sue Quail ran the place, and there seemed to be bands playing on most nights of the week. Being one of the only percussionists in Liverpool, I was asked to play with quite a few of them. As I wasn’t signed to the Tambourines or Arista, I had the freedom to play with other bands - sort of session musician status but without the talent! I must have played Rudy’s twice a week with various bands. I played with Look out Oscar with my old mate Tony Potter, One More Story with Dave Goldberg, Andy Zsigmond and Mark Roberts. I also played with Blue Prelude with my good friend Guy Davies and the Everett brothers. Guy was six foot two and the smallest member of the band by far. The band were unofficially christened “The Big Lads”. Their manager Paul Beecham (aka Spike) was a local photographer and an all round good bloke. He took us once again to Nomis studios in London to showcase for the lazy London A & R, again to not much avail. This time, next door, were Bros - Matt and Luke Goss. We got a guided tour by Luke around their equipment, and they turned out to be ok blokes. They had a few crates of champagne that had been bought by their record company in celebration of hitting the top of the charts, and they said we could help ourselves to a bottle. We helped ourselves to a crate and ran past the Brosettes outside with a blanket over Phil’s head, pretending he was Matt or Luke. I don’t think we fooled them due to the fact that Matt wasn’t six foot nine and would be the least likely to be jumping into the back of a Leasowe Van Hire transit with a case of stolen champagne. We ended up drinking the crate sitting on the roof of the infamous Columbia hotel. If you’re reading this, Bros, we owe you nothing!........ or maybe we do.
Of the bands I played with, Blue Prelude were big but The Persuaders were bigger - bloody millions of us. I think eleven at the last count. Full Soul experience, all original songs with a big big sound - brass section, backing vocals, percussion, led by John Jenkins and John Kennedy. We also had Siobhan Mayer and Paul Speed in our ranks who later found success in River City People. We played some great gigs at the Royal Court and Devonshire House, among others. The gig I remember most was the night of the Hillsborough disaster when we played over the water and nobody wanted to be there. “The show must go on” and all that, but it was painful, heart breaking especially as my brother was at the match and had just told me over the phone what he had seen that day.
We played a few times at my local, The Botanic. Desi the landlord was into his music, and we had some great nights there. The Tambourines got signed there. The Persuaders somehow fitted onto the tiny stage and blew the roof off again. I even had my engagement and 30th birthday parties there, with The Tambourines, Rain and The Real People (among others) playing, as well as some almighty jam sessions with a full Hammond organ set up and Guy Davies going mad playing it with most of his body - all in a tiny local. Desi went on to buy Chillies on Wavertree High Street, and still supports the musicians. Guy, at the last count, was musical director for Australian musical royalty Jimmy Barnes, co-producing with George Martin’s son, Giles, and recording with Kevin McAlmont. He was even on Top of the Pops playing with Elton John and Marcella Detroit - not bad for a ginger!
In my time, I played with more bands than Paula Yates but, between gigs, since meeting Woody, the lighting designer with 16 Tambourines, I took an interest in lighting. He had a relatively new lighting business, Mr Fantasy, and a collection of solar 250 projectors which were really popular at the time .He would take me out on jobs and let me operate for the support band which I really enjoyed, and I found that I wasn’t too bad. My timing was good and, thanks to watching Woody, I could use light really well. Woody was a great teacher. I learnt about colours, mood and programming .He kept all his rig, at the time, in his flat in Kensington and we would trundle back there at 3am after a job, crashing the lights through his communal hallway.
After a while I could take the rig out on jobs on my own - Hardman House, Krazy House. It was a job I really enjoyed and I got a lot of creative satisfaction. Woody was tied in to the Manchester scene and was working with James and Happy Mondays. The business was expanding and Woody had quite a few commitments by now. The jobs were coming thick and fast. The time was approaching to send me out on my first lighting tour. I was sent along to International 2 in Manchester to join up with The Charlatans on the first day of their tour. Admittedly, I had never heard of them. They were hanging onto the shirt tails of the Manchester scene, even though the singer was from Northwich and the rest of them were from Wednesbury, in the Midlands. I was setting up the rig, programming, focussing & general problem solving for their lighting designer Ian, who had a very unfortunate tattoo of Donald duck on his upper arm. He said he got it when he was very young. I thought that sounded about right! This was my first time on a tour bus, and I thought it was fantastic - ten beds, two lounges, kitchen, games consoles and videos and a fridge full of alcohol, leather seats, even a sandwich with your name on it after the load out (fucking great!) and chefs travelling with you on the road. Heather Mills would give her right leg for this job!
We played a show at the old Town and Country club (later The Forum) in London, and I remember we were all crammed into a van in the back parking lot, listening to the chart rundown - ‘The Only One I know’ had been released a couple weeks previous. We waited and waited, realising it must be top ten. It came in at number 8. With my track record, I remember being pretty impressed but, most of all, it was just good to be there, watching their faces, happy for them. The Charlatans got bigger and eventually changed lighting companies. Mr Fantasy didn’t have the rig to do a theatre sized tour. I got talking to the drummer, Johnny, and eventually got the drum tech’s job on their first album tour. Thing were going well, the tour was sold out and I was off again round Europe with my new mop haired Midland Manc mates. The album did well worldwide, and we were about to leave Europe and tour the world for the next six months but, alas, I got a phone call off a band called 25th of May offering me another shot at fame. What was I to do - world tour with all the financial security that comes with it or join another bloody band? Of course, I joined the band.
The 25th of May was a rap/rock sort of band, led by the very right on Swindelli. They had just signed to Arista, and they offered me part of the record deal and also part of the publishing deal, which I thought was very kind of them since I have never written a song in my life. Ed was on guitar, Nigel, a very fine fellow from Middlesbrough, played bass, DJ Jimmy Jazz on the decks, Jabba playing drums and Swindelli on vocals. We released the singles ‘Solid State Logic’ and ‘What’s Going on’ - one of them getting to number 87, funnily enough. I was getting a name for myself with the Music Week readers. They also released the album ‘Lenin and McCarthy’, which I think was a pun. But by then I had been sacked - right on. They wouldn’t have sacked me if I was a lesbian coalminer. Never again! I was finished with being in a band - the bullshit, the politics, the way the record company brown nose round the singer and ignore everyone else. The love affair was over. The charlatan had been discovered. I was never that good and I just couldn’t be arsed anymore. Thank you 25th of May for putting me out of my misery. I would have taken the sacking really hard had they gone on to succeed and conquer the world. But luckily they disappeared up their own arse!
Never again.
I turned my full attention to lighting and, after meeting the Jones brothers who used to run the very successful ‘Temptation’ nights at Mountford Hall, I started working with Scorpio Rising who they managed, as their lighting designer. This was great experience. I would hire a lot of semi intelligent lighting in from Manchester, fill the room with smoke, and have a ball. I found I had a good feel and could make the best of any local house rig we happened to come across. I was getting better and more confident behind the lighting console, and eventually got a call to fill in for the Therapy? lighting guy while he went off on another job. They were at their peak at the time and selling out theatres. This was a big step up, and I grabbed the chance and did a good job. This led to a similar job with Scottish rockers Gun and I also held my own. I was starting to move forward in this lighting lark!
The first five years in the 90s’ were a bit of a jumble; I was doing so many things at once. The Real People and Rain had been signed to Columbia. I was drum tech for Rain, doing the lights for the Real People, and also doing lights for The Tambourines who had changed line-ups and gone back to glorious basics. One of the Real People tours was supporting Inspiral Carpets in the days when a young Noel Gallagher was the guitar tech. He used to come to Liverpool quite a lot to record and hang out in the Real People rehearsal rooms. He took a lot away with him. In fact, when we heard the first Oasis single, we christened them ‘The Australian Real People’ -the sound was that close. The Tambourines went on tour supporting River City People. All seven of us, travelling in the back of the van must have had our stars in alignment. I didn’t think it possible to laugh that much. I won’t even try to explain as you had to be there, but it all started with the pipe music!
Rain were staying in a hotel somewhere in the North East. I remember Martyn coming down in the lift and excitedly saying he had just shared it with David Essex. So Woody, in his infinite madness, found out which room he was in and got all the trouser presses from our rooms, put gaffer tape faces and hair on them, gave each a speech bubble - each with one of the great mans songs in … ‘Hold me Close’, ‘Silver Dream Machine’ etc… and he lined ten of them up all along David’s corridor, with a special guard outside his room. He called it his terracotta trouser press army. Who was I to argue?
I did my first ‘merchandise’ gig when Michael Jackson played at Roundhey Park, Leeds in 92 (when he was still black). It was the tour when Jacko put a jet pack on during the last song and jetted off into the night, and the voice over the tannoy said “Ladies and gentlemen Michael Jackson has left the stadium” (even though it was a field). We did James at Alton towers a while later and then started on a few festivals. The merchandise seed had been sown.
Never say never again.
Still, round that same time, I joined another band. Jeff Skellon had written a great song ‘Be my Friend’ and put together ‘People Get Ready’ to front it. Hopefully, it was going to be a dance anthem - and it was bloody good. So we would turn up to do pa’s (personal appearances, obviously I was moving with the times with the club lingo). We had Nicky singing (I’d met her previously with Lalabambam all those years ago), me and Guy Davies on percussion, and two dancers. Hello club land. Here we come. It was a feel good song played to a load of loved up dance heads; we had a chance. The most memorable gig was at monthly transvestite club, Kinky Gerlinky, in London’s Leicester Square. We were set up on the back of a revolving stage, shaped like a wedding cake. As the intro music started, the stage started turning, revealing 2000 trannies going crazy. Anyway the Track was released on Food Records. I’ll give you three guesses what chart position it got to….Correct! Eighty fucking seven!
I was enjoying the lighting experience so much I eventually broke away from Woody and Mr Fantasy and got my own lighting company together. Just 24 par cans, some acls and smoke and strobes, but a great starter rig and independence. I was struggling for a name, but eventually, looking at my fag packet for inspiration, I decided on Berkeley Lights. I printed flyers with the slogans: “playing a gig….not got much cash…fed up with looking shite… you’ll need new Berkeley lights... you’ll be glad you lit up”, etc…Things were going well. I was getting quite a few gigs, one of them being at La Bateau in Duke Street on Thursday nights. Tony Potter was promoting the night and it was getting a good reputation. The Real People, Smaller and even Oasis played regular. After the show, the rig just about fitted into the back of my caravanette. Then it was back home to the first floor flat in Botanic Road. Eventually, I put my rig into the Lomax in Cumberland Street and I was the house lighting guy for a year or so. Those were exciting times as Liverpool hadn’t had a venue like that for a long time. Local and touring bands, the likes of Radiohead, Oasis, Glen Tilbrook and the legendry Frank Sidebottom, all played the 300 capacity venue. On Frank Sidebottom’s night, someone grabbed his puppet ‘little Frank’ from the stage and ran off up Cumberland Street with it. One of the bouncers gave chase, at least to the top of the road where he was getting his breath back when the police came past. “Someone’s taken little Frank’ the bouncer said. Before he’d had a chance to explain himself the police had radioed in and started a citywide search for little Frank. “No, he’s a fuckin’ puppet”, the breathless bouncer tried to explain.
We tried our hand at promoting in the early days of the Lomax. Me, Steve Roberts, Stuart Grey and fellow Rain roadie Ian Bell-Chambers got together and organised a Christmas spectacular. We called the night ‘Mersey Christmas Tommy Lawrence (on ice)’ - obviously a pun on Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. We got a friend of ours who was a caricaturist on TV’s ‘You’ve Been Framed’ to design the flyer which had the overweight 60s’/70s’ Liverpool goalkeeper skating around a rink. It was the first sold out night of the Lomax and we actually made a profit. We decided to put the money we had earned on the table in my flat, and the four of us played computer golf for prize money; it seemed a fair way to divvy the money up.
I started working with Electrafixion (who were Echo and the Bunnymens’ Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant) as their lighting designer They were tentatively touring to see if the old chemistry would come back. As I was a fan in the 80s’ this was a great time for me. My old mate Tony McGuigan was playing drums, and Sploote from Scorpio Rising, was on guitar. We supported The Boo Radleys and had a ball. We eventually went on a six week coast to coast tour of America, which was my first time - and what a time we had. We had Echobelly supporting, and first on the bill were the unknown Dandy Warhols. I ended up doing lights for all of them.
I knew I was making progress in the business when I got a phone call off Mac asking me to do the next tour. Electrafixion were supporting David Bowie but, unfortunately, I was committed to another project and couldn’t get out of it. After 15 minutes of trying to persuade me, he finally gave up. I put the phone down and thought back to when I was seventeen. If I could have imagined back then Ian McCulloch asking me to tour with Bowie, and me turning them down - my two heroes - unbelievable! What a pisser! I laughed at the madness of it all.
Through the contacts I had made at the Lomax and the fact that I had worked numerous departments within the music industry, I somehow drifted into tour management .A young band called Cecil had just signed to Parlaphone (then part of EMI). In the end I tour managed them for 7 years and we had some great times. One of the strangest things we got up to was at the EMI conference; we called it “The Brian May challenge”. Brian stood between us and the toilet so, every time you passed him, you had to tap him on the opposite shoulder and hurry past. He was spinning all night like a giant poodle chasing its tail. Earlier in the day Cecil had decided they wanted to perform in chambermaids’ uniforms, so I got those for them. Patrick Moore (the stargazer) was in the green room about to do his xylophone act, and I’ll never forget the bizarre sight of Patrick and the Cecil chambermaids sitting round the table. Paddy, the Cecil guitarist, and I ended up leaving the conference only to find Robert Palmer outside waiting for his limo. After pestering him for 10 minutes with continuous “Giz a lift Bobby; don’t be tight Bobby; go on Bobby”, he eventually cracked and let us in the car. Paddy sat between Robert and his then Mrs, who were in the middle of a full scale argument, and I sat in the front pointing at him and shouting ‘Bobby’ for the entire journey…That’s what free champagne all night does for you.
I also tour managed the Dandy Warhols , Patti Rothberg , Kid Rock , Pete Wylie and The Zutons before drifting full time into the world of tour merchandising.
I actually came back to the musical fold while tour managing Pete Wylie. I was taking him to a video shoot to film Loverboy (Columbia records) when he remembered that I used to be a percussionist, and he asked me to be the percussionist on the video. I said “I’m tour managing and haven’t got the time”. When he told me how much the musicians union pay percussionists for video shoots, I soon came out of retirement. The Smiths rhythm section, Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, were involved, so I got my 4 minutes of cred on a video, and Pete got dropped for hiring a fat percussionist…or something like that. Check it out on youtube. I only found it the other day. I’m the out of focus one in the background.
The textile world has kept me pretty busy and, in the last 10 or so years, I have covered most of Europe, toured America seven or eight times, toured in South America, done shows in Beirut, tel Aviv and Dubai and have toured with Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Coldplay, Morrissey, Alanis Morisette, Lou Reed, 50 Cent, Feeder, Ian Brown, Green Day, Take That, Goldie lookin’ Chain, Foo Fighters, Moby, Amy Winehouse, Dolly Parton, Elvis Costello, Muse, Placebo, Willie Nelson, Human League, Manic Street Preachers, the Pogues, Suede, Robbie Williams, Happy Mondays, Beautiful South, Genesis, Steely Dan, the Smashing Pumpkins, James, The Hoosiers, Joss Stone, the Mighty Boosh, Al Murray……….
Also I am the merchandising event manager at such summer extravaganzas as Leeds/Reading festivals, T in the Park, Live 8, Creamfields, Latitude, Global Gathering, Isle of Wight festival, Latitude ……
It’s been a funny old ride.
Anyway, that’s enough about me……..
Perry Leach.
April 2009.