Jackson (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood)

 

In 1977, when I interviewed Michael and Tito Jackson, the Jackson brood were just coming out of a long period in the relative doldrums. The Jackson 5 had become one of Motown’s most well known acts initially charting with I want You Back in 1969 and being the first band ever to have their first four singles top the American charts. They continued to produce many more hits until they seemed to run out of steam in 1973. Michael was always the focal point of the band and during their successful career as a vocal group, he had taken time out to have solo hits like Ben, Got to be There and She’s Out of My Life. A label switch to Philadelphia hadn’t really solved the problem of the band’s decline, but a subsequent move to Epic seemed to have done the trick. When they came into the UK for a promotional tour, Let Me Show You the Way to GO was already flying towards the number one slot.

 

When they arrived in the self-op they were accompanied by an elderly white lady who wasn’t introduced to me. Although this was some time before Michael became quite possibly the most successful artiste in pop history, he was very much the head brother and if felt like Tito was there more or less, as a stooge. Michael was unrecognisable from the physical person he would eventually become. He had a shortish afro and all the standard physical attributes of a late-teenager of African extraction. If you’d been able to put that Michael next to the Michael Jackson of the Bad period then you would have struggled to realise they were the same person. We did introductions and voice levels and I began to ask the questions. My interviews were not the standard Radio 1 fodder of ‘nice to see you, what’s your favourite colour, are you enjoying your visit to the UK etc’. I liked to get more inside people and find out what made them tick. I began by asking Michael about his childhood. He wasn’t very forthcoming. It’s obvious these days why that would be a difficult subject for him, what with all the subsequent revelations of alleged abuse by his father, but this was way before those stories surfaced, so I wasn’t to know. Anyway Tito saved the day by chiming in and giving me a few stories about schooldays in Gary, Indiana. I then went back to Michael and asked him about his family life and how it must have been quite strange being in such a showbiz family from, what was for him, a very early age. Obviously that was way out of his comfort zone but again how was I to know. Michael stared at me quite menacingly and muttered that he couldn’t remember. Once again Tito answered for Michael in a lively but not particularly enlightening manner. I then asked about the situation with Michael’s solo career and rumours that he was once again going to flee the nest and pursue a path away from his brothers. At this point Michael quite petulantly asked me why I was asking all these dumb questions. Why wasn’t I just talking about the record, which is why they were there. I explained that I liked to get context and background in my interviews so that the listeners would feel they had got closer to the artistes and the artistes would feel like they were more than just chart statistics. Michael hissed at me

 

“You’re just weird!”

 

I carried on as if I hadn’t heard and asked more questions not about the record. Michael’s response was to sit there with his arms folded staring into space and seething. Tito continued to play the go-between trying his best to keep the interview going with light hearted banter about nothing in particular, but it was easy to see for both parties this was going nowhere. I turned to Michael and said that if he wasn’t prepared to answer my questions then it was pointless to continue wasting each other’s time. He said that he would only answer questions about the record. I didn’t feel inclined to let an interviewee dictate the terms in such a manner. Sometimes when agreeing to do an interview artistes would stipulate ‘no-go areas’ usually to do with their private lives which was fair enough, but I’d never had anyone making such specific stipulations before. I turned around and rather melodramatically switched off the tape machine before turning back to Michael and Tito and saying that I thought it was best if we just stopped there and they left the studio. The white lady came across and protested that I was treating her charges badly but I pointed out that they were there to answer questions and if Michael wouldn’t do that then there was no point prolonging the agony. She gathered up the brothers and led them out of the studio. As they were leaving I thanked Tito for his co-operation and told him that I hoped there were no hard feelings. He turned and grinned at me, put his hand out and said

 

“Hey”

 

Michael wouldn’t even look at me, let alone say goodbye.

 

Within a couple of days I had an official letter of complaint from a CBS UK bigwig. I phoned and spoke to someone in the promotions department and asked them what they were thinking of, complaining about me! They had sent me an artiste for interview who refused to answer questions and had completely wasted my time. I suggested if we were going to continue working with each other they ensure this didn’t happen again and banged the phone down.

 

This little hiccup didn’t seem to damage Michael’s ambition any as The Jacksons entered another period of chart success with records like Can You Feel It and Shake Your Body Down to the Ground, before Michael went off to do the rumoured solo career, commencing with the album Off the Wall. He enjoyed global success on a level not experienced by any other artiste but then the well-publicized ‘weirdness’ crept in and eventually took over, causing much of his fan-base to desert him. he is now rumoured to be broke, but just what does broke mean when you are talking about someone whose royalty cheques were once bigger than the GDP of many a small country?

 

I suppose the one thing I can take from all of this is having had the privilege of Michel Jackson calling me ‘weird’!

JOURNEY (Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come)

Late summer/early autumn 1973 there was an all night gig at the old Queens Hall in Leeds. There was a big line-up featuring a three-ring circus, The Welfare State, Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come and top of the bill was Hawkwind. Yes you are correct in thinking this was an absolute orgy of late UK hippydom and it happened just before the big bland-out of the mid seventies.

Having ingested an awful lot of pharmas and a large amount of Bradford Black, I remember not an awful lot about that particular night, although I do remember feeling extremely loved-up and spaced out at the same time. I also remember a face-painted Hawkwind saxman Nik Turner coming up to me and my buddies and saying that if we had any gear left we ought to stash it as the place was crawling with pigs (yes they really did used to speak like that in those days daddio!). I remember being there with Plug Kaye. It is possible that any of Kirby, Slek, Jacko, Ice and Linda, Spud Wood, Spike, Max and Pete Townsend were there as well but I really can’t remember. I can remember I was wearing red and yellow tie-dyed cords with massive flairs, a yellow t shirt and topped this all off with a shiny green PVC raincoat. my hair was naturally red-highlighted and shoulder -length in thos days and fell in perfect ringlet curls which were the envy of all of my mother’s perm-addicted friends.

Arthur Brown played stuff from his ‘Journey’ album which I still love and was familiar with as I’d seen him in Bradford the previous week. As the name implies the album, a lose concept-album, took you on a journey through the darkest worlds of moog-influenced worlds of mime and dance. Arthur Brown has always been on the edge of the music mainstream since he first caught the public eye with his brilliant chart-topping hit Fire in 1968. I don’t think any of us who witnessed his live performance on Top of the Pops, will ever forget the black & white image of the shaggy-haired and bearded Arthur writhing about the TOTP studio surmonted by a two foot high flaming head dress. His debut album The Crazy World of Arthur Brown is timeless compared to many of its contrivedly psychedelic contemporaries and although I’ve never heard anyone else say this, I believe it to be one of the greatest blue-eyed soul albums of all time, notwithstanding the remarkably psychedelic Spontaneous Apple Creation. Arthur has been far more influential than people, inclusing himself, realise and it is people like him who should be given public awards for services to entertainment rather than folks like Mick Jagger who only ever served themselves.  Hawkwind were well…………………just Hawkwind! Over forty years after they first came together Hawkwind are still touring led by founder member Dave Brock and continue to operate in a unique self-created genre much to the delight of their many fns the world over. Liquid Len and the Lensmen turned in a brilliant light-show as usual, full of oil-wheel projections and other stuff to aid and abet the huge amounts of acid which had been ingested by the audience. Hawkwind were also joined onstage by the tall, beautiful and very large-breasted Stacia who danced exotically, wearing nothing but body-paint and an occasional smile.

The gig ended as dawn was breaking and we shuffled out into the just awakening streets of Leeds. We enjoyed playing all sorts of the silly games you play when you are as high as kites, like ‘kick the pair of socks over the moving double decker bus’ and other delights.

We then went into Woollies café and had coke floats, so Ice and Linda must have been there because they introduced us all to them. We all started to come down from our variety of highs and all the dopeheads began eating biscuits and chocolate to combat the munchies. From there we broke up and made our way to our various homes. I shared a bus with Plug Kaye, who had recently moved to Manchester to do a hairdressing course at the Vidal Sassoon school. He told me all about life in Manc and it seemed far more exciting than my humdrum existence in little old Birstall. It was decided I should flit to Manchester and stay with him in his bedsit (zilch catswinging room!), until I could cobble together the few quid needed for a place of my own. I went home and told my mother what I was doing. She helped me pack (she was that desperate to hang on to me) and I left for Manchester that afternoon with Plug. I had fifty pence in my pocket and thirty pence of that was for the bus fare!

Up all night (The Records)

 

 

Blondie is still one of the best known names in the history of pop music and when I arranged to interview them, they were at the zenith of their chart-topping powers. I’d first seen them support Bruce Springsteen in 1975, but they didn’t make a massive impression on me. It was the maxi-single containing X-Offender, Rip Her to Shreds and In the Flesh which really grabbed my attention. They were floated on top of the Punk phenomenon but they were about as punk as Coco the Clown. What we had here was potentially the greatest powerpop band ever. Their first album from which the above tracks were taken didn’t fare that well, but a label switch from US owned Private Stock to UK’s Chrysalis seemed to do the trick and the next single Denis from the first official Chrysalis album Plastic Letters charted top ten and was quickly followed by I’m Always Touched by Your Presence Dear.

 

Blondie and in particular singer Deborah Harry, were the first genuine pop-phenomenon to come along since The Monkees and Top of the Pops audience figures soared, whilst they rode high on success as every red-blooded male over voting-age stayed in on Thursday night to drool over the platinum blonde.

 

It was the release of the album Parallel Lines in 1978 which really cemented Blondie’s permanent place in the pop music psyche. When I first heard the single Heart of Glass I felt It had number one smash stamped all over it and I believe I was the first person to play it on Radio 1. This  made me even more popular with the powers that be as there was an unwritten/unspoken rule that no one played an advance copy of a single, until it had been on the programme Round Table, the new-release show; but what did I care the rule was unwritten and unspoken, so I ignored it. Advance copies were normally given to radio stations a couple of weeks before a single’s actual release. The idea was that fans would hear the record on the radio and place an order or buy the record on the very first day of release hopefully ensuring that all-important high chart placing the first week of issue. Heart of Glass was an extremely clever record in that it maintained the power pop laced with a touch of Spanish Harlem feel, but also managed to incorporate a disco-synth beat which meant it would get played in the more serious clubs,

 

Blondie were doing a UK tour to promote the album and I arranged to interview Clem Burke and Deborah Harry after the Hammersmith Odeon show. For some reason I can’t remember, I didn’t go to the actual show but arranged to meet them at their hotel The Montcalm, just by Marble Arch.

 

I arrived there as arranged at 11.30 pm and was soon met by drummer Clem who explained that Deborah was exhausted and sent her apologies, but didn’t feel up to the interview. Talk about gutted!! It was disappointing from a professional point of view as everyone knew Deborah as the focal point of Blondie so I felt I was getting short change. It was even more disappointing from a personal point of view as I was definitely a red-blooded male over voting-age! We decided to do the interview in the hotel lobby, as it was extremely quiet. Clem Burke is an incredibly articulate man though and far more intelligent than your average rock drummer, so we did an interview which was very strong on content and the all important soundbites. As we were concluding I noticed Deborah crossing the floor out of my eye-corner. She waited for me to switch my Uher tape machine off and then leaned over and apologised for her no-show. She said she’d had little sleep and was extremely tired. She was also, she told me, worried that her voice would give out. We carried on chatting whilst Clem headed off for his room and a good night’s sleep; very rock and roll!!! It was pretty plain that she was very tired, but she still managed to be charming and humorous in a very laid-back fragile kind of way. She yawned several extremely sensual yawns during our conversation, which had my pulse quietly racing.

 

After about ten minutes she asked me if I knew anywhere she could get anything to eat. I told her I was sure room-service could provide. She said she had already checked and she didn’t fancy either ham or cheese sandwiches! These were the late-seventies and complete service culture hadn’t hit the UK’s capital yet; there was still very much an attitude of be thankful for what you are given, amongst the hotel trade. Even though this was the capital there was little on offer after midnight apart from a few places, so I said that I was confident she could get something in Chinatown which was only a short cab-ride away. She told me she didn’t fancy anything so spicy and did know anywhere where she could just get a decent American-style hamburger and French fries. Not such a tall order in London you may think but remember this was 1978, just three years after the first UK MacDonalds had opened and decent hamburgers were hard to find, especially after midnight. I told her of the one place I knew which was Up All Night in Fulham Road, about 15 minutes away by car at that time of night/morning. She asked me if I was hungry and did I want to tag along, so realising I hadn’t eaten all day and feeling a bit peckish I said why not. Deborah asked me to wait in the lobby whilst she organised a car. After about ten minutes Deborah came back and said are you ready? I asked her where the rest of the guys were and to my absolute startlement she told me it was just me and her. Me and her!!!! Me and the current Queen of Pop, going off to dine alone together in the early hours. Oh my god wasn’t life truly grand!!!

 

We went outside where the proverbial big black merc with tinted windows awaited and commenced the short drive to Fulham Road. Deborah didn’t speak much in the car and I made no real effort to engage her in view of her decidedly fatigued state. When we got to Up All Night, the driver parked close by in a side road. Deborah was wearing a big black coat over jeans and her eyes were covered with the trademark black Ray-Bans. I had on a pure wool drape coat with rolled lapels and fold-back cuffs in brown velvet. I was also wearing the ubiquitous tight blue jeans and brown high-heel boots. Ever so much the archetypal rock and roll couple! As we approached the door a couple of paparazzi sprang out and started snapping. Because Up All Night was one of the few places open this late these photographic parasites always hung around on the off-chance some rock celeb might show and tonight they were in luck. Deborah did the hand over the face bit but her look was so recognisable that any attempt at anonymity was futile. We went in and sat down and were seriously fussed over by the waiters who’d recognised her immediately. The paparazzi kept on snapping through the window but soon got what they needed and went back to lurking in the shadows. All the patrons of the restaurant kept staring at us rather indiscreetly. Obviously they knew who she was but they were probably wondering who the guy was sitting opposite her, as her relationship with Blondie member Chris Stein had been heavily publicized and Chris and I weren’t exactly identical twins.

 

After a couple of coffees Deborah became a lot more lively and we got on very well, her telling me what it was like living in New York (she said she kept trying to remember as she rarely got back there anymore!!!) and I telling her about the nuances of living in London. She said she would love to go places like Camden Town’s Dingwall’s, but it was really not possible because she would just get hassled all night. We stayed there for an hour or so and then decided to leave. The paparazzi emerged for one last splurge and we headed off back to The Montcalm. Deborah, mindful of the hour, very kindly instructed the driver to take me home. As she decamped at Marble Arch she leaned in and gave me a peck on the cheek and said she’s had a nice time. To this day I still occasionally touch that place in wonderment!

 

When I got to work the next day I was amazed to discover, when a couple of people drew my attention to the tabloids, that there were a couple of pieces about Debbie Harry being seen on the town with mystery man and partner Chris Stein nowhere in sight!!! I wanted to scream from the rooftops that I was that mystery man but discretion got the better of me and I just went into an aw-shucks there’s nothing in it mode, when anyone else mentioned the story. Of course I wanted them to think that there was everything in it!!!!!

 

After the success of Parallel lines and subsequent records, Blondie became a household name but as most bands do, they started to develop internal difficulties and began to implode. In 1981 Debbie released a solo album Koo Koo in a blaze of publicity. It was produced by Chic main-man and old acquaintance of mine, Nile Rodgers and it promised an entirely different experience to Blondie. Far more dance orientated than the Blondie canon, the album cast Ms Harry in the role of ultra-chic disco diva, pre-dating Madonna by at least a couple of years. A massive UK launch for the album was arranged at The Sanctuary health club in Covent Garden. Obviously I was looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with Deborah but I was also intrigued that normally The Sanctuary was a women-only venue and I was eagerly anticipating glimpsing inside this upmarket ladies’ version of the Fortress of Solitude.

 

The night of the launch came and I arrived to find a lot of familiar faces there. I think my friend Denis Hegarty then of the group Darts was there. I think also present was drummer John Bradbury and a couple of other Specials. The Chrysalis promotional staff were there too including Chris Peters whom I’d known from my days in Radio 1 and I think Phil Long. I am pretty sure that Chrysalis regional promotions person Chris Griffin wasn’t there, although I may be wrong on that one. There was a lavish buffet of fresh crabs, lobsters, king prawns and oysters on display, as well as a selection of exotic salads. I say on display and I mean on display because I could see no evidence of hammers or anything with which to tackle the food, but they would probably bring all that on later.

 

I moved into the inner sanctuary and it was pretty hot and steamy but the champagne was flowing so who cared. I looked to see if I could spot Deborah anywhere but she was nowhere in sight. No doubt she would turn up later too. Perhaps she was bringing the lobster hammers!!!

 

We all did the things you do at such receptions as in drink a lot. We would have eaten a lot too but the seafood was still an impenetrable fortress! It was getting hotter and steamier as more people arrived so as you may expect, a lot of people were stripping down to their shirts etc. and some were perspiring a lot more than others. The most significant perspiree was promotions man Chris Peters, also known as The Perennial Student, the reasons for which I never discovered. The cause of Chris’s excessive sweating was mainly to do with an excess of alcohol compounded by the fact that he was gyrating around the dance-floor like a hybrid of Norman Wisdom and Mr Bean, in an effort to impress his dancing partner whom it has to be said, looked singularly unimpressed. Chris’s courtship dance was the main source of amusement, especially as he seemed completely unaware that all eyes were on him. It was now well over an hour into proceedings and still no sign of Deborah. We were all wondering hat the hell was going on as it was extremely unusual to have a reception for an artiste and for that artiste not to be there. All of a sudden a deep hush went around the venue and a spotlight shone against a small archway at the top end of the club. From this archway emerged Ms Deborah ‘Koo-Koo’ Harry bedecked in something resembling a white wedding-dress, an electric-green beehive and some of the highest stilettos I have ever seen. All the press photographers present began clicking away like their lives depended on it. Obviously worried about falling off her heels, she was physically supported by partner Chris Stein as she commenced a ‘walk of honour’, shutters still clicking, before disappearing through another arch at the bottom of the club. And that my friends, was that; we saw neither hair nor hide of Ms Harry or Chris Stein for the rest of the evening.

 

I was shocked more than disappointed at the nature of the failure to renew my acquaintance but that’s rock and roll and just like everyone else, I just got on with enjoying myself. A few of us, including Brad from The Specials decided it would be a bit of a wheeze to play a practical joke on Chris Peters who was still strutting his stuff on the dance-floor and still spouting rivers of sweat whenever he shook his Mr Bean head. We managed to procure one of the dustbins which had been used to chill bottles of lager. The lager had all gone but there was still plenty of ice left. We crept up behind the limboing Mr Peters and tipped the entire contents over his head. All credit to him, after the initial shock wore off he simply gave himself a shake and carried on his idiot-dancing without protest, which must have been quite difficult when you are head to toe soaked to the skin!

 

As the alcohol was beginning to take more of an effect I remembered I still hadn’t eaten, so I went back out to the reception area in order to get stuck into the seafood. I was amazed to find that there was still no way of opening the crabs, oysters and lobsters and the servers admitted they had not brought anything apart from standard cutlery and lemons with them. All that had gone from the display were the king prawns, which had looked a bit jaded in the first place. I spoke to their so-called manager and asked where the scissors and hammers and picks were and he just more or less shrugged his shoulders. Then it dawned on me!!! I quickly got hold of Chris Poole from Chrysalis and told him that I suspected the caterers were scamming them. They hadn’t brought any of the tools needed to eat the food, because they hadn’t wanted anyone to eat the food! It was odds-on that they had imagined no one would work this out, as they’d all be horrendously drunk and they could then flog the whole lot to a local restaurant, meaning that they got paid twice for the food! Chris smiled in complicity as the penny dropped and I’m pretty sure it was Phil Long who went and asked the caterers if they had any carrier bags. They quickly obliged and he began stuffing various crustaceans into the bags and handing them out to the guests. The catering manager came rushing over and protested to Phil, saying that it said in their contract that any food not eaten was theirs to dispose of as they wished. Phil advised him that in that case he should sue Chrysalis and continued packing up lobsters and crabs. I finally spilled out onto the early morning streets of Covent Garden with a haul about four lobsters, three crabs and two dozen oysters! Scant compensation for Debbie’s second effective no-show where I was concerned, but not bad in the great scheme of things. I got some very strange looks, as I made my way down Long Acre and Old Compton Street looking for a cab. There were claws and tentacles spilling out everywhere, but did I worry? Nah!

Up All Night was from the album Shades in Bed by The Records who were another great powerpop outfit who sadly shared little of the success Blondie enjoyed. Founded by Kuraal Flyers drummer Will Birch they turned out side after side of polished, punchy pop but after a couple of lower top thirty hits rather underservedly faded into oblivion.

Dr Feelgood (Aretha Franklin)

 

When I began working at Radio 1, one of the first people I interviewed was Lee Brilleaux from Dr Feelgood. I had been a fan of the band since their early days on the London pub circuit and still think the original band with Lee, Wilko Johnson, Sparko and The Big Figure was the best UK R&B outfit of all-time. When Lee shuffled in to the self-op studio he cut a decidedly dissipated figure who looked like he’d been on the piss all night, before being dragged through several hedges backwards. First thing he did was to offer me a line of coke before snorting up a substantial line himself. Sex and drugs and rock and roll; well on this occasion thankfully without the sex! We chatted about this and that and eventually wrapped the interview. As Lee was leaving he said “ You’re awright you, you want to come over to Canvey for a drink sometime”. Canvey was Canvey Island in Essex where Lee and his fellow Doctors resided. Over the ensuing few weeks we met several more times at gigs and record company bashes and the like and struck up quite a friendship. Every time we parted Lee renewed his invitation to go and sample the delights of his own particular sceptered isle.

 

When the single Milk and Alcohol came out, United Artistes, the Feelgood’s record label held a launch party in the basement of a wine bar, just around the corner from Broadcasting House. The event commenced at 12.00 noon and was being sponsored by Kalhua a drinks company who produced a coffee liqueur. The only drinks on offer were Kalhua cocktails, which consisted of two large shots of Kalhua, two large shots of vodka, loads of ice, topped off with milk and served in pint glasses. Milk and Alcohol; get it? I got stuck into some serious cocktailing and during the course of proceedings met Radio 1 producer Don George who was the producer of kid’s programmes Junior Choice and Playground. After talking to Don for  a while he asked if I would make an appointment to see him as he would be interested in me doing some work for his programmes. That’s what I loved about being a freelance, you could get well-oiled at a record company’s expense whilst still making the most of career opportunities!! Whilst Don and I were chatting we were joined by someone else I’d not met, who shall remain nameless for reasons which will become obvious. This character worked as a Floor-Manager for a well-known TV chart-show, but it seemed he had quite a bit of influence over who appeared on the show. He was telling us that he was just about to buy a rather expensive house in West London and I jokingly commented that, bearing in mind the level of BBC salaries he must have a very rich wife or he’d been saving up the payola for a while. Payola was the name given to bribes that people in radio and TV were reputedly given to ensure on-air exposure for records and artistes. There had been a huge payola scandal at the BBC earlier in the seventies although I’m not sure whether any of the allegations were subsequently proven. When I casually dropped this remark into the conversation, aforementioned Floor-Manager went white and I was pulled to the side by the United Artistes Head of Promotion. He asked me how I had heard about the bungs that Mr Floor-Manager had received. I told him that it was simply a joke but quickly got the impression that certain parties were not amused. I told him I thought that that sort of thing had all stopped with the earlier scandal. He told me not to be so naive and asked how I thought another Radio 1 producer, whom he named, managed to live in a house worth £250,000 when his BBC salary was around £12,000. He then went on to explain how I could join the same loyalty scheme and told me what were the rates of reward. He even named a specific record which he could use a little ‘help’ with. For reasons of historical accuracy I can tell you that the record in question was ‘Remember Russia’ by Fischer Z and not surprisingly it did get exposure on a certain TV chart-show.

 

I informed Mr Head of Promotion that I was not corrupt and would not accept bribes in return for such favours. I suppose I should have blown the whistle but I was convinced no one would believe me and that the people involved could probably do me more damage, than I could do to them. All this was rather ironic in that a year or so later I WAS accused of favouring certain record pluggers, suggesting I was in their pockets and receiving bribes. The allegation was channelled through Doreen Davies, PA to then Radio 1 controller Derek Chinnery although I’m pretty sure I know where it originated. My Head of Department, Colin Semper mounted  a seriously heavy rearguard action, pulling out details of all the records I’d been responsible for programming during my time there and proving beyond any doubt that I did NOT favour pluggers in whose company I was frequently seen. Vindicated then, but had it not been for Colin’s absolute belief that I would not do something like that, then my head would have definitely rolled.

 

The reception went on until about 7.30pm when amongst others Lee and I emerged into the fading daylight in an extremely inebriated state and you guessed it, headed off for another bar, clutching bags of free samples of Kalhua.

 

Milk and Alcohol went on to become Dr Feelgood’s highest charting single and Lee and I continued to bump into each other fairly frequently. One lunch time I was walking along Oxford Street when a black cab screeched to a halt beside me. the window slid down and a rather beery-breathed Lee asked me what I was doing later that day. I told him nothing in particular upon which he said “Right yer comin’ ter Canvey for that drink wot I promised”. My protestations were countered by the rather substantial figures of Sparko and Figure who proceeded to drag me into the cab. I continued protesting but to no avail and soon realised it was destination Canvey Island whether I liked it or not. It would probably have been about 5.00pm when we got there and the pubs weren’t officially open but the members of Dr Feelgood had the same privileges as Freemen of Essex whilst on their home patch, so gaining entry to a local hostelry didn’t present a problem. I recall Sparko and Figure stayed til about 8.00pm before sloping off elsewhere but Lee was busy holding court with the odd local so we stayed put. Around 10.30pm Lee asked me if I fancied going on to a club but I told him I needed to head back as the last train was not far off. Lee told me not to worry about that I could stay at his and go back in the morning so I agreed. He said he was just going for a piss and would book a cab for us. I waited for him to come back. And I waited….and waited! At about 10-45pm I went out to look for him. We were both pretty drunk by this time and I was worried that he may have fallen over in the gents or something. I went in the toilets but there was no Lee in sight, so I headed back to the bar. After another ten minutes I went out again but still no Lee, so I went and asked the Landlord if he knew where he was. He told me that Lee had ordered a cab and gone off somewhere else but hadn’t a clue where. He also told me that the last train to London had just left. There I was stranded on Canvey Island with little more than my train fare back to London (holes in the wall were pretty rare in those days and only the very wealthy held credit cards).

 

I explained my predicament to the Landlord and he laughed suggesting this sort of thing wasn’t unusual where Lee Brilleaux was concerned. He kindly offered me a room for the night and said he would get Lee to pay for it when he next saw him. I slept soundly and headed off home, early the next morning. When I next saw Lee a couple of weeks later he was extremely apologetic and very sheepish. He explained that he was so pissed he had simply forgotten I was there, which is why he had not collected me when he went off to the club. He kept on apologising and buying me drinks and I’m sure he thought that was it as far as Dr Feelgood getting any exposure from me was concerned. That wasn’t the case at all and I saw the funny side of things and continued our occasional friendship until I went to work in Birmingham in 1980.

 

Lee Brilleaux was another of rock music’s family who passed on way too early. Lee died on April 7 1994 at the age of 41, not from the ravages of a rock and roll lifestyle as we may have expected, but from the ravages of that diabolical disease Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Lady in Red (Chris de Burgh)

One of the things which I am very thankful for is that I got the opportunity, during my career, to work with lyricist Don Black on several occasions. Don is for my money one of the best old school lyricist going and he is certainly the best this country has thrown up. His credentials are endless; Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, James Bond title songs, Ben for Michel Jackson, To Sir with Love to name but a few! It remains a travesty that the musical Dear Anyone, which he wrote with There’s a Kind of Hush composer Geoff Stephens and playwright Jack Rosenthal, closed after a very short run. I was lucky enough to see it more than once and can honestly say it was head and shoulders above every other UK produced musical, over the last 40 years. I can remember going to the preview where I met Jack for the one and only time. We were introduced and I was very surprised to discover that he knew who I was. On enquiring as to how he told me that I was the person who’d employed his wife Maureen Lipman on a TV show and was responsible for her getting back to London hours late and in an exceptionally inebriated state but that, as they say, is another story. The only good news for Dear Anyone was that one of its songs I’ll Put You Together Again was a massive hit for Hot Chocolate, which is unusual for a musical which failed at the box office.

 

Don is also one of the nicest people I have ever met and I enjoyed several afternoons in the company of Don and his wife Shirley, when they used to have a flat in Basil Street, just behind Harrods. I remember vividly being at their flat when the Irish terrorist bomb went off in Harrods in the eighties. It was a bit nerve wracking for me as I had left my girlfriend and her mother there just a half hour before the bomb went off. It took me two or three hours to establish that they were ok and that they had left the store to go elsewhere shortly after me. (remember no mobiles in those days!) On one occasion I was at Don’s one time when Whacko Jacko himself rang and suggested that they should work together again. That would have been in about 1985, when he was at the height of his popularity and before he turned into a complete fruitcake.

 

Don introduced me to West-End singing star Marti Webb, whom I think he may have been managing at the time, although I also remember her being managed by a gentleman with the rather brilliant name of Brian Brolley. Exact roles lost in the mists of time! Marti was typical of the sort of performer who had grown up on the West End stage, in that she was a great all-round musical performer with a far better voice than most people imagined. Marti had a lovely, if somewhat scatty personality and always seemed to fall in love with the wrong man. I can remember her describing herself as being ‘on the shelf’ on numerous occasions, in a light-hearted humorous way, but I always got the feeling that she may have thought that was a case of ‘many a true word spoken in jest’. I can’t understand why she felt like that; she was beautiful and successful and should have been able to have her pick of eligible men, but I suppose just because someone is very confident on the stage, doesn’t mean they are anything like as confident in the real world. From what I recall she did enter into a brief marriage after I knew her, but the fact it was brief does suggest it wasn’t particularly successful in normal parlance.

 

As a sort of follow-up project to Tell Me On a Sunday, which Don had written for Marti with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don came up with a further vehicle for her called I’m Not that Kind of Girl, which again was a themed project written with composer and producer David Hentschel who has worked with Genesis, Elton John and Frank Zappa amongst many others. It was a sort of thirty-something’s Bridget Jones’ musical diary before its time and contained titles like;

 

Seven Outside Mr Chows (the famous Knightsbridge Chinese eatery for those without metropolitan experience), What Would Jane Fonda Do?, Shampoo and a Miracle Please and Dear Janet Reger.

 

Myself and director Roger Cassells decided it would be a nice idea to feature the entire album over the course of the week at the rate of two songs per day plus a set-up interview with Marti and Don on the first show.

 

Our contracts department wanted to treat each daily show as a separate event, which would have cost a fortune on the budget. I managed to track down some ancient contract which had really been designed for radio but could be employed for TV appearances and this was done on a ‘weekly engagement’ basis which made the whole thing a lot cheaper as far as we were concerned. As the whole thing was an excellent promotion vehicle for the album Polydor, the record company, agreed to make up any shortfall on artiste’s fees etc. This sort of thing went on all the time but people pretended it didn’t. My attitude had to be what a record company agrees with its artistes is between the two of them, as long as it didn’t come about as a request from me. The Musician’s Union were very powerful at the time and had very strict rules as to what and what you could and couldn’t do. Had we stuck to those rules, in conjunction with the creativity of our contracts department then it’s doubtful we’d have ever managed to get any artiste worth having. Contracts  were far too respectful of artiste’s agents for my liking. I understand they have to earn a living, but when they actively stop their artiste from working because their cut isn’t big enough then that is wrong. I was criticised on numerous occasions by contracts for speaking to artistes directly. When I did this all I wanted to know was if the decision not to do our show had come from them or their agent. 99% of the time the artiste in question, knew nothing about the show and were more than happy to do it for the fee on offer. Artistes understood the power of  a TV appearance in promoting their careers and ultimately upping their earnings, from which their agent would ultimately get their cut. Old school artiste’s agents could rarely see beyond the fivers they used to light their cigars.

 

For a change this appearance was scheduled quite a long way up front, which gave me a bit of time to work on finessing it. Some of the songs required little set dressing but we decided it would be great to go to town on the Dear Janet Reger number. Janet had been famous for designing beautiful silk lingerie but had gone out of business several years before. Roger and I decided it would be great to get Marti and her backing singers Vicki Brown, Helen Chapelle and Kay Garner to perform the song in the best Janet Reger could offer (well we would wouldn’t we?!!!).

 

With the Janet Reger marque no longer in operation, this proved rather difficult, but I managed to track down the lady who had been responsible for her PR. Ironically she was based just a stone’s throw away from BBC flagship headquarters Broadcasting House, in London’s Portland Place.

She told me she still had a few Janet Reger items on hand and I was quite welcome to borrow them for the show if I wished. We made an appointment and I turned up to her offices a few days later to see what I could salvage. When I got there I was amazed to be shown a complete rail of the most exotic lingerie. I asked how much I could use and I was invited to take the lot as there was no longer any real use for it. Fortunately Portland Place is quite close to the headquarters of the London Rag Trade, so the looks I got as I loaded my car with naughty knickers weren’t as disapproving as they might have been elsewhere!

 

Marti and her entourage turned up early on the Monday morning and we discussed what we would be doing throughout the week. When we got to the part about the Dear Janet Reger section, I explained rather nervously what we had in mind, expecting some resistance. I couldn’t have been more wrong; Marti and the backing singers went positively dewy-eyed when I showed them the array of sexy underwear in which I wanted them to perform. There then became the most enthusiastic, but friendly, cat-fight over exactly who would wear what. On the day of the Janet Reger performance I met them all and was told it had been decided that Marti would perform in a beautiful knee-length red silk camisole and the singers would wear various risqué silk bits and bats. I must say that talking to them in the dressing-room before the show had me feeling rather hot under the collar and extremely blessed. The show went very well, as indeed did the whole week’s pieces. In the green room after the show Marti collared me and sheepishly asked if the camisole had to go back Already knowing what was coming I said well yes, but I could have a word. I was then approached by Vicki Brown who was the wife of cockney rocker Joe Brown and mother of future European star Sam. Vicki asked the same thing, as subsequently did Helen and Kay. When I phoned the PR and she said we could keep the stuff I became the most popular male in TV land. As I had said previously, there was far more stuff than the girls had worn on the show so I became even more popular when I distributed the rest of the gear around the girls in the office. I reckon I was more than responsible for injecting a bit of spice into a few jaded relationships that week!

 

I worked with Vicki Brown on many occasions. She was a great singer, a beautiful woman and an amazing bubbly person. Seeing her resplendent in Janet Reger underwear did, I must admit, have me thinking some seriously impure thoughts but thinking of what a big guy Joe was, sort of dampened my ardour a little. It was an extremely sad day when I heard that Vicki had passed away at the very young age of 51 in 1991.

Tell Laura I love Her (Ricky Valance)

 

 

Soon after I arrived in London I met up with John Tobler, a music journalist who has written for many publications over the years. We had started corresponding when I wrote to him about a piece he had written on Rick Nelson in the legendary mag Zig Zag. John was working in the press office at CBS records, in Soho Square at the time, although he was also freelancing for various magazines as well. John was very generous and aware that I was potless, he frequently let me raid his album cupboard and took me out for boozy lunches at CBS’s expense. John also had me as his ‘plus-one’ at many of the gigs for which he got sent tickets and usually managed to get me into the spiritual home of Pub Rock, Islington’s Hope and Anchor, for nothing.

 

John knew of my ambition to be a writer and one day when we were having a lunchtime drink in The Pineapple on Charing Cross Road, John told me there was a vacancy coming up at CBS for a junior to write the trade singles releases and was I interested?

 

Was I?

 

I accompanied John back the CBS, having phoned in sick to work. John introduced me to Elly Smith, who was Head of Press. Elly told me VERY briefly what the job entailed and asked me if I wanted it to which I replied, not surprisingly, yes please. The job would involve one day a week and I could fit that in around my other job where I was working for a firm of solicitors. I told Elly I would start the following week which she was fine with.

 

I arrived at CBS the following week and attempted to try and get down to stuff immediately. Unfortunately I didn’t really have a clue what I was supposed to do, but I sat down and looked at my workload and thought about how to accomplish it. I was under the impression that writing was an honest profession and was incredibly naive with regard to the ‘selling’ element of writing, which is more often how it is employed. My job was simply to ‘flog the product’ to the record shops but I thought I was there to write honestly, creatively and inventively about the singles being released each week. The first record on my pile was by Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge and to say it was bland is an understatement. How could I write anything interesting about that pile of do do? I wrote an honest crit of the required length and moved on to Bugatti and Musker. The only real difference between this and the last one was this was  English as opposed to American bland, so I again wrote accordingly.

I ploughed through about eight singles and apart from one by Sailor, which was ok, they were all tosh. I handed in my ‘work’ to line manager, David Sandison and helped myself to a bunch of albums from the record cupboard before heading home. David phoned me the next day and told me that the stuff I had written wasn’t really suitable and could I have another bash, so I agreed to pop in after work for a couple of hours. Still without any guidance I attempted to rewrite the stuff using more creativity and such as I presumed he didn’t think the writing was colourful enough. I tried again, this time liberally littering the page with alliteration and metaphor but still not really grasping that the only thing I was supposed to be doing was lying through my teeth, so that the stores would buy in records which were extremely iffy. I again stopped off at the record cupboard on my way out, to see if anything new was in there.

 

The majority of space in the record cupboard was taken up by copies of the first two Bruce Springsteen albums Greetings From Asbury Park NJ and The Wild, the Innocent and the E street Shuffle. This was before the ‘I have seen the future of rock and roll’ hype which preceded the Born to Run tour and Bruce was pretty much unknown within these shores. Personally I thought both albums were great, but it was still part of my job to make sure no visitor left without a copy of each album, even if they already had them! We needed to clear some space in the cupboard for the anticipated new releases.

 

One of the only honest bits of writing I got to do whilst I was at CBS was updating Bruce’s biography in anticipation of the upcoming tour. This time I was actually able to write what I believed to be true and that was that Bruce Springsteen was destined to be a major artiste. When Born to Run came out I thought it was a great record and I went to see his first show in the UK at Hammersmith Odeon which was a bit of a disappointment. Bruce didn’t manage to spark the fire on that particular night but an unknown band called Blondie managed to provide a better support than we could have anticipated. Must watch out for them! As everyone now knows Bruce went on to be one of the biggest names in rock music history and as always happens when people I have loved for their obscurity as well as their talent, become popular with the masses, I went off him! With hindsight I feel that he has rarely revisited the quality of the first three albums but I have little doubt he is a phenomenal talent and his title track for the movie Philadelphia still has the power to move me to tears. I have no doubt that this is mainly due to its place in the context of the film, but songwriters with the power to do that are a pretty rare breed.

 

Needless to say my tenure at CBS was extremely short-lived, but I kept in touch with John and occasionally visited his house in Brookwood, Surrey. Like many music journalists, John supplemented his income by selling all the promotional copies of albums he was given, but didn’t want to keep. He was the worst record cupboard raider I have ever seen and would come away from record company offices with so many albums he could have done with a pack mule to carry them. That was to my benefit though because a lot of the albums John wanted rid of were albums I really wanted so at 50p and £1.00 a throw, I wasn’t complaining. Whilst my taste coincided with his in some places, it shot off at serious tangents in most. He didn’t like much soul for example so I was able to relieve him of Look Out For #1 by Brothers Johnson and We came to Play by Tower of Power as well as loads of other great stuff. He did me no better favour though, than when he sold me Smile by Laura Nyro for £1.00.

 

I already had New York Tendaberry in my growing collection but I’d never really listened to it. Like many people of my peer group my knowledge of Laura Nyro was limited to the darkly mysterious Gibsom Street,  a track on the double sampler Fill Your Head with Rock, which had been a must in any serious late-sixties underground collection. I had seen a review of Smile in the NME by (I think) Charles Shaar Murray, who’d sung its praises. The trouble with iconoclastic writers like Charles is that they are often so completely full of shit that you cannot trust them; I mean Charles had said that Marquee Moon by Television was the greatest album on the Elektra label since LA Woman by The Doors when anybody with an ounce of insight about these things, knows that Marquee Moon is the greatest album in the history of rock music, period!

 

Smile doesn’t really qualify as a rock album as it is essentially jazz-rock fusion and before you run away thinking fusion; the worst of all possible worlds, let me tell you that you would be wrong in the case of Smile. It is a beautiful album from start to finish. Smile kicks off with the languidly laid-back Sexy Mama and by the time we get to the end of side one (that’s vinyl my dear!) we have been treated to one of the greatest songs ever written, I am the Blues. It is impossible to convey in words just how great this song is, so I will just say to you, if you haven’t heard it then beg, borrow or steal a copy and you will see exactly what I mean. The song is not about the blues but it is about life and written BY the blues itself.

 

It opens with a line which is just so powerful;

 

‘Cigarettes, I’m all alone with my smoke and ashes’

 

The whole record is an absolute triumph of love over despair and it will always be in my collection. It is hardly surprising that on hearing Smile, I then dug out New York Tendaberry and found that this was a great record as well. Over a very short period I acquired all of Laura’s albums. The reason I did that is because although I am somewhat prone to being a completist, in the case of Laura Nyro I just adored everything she did. Her songs are not of this world and her piano style is so unique as to be instantly recognisable even when she is covering things like Up on the Roof, or Spanish Harlem. Laura may have come to us via the Woodstock Generation but her roots were completely in post doo-wop New York and Spanish Harlem and the marriage of styles and ideologies made for some beautiful music. The last fully-fledged studio album Laura recorded was Mother’s Spiritual. As a whole it wasn’t her best album but the title track is quite simply the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard in any genre and in case you get the impression from my musings here that my musical taste is limited, I should confess that Johan Sebastian Bach composed a lot of the music I really care about.

 

Laura Nyro may not have been as well known a songwriter as Dylan, Carole King, Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell but for me she was as good as any of them and when she sang her own songs, that haunting voice just blew me away. She was also to my eyes stunningly beautiful; not in a classic way but she had this ethereal quality about her which transcended looks and stuff. Don’t sell her short though, Laura wrote some songs which became very well known in the hands of others, Stony End for Barbra Streisand, And When I Die by Blood Sweat & Tears and Wedding Bell Blues by Fifth Dimension to name but a few.

 

When I started working in the music business I wanted to meet just three people; Leonard Cohen, John Cale and Laura

Nyro. I met the first two but never Laura. When she died on April 9th 1997, the musical firmament lost one of it’s

brightest stars at the relatively young age of 50. It was worse for me though because I lost my metaphysical lover.

 

Ironically once I started working in the media full-time, I saw less of Mr Tobler, but I often read his liner notes on re-issues of just about everything. I was only the other day reading his notes for a Kinks compilation where he said that Ray Davies had probably written the song Victoria about is daughter! Try the late Queen of England me old son, as in Arthur; or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, the album from which it was taken tut-tut!

 

The last time I saw John was at a party in the Bayswater flat of Human League, Heaven 17 and Tina Turner producer fame Martyn ‘Teddy Bear’ Ware. I worked with Martyn on several occasions and we became quite friendly. In fact all the members of Heaven 17 visited my flat in Birmingham in the early eighties for a bit of a chill-out before racing off to their gig in my girlfriend’s newly acquired ice blue Ford Popular. Anyway John was pretty pissed and started insulting Martyn calling him things like electropop ponce and other pleasantries. Not really knowing where to put myself I shrugged at Martyn as if to say I hadn’t a clue what had inspired John’s behaviour and I hadn’t. I discreetly dragged him off to avoid further embarrassment and tried to sober him up outside. I am very grateful to John Tobler for his help but I’m not sure we had an awful lot in common, apart from an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop and rock music and so I think we simply grew apart.

google88002ee1d5e991e1.html

Hey Paula (Paul and Paula)

 

One of the media’s most tragic figures from the period when I worked in it, was Paula Yates. I used to see Paula at just about every record company reception I went to; sometimes with future husband and  head Boomtown Rat, Bob Geldof, but often without. She would frequently hang out at these events with Thin Lizzy mainman Phil Lynott, who was always trying to chat up my girlfriend but without success! At this stage I wasn’t particularly struck on Paula, who was always over made-up and pretty bad mannered, but that may have just been a post-punk pose.

 

In 1981 she brought out one of those coffee table books called Rock Stars in their Underpants which was rather unsurprisingly, a collection of so-called rock stars photographed in their skivvies by Paula. It was described by Andy Warhol as the greatest work of Art of the last decade. Interestingly and rather absurdly the photo concerning Bob Geldof was not of him at all, but was just a photo of his jockeys hanging on the bedpost.

 

I booked Paula for the evening ‘6.55’ show. Obviously the subject matter was not that substantial so we were really just using it as an excuse to chat to a B list celebrity. As well as being Bob’s belle, Paula also had her own News of the World column at the time, called The Natural Blonde.

I must be honest and say I really wasn’t looking forward to meeting her based on my previous experiences, but one had a job to do! I met her at reception, showed her to her dressing room and was surprised to discover that she was very personable and a lot more articulate than I had anticipated. The other thing which struck me was just how beautiful she was without ANY make-up. Why, I wondered did she choose to hide such natural beauty behind a severe paint job! I introduced her to presenter Duncan Gibbins, who would be doing the piece and left them to discuss the nature of things. After about ten minutes Duncan came out and told me he thought I had better go into the dressing room and talk to Paula. I knocked and went in to find Paula literally sobbing in her dressing room chair. I turned back to ask Duncan what had happened but he’d legged it. I sat on the chair next to Paula and asked her what was wrong. She explained that Duncan had laid into her like some tabloid journalist and told her he was only going to gloss over the book, as he really wanted to grill her about her private life and in particular, her parents. Paula, it was thought at the time was the issue of mother Hellen, a former Bluebell girl and husband Jess Yates, who presented Stars on Sunday for Yorkshire TV. Jess Yates had been fired from Stars on Sunday, a god-slot variety show when it was discovered that he had been having an affair with a young ‘actress’. He was actually separated at the time so it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it hadn’t been for the fact that those were more innocent times and he was, after all, the presenter of a religious programme. Paula said that Duncan had told her, in a rather unpleasant manner that he was going to rake over her past, as there had been some tabloid speculation that Jess Yates wasn’t really Paula’s father at all. Paula had raised the objection that she was there to talk about her book and herself, but Duncan had continued to savage her. It later transpired that she was actually the result of an affair between her mother, whose stage name was Helene Thornton and Opportunity Knocks star, Hughie Green. Paula said she was pulling out of the show and going back to London!

 

I told Paula not to worry and said that I would speak to Duncan and re-brief him. Duncan was young and extremely ambitious and saw an opportunity to be a sort of John Humphrys of the entertainment world. I went out and found Duncan and told him to stop behaving like a prat and to just speak to her about HER. I told him that the story about Jess was dead and buried in any case and as she didn’t even know the truth about the rumours, the story was hardly going to go anywhere as a result of him approaching the interview in that manner. I told him that the long and short of it was that it would be crap journalism and we weren’t a news programme in any case. I went back to Paula’s dressing room and spent about twenty minutes being nice to her and assuring her that we would stick to the expected territory in the interview. I was still worried that Duncan may attempt to try for a ‘scoop’ but as the programme was live there was little I could do about it, if he chose to ignore my position. In the end she perked up a lot. The interview went ahead and Duncan Gibbins didn’t even mention her parents. So you see I can be scary when I want to be! 

After the show Paula didn’t go back to the Green Room as she was still very upset about her initial  meeting with Mr Gibbins and didn’t really want to socialize with him. She went instead, back to her dressing room where I ordered some tea and light refreshments to be sent. We chatted a while longer and she thanked me for sorting out the problem and ‘looking after’ her. She told me that at least that night’s events would provide her with the material for her next News of the World column. I read her next column with a degree of apprehension but I needn’t have worried. She said some extremely nice things about me, but I can’t say the same for Duncan. 

Duncan Gibbins died in a wildfire in Southern California on November 3rd 1993. Duncan had escaped his blazing home, but perished when he went back to rescue his cat. 

Paula went on to present ground-breaking music show The Tube on Channel 4 with Jools Holland and I have often wondered if its producer may have got the idea of using her, based on her appearance on ‘6.55’ 

After marriage and then a much publicized break-up with Geldof, Paula entered the strange world of Inxs Aussie-rocker Michael Hutchence, where she hit the slippery slope towards an oblivion fuelled by drugs and drink. After Hutchence’s suicide in 1997 Paula slept on a pillow which contained some of his ashes. She continued along the path of self-destruction which would eventually lead to her death at an obscenely young age. Paula died on 16 September 2000 from what was eventually attributed to heroin abuse, after an autopsy had been performed. On hearing the news I shed more than one tear for that poor little girl lost I can tell you.

Zorba the Greek (Mikis Theodorakis)

I first met Julian Littman when he appeared with ace songstress/actress Charlie Dore on the lunchtime show. Just like Charlie, Julian is an actor as well as a musician or so he tells me LOL. He was acting as Charlie’s Musical Director and I know for sure he is a great musician. He is one of those amazingly talented people, who can squeeze a tune from just about anything they pick up. (I hate him really!)

 

A year or so after the above, Julian came back to Pebble Mill to MD a musical play for English Regions Drama. The play was directed by a talented Irishman called John Davies and his production assistant was my then girlfriend, Jane. John was a first-time TV drama director but he had directed an excellent short, autobiographical film called ‘John, Love’. The TV musical was called ‘The Amazing Miss Stella Estelle’ and starred Elaine Lordan, later of Eastenders notoriety. Elaine was only 16 and I think that may well have been her first TV role. I socialised with the production staff and cast of the drama on numerous occasions and I think I remember my girlfriend and I taking Elaine to see Leo Sayer, at Birmingham cabaret venue The Night Out. I had loved Leo’s first album Silverbird which contained the brilliant single The Show Must Go On, but I’d got less and less keen on him as his career had progressed more and more down the Easy Listening avenue. I’d been using Leo on the lunchtime show and was rather surprised when he turned out to have a very deep knowledge of some of the more obscure musical artistes I liked. I was particularly struck when he started talking about Tom Waits whom I have always admired and so it turned out had Leo.

 

I think The Leo Sayer Show was still running at the time and Leo had arrived with its director Stanley Appel, who had also directed Top of the Pops for a considerable time. It later transpired that my girlfriend knew Stan’s wife and we socialised together on several subsequent occasions. Talking to Leo had made me curious as to what his live show may be like so I arranged for tickets for myself, Jane and Elaine (I think her co-star Ricky Hayter may have also come along). Leo was a complete revelation and turned in a wonderful R&B set, which was dominated by his harmonica playing. It is not that well-known a fact that Leo Sayer is one of this country’s great harmonica players. Leo always came across as a nice guy so I was very surprised when he appeared on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and behaved like a complete pillock.

 

I think The Amazing Miss Stella may have been a live drama but I can’t remember; anyway once it was recorded or had gone out live, there was the traditional wrap party at a Greek restaurant in central Birmingham, which was called Zorba’s. The party was attended by cast and crew and a few partners like me. I was sat opposite one of the cast whose other job was working as an exotic dancer . She had brought the other half of her act to the party, a ten-foot long python, which she proceeded to pass around the table! It was the first time I had ever held a snake and I must be honest I developed a certain fondness for Monty that evening. At some point during in the evening director, John Davies came and thanked this lady, whom I think was called Sandra, for her part in the drama to which she replied “Don’t be daft John, I know you only wanted me for me tits!”

 

I must be honest and say that she had extremely impressive upholstery, most of which was exposed and in my direct eyeline.

 

Whilst the partygoers were still concentrating on getting pie-eyed, Julian Littman pointed out to me that in a room off to the side of the one we were in, there was a room with a stage and a guitar on a stand. He suggested we should investigate. We went in to discover that it was a much bigger part of the restaurant than the room we were in and the owner explained it was where they put on entertainment at the weekends. Julian asked if the owner, whom we shall henceforward refer to as Zorba, minded him having a play on the guitar, so Zorba plugged it into the house PA for him. It was only a cheap Les Paul copy but Julian made it sound most impressive. Julian knew I played a bit so invited me to have a tonk, which I duly did. The partygoers then suggested that we might like to do a few songs for their entertainment, so Julian asked Zorba if he had another guitar. He explained that sadly he didn’t, but they did have a bouzouki. Julian said that’s fine it’s just a big mandolin! Julian asked me what tunes I knew, but the only ones we had in common were some old country songs like Tennessee Stud and I Saw the Light and some Everly Brothers stuff, so we did them. The audience enjoyed it but Zorba absolutely loved it. We found the whole thing rather bizarre; country and western on a bouzouki!

Zorba asked us what we were doing on the Saturday following, to which we answered nothing in particular. He asked if he could book us to do an entire set and offered us the princely sum of thirty quid plus a meal and drinks. Ever game for a laugh, we duly accepted.

 

The next day we borrowed some cowboy gear from the wardrobe department at Pebble Mill and Julian taught me some chords on his mandolin, which I could easily translate to the bouzouki. Saturday came and with it the one and only performance of The Bouzouki Brothers. There we were up on stage, bedecked in cowboy boots, kerchiefs and stetson hats and playing not one, but two bouzoukis! We played about a ninety minute set featuring a one-off bouzouki duet, which could only be known as Duelling Bouzoukis. It went down an absolute treat and we had several encores. I must contact Julian and see if he’s up for a reunion!

You Angel You (Bob Dylan)

 

For almost a year I had been trying to arrange an interview with Peter Gabriel, late of the group Genesis. His manager Gail Colson had asked him on numerous occasions but the answer was always no.

 

About three weeks after I interviewed Robert Fripp, who was also managed by Gail, she rang me and told me that Peter had agreed to the interview. Apparently Robert had given me a glowing reference and this is what had persuaded Peter. We arranged for the interview to take place in a self-op at Broadcasting House. A self-op as the name implies is a studio that is completely operable by the interviewer and at this time of my life I practically lived in them. Autonomy was a good way to make sure that your interviews and features were interfered with as little as possible. If you delivered an edited piece to the producer, which was bang on time, he or she was only going to start fiddling with it if there was something seriously wrong with the piece. Towards the end of my period in radio I was delivering entire programmes which I had put together in a self-op. This, one might consider to be the very essence of DIY, a concept in which I knew Peter Gabriel was very interested and it was also the name of a track on his second solo album, which like all his first four albums was called simply Peter Gabriel. Twenty minutes before I was due to interview Peter he called me. I was waiting for the worst, but it turned out he was stuck in traffic and was just ringing to let me know he was running late. That was the first call I ever received from a mobile phone!

 

When he arrived he looked rather harassed and explained that he couldn’t stay more than 15 minutes as he was in the middle of interviewing producers for what would be his third solo album. His next stop was with Steve Lillywhite, who eventually got the job and helped Peter to his first ever number one single with Games Without Frontiers.

 

The first thing I had noticed about Peter was that he had an appalling stammer. He explained this was why he had shied away from broadcast media interviews in the past. It transpired that this was the first ever broadcast interview he had done. He told me he wasn’t that worried about people knowing he had a speech impediment and was more worried that people would simply get bored and switch off when the interview subject took a minute to answer a question which should have taken 10 seconds! I told him that wasn’t a problem as I could easily edit out his stammer. He was very emphatic that he didn’t want it to disappear completely, which would have been difficult in any case; he simply wished to reduce the delay effect to a minimal period in view of his long-held fears. We started chatting and it was just like Robert all over again, although Peter didn’t invite me to join his backing band! We discussed the concept of DIY in the record industry, which at the time was quite revolutionary. Peter’s intention was to take over every aspect of the production process of making records. He wanted them made in his studio with musicians and technicians he had selected and he wanted the final product released on his own record label. In other words he wanted to ensure quality control from start to finish.

 

I was completely in favour of this idea and we discussed at some length how the whole thing might become reality and how at some point in the future this would become the norm rather than the exception.

 

Peter ended up staying for about an hour and said he had found our conversation really interesting. He said it would be good to meet up again for a further chat. I sent him a copy of the edited interview and Gail called me to say he was really pleased with the result.

 

Peter Gabriel went on to put his plans into action by putting together the WOMAD festival and the Realworld record label. Just like he was predicting back in the late seventies, the role of record companies has steadily diminished and now a large percentage of music is produced following the DIY principle. Peter got an awful lot out of music but unlike many such people he put an awful lot back too. Realworld is a fine label which produces records because they are great or culturally challenging and not simply to make money. Bearing in mind the catalogue, I would doubt the label makes any money at all in real terms (No pun etc.) but what it has done is furthered the interest in world music, like no other label before it. I am full of admiration for Peter Gabriel and all he has done and I hope that our conversation back in the early days of all that, gave him some food for thought.

 

As is common in this business we never did get to meet up again.