Lee Brilleaux

by Zoe Howe

  Lee Brilleaux

  Dr Feelgood would return from America in the spring of 1976 for a short break before going straight back in May. The pressure was on to record a new album for their already scheduled autumn tour. The best solution, however, was the simplest one, and it was a solution that was already in existence. Brilleaux had promised that fans would get a live album when the time was right. That time was now.

  Recordings of the previous year’s shows in Sheffield and Southend had at last bottled the spirit and energy of the Feelgoods at their peak. Other than listen back to the recordings and select the best tracks, ‘there wasn’t much to do other than mix it,’ said Wilko, who set to work with Vic Maile on readying the release. What transpired was ‘the ultimate Dr Feelgood album’, in Lee’s words.

  ‘Some of it is out of tune, some of it’s too fast because we were so out of our brains on amphetamine, some of it doesn’t even bear listening to. I think it’s more interesting as a historic document rather than a piece of music,’ but there was, as Lee put it, a ‘magic’ about it.

  One of his favourite tracks on what would become Stupidity was their version of ‘Johnny Be Goode’, Lee snapping the words rhythmically over a long, dynamics-driven blues workout. UA were dubious about its inclusion. ‘We were told, “Don’t put it on the record – it’s been done to death by everyone.”’ said Lee. As usual, they did what they wanted, and it was the right decision.

  By April 1976, Wilko took a much needed holiday with his family before the next American sojourn, which would take them back to San Francisco and also to New York, among other places, to play to the burgeoning punk crowd at the Bottom Line club. Closer to home, the rest of the Feelgoods and an assortment of pals were about to lay down some tracks with the eccentric and talented harmonica player Lew Lewis. Lewis was a character of whom Lee was very fond. They’d grown up on the same street – Lew had played in the Southside Jug Band as well as The Fix – and Lee still looked out for him.

  ‘I’d gone to Borstal training, sort meself out a bit,’ explained Lew, ‘and when I came out, Lee said, “Why don’t you join Eddie and the Hot Rods?” They were looking for a harmonica player. I knew them anyway, but he got that together, absolutely.’

  The band had started playing in town, but one night, ‘Lew freaked out,’ Pete Zear remembers. ‘It wasn’t the first time; it had come to a head. [Hot Rods manager] Ed Hollis told Dave Higgs, “We’ve got to drop this guy.”’ Lew: ‘After I left the Hot Rods I was like a fish out of water – one minute I was in a band and the next minute I wasn’t. I was slung out of the band with just two rusty harmonicas. It was terrible, well out of order.’ Lee took offence at the development and, as Pete Zear recalls, ‘decided to help him out. I got a phone call. “We’re doing some recording, are you interested?” I went round and they were trying to get this song together. It was “Caravan Man”. Lee had the riff. Sparko, Figure, the drummer Bob Clouter was there, Geoff Shaw …’

  Lew continues: ‘I’d called in and Lee said, “Lew, let’s do a song! Let’s do a song about Ed, about what a bastard he is! He lives in a caravan … let’s call it ‘Caravan Man’.” But I’m not going to waste precious lyrics saying “Ed Hollis is a bastard” and all that. So I said OK. Lee really wanted it to be about Ed, but the idea at the back of my mind was of a Native American in a caravan. Nobody knows that, really. It’s not about Ed, it’s about territorialism, people stealing other people’s land. That’s what I was thinking about.’

  ‘It was a combination of compassion and respect for Lew’s talent,’ adds Geoff. ‘Lee was doing it from the music stance as well. Lew could be a massive pain in the arse, but we loved him, he was a soulful guy. He was always a bit troubled. He’s bright and funny, kind, but there was the other side which was self-destructive. There was a gig he did at Dingwalls once. We had to tie him to a post to get him through the gig, he was so out of it.’

  ‘Anyway, Lew’s all nervous, trying to please,’ continues Zear. ‘We got through the recording and then I remember it being said, “Well, now we gotta do a B-side!” Didn’t think it would be a single, seriously. Sparko said, “Start on guitar.” So I said, “All right,” and we did ‘Boogie On The Street’. Made it up in one take.’

  Lee played the recording to Jake Riviera, the Feelgoods’ sometime tour manager, who was now working with the promoter Dave Robinson, having just founded the now legendary independent label Stiff Records.

  When Jake was still planning the enterprise, Lee asked him how much they would need to set Stiff up. Jake responded that ‘four hundred pounds would get it going,’ Richard Balls writes in Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story. Lee immediately wrote him a cheque for £400 and handed it over, and he subsequently became a shareholder of Stiff Records alongside Chris Fenwick, Nick Lowe and the photographer Keith Morris. Elvis Costello told a Southend audience in June 2015, beneath a projection of Lee Brilleaux, that without him, his first album might not have come out, although Dave Robinson has since said he doesn’t think the cheque was actually cashed. (Apparently a cheque from Wilko Johnson was framed and hung on the wall.)

  The Feelgoods would use pseudonyms on the release as they were UA artists, so it is ‘Lee Green’, rather than Lee Brilleaux, who is vamping away on rhythm guitar throughout ‘Caravan Man’ (very Canvey title). Sparko became ‘Johnny Ocean’, while ‘percussion’ was provided by ‘The Sheikh of Araby’. Contractual reasons aside, this would also mean they didn’t steal any thunder from Lew.

  ‘It didn’t sell a lot,’ says Zear. ‘But it had a vibe about it, and people like Frank Zappa said he liked it. I was lucky enough to catch his radio show one time and he put “Caravan Man” on. All through this, Lee was like the rock keeping it all going. UA heard about it and said, “We want you to do one for us as well.” We recorded a single, “Out For A Lark”, and “Watch Yourself”. Lee was playing guitar and we were both doing the riff.’

  Another reason behind the Feelgoods’ decision to start working with Lew Lewis was because there had been a row within Dr Feelgood, and Wilko had, ostensibly, ‘left’. ‘It was one of the times he’d left,’ clarifies Sparko. ‘We were going to carry on doing the Lew thing, but then Wilko came back and we carried on.’

  Stupidity was soon to be released and tour dates were booked, but another trip to America was not about to cheer up the increasingly overwrought Wilko. ‘Someone reported back to me that Sparko had said, “Wilko ought to have a drink, because then he’d be less uptight and we could be mates.”’ said Wilko. ‘There was probably a lot of wisdom in that; Sparko is a wise person in lots of ways. But I was a teetotaller and it emphasised the differences between us, particularly between me and Lee. You know when someone just really gets on your tits? Everything they do. If one of us was in the room the other would walk out.’

  The fundamental problems within the band were self-perpetuating, and the individuals involved were now sadly bringing out the worst in each other like never before. By the end of the year, they would hardly be speaking.

  The tenth of May 1976 – Lee’s twenty-fourth birthday – was one of two nights the Feelgoods would headline at New York’s Bottom Line, with the Ramones in support. The Ramones, with their driving blend of bubblegum pop and trashy punk, would later be garlanded as the East Side’s punk pioneers, but Lee wasn’t sold on them. ‘They seemed too nervous, embarrassed,’ he said. ‘I had the impression [we were] dealing with four intellectuals who were playing at being little punks.’ The Feelgoods, on the other hand, were completely in command and Lee was wilder than ever. It’s hardly surprising the Ramones were nervous in their presence.

  Patti Smith would also be written off as ‘too intellectual, too poetic. Sorry, Patti. I don’t want to be mean.’ Lee just didn’t like the combination of art and rock’n’roll, which was the direction in which many New York punk groups were heading. He might have been uninterested in them, but they, on the other hand, took much from the Feelgoods – Patti included (see the cover of Horses – black-a
nd-white image, skinny tie, man’s shirt). All very well, but for Lee’s part, give him The J Geils Band any day.

  Of all the American acts the Feelgoods met, interestingly the all-girl band The Runaways stood out to Lee, and not for the reasons one might assume. They might have been put together by svengali Kim Fowley and encouraged to ‘rock out’ in skimpy clothes, but the reality was they took what they were doing seriously. ‘We found ourselves in the same hotel as them,’ said Lee. ‘They didn’t consider themselves a gimmick. The whole conversation was technical detail, comparing monitors and sound systems … in short, no different to any male rock musicians.’

  Meanwhile, back on the West Coast, Shirley Alford had heard on the radio that Bad Company were playing at the Winterland, supported by Dr Feelgood, on 15 May. ‘I was like, “What? That’s crazy, I’ve got to go.”’ Shirley had stayed in touch with Nick Lowe since meeting him with the Feelgoods back in January, and assumed he’d be with them on this trip.

  ‘I go down there and I was fairly late. I was coming along the sidewalk alongside this huge old venue in San Francisco and was making my way up to the front to try and get in, get a ticket, whatever. As I approached – you couldn’t make this up – the stage door was right there and it opened, and out came Jake Riviera and Lee, Wilko, Sparko and Figure.’

  Shirley realised the only member of the band she’d actually met was Lee, and she called his name. ‘He came up and went, “Oh! OK, get in the car.” I’m bundled into the car, sitting in the middle, Jake was driving, and Sparko and Figure were there. I said, “Where’s Nick?” And they’re like, “You know Nick?” It dawned on me they had no clue who I was. Lee didn’t remember me.

  ‘I eventually got over the fact that my vanity was a little wounded, you know – he really didn’t have any idea who I was. I was just someone who knew his name and that obviously qualified me to get in the car.’

  All the same, fate had brought them together again, and this time they would connect properly. ‘I remember hanging out with Lee and going partying with Lee and Chris – we had a fantastic time together. That was the beginning. Once they left we ran up enormous phone bills. I was like, “I’ve got to get to England.” I was crazy about him.’

  ‘Lee was careful about who he got together with,’ said Pete Zear. ‘He wouldn’t be sure whether someone was interested in him as a person or because he was in the band. I knew him well enough to know this – he wasn’t always looking around to play away. And there was no doubt that when Lee got married, it would be to someone wild and American.’

  Other than meeting the woman who, it quickly transpired, would be the love of his life, the American tours would be written off by Lee as ‘a sorry tale. We spent a lot of time striving to make it, and neglected our UK and European fans. And [we were] too British. Bit Tony Hancock. The Southend feel, they didn’t understand it. I remember a LA record executive saying to me, “You’ve got to talk more to the audience!” He was probably right, but it’s not me. I’d come across phoney, corny.’

  In addition to this, while the Feelgoods had been chancing their arm once more in the US, the British kids who had idolised them in the preceding years were now punks, and anything that had occurred pre-1976 risked being dismissed as dated and irrelevant. ‘All those bands were coming to see us,’ remembers Wilko. ‘But we didn’t see this coming at all, it was happening in town. It really kicked off when we were doing these tours of America.’ The Kursaals, on the other hand, were on the ground watching it unfold.

  ‘The punk thing was happening and I loved all that,’ said Will Birch. ‘In fact when the Kursaals headlined at the Roundhouse, bottom of the bill was The Clash – they watched us soundcheck. They looked the business. It was Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Terry Chimes and Keith Levene. The minute they walked in, I just knew it was all over.’27 But the Feelgoods’ finest hour was yet to come.

  Stupidity, the Feelgoods’ hotly anticipated live LP, was released in September 1976. Within days, it had topped the album chart, making it the first live album to go to number one in the UK within a week of coming out. The Feelgoods knew Stupidity would do well – ‘we were undisputedly the best and most famous live band in England at that time,’ said Lee – but no one expected a number 1 hit.

  ‘By the time of its release there was a real buzz going round,’ Lee told Blues Bag. ‘We were quite famous people, but bearing in mind that nowadays so-called “stars” get into the pages of the tabloid press and become household names, the exposure we got back then wasn’t the same. However, we couldn’t walk down the street without being recognised.

  ‘We were, I suppose, a little bit big-headed, so when Stupidity did chart we weren’t all that surprised – but when it hit number one that was another thing, a magnificent moment for us.’ The band were touring the album around the UK when they heard the news – ‘either on the radio or in the paper’, says Figure. Sparko recalls they were ‘in a car park in Manchester’; Lee, on the other hand, believed they were in Portsmouth, and that it was also his birthday, ‘which was extra double buzz’. (Lee’s birthday is in May. It probably just felt like his birthday.) Wherever they were, as Figure remembers it, ‘we celebrated … and celebrated … and celebrated …’

  The band, drunk as one might expect, migrated from pub to restaurant and traumatised the maitre d’ by ‘demanding to have all the tropical fish out of the tank, tried to eat them,’ recalled Lee, before adding the disclaimer. ‘We didn’t in the end; animal lovers will be pleased to learn we gave them back.’

  Wilko was particularly vindicated by the news. He had locked horns with Andrew Lauder during the mixing stage; Wilko was adamant there should be more ambience – it had to be ‘a really live album’ with minimal fixes, ‘bum notes and all’, and he wanted much of the recording to be taken from the audience microphones.

  Lauder still doesn’t agree that this was the best way forward, even if the album did top the charts. As for the rest of the group, they were less inclined to get involved, and also keen to avoid a combustible situation. As Wilko at one point told Lauder to ‘leave the studio’, Lee and the Feelgoods can’t have felt comfortable. They may have been at the top of their game, but the fact that they – a purportedly ‘unfashionable’ band playing R&B – were now a phenomenon was almost an anomaly, hardly a given.

  ‘Wilko is a very single-minded chap,’ said Lee in later years (to Stephen Foster). ‘He knows exactly what he wants and he had very fixed ideas about how the records should be made. Whereas we were always willing to listen, Wilko would be the one who would argue with the producer. That’s fine in itself but it kind of led to a destructiveness.’

  Andrew Lauder: ‘I remember Wilko saying, “This is what it sounds like when you’re at a gig at the back of the hall,” and I said, “I don’t want to be at the back of the hall at a gig, I want to be down the front.”’ An exasperated Lauder eventually told the producer Vic Maile to ‘let Wilko have his way, the album will die and then he’ll have to do as he’s told’.

  ‘It was getting to the stage that they had to schedule the record,’ Lauder continues. ‘They had a tour to do. We couldn’t just sit here in limbo. Wilko had made his mind up. I remember him saying, “It’s gone to number one, I was right.” Well, you’re not right because if you’d done it my way it would have stayed there longer! We’ll argue to the grave about that one.’

  In September 1976, the week Stupidity was released, Shirley would arrive in London for the first time, five days after her twenty-first birthday. The plan was to stay with friends, see Lee and have a couple of months’ holiday before going back. At that point, Shirley had no real clue as to how famous Lee now was. The Feelgoods were away on tour when she arrived, but Shirley went to visit Nick Lowe, who was staying at Jake Riviera’s flat in Queensgate, West London, at the time. Nick told her the band would be playing London’s Hammersmith Odeon on 1 October.

  ‘He said, “It’s all happening, you’ve got to go – we’ll put you on the gue
st list.” And that was it. That was the first time I saw Lee in England, and the first time I saw them perform as the Feelgoods, the four of them. Stupidity had hit number one and they were huge. HUGE. Biggest thing in the UK – and it was overwhelming because I had no idea. They were not big in the US.

  ‘For years I’ve had people make jokes, like “Oh, you were a groupie.” Well, guilty, I guess … but I’d never heard of them, so does that make me a groupie? Was I supposed to be impressed by the fact [that] he had no fame in the US? It doesn’t make sense. But he certainly had fame in England. I was astounded when I got to London, there were posters of them everywhere. It was fantastic.’

  This was the major London show, and as Shirley walked through the doors of the Hammersmith Odeon that evening amid droves of fans, all wearing the merchandise and talking about the Feelgoods in excitable tones, the magnitude of what was happening began to sink in. This show would also be the first time Lee’s parents had ever seen him perform with the band. Lee knew it was going to be a potentially rough night (and he was right. ‘Everybody was just going crazy,’ said Shirley. ‘I really was nervous that I was going to get inadvertently punched in the face.’) Lee wanted to look after them, but Arthur was determined to experience it just like a punter. Sparko: ‘Lee wanted to arrange transport for them but his dad said, “No, no, I want to travel with all the fans!”’

  It was hard to know what they would make of it all – not just the often suggestive spectacle on stage, but the madness of the fans: people were tearing up the seats, fighting, slam-dancing and basically trashing the joint. ‘It looked like a bomb had gone off,’ said Shirley. As for Mr and Mrs Collinson’s reaction, they couldn’t have been prouder.

  ‘We had a wonderful time,’ said Joan. ‘Incidentally, we’d done a lot of our courting in the back row [at the Odeon], so it was quite something to see Lee there. My husband was crazy about it. I was terrified he was going to go over the edge of the circle, I was hanging on to his coattails, he was as bad as all the youngsters.