Lee Brilleaux

by Zoe Howe

  Dr Feelgood could not survive the rigours of the road on drink alone though; there had to be other forms of recreation in order to stave off insanity, and Lee’s love of a good practical joke was as healthy as ever. When the band returned to Spain, they reconvened with Spanish tour manager and all-round character Jerome Martinez, who was also fond of a bit of japery. Once he and Lee got together, all manner of silliness would occur, one stand-out incident being at the expense of Dean Kennedy who was, he admits himself, ‘young and naive. Very gullible. Lee sent me on false errands quite a lot. For example, I told him I liked artichokes and he told me they came out of a sheep’s arse. I believed him and stopped eating them.’

  ‘After the concert in Seville,’ said Jerome, ‘I accompanied the group to the Parador Hotel of Carmona, an old restored castle. We got together in my room to have a few drinks, but in the silence of the night we heard a strange noise, like someone breathing loudly. Lee said, “What’s that?” I winked at Lee and said the castles in Spain were inhabited by lost spirits and ghosts. Lee said, “Ah yes,” and we looked at Dean. He got nervous and, believing this, he didn’t want to go to his room. Lee [wanted to continue] the joke and said, “What shall we do?” I put a white sheet on and knocked on Dean’s door. What a shock he had. He was livid. Lee was in the corridor laughing his head off. In the morning we asked what the noise had been – it was just the watering system in the gardens.’

  There’s no doubt that Lee will have approved of staying overnight in a strange old castle rather than a characterless hotel. Lee, as he was as a teenager, was still fascinated by ancient buildings and architecture, sites of interest and natural beauty. This was one of the reasons he loved being on the road. ‘When we went to Spain,’ said Sparko, ‘Lee wouldn’t be satisfied with just hanging out. Lee would be like, “Right, Monday I think we should visit the caves.” There’d always be something. “Let’s drive to Granada tomorrow.” He wasn’t a person who could relax. I don’t have that problem. His main thing was being on the road … you’re always going somewhere, which he liked.’

  Another way of allaying any touring tedium was, of course, dressing up – something Lee had always been partial to. It was only a matter of time before Lee tried to revive the spirit of the Utterly Club within the Feelgoods, including the introduction of snuffboxes from specialist shops in Charing Cross Road, watch chains and waistcoats, even a short-lived attempt to introduce silver-topped canes. It was, as Gypie remembered, like a ‘mobile Regency gentlemen’s club’. But even if Lee’s dandified leanings weren’t adopted by the collective long term, one thing was certain: service station food would never darken the Feelgoods’ gullets again if Brilleaux had anything to do with it. Yes, this would, by all accounts, be the tour during which Lee took his first real steps towards becoming a bona fide gourmand.

  As we know, the Good Beer Guide was never far from his grasp on tour, and, when he was home, Lee and Shirley would try out Delia Smith recipes,43 but the Michelin and Egon Ronay guides had since been added to this library of gourmet guidance, as would the much loved Just off the Motorway, written by fellow bon viveur John Slater. The Feelgoods worked hard, and as a band they were largely frugal when it came to everyday expenses – ‘no more four-star hotels for us,’ Lee had announced (unless the promoter was paying). ‘Like all industries in this country, we’re economising.’ But similarly, Lee quite rightly thought that when it came to fuelling up, they deserved something special to look forward to during those monotonous van journeys.

  Country pubs and restaurants would feature strongly in Feelgood tours, and Lee would do his homework. If he noted that a promising eatery was vaguely on the way to where they were going, then he’d work a visit into their schedule, even if it meant everyone had to get up two hours earlier. It was almost always worth it. Curries, Guinness stews and fry-ups would remain Brilleaux favourites, but this was the beginning of his famous love affair with fine food and drink: we’re talking about real ale, expensive wines, brandies and many, many gin and tonics.

  Lee’s enthusiasm was not always reciprocated by the proprietors of some of these establishments. As they had with the landlord of the Punch House near Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, the band would sometimes come up against prejudices based on their collective appearance, a problem the Feelgoods had endured since the early days. (If ever one needed a silver-topped cane …)

  Lee had, on one occasion, booked somewhere especially smart on the way to a gig, reserving a table for the band. ‘The woman who ran the restaurant saw us and thought, they’re not the sort of people I want in my restaurant,’ said Sparko. ‘You know, Gypie with his leather jacket; someone else might have looked a bit scruffy. And she said, “No, we’re fully booked.” Lee said, “Well, we did phone and book, we’ve got a reservation.” She wouldn’t let us in.’

  Lee wouldn’t stand for this. Having bought a pint at the bar, he looked the restaurant owner in the eye and slowly poured his drink onto the carpet in front of her. ‘Lee said, “If you want animals, we’ll give you animals,”’ remembers Sparko. ‘Those were the sorts of injustices he railed against.

  ‘Lunchtime was important. You can’t eat just before a gig, especially if you’re going to eat a lot, which we all probably did. We’d all drink a couple of bottles of wine each, brandies … We used to joke that it was more important than the gig.’ The quality of the food and drink was vital, but what Lee also loved was the atmosphere, the sense of occasion, ritual and reward, the idea of being kind to yourself, the inviting glow of various hidden treasures that were off the beaten track. ‘Lee would read from the Egon Ronay guide as if he was giving a reading,’ adds Sparko. ‘“This sixteenth-century coaching inn, with a wealth of beams and …” It was like a recital of Shakespeare.’

  It wasn’t just the band who would enjoy a good meal. Lee was insistent on taking care of whoever was there on his watch – sandwiches and beer might be distributed to support bands by Lee and Chris in person, for example, and the crew would also be treated to proper grub, even at the risk of being late loading into the venue.

  ‘In Sheffield, we stayed at this specific hotel,’ remembers roadie Neil Biscoe. ‘Lee had chosen it because they did the best Sunday lunch, and the gig was on a Sunday. The crew were not allowed to leave the hotel until we’d had lunch. I don’t think we pulled up at the gig until about four p.m. But that was Lee. “You’re not going to the show until you’ve had your Sunday roast, that’s the reason we’re here!” It was coming to the end of the 1970s, very much the Feelgoods’ decade, and they were damn well going out well fed.

  THE ROCK’N’ROLL GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO OPTIMUM ADVENTURING

  Don’t be afraid to try the local cuisine when you’re travelling. Be curious.

  The best cooking is the simplest. You can never go wrong with good home-cooked fare.

  Don’t eat too close to the show. Having time to digest one’s comestibles before physical activity will help you to avoid all manner of unpleasantness.

  If you are travelling, you’ll need to be organised lest you end up subsisting on turgid service station coffee and Ginsters pasties. (Other pasties are available, but you probably shouldn’t eat them either.) This is where your Michelin Guide comes in.

  The social aspect of eating out is important, but if you have a yen to try out a particularly swanky restaurant, it is more polite to slope off alone rather than to expect everyone in the touring party to shell out for a meal they might deem unnecessarily expensive.

  When at home, learn to cook some hearty meals. Brilleaux’s favourite cookbooks included Elizabeth Luard’s European Peasant Cookery, Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course and Feast Days by Jennifer Patterson. (His copy contained a letter from Patterson – later known as the dark-haired chef of Two Fat Ladies renown. It was a reply to Lee’s correspondence correcting her spelling of ‘Maldon’, in reference to the sea salt.) To the bookshop with you.

  Don’t be too reverent with these kitchen tomes – they’re going to get
stained anyway (or they should, if you’re using them often enough) so make like Brilleaux and write notes and thoughts in the margins, customise recipes to your own liking, draw pictures of the pie of your dreams … This inscription of Lee’s, for example, was found in the back of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course: ‘This book has served me very well. Mrs Smith has taken the mystery out of ordinary procedures and practice. When I have been sober and fastidious, her recipes have served me well indeed, my children fed conveniently, economically and myself smug, off to the pub, and considering my domestic duties well acquitted. Please God forgive me my pride.’

  Lee and his dog Bo survey the mainland (and the creeks where Lee and Chris used to play pirates) from Canvey’s sea wall close to his home on Kellington Road.

  15.LEAVING CANVEY ISLAND – AND THE LADY VANISHES

  We have thought about adding piano to the line-up, but any musician joining us now would find it difficult to fit in with us.

  What type of people are you?

  We’re crazy as hell.

  Lee Brilleaux in conversation with Ian Ravendale

  1980. Lee Brilleaux was still only twenty-eight but after a check-up at the doctor’s, he’d been advised to cut down on his drinking, which probably didn’t come as much of a shock. A brief and not always adhered-to ban on gin and tonics, beers and brandies was underway – white wine, however, was permitted. And so, as Will Birch recalls, ‘they all embraced it and took it literally. There was white wine everywhere, they were all glugging away.’

  As Nick Lowe had a window in his schedule in the early summer of 1980, the Feelgoods booked Eden Studios in Chiswick and engaged his services once more for their next album, the aptly named A Case Of The Shakes. On learning of Brilleaux’s white wine diet, Lowe ordered in twelve cases of the stuff, which arrived just as the Feelgoods rolled up. There was, I’m told, the usual availability of amphetamines, cocaine and marijuana too – ‘It’s not true that alcohol was the only drug,’ said Larry Wallis, ‘but it was the most important.’ The ‘party method’, that of inviting a crowd of songwriting pals and choice drinking companions to the studio, was employed once more.

  ‘I went down one night,’ remembers Will, ‘and there was a narrow corridor through to the control room – it was filled with what seemed like dozens of cases of white wine. You had to squeeze past them. I went into the control room and they were all there knocking it back. Even Figure was there with a glass of white wine, pinky raised: “A superb vintage!” You remember that cheap wine Hirondelle? They referred to that one as “Horrendo-del”. Someone would take a sip and go, “Hmmm! The year … one o’clock.” But they cut a few songs on that.’

  A Case Of The Shakes would feature live favourite ‘No Mo Do Yakamo’ featuring Lee singing in an unusually low register, requiring a restraint Brilleaux had little patience for onstage – the live vocals for this song would generally be roared out an octave higher instead. Then there was the Brilleaux–Mayo composition ‘Drives Me Wild’ and the punk-inflected ‘Best In The World’, a Nick Lowe song from the Rockpile slushpile. Larry Wallis, who would wait for the call from Brilleaux to let him know when it was ‘Feelgood season’, was also brought back into the fold. Larry would write ‘Going Someplace Else’, his favourite self-penned Feelgood song. Wallis would also work with the band on the fast-paced hard-luck story ‘Punch Drunk’, which would be chosen as the album’s opening track.

  One of the covers chosen for the record would prove a departure in terms of what was expected of the group, the swing-inflected R&B song ‘Violent Love’, written by Willie Dixon. It was a song Lee had always wanted to record, having owned and loved the Otis Rush recording for years.44 The subsequent Feelgood version would be hailed as an offbeat classic with a light touch, and it would be one of the few tracks which would afford us a chance to hear Brilleaux’s real voice, without the Howlin’ Wolf affectations. It was also a rare opportunity to hear the Feelgoods ‘unplugged’.

  While in the studio, Lee was telling Nick how much he’d hoped the band could record a version of it. Lowe, unfamiliar with the song, asked Lee and Gypie to show him how it went. Gypie picked out the chords on his acoustic guitar while Lee commenced crooning. ‘Bash went, “That’s great, why don’t you do it [like that]?” said Gypie. ‘We had our doubts, but anyway, Sparko learned the changes in the control room and plugged his bass straight into the board. Figure used brushes instead of sticks, the engineer set up a mic for the acoustic, and we did it. First take.’

  As soon as Liberty Records heard ‘Violent Love’, they were convinced the Feelgoods should release it as a single. The band weren’t so sure – it was so different to what their fans were used to, and their priority was to please their audience rather than indulge their own whims. All the same, they relented, even making a tongue-in-cheek video45 to accompany it – the band, every inch the sleazy lounge lizards, playing acoustically to a group of flirty elderly ladies with whom a shark-like Lee eventually disappears, not before flashing the camera an oily grin.

  By September 1980, A Case Of The Shakes was out, boasting distinctive Barney Bubbles-designed artwork46 in pink and blue, featuring the Feelgoods trapped ‘inside’ bottles of booze (the fortifying ‘Horrendo-del’, perhaps?). While the album wouldn’t chart, it would become a popular post-Wilko release over time, and it still sounds fresh, every track flying straight out of the gate like a slightly mad racehorse.

  The album would be promoted via the band’s biggest tour yet (by now ‘Dr Feelgood touring schedule’ was an industry joke – a phrase that would simply double up for the word ‘everywhere’), including a jaunt to Australia and Japan and culminating in a return to the US. But while they were praised as ‘still effective’ by the Los Angeles Times’ Don Snowden, who attended their Christmas show at the Whisky a Go Go, it was also observed that they were like ‘a slightly over-the-hill boxer’ who had ‘lost its knock-out punch’. The manic thrill of yore had been replaced, in Snowden’s opinion, by ‘workmanlike reliability’. Everyone – members of the band included – was starting to yearn for the Ghost of Feelgood Past, or maybe just the Ghost of Feelgood Pause, which, up to this point, didn’t seem to exist.

  ‘Travelling is very tiresome,’ Lee would admit. ‘You sit on an aeroplane for twenty-four hours and go to Australia, and then get off the plane on the other end and walk on a stage, you’re jet-lagged out of your brains, you don’t know where you are … There you are in Sydney, you left winter and there it’s the height of summer. Then [someone comes up and says, ‘Which one’s the Doctor?’] and wonders why you turn around and snap his head off.

  ‘Having said all of that, I’m very grateful that I’ve been successful enough to have the chance to travel like this. I’ve seen more things in ten years than many people would see in their lifetime.’

  Lee was always careful to counter any complaint with a positive conclusion – he knew how lucky he was – but there was growing unrest in the camp. Family life was a pull in some cases, but also the standard of living was lower than before and the perks that make that almost unceasingly nomadic lifestyle bearable were not always present. There was, Lee had to admit, a ‘drop in interest’ in the Feelgoods thanks to ‘a generation of kids who were more interested in electronic music and all that nonsense’, he sniffed to Blues Bag.

  ‘Our fortunes had also taken a dive partly through our own fault. We’d gone on Top of the Pops, told somebody to fuck off, that sort of thing – they don’t like it on that programme, you don’t get asked back! We’d been uncompromising about quite a few people, but that’s fine, providing you’re prepared to take the consequences.’

  Support, as a result, was becoming thinner on the ground, the journeys were longer and harder, they weren’t at their peak, and frankly, they were feeling it. ‘To keep up with the drinking was [hard], let alone anything else,’ said Figure.

  Alcohol consumption had come to define the Feelgoods. It was ‘like a joke’, as Sparko puts it. This wasn’t the angst-ridd
en alcoholism of a neurotic artist, rather the Feelgoods had the kind of attitude towards drink that seaside postcard artists have towards sex. Lee would sometimes dash into a bar and shout, ‘Brandy! Quick! I’m a doctor!’ and then down the shot himself once it appeared. One of the books Brilleaux had taken with him for the tour was the pulp novel Beat the Devil which featured a character who always replied, ‘Busy drinking’ when anyone disturbed him. This, naturally, delighted Lee and it quickly became a catchphrase. But the Feelgoods had been ‘busy drinking’ for years, and it was time to dry out for a bit. Expressing that, however, was not easy. ‘No one could refuse a drink,’ said Sparko. ‘It was like, “Excuse me? You don’t want a drink? Can you write that down?” No one was allowed to refuse.’

  The band took a much needed six-week break after Christmas 1980 to recover from the tour, punishing even by Feelgood standards. The next year would be one of change on every level, a year of coming together and splitting apart. Lee, especially, would need all the strength he could muster – he’d find himself at the eye of a storm that would leave behind a fair amount of human wreckage. Barman, an extremely large G&T, if you please.