by John Taylor
It was Simon Cook who indirectly gave Simon Le Bon the nickname “Charlie.” One evening, Andy got frustrated at having two Simons around and said, “I can’t fucking handle this. You, Le Bon, what’s your middle name?”
“Charles,” SLB replied, reluctantly.
“Right,” says AT. “You’re Charlie. And you”—pointing his talon at Simon Cook—“are Simon.”
We were beginning to learn not to argue with Andy when his blood was up.
Rob Hallett soon followed up the Marquee booking with a prestige slot at the Lyceum Theatre, opening for Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls. John Cooper Clarke was also on the bill. Pauline had been the singer in Penetration, the band for whom The Human League had opened when they had made such an impression on Nick and me with their multiple synthesizers and drum machines.
Anyone who has visited the Lyceum in London knows what a beautiful theater it is. In terms of architecture and décor, there is nothing like it in Birmingham. It was the biggest stage I had ever walked out onto, and it was intimidating, not just because of the architecture but also due to the London punters, who tended to look down on Brummies from a very great height, and also because of the possibility of a writer from Melody Maker or the NME turning up, or record company A&R men. We had to be at our best, and we were up for it.
There was something reassuring about the feel of the springy boards under our feet. For more than a hundred years, the greatest entertainers in the country had been walking on that stage, and a heritage like that cannot help but rub off on you.
When I stepped out onto that stage, under the most lights I had ever faced and playing through the biggest sound system I had ever plugged into, I was stepping into a tradition and couldn’t help but get caught up in it. Simon would have felt it too, with his stage upbringing, his mother reminding him, “Eyes and teeth, Simon, eyes and teeth!” It was possible his grandmother had appeared on that very stage.
Our opening-act set lasted just thirty minutes, but it stirred up the right amount of interest in the audience and in the industry players who were there to see us or one of the other acts on the bill. We were certainly as much discussed as the headline act.
One of the reasons I had the confidence to grow into these bigger venues was because of what I was beginning to understand about Roger, that he was entirely reliable, that there was never any drama, anger, or bullshit. As a drummer and as a man, he is always on time. For a bass player trying to become a better bass player, trying to become a performer, that was of critical importance.
Roger and I are always the first to congratulate each other on a job well done after a show, albeit in an extremely low-key way.
Roger: I thought that was pretty good.
JT: Best one yet.
Roger: It took me a while to get into it. My fucking headphones fell off in the second song.
JT: Really? I thought you were good.
Roger: One or two good-looking chicks out there.
JT: Definitely.
Roger: I think I’ll go and have a drink at the bar, watch Pauline Murray.
JT: OK. See you out there.
Of course, “chicks out there” would not have been any use to us that night, as we would all be crammed back in the Citroën by midnight, heading back to Birmingham, arriving home just in time for a nightcap at the Rum Runner.
23 Bidding Wars
In November, the Berrows bought us onto a tour supporting Hazel O’Connor. Buying artists onto a tour was common practice back then. The idea was to give the up-and-comers showcase opportunities where they could strut their stuff on decent-size stages, with sophisticated sound and lights, in front of decent-size crowds.
It cost about twenty grand, and Michael sold his flat to pay for it.
Hazel O’Connor had been a wild child—a singer, actor, and exotic dancer who had lived all over the world. She landed in the studio with Tony Visconti in 1979 and recorded an album of songs that formed the basis for the film musical Breaking Glass. Hazel starred as Kate, an angry singer-songwriter who is managed by a firecracker played by Phil Daniels. The film was directed by Brian Gibson, who, many years later, would sell my wife, Gela, and me his Los Angeles house. The executive producer of Breaking Glass was a young Dodi Fayed.
After the film was a hit, she put a band together, Hazel O’Connor’s Megahype, and went on the road playing big venues—the Odeon in Birmingham, Colston Hall in Bristol—and sold out most nights. The idea of playing on that particular tour was appealing to us, as she didn’t attract the kind of fanaticism some artists had, that an opening act could not get past. We wouldn’t be banging our collective heads against a wall of apathy. We could take her on.
It was a three-week tour, from November 18 through December 6. We joined the Megahype tour on a Sunday night at the Top Rank in downtown Cardiff. They may not have been fanatics, but the crowd we were exposed to there was not like any audience we had played to before. Beer-drinking rugby hooligans would go close to describing them. Nick and I had gotten used to insults being hurled at us for our choice of wardrobe years ago. They would shout, “Poofters!” “Fairies!” and “Wankers!” “Wankers!” was pretty much the catchall phrase back then. We were not above using it ourselves, either. That was probably the insult we most frequently shouted back at the mob. We were happy to end our Cardiff set.
On this tour, I was wearing a silk Dior blouse that had belonged to my girlfriend and black PVC pants. I was starting to dye my hair dark red, and makeup was back. It was hardly Ziggy Stardust, but out here in 1980 it was still provocative, as was the music, which was anything but good-time rock and roll. It was going to take longer to connect in cities like Cardiff. A hit would help. Something on the radio. Someone like John Peel saying, “These cats are cool.”
• • •
The world of the Rum Runner was a protective shell. It was our own world, and one could easily forget that most people didn’t dress the way we did, that we were part of a cult.
When we took our act out of clubland, away from the cult, we often would hit walls of resistance, indifference, or even hatred. It didn’t stop us or make us want to tone down our appearance; on the contrary, we just got more outré.
From Cardiff, we went on to the Manchester Apollo, with its velvet seats and high balcony, for our first theater experience. We continued to feel more and more at home on these bigger stages; our act breathed into them. Then we hit the universities of Sheffield and Lancaster.
The highlight of Hazel’s set every night was the ballad “Will You?” from Breaking Glass. We would all line up at the monitor desk, stage right, and watch the band perform this gorgeous song, in which saxophonist Wesley Magoogan would deliver the solo that was the emotional peak of the show. There was never a dry eye in the house.
As we were going from town to town in our rented Winnebago camper, Paul and Michael were making connections with the London music business, bringing representatives from different labels to see us. We must have made for an appealing package. Paul and Michael were grown-ups. They were hardworking and they had vision. That is what the record companies were buying, as much as anything. A band with looks and songs with hooks but also, importantly, a sense of “This is where we are going.”
We would meet the label guys backstage after the gigs and they’d ask us what we wanted to achieve. We would trot out what was becoming our mantra: “We want to play Madison Square Garden by 1984.”
It was we, we, we.
“We want to be the biggest band in the world.”
RECORD GUY: “Right, yeah, we can help you do that. That is a very appealing idea.” (Record Guy turns to management) “How much is it going to cost to get on board with you guys?”
Paul would reply, “Perhaps here is not the place to have that discussion, chaps,” and usher them away to somewhere more private.
For the labels, it’s a punt, a bet. In the car back to London, they would be discussing us among themselves, maybe saying, “I think they coul
d do it. They seem so determined.”
THE OTHER: “Have you ever met a more ambitious bunch of kids in your life? Who do they think they are?”
On Friday, December 4, after playing in Norwich the previous night, we drove to London in the RV. We had been invited to the offices of EMI and Phonogram, the two favorites in what had now become, to our delight, a race to sign us, a bidding war.
We visited EMI’s global HQ first, a seven-story office building built in the early sixties from glass and concrete, next door to the Wallace Collection on Manchester Square in West One. The building is featured on the front of the Beatles’ first album, Please Please Me—the Fab Four peering over the edge of the balcony.
EMI made sure we got the full treatment. The general of the charm offensive was Terry Slater, who ran the A&R department. Terry was a Cockney, a bearded bear of a guy who’d been a musician himself, having played bass with the Everly Brothers.
Standing to the left of Terry was Dave Ambrose, whom Rob had introduced us to a week earlier in Leeds. As we followed Terry and Dave to Terry’s ground-floor corner office, every secretary gave us the eye, a warm welcome, and a smile, and they got as good as they gave.
There was a piano in the corner of the room. I sat down on the stool in front of it. Terry’s eyes misted over. “When Freddie sits at that piano, there’s nothing like it! That’s where he first sang ‘Mama, just killed a man.’”
Freddie Mercury had been one of Terry’s earlier signings.
Terry drove a Rolls, unashamedly, and he would later manage A-ha. Dave Ambrose was the alkali to Terry’s acid, a lovely, damaged, sweetheart of a guy who had an instinctive feeling for music. He walked slowly and carefully around the room while we talked.
Within an hour, we had been swept off our feet by “The Greatest Music Company in the World.”
They were a hard act to follow, and consequently, when we walked over to Phonogram’s offices, on the third floor of an office building they shared above Chappell’s music store on New Bond Street, we were bound to be less impressed. Not that Roger Ames, who ran the show there, wasn’t impressive; he was, and he had an equally interesting vision for the band. In fact, Paul and Mike connected better with Roger than they had with Terry, and when the seven of us filed out onto New Bond Street, they made their case.
“They’re the guys,” said Mike.
“Absolutely. A very smart man. I like him,” said Paul.
“We like EMI,” said we in unison. “We’re signing with them.”
It was a coup. We had taken Mike and Paul’s advice on business from Day One, and they had not steered us wrong, but we had been entranced by the EMI charm. The possibility of signing to the Beatles’ label, Queen’s label—even the Stones were then under contract to EMI—was too big to ignore. And after the Sex Pistols debacle, EMI were keen to make restitution to the modern world. It was no coincidence that one of the first guys we met in the Manchester Square offices was Malcolm McLaren. He knew EMI was the best London-based international music label; that’s why he had signed the Sex Pistols to them in the first place. EMI had dropped the Pistols after the scandal surrounding their appearance on daytime TV hit the headlines, but it had been a mistake. They should have held on to them.
Malcolm was managing Bow Wow Wow now, and he had promptly taken them straight around to EMI. Dave and Terry, not wanting to lose out a second time, signed them eagerly.
They wanted us too, and we wanted them. It was that simple.
The following night, the Megahype tour came to an end at London’s Dominion Theatre. Simon and Andy jumped onstage for an encore of Bowie’s “Suffragette City.”
After all the excitement of our first national tour, we went home with an international record deal. Mission accomplished.
24 Divine Diplomacy
There was now a team around us. Dave Ambrose brought a producer named Colin Thurston along to meet us. Colin had engineered the famous Bowie/Iggy Berlin sessions that had yielded the milestone albums The Idiot and Lust for Life. Now, as a producer, he was doing great work with contemporary artists that were all interesting to us: Bow Wow Wow, The Human League, Magazine.
We didn’t need any persuasion. Dave had made a great A&R call.
Colin had been born in Singapore and was a natural outsider, and it would become clear to me that he was most at home in the studio with strange and hungry young musicians.
Between management, ourselves, EMI, and now Colin, the decision was made that “Planet Earth” was the right first single, and “Late Bar” was chosen as the B-side.
EMI were on point with our strategy. We had already printed up several thousand labels for what would have been an independent pressing of a “Planet Earth” 7-inch single to be funded by Mike and Paul (with “Anyone Out There” as the B-side), but the keenness of the record labels to make a deal with us so quickly preempted our need to go it alone.
EMI scheduled the single release for February. A plan was made to record the single, get that delivered to the pressing plants, and then put the rest of the album down on tape.
We were on the fast track.
Colin’s favorite recording studio in London was Red Bus, across the city off Edgware Road. We drove the Citroën down the M1 and checked into the Lindsay Hotel on the Fulham Road.
Colin was absolutely the right producer for us. He knew how to take what was best about us and magnify it, and boy, did he take our sound to another level.
Colin specialized in giving individual attention to all of us. There was no preferential treatment. He lavished as much detail as was necessary on the recording of the bass, the tom-tom overdubs, and the keyboard sequences, just as he did on the lead vocal parts. Or at least it seemed that way. Being the focus of that kind of scrutiny for the first time in the studio made me a little nervous. I could no longer stay in between and out of sight. I was uncomfortable subjecting my playing to such detailed analysis, but Colin was a divine diplomat.
Colin: That’s great, John, great.
JT: (taking off my bass, perspiring slightly) Cool. Thanks, Colin.
Colin: Hold on, hold on. We’re not done yet.
JT: (plugging my bass back in somewhat reluctantly) Oh, OK.
Colin: Most of what we have is great, John. But it can be better. I think you could approach the b-section slightly differently. I’ve an idea.
JT: Okaaaay. . . .
The tough love would continue until the track was completed to Colin’s standards. Listening back years later, I am grateful to Colin for raising the bar on what I thought was the limit of my abilities. It has been said that “Planet Earth” was the first truly “eighties” pop song, and that is as much a testament to Colin’s production skills as our efforts.
“Planet Earth” was influenced by German techno as much as it was by punk and New York disco. Andy’s heavy-metal lead line, strangled through the Roland guitar synth, gave it power, but under a dark light. Lyrically, it was new. “Planet Earth” was a celebration of youth, of the possibility of youth, about feeling good to be alive.
After three years of songs about hate and war, it was fresh.
• • •
After I had cut my bass tracks, I got sick and couldn’t function. I was a right mess.
I was beginning to discover that I did not relish sleeping away from home. The Hazel tour had taken us away from Birmingham for a couple of weeks, and the recording in London did the same. Mostly, I still spent nights in my own bed. As much as I was desperate for freedom from Mom, Dad, and the paper-thin walls of Simon Road, being away from home meant taking responsibility for looking after myself, feeding myself, keeping my clothes clean. Getting to bed at a reasonable hour.
Andy and Simon were already well trained, both essentially having left home years before we had met. They were both in their own flats in Birmingham, so it was no difference to them whether they were there or at hotels on the road. Nick, Roger, and I were all still living with our parents. Andy knew the gig was of primary
importance; it was the gig for which you got paid. Simon’s years in his student digs had obviously taught him something, but me, I was a pampered poodle, and without Mom and Dad spoon-feeding me, I was not eating properly, drinking too much, and staying up until dawn, not wanting to go to bed in lonely and anonymous hotel rooms that I would sometimes be sharing with other band members.
I wanted to make music, and in this sense my dreams were being realized. The time spent onstage was becoming more fun the better at it we were getting. But what to do with the time in between, the time when I didn’t have my bass strapped on in front of an audience?
Those were turning out to be the challenging times.
25 Divine Decadence
After the work in Red Bus was complete, we returned to Birmingham. On Christmas Eve we played the Cedar Club, one of the city’s bigger live-music club venues. It was the first of what would be many triumphant returns to our hometown.
Although it was yet to be released, it was good to be able to say, “This is our new single.” We played “Planet Earth” twice, the second time as an encore, and streamers rained down as we invited many of the Rum Runner stars, like Koren Foxx and Gay John, to join us, in their glamour and finery, on the stage.
Divine decadence was in the air.
• • •
After the warmth and conviviality of a Simon Road Christmas—relatives, friends, Father Christmas Cassidy, checking in with Nick around the corner in Mill Close—a sense of change and expectation hovered in the atmosphere. My entire family would be taking this journey with me; I was to be the torchbearer of the family name. It was going to be Nigel—“sorry, John”—who was going to put the family on the map.
For New Year’s Eve, it just had to be the Rum Runner. Bearing in mind that the Rum Runner knew how to party pretty much any day of the week, this was going to be a spectacular night.