In stark contrast to the subsequent Stiff-styled image of the tweed-suited, horn-rimmed, eight-stone weakling who’d had not just sand, but an entire beach, kicked in his face, Declan was actually a keen swimmer and still a fanatical football fan, physical interests none of the other members of the band shared. He had shed the excess weight of his Liverpool days and now had an athletic physique, favouring over-sized denim dungarees and sporting medium-length hair with small, rimless glasses.
Into this fraternal atmosphere, the arrival of Mary at Stag Lane began to cause some serious inter-band conflict. According to both Ken Smith and Steve Hazelhurst, Mary was a fixture in the house by early 1974, but at some point broke off with Declan and starting having a relationship with Mich Kent, who was also living at Stag Lane. Then in April 1974, Mary fell pregnant. ‘There was this thing going on with Mich which was all a bit hush-hush at the time,’ recalls Hazelhurst. ‘Then Declan and Mary got together again, and she became pregnant. Mich and Declan were thick as thieves, but there was this triangle, and it ended up with Dec the victor and the father of the child.’
Some time after these emotional upheavals, Declan wrote his most heartfelt song to date, the pained ‘Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver)’. A clear attempt to write a ballad that would do justice to The Band, it was his most straightforward effort to date to write from the soul, a stark look at a three-way love affair which – as would soon become common – portrayed Declan in the role of the embittered victim. Evoking himself as the man who got ‘caught up in a whirlwind’ and ‘got blown right out the door’, ‘Imagination’ seemed to be a pointed reflection upon the tangled relationship between Declan, Mary and Mich.
The song was also the first clear manifestation of the themes that would become more and more prominent as Declan MacManus moved towards becoming Elvis Costello. ‘I’m Not Angry’ from My Aim Is True takes the same dark, domestic territory as its direct inspiration. Given that Mary was Declan’s first serious relationship, the mother of his child, and later his wife, an argument could be made that his weary view of relationships and his antipathy towards particular women (as opposed to women in general) as expressed in his early records could reasonably be said to stem from the events of 1974. With Mary, it would simply never be an easy relationship. ‘They used to have pretty strong arguments,’ recalls Ken Smith. ‘She had a pretty strong temper, as did he.’16
The somewhat inevitable end result of the pregnancy came on 9 November, 1974, when Declan Patrick MacManus and Mary Martina Burgoyne married at St Margaret’s Catholic Church in Richmond-Upon-Thames. She was nineteen, he was twenty. The groom listed his occupation as computer operator, the bride as airline stewardess. Bizarrely, Mich Kent was best man, all previous differences apparently forgotten, and the rest of the band also attended.
Mary was nearly seven months pregnant on her wedding day. For two young Catholics in the early ’70s, a termination had probably never been a serious option. Indeed, Declan was vocally opposed to abortion and has remained that way.
By the time their son Matthew – named in honour of Declan’s grandfather, whose middle name he shared – was born at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton on 21 January, 1975, the newlyweds had moved into the flat below Declan’s father’s house; Ross and Sara remained at 16 Beaulieu Close, while Declan, Mary and Matthew occupied No. 15. Around the same time, Flip City made their second foray into the recording studio.
The band’s studio debut had been back in the summer of 1974, when one of Ken Smith’s music biz contacts had got them some ‘downtime’ at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios. They cut through three MacManus originals – ‘Baseball Heroes’, ‘Radio Soul’ and ‘Exile’s Road’, as well as Steve Hazelhurst’s ‘On The Road’ – under the auspices of a well-heeled BBC engineer, decked out in a bright orange shirt and cravat, who would count the band in with a click of the fingers and ‘OK boys, let’s take a trip! One, two, three!’
Heard today, the tapes of the three MacManus songs illustrate clearly both his individual strengths and the weaknesses in the component parts of the band’s sound. The voice is instantly recognisable: strong, expressive, perhaps slightly more nasal than it would become but containing the same idiosyncratic stylings as the one that kicked off My Aim Is True three years later.
With the benefit of hindsight, there’s no particular gulf in the standard of his songwriting between 1974 and 1977; although lyrically he would develop considerably, Declan was already gifted and confident enough to be making records. However, unlike many other artists who make a rapid and definable creative leap between their early amateur days and a professional career, his artistic arc would be a steady upward ascent rather than a steep and sudden climb. The reason for this was almost certainly Flip City. The band was ragged, enthusiastic but amatuerish. They sounded like what they were: a pub band playing for drinks and kicks.
As a means of getting the band gigs, the BBC demo tape was certainly adequate, but by the time they ventured into the studio above the Hope and Anchor pub in Islington in early 1975, Declan in particular was looking for much more. ‘He was absolutely dead serious about what he was doing,’ says Steve Hazelhurst. ‘He wanted the band to be successful.’
The Hope was a regular stop in Flip City’s London itinerary. On the afternoon before a Saturday evening gig, Ken Smith had managed to secure some studio time from proprieter Dave Robinson, who in between inventing pub-rock, managing bands and promoting gigs, ran a makeshift studio there.
Having helped Robinson move a piano up to the top floor, Flip City were rewarded with the chance to put down three tracks. Original drummer Malcolm Dennis had now left and a replacement had yet to be found for the drum stool, so Flip City recorded with a long-forgotten session drummer from a band called Phoenix, whose talents were supplied by Robinson. The results – ‘Pay It Back’, ‘Imagination (Is A Powerful Deciever)’ and ‘Radio Soul’ – were intended to showcase Declan’s prowess as a songwriter as much as present the band itself as an entity.
In any event, the former aim was probably better realised than the latter: driven by enthusiastic but rudimentary saxophone, a driving soul beat and a structure clearly pinched virtually wholesale from Van Morrison’s ‘Domino’, ‘Pay It Back’ was lyrically and structurally very similar to the later version that appeared on My Aim Is True, but entirely different in feel. Lacking the album version’s loose-limbed swagger, the band instead attempted a fluid blue-eyed soul swagger in an early Springsteen style which they couldn’t pull off, and which sat awkwardly against the vengeful sentiments of the song.
The assured – if slightly plodding – recording of ‘Imagination (Is A Powerful Deciever)’ was more successful, and can be heard on the bonus disc of the My Aim Is True CD reissue. It was Declan’s finest song to date, and Ken Smith remembers an attempt to get the American blues singer and songwriter Bonnie Raitt to listen to it, with the aim of persuading her to record it.
‘We went to Browns Hotel in Kensington with this reel-to-reel tape, but she had a cold and couldn’t come down, so we left it with the clerk at the desk with a strong promise that he would give this to Bonnie. [The tape] might have had other tracks on it, but it certainly had ‘Imagination’ on it, because that was the one we were trying to sell.’
If Raitt ever did get the tape, she made no use of it, but it’s clear that Declan saw his future career as a songwriter as much as a performer, with ambitions and a drive which far exceeded what he was doing with Flip City. From an early age he would have been fully aware of the financial rewards of song publishing, not least because both his parents were well versed in the intricacies of the music business. The final track recorded at the session was ‘Radio Soul’. It remained both melodically and lyrically strong, but the band were still searching for the right musical setting. It would take The Attractions to find it.
As Flip City continued to gig into 1975, it became more and more apparent that Declan’s attitude and improving songwriting was increasingly at odds wit
h the laid-back, happily amateur philosophy of the rest of the band. He knew what he wanted – and it wasn’t Flip City.
‘They were just the weirdest fucking band,’ recalls Dave Robinson. ‘I booked Flip City because I liked their manager Ken – very eager, very keen – but the band couldn’t play at all. They never actually played as a unit ever, and you didn’t have to play that great in those days for people to feel it was all right. They were just musically dyslexic.’
The inability of the band to adequately express his ideas teased the hostility out of Declan. During one live rendition of ‘Pay It Back’, Steve Hazelhurst’s light-hearted introduction – ‘This is a song for all you thieves in the audience’17 – was cut dead in its tracks by the furious singer: ‘He just looked at me with this glower on his face. Obviously I’d said the wrong thing.’
Another case in point was ‘Flatfoot Hotel’, a set regular, and a long, labyrinthine and less-than-melodic trek through some obscure personal preoccupation: ‘And there’s no forgiveness/And there’s no relief/’Cos I start off as the good guy and I end up as the thief.’ The end result sounded like a cross between ‘Hotel California’ and something by Santana, only even less appetising than that sounds. It even featured a drum solo. Declan was obsessed with getting the song absolutely right, but the band had little enthusiasm for the track and never really got to grips with it.
Apparently based on real life characters at either the Three Fishes pub in Kingston or the band’s household at Stag Lane, it’s tempting to read the line: ‘So you came looking for sweet romance/Did you find out what you were missing?’ as a dig at Mich Kent. The song piled allegory upon allegory until its eight-minute trek became not just tedious, but effectively meaningless.
The numbing qualities of ‘Flatfoot Hotel’ were utilised to full effect on the night that Flip City played a private party at an expensive house in Purley in London. The partygoers were a young, well-to-do media crew, merely looking for an excuse to dance and have fun. In other words, the kind of people that Declan instinctively mistrusted. In a typically single-minded – or simply contrary – mood, he started the band off into the long trawl through ‘Flatfoot Hotel’. ‘It was always a set closer, but for some reason he wanted to start the set with it, to shock the people who were all waiting to party,’ says Ken Smith. ‘I looked at people’s faces and I was worried about whether they were going to pay us!’
Declan had no intention of being dismissed as another run-of-the-mill pub rocker, filling in time before promotion and a paunch set in. If the audience didn’t recognise his talents, then he certainly wasn’t going to pander to them. ‘The attitude was already there,’ says Steve Hazelhurst. ‘It was like a stage persona, but it was more than that. The word entertainment was anathema to him: “I’m not an entertainer. I’m not here to entertain people.” He used to go on and on that the whole world was full of apathy. He’d say things like: “My ambition is to shake people out of their apathy. I want us to be so good that we scare people!”. I don’t think you could quite call it punk, but it was very fortuitous the way it all came together.’
While the original Hope and Anchor tape was primarily an exercise in showcasing Declan’s talents as a songwriter, the band decided to reconvene on the fourth floor of Dave Robinson’s Islington studio in the late spring of 1975 with humbler aims: to put down the staples of their live set in order to secure more gigs. This time there were no heavy musical instruments that needed moving, so they paid the priapic Robinson something along the lines of ‘£20 and a bottle of port’. With new drummer Ian Powling in place, the tape was a live, first-or-second-take bash through four MacManus originals and four covers.
They breezed through the original songs: ‘Exile’s Road’, ‘Sweet Revival’, a messy ‘Please Mister, Don’t Stop The Band’ and ‘Wreck On The Slide’, before adding an energetic, call-and-response cover version of Chris Kenner’s ‘Packin’ Up’ and a jokey canter through the hardy Hank perennial ‘You Win Again’. The two songs of note, however, were Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ and Jesse Winchester’s18 ‘Third Rate Romance’. The Dylan song had been released on the Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid soundtrack album in 1973, and was a recent addition to the Flip City live set, first aired at a disco party in Charing Cross where the band had supported a miming Desmond Dekker. It was slightly out of the ordinary for the band’s style, but if the song’s rudimentary, circular chord sequence never quite suited their tempo and the lyrics sat oddly with Declan’s sardonic vocal, then ‘Third Rate Romance’ was much more successful.
A recent US pop hit, ‘Third Rate Romance’ (‘low rent rendezvous’) was a sly tale of two strangers meeting in a restaurant, cutting their losses and having a one-night stand. A grown-up, unsentimental slice of sexual reality, it had at its heart a subject matter that Declan would go on to explore in minute and lacerating detail in later years. Even in 1975 he does not disappoint, singing it beautifully with the kind of wry smile which indicates he is revelling in unravelling this slightly seedy sexual encounter. ‘She said, “You don’t look like my type, but I guess you’ll do”,’ he sings, adding, ‘And he said, “I’ll tell you I love you if you want me to”.’
For Dave Robinson, it was a turning point. ‘Him doing a cover of “Third Rate Romance”, that’s what attracted me to him. I thought, “Fuck me, this guy is good. Why don’t you find a real band?”. But he stuck with them.’ For the time being at least. While Steve Hazelhurst recalls that Robinson was slightly more ambivalent about Declan – ‘He liked him, but he wasn’t 100 per cent. He did use the phrase “verbal diarrhoea” at one point,’ – Robinson was keen enough on ‘Third Rate Romance’ to agree to put it out as a single on his fledgling Street Records. It was a break.
While contemplating their luck, Flip City continued gigging around London and sometimes beyond through the summer of 1975. Gigs at The Lord Nelson on Holloway Road, The Brecknock in Camden Road, The Greyhound in Fulham, The Hope and Anchor, and a late-night residency at the Howff in Primrose Hill, were slotted in alongside higher profile appointments: an open-air festival in Stepney; two gigs at the famous Marquee in central London supporting Dr Feelgood and National Flag respectively; an out-of-town engagement in Dudley, near Birmingham; and two memorable performances at Wandsworth Prison.
The prison shows were held in the chapel on Sunday afternoons, where the band was requested not to smoke on stage or bring their girlfriends in case it should incite the inmates. The audience were also threatened with solitary confinement should they not display sufficient enthusiasm. The ruse worked. As Flip City soundchecked with Commander Cody’s ‘Looking At The World Through A Windshield’, one prisoner was particularly impressed with Declan’s guitar-playing talents: ‘He can really tickle them strings, can’t he?’
But despite the approval of the cons at Wandsworth, Flip City were treading water. The most they ever earned collectively was £25. They had no fans as such, and most of the time they barely even registered. There had been one professional photo shoot for the gig guide in London’s Time Out magazine, but no reviews, and certainly nobody was misguided enough to be touting them as the next big thing in the music papers. The same prominent UK music journalists that created such a ballyhoo when Elvis Costello eventually got his first record on the shelves had encountered Declan MacManus and Flip City and gone away unimpressed.
‘Noboby wanted to know back then!’ he complained only a couple of years later. ‘I remember the time [Nick Kent] came down to the Marquee when we were supporting Dr Feelgood. [He] didn’t even bother to check us out. And I really resented that, you know.’7
With a man as determined and musically ambitious as Declan at the helm, such a sidelined role was never going to be satisfactory. Aged twenty-one, he was getting restless at the many possibilities of musical achievement that he believed were passing him by, and increasingly eaten up by the gnawing sensation that he was being ignored or unappreciated. There was a lot at stake. Self-belief and sheer determ
ination can only take a person so far, and even somebody as sure in his heart of his talents as Declan couldn’t help but ponder whether he was destined to a life of mundanity. ‘I did sometimes wonder whether I was going mad,’ he said later. ‘That maybe it wasn’t any good. But I kept on thinking it was they who were wrong and not me. It turned out to be the best way to think about it.’8
Or perhaps the only way. He could hardly contemplate the idea of not being successful; having invested so much energy and commitment into his music, in the certainty that he was somehow ahead of the pack, much of his self-esteem was hanging in the balance. He desperately wanted out of the nine-to-five suburban routine before it got him by the lapels and wouldn’t let go – before it defined him.
This transparent and unashamed hunger for success led to charges of greed by some of his fellow band members. ‘[One] thing that annoyed me about Declan: he wanted money,’ recalls Steve Hazelhurst. ‘Vast amounts of it.’ Although one of his few comments about his Flip City days acknowledged that ‘we never had any money, we played for peanuts’,9 there is scant evidence that it was the quest for cash which spurred Declan’s ambition.19
What he wanted most was the freedom to concentrate on his music rather than his unfulfilling job as a computer operator. But with a wife and young child, he couldn’t take the kind of calculated career risks that many of his peers were able to take. Little wonder then that money simply provided the most tangible means of escape from the constrictions of life in the suburbs. As he agonised in a new song written around this time: ‘How much longer?’
As it transpired, not too long.
* * *
Largely without rancour, Flip City broke apart. After some deliberation, Dave Robinson had decided not to pursue the idea of releasing ‘Third Rate Romance’ as a one-off single, a decision that battered the morale of the band. The gigs were failing to make any waves, and the dynamic of the band had changed. Declan was now living with Mary and Matthew in Twickenham, and the remaining members had been evicted from Stag Lane. They were all growing up, and into other things.
Complicated Shadows Page 6