It was the most embarrassing thing I had ever done. Clifford could pull off the whole bowler hat/suit ensemble, being an old-fashioned dapper gent was his natural look, but me? I was hoping I might look a bit like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. I didn’t. I looked like TV comic Freddie Davies.
I’d got to know some of the guys in the builder’s yards on the phone. My appearance in person, along with my father’s introductory spiel of ‘And this is Mr Morris junior,’ cracked them up. They pissed themselves. Despite feeling mortified and wishing for the earth to swallow me, I did my best to laugh along and appear interested in the minutiae of the plumbing and building trade. After the fifth or sixth call, my father realised I was not going to be the sales asset he had imagined, admitted defeat and told me to stay in the car for the rest of our day out.
My ‘I told you it was a bad idea’ wasn’t exactly tactful and for the duration of our silent drive home, I thought I was about to find myself jobless yet again. I returned the chapeau with a shudder and we agreed never to speak of it ever again.
* * *
I was put back to work in the office. With no qualifications to my name and a criminal record, who else was going to give me a job anyway?
The money was less than I got at the mill but I did get a day a week off to do an OND in Business Studies at Macc College as well as evening classes in shorthand and typing. At the latter, I was the only lad in a class of thirty giggly girls.
Most hot-blooded young men would have realised that there was a lot of potential in this situation. Not me. I felt intimidated – like a gatecrasher at a hen party. I was easily singled out. The whole thing was cringy and embarrassing. So, after two weeks, I fled yet another place of learning and never returned.
I must have been paying some attention as I managed to pick up the basics of touch typing – it’s still useful today – and also something called Pitman shorthand script, which involved scribbling things that looked like hieroglyphics. I didn’t stay long enough to discover what the point of that was.
No, I’d made my mind up: I was educated enough, thank you.
I’d passed my driving test on the second attempt. I could ditch the pushbike and move on to four wheels. Road legal at last. That was enough learning for me. The only qualification I really needed was a full licence. I could now take up car scrounging until I’d saved up enough to get a motor of my own. An unexpected side effect of becoming a driver was that I became far more popular with the young ladies at work. They needed lifts to nights out at Genevieve’s, Pips and other Manchester nightclubs. I would drop them off on my way to gigs and round them up on the way home. They chipped in a few quid for petrol and bought me drinks.
Towards the end of 1974, around my seventeenth birthday, I met a fellow percussionist named Phil Swindells (not to be confused with the other Phil). He was a year or two older than me and a really good drummer. He played in local banjo bands, jazz groups, all sorts of stuff – he was an in-demand drummer.
‘You’d like Phil. He plays the drums too,’ they would say down the pub. Why do people always think like that? I thought it was opposites that attracted.
He was nothing like me anyway. He drank only lemonade, drove a car safely, thought the drummer Carl Palmer was cool . . . and Phil could play the drums ‘properly’. Try as I might, I could never play like him, but on the other hand he couldn’t play like me either. He could play swing convincingly, something I never could. To compensate, I had developed a way of playing that I thought looked and sounded like I knew what I was doing. I was not technically proficient at all. What I lacked in finesse I compensated for with energy and stamina. I had developed what they call a ‘unique style’.
Phil was always gigging and he always knew of someone who had odd bits of kit to sell cheapish.
One Saturday lunchtime, he rang up in a bit of a panic. He’d got himself double booked and wanted to know if I could I stand in for him at a pub gig in Leek – ‘Just light pop stuff,’ he said, ‘nothing complicated.’ I was flattered that he offered me the gig. I jumped at the chance, anything to get to play with a band. Phil told me to turn up at six and meet Doug and Dave in the pub car park. How on earth I thought I could just turn up and play with someone without rehearsing with them first, I do not know. (On reflection, the more likely explanation lies in the fact that 1974 was a bumper year for LSD, pre Operation Julie, which just about destroyed the acid business in the late seventies. Most weekends, I was away with the space cadets.)
Doug and Dave turned out to be a couple of elderly gents – a pianist and an upright bass player. It went downhill from the moment they asked if I’d brought my own dickie bow. The most recent number in their set was ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’. It was ‘mood’ music for couples having their Sunday night chicken in a basket. There were complaints. Not all from the audience.
‘Can you play a bit quieter?’ was Doug and Dave’s frosty catchphrase.
As first gigs go, I suppose it could have been worse, but I am not sure how.
‘Try everything once’ has long been a motto of mine, and now I could strike cut-price cabaret off the list. I didn’t ask if I’d see them next week. I already knew the answer.
It wasn’t Phil’s fault, though he was very apologetic, explaining how he didn’t think it would be that bad. A few weeks later he was on to me again. Another band he was standing in with were after a permanent drummer. Not really his cup of tea, and he thought it would be more up my street.
‘It’s more rock and heavy stuff,’ he went on.
That sounded promising. This outfit were younger than Doug and Dave and had much longer hair. Well, they had hair. Two guitars and bass, the traditional line-up. They did covers of ‘All Right Now’, ‘Honky Tonk Women’ and ‘Black Night’. Unfortunately, my unconscious attempts to steer these ‘standards’ in a more Krautrocky direction did not find favour with the rest of the group. The lead guitarist and bass player were soon exchanging wincing looks with each other. Undeterred, I soldiered on. I was enjoying myself – surely that would be infectious.
By the second, ‘Can you play a bit quieter?’ I had a pretty good idea where this would end up.
‘You’re not that bad really, but I think you need a few more lessons. Tell Phil we’ll see him next week.’
I took the hint.
That’s the way my musical career went for the next few months: a chain of unsuccessful auditions and one-off gigs. I enjoyed the playing with other people bit. It was just that other people didn’t enjoy playing with me. I think the problem was that my ‘unique style’ was a bit too unique for most.
My record collection was expanding even faster than the drum kit. I was still trying to buy at least one new record a week and I listened to as many different bands as I could. There really wasn’t much that I didn’t like. I’m not counting music that was in the charts – that was music that I hated with a passion. I would still watch Top of the Pops on the TV every week just so I could vent my spleen and laugh at every act’s shit attempts at miming, while at the same time fantasising about what I would do when I was on the show. TOTP, the show I loved to hate to love. I still remember the time in 1972 that both Hawkwind and Bowie were on. ‘This is more like it!’ I shouted at the TV, but the TV wasn’t listening. ‘It’ll be Amon Düül next!’ It wasn’t.
Looking back now, I can see what my problem was with TOTP. I thought that I was watching a show about contemporary popular music (and, to be fair, TOTP did little to dissuade me from this assumption). TOTP actually had more in common with the showbiz traditions of variety than anything rock and roll. The regular sexy dance routines from Pan’s People and crap pop acts like the Rubettes and Paper Lace would appear alongside novelty acts such as the Wombles (featuring, as Wellington, Chris Spedding, who would shortly go on to produce the Sex Pistols’ demos), and then you’d get something great such as Bowie, Golden Earring or Mott the Hoople, all presented in the same cheery sausage-writing style. Nowadays nostalgia allows TOTP’s naffne
ss to be overlooked as part of its charm. I watch compilations of the old shows and sigh, ‘Ah those were the days. Pilot – I wonder what happened to them?’
Of all the musical styles in the world, the one for which I reserved a special hatred was disco. Particularly the kind peddled by the Bee Gees in Saturday Night Fever. I liked Ni k Cohn, on whose New York Magazine article the film was based, but how the fuck did he end up with a movie like that? It was the work of the musical Antichrist. I was not alone in having that view. Saturday Night Fever was generally reviled by serious young male music fans of the day, and Abba too were scorned for doing the Devil’s work. What a dour lot we were.
Now, of course, it’s a different story. ‘Jive Talkin’’, which came out in 1975 (two years before the film), brings back memories of a particular time and place in a way that Patti Smith’s ‘Horses’ doesn’t. I never ever owned a Bee Gees record, much less went to a funky disco (well, maybe once or twice, but Krumbles in Macc wasn’t like the one in Saturday Night Fever), but the perseveration of that track always evokes long-forgotten feelings of 1975. It’s an idealised seventies, one that never actually happened to me, but a kind of collective memory of the time. That music, particularly popular music, can work as an emotional time capsule, a link to memory, is something extraordinary. That we have no control over what stays with us and what fades (why don’t I remember Nils Lofgren more clearly than I do? I listened to him enough), that the mechanism is apparently purely subconscious, is fascinating. Am I remembering the actual past or the mythologised past of the ‘good old days’?
Back then, in the real mid-seventies when disco was just starting to enter the mainstream, I would curse every second of TOTP’s tinsel-prismatic sheen, except, of course, when someone I liked came on. Then I would cheer them on for taking the piss out of the whole charade.
I hated 99.9 per cent of its spangly content with venom. ‘How dare the BBC put this disco shit on my TV at 7.30 on Thursday evenings when there’s some proper music in the world that never gets a chance . . .’ went the pompous letter I never sent to Points Of View. Honestly, at the time I just did not see the point of disco: it got filed away under ‘Vilified’ along with anything my dad liked.
It was The Old Grey Whistle Test that catered for the likes of me and my friends – serious bands presented by serious people in a serious manner. That was more like it. Like John Peel’s radio show, it was scheduled as late as possible to deter the accidental, more easily musically offended viewer. It had all the greats – Roxy Music, Captain Beefheart, Mott the Hoople, Can, Alex Harvey, Dr Feelgood, Alice Cooper and the New York Dolls, who presenter Whispering Bob Harris had taken some sort of instant dislike to and made no secret of it. He would later have no truck with punk either, giving rise to the perennial thorny question: was it possible to simultaneously like Little Feat and the Sex Pistols? I loved it all. The Felix the Cat/twenties flapper videos the show’s producers put on to accompany some of the album tracks were a little bit naff, and they never had Amon Düül on, but nothing’s ever perfect.
‘Pop tripe’ aside, I listened to every other kind of music: country, folk, funk, etc. This is probably why later in 1975 I ended up in a kind of folk-rock group whose name is lost in the mists of time. A good thing, no doubt. I think it was something to do with flowers of some kind, but I can’t be certain. Perhaps it was birds? Maybe it was such an awful name I am ashamed to remember it.
They were a group put together by an acquaintance of Phil Swindells called Will Edwards. I used to see Will in the pub and we’d talk about music, what records we were listening to, and weren’t the charts full of shit? That kind of thing.
A big night out in Macclesfield was usually a Friday, end of the working week. A gang of us would meet up at someone’s house (never mine – living with my parents ruled that out). We’d put on some dubplates and have a few spliffs. Then play a bit of Johnny Guitar Watson or the Meters and roll a couple more joints, before commencing our grand tour of the public houses of Macclesfield – or at least those from which none of us were barred. A pint or two in each and then move on to the next. We’d try and end up in the Bear’s Head for closing time in the hope of a lock-in. Failing that we could always try getting into Images or ‘going on’ Krumbles. I don’t know why but it was always referred to as ‘going on’ the respective nightclub like it was some kind of horse.
Most of the time my face didn’t fit and I’d get knocked back at the door. But if I timed it correctly before the pub closing-time rush when the place was pretty deserted and the door staff less attentive, I could get into Images. It served only lager on draught and a sparse selection of spirits, and there was usually an old bloke with slicked-back grey hair and a pink cravat at one end of the bar, leerily eyeing up any new female customers. The girls would give him a wide berth and, loaded up with rum and black, head for the small room at the back with the dancefloor. There was also a small balcony, reached by means of a wrought-iron spiral staircase down which many a pissed punter would tumble come closing time. The DJ was usually Barry White – no, not that Barry White. Barry was the guy who sold me the Hawkwind LP and now had a record shop of his own and moonlighted on the decks. He was pretty good – for Macc on a Friday night, he was perfect. He played a selection of soul classics and Parliament-Funkadelic’s. ‘Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)’ was always a hit with the late-night revellers. The mixing of hash, bitter and draught Holsten Pils, though, was a risky business. I found the trick was to stagger out into the cold and homewards before the room started to turn a full 360 degrees. The chill air would take the edge off long enough for my legs to gain adequate momentum to propel me back up Park Lane and home to bed without throwing up in a bin.
Then Will decided he’d start a band. We’d all decided we’d start a band at some time or other, and usually nothing came of it once we’d sobered up. But Will stuck at it. He played bass and soon he’d found a guitarist/singer and a keyboard player, and scrounged/bought some gear. He asked me if I’d like to do the drumming. Of course I said yes, and we started spending Saturday afternoons together rehearsing at the MADS Little Theatre in Macc. I should point out that Will was like Phil Swindells, another wholesome lad. He was a Christian youth-club goer and the rest of the group were of similarly healthy persuasions. I just about got away with smoking cigs but skinning up would have been a big no-no. Not that anyone was hardcore God Squad or anything – but (unfortunately) they were ‘really nice’.
The first problem, and I suppose it’s any band’s first problem, is what music do you play? Sue, the keyboard player, wanted to do some songs that the guitarist hadn’t heard of; Will wanted to do songs that the guitarist and Sue hadn’t heard of; and I wanted to do a John Cale song (‘Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend’) that none of them had heard of. Eventually we decided to start doing a Bob Dylan song. It was ‘You Ain’t Goin Nowhere’, which embarrassingly I wasn’t that familiar with, but the dithering had gone on for long enough. All Dylan songs sound a bit similar, I thought, so I just pretended I knew how it went and bluffed the rest. Anything just to get playing.
And so I learnt to drum and smoke while sitting in front of a fireplace.
It was a bit hesitant, stop-start, but eventually we got the hang of it and it didn’t sound too bad. It even sounded a little like Bob Dylan. At least the day didn’t end with the don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you not-so-cheery goodbye.
The next week, after we’d remembered how to play the Dylan song again, things went a bit better, but there was still something awkward about it all. We all got on OK, but we were all shy and introverted with each other.
I’m ashamed to admit I can’t recall the name of the guitarist, so let’s call him Nick until I receive his official letter of complaint. His long, straight, blondish hair, Lennon specs and denim jacket with the big, rounded lapels gave him the look of either a shaggy John Denver or a trendy history teacher. He was a bit of a folk-club veteran and had written a song or two. ‘Perhaps we
should do one them?’
Original songs . . . just like a proper group. So Nick played us a song in a folky singer/songwriter sort of vein and it sounded OK, but as it was just guitar and vocals I couldn’t imagine what the drums were supposed to do on it and when.
The stuff I’d done with bands before – cabaret stuff and rock classics – I knew how they all went after a fashion: first bit, second bit, first bit again, second bit again, another bit until it stopped. But I just couldn’t grasp this song of Nick’s – it was like learning a foreign language. We made a cassette of us all playing the song but all you could hear were the drums, and no matter how quiet and gently I attempted to play it just got worse. So we relied on the tried-and-tested method of nodding to each other at the point where the changes were going to occur, and one in three times we got it right, almost, and that was good enough for Will. For if this was anyone’s band, then it was his. Will, along with his friend George, who ferried us about in his orange Beetle, was the manager of sorts and he had faith and a bit of money.
We would go and record a demo of Nick’s song in a proper recording studio, enter it in a songwriting competition run by Piccadilly Radio, play some gigs and get a record deal – easy.
The first bit was a breeze. Will booked Strawberry Studios in Stockport for half a day. The studio was owned by ‘local legends’ and ‘professors of pop’ 10cc .
10cc made very clever records. The production on them was always state-of-the-art and the lyrical subject matter was usually quirky. I like quirky. That 10cc were still based in the north-west/rainy Stockport and were investing their pop gold in the furtherance of other local bands, rather than flying off to the sun and swimming pools of LA, also struck me as something to admire.
Tucked behind the wedding-cake shape of Stockport Town Hall, Strawberry, with its gold discs, mirrored walls and aroma of fresh brewing Cona coffee, was awe-inspiring, fascinating and educational. I had a pretty good idea of what a recording studio was and what it did. But seeing a proper mixing desk and a twenty-four-track tape machine up close left me slightly awestruck. I mean, how did it all work? What did those lights mean? What was the buzzing noise in the headphones you had to wear? Should I mention that buzzing or not? These and many more questions were left unanswered but I learned a couple of things about the recording of drums. One was that it is not easy, especially if the drummer is virtually clueless – like myself. The second was the solution to the difficulty in the recording of drums lay in covering the heads first with toilet paper and gaffer tape and then, if that didn’t work, draping them with tea towels and stuffing cushions into the bass drum. This seemed to me to make them sound worse, but what did I know? I had to play with headphones on, but they kept falling off. I was going to fuck the song up, I knew I was. How does it go again?
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