12 Sep 11 My life as a rock star

As long ago as 1981 I formed my first band, called The Syndicate.

I was in a school band before then, but I don’t count that – it didn’t have a name, but that has been a recurring theme of the bands I have been in. I played bass which I hate and could never do very well anyway. A guy called Dave Amos was on guitar. Another school friend called Paul Coxon was on lyrics and vocals, but he never sang anything. Thinking back, his lyrics were, at best, on a good day, with a lot of generosity of spirit, total toss. His singing was not quite up to the level of his lyrics.

Our guitarist… was motivated to forge the link between music, woodwork and motor mechanics

It was Dave’s band really. We had to practice at his house, that’s how you could tell whose band it was. Musically, Dave knew all the notes and could play any chord, any guitar solo and every song ever written. The trouble is he knew how to suck the passion and life out of everything he played. He was good at maths and physics at school and music was a bit like that to him – a soul-less series of things that got put together through necessity rather than fun.

On the other hand, as a musician, I was nowhere. I bought a bass because I worked out that everyone else wanted to play guitar. Playing bass meant I would be able to get into a band more easily. I mean, four strings, four fingers on each hand, two fingers for each string – it’s got to be a piece of piss. That seed of a hypothesis was never really bore fruit – it’s bloody tricky to play bass. But motivationally, I had it sussed. I was in it to give Bob Dylan a day off from time to time, lose my virginity, get discovered and become a squilionaire. Our guitarist, on the other hand, was motivated to forge the link between music, woodwork and motor mechanics.

We never played a gig, we never really got through a single song. We just plodded along with everything turned up full while Dave went through every note in every order on his plank of a Stratocaster copy saying things like ‘switch to 13/15 time now’. I was never going to get discovered, laid or rich in this band.

So I knew what not to be when I formed the Syndicate. It needed to be be my band. I needed to be the guitarist, I needed to write the songs and we had to do gigs and it had to have a name. The Syndicate was a great band – very raw but very good, the songs were alright and we did some great gigs – a memorable one at Trentham Rugby Club springs to mind and one at Wolves Poly Students Union. It was a sporadic thing. Most of the members were either at college or travelling and when we all got back together we just played music.

Before we played a note there were musical differences between Joe who liked Bowie and looked like Robert Smith and Ziggy who looked like Mungo Jerry and liked something but couldn’t quite describe it to us

When I was 20 I stopped my travelling for a while and decided to get educated so I went to Coventry Poly. But instead of going to any lectures I joined any band that would have me. At college I was mainly in a band with no name and no songs and no fucking idea. Before we played a note there were musical differences between Joe who liked Bowie and looked like Robert Smith and Ziggy who looked like Mungo Jerry and liked something but couldn’t quite describe it to us – he never really stopped fucking about with his flange pedal long enough to play any of it to us. They both fucked off by year two – one failed his exams, the other just vanished. I joined a band up in Birmingham called  The Moving Stares or Go No Stop, depending on who you asked – but more about them later.

In the meantime back in Stoke my first band, The Syndicate, kept changing names. We were Sid Ego and The Superegos for a while and some other names. We were living all over the country so it was disjointed. We recorded some stuff that was played a bit by a local DJ who was just known as ‘Tank’. We did a load of 30 second jingles for him to do his local DJ impressions of Dave Lee Travis to. There were a heap of them like electro versions of Petula Clarke’s Down Town and a flat pick, blue grass version of Happy Birthday and other stuff.

…our early recorded music was great quality, but all about menstruation, wife-beating and penis envy. The DJ was having some problems getting away with this on the play-list at the weddings

In return he used to play our recorded tracks at all of his gigs. The recorded tracks, however, were all a bit right-on. My brother was also in the band. His girlfrend was making an Arts Council funded film about feminism and being blokes we told her the original music by the all-girl band was shit and we would have to re-do it all properly. So we took a huge chunk of Arts Council budget and headed off to a pro studio in London (next door to Liberty as I remember). As a result, our early recorded music was great quality, but all about menstruation, wife-beating and penis envy. The DJ was having some problems getting away with this on the play-list at the weddings he did, but credit where it’s due, he aired the music.

Terry fucked off with the takings before the gig was over. The two bands were left with the club management (and bouncers) not letting us have our gear back

Anyway, the DJ knew one of the former managers of Stoke-on-Trent’s slimiest hot-spot, The Place. This guy had been fired for some reason – which we were about to find out. He was called Terry someone. He got us and another band from Stoke (called Single English) to do a gig at Jollees. It was Terry’s shot at becoming a pop impresario. But he did fuck all to promote it. We and the other band did all the posters, sold all the tickets, got it mentioned on the radio and so on. We managed to get about 800 in there. But Terry fucked off with the takings before the gig was over. The two bands were left with the club management (and bouncers) forming a solid wall of fat and bone between us and our gear and the only chance of us not ending up wearing the amps on our heads was to settle the rent on the venue that Terry hadn’t paid. Fucking mess. Someone called the police, and about 4.00am we got our gear back and Terry had been tracked down to a flat over a pub and was busy getting his head kicked in by the bouncers. Lesson learnt about doing gigs – get paid up front and get your gear out as soon as you’ve finished playing. But it was a good gig – it went really well.

I fucking hated Picksie by this point. Rehearsals consisted of him saying things like ‘we’re going to get fifty school girl ballerinas all caressing hypodermics while the band play Jerusalem on Jews harps’

Meanwhile back in Cov, I had given up on my course and spent all day in my student house playing guitar and then hooking up with some musos in Birmingham most weeks. There was a singer called Picksie who was very theatrical. There was also a brilliant keyboard player called Carla. She was already doing sessions. She had done the keyboards on some Fine Young Canibals tracks by the time I hooked up with them as a guitarist. We got a drummer from another band and Carla’s ex-boyfriend came in as bassist. We spent all our time not doing gigs, but in a studio in Aston making demos and videos which we sent to The Tube every month. And every month they wrote back saying that we were just too theatrical for them. So Picksie would get even more theatrical and outrageous and we would then video it and send it to them. This went on until they just stopped replying at all. I fucking hated Picksie by this point. Rehearsals consisted of him saying things like ‘we’re going to get fifty school girl ballerinas all caressing hypodermics while the band play Jerusalem on Jews harps’ and me saying ‘how much effort do you have to put into being such an utter wanker’. Meanwhile the rest of the band would piss off to the pub.

I was going to put all those romantic star-struck notions behind me… there were thousands of people visiting the National Garden Festival and someone had to tell them where the toilets were.

By this time, I was leaving college and the bright lights of a job at The National Garden Festivals in Etruria beckoned. So I left the band. Nine days later Carla called to say that they had all got pissed off with Picksie and kicked him out. Carla, the bassist and the drummer had also got an audition for a 12 month paid contract and would I do it with them. It sounded like cruise ships, so I was a bit dismissive. And anyway, I was going to put all those romantic star-struck notions behind me and get on with doing a real job; there were thousands of people visiting the National Garden Festival and someone had to tell them where the toilets were.

Turns out the audition was to become the rest of Everything But the Girl (behind Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn) for an album and a tour and they got hired.

Last time I saw Carla was in about 1996 at Glastonbury. I bumped into her wandering about all the shit chic stalls. We chatted for a while. She was actually working there, with Billy Bragg – She went straight from EBTG to working with Billy Bragg and has done keyboards on everything he has recorded since and every tour he has done as well.

We were on a TV show called No Stilettos with Eddi Reader of Fairground Attraction and got to do our sound check with Suede and we jammed with The Trashcan Sinatras into the wee hours

At that pount I took a break from guitar (I actually felt like throwing the fucking thing away). I wandered off to Snowdonia and became a climbing instructor, I didn’t even have a radio, cd player, tape player or any other music for a couple of years. It took almost ten years to pick a guitar up again which I did when I moved to Glasgow. Good times knocking out rock’n'roll with a jazz drummer from Derby, the original bassist of Wet Wet Wet and one of the first guitarists from Altered Images – we even hung about with Texas and Gun and did a lot of jamming with them all. We were on a TV show called No Stilettos with Eddi Reader of Fairground Attraction and got to do our sound check with Suede and we jammed with The Trashcan Sinatras into the wee hours and I even did some guitaring with Blue Nile. It very much felt like the rock’n'roll lifestyle. We got VIP passes for the Stones gig at Hamden Park where Gun supported them. Good days and a great way to waste your life away in poverty.

And over the years you forget how fucking cold, poor and miserable you were, one step from being a millionaire in a mansion and one considerably shorter one backwards to being a smackhead in a squat. I moved on, it wasn’t going to happen and I wasn’t going to die for the cause. Since then I have done solo spots at a few festivals locally and I do a bit of harmonica and guitar from time to time with my brothers band in Devon. They have been going about 25 years and they do a lot of the music festivals in the South West, some covers, some original compositions …and some of my songs as well. I ought to do the same. You can’t explain to others how great it is being in a band.

…but looking back, my best shot at fame eluded me by 9 days