Ain't Bad for a Pink (17 page)

Displacing your anger into an object is a harmless way of making a threatening point.

It’s still happening. Only recently, at a local folk festival there was an agreement that I should receive £150 for two sessions on consecutive nights. When the time came for payment there was a managerial vagueness about the fee. “£100, wasn’t it?” Fortunately, Zoe’s memory is extremely good and no meat cleaver was necessary. They paid up.

Sometimes, though, it was all too petty to bother with and I sublimated my anger in humour. I once supported The Edgar Broughton Band at the Bridge Street Arts Centre in Newcastle-under-Lyme in the Eighties. The audience was sparse and when Edgar Broughton, who had some acoustic numbers in his repertoire, heard me, he went and hid. At the end, when I went for my £75, the management only wanted to give me £35: the usual excuse – poor attendance. Furious, I threw it back at them and stormed off.

Des picked it up.

I called the resulting tape:
Live, Under Lyme and Underpaid
.

But, going back to the Burslem gig: so impressed were these punks that they invited me to tour with them and be their sound engineer. The band in question were The Adverts and I met them just before they became famous. I did the sound systems for all their live performances. Gaye Advert played the bass, TV Smith was the singer-songwriter and Lorry Driver was the drummer. I remember the awful row they made and the pogoing and the glaucous waterfall of spit after every song and me and Des sitting experiencing this next generation of music with some bemusement.

This group was formed in 1976 and within three months they were on tour with The Damned. “Looking through Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” was the hit they had in August 1977. It’s on
Mojo
magazine’s list of best punk singles. A suitably macabre subject: Gary Gilmore was on Death Row and insisting on the death penalty for himself. This song referred to the wishes of the murderer to donate his eyes to medical science. What gruesome scenes had they witnessed? The song created just the sort of controversy an up and coming punk group needed.

Gaye was the bass player but we had to tune it up for her. Al Dean said to her,

“These strings are knackered.”

“But I only bought them last week!”

“Yes but you bought them second hand!”

Slim (Wayne Davies).
(37)

The Adverts were a well-regarded group; in addition to The Damned they supported Generation X, Slaughter and the Dogs and The Jam. When Annie Nightingale took over as host of
The Old Grey Whistle Test
in 1978, The Adverts opened her first show. “At last: the 1978 Show!” said TV Smith – probably in reference to the Whistle Test’s failure so far to embrace punk. They did four sessions for John Peel on Radio One: two in 1977, one in 1978 and one in 1979 by which year it was all over. The Adverts split up after the death of their manager Mike Dempsey.

Some punk bands were good; some diabolically bad but they all had raw energy. The Sex Pistols and The Boomtown Rats had talent and an eye for the main chance. The only way you can make a punk band sound good is to make it sound as bad as possible. You produce a wall of non-melodic sound and you pin the audience against the back wall with the blast. If you put a coat or a plastic glass on those speakers the vibration would send it two or three feet but these mad audiences would come to the front and put their heads inside the bass speaker cabinets!

No-one in The Adverts could play but TV Smith who wrote some great songs including “Looking Through Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” now appears on Radio Four. His recent work is Dylanesque and I feel glad he is still out there doing it.

With punk events you were a little bit on your guard. They were all crazy - the audience as well. They all used to rush to the back of the hall then rush forward and crush one another. Things were always edgy. Buzzcocks had a very strange following. The Adverts - OK, Generation X - OK but the Buzzcocks - a bit wild. They used to encourage the audience to spit. It was like waterfalls everywhere. The cables had to be dried out with rags - fortunately there was no AIDS then - before we put them into the van.

Wayne Davies (Slim).
(38)

Being constantly on the road, either doing gigs or doing sound systems we would meet up with other bands at transport cafes at unsocial hours. There were all sorts: people destined to become famous and some already well-known; averagely good bands and flavour-of-the-month bands; all on the road and tired and hungry. But no tribute bands in those days! You can tell a musician if you are a musician: it shows in dress, hair length, general aura, extreme fatigue and a few seconds of conversation. We would often end up talking about cooking or vintage cars or the architecture of a city, rather than about music. It’s the opposite of what you would expect. Little needs to be said about gigs because everyone has experienced mismatched audiences and technical horrors so unless there’s a really funny or terrible or sexy story there’s nothing to add. This is why Des and I don’t find Billy Connolly’s stories interesting: that sense of humour is in the back of every band’s transit van cruising down the motorways of Britain.

I was involved in setting up sound systems for some high-profile bands. At that time Pete had a big PA – he’d designed it and we used to hire the sound system out. That was the punk era – there were lots of them – and they needed a big PA to make lots of noise. One of these bands had an outrageous girl: wild and liberated. She used to say things like, “Have you got some gaffer tape? I’ve just come on.”

One night, at Barbarella’s – or it might have been The Longhouse – in Birmingham, this band had been due to go on fifteen minutes ago; everything was all set but Miss Gaffer Tape was nowhere to be seen. I looked in all the possible places for her and I looked again. Things were getting desperate – the crowd was yelling and stamping and the only possible place she could be was the toilet. I knocked on the door.

“I’m having a shag and I’m not coming out till I’ve finished.”

She was another quarter of an hour.

Wayne Davies (Slim).
(39)

I don’t know a musician that hasn’t got respect for Ian Dury and the Blockheads, whatever their taste in music. Dury was an artist (he studied under Peter Blake at the Royal College of Art) and a storyteller: his songs were vivid, witty stories told by an artist. He was aligned with the punk movement but his original band, Kilburn and the Highroads, was a very well thought of small band, not labelled as anything but good. Dury was also a polio victim and his drummer had only one leg; the whole band was characterised by courage and style, even in death. At his funeral the flowers were arranged to spell DUREX and he had a glass-sided Victorian coach with white horses.

I met Ian Dury in transit and I admired his funny and sad storytelling songs. His music was in the rock genre, original and technically sound and you could hear the vocals. I liked the way they were done in an English dialect and rhyming slang, reminding me of the obscurities in some blues lyrics. He was asked to write the libretto for
Cats
but refused because he hated Lloyd Webber’s music and I applaud him for that.

Des’ band supported Kilburn and the High Roads and I liked the Dagworth’s songs for the same reason: “Brixham Harbour” has a nice Englishness.

During this period of my life, I was quite well off. My association with Mike Dempsey, the manager of The Adverts, took me to some interesting places and he was my main source of contacts in those days. Dempsey had a great penthouse in Knightsbridge – very posh and built on various levels – and we were invited there. This would be about 1977. Well, we pulled up in our van and went through a cordon of press photographers and policemen. We thought they must be there because of The Adverts but it turned out to be another reason.

A prostitute was being evicted.

It was a big news story – she’d been having an affair with a well-known MP. Anyway once in the flat Mike offered me a very meagre amount of weed in a tin. “Wait a minute,” I said and I went through the cordon again, collected a carrier bag from the vehicle and went back in the flat. The world’s press was not interested in me and my mission. Good job. The carrier bag was full of weed: my slice of a harvest I had helped gather in! I distributed it.

These good times only came to an end when my connection with Michael Dempsey was severed by his death, which inevitably curtailed my business.

The lads phoned me. “Everything we’re doing’s wrong according to this man. He wants echo on this and that but he doesn’t have a stage sheet!” The manager of The Three Degrees was hassling the lads about the sound system. They were right to be upset: a set list with requirements set out at the side for special things like echo was essential. This manager was being unreasonable. I got into my 3 litre Volvo – a very impressive model complete with all the refinements – and drove over to The Heavy Steam Machine in Hanley.

The manager was a small slim black man in a salmon pink suit. I threatened him: “You’re the wrong size to shout at my lads like that! There’s only me shouts at my guys. Right lads: load up. Take the gear out.” Pink Suit stormed off to the Three Degrees’ dressing room, panicking and mouthing off and ridiculous. “Right lads – carry on.” The lads carried on with their job as if nothing had happened.

The show went on and all went well. Afterwards the girls came and each and every one kissed me: “The best sound we’ve had all Europe.” They might as well have said it was the best sex in Europe, so tremendously pleased was I to have my work recognized. A rare occurrence in the business.

The Three Degrees were attractive, sexy ladies; more than that: they had star quality. Unmistakeable.

A fortnight later I received a similar phone call from the same venue: more trouble. Exasperated, I stormed over to Hanley and flung open the doors. It was dark inside: only the stage was lit and on the stage was the biggest man in the world. His arms were bigger than my legs. He was as big as Texas – complete with hat. I just looked up at him. “Do what you like,” I said. Then there was laughter. It was a wind-up. A very creative wind-up.

You get used to prima donnas when you’re in show business so it’s good to meet entertainers who behave well, as the Three Degrees did. Unlike their manager.

I used to provide the sound system for corporate entertainment at a stately home near Stafford. A posh setup. KC and the Sunshine Band were performing. This was a nine piece band but I had only provided two microphones. I apologised and was about to call it off so they could make other arrangements. “Does it work?” someone asked of the sound system. “Certainly. Of course it works.” “Then we’ll work round it.”

Then followed what I would describe as a perfect night. They were probably better not having what I should have taken – brass instruments are loud anyway and it sounded great: just like a live acoustic band. I’m always bowled over by professionalism in musicians. The Drifters were similarly professional: a consummate cabaret act, perfectly polite and a great band. I did the sound for them at The Heavy Steam Machine round about 1977.

Like being a musician, being a sound engineer or a roadie meant getting used to a mobile life spent largely on Britain’s motorways. It could be fun and it was not unusual to meet Rod Stewart at the services but it was exhausting and stressful as well.

Partly as a result of the connection with The Adverts, Custom Amplification built up a reputation for providing good sound systems for punk groups. Accordingly, I provided the PA for high-profile groups such as the Sex Pistols – they were just punks! – and The Boomtown Rats. I didn’t always go with the sound engineers. Sometimes I was not needed at all and at other times, for special things, I went separately. Al Dean and Shep usually went in a large Mercedes 608D van, with a couple of others. Such heavy and expensive material needed guarding at all times so I hired out stuff on condition that Shep went with it. I had confidence in my sound engineers: they knew and understood how it all worked.

This life had none of the romance often associated with travelling. Asked if I had done gigs in Belfast or Dublin, I once denied it only to be reminded that I had played both cities with my band and solo, and I had also done sound systems in these places. Yet no city distinguishes itself from any other if you’re focussed on motorway routes, venues, hotel rooms and relentlessly moving on. There simply isn’t time or energy to allow the mind to imbibe a sense of place. Imbibe something else, perhaps.

Shep had been introduced to my shop through Pete Whittingham. He’d been sleeping rough on a park bench and looked like a tramp. One day I locked him in the premises and threatened not to let him out till he’d had a bath. After that he stayed at the shop and started to work for me. Shep went on to tour with Bob Geldof and was briefly to be seen on the Live Aid Concert, adjusting a microphone stand. According to him the Live Aid technicians had T shirts made: “Fuck the world – feed the crew” but were banned from wearing them. Although this is a humorous, possibly apocryphal story, it does highlight the fact that this profession, although it touches the lives of the rich, talented and famous, is not prestigious in spite of being crucial.

Shep toured the world with performers such as ELO, Joan Armatrading, Ozzy Osbourne and Ginger Baker. I met Ginger Baker briefly. A total eccentric. Shep remembers seeing him heading for the hills with two very rich young ladies and a big bag of coke. Shep was with Alex Harvey when he had a massive heart attack on a dock in Belgium. The second heart attack killed him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital in Zeebrugge. It was the day before his forty-seventh birthday and he had been performing with his new band, Electric Cowboys. I never claimed the money for the sound system.