The lives of brian a mem.., p.14
The Lives of Brian: a Memoir, page 14
That’s right: Vic had once opened for The Beatles.
And now I was standing on stage next to him.
We had a demo tape ready within just a couple of months. Then it was time for Vic and Tom to take it down to London to see if they could drum up any interest from the record companies down there. They literally just drove the band’s six-wheeler Ford Transit straight to Soho and parked it on Wardour Street, which you could do back then because wheel clamps and £10-a-hour parking meters hadn’t been invented yet.
I would have gone with them, but it was in the middle of the week, so that was out of the question.
No sooner had Vic and Tom parked the van than the power went out all across London, which was just so typical of 1970s Britain. So, the first few record companies they went to had no way of playing the demo. Whether the lads left tapes behind or not, I’ve no idea – and Vic’s memory of it isn’t any clearer. What’s not in doubt is that the power came back on just as they got to a company called Red Bus Records, which was new on the scene, but had just signed a deal with EMI Records so were looking for new acts. The timing couldn’t have been better.
Vic and Tom were met by a guy called Ellis Elias, a very right-on and groovy showbusiness-type. He owned Red Bus with another guy, Eliot Cohen.
‘Well boys, this is great stuff, yeah, alright, I like it,’ said Ellis, once he’d listened to the tape.
‘So, er . . . you’ll have a think . . . and give us a call?’ asked Vic.
‘Oh, I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ said Ellis.
Later that night, I got a knock on the door. It was Tom, just back from London. Shell-shocked.
‘We fucking did it,’ he said.
‘You delivered the tape?’ I asked.
‘No. We did it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘You didn’t deliver the tape?’
‘We got a record contract!’
That was when I remembered that I was married with a kid and a full-time office job. So, I was delighted. But at the same time, I was like . . . what the fuck am I going to do now?
I had all of forty-eight hours to make a decision. Red Bus wanted U.S.A. to get down to London as soon as possible and record our first single – two songs in total, an A and a B side – with an album to follow. Not that there were any guarantees. If the single flopped, who knew if there’d ever be an album. We’d just have to take our chances.
Carol was worried, of course. She hated the thought of it all going wrong and us ending up even more broke than we already were. My draughtsman’s job might not have been very lucrative, but it was steady. Having a regular job also meant that I could help around the house. If I went out on the road playing rock’n’roll, on the other hand, Carol would be left at home by herself to look after Joanne, who was now four. Not only that, but Joanne’s little sister Kala would also be along soon, adding a newborn baby to the mix. So, it was a pretty bad deal for her, unless of course U.S.A. went all the way and we ended up living a life of luxury.
So, this was it.
One of those moments in life. Do you take the path well-travelled . . . or do you grab the chance with both hands?
What worried me the most, surprisingly enough, was the thought of telling the lads at work that I was quitting to become a professional musician. They’d piss themselves laughing. They’d think I’d completely lost the plot. Then again, the company was offering redundancies because business was drying up, so I had the perfect excuse – and it looked like there’d be more redundancies to come. The workforce had become so expensive in Newcastle and the Japanese were making the same product for a fraction of the price. Parsons would tell its customers, ‘We make the Rolls-Royce of turbines, they’ll last forever.’ But the customers knew that if they bought a Japanese turbine and had to replace it after twenty years, it would still be cheaper.
Another reason to leave was my shop steward, Harry Blair – a proud and stubborn man who spoke in war metaphors and was a member of the Communist Party.
I mean, I liked Harry a lot, but we were always butting heads because I couldn’t abide his politics. He even once ‘sent me to Coventry’ – a real thing in 1970s Britain, not just a turn of phrase – when I refused to support changing the name of our union from the Draughtsmen’s and Allied Technicians’ Association, or DATA, to the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section, or TASS. My objection being that TASS was also the name of the notorious Soviet propaganda news agency.
‘Exactly!’ said Harry, when I pointed this out. ‘We’re showing solidarity with our brothers!’
It was when I told him how I felt about that – especially as a member of the armed forces, trained to protect him from those same Communists – that he sent me to Coventry by refusing to speak to me for a week. He even announced it to the entire office.
Harry could also be very entertaining company, mind you – especially with a few beers in him.
Every Christmas, for example, there was a big ‘do’ for all the Parsons draughtsmen, and we each had to stand up and do a party piece. Harry’s contribution was a traditional Newcastle song called ‘Geordie’s Lost His Liggie’, about a little lad who loses his ‘liggie’ (or penka, or marble) and goes to extreme lengths to try and find it, including poking a broom handle down the toilet, then blowing up the toilet with dynamite, only to eventually discover that the liggie in question was ‘in his bloody pocket, aal alang’. Harry’s version of the song brought the house down – and I’ll always be grateful to him for introducing me to it, because I later recorded a version with Vic and the lads and I’ve had a great time performing it ever since.
The redundancy was a godsend because I got a one-off payment of £800 – a massive wedge of cash for someone who was earning £36 a week. If the record deal went south, I thought, I could always live on that money while applying for a draughtsman’s job somewhere else. That was wishful thinking, of course – heavy industry was dying all across the North East, and those kinds of jobs were disappearing as fast as the turbine orders were drying up. But it made me feel better about taking the risk.
A few days later, U.S.A. was being photographed by the Evening Chronicle for a feature entitled ‘Stars of the Future’ – then we were on our way to London in the Transit, which was packed with every piece of equipment that we owned. Tom drove, with Brian riding shotgun – me and Vic in the back, fending off an avalanche of amplifiers every time the van braked. Not exactly a relaxing journey – especially since we set off in the middle of the night to get to London for 9 a.m. – but we couldn’t have cared less. We were grinning so much.
Next thing we knew, we were walking triumphantly through the front doors of Red Bus Records.
Which was also when we came crashing back down to earth.
What happened next went something like this:
‘About the name, boys,’ said Ellis, frowning sympathetically. ‘We’re not sure “U.S.A.” hits quite the right buttons . . . I mean, it rather suggests you’re from the other side of the pond, no?’
‘No . . . I don’t think so,’ replied Vic. ‘It just means we play American-style rock’n’roll.’
‘Hmm,’ said Ellis.
‘I like the name U.S.A.,’ I chimed in, trying to be helpful.
‘Me too,’ added Tom, as the other Brian nodded in support.
‘Hmm,’ said Ellis again. ‘We were thinking of a name that . . . speaks more to your roots?’
‘Well . . . I suppose . . . that makes sense,’ shrugged Vic.
‘I mean, we are a pretty rootsy band,’ agreed Tom.
‘Excellent!’ said Ellis, clapping his hands. ‘So that’s it then. We’ll change the name to . . . Geordie.’
An awful silence.
We all looked at each other in horror, too scared to say what was on our minds. I mean, Geordie just seemed so, well, fucking obvious – and it would make no sense at all to anyone outside of Britain, who’d have no idea that a Geordie was someone from Newcastle, or that the four lads in the band were all Geordies. Not to mention the fact that there were a few parts of Britain where Geordies weren’t exactly popular. Sunderland, for example. If we pulled up outside the Sunderland Boilermakers’ Club driving a van with ‘Geordie’ written on the side, we’d be lucky to get out alive. But Ellis didn’t seem concerned about any of that – probably because the guy had never set foot outside of Golders Green, other than on his way to the airport.
Maybe we should have said something. But the truth was, we could hardly believe that we were actually getting paid to make a record – something that we would have jumped at the chance to do for free. This wasn’t the time to kick up a fuss.
So, with that, the meeting was over.
And Geordie it was.
12
Wardour Street
Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns via Getty
In the history of terrible band names, Geordie really wasn’t that bad. I mean, spare a thought for Showaddywaddy. Or the guys in Kajagoogoo. And our misgivings about the new name disappeared when we got the first taste of our newfound success.
No sooner had we left Ellis’s office than we were escorted out of the building and around the corner to an emporium on Carnaby Street, where a battalion of shop assistants with pound signs in their eyes were waiting. When we walked into that place, we still looked like four regular guys from the North East. When we came out, Vic was wearing stack-heeled boots with a knee-length coat made of shiny metal discs, Tom was decked out in a black silk hat with matching puffy-sleeved bomber jacket, and I was sporting a pair of hillbilly-style dungarees and the same boots as Vic, only with lightning bolts on the side. (The boots were later stolen . . . thank God.) Only the other Brian refused to get tarted up, sticking with a boring T-shirt and jeans – until we manhandled him into a white sequinned jumpsuit.
I couldn’t believe that it was all happening. I mean, this was real rock star stuff. It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t a rumour, it was us and them making a fuss over everything we tried on. It was just silly.
After the shopping trip, it was time for a photo shoot. Then it was back to Red Bus, where we signed some paperwork and found out that our ‘salaries’ would be £45 per week.
I remember us just walking up and down Wardour Street for the rest of that afternoon in a daze.
Ellis was going to take us out for dinner that night, so we had time to kill, and as we walked, we saw a large, very luxurious car pull up next to us, and these really hip-looking guys got out and swaggered into this little Italian restaurant. They were the Small Faces – or just the Faces, as they’d become known after Rod Stewart became their lead singer. I could have sworn that I also caught a glimpse of Steve Marriott, one of my all-time favourite singers, who’d left by then to form Humble Pie.
It was an incredible moment because although we’d just signed a record deal of our own, we were still just these starstruck kids from Newcastle. I remember us standing on the pavement outside, our faces pressed against the glass, watching as one of the coolest bands ever talked and laughed with the manager.
Guess where Ellis took us out to dinner that night? Yup, that very same place – and we also talked and laughed with the manager, who knew all of our names. But with us it felt a bit fake because the only reason anyone knew who we were was because they’d been told in advance by one of the secretaries in Ellis’s office. It was one of many moments in Geordie when I realized that although we were this close to being cool, we weren’t there just yet. We never would be, of course.
As far as we knew, Ellis and his business partners were paying for our meals out and everything else. Being working-class lads from Newcastle, the thought never occurred to us that it would all be taken out of future royalties and ticket sales – and that our £45 a week salaries would be a fraction of what we were actually earning, and that our salaries would be suspended if we weren’t gigging. Not that it would have stopped us from signing the deal, of course. As long as we were having this kind of fun, we weren’t asking questions. We’d have signed anything they put in front of us.*
Likewise, when we were booked to play at the Marquee Club – the same venue where The Rolling Stones had played their first-ever gig, a decade earlier – we were delighted when they said we could borrow their in-house P.A. system instead of lugging ours all the way down from Newcastle. We thought they were just being nice. But, of course, they ended up charging us an astronomical sum for ‘P.A. rental’ and deducting it from our fee, leaving us with almost nothing.
But again, we were playing The Marquee Club – the gig was even advertised in the New Musical Express! – so falling victim to that racket seemed like a small price to pay.
When we did the Marquee show, of course, it wasn’t exactly buzzing – the hip kids were never going to queue up to see a band called Geordie from Newcastle. But I did my best to liven things up, crouching down and telling Tom Hill to get on my shoulders. Then I got up and ran around the stage like a maniac with a fully-grown bass player on my back. That certainly got people’s attention. And the Marquee liked us enough to invite us back a few more times – although it was a hell of a commute all the way from Newcastle. Some nights, we’d finish our set, have a beer, get in the Transit, find the A1 – which runs right into the middle of London – then follow it for 300 miles back home. A treacherous journey in the middle of the night, when you’re exhausted (and drunk) after a show, driving a knackered old van.
One night, there was such bad fog when we left Soho that we couldn’t find the A1 and ended up having to pull over somewhere in deepest north London. And right there in front of us – barely visible through these rolls of mist – was a crazy-looking restaurant with a logo over the door of an old bearded guy in a white suit. Stranger still, the place was open, even though it was 10 or 11 o’clock at night.
We’d somehow managed to stumble upon one of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets to open in Britain. (McDonald’s wouldn’t arrive until the end of 1974.)
Out of pure curiosity, we went in and ordered a ‘bucket’ of chicken, then took it back to the van, so we could wash it down with some Brown Ales, expecting it to taste as disgusting as anything served in a bucket surely would. But oh my God . . . this was good shit. We couldn’t get it in our mouths fast enough. We must have ended up getting another two or three buckets. It was a revelation. And of course, we didn’t give a shit about the calories or the saturated fats, not because we were young and fancy-free – we just didn’t know what the fuck calories or saturated fats were.
Ignorance really was bliss in those days.
The big moment for us, the moment that made even Vic jump up and down like an overgrown kid, came when we were in the Transit waiting to cross the Severn Bridge on our way to a show.
By now it was mid-September 1972, and our first single – ‘Don’t Do That’ – was about to be released.
We’d already recorded an entire album’s worth of material at Pye Studios in Marble Arch and Lansdowne Studios in Holland Park – including our version of the song that Harry Blair had introduced me to, ‘Geordie’s Lost His Liggie’. Ellis had acted as producer, along with a fabulous Italian guy called Roberto Danova – long black hair, big black moustache, everything dripping from him the right way. (He’d done a lot of work with Tom Jones, which made perfect sense.)* Due for release early the following year, the album would be called Hope You Like It – with the LP cover made to look like a present, wrapped up with ribbon and bow, the title printed on the tag. A bit corny, yes, but Red Bus wanted to market us as a rock band with a cheeky, fun-loving attitude that would appeal to kids and younger teenagers.
‘Don’t Do That’ summed up all of those qualities perfectly. It was an all-out, hard-rocking, foot-stomping track, but with band shouts and hand claps and a country music-style break in the middle that went, ‘Grab your partner by the hand/C’mon down to Geordie land/Everybody have a go/Get your Brown Ale and do-si-do’. As for the B-side of ‘Don’t Do That’, it was a heavier, more stripped-down number called ‘Francis Was a Rocker’, based around yet another of Vic’s riffs.
So, there we were, sitting in the van in heavy traffic by the Severn Bridge, and as always we were listening to Radio One. Noel Edmonds was on at the time – I’m pretty sure this was a Friday afternoon – and part of his show back then was that he’d play a selection of new singles that he thought were good, but hadn’t been released yet. Often, just being picked was enough to get you into the following week’s Top 40.
‘And now for our next track, which is from a new band all the way from Newcastle,’ said Noel, as our jaws collectively dropped, ‘and I have to say, it really makes me smile . . .’
Was there another band from Newcastle that we didn’t know about . . . ?
Surely, he couldn’t mean . . . ?
‘If you can’t tap your foot to this, you’re not human,’ Noel went on. ‘So here they are – Geordie!!’
We couldn’t hear the rest of it because we were all screaming so loud.
It was just . . . I mean, how do you even begin to explain the thrill of being on Radio One in 1972?
I almost cried.
Actually, forget that – tears were streaming down all our cheeks. We’d done it. We’d fucking done it.
Anyone outside the van must have wondered what the hell was going on, with these four lads inside cheering and bawling and jumping around so much that the vehicle was rocking back and forth on its springs. Then a police officer started to wave us across the bridge, but we had to pull over because we were in no state to operate a vehicle. Then we just sat there, staring at the radio, listening to our own song.
