The lives of brian a mem.., p.15
The Lives of Brian: a Memoir, page 15
We did get lucky with Noel, though, because he clearly genuinely liked what we were doing. When Tony Blackburn played ‘Don’t Do That’ a few days later, on the other hand, he began by saying, ‘Sometimes you don’t like what you play, but you’ve got to play it anyway, so here you go . . .’ Yeah, cheers Tony. But Noel’s endorsement was enough to get our first-ever single straight into the Top 40 at No. 32 that week, which in turn scored us an appearance on something even bigger than Radio One.
We were going to be on Top of the Pops.
The thing to remember about Top of the Pops in the 1970s is that it wasn’t just a pre-recorded television show broadcast on BBC One at 7.30 p.m. every Thursday night. It was a cultural institution, an integral part of growing up, and grade-A BBC Crap! But pretty much every kid in Britain would be watching it after eating their tea – when they should have been doing their homework – and the audience figures were astronomical, something like 15 million per week. So, the pressure of performing on the show – or rather, lip-syncing on it, which is what everyone had to do – was overwhelming.
The first big question was what to wear.
I’d already worn the clothes that we bought on Carnaby Street in about a hundred different photo shoots, so I needed something new. But Red Bus weren’t going to take us on any more shopping trips (when I’d seen the bill from the last one, I’d almost had a heart attack).
It was my ma who ended up saving the day. She had one spare roll of white fabric, for weddings, and another of black fabric, for evening wear. So, she sewed them together to make a kind of rock’n’roll Newcastle United strip, which I wore with my dungarees and the lightning bolt stack-heeled boots – which sadly hadn’t been stolen yet. I looked like a walking sandwich board, but my mother was so proud. ‘My son is-a so famous, so famous,’ she bragged to anyone who’d listen. ‘And I make-a special costume for him, so he can top-a the pops.’
I’ve still got the outfit somewhere – I’ve never been able to bring myself to throw it out.
Top of the Pops was recorded in those days at BBC Television Centre in White City, just north of Shepherd’s Bush. So off we went in the van, all of us by now very familiar with the trip down the A1. We could barely contain our excitement. In our imaginations, of course, we were thinking that everyone would be hanging around before and after the show, swapping stories from the road, jamming together, shooting pool, having a few beers. By the end of the night, I thought, I’d be singing impromptu duets with fourteen-year-old Michael Jackson, while Vic and the lads played drinking games.
Needless to say, I was in for a disappointment.
The weirdest part of it all was the racket that the BBC had going on with the Musicians’ Union that forced you to re-record your song in a union-approved studio – from scratch – before the programme. You could use only union members for the re-recording, of course. And even though you were starting again with a different production team, the song had to sound identical to the one that was already in the charts. Oh, and the whole process had to be overseen by a union official, who would be paid to just stand there and watch. It was ridiculous – and a total scam (and, of course, it was run by the unions).
What happened in reality was, the second you got into the studio, a guy from your record company would meet the union representative, then take him off for a long and boozy lunch somewhere in Soho or Covent Garden. Meanwhile, you’d just sit around, twiddling your thumbs. Then when the record company guy and the union official finally got back – by now three or four sheets to the wind – the engineer would hand over a copy of the original master tape, and the union official would pretend to believe that it was a newly recorded one, even though he knew fine well that it wasn’t. I mean, there was no way on earth that any record company would risk making an entirely new recording of a song that was already a hit. And the BBC would never accept that, either – the reason why they made everyone mime was because they were scared the acts would mess up their own songs if they played them live. (That wasn’t the official reason, mind you – if you asked to play live, you were told that the noise from the guitar amps and the vibrations from the drums would make the cameras shake during the close-up shots.)
Once the faked re-recording of ‘Don’t Do That’ was over, it was time to head over to Television Centre for the rehearsal, which was when I realized that for a rock’n’roll singer like me, who really belts out a tune, it’s incredibly difficult to mime. And you really did have to mime – not sing along – otherwise what came out of your mouth could be picked up by the microphones in the studio and clash with the recording. I’d also been expecting a big, exciting, nightclub-type sound from the Television Centre P.A. system – but when we went through the song a couple of times to prepare our moves, it was more like listening to someone playing the record at home. The whole thing was turning out to be a pretty massive letdown.
Finally, at about five or six o’clock in the evening, the ‘live’ audience was allowed in, and the taping began. Which was when we discovered that the DJ that week was the same guy who’d just complained on-air about playing our record – Tony Blackburn. In fact, most of the taping seemed to revolve around Blackburn, with the crew moving him between various pieces of scaffolding and groups of dancing girls, so he could deliver his intros and links with all the sincerity of a £4 note. He was all white teeth and rollnecks in those days, with hair that looked like a stick-on LEGO piece. Meanwhile, the girls in the audience seemed to be mostly regulars, and really couldn’t have cared less about the bands.
Or at least not our band.
We just fixed our grins in place and got on with it.
Then suddenly it was all over, and off we went to the green room. On the way there, I saw Blackburn and stopped to give him a piece of my mind. ‘You’re a DJ, not a music critic, so maybe keep your opinion to yourself,’ I said to him – or that’s the printable version, anyway – to which he just mumbled something and fuddled off in his rollneck down the corridor.
The vibe in the green room was very cold and jaded. I vaguely remember some Jackson 5 members dropping in for a minute, but it was mostly just old-hands from the programme.
As unfriendly as it was in there, we were all set to stay for the night, have a few beers, savour the moment. But after a couple of drinks, the barman closed down the bar and ushered us out. And as soon as we were out, he opened it back up again.
The message was clear. We might have got into the charts, but we still hadn’t made it yet.
The programme aired three days later. It’s been lost to history – probably just as well, given how unnatural miming felt to me, which you could tell by the penis-in-a-meatgrinder look in my eyes. The BBC had a policy then of wiping its tapes, so they could be reused. Most Top of the Pops footage from its launch in 1964 to the mid-1970s has been erased, including The Beatles’ one and only live performance on the show.
As deflating as the whole experience was, it was still a thrill to be on the television.
‘I fuckin’ saw ya!’ people shouted out to me on the street back home. ‘It was canny like. Mind, you should get your hair cut, you looked like a fuckin’ puff!’
My ma was bursting with pride, of course. Especially since I’d worn the outfit that she’d made. But my dad was unmoved. On the night of the broadcast, he just buggered off to his club at 7 p.m. for a pint, like he always did. ‘I’ve never watched Top of the Pops in my life,’ he said, ‘and I’m not starting now, just ’cos you’re on it.’
Geordie’s first tour, such as it was, began in late 1972, just before the Hope You Like It album was released. For the U.K. leg, we were travelling between venues in a big red double-decker bus that the record company had rented from some hippie guy who lived on the top floor. Then on we went to Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia and Germany. We supported and were supported by some unbelievable bands. In Manchester, we shared a billing with the incredible Suzi Quatro.
There was even better news at the other end of the M62. One day out of the blue, we saw our gig list for the next couple of weeks, and there it was, THE CAVERN – LIVERPOOL. I couldn’t quite believe it. This was the hole in the ground where it all started, The Mersey sound, The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the whole lot of them. There was our name ‘Geordie’. We were going to play there in the Vatican of rock’n’roll.
It was exactly how I had imagined it, a complete shithole, a dump, a cellar of memories and not much else really. The stage couldn’t be seen, unless you were right in front of it, because of the convoluted staircases and the passageways. So The Beatles it seems to me could only play in front of about fifty-three people at a time. But none of that mattered – to a musician, that was paradise. I remember the show in detail, we really played our hearts out and if I remember correctly we did pretty good.
The Liverpool Echo reported it for posterity, ‘Geordie were good, but really are a poor man’s Slade’. Ouch, that hurt a bit, but critics are there to be critical and this guy was good. I’m so happy the audience were there to critique us, as non-journalists, and everyone lived happily ever after.
We actually supported Slade in London at the Palladium – and I had the pleasure of meeting Noddy Holder, who couldn’t have been friendlier.
Late that month, on 27 January, we were due to start a German tour at the Festhalle in Frankfurt, opening up for Chuck Berry. Unfortunately, this show was cancelled and we had to wait a further five days to share the stage with the legendary guitarist. The moment finally arrived and on 1 February 1973, at the Niedersachsenhalle in Hanover, exactly one year after our Peterlee debut, we shared a bill with one of my heroes. Each night, Chuck would show up, demand payment upfront – which he promptly deposited in his jacket pocket for safekeeping – and then go on stage and plug into our equipment.
At Philipshalle in Düsseldorf, on 2 February, I was sitting on a flight case at the side of the stage, next to Vic Malcolm. Chuck Berry and his band were in full flow but the drum riser hadn’t been secured properly and as the drummer thrashed away, the drum riser began to move sideways.
We were watching this, and told our roadies, Charlie and Alan, to get on there quick and fix it. It was hilarious, watching them crawl along the stage on their bellies like two commandos with nails in their teeth and a hammer in hand, thinking they couldn’t be seen on a lit stage, with a full house watching. As they were hammering in the nails, Chuck stopped mid-song. He turned to the roadies and said, ‘What are you doing?’
They quickly explained the problem and his reply was, ‘Well could you at least hammer in time to the music!’
At the end of the song he said thank you, and then, ‘There is one man who made it possible – give this boy a big hand.’ And he pointed to Charlie. ‘Come on, come here.’ Charlie reluctantly went on and received his own standing ovation.
After the final show, at the Friedrich-Ebert-Halle in Ludwigshafen, I took the opportunity to approach Chuck Berry and I asked him for his autograph.
Considering he’d used our equipment every night I figured it was the least he could do, but I was pissed off by his response. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I only sign one a day and I’ve already done it.’
Perhaps there’s some truth in the old adage that you should never meet your heroes.
The continuing story of Charlie Wykes was a wonderful one. He didn’t have a clue about being a roadie, but he could lift things and he was a hard worker. He was gradually learning how to fix things, how to put drums up and all of the good stuff. We were in the early days of U.S.A. and the concert chairman said, ‘I’ve heard about you buggers, I heard you’re too loud. If you’re too loud, I’ll pay ye off and you’ll never work round these areas again.’
We needed the money. And Vic Malcolm said, ‘Charlie, when you’re out the front tonight, if anything goes wrong, anything that’s too loud – in fact if anything at all goes wrong, just wave your hands and we will stop.’
So there we were on about the third song, and Charlie started waving his hands, flapping furiously. Vic went, ‘STOP, STOP! Charlie, what’s wrong?’
‘They’ve run out of Brown Ale!’ said Charlie.
Our transport problems were eventually solved by Ellis, who sent us a gorgeous, brand-new Mercedes van, which seemed very generous of him, until we realized that for the privilege of using it, we would have to appear in a Mercedes advertising campaign.*
We weren’t complaining, though. The van was not only a huge improvement over the Transit, but also a sign that we were on the up-and-up as a band.
Then when our next single entered the charts at No. 27 – ‘All Because of You’ was the title, another foot-stomper, with a sped-up vocal intro, more band shouts and a middle section inspired by The Beatles’ ‘Twist and Shout’ – Red Bus outdid themselves and also sent us a brand-new Ford Granada. The idea being that the roadies would drive our gear around in the van, while we’d arrive in style in this very posh four-door saloon.
I felt like a kid again when we got the keys to that car. I mean, a Granada was almost as luxurious as a Jaguar in those days – a proper executive limo. But then, of course, the fights started over who got to take it home when we weren’t touring. ‘Well, I want it this weekend’, ‘Fuck you, you had it last weekend.’ That kind of thing. Everybody wanted a Ford Granada parked outside their house. Being a married man, I couldn’t use it to pick up any girls, but I could at least take my wife out in some style.
The only one who didn’t care about the Granada was Vic. As the main songwriter, he’d got his own deal for the publishing side of things – and he must have got a pretty decent advance because he went out and bought himself a brand-new Reliant Scimitar – one of the coolest cars ever, even if it was made by the same company that gave Britain the three-wheeled Reliant Regal van.
Meanwhile, Vic had also started going out with a girl who had her own flat in Chiswick, a very nice part of west London. So, whenever we were in the capital, we’d all have to stay at this nasty little council flat in Hackney that Red Bus had rented for us, literally just a room with four mattresses on the floor, while Vic was enjoying the good life on the other side of town. After a long day in the studio, Vic would get a nice home-cooked meal from his girlfriend, while we’d be hunting around Soho for a plate of cheap spaghetti at an Italian café.
But as much as we all thought Vic was a lucky bugger, no one really begrudged him his lifestyle.
Or at least not until later on, when everything started to fall apart.
After our Top of the Pops debut, Geordie appeared on the programme something like fourteen more times, if you can believe it.
But it was our second appearance, to promote ‘All Because of You’, that was the most memorable for me – mainly because amongst the other guests was one of my all-time rock’n’roll heroes, Roger Daltrey. He was in the charts that week with his first solo single, ‘Giving It All Away’.
We couldn’t believe our luck to be playing on the same show as a real-deal rock God.
Once again, we had to fake the re-recording of our single before we headed to White City for the taping. Then, as we walked into the Television Centre, I spotted a horrible yellow Jaguar E-Type with a 00-something vanity plate parked outside, and it made me shudder, because there was only one man who would ruin such a beautiful car in that way – the dreadful Jimmy Savile. He would be the host of that week’s episode.
Other than watching Savile walk past us down a corridor by himself with his terrible blond hair and full-length fur coat and jangling medallion necklaces, I’m happy to say that I didn’t have to speak to him. But just seeing him there alone, with no one going near him, was enough to tell you that he was one strange cat. Even back then – decades before it was revealed just how sick the guy was – I never understood his appeal. I mean, whether he was on the radio or presenting Top of the Pops or doing anything else, he didn’t talk, he just made noises with his mouth. ‘Now then, now then, now then guys and gals, uhuhuhuhuh, goodness gracious, how’s about that then.’ It was gibberish. But for some reason, the BBC kept giving him more gigs and more money – and the British public kept lapping it up.
After the taping, off we went to the green room again for a couple of beers, fully expecting to get thrown out after an hour for not being famous enough. But it didn’t happen – probably because Roger unexpectedly introduced himself to us at the bar. ‘Hello lads, how are you doin’?’ I was intimidated at first – I mean, the guy was an absolute icon, and he was wearing the coolest flared dungarees with just his suntan underneath and a golden crucifix around his neck – but he turned out to be a regular lad, and he couldn’t have been friendlier. In fact, he went out of his way to tell me that I had ‘great pipes’ – which, coming from the guy who’d sung ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, was the greatest compliment I’d ever been given. I don’t remember much of the rest of our conversation, other than him asking where I was staying while I was in London, and me telling him about the filthy council flat with mattresses on the floor that we all had to share in Hackney. Then before we went our separate ways at the end of the night, he took me aside and said, ‘Do you wanna come over for lunch on Sunday – have a chat?’
I thought, does Rose Kennedy have a black dress? Of course I do!
Next thing I knew, he’d written down the address of his country house, and the name of the nearest village, and all I could think was, this is it, this is the stuff you read about in the papers – stars getting together for drinks, being daft, doing whatever they want to. The rock’n’roll lifestyle that I’d heard so much about.
Someone else had won the fight for the Granada that weekend, of course. So, I had to drive there in the Mercedes van, still packed full of our gear. It was a long way – almost at the southern coast, in fact – and the scenery was just stunning down there. I remember the lanes getting narrower and narrower, and the van seeming to get wider and wider, until eventually, there it was . . . a gate followed by a long gravel driveway leading up to this absolutely stunning seventeenth-century manor house.
