Part 2: they call it madness ...
H:
So where’d you find Blitz at?
P:
We advertised, this is how we came by this guy in Blancmange,
but we wanted someone to double either on keyboard or guitar
or something, he fitted the bill.
H:
What was his background then?
P:
He’d been to Italy, had a band out in Italy, but he knew Bryan
Morrison and the guy who actually discovered us, Pierro Fularmi
(?), who was walking his dog across the Green, in Twickenham,
heard us when we were playing the local school’s Christmas dance…
but we’d also heard that Jonathan King was interested, and he
was, because, when Justin De Villeneuve and Bryan Morrison were
talking to us at the cabbage patch, Jonathan King walked into
the room, it was a dressing room, the door was at the top, we’re
talking to them and he just walked in and said ‘hi, I’m Jonathan
King’… we were forewarned, someone’s father had known him, put
in a good word, but when this Tom and Dave were with us, we
also had… I know how we got in touch with Roxy Music’s manager,
but he just sort of said ‘don’t phone me, I’ll phone you’, but
he came down, I can’t remember his name, but he was a friend
of some sort of dodgy character we knew from Berwick Street
market… we must’ve sort of done a few gigs with him, but the
gigs escape me, Dave and them… in the meantime, this guy with
the Moog and the theramin turned up, but he just like made weird
noises.
H:
So you gigged with that guy?
P:
Yeah, we played this gig at Hampstead town hall, we did that
twice, booked it, and we done it with this school band, and
I reckon that school band was Madness, somehow, I really do…
it was a local grammar school, and we took on this band, only
on a scam, because they’d bring all these kids with them, but
we gave them free food. We had another guy with us then, the
bass player was an Anglo-Indian guy, whose name totally escapes
me, but we had two sort of… I always remember us trying to wire
up a mixer, which none of us knew about…
B:
I’ll tell you one thing, this is true, I was the guy who recommended
to Dick to get Colin (Stoner) in, I’d known Colin for years,
you were without a bass at the time and I kept saying ‘get Colin
in, he’s a damn good bassist… he doesn’t seem to have a personality…’
P:
Bass players never do though!
B:
He was very shy and wouldn’t say anything… but I kept saying
‘Colin, Colin, Colin!’
P: I know he was a friend of yours…
B:
But Dick didn’t think he’d fit in, he was so quiet and shy...
H:
Shows what a bit of makeup can do!
B:
Oh, Frankenstein!
P:
‘Specially at four o’clock in the Little Chef on the M1, they’re
all looking…
H:
So what did people make of your music, in those pre-punk days,
with that sort of noise?
P:
I don’t know… obviously we sort of created some sort of following
in Twickenham, because we were being booked down there, and
really, that’s the heart of, that’s where the Stones come from,
the Pretty Things, and those bands, the whole of that Twickenham
(scene)
H:
Where you conscious your sound was a bit abrasive, a bit difficult
to swallow for the time?
P:
No, I think we were just hoping for a following, but when you
look at it, we were probably more effective… we used to come
home Wednesday afternoon, and for our Saturday gig, the Cabbage
patch, we used to come home, all made up, and go round and flypost
every single store in south London, every pillar box, every
phone box, everything, and we were a really creative unit. And
once that management took over, that stops you being… it was
still creative, but you sort of leave so much to others… but
we were probably better and we’d have probably survived, we
were probably more like… oh, I know the band I’m trying to think
of, a big collective rather than…
H:
Pink Fairies?
P:
Oh, she used to look after Gaye Advert didn’t she, the Pink
Fairy’s wife? Her sort of minder was one of, she used to have
this woman looked after her, funnily enough they were talking
about it this afternoon on Robert Elms, the Pink Fairies…
H:
So at that stage you were quite a self-contained unit?
P:
Yeah, even if we were doing one gig, two gigs a week, but eventually
Urban joined, and everything gelled. That was it, we’d cracked
it, and we went in to, underneath Charing Cross station for
about 3 months and rehearsed and made the first LP.
H:
And you’d got management by that point…
P:
yeah, that was tied up at the Cabbage Patch…
H:
how did the record company relate to you?
P:
I dunno…
H:
Because they never put a single out till the third album…
P:
I think was us… that was, a bit like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin…
H:
To show you’re more serious than a singles band…
P:
yeah… which was probably totally wrong, but…
H:
‘Cause at the stage of that first album, there’s a very definite
empathy with punk, even if nobody quite knew what it was at
that stage, no one would have known what to do with you I guess…
P:
Every time you done an interview, it’s ‘what are your influences’,
and obviously, we could be driving up the motorway and listening
to… Gladys Knight and the Pips! Or we could be listening to
the Velvets, or anything… ‘cause we only had say 30 odd tracks
to juggle every night. So you’ve got to make it fresh and live,
and you’ve got to make it interesting for yourself, to keep
on top of the whole thing, so whatever you’re listening to probably
came out as the sort of (inaudible?)
H:
So it wasn’t particularly a conscious thing, the way the music
came out?
P:
No, the conscious thing was the management, when Justin was
our manager he was trying to push us into that, he had the nous,
he knew what was happening with Malcolm Maclaren, and what was
going on at Sex, because he said ‘go down there and pick clothes’!
And he wanted us to adopt that sort of style, he was well aware
of the fashion aspect. ‘Cause the Sex Pistols, I think they
were managed originally by, er… I know Jonh Ingham, Sounds,
was trying to get them, then he managed Generation X, but he
originally took Bryan Morrison down there, he said they were
a load of crap! I forget what I was going to say there, but
there was something relevant…
more
to follow...
