Turning Up Out Of The Blue In Germany

I don't get scared that easily but I got slightly scared when I was twenty, on a bus in the middle of nowhere travelling through some German city (I forget which.)

Daniel had invited me along to his German TVPs tour you see. He didn't know Sexton or Liam so very, very well (playing as his backing band for the first time ever) and thought it would be nice to have me along too, we had been spending an awful lot of time together.

He gave me a crumpled up fax with the dates and venues on it and said that he would arrange everything with Andy from the band The Bartlebees who promoted the tour.

So there I was, in the middle of nowhere it seemed and I suddenly panicked slightly. I was usually absolutely relaxed about everything in those days but I suddenly realised that I had been a bit too relaxed. I had no contact telephone numbers, no map book, just a few lines of scribbled directions.

I found the place ok in the end. I couldn't work out why the snare drum was being hit on stage by Armin the drummer repeatedly, I'd never been to a sound check before. And I was surprised by the graffiti and general dinginess of the back stage area. Back stage in Germany is slightly dingier than back stage elsewhere, a reaction, I presume, to the general order and tidiness in Germany as a whole.

Of course Daniel had given Andy absolutely no warning of my arrival. I was very fortunate that there was a spare seat in the van. I think it was Liam who started calling me 'coach' to reflect my role. The Toerag studio set (where Liam was the recording engineer) all called me coach from then on - people like Bruce from the Headcoats, Holly and Debbie from the Headcoatees, and still do.)

I have a suspicion that the Bartlebees, Patrick Andy and Armin, thought that I supplied Daniel with smack too. Kenji was visiting from Japan to film the performances and Stefan drove, wearing a chauffeur's peaked cap.

The only time in my life when I have consumed more alcohol in two weeks was a year later when I returned to tour with the TV Personalities, this time playing bass guitar.

And so these tours and and The Projects touring Germany years later, along with my parents taking my brother and myself to Germany for most of my childhood summer holidays means that I have visited more German towns and cities than English ones. In fact, I think I've been to them all.

Go Faster!

Honestly, I'd never felt so sick in all my life.

The fair had come to Kennington Park and a really mean fair it was too, from the skinny, feral men who ran it, and drank every night that week in our local pub, to the run down attractions with their rust and peeling paint.

The pub opposite our flat, when Jane and I lived on Camberwell New Road, was called the Skinner's Arms. It served an ageing clientèle made up mostly of Irish people who must have been attracted by the construction boom in the 50s and now just spent their days in the pub. The landlord was a friendly, heavy drinker with a big puffy face that, with it's bumps, resembled a big, happy, shiny potato. Jane and I, and sometimes Daniel too who was spending a lot of time round at ours (he'd bring a copy of The People newspaper and spend the afternoon reading through it in the living room), would be the only people under 60 in the place. I went past it a short while ago and the building is now a nightclub.

There was a pool room in the back and, on the first night of the fair, I was playing pool with the fairground workers. I think I got into an argument. The next morning Jane and I were hungover and took a stroll in the park to clear our heads. We walked past the umbrellas ride and I asked the owner, who was busy with some maintenance or other, if he'd start the ride up for us.

So there we were, sitting, waiting in the umbrella ride on that gloomy damp morning, the only people in the whole park, the only people on the umbrellas. And as our umbrella slowly started to twist through the sir, I thought I'd try reading my paper, just to be silly. Perhaps that annoyed the ride owner, or perhaps it was something to do with the argument in the pub the night before, or perhaps he simply was a bad man, but he set the ride at full speed and disappeared. Gone to the newsagent's or for a cup of tea, wherever he went he didn't return for a half an hour. When we finally got off it took me a long, long time to get my balance back and I felt sick all day.

Toerag

Liam's Toerag studio became well known when he recorded the Elephant LP by the White Stripes. By that time the studio had moved to Holloway but when I first visited it was located on French Place in Shoreditch. I must have been introduced to Liam through Daniel who had recorded quite a few singles there and and had recently finished recording the 'I Was a Mod' Television Personalities LP.

Stuck for a place to live, I took a spare room in Liam's place. It was more of a closet. About the size of a double bed with a ceiling too low to allow you to stand upright. A few wooden steps led up to it and on them, painted in pink, were the words 'HMS Fairy Cake.' It was only a temporary solution. Josh, who financed the studio, used the space to build huge, gaudy, neon models for his club night 'The Fratshack,' and so I lived amongst giant papier mâché American football players, dinosaurs and grotesque go-go girls.

Liam is famous for owning no recording equipment manufactured after the late sixties, and the same went for his possessions. From the black and white television set to the basil brush doll to the clothes that he wore, it was all from the middle of the last century. And the same too went for all of the people who would hang around the studios. Garage rock bands, surf bands, none of it really my thing but it was fun to be there. I made a few friends, I'd walk Bruce and Holly from the Headcoats/Headcoatees' dog to Hoxton Square now and again.


Shoreditch then was completely different to today's Shoreditch. No one seemed to know where the place was, it was derelict and empty. The pub 'The Barley Mow' did exist, but in those times its interior was full of cricket photographs and greyhound illustrations. The only customers would be bands recording at the studio and policeman from the old Shoreditch Magistrates Court. The Bricklayer's Arms, just up the road, was even emptier. The greasy spoon café on Rivington Street was around then and there was another on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and French Place. Today Shoreditch is not unlike the West End, full of bars and restaurants, places to see people and be seen and a couple of small music venues, and it is a nice enough place, but there was a point in between those two extremes when Shoreditch was really a great place to be.

Tear Gas At The Laurel Tree

The Laurel Tree in Camden is where all the indie kids would hang out in the 90s. Jane and I discovered the place by accident when we decided to run away from our flatmate one evening. He was queuing in the chip shop beside Camden Tube and, although it was a mean thing to do, I am glad that we did it. Parsley's band 'Dutronc' were playing cover versions of Jacques and I thought that the whole place was just fantastic. I returned the next week and met Morgane, the first of all of the people that would become my friends in London. I proudly let it slip that I was playing bass for the Television Personalities but she beat me by letting me know that she played keyboards for Stereolab, who I thought were just fantastic. Morgane introduced me to Nick and Dino who became great friends with whom I'd go to lots of parties with and with whom I'd start the band Miss Mend (and later play in The Projects with Morgane and later still Dino.)

One time I was at Chris and Loretta's 'co-op' club night and I found myself wanting for cigarettes. I drunkenly pushed my way through the crowd to the stairs. The ground floor hosted a depressing pop disco and the dance floor was heaving with fake tans. I pushed my way to the cigarette machine and allowed it to prop me up as I slowly filled it with all the coins that I had, searching every pocket for extra five and ten pence pieces.

Eventually the packet of cigarettes was in my hand and I turned on my heel to find the whole place absolutely empty. The few hundred people had disappeared. It was quite a dream like experience. The room that had been a heaving, sweating, drunken mess was, to my surprise, deserted. Then I began to taste what I assume to have been tear gas at the back of my throat. I returned upstairs. It seemed that It couldn't have been a large tear gas canister that had been thrown down there because it didn't have much of an effect on me.

How I Met Daniel

When I first lived in Stamford Hill, while I was still a University student, my favourite place was Safeways the supermarket. On the opposite side of the junction, I'd use any excuse to visit.

It was there that I bumped into the singer from my favourite band at the time The Television Personalities and his girlfriend Alison. I can't remember what I said but I do remember it being a bit awkward. I don't think that the name of his band was quite as well known in those days as it is today and this made it feel like an even bigger coincidence somehow. I'd play his records every day, I thought that his songs were just great.

They were at a Pastels show that I went to a few days later at The Garage opposite Highbury and Islington tube. He was feeling very introverted and sullen, which I'd say now was down to not having taken heroin, since at the time, he was an addict. Alison was feeling a little upset by Daniel's mood (she didn't know the extent of his drug taking, in fact, I don't think that she knew that he took the stuff at all) and I think my being there was an irritation. We travelled home together and I invited him over for the next day to meet Jane, the invitation was reciprocated and we became friends.

We were to spend a great deal of time with each other, right up until his disappearance. and I got to know Alison well, who's a great person, and their flatmate Declan too who was overwhelmed with an obsession with the blind South American singer José Feliciano.