Mj and Tj wait for the moment...

Aaah that question.... We often sit in our Acton studio,  trying to get to ...er, the ... essence of how we want the record to sound.

Yes I know we’ve been at it since we finished the American tour last May...(apart from the gigs during the summer)  We came off that tour with a couple of great guitar riffs that we played in the sound check. The Manic riff to “Whats up Doc?” had become a staple sound check choice. The amazing thing is that the lyrics came to me on the Virgin Atlantic flight to Chicago on the way to the SWSX festival.

This time I was flying alone.  Mick had travelled ahead via New York to see friends and we were to meet up in Austin Texas.  I was looking forward to the flight - a little luxury time with myself.  I was hoping for  8 hours of indulgence.... a film (I started Michael Clayton and got bored...) catching up on some serious reading and thinking but as always, a moment grabbed me,  a lyric idea jumped into my head and I was off.  “What’s up doc?” ....basic concept is that a man goes to the doctors and says, hey I'm still determined to rock and even if the bones don’t wanna shake, the heart does, so here I go whatever you tell me.....simple idea, but then the best ones often are.....anyway, before I knew it, the lyrics were scrawled all over an A4 sheet of paper and thousands of miles of Atlantic had passed and I hadn't even looked up.  Actually I was aware during the whole journey of two Australians sitting at the bar in the cabin, getting drunker and drunker with a joyful determination that did not falter until the flight started it's descent.  Those guys were like my soundtrack and they were having a really GOOD time.  I liked that.  I also noticed glamorous women changing out of glamorous clothes into track suits at the start of the journey only to disappear again at the end, re-emerging once again perfect as we began to land at Chicago airport.  Apart from that, the journey had passed in the blink of a lyrical eye.  The long flight had been of great benefit I told my manager as soon as I spoke to him on landing.  I had a new song idea down, the guitar riff was there in my head and it rocked.

And that’s how it happens. Is it inspiration? Mj always says the song is already there in the ether...  you just have to find it. Tap into it.  Maybe it was being so high in the air, but I like to think .......

And the riff in my head had it's debut at the first sound check and at every sound check subsequently we’d blast through it. What fun. You know it works when you cannot stop playing it because it FEELS right, it has the energy.  Mj was starting to feel the tune coming on.  “PartyWorld” had the same feeling.

God it feels good when a 4 piece rock band taps into that energy and it...it just rocks..you feel like.... wellll...

So when we came back that was the first song we recorded.  Mj arrived at the studio in a bad mood - well, an angry mood actually - but the tune was there now in his head and he just got up and sang it in the space of a few minutes. That “aaaaah fuckin’ hell” at the beginning. Thats for real. tapped the mood onto the record. Live in the moment.

Hmmmm “For real”

Those words keep coming up again again to us. How do we keep it real.  We want the record to be real.. of  “the moment”. No demos.  No going back in and re-recording or layering. Real. Every grunt and breath. Every guitar buzz and feedback. Every bum note that was bent to find the tune.... just in time to just make it cling on to the express train.  When we were 18 you just did it, there are are so many other factors now.  Family, money, kids, fear, reputation, prejudice, experience.... can we exchange the naivety that comes with youth for something just as powerful, something that  is just as good as not being scared to look over the edge?

We don’t want to edit this record.  Don’t want to censor it. Don’t want to make it work within the accepted rules. Don’t want to be professional guys making professional records. Does that keep it vital? You tell me.

The burst of energy.  Its there in the recording. The raw emotion of the song recorded in one take of “Unbelievable Pain” is there sung from the words taken straight off the Laptop - we didn’t even have time to print them out.  That pain you hear is for real......

Real.  There I said it again.

So ok we’ve been at this for a year now.  Why? Because it does not grow on trees.  Does not come every day like a desk job... it comes...... when it comes. Saw a film, read a book, read a story, heard a new track by someone that sets it off. We go to the studio every day looking.

This week we’ve been going back through the tracks recorded... each one usually in a two hour burst of creativity. Two hours from lyric on a page to a living song. And we’re trying to keep the energy of those moments.

Trying to UN-learn what we’ve been taught, what some producers back in the day taught us. How would Spector have done it? - wish we’d worked with him. Look at Kanye's new album...so simple its magic, so raw its...... No fat there.

So we’re nearly there... the titles tell it... PartyWorld, What’s up Doc, Unbelievable Pain, Reach for the Sky, The Lucky Day, Believe or Leave, Make it Alright..... and more

What if Prodigy could jam with the Yardbirds, If I could close my eyes and be watching the MC5? .....What if Hendrix had a Laptop ........if the Faces were still down our local and we as wide eyed teenagers felt the dream, felt the rush? I wish.. yeah, but you have to look up!! But that’s what I’d love to hear if it was out there.  Check out the “Jim Jones Revue”. We love them. We watched on YouTube and went wow!!! Uncanny about the name too... spooky.

The records coming soon. We’re nearly there.

Oh, and I’m filming everything now as well. God I love technology. I’ve got this tiny HiDef Kodak Zi6 camera and I just leave it on now, big brother style.  We argue, we’re surprised. we’re thrilled. We’re inspired. We get tired, disappointed, disheartened ....and then a magic moment blows the doubt away, blows it all away and we fly again.

HiDef, filmed as it happens, broadcast live, see the story unfold. Thats the future. The music is the sound of that time, that story. You can’t copy time as it happens, only replay it.

Mj recording the Unbelievable pain solo....

I’ll be editing lots of those moments to make an album documentary... real moments, the real moment when we recorded the guitar solo... even the mistakes.

Hang in there..our futures coming to a screen in your room  soon.

Tony James

Friday 13 march 2009.

Note:
“Reach for the Sky” - recorded in two hours from lyric on a page to song in the air.... one take guitars,  grunts and all.  A stream of consciousness. Imagine every book you pull from the shelf inspires... I want to reach for that highness.... The video shot in two hours, no lighting, no steady cam just shooting the room we live in... and a couple of days with iMovie09 - I love technology. Hope you enjoy our rush. See it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xLVEhexx4g

Looking for a singer part 1...... Scrabble and other requirements.

It's a problem all bass players and guitarists always have ...you need a great singer to complete the vision of this dream band you have in your head.

I’ve sat around with a lot of those dreams throughout my life, from Mj and I putting ads in Melody Maker back in 1975 looking for a singer, to ten years later creating the monster that became Sigue Sigue Sputnik.  I guess there’s been a consistent theme...Oh if only you could find that one person.. a bit Jagger, a bit Iggy, a bit.... well you know the thing.  Sometimes it's a chance meeting... what was that one about Jagger and Richards meeting on a railway station?  Some of the great bands get formed at school where it's more simple and the criteria more basic - the drummer is the one with a car, the guitarists the one who plays a bit, the bass player, well he was the mate who could learn maybe but looked good and the singer...well, the singer is always the troublesome one who didn’t have anything except that his parents had a room where we could rehearse... see schooldays, the best and simplest of your life. Damn growing up into the real world!

Actually it was the early days of Sputnik that introduced me to one of the enigmas of Rock and Roll.

I’ve been documenting the “Pindock Mews” days for a while now. These were some good times, bad times, some very dark times and for a long time there was a terrible junky orientated time that I could never seem to escape from, a blackness that would keep rearing it's hideous head.  There was a young journalist (i think his name was Martz) who I had become friendly with and he would often come to the mews with cassettes of obscure bands and bootlegs of people like the `Heartbreakers’ .. all very insightful back in those pre internet/youtube days. 

The downside of Martz was that I had begun to realize that every time he came round to the mews my record collection seemed to get smaller.  Years later, he admitted to his shame that he had consistently taken my records, especially the rarest ones, as he was leaving the house, which he then sold to fund his heroin habit.   See, that's the trouble with junk - in my experience, and I've seen quite a bit - it will turn good people into assholes who will do anything, say anything, betray any trust just for the next hit.  It's such a horrible world.  I would never, ever touch it, never did, never will.

During this time though, Martz still came round regularly and he knew I was looking for someone to front my next big idea band, so he put me on to a new group who were going to be playing the Embassy Club in Mayfair one evening.  I went with him that night to see this new band, playing in an empty club and that evening I had a chance meeting with someone who would again change my life during the passage of time ....for the better.

Meanwhile we watched the band go through their set for us and the other two people in the room and they were really great.  Martz did have good taste, despite his other sides.  The singer was especially great - a kind of Jim Morrison meets Suicide and the Velvets.... no drummer, just what was then brand new, an 808 drum machine.  Damn, I thought, feeling that euphoric rush of excitement when you see something special, that guy would be so great to work with.  Martz introduced us and we chatted and there was an instant connection which quickly became a friendship.   His name was Andrew Eldritch and his new band was called The Sisters of Mercy.

We hung out together a lot during the following months.   He would sometimes stay at Pindock Mews when in London (he came from Leeds) and I became a member of his incredibly funny postcard mailing list.  I received cards from all these obscure places detailing the Eldritch exploits, often made up but always funny, biting and incredibly articulate.  He was and is really smart and I love that.  He read Chinese at University or something ridiculously clever.  We used to play Scrabble and to be extra clever, he wouldn’t turn the board around, but played upside down just to be... well, difficult and intimidating.  I loved that too.  He played some big scoring 7 letter words - it was a real battle. I got him back with “Caziques” on a triple triple once though. (Are you still with me? Look it up - its a royal, once in a lifetime play).

I couldn’t entice him away from the Sisters though ....and I understand why. They were his dream, just as Sputnik was mine and he’d made it real.  I wished him luck, knowing he were destined for greatness... and my search for a singer went on.  We stayed in touch though and without fail every Sisters 12 inch record arrived in the post..... and more postcards.  Meanwhile Martz got banned till he cleaned up ..and he did but then we lost contact.  I wonder what happened to him and how he met his karma? 

And a lot of singers came and went.

And a whole phenomenon of my own arrived.. and then....

Almost ten years later, just after the demise of Sputnik, I got a phone call out of the blue.

It was Andrew and this time he was the one asking the question. Would I like to join the Sisters and make an album with him called Vision Thing?

I said Yes.

See - it comes around...

.

Lookin for a Singer Part 2... The Voice of an Angel

Are all of our destinies pre written? Bands that are meant to be and bands that are not?

Way back in , oh, 1981 or 2 just after Generation X had finished, I was once again trying to find my way and looking for a singer to work with after Idol had left for America, leaving me without that special person we all need in this Rock and Roll world - a partner to write with and start a band.

My best friend Mj was in the background as always, ear to the ground, with his amazing insight and that feeling he has for who was special and who was not.   He was looking out for someone who might work for me, someone with that indefinable yet instantly recognizable certain something.  We both recognized it when we saw it - it was just so bloody hard to find.

It was still the Magenta years at Pindock Mews.  When I look back at those difficult yet simplistic times from the lofty heights of the year 2009, I wonder now how we ever got things together.  These days you can make an album, record, make a CD, Mp3, website, Myspace page... all ways to get your music “out there” so easily - you need a simple lap top computer and a simple music program..hell, anyone can do it..you just need the idea. Ahhhh, the idea and the talent...is that where everyone gets confused, confuses talent, art and ideas with luck?

In 2009 does talent still rise to the top of the pile in this world of ours where everyone thinks they can be a star without having to .. well really work for it?  Where everyone wants to be a star for the talent of “being”?  Look at all those precious fools on Big Brother... so self important believing that just their very being.. what they would call their “personality” should make them a star - not for the work they created or were part of... just for being ...hah, but that’s another rant I guess...

Where was I?

Back then someone who was kind to me, a man called Fatchner O’Kelly, the Irishman who managed the band called “The Boomtown Rats” believed in me at a time when only two other people did -  Mj and Magenta .

Fatchner came over one day and gave me a piece of equipment...it was brand new and it was called a “Porta studio” ... a piece of equipment that in those days was revolutionary.  It was virtually a studio in a box the size of a large briefcase.  It allowed you to record FOUR separate tracks onto a normal cassette, add Eq and effects and mix these down to another ordinary stereo cassette.. it was the first home recording studio.

And Fatchner came around to that Mews house and gave me one. Just gave it because he believed it would be put to good use.  You know Fatchner, if you ever read this piece I am writing now, I want to thank you now from my heart because you changed my life.. and at the time because of oh many reasons, I never thanked you enough or made you a part of that life you changed.... so I’m acknowledging that debt now.  The last time I saw you was in Portobello road and you appeared like a ghost and our eyes locked, but we did not know each other any more.  I wonder where you are tonight and if you can feel my gratitude, I hope so.

Tj and Mj (cowboys) with Fatchner (kneeling)

That Porta studio became the center of my world.....  permanently plugged together in the living room in Pindock Mews, London W9, I was able to create music all on my own.

I just needed a singer.

There are lots of those little 4 track tapes from those early days recordings, where I was looking for someone to be my partner, someone to sing, someone to create the magic that becomes a “band” and a partnership. You never think about it at the time because its too high an ideal to have, but those partnerships can make great music... become famous even.

I used to put adverts in what was then the only place to advertise, the weekly music paper called the Melody Maker in the ‘musicians wanted’ section. People would reply and we would meet..... waiting for something that I did not know. The magic to happen.

And sometimes it does happen and you miss it.

That was one way and the other safer way was when a friend suggested someone.

Mj was busy with the Clash recording an album that was to be called Combat Rock when he called me to say he’d met this singer who he thought I ought to meet up with and so he called her to say come over to Maida Vale to meet me.

It was a sunny day in London with sunlight streaming through the windows of Pindock Mews when this girl came to the front door. I was already not sure this was a good idea - in those days rock and roll bands, well the kind I wanted to be in, were generally still fronted by effete boys with big lips in a David Johanssen kinda way and not by singers like this blonde cropped haired girl who walked in. She had been in a medium successful band called “the Tourists” and her name was Annie Lennox.

She lived just around the corner from me.

In that fumbling English way we chatted, had cups of tea and I played her a little backing track I had recorded on my Porta studio...when I listen back now it is laughably simple and Annie just started to sing over it and I just pressed the record button.

She just kinda ad-libbed, with no lyrics or idea... a kind of doo da daa daa day da tune.. soaring with an almost operatic beauty.

She truly had the voice of an angel.  It as amazing.

And yet we never met or spoke again.  She left me with the tape.  I was still not sure, I mean I knew for sure she was great, but equally I was sure I wanted a male singer to front my band.  So I just put the tape back in the drawer and thought of it as the moment one sunny day when a girl sang.

I still have that tape.

Isn’t it funny how a preconceived vision can change your destiny.  I wonder what Annie remembers of that day? She was special then, Mj knew... and I saw it too.

Hard to believe two years later I chose Martin Degville to front my dream group and equally uncanny to hear Annie Lennox release a single even more years later which had that same daa daa do daa non lyric....

It was called “There must be an Angel”.

She was, and I missed her.

Tony James
27 Jan 09

I’ve been reflecting back, as you do, during these quiet, still days between Christmas Day and New Years Eve... there’s a frost on the ground which instantly transforms this breathtaking countryside into something verging on magical and that transformation inspires my thoughts as we look forward into another year.

I wake up on days like these with a fresh blank sheet of paper (on my laptop obviously..!) ready for ideas to flow and I feel the energy rise and I cannot stop. Here’s the News - And this is what I know.....

We will raise our game ..write better... find new ways to get the ideas across in the middle of the greatest revolution that ideas and creativity has ever known.  Give it away and still make a living when the rules change daily?  Yes  it’s a struggle but was there a more exciting time for Rock and Roll?

We need to play more shows. Everywhere. Meet more people, create a Community. Have better art. Find places for that art.... on T-shirts and beyond T-shirts. Have more films with this music as their soundtrack. Embrace Youtube, everyTube. Understand that it’s the ideas that count, not the production values. Film it on iSight, Camcorder or Flip Mino - in HD or Phone Cam.  Make the moment of creativity the show, the gig.... Make the studio a show.  Make our own show. Film what we’re thinking... have an opinion and say it for real, regardless of how it plays to a wider audience, make it for real, sharing the experience, and have a laugh - that’s a show. Then take that show on the road. I want to be part of that show.

Jump on that digital freedom train because boy, has it left the station, and if you ain’t  on board yet start running - because it’s gonna take even more creative ideas and fresh innovative thinking to stay ahead because there’s no easy ride ahead for any artist - if you care about what you do. But, what an exhilarating journey - this is the time that, for the first time, we truly hold our destiny in our own hands......how incredible is THAT!!!!

Oh, and I’ve said it before, but we need to do it our way. Never compromise. Make sure Art triumphs over Business. Never, never dance for the man (and it’s oh so easy because as we all know, he plays SUCH a seductive tune sometimes doesn’t he)...... And I still need to find the time to learn to play the guitar solo from “Goin’ Home”.

Meanwhile.

Can’t tell you how much it means that we’ve seen more people walk through the door at our recent shows than ever before..  and above all I’ve seen something in the faces of those people and the people I’ve talked to after the shows here in London and in Paris last week. It’s a feeling that we have something special.. a special secret something - that this band of ours is a secret bursting to get out.. a Bubble about to burst. That’s you out there. And it’s growing.

It is up to us.  It’s not about who we were - it’s about who we could be.

This could be our year. Come with us.

tony james
Dec 30 2008

It was late morning when Billy Idol arrived at Olympic studios in Barnes, West London and he was.... well.. late. Of course, true to insatiable form, he’d met this girl the night before and of course ended up back at her flat ...and had woken up with a terrible ‘what have I done’ hangover, but..

But..... there was music in his head.

He burst into the studio full of enthusiasm as always.  “You know that song title you had Tony ...I think I’ve got a bit of a tune for it.”

The night out had been good for him.

We’d been ensconced in the famous studios for a while now recording what was to have been the third Generation X album with the original line up. It was May 1979... But things were not going well.. the heart , the spark, seemed to be missing. Derwood the guitarist had already said in angry times he was going to leave and I felt we were struggling to find a direction for our music. We looked at each other differently and somehow the music felt hollow, like a bad dream you hoped you would wake up from.....

We’d been really influenced by the just released Public Image track with its massive throbbing reggae style bass and Keith Levines scratchy lead guitar lines floating above it - it was a revolutionary sound, leaving out the traditional rhythm guitar and it had inspired our earlier rehearsal sessions a month previously in  a cottage in the Oxfordshire countryside. It was the first time we’d departed from our traditional writing pattern.

Not many people knew that I wrote all the lyrics for Generation X back then, usually written sitting on the floor at home in my old bedroom at my parents house on my mothers original 50’s stiff black typewriter, tapping with one finger. I’ve still got lots of the originals. I’d give Billy completed sets of words and he too would go home and later come over to me to put his tunes together into completed songs  and arrangements. What simple times! 

This time we had a dozen songs for the Olympic sessions but we knew there was no obvious “single” ... its always the scent of a hit track that sets the sessions alight but on these days it was an uphill struggle ..... Was it because I’d broken with tradition and I was writing at the Mews house I was sharing with Mj and his girlfriend at the time, Viv from the Slits?  The revenge of mums typewriter? Actually I loved the recording of the track “Stars look Down” we’d just finished so something was working..... Then Mick brought home a rough of a track he’d just recorded..called London Calling... damn, it was really good!

Meanwhile over in Barnes I can remember the days seeming endless and, ridiculously, spent looking forward to going to dinner in the restaurant around the corner where the record label had agreed we could eat what we wanted on their tab!...bloody hell, this was seeming like a job now, waiting to clock off.  Black clouds were gathering. Oh yes.. we seemed to be producing ourselves too... or not .... always dangerous.

So that morning, after Billys night out, was a ray of sunlight into our world with, at last, the scent of magic in the air.

We sat on the back fire escape steps, on the cold concrete, and Billy leaned against the iron railings and played me a driving E,A,B, A chord sequence on his Epiphone guitar, singing da da daaa da da da tune.... Idol always had such a teenage enthusiasm every time he presented something new, seemingly amazed at finding this tune somewhere out of the air..... and it always brought the mood to a frantic pitch of creativity that we both got caught up in.. he la la la’d the next couple of phrases and into the chorus ending with “with the records reflection and the mirrors reflection..and back into the hook.. from the Tokyo seed.....

That day the words and arrangement just flowed out of us both and we scribbled them down in pencil on a scrap of paper ..it happens like that when you’re on a roll - everything is so right that the words seem like they’re already there... you just pluck them out of the ether and of course they fit perfectly, like filling in a crossword puzzle as if you already knew every answer... we rushed to the middle bit and the solo was obvious.. (alright, yes I know its not Shakespeare... it is magic though!)

Lets just repeat verse one again after the solo, Billy plinking the notes on a guitar not plugged into any amplifier and me with my bass.. we both looked at the scribbled notes as we sang the now completed song through once more, laughing at the symmetry and the fit of the words and melody..

Thats the way it happens on those sunny days.. easily. Or not so easily I guess.. in fact it is really hard to sit down to write a simple song about a simple idea with words that the listener already feels they know on first hearing. Otherwise we’d all keep doing it....  every day.

But on some magical days it just comes and you know it. Mick told me the moment he wrote Should I stay that he knew it.

I’d had had the idea for the title and lyric when we were in Japan earlier that summer for our first and only Japanese tour... and I was of course drunk in a Tokyo disco after a show.... Mississippi Queen (actually I already had the T-shirt cos Mick had bought one back home when he’d been there with the Clash)... anyway I’d watched as hip kids danced with their own reflections  in the floor to ceiling mirrors that edged the dance floor and I logged the idea in the back of my brain. I must have told the idea to Idol later and we both carried the seed around until now.

We left the stairwell and as the equipment was already set up in the vast cavern of Studio One we showed Derwood the chords there and then.. Mark Laff, listening, spontaneously played a kinda “ballroom blitz “ dance beat and we were off..playing in that hallowed room that had held everyone from the Stones, Hendrix and Yardbirds.

We recorded the backing track in a couple of takes and that song, Dancing with Myself was to change everything. It was one of the best we’d ever written and it had the magic.

It changed everything not least because the sessions came to an abrupt end as Derwood suddenly announced he was leaving the band ....and drummer Mark Laff followed soon afterwards - this time they had decided they wanted to write their own songs rather than play mine and Billys.... and went off to pursue their ideas in their band to be called “Empire”.. I did not realize at the time that this was the start of the end of my first proper band....

The original Olympic recordings, buried for years, did finally appear as the bootleg album “Sweet Revenge”. If you listen closely you’ll hear that that first recording of Dancing with Myself is one of the only completed tracks - many of the others have the guitar solos missing, never completed because of Derwoods early departure.  It's sad and painful listening for me today..... I loved that band.. and the people.  How is it that something so good, maybe so great, certainly in terms of friendship, can then fall apart so easily?  We’re all friends again, but I wonder what those two think looking back now?  I guess it's happened time and time again.

Well, a lot went on in the next year.. (And I guess that's another longer story...)  ....until we were standing again in another legendary studio - Air Number One high above Oxford Circus in London’s West End.. to re-record and produce the definitive version of Dancing with Myself.  Oh yes, and A group called Japan were in the other studio there and it was June 1980.

We had a new manager and this time a new producer, a young ex drummer called Keith Forsey - he had been Giorgio Moroder's drummer on tracks like  “Rivers of Babylon” and the Donna Summer hits... (I hadn’t met Georgio himself yet - I did not know then that that was to come!) . Forsey was disco groovy..and it was to turn out, a great songwriter too, he wrote “Don’t you forget about me” for Simple Minds...

But this time on drums - Terry Chimes, ex of the Clash playing that blitz beat.. on lead guitar, lying on the floor with a bottle of methadone  to hand, surrounded by a circle of vintage amplifiers so loud you couldn’t get near - step forward an inspired but disintegrating Steve New, ex Rich Kids playing the lead guitar phrase.... on rhythm guitar, giving it, in his own special way, some “Bollocks” on the choruses was Steve Jones and the trusty cream Les Paul. To play the tight chugging guitar in the verses, courtesy of the Tom Robinson Band.. Mr Danny Kustow. Billy idol on the voice - his own burgeoning heroin habit reasonably in control ......and finally myself on Rickenbacker bass... now THAT is a rocking line up.

Actually the weird thing I remember now is that the famous Iranian Embassy siege was on the TV in the lounge when Billy and I left the studio later that day. We walked to Regents Park and sat amongst the summer flowers by the fountains while Keith got up the mix for us to hear.

It’s this version, contrary to many misinformed rumours, that is the ONLY version of the song recorded.  Billy Idol later took the song the two of us had recorded and used it in his solo career - he NEVER re recorded it. Even the record company get muddled about this, to my continued annoyance.  It's the same version in his video and on “Vital Idol” that we recorded that day.  I was glad Billy used the song because it never got the exposure it deserved under the Gen X flag. That track has been in more movies and adverts than any other Generation X track ever.  And it's been covered by bands like Blink 182, Greenday, The Donna’s and recently a jazzy version by French band “Nouvelle Vague”.. its their version used as the theme tune for the USA TV series “LA Ink”. All from that crazy hour sitting on the cold steps outside Olympic studios

I’m telling this story today because a couple of weeks ago Mj and I were in Paris for a Carbon/Silicon press conference and while I was getting ready to go out I heard the familiar tune ringing out of my hotel TV... its still a thrill to hear your song playing, even after all these years (nearly 30) even if it was in an advert for a French bank!!!

Anyway, back then, Billy and I returned to the studio to hear the mix an hour later.  I have this enduring vision of listening to the playback and realising Steve Jones had somehow got out of a window and was now on the outside of the soundproof glass of the studio dancing and gesturing to the shoppers six floors below from the narrow window ledge, inches from a plummeting death, but silently mouthing the words to the chorus through the glass as he windmilled his Les Paul, legs defiantly apart.....

I was, he told me after, trying it out...you know....  Dancing with Myself...

and having a hell of a time apparently.....

Tony James

4 Dec 2008

I’ve always loved those great rock and roll stories.

When Mj and I first met way back in the early 70's we both shared an interest not only in the same bands, but also in the magazines that detailed the lives of the people involved... I’m thinking of the American magazines like “Rock Scene” and “Creem”.. these were really hard to get in those Rock and Roll starved days of 70's London.  Mj got his sent over by his mother who lived in Michigan in the USA. I had to search out bookshops in London which imported them - Compendium  Books in Camden Town high street was one of the only ones.  I would travel up from home in Twickenham just to get a copy and then pour over the tales of the rock excess and of the cool rock scenes in Detroit and New York, of the Stooges and the N.Y. Dolls. It all seemed a million miles away. Such teenage dreams. It all meant so much back then those papers....

It's strange looking back on those times how fanatical a fan I was... I loved to read all the stories.  Back in Twickenham and for the rest of the country, my weekly bible NME came out on Thursdays.  But so keen was I to read any mentions of the bands I loved, that every week I was quite happy to make the hour and a half round trip to Oxford Circus in central London on a Wednesday afternoon on my motorbike, just to get the latest issue of NME a day early.  Imagine - it meant that much! There was a paper stand just outside the London Palladium near Regent Street (Its still there - Mj used to go there too he said yesterday), where they had the first issues just after 5 p.m.  I’d get home and read every article written by their star journalists - Nick Kent, Pete Erskine and Charles Shar Murray, their ruthless style was so different from any other paper - it made everything seem exotic.  Aah, the glamorous life of the stars like Bowie and the Stones. I wanted desperately to exist in that world too, but the leap from watching bands at the local college and sitting at home in my bedroom practicing bass seemed impossible. Oh but the stories....... of Keef Richard buying jeans at Granny Takes a Trip, Brian Wilson in the sand box, The Dolls hanging out...... I loved them all.

I never stopped to think for a second that any of it was exaggerated or that it was just myth building by publicists and managers and, now I know better, by the magazines and papers too. Everyone joins in the game - they all want us to buy the dream and the myth..... it makes the money go round. But hey, I love the magic it makes still.

I sometimes wonder when I write these blogs if it is demystifying our world to you too much. Does writing about it so personally take away the imagination?  I try to write about our life in this band as honestly as I can - my thoughts in this rapidly changing world we exist in - and to give a feel for what this life is really like. Especially as someone who was once such an innocent believer and fan of rock and roll and who now has some touch of the world I once only read about. I guess that is one of the wonders of the internet - that as more and more artists write about their lives and fears with such intimacy, you feel a closeness that never existed before - a direct line uncoloured by the papers I once was so influenced by.  Is it better or not?

Sometimes those two worlds collide and you find the fan in you is still there.... thank God.

I started this story because last week I was at Camden market again and found myself standing in a familiar place. I have so many memories of that area, from the Clash rehearsal rooms,( “Rehearsal Rehearsal” they called it), the railway arch where Generation X rehearsed (there’s a clip of us arriving and playing “Kiss me Deadly” there on Youtube) and especially the venue that was once “Dingwalls” where the young Tj saw so many bands. I found myself remembering one evening, long long ago - probably 76 or 7, standing in the queue with Mj to see the singer Robert Gordon. It was the early days of our bands and we definitely were not in the ‘whisked past the velvet rope’ stage.

A voice behind us in the queue suddenly went.. ”Hey man , great jacket”...

There was something about that voice that resonated through us both, something familiar,  nasally..  causing both our heads to jerk round...

Bob Dylan peered at us through the usual dark glasses... pointing at my shiney new white leather... `

“Er , I got it at Kensington market, in Johnsons on the first floor” I stuttered, luckily failing to add the gush “Oh my God I’ve got all your records Mr Dylan.....” 

“Cool” he said as he strolled away... leaving us reeling in disbelief at this chance encounter with a legend I’d only ever read about...

Waving  as they walked away to the velvet rope we realised he was with Ellie Smith, the PR from what was then CBS records and the Clash’s publicist. Did she put him up to it? But...... I’ll always have this -  Dylan, no, The Dylan,  thought my jacket was cool. Wow. 

Days later she told us that Dylan sent someone for him (I guess he didn’t shop himself) to Johnsons to buy similar jackets... one in each colour and size.

So there it is -  a rock and roll story of my own. Oh and Robert Gordon was great too.

Tony James
6 Oct 2008