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My Life in Punk Rock - The Beginning |
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I got a call from Rat Scabies sometime in the middle of 1992. I was rehearsing with another band when he called. The band were friends, but Ratty was talking business, so friendship went by the wayside, and I took the King's shilling. Nothing was concrete at that time, but Ratty was getting the band back together. This time there would be no Dave and no Captain, but these were obstacles he would overcome. Kris Dollimore, the ex-Godfathers guitarist, who was well known to both of us, had put me in the frame. Ratty and I had met on several occasions and knew roughly what each other were about. It all began fairly sedately. Rat, Dolli and me worked on bits and bobs over several months, going to Scotland to write songs on a farm owned by Rat's mate Kenny, a former tour manager of the band from days gone by. Somehow we ended up running around with big guns whilst drunk on single malt whisky, shooting things. There was a short gap of a few weeks following the Scotland trip. Rat was fishing around for other potential members, but once he'd decided on me as the bass player (having tried J. J. Burnell and Glen Matlock among others), demo tapes were made, new and mysterious singers were auditioned, which was a lot of fun, and then Dirty Dave signed on for the duration. I say duration, he did go AWOL a couple of times, but there were reasons. He just never shared them. A weird violinist called Kev turned up a few times, but when we got him into a studio it became apparent he couldn't play to save his hippy-arsed life. Good, I'd had my fill of gypsy violins for one lifetime. Things stagnated in the early stages, until Rat got a mate of Brian James' involved. Brian was the original Damned guitarist ,for those less familiar with the history of the band. Allen Tea Shoppe (not his real name) was older than Methuselah, but could loosely throw a song together, provided everybody else rewrote it. Soon enough, we were in business. I got stuck with the dubious title of 'musical director', which basically meant that I had to teach everyone the songs and make sure they were rehearsed, leaving Rat free to do whatever else he was up to. So we learnt the songs (well, most of us did). Then we rehearsed rather a lot, and then toured and toured and toured. David M. Allen, who was partially responsible for producing Dare by The Human League, followed us around as we made lots of rough recordings in almost every studio in North London. Dave produced, and got stoned a lot. Normally his ears recovered enough to take all the excess reverb off before mixing things, but not always. |
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