After living in Japan for a year and a half the plan was to take the music we’d made in my apartment in Katsutadai and make a go of it in the wider world. We’d had some studio time in Tokyo with Miki’s uncle who was some kind of producer with NHK but we dismissed this opportunity as another example of gaijin value and set our sights on London. In some ways it would have been better to go to New York or Seattle, or something, and continue to exploit the edge of difference but I remember being adamant that only making it in London would do for me.
Like so many before and after us we arrived in London full of hopes and aspirations. The capital soon washed over us, robbed us of our mojo and all our gear which we waited weeks for to be shipped back from the east. In the meantime, I bought a bike on a credit card, cut the corners off a pocket streetmap so it would slip in and out of the fairing easily enough when I stopped at the lights, and set off to pay the bills. The daily grind of life as a motorcycle courier meant I’d only see Jim on the weekends, which interrupted our previously intense songwriting and recording partnership.
It isn’t necessary to dissect our failure to make a living as musicians in London, it is a tough life and only a few people ever make a decent living at it. And most of these are well connected or indecently talented, we weren’t either. We had fun and we loved making music but we were hopeless at the promotion side and never made a bean out of it. I listen to some of the old recordings from time to time and think we made a good fist of it, artistically, but the zeitgeist was always just around the corner. It was always this way with us.
Even when living in bohemian Brixton I recall somehow missing all the seminal gigs and the exclusive parties that everyone spoke of in the days afterwards. I'd listen to these party autopsies with a fixed smile, quietly seething, thinking, 'hang on, I wasn't busy that night, where was my invite?' The problem with that word 'exclusive' is, of course, the 'exclude' bit. But you know what? I’m happy with that now, it suits me well enough. I love the stories but I’m glad it wasn’t me who did half the things in them. I was cursed but also saved by not being in with the in-crowd.
I think of Renny, completely blotto, allegedly, seen waving a can of Brasso under people's noses at an Alabama 3 gig; Hugh, looking for a late beer and giving some lip to a couple of wiry Arab shopkeepers, losing a tooth and getting a fat lip for it. I remember the defunct kids nursery they squatted where all the door handles were knee-high and the toilets were tiny and the dealing (and therefore the partying) never stopped. Steve and the strange shrine he built, and the French girl he kept in his room who never spoke a word. And there was a guy who clearly lived in my car one summer, although I never actually caught him at it.
Heck, it was so hot that year we moved the entire contents of the lounge onto the roof, carpet and all, and sat up there every night. And then it was so cold that winter that my GT750 became stuck, frozen to the ground by a huge cascade of ice from a broken rainwater pipe. There was no central heating or insulation in those flats so everyone used to keep their cookers on for warmth, turn their gas meters round and run them backwards to manage the bills.
One year an old Irish guy called Adrian, who played with Van Morrison once, went too far and had to keep his cooker on for two weeks through the bombastic heat of summer to make up the difference. He'd put the gas on in the morning, open the windows and head off to work. when he came home he spent the evening in the pub over the road, out of the way. The goths upstairs sat through it all, you never saw them out of their black garb those guys, no matter how hot it got. Beauty knows no pain.
I came out of that craziness pretty well unscathed, all in all, from the ridiculous to the sublime. I do miss the dynamism of it all though, the urbane attitudes, the polyglot street culture and the cool, cool people. There’s nothing quite like strolling down Coldharbour Lane of a Friday evening with that palpable sense that a weekend of wild partying is about to kick off. Brilliant, even if you’re short of an invite. But it was loose and it got looser, and when crack hit the streets and began to filter into our stairwell, it was time to move on.
Like so many before and after us we arrived in London full of hopes and aspirations. The capital soon washed over us, robbed us of our mojo and all our gear which we waited weeks for to be shipped back from the east. In the meantime, I bought a bike on a credit card, cut the corners off a pocket streetmap so it would slip in and out of the fairing easily enough when I stopped at the lights, and set off to pay the bills. The daily grind of life as a motorcycle courier meant I’d only see Jim on the weekends, which interrupted our previously intense songwriting and recording partnership.
It isn’t necessary to dissect our failure to make a living as musicians in London, it is a tough life and only a few people ever make a decent living at it. And most of these are well connected or indecently talented, we weren’t either. We had fun and we loved making music but we were hopeless at the promotion side and never made a bean out of it. I listen to some of the old recordings from time to time and think we made a good fist of it, artistically, but the zeitgeist was always just around the corner. It was always this way with us.
Even when living in bohemian Brixton I recall somehow missing all the seminal gigs and the exclusive parties that everyone spoke of in the days afterwards. I'd listen to these party autopsies with a fixed smile, quietly seething, thinking, 'hang on, I wasn't busy that night, where was my invite?' The problem with that word 'exclusive' is, of course, the 'exclude' bit. But you know what? I’m happy with that now, it suits me well enough. I love the stories but I’m glad it wasn’t me who did half the things in them. I was cursed but also saved by not being in with the in-crowd.
I think of Renny, completely blotto, allegedly, seen waving a can of Brasso under people's noses at an Alabama 3 gig; Hugh, looking for a late beer and giving some lip to a couple of wiry Arab shopkeepers, losing a tooth and getting a fat lip for it. I remember the defunct kids nursery they squatted where all the door handles were knee-high and the toilets were tiny and the dealing (and therefore the partying) never stopped. Steve and the strange shrine he built, and the French girl he kept in his room who never spoke a word. And there was a guy who clearly lived in my car one summer, although I never actually caught him at it.
Heck, it was so hot that year we moved the entire contents of the lounge onto the roof, carpet and all, and sat up there every night. And then it was so cold that winter that my GT750 became stuck, frozen to the ground by a huge cascade of ice from a broken rainwater pipe. There was no central heating or insulation in those flats so everyone used to keep their cookers on for warmth, turn their gas meters round and run them backwards to manage the bills.
One year an old Irish guy called Adrian, who played with Van Morrison once, went too far and had to keep his cooker on for two weeks through the bombastic heat of summer to make up the difference. He'd put the gas on in the morning, open the windows and head off to work. when he came home he spent the evening in the pub over the road, out of the way. The goths upstairs sat through it all, you never saw them out of their black garb those guys, no matter how hot it got. Beauty knows no pain.
I came out of that craziness pretty well unscathed, all in all, from the ridiculous to the sublime. I do miss the dynamism of it all though, the urbane attitudes, the polyglot street culture and the cool, cool people. There’s nothing quite like strolling down Coldharbour Lane of a Friday evening with that palpable sense that a weekend of wild partying is about to kick off. Brilliant, even if you’re short of an invite. But it was loose and it got looser, and when crack hit the streets and began to filter into our stairwell, it was time to move on.
Me (left) and neighbour Mario jamming on the roof (with a lobster)
