Authors: Mike Read
Local musicians tend to gravitate towards each other and drift in and out of various groups like butterflies trying to find their favourite buddleia bush. At one point we drafted in Ric Parnell from the nearby village of Claygate, reasoning that as his father was one of the country’s top drummers and bandleaders then Rick should be able to at least hold a pair of Premier E sticks. Hold them? Led Zeppelin’s ‘Communications Breakdown’ with its unusual nine-beat intro, straight in, no messing. He played on one or two of my demos,
including a powerful re-working of ‘What the Dickens’, where he and Virgin Sleep guitarist Keith Purnell really let rip. Keith also played with the seasoned rocker and highly respected singer Jackie Lynton, who popped his nose into one session and ended up kicking some life into a rather lacklustre song of mine we were recording, ‘January, February, March’. Even attempting to rhyme ‘March’ with ‘much’ was lyrical madness. Ric Parnell was rising faster than the rest of us, moving on to Rod Roach’s new band, Horse, and playing on their debut (and only) album, and then touring the States with Engelbert Humperdinck at the insistence of Parnell senior.
It was during the recording of the Horse album at Olympic Studios that I met Mick Jagger. We walked in together one day. ‘Hello, Mick,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ said Mick.
You could tell we clicked. I haven’t seen him since.
On Ric Parnell’s return to the UK, he immediately gave me his immaculately tailored midnight blue DJ, which had been made for him. He hated it. I loved it. He joined Atomic Rooster and acquired a much more appropriate snakeskin suit and snakeskin boots, which he wore until they fell apart and took on a life of their own in the corner of his bedroom. I swear I heard that suit hissing. I shared two flats with Ric. When there was no work on he’d stay in bed all day. That’s just passable in itself as a part of a rock & roll lifestyle, but his culinary habits were the stuff of legend. Under his bed lived a white Mother’s Pride loaf, a jar of peanut butter, a knife and a rolled-up pair of socks that existed in a world devoid of launderettes and washing powder. Following yet another slice of dry bread coated with crunchy peanut butter, the fastidious Parnell would gently place the knife, thick with spread, on the rolled-up socks to avoid getting it dirty on the floor. I swear each sandwich contained more sock fluff than peanut butter. I also swear that it was this natural rock & roll behaviour pattern that led to him becoming the drummer in Spinal Tap. He was a shoe-in. God made the rock & roll lifestyle especially for Parnell.
The key to success in those days was to release a single. You couldn’t simply cut your own records back in the day. Now, anybody can do it. You set up the technology in your bedroom, record it, mix it, upload it, make a cheap video, stick it on YouTube and even cut CDs where necessary, print your own labels and your own liner notes and design the cover, all from the room that you were once sent to for being naughty. But then, to feel the thrill of holding a piece of vinyl in your hand meant that someone other than yourself, in the all-powerful record industry, believed in your talent as a performer or a writer. It was proof to friends and family that there was a chance you’d make it. I had several songs at the time that might have been considered commercial (which seemed to be the all-important byword), including a song about a Florence Nightingale-type character, ‘Lady of the Lamp, I Won’t Look Back’, which included references to ‘double-breasted businessmen’ and a former Uppingham scholar who lost his life in World War One, and ‘Pictures on My Wall’. The latter song, as with a few of my demos, had the delightful addition of my friend Tricia Walker on her family’s great Canadian harmonium, with lyrics extolling the virtues of pictures scattered around at home. The lyric took in Chatsworth Hall, Sybil Thorndike, Katmandu and the cartoon character Toby Twirl! Heady stuff. As it turned out, the first single release that I could wave in front of my parents was ‘February’s Child’, a song inspired by Valerie. Valerie’s mother, Molly, caught us kissing in the music room (nothing really serious, but enough to put a mother’s nose out of joint) and banned me from the house. Limited to riding past on my bike and waving I simply had to vent my spleen in a song. Not surprisingly, the spleen-venting was done in a very Home Counties way, via a twee little ditty featuring harpsichord and flute. Sure, it might have been released on a small classical label, whose previous single had been ‘Esmeralda Fufluns’, a children’s song about a dragon, but at least there would be a piece of vinyl and that was what mattered. Our group, Just Plain Smith, comprised two friends from
Uppingham School, Bill Heath and Chris Hatt, and their schoolmate Jake, Colin Standring from Surrey University, who’d been in the Jimmy Brown Sound and Horse, and Dick, like Bill a budding law student. Chris literally dreamed up the name, while Bill coined the song’s media strapline, ‘On a scene of its own’. Quite.
Our backing vocalist on this exploratory disc was Tim Rice, credited on the label as playing the ‘mitsago’. At the time, and occasionally since, people have stolen stealthily up to me and whispered in a covert voice that they had no idea that people still played the mitsago, in a classic case of emperor’s new clothes. The erroneous assumption that it was maybe related to an ancient instrument such as the sackbut or the hautboy was heavily wide of the mark, as, with the scintillating humour of youth that only youth considers to be scintillatingly humorous, I simply reversed Tim to get ‘mit’ and added ‘sago’ instead of Rice. For his sins, and the thrill of musical camaraderie, Tim joined the band at the odd gig and, as top record producer Norrie Paramor’s former right-hand man, was closer to the hub of the business than we were. For some obscure reason he became unavailable the following year, after
Jesus Christ Superstar
shot to number one in the USA. There’s gratitude. Where was the publicist who could have given us such possible newspaper headlines as ‘Just Plain Smith backing vocalist tops US chart’? To date T. M. B. Rice is the only Just Plain Smith backing vocalist to have been knighted. A version of the group appears sporadically to this day, but even Tim’s global glory hasn’t added much to their fee or their set list over the years.
Mention must be made of the Hatt–Heath B-side, ‘Don’t Open Your Mind’, on which we really let rip and stopped trying to be commercial. Gentle and pretty it wasn’t, but it should probably have been the A-side, being described over twenty years later in Record Collector as ‘a dynamic piece of freakbeat akin to “Arthur Green” by John’s Children’. ‘February’s Child’ was described as a ‘beautifully crafted slice of late ’60s pop in a similar mould to the Kinks’. In the ’90s the single was listed at number twenty-seven in the
Record Collector
chart. No mean feat two decades on. It’s now listed as a having a value of around £150 a copy. It didn’t cost that to make the record!
Orlake, the pressing plant, was way out at the end of the tube line in Upminster, but there was no way I was waiting for our copies of the record to arrive by post and I hurtled up there on the appointed day. I got there early and had to wait some three hours. Would I like to come back later? No I wouldn’t, thank you. I’d like to wait. You can’t trust the music industry: go for a cup of tea and the factory closes and that’s it. Eventually, they gave me a box containing the first six copies. I hardly noticed the long trip home as I examined each one over and over again; first the A-sides then the B-sides, then the letters scratched onto the section where the groove runs out, then the grooves themselves and then I started again on the A-sides. We got a few reviews; I think it was the
Melody Maker
who declared that we were like Skip Bifferty. We were thrilled as they were a serious musical force, but it turned out that the only likeness they were referring to was that both groups were living in a house in the country. Having the same real estate values as a genuinely talented and respected group was surely no bad thing.
In another interview I was holding forth with such earth-shattering comments as ‘A deadline can work wonders and we play much better under pressure’. The only pressure I remember is that Jake’s family lived in the Bahamas and he got to the studio half an hour late. The producer was also quoted in an interview, inspiring all and sundry with his
aperçu
that ‘the harpsichord is an essential gimmick and without it the song will never get off the ground’, which was good to know. Another of his quoted classics, this time regarding the microphones was, ‘It all depends on strategic positioning. It’s this that will make or break you.’ Nothing to do with our songs, haircuts or youthful good looks then? How very disappointing. One interview ended with a flash of visionary brilliance from ‘Just Plain Mic’, as they insisted on calling me: ‘Even if the record doesn’t make the chart, I don’t think we’ve wasted our time.’ The jury is still out.
The record actually got some airplay: Emperor Rosko spun it a couple of times and Bill Heath’s incessant and terrier-like campaigning bagged us a spot on
Radio One Club
. I hoofed up to Leicester, although I was still bearing the final scars from a horrific car crash a few weeks earlier. The axle sheared on my friend Roger Tallack’s Triumph Herald and as the car somersaulted I apparently went through the gap where the windscreen had been and ended up unconscious with battery acid pouring over me. How we survived goodness only knows. There was petrol everywhere. If either of us had been smoking (luckily neither of us smoked) we’d have been engulfed in a ball of flame. I remember briefly coming to in the ambulance and muttering ‘We can get some press out of this for the single’. A trouper through and through. Having done my PR I passed out again, coming round in A&E. I was naked except for a piece of elastic around my waist and a few tatters hanging down Robinson Crusoe style. Not realising that the battery acid had eaten my underpants I entered the realms of somnolent apologia: ‘Oh no, my mother always told me to wear clean underwear in case I had an accident.’ I couldn’t see a thing for the first three days in hospital as the petrol had burned my eyes and soaked into the dozens of lacerations on my face and head. Apart from the severe pain I had no idea what state I was in. I was still semi-conscious during first visiting hours when I heard my mother say to my father, ‘My God, I hope they don’t let him look in a mirror.’ I wasn’t sure how my new Quasimodo look would fit into the image of a young pop group. Maybe I could go solo. Maybe I’d have to. My mother at that point, not yet aware of my total lack of sight, didn’t know that they could have held up every mirror in the place and I wouldn’t have known.
After my honourable discharge some three weeks later and a few more weeks convalescing in the sun, I bore my remaining scars with youthful embarrassment as I appeared on
Radio One Club
, alongside Jeff Lynne’s underrated Idle Race and Bobby Vee. According to the music press, there was much talk of servicemen from
Walton-on-Thames taking a copy of ‘February’s Child’ with them to the Far East, where it was copied and pressed illegally, reaching number ten in the Malaysian chart. You can’t beat a good rumour.
I did a one-off gig around this time, forming a trio with two other young hopefuls to play at the Dorchester Hotel. The occasion was the second wedding of property magnate Sefton Myers, who’d recently formed a management company with showbiz agent David Land. The guests included Sefton’s daughter Judie, later to find fame as Judie Tzuke. The three lads who took to the stage to entertain (I use the word loosely) were also looking for appreciation of their musical abilities and as such were still on the very shaky first rung. I played guitar and sang, my fellow vocalist just sang and our third member pounded the piano. My confederates were keen to make an impression, as they’d not long been signed to Sefton and David’s management company, New Ventures. I was on board too, not as an artist, but as the young lad attempting to do their PR from their office in Mayfair, at 1 Charles Street. I had no experience of course, but the singer of our trio had rather recklessly recommended me in what must have been an unguarded moment. Had you wanted to interview Tim and Andrew and be the first to spot their global potential, you only had to call me on 01-629 **** and you would have been on a winner, or rather two winners. Too late now.
I have no idea what we served up that night. I don’t remember any rehearsals. I don’t remember any soundcheck. I’m not even sure that I remember any applause. We certainly weren’t approached by anyone else in the room eager to book a rather odd trio. It was a case of three men in a boat without a paddle … actually, no, make that without the boat.
‘Tim and Andrew’ were Rice and Lloyd Webber respectively. Their big project at the time, post-
Joseph
and pre-
Jesus Christ Superstar
, was a musical based on Richard the Lionheart, with the rather lengthy working title of
Come Back, Richard, Your Country Needs You
. They wrote some of it on a barge on the Thames and recorded the songs at
Chappell’s in Bond Street, where I added my dulcet and not unharmonious backing vocals to some of the tracks. The two I can recall were ‘Come Back Richard’ and ‘Roll On over the Atlantic’. Now if only it had been
Superstar
.
Many artists and musicians lived locally, but I was always more interested in the songwriters. I’d heard a whisper that Barry Mason had bought George Harrison’s old house, Kinfauns in Claremont Park, Esher. I knew where it was as we’d played several times for Claremont School dances. The invitations (black tie or military uniform) were always worded by the headmistress as being from ‘Miss Doran & the Claremont Seniors’, which I thought was a cracking name for a doo-wop band. Miss Doran would utter cries of anguish at the volume of our amplifiers, in sympathy for ‘Queen Victoria’s ceiling’, but we were sure that the Old Queen was past caring about the coved cornices, decorative roses and plaster icing over our heads. Barry had co-written many classic hits, including ‘The Last Waltz’, ‘Delilah’, and ‘Everybody Knows’ for the Dave Clark Five. I had it all worked out. I’d cycle down, knock on the door and offer to play him a few songs; he’d like them and my songwriting career would take off. Well, I did the cycling and the knocking, but expected little else. I hadn’t counted on being invited in, being given a cup of tea and having my rough demoes played. That’s when they stop sounding as good as you’d imagined. Barry listened, offered to record them in better quality if I brought my guitar round the following week and was genuinely encouraging. I cycled home on a wee bit of a high.