A Tale of Two Singers

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.

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