DISCLAIMER: Some names in the following account have been changed to protect people's identities. If anyone reading this feels offended or that I have slighted them in any way, I truly apologise. If anyone reading this can learn any lessons about how not to succeed in the world of music, then all the better.
THE STORY SO FAR... Byzantine has died a messy death after two years. Cyberlizard has now got equipment but no band.
I muddled around for about a year, having a pile of my own problems (no work, accommodation, personal crises) to deal with. At one point I wanted to get engaged to a girl I had been going out with for several months, but she told me she thought I was offering her second best, ie marriage because I couldn't get the old band back together. I did try working with Lesley for a bit, but at first it involved taking my guitar around to her flat only to find that a horde of her boyfriend's mates had turned up and were sprawled around the place - very inconvenient if you want to try to do music. I learned to drive in 1989, though, which was one of the best things I ever did (should have done it years sooner). At one point I took a tape of Byzantine over to a drummer in Plumstead. He was actually a thalidomide with greatly reduced arms, but was nevertheless a brilliant musician and heavily into the stuff I wanted to do. We didn't get together for two reasons: first, he wanted to dump Lesley (I still felt a vague sense of loyalty there) and secondly, he wanted me to stay on the dole and move over to the area so that we could work together. Although I wasn't working at the time, I have always had a bit of a gut reaction against living off the State indefinitely, so nothing came of it.
After a while I started going to auditions with the view to joining someone else's band for a change. The first one I got into was Jokers Wild (at least, I think that was their name). It was basically two guys who played keyboards and sang, plus their drummer when he was around. I have to admit, they were extremely talented and articulate. Where I didn't really fit in was that they also had a fairly earthy sense of humour which sometimes extended to filth (one of their former monikers had been "Paddy and the Perverts"). But musically I fitted in well and felt I had a lot of room.
Incidentally we had a poignantly amusing incident one afternoon when another guitarist came to audition. He seemed pretty keen so we gave him a go. One of the band was calling out the chords to him, when halfway through the song he stopped and looked a bit puzzled.
"Er, how do you make the chord of C?"
Angry? We were more embarrassed than anything. We were very nice to him, advised him to learn a few more chords, etc, and gently sent him on his way. It was only after he'd gone that we looked at one another in disbelief. He was such a nice guy, though, that we didn't want to hurt his feelings.
I had the nagging feeling despite the musical pleasure that somehow I wasn't gelling with the other two. Sure enough I got a phone call at work (another struggling job, but that's another story) one afternoon.
"Hi, how's your day been?"
"Not too good actually!"
"Well, I'm sorry, I've got more bad news... I'm afraid our old guitarist is back."
I bore them no ill will. It was a relief in some ways.
It so happened that Rob had by now gotten into another band after lashing out a phenomenal amount of money on a new drum kit. A few months later he went with me to buy a second-hand CZ5000 and was quite impressed by the sounds, and so a short while later I went to audition for the keyboard player's job.
Apart from Rob, there were three others in the band. Dave, the bass guitarist, was a quiet, laid-back guy with a floppy fringe and a roll-up permanently stuck to the corner of his mouth. He was actually multi-instrumental and, the essence of hipness, drove a VW Beatle. Jimmy, the lead singer, was a larger than life character whose age seemed indeterminate - late 30s, I would have guessed, and who had more charisma than he could handle. He was a Scouser, but thankfully not a professional one. The guitarist, Villio, was a quiet amiable Italian who could not quite spikka da lingo. I tried asking him about Django Reinhardt's influence a couple of times and received friendly and helpless shrugs of the shoulder, after which I gave up.
The audition went well and I was accepted. Soon afterwards, however, it became apparent that Villio had left the band and gone incommunicado. At this point I was toying with the idea of using the Casio's onboard sequencer, so I coyly suggested that I might fill the guitarist's position instead.
If you've ever been the sole guitarist in a band without keyboards, you'll know how difficult it can be to fill out the sound, especially when switching to lead. This was the first time I'd tried this for years, and it was quite an education. Looking back on it, it might have helped to have bought a powerful valve amp, but I had a box of effects, including a compressor, to get me by. Rob and Dave were a pretty good rhythm section anyway, and it wasn't the sort of music that required ten minute guitar solos. Songwriting was a bit of a haphazard affair, though. Early on I gave up on bringing complete songs along because Jimmy would want to add something to them: the trouble is, he was never quite sure what. So instead we would try and pull some riffs or chord sequences out of the air and Jimmy would grab the mike and start singing in a sort of haranguing, ranting style. Some of his words and ideas were quite good, but unfortunately he never committed anything to paper, so occasionally we had to go around the block a few times.
Like I said, Jimmy was a larger-than-life character. He lived in a squat in Lambeth with his Mediterranean girlfriend, did the odd bit of dispatch riding for a living, and was friendly with an older Asian guy, Kenneth, who acted as a sort of manager. Despite his working-class hero image, however, Jim had a bit of a problem handling alcohol, especially lager. Somehow we would always end up in the pub, which was quite enjoyable, and then after a couple of lagers Jimmy would start rambling a bit about things. He believed in himself, which was good, except that sometimes the rest of us were sceptical. I stress that he was a diamond geezer, but in some ways he was in a world of his own. One afternoon we were around at his pad and he was having a session of playing Wire very enthusiastically. Dave obviously didn't share his enthusiasm, because he muttered to me "It's like a **** religion to Jimmy." He was also a bit heavy-handed with our guitars, so after a while the secret protocol among the band was Don't let Jimmy near your axe! Give Jimmy credit, he complied with our wishes when he found out, although I think he was a bit hurt.
Mick's band, the Red Orchids, had landed a gig at the Sultan in Bermondsey, and he invited us to be on the gig list as well. So we rehearsed quite intensively, went along after work and invited a few friends and colleagues along. In the magnitude of disaster it was about level with Jazz Riffs, only personally much worse for me. It was a hot summer's night and the pub had to keep the windows shut to keep the noise in, so the guitars were slipping out of tune anyway. Far more serious was the fact that my amp kept mysteriously cutting out, giving me only bursts of what I was supposed to be playing. Sweating like a pig (and not just with the heat), I looked down at the stage and saw Jimmy banging his feet up and down with the beat. Every time his boot hit the floor, the amp cut out. I yelled at him to stop doing it but he didn't seem to understand. The reason why became apparent as he grew steadily more legless. By the end of our fifth and last song he was more or less off his face, shouting into the mike "It's all a load of ********s".
Love it? Some people in the crowd hated him. It was not what you could call an unqualified artistic success.
Afterwards we played the tape back. It was awful, just a racket with nothing clearly audible. By now, despite a Saturday afternoon photo shoot with a friend of Jimmy's, I was beginning to have my doubts about the project. Jimmy was both the driving force behind the band and its biggest problem in some ways. That sounds harsh, but then in the bizarre chemistry of musicianship, that's often the way it is.
Eventually we sat down in the pub for a polite but forcible discussion with Jimmy and Ken. Ken was obviously sympathetic to both sides, and we tried to explain to Jimmy that he needed to tighten up, get things down on paper, etc. He listened pretty well, but it was clear that he didn't think there was a problem. After that I started thinking - along with the others - about different projects.
Looking back on it, maybe it was contemptible or at least unfriendly of me to persuade Dave and Rob to form another band without Jimmy. I certainly think I could have gone about it a bit differently. At that time my own back was up against the wall, work-wise, and I was still hoping to become a professional musician. I was also conscious of approaching 30 as I felt at the time that that was some sort of magic cut-off date. Add to that being gently dumped by a long-term girlfriend and various other problems, and I think I had become a little devious. It's not something I'm proud of.
The three of us therefore struck out on our own, without John. I felt free at last to introduce a lot of songs I'd produced on the sequencer, so shortage of material wasn't a problem. All we needed now was a second harmony person (guitar or keyboards, or preferably both since I wanted to be able to switch around as well) and, most importantly, a singer.
We found our fourth muso in the shape of the brother of a girl I knew, Justin Brown. Justin was younger than any of us and a bit precocious, but very talented on guitar and keyboards. Occasionally he and I clashed: it was probably the "grizzled old veteran vs. keen rookie" syndrome, though in some ways I must admit he was technically more accomplished than I was, and could play the drums too. I got on quite well with his mother, which helped initially. Although he was partial to the odd puff now and then, he never let it get in the way of what he was doing.
We'd been playing together for a few weeks when we put an ad out for a singer, and got a few replies. The first one we selected, Susie, was a talented and attractive girl who wore dark glasses all the time. Unfortunately she mysteriously blew us out after muttering something about personal problems, which wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't sent her some music manuscripts that I'd done. She said she never received them, but I was sceptical. Anyway, we never heard from her again. So we tried again and this time we auditioned three girls, two of whom (Paula and Christine) were pretty good, the other possibly suffering from stage fright but certainly being hopeless on the night. Christine was also suffering from nerves, which was why she'd had a few to drink when she turned up. Initially we went with Paula, but her leanings were in a slightly different direction to ours and so she decided not to pursue it after a couple of practises. That left Christine, whom I'd actually preferred, although they were both good.
Actually Dave had fancied Christine right from the start, although he was in a long-term relationship. Soon after Christine joined the band they started going out together, and later moved in together. It's very hard to handle a relationship like that within a group: in some ways this is the problem that single-sex groups just don't have, unless they steal one another's partners. But at the time it seemed OK, and we all got on well together socially. Rob and I didn't participate in the "jazz Woodbines", though. Dean's sister was living around the corner from us in Bromley and we sometimes went up there for drinks after practise or the pub shut. One night I confess I made a hog of myself with Greek brandy and was very ill for 24 hours.
We got a gig at the Black Horse in Catford, a large pub with a middle-aged couple who later allowed us to use their back room to practise. A lot of people came down to see us and the gig went pretty well, with Justin and myself switching between guitar and keyboards and the rest of the band playing and singing brilliantly. Afterwards the hat got passed around and I remember being awestruck that we had received £38: I'd never received so much on one night in a band. Perhaps it shows that my horizons were limited at the time. Mick said at the time that he thought it was the sound that we had been looking for in Byzantine, which struck me as a compliment. Unfortunately we played there again in the New Year following and flopped due to a largely empty pub, not helped by the fact that two over-friendly punters doing their Clint Eastwood impressions seemed to deter a few people. So, no more gigs at the Black Horse.
Justin was the first one to leave, unsurprisingly. We'd often sparred verbally, and looking back on it perhaps I patronised him a bit due to his age. At any rate he just phoned up one evening and said he wouldn't be coming again... ever. He sounded a bit nervous, but for once I adopted a laidback approach and was polite, and he was actually grateful: "Thanks for being okay about it," were his words. Well, what could I have I done? I knew he was probably going to university in the months ahead anyway, and at the end of the day I liked Justin. Certainly he was preferable to his replacement.
His replacement was a man called Alvin Howard, a somewhat yuppieish guy of about our age who lived with his girlfriend over in south-west London. Alvin seemed quite nice at first and took on board what we were doing, but it took a while for me to realise that we had taken a cuckoo into the nest. At first it was just little things like refusing to MIDI two synthesisers together when asked. At first Christine wasn't too keen on him, but then her attitude changed.
Rob and I weren't too keen on him either, but were willing to give him a go. After a while I felt trouble brewing and phoned him just before practise, saying that I felt he and I were incompatible, or something on those lines. He talked his way around it, and Dave and Christine seemed happy to keep him on. "There's no need for this, Cyberlizard" were his admonishing words, rather like an avuncular teacher. In hindsight it's easy to see I made the wrong decision, but I relented.
After that things started slipping out of my grasp as the axis of power shifted to Alvin. Maybe this sounds like a power struggle, and it was. It wasn't so much that I wanted complete control of the group as that I had a certain vision of the sort of music to make, one which I felt we had all shared in the beginning. I had also done most of the songwriting and arranging up to that point, although Christine did write some excellent lyrics and vocal tunes. Also, I admit that my personal idiosyncracies and sometimes crazy behaviour were probably a bit tiresome to the band. I was happy enough to share songwriting with other people, but Alvin's songs suddenly started pouring in and they didn't feel right to me: not with titles like "Animal Passion" (fnarr fnarr) or "Landslide Lady" (about a prostitute). Apart from the lyrical matter, the music felt a bit cheesy to me. I guess he must have equally felt that my compositions were overblown and pretentious, which is a fair comment. Either way, it was becoming apparent that no one band could hold the two of us.
The group split de facto into two factions: Rob and myself (as Rob had trouble with Christine's moods), and the others. Dave and Christine were firmly in the Alvin camp, both for reasons of songwriting and because the three of them seemed to puff joints at every opportunity. After a couple of hours in the studio we would all be immersed in a fug and our eyes would be watering. It became painfully obvious to me one night which way the wind was blowing when I took some gear around to Dave and Christine's to play a song to them and Alvin. While the song was playing they were chatting and laughing about something else. I was angered but said nothing.
Things came to a head one night in the rehearsal studio. It was becoming apparent that it wasn't going right, and suddenly Dave asked politely what was wrong. In the ensuing conversation, all I can remember was Alvin saying to me coolly, "I think you should go." There didn't seem any point in going any further, so we packed up and went home. Next day Rob told me that he had had a phone call from them, asking him to stay in the band with them. He wasn't too impressed with them, so he declined.
Maybe it was some sort of nemesis for splitting the Survivors away from Jimmy. It's also easy to look back with nearly ten years' wisdom and see where I personally went wrong. But it was one of the most bitter moments of my life. I felt I'd had it almost within my grasp, only to see it pour through my fingers like sand.
And what became of the other three? A year or two later I spoke to Christine on the phone. She said that Dave and she had split with Alvin because they couldn't get on with his way of continually reworking things. I met Alvin only once afterwards, at Rob's wedding, and actually we got on fine. I bear him no ill will now anyway: firstly, because you have to forgive, and secondly because time, if not a healer, then at least puts things into perspective. Good luck to him, whatever he's doing now.
Dave's was perhaps the saddest story. I once met two musicians who'd been in another band since with Christine, and they said she'd been trying to dump him due to his fondness for "weed". A few years later, Rob's younger brother came down to the South London jam in Beckenham for a drink with us and told us he'd seen Dave that day, selling the Big Issue at London Bridge station. My heart went out to him.
To be continued.....
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