As Is Mk. 1
November 1986 - March 1989
Well, all's fair in love and music, so having borrowed Paul Read for drums on a 'permanent loan', he and I had to decide which bass player to steal! We needed someone special, as we wanted accomplished playing as well as good vocals from all members of the planned three-piece. The fact was (and almost certainly still is) that if a musician was readily available, he/she may not have been any good. So if you wanted someone who would slot in quicker, needed less explaining to them and who understood what gigging and all that were about, you'd better find someone who's already taken.
Enter Steven Mears, a
recent Australian immigrant who was in fact originally born in Britain. On
arrival he'd done the accepted thing and hung around in record shops until he
found fellow music lovers in World Service, a great guitar-based
rock/folk/new wave combo that I'd long enjoyed. He was a a tuneful bass player,
he wrote songs, he could sing and he was even good-looking! There's not many of
them to the pound. After a clandestine rehearsal in the basement at Clarkson
Street, he agreed to join and to break the
news to World Service that he'd found new employment. What ensued was one of the more uncomfortable periods
of my musical life, as some members of World Service weren't terribly happy about
this perceived theft!
We just had to get on and ignore it. As it turned out, it wasn't long before World Service reappeared with a new bass player along with added keyboards and saxophone, totally rocking the joint at a storming Ipswich Corn Exchange gig. So, however acrimonious things were at the time, I can't help thinking we did them a favour.
The addition of Steven was
obviously the right thing to do for us anyway, listening to old rehearsal tapes from the
first two weeks of the band proves that. We sounded like we'd played together
for years. Intertwining melodies were spun off of the solid and inventive drums of
Reado, and the three-part harmonies for which we became known seemed to write
themselves. The sound was difficult to describe; we tried to encapsulate it with
the phrase Heavy
Big Pop, a term which was repeated in our one and only review
in the live pages of the NME, where the reviewer, a young tyro by the name of
Steve Lamacq, described us as 'chivalric and uplifting'. I liked that......a
lot. Alas, even the gloss of a great write-up from someone who later became a
very influential Radio 1 DJ is somewhat tempered by the knowledge that I'd known
him for years, ever since he came in as a teenager to Parrot Records and flogged
me some copies of his fanzine 'A Pack Of Lies'. But it was nice of him to give
us the glowing report, and he genuinely did like us!
But anyway, back to the plot.....
We rehearsed like hell,
the three of us - sometimes at the Caribbean Club in the weights room, which
retained a permanent fug of stale, male sweat; and for a time in a portakabin at an old
people's home near Saxmundham! Some relatives of Steven's ran this twilight
hotel and we were grateful for any resource we could get! All of which became
even more surreal when we were offered a loan/investment of £2,000 by said relatives. We
were invited to write the contract regarding repayment of this money ourselves,
which we duly did.....suffice to say that they were very very unlikely to get
their money back. The contract was worded so that the only way the 'investment'
would pay back was if the songs we recorded with the money were released in
their original format and sold millions! They were very mellow about the whole
thing and were probably more concerned about helping Steven and his funny little
pop band out than getting the money back. Which was lucky.
In December 1986 we demo-ed the songs at the home-attic recording emporium Treetop Studios in Stutton, overseen by Andrew Fryer, a man held mostly responsible for The Stupids' tight and punchy sound. He regaled us with stories of Captain Sensible breaking his mother's Victorian sink while we went ahead with making all the mistakes at a cheaper studio before spending large sums of money on the grand opus. The resulting cuts are played too fast, with harmonies not as good as we thought they were and guitar sounds totally wrong in places. We'd also flirted with keyboards a bit, even auditioning one or two players at The Old Times. Paul Airey was the brother-in-law of our manager Dave Powell; he'd played with various rock luminaries in his time and came along so we could hear what it would sound like...I don't think he was ever going to actually join, pro that he was. In the end after very nearly taking on someone called Kate, we decided to continue as a three-piece for the time being. So any keyboards that there were on the tape were played with two fingers by yours truly. And they were all too loud! Mission accomplished then, we knew what not to do next time...
Gigs
came fairly thick and fast, we snuggled up to the 'Fayres' scene and Greenpeace;
they were organisations that we broadly agreed with, and who could offer us
petrol money, if not wages, to put ourselves in front of people we wouldn't
normally have the opportunity to play to. We also played the regular Ipswich
venues as well as their equivalents in major East Anglian towns. Our cohesion
and confidence made for great shows, and we tended to convert wherever we went,
across style and age boundaries. Guitar, bass, drums and good harmonies - it's
an old trick but it still works, even now.
Steven's lyric-writing was ethereal and rather oblique and his tunes bouncy and melodic; I always preferred doing his stuff to my own, more formulaic music. It was unnerving to sing his words because I never really knew what the songs were actually about...and he wouldn't tell me. But between the three of us we arranged and tore strips off each others' contributions, to the rather spooky and unnerving point where we all knew what the others would do at any given point during any new song or arrangement. I won't say we were psychic, but we connected in a way that I for one had never come across before. The more we played together, the less we needed to work at it - everything came naturally. Steven's songs arrived ready for me and Paul and my songs arrived ready for Paul and Steven.
I was growing in confidence as a singer and was slowly training my voice, an annoyingly low baritone, to extend up the register and to have more power and projection. It was hard work but very gratifying when I got there and found I could express everything so much better. Basically I would try and write one song a week which was just out of my range and work up to it. This stealth method got me there without too much difficulty as it was so gradual. Best thing I ever did.
Paul and Steven inspired me so much it was liberating - I'd finally found people that were such good compadrés that I could explore the music that was in my head but not yet being played. They pulled me back from the blind alleys and encouraged me in the right directions. We were so solid it was untrue, which gave one great strength to experiment and then not be too bothered when it didn't work! They also did all the driving to gigs (I couldn't then), they also had 'proper' jobs (I didn't), and it's only now that I realise what a pain in the arse all that must have been...and they still found the time to be the best.
We decamped to The Lodge, a converted barn studio in Clare, Suffolk, which was run by members of The Enid, a 'prog rock' band that I still know very little about. We spent several days smoking, eating vegetable curries and watching videos....erm, that is...recording eight songs to take on the world with. We blew the loan money that week in the best way we knew how - on a fat sounding, shiny recording of us at our eclectic and polished best. The sound is not as gritty as it was live, but I get tired of bands complaining that their recordings don't do their live act justice - the two mediums are not supposed to be the same, unless you're one of these manufactured boy/girl bands, replete with backing tracks when performing "live" if not miming in totality.
We were in The Lodge in February 1987, using up some studio 'down-time' made vacant by a gap in the recording schedule of Katrina & the Waves, so I took the opportunity to drool over the guitars left behind by Kimberley Rew, one time Soft Boy then twanging for Katrina. I prayed for his magic to rub off on me. This was also the studio where Kim Wilde's first album was recorded, and you can hear elements of the studio's 'reverb room', most prominently heard on 'Kids In America' by the delightful blonde chanteuse, creeping onto our stuff as well. Or maybe it's just me.
I can remember being utterly destroyed by the rough mix, wondering just how we were going to polish this particular turd, and wishing we hadn't encouraged the engineer to smoke quite so much dope. I was the busiest of the three of us over the week, having to do guitars (normally three of them), keyboards and vocals...and it all sounded a bit of a mess! My paranoia was unfounded though, and the return for the final mix a little later produced a nice blend of all the elements with only a little bit of tweaking. We added gunshots to 'The Kid & The Smoking Gun' with a replica Magnum 44 that the engineer 'happened to have handy', in an obvious but fun bit of affectation. I think Paul enjoyed firing the shots and did well to resist the temptation to ask us if we "felt lucky today".
Thus armed with our new aural explosion, we began to assault the record and publishing companies, garnering the usual response in the main, but perhaps a little more interest was shown than usual. We knew we were right anyway, so it didn't matter.
In November 1987, there was a brief break while I went off to play bass for the Adicts for two months, touring Germany and Spain. Reado came along as road crew and to keep me company for most of it, but that's another story.
After a while, we realised that we wanted someone else to join the band, the constrictions of the three-piece format were stopping us doing some of the things we wanted to do. For instance I was keen to start using the guitar to get more interesting sounds out of it again, a bit like in the Panorama In Black days. So we needed someone to fill in the gaps that this would leave. We'd pretty much given up on the keyboards idea and fancied rocking out a bit more, so started the search for another guitarist.
Another band doing the rounds at the same time as us was Choy Choi, a more metal- based bunch with a flamboyant singer and good sturdy rock backing. We often played on the same bill as we were the two great Ipswich hopes and some promoters liked to parade us together. After one such showcase, a review in Ipswich's Evening Star, which was normally terribly excited about anything local, described Choy Choi, in banner headline, thus: -
DINOSAURS WITH EGO PROBLEMS
Whaaaaaaattttttt???? The reviewer, Paul Taylor, went on......"I spent most of their set cringing in disbelief at the stadium-sized egos they were trying to cram onto the one stage"...."any local frontman who gets undressed on stage before the gig and then proceeds to distribute flowers to his fans cannot surely expect to be taken seriously. Can he?"..."the impression was one of cockiness...which wasn't helped when they started howling like spoilt kids when the stage monitors cut out, shouting at the soundman to put them back on"..."It seems that dinosaurus-rockus is not dead".
As Is meanwhile, were "the most enjoyable local band I've ever seen". Whoops, a bit embarrassing for all concerned then, but I couldn't find much to disagree with in his summation of our friendly rivals, as I wasn't over-keen myself. I was just amazed that a local journalist had the chutzpah to tear into one of the 'sacred' local bands in such a vicious way...very impressive.
So when it turned out 6 months later that he was a guitarist and was keen to get on board, I for one didn't need much persuading.
Paul Taylor, Yorkshire lad - flame-haired, opinionated and loud with it. He charmed and yelled his way into our lives like no-one else could have. An intensely serious musician, he worked very hard to make sure he got every note right, with the result that within a couple of weeks of his joining in January 1988, we were up and ready to go again. The man was a total star. When I look back at it now, it must have been terrifying getting involved with the three of us, as a complete outsider, new to town and the local music scene. Maybe not knowing just how tight we were is what smoothed him in. Whatever, he fitted in just dandily and so we were four.
Paul's arrival was swiftly followed by the gig at Kings where we got our NME review, and the desire to get recording again. No munificent beneficiary this time, so we dusted off the Portastudio and drove into Elveden Forest to make use of a space known as 'The Bunker', an old military installation in the woods which had been leased by some sort of arts collective to live in and make.....well.....art. One of the people there, a smiling Sanyassin called Neil, had lived at Clarkson Street before me, and he rented us their rehearsal space for the day.
With Chris Yapp, long-time buddy of Paul Read and our live soundman, in tow, we set up the very basic equipment we'd gathered together and bashed out six songs into the ailing 4-track console, reminding ourselves all the time that Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had been recorded on a 4-track too. Sadly we didn't have George Martin and an army of EMI's finest engineers with us, but the recordings are pretty damned immaculate bar a bit of tape hiss and a fluffy bottom end. Not bad considering it was recorded in a concrete box with some carpet and egg-boxes on the walls.
Chris
and I mixed it in my living room a few days later, and I suppose for most people
it's the definitive As Is Mk. 1 recording. Take It From Me is a slushy
but boppy love song, assuring support and friendship more than hugs and kisses.
The international brotherhood of man is celebrated in Wherever You Go,
with a riff purloined from 'Thank You Friends' by Alex Chilton's seminal 70s
band, Big Star. Badlands is the one they wrote home about; it
became something I wrote (or rather, co-wrote with Steven) that really did
something for people. That was nice.
The lads let me exorcise some punk rock demons on Hey Judas, and somehow it worked. World Full Of Eyes was an old Bane song that Steven took a liking to, so we let him sing it. Steven's only solo composition on there is I Don't Want To See You Again, which is something to do with someone's divorce...I think! It's a beautifully crafted song from Mr. Mears, which put me in mind of The Carpenters (no bad thing, in my book). I spent ages trying to get the guitar solo to sound like the one on Goodbye To Love, so that the tribute could be complete. I'm not sure I succeeded, but it sounds right when I listen to it. Sadly WEA, MCA, Silvertone Records et al were not impressed.
For a few years there'd been an annual competition along the lines of a 'Battle of the Bands' running throughout the region, with the Grand Final held at the Corn Exchange in Ipswich. I think the Pauls suggested that we enter, being of a more competitive nature than Steven and myself.
I was thoroughly opposed to the whole fucking thing; the very idea of a competition between bands of an extremely disparate nature just seemed divisive and pointless. But then there was the money (£250 cash), and a day at a very nice recording studio to be had by the winners...no, still not that tempting actually...
Unfortunately the band was run on democratic lines and I was outvoted. Mind-numbingly tedious heats followed, in Hadleigh and at Westbourne High School, at which we scraped through on sheer togetherness to the final, where all of a sudden I became interested in putting on a good show. We had a lot of people rooting for us, so it would have been rude not to try. So we gave it the big one and were duly declared the best band in Suffolk. What a load of twaddle. I vaguely remember trying to dismiss the whole thing in the acceptance speech before running off giggling with the cheque.
We
did also get a video of the night's gig and a return show, to be broadcast live
on local radio, so it turned out to be pretty useful really. It was still a load
of shit though, and I'd like to thank the sponsors, Celestion, Ipswich Borough
Council blah blah blah blah blah....
They asked me to judge some of the following year's heats but I suddenly came over all busy.
So now what...the record companies had all said 'thanks, but no thanks' again. We'd sold masses of tapes, so their loss was our gain, perversely. There was talk of a show at Wembley Conference Centre, a spin-off from the competition - but nothing ever came of it, I'm not sure why. In fact the only reason I can remember it now is because I've just looked at a newspaper cutting that tells me all about it. It was on Celestion's stand at the British Music Fair...or rather it wasn't.
Around this time we had a concert booked at La Dolce Vita, a night club which has long since disappeared from Ipswich, mercifully. I suppose we had reservations about it at the time of booking, but what a disaster! That's the trouble with winning things, you start to attract unwanted attention. I never got to see the inside of the venue as the two Pauls had already stormed out of the manager's office after a row about dress-code. Paul Read had got wind that they wouldn't be letting anyone wearing jeans into the club, which ruled out around 97% of our followers. He was literally jumping up and down in front of the guy's desk, which attracted Paul Taylor upstairs to see what all the fuss was about. As PT entered, PR wheeled round to point at him and yelled "Alright, would you let HIM in then???!!". "No" came the reply. "Well he's in the band you fucking idiot, so we'll be off then.....". I arrived at the back door just as they stormed out.
We popped over to the Caribbean Centre, just 600 yards up the road, and explained the situation, i.e. "lots of people are coming to see us and we're not playing anywhere, do you want us to play here and put 100-odd thirsty people in your bar?". They thought this was a jolly good idea, so we put the word out and threw up hastily scribbled posters close to La Dolce Vita to send everyone in the right direction. In the event, a splendid night was had by all. Except those who'd managed to get in to the original venue. And then had to leave. Without a refund. La Dolce Vita indeed.
A
gig at The New Pegasus in Newington Green followed, most famous for the being
the pub in whose car park Johnny Rotten was stabbed by drunken royalists, upset
by 'God Save the Queen'. Oh, and it used to be owned by Chas 'n' Dave.
Tony Newland from WEA turned up for this one, but never introduced himself, having been under-impressed. Oh well.
We had recorded one song as part of our prize from the Celestion Rock and Pop win, a lively little jiver from Paul Taylor called The Big Adventure. I contributed a middle eight with a distinctively unfitting reggae feel to it, just to confuse people really.
The recording was made at Brook House Studios in Drinkstone, near Bury St. Edmunds. The producer's rather large house contained the studio, which was very posh - integral kitchen/diner, living room, swimming pool and a control room the size of Switzerland. The whole lot was also soon to be the subject of conversation for his and his wife's divorce lawyers. Which made for a comfortable day.
Bloody hell...what was the
bloke's name????? Well anyway, all around his games room there were gold discs,
mainly by Status Quo. It couldn't be true! It was true! We had put our music
into the hands of the man that brought you Rockin' All Over The World and
Livin' On An Island. Ah no, the shame, the ignominy! To be fair, he did a
great job. He just recorded everything and then told us to "fuck off and
play pool or something" while he fiddled with it, and we were not to come
back until he'd finished. When we were allowed back in to the control room, he'd
made quite a good fist of the whole thing, which I suppose we should have
expected from the man that produced Graham Bonnett's number one (in Germany)
hit.
July 1988 brought the promised live broadcast from the Corn Exchange, during which soundmen repeatedly found the fader with the guitar solo on it just as it finished and Paul Read managed to swear on live radio without anyone noticing as "walk off into the rain" became "fuck off into the rain" during the last verse off I don't Want To See You Again. Local plaudits were forthcoming as always, and we continued to dominate the music sections of the local press to the point where even we were bored with it. But we simply couldn't get London and its moguls to take any notice whatsoever. Even Steve Lamacq went a bit chilly as we explored a bigger, spacier sound that wasn't to his taste.
Summer slid into winter and we were in that awful situation where we were great and well respected in our own area, but not getting anywhere. Really enjoying it and all that, but...
I managed to book a small tourof Denmark and Sweden, several months hence, via my girlfriend of the time, Vibeke, who was herself Danish, and whose parents knew someone who wanted a British band for a few gigs as part of a sort of cultural exchange thingy called 'Britisk Uge' or 'British Week'. A gig in Sweden came via her Swedish mate Gunilla, who had also lived in England as an au pair. That all sounded exciting, at least.
Paul Read suddenly asked me to bring the portastudio along to a rehearsal in February 1989, because he "wanted a tape of some of the newer songs". We threw down some very rough versions of the newies and the older stuff that we'd never taped, and I didn't attach too much importance to the event. But the following week he announced that he'd been asked to join a band that he couldn't name at the time, for a major tour of the US and some recording. He just wanted a record of all the songs to be made before he left. As it turned out the band was The Outfield, an English band virtually unknown in the UK but riding high in the States.
I'm very pleased he requested the recording, because if he hadn't I wouldn't have the magnificent songs it contains on tape. Steven's songs in particular are wonderfully descriptive (as far as I can tell!) of his own mood and wanderlust. he had been making some contingency plans too, you see, involving a move to Liverpool with his firm. When Paul Taylor realised that both of them were off, he decided to take up the offer of that job in Sunderland after all.
But first, the cheerio gig, at The Grand Hotel in Felixstowe, of all places! It was deemed "A Farewell of Sorts" as an indication that I, at least, would be back. After all I had the Denmark stuff to do...
I'll leave the actual commentary on the last show to Stephen Constable, our man on the inside at the Evening Star: -
AS IS - GRAND HOTEL FELIXSTOWE. Thursday 16th March.
"If you want to be dramatic, it was a tearful farewell. If you want to be cynical, there was approximately double the amount of people there because it was the last gig. If you want to be honest, As Is were one of the best bands to emerge from this area in the last few years - the band most likely to, the band to watch in the future.
However, vocalist/guitarist James Partridge has now got to rebuild a band.
That's the easiest bit; it will be assembling a band that comes somewhere near to the formula of As Is the first which will be difficult. It's actually quite rare to find a gaggle of musicians who, when stuck in a room together, will get on like the proverbial house on fire. I know, I've been there. Still, let's hope he gets somewhere near.
The gig itself was, of course, great. The band were fired up enough to give it some of that (as I believe the phrase goes), and played a strange set which seemed to miss out all the better tunes that the band had produced in the last three or so years. Having said that, this was also the best audience they have ever had. Singing along to a local band? Never before has the future looked so bright....
It was very relieving that the evening had a celebratory feel about it and not that 'oh wow, what a bummer' attitude. The band itself contributed to the feeling by performing their Heavy Big Pop with dignity, a dignity that is, well always (nearly) missing from local band gigs.
Paul, Steve, Paul and James are all better off for the experience of being As Is, and when they finished the evening off with a tirade of killer tunes like 'Grown Up Wrong', 'Take It From Me' and 'I Don't Want To See You Again', I felt genuinely pleased to be there and witness this gig.
Earlier songs like 'Sugar & Steel', 'Tell Me', 'Watch It All Fall Down' and 'Somebody Else's Problem' all slammed out of the boxes on stage with a certain urgency and - yes, it was just another As Is gig.
So, another local band splits up. No great tragedy - it's only pop music after all, I hear you cry. Okay, so it's only pop music to some of you, but some of us happen to enjoy it and I certainly wouldn't bother to do this every week if I thought it was only music.
It's only left to wish all four As Is'ers good luck, and hope that because of this split, we get four bands just as good as As Is was. And you can take it from me...."
Notable Lyrics -
"Wade Into The Water" - Steven Mears 1988
Sitting still on a catherine wheel
Clawing at the pages but they tear like steel
I've got red eyes, I shrug my shoulders too
I've been reading all the books on how to talk to you
I'm looking at the skyline and counting the trees
Rehearsing all the movements I've been doing for years
I need time to think and room to lay my charts
Marking with a cross where my journey will start
So raise the anchor, all hands on deck
I've got plans to lay and men to teach respect
It could be good for us, if you want it too
All you have to do
is wade into the water
Don't be scared of the night, don't be scared of the dark
It's got no fears for you
Don't be scared of the light, stand up and make your mark
All that you have to do...
Sitting still on a catherine wheel
Clawing at the pages but they tear like steel
I've got red eyes, I shrug my shoulders too
I've been reading all the books on how to get to you
It takes a train of thought to understand
I'm not from here, I'm from a foreign land
It could be home for you, if you want it too
All you have to do
is wade into the water.
Other people speak!! - more on As Is mk. 1 from those that were there... contributions welcome, email me.
Music Index Bloody Fingers Cyclo-Hexane The Retarded Panorama In Black Bane As Is mk. 1 The Adicts