What a picture!

Oliver Gray

It was thanks to Amplifier that my so far brief career as a rock photographer got started. The editor Joe likes his live reviews to be illustrated, so I spent slightly more than intended on a new camera and off I went.
First piece of vital equipment: a good set of earplugs. You have to be right at the front to get decent pics, but the people in the front row hate it if you push past them, so you nearly always end up with your head pressed against the speakers. It’s not good for your health, as you crouch among the cigarette butts and puddles of beer, being crushed my moshers and smashed by crowdsurfers’ Doc Martens. How we suffer for our art.
Probably the worst gigs to take photos at are sparsely attended ones. Here, rather than blending in with the crowd, you will attract attention and people will ask you why you are taking photos. You have to admit that it isn’t for the NME or Mojo, although, come to think of it, you could claim it was and they wouldn’t know any different.
My first foray into a photo pit was probably the most sensational baptism of fire I could have chosen. Those lovely old Flaming Lips hurl large objects at the crowd from the moment they hit the stage, but of course, as a photographer, you are between the band and the crowd. Within seconds, we were covered from head to foot with confetti and fake blood, being smashed in the face by enormous rubber balls. I caught the eye of the drummer, straight ahead of me, and we both collapsed into helpless laughter. It was a moment of pure – though uncomfortable – joy.
Less joyful were my attempts, last month, to get some photos of Mercury Rev. Halfway through the first song, I was physically dragged from the crowd by a security guy the size of a buffalo. As if I were a spy, he interrogated me as to my motives and threatened to impound my camera.
Now much as I love Mercury Rev, these bands just can’t have it both ways. They want, and need, publicity. At the beginning of their career, they are invariably delighted to be photographed, so who are they to get sniffy when they don’t need you any more? But Mercury Rev were innocent. The man-monster claimed to be “only obeying orders” and the tour manager located me a photo pass. From then on it was quite fun, watching Oddjob hauling other hapless snappers from the crowd and dispensing summary justice.
And how to achieve good photos? Use flash (this helps counteract the dry ice and the light show), be patient and persistent. Above all, take hundreds of photos of your elusive moving target. If you’re lucky, one of them might just be okay.

From Amplifier magazine

Laughing hyenas

Oliver Gray

I have a friend who has just joined a fast-rising and very fashionable band. My delight about his success is tempered with worry about how it might all turn out. Its been said often enough, its a nasty industry. We punters and journalists can just sit back and enjoy it, but for those at the cutting edge, trouble is always lurking round the corner. This particular band is so sparky that there is major potential for a Libertines / Vines style implosion, and then where will my friend be? He doesnt have a manager and Im sure as hell that the band is in the same position as any other newly-signed act has ever been in: feeling temporarily and thrillingly rich but in reality in massive debt that will only ever be resolved if they have a highly successful long-term cereer.
Or not even then. Seeing little Ian McLagen onstage recently with his Texan Bump Band reminded me that it took the Small Faces over thirty years to salvage any of the royalities due to them, by which time, two of them were already dead. And that, remember, is a band which had many, many major worldwide hits. Avid consumers of music biographies will be delighted with the publication of a long overdue acount of the life of Steve Marriott (“All Too Beautiful”, by Paolo Hewitt and John Hellier), but the best book to read in preparation for the moment when your son / daughter announces that he / she intends to enter the music industry, is “Without You”, the tragic story of Badfinger, by Dan Matovina. Two members of this highly influential band, Pete Ham and Tom Evans, hanged themselves as a result of their treatment by the music business and these, lest we forget, were the writers of “Without You”, which over the years has sold multi-millions in various versions.
It cant get any worse? It can, actually. Last month, a UK TV channel showed a documentary entitled “What Happened to the Bay City Rollers Millions? Actually, it was revealed that in todays terms, the bands record sales actually reached a value of over a BILLION dollars. Singer Les McKeown was seen playing tiny cabaret gigs to avoid the destitution into which all the other remaining band members (apart from the dead one) have sunk. Les was granted an interview with Rollers manager Tam Paton in his mansion, but the only answer to his question was, “There is no money, its gone.” This didnt explain how Les, in another scene, was able to go into a London record store and fill an an entire basket with Bay City Rollers compilation albums for which he would receive not one penny in royalties.
Anyway, the other day. I popped into my local small-town gig and was astonished to find it full of people, despite the fact that a little-known local band was playing. “Whats up?” I asked the promoter. Ah, he replied, bursting with apparent pride, “Its an A & R feeding frenzy.” This rather upsetting phrase apparently refers to the fact that these creatures invariably hunt in packs, mainly in the fear that someone else might sign a hot new act that could have made money for them. Little matter that the image conjures up a picture of a bunch of rabid hyenas chewing over the bones of some hapless wildebeeste, because, if youve read the above, thats in fact an accurate picture. The band was weak and the A & R pack were so drunk and inattentive that, by the end of the evening, they had probably all signed each other. The band, assuming there was any vestige of good taste in the A & R boys (no girls, for some reason), remained unsigned. They had a lucky escape, I reckon.
And yet, theres nothing like the thrill of a rumour going round town: “Hey, guess what, so and sos been signed by the such-and such label!” You cant help but be impressed and excited. But, if youve read enough rock biographies, the awful reality will soon hit you. “Love and Poison”, David Barnetts fascinating story of Suede, is full of dimly-remembered names of bands which once hit the front page of the NME in a flurry of techicolor publicity but were quietly dropped after a couple of singles and an album: Menswear, Adorable, Spitfire and Kingmaker, to name but a few. Remember them? Thought not.

From Amplifier magazine

Soft Bulletin

Oliver Gray

I wake up a worried man. I’m worrying about everything, but about one thing more than others, namely: Will the venue be too full and will the customers complain? No, hang on, there’s a bigger worry than that: What if the Soft Boys don’t turn up? There’s no reason even to consider this eventuality, but people are travelling from all over the UK for this “secret” warm-up show and won’t like it if they’re disappointed.
Now, have I thought of everything? That thing with the bass amp last night was extraordinary. My friend Phil has agreed to lend us his amp, which previously belonged to the Joe Jackson Band. We have to load it onto a straw-covered trailer in the pouring rain in the car park of Fleming Park Leisure Centre. Why? No idea. The speaker is the size of the Empire State Building, housed in a flight case so gigantic that it barely scrapes through the Railway’s door.
The Soft Boys haven’t played in Winchester since 1978 and I’m so excited. They’ve re-formed and have made a great new album. Prior to their American tour, they need a warm-up show and somehow or other I’ve booked them for this tiny venue. The interest is high but the organisation is demanding. We normally put on much “smaller” bands and it’s all done on a handshake, but here there is a contract involved and I have to be conscientious and responsible.
This is my first experience of purchasing a “rider” and it entails spending over two hours in Sainsburys. It’s surprising how confusing your local supermarket becomes when you’re buying unfamiliar things. There’s a whopping great list of items such as soya milk, honey, olives and pitta bread, not to mention copious amounts of alcohol, all specific brands. At one stage, I’m fretting about whether I’ll get into trouble for substituting Sainsbury’s own-brand vodka for the specified Smirnoff. Like I say, I’m a worrier.
The contract is full of all sorts of specific demands that we can’t possibly fulfil. I have penned an addendum and made the agent promise to pass on all the details to the band, so they know what to expect. I’ve also Emailed a reminder with a request to pass it on to the band members. Principal among these is the vital information that there is no dressing room.
So Robyn Hitchcock arrives and his very first words are, “Hello, where’s the dressing room?” He looks genuinely hunted when I say there isn’t one. “I have to have somewhere to hide away. If I stay in the pub I’ll be hassled.” It’s true that he has a disturbingly large number of obsessive fans, some of whom (inexplicably, really) are actually quite unruly. So I have a brainwave and ask my friend Hector, who lives just down the road, if they can use his house as a dressing room. “I’ll have to tidy up first”, he replies. What a hero.
They sound check for ever (part of the point of a warm-up show). Ben, the engineer at the Railway, displays the patience of Job as he assists the meticulously professional sound man the Soft Boys have brought with them. And then, would you believe it, apart from the drummer, they don’t use the dressing room at all. Instead, they watch football in the front bar while Robyn disappears into town. He spent his teens in Winchester and wants to explore (not to mention being tempted by the Gurkha Chef).
Support artist Mark Andrews is performing solo for the first time in his life and is absolutely terrified. The audience receives his set of carefully-chosen covers warmly, but before long I’m worrying again. I’ve impressed on the Soft Boys that they MUST be on stage at 9.30, but Robyn has disappeared. It appears that he’s managed to get himself lost and the rest of the band, while mildly concerned, can do no more than shrug their shoulders as if to say, yup, that’s Robyn. As the clock ticks ever onward and the crowd starts to become restless, I’m almost on the verge of panic. It’s nearly ten when I run down to Hector’s house, where Robyn has somehow gained admission and is sitting in the kitchen. “Sorry, I haven’t got a watch”, he says.
Still, I’ve had a beer by now and have decided that at least it’s another good Hitchcock story. A lifelong ambition is fulfilled as I push my way through the crowd, making way for the star. He towers above me, which rather spoils the effect.
All the effort has been worthwhile. The sound is perfect, the band performs sublimely, but still it’s impossible to relax. There are a couple of annoying talkers in the audience, one of whom has sneaked in without paying. I have to tell them to shut up, and you never know how people are going to react. Worse, at the back of the hall is a group of extremely drunk blokes. Who knows why they follow Robyn Hitchcock, merely to shout out inappropriate remarks and stagger around, but they do. No wonder he’s desperate to have a dressing room. I am nice to these guys, who are actually harmless music-lovers with a strange way of showing it. My magnificent wife, who has been acting as bouncer, charms them and keeps them relatively quiet. “I love you, door lady”, announces one. “Is that your wife? Bloody hell”, gasps another.
The gig is over. I’ve had to interrupt the band in mid-flow because there’s a strict 11 pm curfew. Immediately, Robyn is at my shoulder. “I need protection, get me out of here.” I’m beginning to enjoy my new-found “minder” role, so it’s all back to Hector’s house. It’s all worked out, but one thing has been missing: enjoying the show. So, the next evening, I travel up to London to enjoy the Soft Boys as an untroubled audience member. There they are, playing to a large audience in a big venue. I like to think that the warm-up show has helped them. But, on the train back, I’m still worrying:
What the hell are we going to do with that whopping great bass amp, still cluttering up the Railway’s back room?

Bristol Fashion

Oliver Gray

Glastonbury 2000. On the Pyramid Stage, Travis have just finished their triumphant set. In the Dance Stage, Fatboy Slim has also finally shut up. Me, I’ve just had one of the most thrilling experiences of my life in the form of a transcendental performance by Oklahoma’s Flaming Lips on the New Stage.
Suddenly, all is not well. The three crowds have met in a narrow channel between two of the arenas and a frightening crush has developed. I begin to feel physical pressure from all sides and a few people are starting to panic. The odd scream goes up and it appears for several minutes that we are teetering on the edge of an actual disaster along the lines of Hillsborough.
This, I realised the next day, was a silly fear, because the wide-open spaces of Glastonbury meant that it turned out to be possible to relieve the pressure by gently opening a few barriers and allowing us to overflow into the car park. But it was with some horror that I looked back on my thought at that time. It was “At least I’ll die happy”. Some people will do anything for rock and roll. I could write a book about it. In fact, I have.
The rock and roll adventures described in all their horrors in my book “Volume” contain several visits to the Bristol area. In fact, having grown up in Gloucester, my earliest experiences of having my brains blown apart by loud noises took place in the unlikely environment of Cheltenham. My first ever live gig was a concert by the youthful Hollies at Cheltenham Town Hall in 1964. We sat around the edge of the dance floor, not daring to ask anyone to dance and marvelling at the fact that Graham Nash’s acoustic guitar wasn’t plugged in.
When I finally became a Bristol resident in 1972, it was in the fraught circumstances of attempting to pass a teacher training course. Every day, I would ride my scooter out to Hengrove School, shaking so much from terror of what lay before me that I could hardly steer it. I had found a tiny and, let’s face it, squalid bedsitter in Somerset Street, Cotham, overlooking the city from behind the hospital. This room (always freezing owing to my lack of wherewithal to feed the gas meter) had the advantage of a bay window which provided an ideal stage for trouser (and ear) splitting impersonations of the stage antics of my hero of the time, Free’s Paul Rodgers. I had encountered Free at the very beginning of their career, and so it was a depressing experience when I found myself attending their concert at the Colston Hall that same year. Guitarist Paul Kossoff, another musician I hugely admired, was on his last legs through drug abuse. He collapsed twice on stage and the gig had to be curtailed. It was horrible.
My girlfriend was a primary teacher in Chew Magna, so it wasn’t easy to go out to gigs, but we did see Rory Gallagher at the Colston Hall, as well as, bizarrely, John Entwistle’s Ox at the University and the Spencer Davis Group at the plastic palm tree-bedecked Locarno. The doubtful highlight of the year was Stackridge at the Victoria Rooms. It seems unlikely today (Stackridge still stagger on) that they were once thought of as fashionable, but going to hear Mutter Slater playing “Purple Spaceships Over Yatton” was as hip as going to see the coolest indie band. Every now and then, I would get outrageously drunk in the Dugout club, which served, I remember, corn on the cob. During the Eighties, long after I had left the city, this became an underground venue of some repute and I felt a warm glow of nostalgia every time I read a review of someone in the NME.
In the late Seventies, I managed a Winchester band called Thieves Like Us, which played frequently in Bristol. For some reason, we kept coming back to a pub called Crockers. As this was a folk venue, it was odd that the audience rook a real liking to the flamboyant punk rock served up by Thieves. Odd features of this place were the fact that you had to play two nights on the trot (sleeping in the van, of course) and that you had to collect the pitiful fee from the landlord, who kept several ferocious, slavering alsations in his attic office. As he counted out the small number of notes, it was possible to see that the safe was crammed with mountains of cash.
We had to suffer these indignities because the Rainbow Agency ran some bigger venues in the city and demanded evidence that the band could pull a crowd. Although we proved that over and over, we were never allowed to graduate. There was some excitement, however, in the form of a rumour that a journalist from Sounds was going to review a Crockers gig. When the article appeared, it was complete demolition job and directly responsible for the total collapse of credibility in the industry the band suffered. And he was annoyed by me sticking a decal on his jacket. This person went by the pen name of RAB. I bet he still lives in Bristol, the sod.
My best Bristol adventures came courtesy of a fascinating band called Automatic Dlamini, which I followed for years. Their leader, John Parish, had been the drummer in Thieves Like Us, and Dlamini survived for close on a decade, first in a series of freezing cottages near Yeovil, then in another series of even more freezing flats in Bristol. John still lives in the city (thankfully with central heating) and Automatic Dlamini’s baffling number of line-ups, dodgy record deals and fantastic music is remembered by the slogan “The D Is For Drum” which is still to be seen adorning a gateway near the harbour.
For this band, I was willing to attempt (and fail) to mix the sound at an unenviable venue called the Bristol Bridge Inn (which resulted in a TV appearance for them on the show RPM) and also to run out of petrol in the middle of Salisbury plain (not to be recommended), trying to get back from a gig at Bath’s Moles Club. I was also able to survive the Moonflowers while roadie-ing for Dlamini at the Ashton Court Festival and to experience the PJ Harvey phenomenon at its height when Dlamini supported her at a sweat-drenched Bier Keller, as I tried desperately to plug their album “From A Diva To A Diver”.
The last time I visited Bristol, we had driven all the way from Winchester to see PJ Harvey’s show at the Colston Hall. As we emerged from the Broadmead multi-storey, someone threw a bottle at us from a passing bus. Well, cheers, Bristol, I love you too. I do actually, and your music. Bristol is famous for Portishead and, er, Portishead, but the nearly-made-its have been even better: K-Passa (Simon Edwards is brilliant); Strangelove (Patrick Duff is even more brilliant); and the Blue Aeroplanes (Gerard Langley is even more even more brilliant).
Now, about that scam we used to pull to get over the Suspension Bridge for free…
From: Western Daily Press, Sept 2000

Tribute to The Hoax

Oliver Gray

You might never see the Hoax again. That’s quite a thought. What if, in years to come, someone asked you to analyse the band which almost broke the mould? Where would you start? What would you emphasise?
I’d start by describing a moment which summed up my love affair with the music of this unique band. It was the moment I felt compelled to confess to Jon Amor that I, the most hardened and cynical of rock journalists, a slave to rock music for over thirty years, had never, ever seen a better band. Well, I’d had a few drinks, but like a declaration of passion, it had to be said. Jon looked slightly startled, maybe even blushed slightly, then responded: “Gosh, that’s quite a tribute.” He knew it was genuinely meant; and he wasn’t so modest that he didn’t believe it. The Hoax is the best band I have ever seen.
Or rather, was the best band. Because, unless you catch one of their farewell shows next month, you’ve had it. The Hoax have decided to go their separate ways. The dream is over. The band which seemed destined to do what few other bands have done before – take on the music industry and win – has done what so many others have also been forced to do: admit defeat.
Think back to what made the Hoax so unique, and try to explain it. Well, they were sort of blues based, but there was some hard rock in there as well. And some funky stuff. People kept arguing about them. Why were they so bloody loud? All right for the band, they always wore ear plugs. Apparently it was all something to do with Jesse Davey’s Leslie cabinet, which needed a certain volume to function properly. Who cares, we didn’t mind the volume anyway, once we’d got used to it.
And then there was their image. Do you suppose they thought about it, or was it pure chance that they were so stylish despite being not stylish at all? Believe it or not, people would hold endless discussions about whether Jesse should cut his hair, whether Jon’s baggy suits were appropriate to the kind of music he was playing, whether Robin really should be wearing sunglasses on stage.
And the playing: Hours of innocent debate would centre on who was the better of the two guitarists. Acknowledging that both were brilliant, everyone who ever saw the Hoax would have an opinion. Was there any sense of rivalry on the stage? Not as far as anyone could tell. On the face of it, Jesse was the more flamboyant while Jon was content to be slightly more straightforward but possibly more emotionally committed. Who can tell? Like everyone else, I have an opinion, but I’m not about to divulge it.
And which party piece was the better? The full scale stage front guitar battle, or the later effort in which they played each other from behind, as it were?
Guitarists, guischmarsists. What was the magical element that drummer Mark Barrett brought to the band which enabled them to take such a quantum leap forward when he joined them prior to the “Humdinger” album? Why, at the same moment, did Robin Davey decide to depart from the role of taciturn bassist and start careering round the stage since no bassist since, frankly, Captain Sensible? And how on earth did High Coltman summon up such depths of emotion from both harmonica and voice on the stunning “Don’t Shake My Hand” night after night after night? My theory is that still waters run deep and they don’t run much deeper than Hugh.
So this short story is over, and perhaps it’s better that way. Here’s a summary: Robin and Jesse Davey met Hugh at Great Cheverell Primary school. Jon had already departed for Levington Comprehensive School, where all four of them worked on their blues obsession. They were called the Hoax from the start, and with their third drummer, Dave Raeburn, they were spotted by Mike Vernon at the Boar’s Head in Wickham. They had already recorded a commercially-available cassette, and this formed the basis of the first Code Blue album “Sound Like This”. It almost looked as if the breakthrough was going to be achieved instantly, as Mark Cooper, who reviewed the album for “Q”, also booked the Hoax onto Later with Jools Holland. But, in time-honoured music business fashion, it soon started to go pear shaped on the recording front. The clearer identity the band sought to display on the second album “Unpossible” wasn’t to the liking of the record company, which demanded a rethink and – unbelievably – three potential singles.
Pleasingly, the Hoax actually achieved their greatest success after regrouping and setting up their own entirely independent operation. They armed themselves with the incalculable advantage of the ideal drummer, Mark Barrett joining them from a band which had supported them in Lincoln, from where he was destined to commute until the end. Turning down several proffered deals, they instead formed Credible Records. As Robin said: “To do what we wanted to do, we needed total freedom.” The “Humdinger” album and its spin-off video represented the nearest the Hoax would get to conveying their live magic on record. Nonetheless, they had hoped for more. American deals were not forthcoming and the enemy of all creativity – economics – reared its ugly head.
Thinking about this tribute has given me that chance to listen back to most of the Hoax’s recorded output. “Sound Like This” now sounds misconceived, an attempt to make them sound like “just a blues band”, which was always out of the question. “Humdinger” is acknowledged as a triumph, perhaps an appropriate note on which to bow out. But, amazingly, “Unpossible”, despite the fraught circumstances of its creation, throws up all sorts of Hoax possibilities. “Fistful of Dirt” (retained in the live set almost until the end) was an essential dirty-sounding grunge lope for which Jon Amor wrote the sinister lyrics. “Will Be True” points to a whole soul area which largely remained unexplored, while “Realisation Dawns” can easily be interpreted as a gigantic metaphor for the band’s disillusionment with the industry.
Another matter which made the Hoax unique was their extraordinary self-sufficiency. So talented are the individuals involved that they had no need for designers, producers, video makers, animators, agents or publicists; they could do it all themselves. The indefinable something which made their stage shows so intriguing was a stage-audience connection which made you feel part of the show as well as being in awe of the performance. And it has been well-documented how each member of the band liked to observe the audience almost as keenly as the audience observed the band. Not to mention, of course, the thorny old “Is it blues?” question. The answer is yes, by the way.
On the early Hoax track “Wake Me Up”, Hugh admits that “Everyone tells me ‘Get a Job and Cut Your Hair'”. They’ve mostly done the latter, but is it likely that any of the Hoax will, inconceivably, quit music altogether? At first, that seemed possible but, according to Robin, both Jon and Hugh are working on new musical projects, Hugh from a new base in France. Jesse, Robin and Mark plan to stay together; as Robin says, “Jesse and I never considered doing anything other than music”. The unique pot-pourri that threw up the Hoax could never be recreated, but maybe, just maybe … for once, the parts could be greater that the whole.
From Blueprint magazine, October 1999