An extract from my book VOLUME:
ONE THING WAS for sure: No way would I ever again become involved in band management. But then … we began to notice that the adolescent Annabel, while plonking away ponderously on the piano, was starting to write some quite appealing songs. Most were concerned with the moon and June, but a couple were lyrically quite unusual. One song, called “Get Out”, had the decidedly non-lovey-dovey chorus, “I don’t want you in my life, get out before day turns to night, I have learned from my mistakes, I think it’s time you did the same”. Her band Z.inc went so far as to record that song with ex-Trip producer Martin Johnson in his home studio, in a heavily-flanged version which made them sound like an all-female Smiths. I had already worked with Annabel on an extraordinary project for Heinemann, which entailed writing songs to accompany their German course “Logo”. I spent a strenuous day hiking through a Bavarian forest to attain the right atmosphere, and by evening had written eight songs. If your child has done German at secondary school, the chances are that he or she has had to suffer these trite ditties. Annabel got the gig of singing these songs on account of being bilingual, and we both actually got paid.
Z.inc was an ineffective band, because Annabel based it on hiring and firing her very nice but not particularly musically gifted friends. As usual, we didn’t know what to do with the recordings when we had them, but they did sing at my 50th birthday party to a certain amount of acclaim. It wasn’t until the time came to leave secondary school that any of us had any thoughts of taking it seriously. When we attended the end-of-year concert, we got our first taste of the Terrible Three in action: Annabel and two new accomplices, Hannah and Sara, had christened themselves Inner Sense and performed three original songs to a spellbound audience. They accompanied themselves on piano and flute, but the really startling thing was the seemingly effortless three-part harmony vocals. While preparing for their GCSE music project, they had discovered this God-given compatibility. They briefly led me back into rock and roll management and their behaviour, as an apparently innocent pop trio, was more excessive than that of any other band I have been involved with.
Nail-biting gigs were the order of the day, as their consistent lack of punctuality, preparedness or professionalism meant that my determination to “let them get on with it and make their own mistakes” was always frustrated by horror at how disastrous the gigs might be if I didn’t intervene. Damn. Some early gigs were performed just by the girls, accompanied on guitar by Richard Williams, who was inexplicably willing to help them out way beyond the call of duty. For over a year, I lived in a constant state of worry about how poor Richard’s goodwill seemed to be being exploited, although Richard always claimed not to mind. Some of these gigs took place, using a Meccano-set of a borrowed PA, in a dodgy town-centre dive called the White Swan, an entirely unsuitable venue for a sweet-voiced girl trio. Tattoo-covered beermonsters looked on indifferently and on one occasion, a bitter fight spilled onto the street outside. I almost cried to think that I’d got involved in such lunacy once again. But, of course, I couldn’t resist issuing a press release which suggested, falsely, that the protagonists had been fighting for the attention of the girls. Then there was the “gig in a zoo”, at a primary school fête held at Marwell Zoo, near Winchester. The fee was free admission to the zoo, but the assembled parents and their children didn’t seem too impressed. Nor did the animals.
The Sense went through backing bands like you or I go through socks. The first one, with which they did shows at the Railway and at Southampton’s Joiners Arms, was a college indie band, aptly called “Vacant”. This band had the distinction of having a drummer who subsequently got a degree in Surfing. The “mid-period” band featured Hector Peebles along with Richard. Both alternated between guitar and drums, and on Annabel’s 18th birthday, the Sense played their only grunge gig, at outrageous volume in a bar called Muswells. Richard and Hector excited the girls by saying it would be a “drum and bass” gig, but they actually meant it: Richard played drums and Hector played bass, in a sound that was more Bungle than Jungle. Also, the bar’s manager belatedly realized that most of the audience would be under 18 and almost pulled the plug on the whole thing.
It was The Sense Mark 3 that came closest to cracking it, with an accomplished band comprising Richard and three gifted college students on bass, drums and keyboards. In this form, they twice headlined Winchester’s Hat Fair festival and also did a series of well-attended London showcase gigs, which actually made money because all their friends came along. Alcohol being the girls’ drug of choice, they were invariably hung-over and then drank copiously before going on stage. On one memorable occasion at the Rock Garden, they got through a bottle of red wine each before the show, because, as is the nature of such showcases, five or six other acts had to go on first. Amazingly, their harmonies remained intact.
When they made their debut at the trendy Cherry Jam club in Notting Hill, the promoter was so astonished at their soundcheck that he immediately called a potential interested party. It’s hard to explain the girls’ appeal. I’m not the right person to assess their level of attractiveness, but all three are different and distinctive-looking. All three write unusual but catchy songs and all three sing lead, with one member, Sara, being a quite outstandingly good soul singer. They also have an unstudied naturalness in what they do, and the harmonies are other-worldly.
Anyway, the person the promoter thought should hear them was one Ron Tom, a music biz wheeler-dealer who had discovered both All Saints and the Sugababes. “He’ll never turn up,” I thought, but he did, half way through their set. My attempt to converse with this ultra-cool dreadlocked dude was doomed to failure, but he did invite the girls to audition in the front room of his flat near Abbey Road. By all accounts, this was an extraordinary event. Driven there by Birgit (Ron shocked and amazed that they had a minder), they duly sang unaccompanied to doubtful looks, until Ron disappeared into another room, emerging shortly afterwards in clouds of smoke and declaring they were great. But any potential deal (and this was by no means the only one in the offing) was always accompanied by a sub-text of altering songs, changing image and giving up studies, none of which they were prepared to do.
So The Sense continued on their erratic way. One memorable show (Richard’s last, though he remained an honorary member) was with the Bluetones at Royal Holloway College. The stage and lights were massive, but Richard’s guitar “fell over” and broke before the gig (bad vibes) and they suffered the indignity of being followed by a Darkness tribute band called The Dampness.
