Category Archives:Blog
Memory Lane TYNESIDE
A recent conversation prompted me to reach for the book “Memory Lane TYNESIDE”. I’ve posted a few indicative pages to give you the gist. Then I turn to page 27 where the image at the bottom is captioned: “In 1971, young people enjoy a concert given by musical group Bullfrog in Eldon Square”. We made the history books – not for our fame but because the architecture captured in the background was soon to disappear. I’ve added some clearer pictures as the book favours a long shot. That’s me on the right – I was 19 years old. That’s the original lineup Robin Hird, Mick Glancy and Mick Simmons (deceased). And there’s more: I recently discovered some recordings made by this original line-up which Steve Hoggart has remastered. Watch this space.
DISTANT DESTINATION
The Long Fade album was released in 2019 to some great reviews. It also got plenty of airplay. It was re-released in 2021 by Cherry Red Records as part of an extensive deal on recordings I’ve made going as far back as the early seventies. I began my musical career in 1969. Since The Long Fade is the first release to bear my name, you could say it was an album 50 years in the making!
So, how to follow it up? That difficult second album. Well, I don’t have 50 years to mull it over. There were a few false starts, then Covid 19 and lockdown hit and all bets were off. One day in lockdown, a new song emerged from my consciousness: “Distant Destination”. Due to the time we are living through, and, perhaps, my own time of life, this is quite an introspective song. It is now complete with a magnificent Jen Normandale vocal. Other songs have followed, some introspective, some quirky: it could be a strange album. Now in 2023 it is nearing completion. It bears another first – a vocal from me. Released as a single, I Will Go Back features only me and percussionist, Barry Race. We even made a pop video! This album will be finished if I can stop writing new songs. They just keep coming. See track listing below from the tray inlay artwork.
THE LONG FADE
Taking The Easy Way: Alvin Stardust
Youth Opportunity Schemes & The New Wave of British Heavy Metal
I’ve told the story many times about the time I was House Producer at Impulse Studios/ Neat Records. We had at the studio a young assistant called Conrad Lant. Conrad was on a youth opportunity scheme meaning he got £10 on top of his dole (unemployment benefit) for doing work experience with us. Conrad talked me into giving his own band a session. His band was called Venom and the rest, as they say, has become history.
But a memory occurred to me recently of Conrad’s predecessor also on work experience at the studio. I do not recall this lad’s name but we called him The Mekon (for some reason). He was a bit of a surly bugger. I remember the incident that saw his work experience terminated thus allowing Conrad to enter the picture. I was producing a band from Hartlepool called DisGuise. This would be shortly after I produced Tygers of Pan Tang because I was asked to do this by their manager Tom Noble who also managed the Tygers. He said he was pleased with my Tygers production.
On the day of the Disguise session we’d laid down the first take of their first song. The guys put down their instruments and came through to the control room to hear a playback. As they trooped in their main singer and bass player Jimmy McKenna asked: “How was it”? My stock answer to such a question would always be “Fantastic”! If it wasn’t fantastic I’d add after a brief pause “but let’s do one more to see how it goes”.
However, before I could exercise my production psychology The Mekon blurted out “sell yer bass and have a really good night out man”! This was followed by a moment of embarrassed silence and then embarrassed muffled giggles. I looked round for a hole to bury myself in but then decided if such a hole could be found I would bury The Mekon in it.
To be honest I don’t recall what my response would have been had The Mekon not interjected. But it would have been complimentary and encouraging, they were a great band with an interesting and edgy sound. The pic is of DisGuise mk 1 line-up – Peter Scott guitar, Jimmy McKenna bass, Alan Scully drums. The line-up for the 1979 Impulse session had John Miller on drums (in between his stints with White Heat)
The next day I sent The Mekon back to the dole with a recommendation that they should not send him anywhere that required the merest slice of tact and diplomacy. I may also have suggested sending him into outer space on the next NASSA mission but I don’t fully recall.
This opened up an opportunity for Conrad who actually got on great with everyone. And as I intimated, the rest is history.
British India House
When I quit my band Bullfrog in 1974 it was to concentrate on becoming a songwriter. I made some demos assisted by Bullfrog drummer Jim Harle in a studio called Mortonsound in Carliol Square Newcastle. The building that was home to Mortonsound Studio was impressively named “British India House”. I used to walk down an incline past Worswick Street Bus Station. The bus station is no longer there but thankfully British India House is still standing to this day. It is is an impressive 1930’s Art Deco style building.
A while ago I chanced upon the tape from that day and borrowed a Revox to have a listen and digitize the songs. These demos are too primitive, naïve and cringe-worthy to share. But this work is my first solo demo recording and represents the foundations of my song writing career.
Jim, the Bullfrog drummer who was the only other musician on the session recalled “there was an elderly gentleman at the mixing desk that day”. That would be Roy Hartnell who became a friend of mine. He was 40 years old – elderly!
Cringe-worthy the recordings may be , but the they represent the first step on a journey I was determined to make. Some might say my real first steps were with my band Bullfrog but this did not take me to my chosen destination. Or maybe it simply took me to the destination that was meant to be: Carliol House, Newcastle. Perhaps the start of a new journey. Those who know me will not be surprised that I embarked upon that journey with a determination more like a curse than an asset.
Mortonsound was a humble 4 track affair but I did return there once more when I quit my job as house producer at Impulse studios around 1979. Unlike my first visit to Mortonsound the second visit produced hits: a top 20 album track for a British artist and a massive hit for a Canadian vocalist. The story of that second recording session is told here:
https://steve-thompson.org.uk/i-quit-heavy-metal-and-a-flower-pot-man-came-to-call
I travelled to the studio with an 80’s pop icon and a 60’s song writing icon sat in on the session. Quite a story don’t you think?
Remembering Alvin Stardust
Forty Years Of Airplay
A recent series of email exchanges with this young lad (right) has reminded me of a story you may enjoy. Back in the eighties Mike Read was on Radio One (when it was listenable). He held the plum spot of Breakfast Time. I was on a roller coaster ride of a hit single with Hurry Home by Wavelength. Mike played a strong part in that hit, playing the record to death on his show. One morning I was having my breakfast whilst listening to the Mike Read Breakfast Show and he had once again played my song Hurry Home. As it finished he said “that song was written by a guy called Steve Thompson. Yesterday Pete Waterman played me a load of his demos. They were brilliant and when you come across someone so talented don’t you just hate them”. This was an incredible thing to hear on the wireless so I assure you I remember accurately every word. Anyway, I finished my breakfast and maybe half an hour later Mike was on topic again “hey remember that songwriter I told you about, Steve Thomson? Well here’s his latest record – “I Don’t Want To Be The One. As the intro started he said over it “By the way, it’s the Searchers. Did wonders for my ego I can tell you. Anyway, moving on to our current airplay scenario. Mike is once again spinning my “latest record”. This time it’s Alvin Stardust. Tell you more later.
I Quit Heavy Metal and a Flower Pot Man Came To Call
Another chapter from my bookfor your perusal:
I Quit Heavy Metal and a Flower Pot Man Came To Call
“Lots of sunny people
Walking hand in hand”
Let’s Go to San Francisco: John Carter and Ken Lewis.
An intriguing chapter title, I hope you’ll agree. There was no trigger for this story emerging from my subconscious after 39 years. It just dropped from the back of my mind one morning as I took a shower.
It’s the summer of 1981 and for three years I’d been house producer at Neat Records. Neat was fast growing into a foremost specialist Heavy Metal label. It had not begun as a Heavy Metal label. We set it up as a vehicle to see what we could do. I produced the first two singles on Neat which were mainstream pop and then I produced the first Heavy Metal single on Neat Records which was Neat 003: The Tygers Of Pan Tang. I also produced the first album on the label: “Rock Until You Drop” by Raven. And then my final production for Neat was a brash young trio called Venom. After the Tygers single, the interest in Neat releases had gone ballistic. I was also operating as A&R guy and apart from producing, I was trawling through the piles of cassettes and tapes coming in from heavy metal hopefuls.
We had a young lad at the studio on a youth opportunity scheme. His name was Conrad Lant. He helped out on the sessions as a kind of gopher/tea boy. Conrad was watching all this happen and he was forever telling me all about his own band Venom and beseeching me to give them a break. One day I relented and gave them a session. We recorded 3 tracks that day, one of them being “In League with Satan” which eventually became their single. I loaned Conrad my Gibson bass for the session.
With hindsight I can see now that big and significant things were happening at the studio. But at the time my workload was increasing and it was dedicated to heavy metal. There was less and less time for me to develop any of my own stuff. So, I decided to quit. When I told Micky Sweeney, the sound engineer I was leaving the studio, he decided to go too: a clean break. Neat Records was becoming pretty high profile so the engineer and house producer jumping ship at the same time was a big enough story to make the regional newspapers.
I dropped out of the growing Neat Records story, a story that I had played such a significant part in up to then. This career move was either very brave or very stupid but I was young and I instinctively felt I had to do it. I’ve since given many interviews about those early days at Neat for books, blogs, magazines, films and radio as well as on the talks circuit.
And so there I was in my flat in Tynemouth, contemplating my future. It dawned on me that my future right then looked a little bleak. All I had was a dream and a cart load of ambition. Then there came a knock at the door. Flobbalop!!
I answered the knock and there on the doorstep stood a man who introduced himself as Ken Lewis. He said he’d read about me in the local press and he was a songwriter too and would like to chat about song writing. So, I invited him in. Over a cup of tea, he began to tell me his story. He said he had sung backing vocals on The Who’s “Can’t Explain”. He’d been a member of the 60’s band The Ivy League. He’d written several hit songs with his partner John Carter. One of them being “Let’s Go To San Francisco“. A big hit and they’d called themselves The Flowerpot Men for that one. He told me that he and his writing partner John used to make up names for a band when they had recorded something worthy of release. Then Ken explained that he’d been suffering mental illness and was no longer in the music business. I believed him. I believed he was mentally unwell, it was kinda obvious. But I think I believed all the other stuff too, as implausible as it may have seemed. He just wanted to talk, so it wasn’t important whether his stories were true or not. Maybe I neither believed nor disbelieved his stories at that time. I just accepted them. Ken said he was very interested in my work and wanted to hang out with me the next time I was in a recording studio. I said OK and as it happened, I had a session arranged the following week as I seriously needed to get my new song writing career underway.
The recording session was at Morton Sound in the heart of Newcastle City. The same studio that I’d first used when I quit my band Bullfrog. I could have used Impulse but I wanted to make a clean break. Plus, I was broke and the session was a low budget affair. I was going to knock off as many songs as possible in just one session.
As a non-driver I asked my mate Graham Jenkinson to drive me to the studio and so he picked me up in his white transit van and took me and my gear into Newcastle. When I climbed into the van, I found that also along for the ride was young Andy Taylor, now a major pop star with Duran Duran. Andy had dyed his hair blond and at 9am was happily smoking a spliff. I declined to participate. I asked Andy, “what’s it like being a pop star” and he responded “fucking great”.
The session went fairly well. I had asked my drummer, Paul Smith, to bring only bass drum, snare and hi hat to keep it simple. The band Fist had recruited a new singer called Glen Howes, who impressed me, so I asked him to sing the demos for me. There were only 3 of us on that session: Paul on Kit, Glenn on vocals and me on everything else. And Ken Lewis sat in on the session and listened. He didn’t participate or comment at all. When the session was over, he said goodbye, and left. I never saw him again.
This is all I remember of my brief association with Ken Lewis. He didn’t suggest we co-write or anything at all and he seemed to want nothing from me. Back then I only half believed his story but with the benefit of Wikipedia, I have now been able to check his story out. Reading Ken’s Wikipedia entry, I found he was indeed a member of The Flower Pot Men and co-wrote “Let’s Go To San Francisco” with John Carter, as well as several other hits. He was a member of the Ivy League and did indeed sing backing vocals on The Who’s “Can’t Explain”. What he omitted to tell me was that the guitarist in his early band with John Carter, was Jimmy Page. Wow! The most telling thing in the Wikipedia entry is the explanation that: “Ken Lewis quit the music business due to depression and moved to Wallsend”. He was living near to Impulse Studios/Neat Records. Sadly, the entry also reveals that he passed away in 2015. I don’t know why he popped into my head in 2020 but I might have been tempted to re-make contact and ask him why he tracked me down in 1981.
It’s rather strange to recall Ken passing through my life so briefly, almost like a ghost. The recording session that he sat in on, included my biggest selling song ever: “Please Don’t Sympathize” – a top 20 album track for Sheena Easton and a hit single for Celine Dion, going Platinum in Canada and France. Perhaps Ken Lewis had simply stopped by to be my lucky charm. Thanks Ken.
Press Cutting
Laid Back Procrastination
I mentioned earlier my new album for Spring to be accompanied by a live show (possibly the last one ever). Well, album production has been slowed down by external events. Two consecutive studio sessions were postponed by Covid isolation requirements. On the third attempt I, myself suffered from a lurgy (non Covid). This stymied my plans for adding vocals. Bolstered by the reception I got to “I Will Go Back” I planned to come out of the closet as a vocalist. For the time being I’m back in the closet. Alternative instrumental sessions were planned which are now on hold whilst my finger recovers from a painful association with a kitchen knife. And so I’ve decided to say the album may happen in spring but then again it may not. It will happen when it happens. I’m taking the pressure off myself to set a date. No good can come of such pressures. During the isolation period I engaged with pre-production at home. I started to work on the title track for an album that would follow the next – “Strange Times”. This is an experimental album that at present exists largely as a concept and artwork. The new song is working really well. Should I bring it forward and include it on the Distant Destination album. Or should I perhaps work on the two as a double album and title them both “years of procrastination”. We shall see. |