That Close

by Suggs

  Songs come in different guises. Mark had come up with a terrific Burt Bacharach-esque chord sequence, and then the lyrics to ‘One Better Day’ started to come to me when I overheard someone saying on spotting a somewhat dishevelled resident coming out of Arlington House: ‘He’s seen better days.’ It struck me as an odd phrase. ‘He’s seen better days.’ If he had I started to wonder what those ‘better days’ might have been. I began to build a picture in my mind of a love affair taking place between two homeless people on the streets of Camden Town. Something noble and romantic, and why not? If this chap had already seen ‘better days’, I wondered whether he may have ‘one better day’ to come.

  Arlington House, address no fixed abode,

  An old man in a three-piece suit sits in the road,

  He stares across the water, sees right through the lock,

  On and up like outstretched hands,

  His mumbled words, his fumbled words, mock.

  Further down a photo booth, a million plastic bags,

  And an old woman filling out a million baggage tags,

  But when she gets thrown out, three bags at a time,

  She spies the old chap in the road to share her bags with,

  She has bags of time.

  Surrounded by his past, on a short white line,

  He sits while cars pass either side, takes his time,

  He’s trying to remember one better day,

  A while ago when people stopped, to hear him say.

  Walking round you sometimes hear the sunshine,

  Beating down in time with the rhythm of your shoes,

  A feeling of arriving

  When you’ve nothing left to lose.

  Now she has walked enough through rainy town,

  She rests her back against his, and sits down.

  She’s trying to remember one better day,

  A while ago when people stopped to hear her say.

  Walking round you sometimes, hear the sunshine,

  Beating down with the rhythm of your shoes,

  A feeling of arriving, when you’ve nothing left to lose.

  THIS ARE TOP OF THE POPS!

  Jerry Dammers was as good as his word, on my mum’s sofa. Starting a record label that would arguably become Britain’s answer to Motown. Putting out some of the most vibrant and exciting records of that, and indeed any, period of British popular music. Including our first single, ‘The Prince.’ Shortly after which, we were asked by The Specials’ manager Rick Rogers if we would like to go on tour with them. What! At this point we’d barely been out of London.

  On a cold November morning in 1979 we were to meet at the legendary music venue the Roundhouse in Camden, to embark on the 2 Tone tour. There was us, The Specials, Selector and later Dexys. At any one time, twenty-eight deranged musicians squashed onto an old coach. Filled with excitement, I was one of the last to arrive – ironic as I was only living round the corner. There were arms, legs, trumpets and trombones, spliff-puffing faces sticking out of all the small slidy windows. A couple of revs of the clapped-out diesel engine and we were off! Heading up Chalk Farm hill, to the North. We got no further than the Watford Gap.

  Someone had taken exception to an exuberant crowd of black and white kids playing football in the car park and larking about in the service station canteen and called the Old Bill. A van load of heavy-handed cops turned up and Lee and Neville were nicked. Two of the band arrested and we’d barely got out of London. It set the tone for the 2 Tone tour. Chaos, anarchy and unbelievable fun. But what I remember most about them gigs was the energy, the venues would literally be rocking. We would often be playing old dance halls with sprung floors. More ballroom bouncing than ballroom dancing. From the stage you could actually see the balconies going up and down within an inch of collapse. Bulbs dangling from the lighting rig as it careered to and fro. Me standing on a bucking speaker stack as the sweat condensed on the ceiling and rained down on us. Unforgettable nights, normally culminating in all the bands and half the audience on stage to sing the finale. ‘Madness.’ I remember one night in Leeds, there were so many of us on stage the whole thing collapsed. Leaving us in the basement with our heads sticking out just above the stage.

  I loved The Specials and when Madness weren’t playing I’d follow them around. Yes, and when they were playing it was my thing to climb up the PA and dance on top of the bouncing speakers. In the process garnering a bit of attention for myself on someone else’s stage. Something I’ve not been adverse to over the years!

  One time I ended up with them in Montreux, Switzerland. I was standing with Jerry on the banks of the beautiful Lake Geneva, lovely sunny afternoon. Jerry says, ‘Here, Suggsy, shall we hire a boat and go out on the lake?’ ‘Why not.’ I says. So we get hold of this small boat with a piddling outboard motor, and there we are, put-putting our way past the yachts and out onto the beautiful Lake Geneva, sun shining, snow-capped mountains in the distance, lovely. When Jerry spots this water-ski jump – he had this thing about James Bond. ‘Here, Jerry, hang on, no!’ Next thing, I am clinging to the sides of the boat as we hit the jump full throttle … we get stuck half way. The propellor is jammed in the wood of the jump. We start jumping up and down trying to free the boat. The propellor falls off and slides into the water. It’s three hours before we are rescued. Jerry was a crazed but inspirational character and great fun to be around. He gave us the opportunity to make our first record, and, for the first time tread the hallowed boards that were Top of the Pops.

  Above Holts shoe shop in Camden were the offices of Rick Rogers, and the London HQ of 2 Tone records. It was in that very office that we waited to hear if we were going to get on Top of the Pops for the first time. TOTP. Every schoolboy’s dream, like playing in the FA Cup Final. In those days TOTP was a hugely popular show, watched far and wide. It showed all the up-and-coming bands, and everyone would talk about it the following day at school. Mums would be bemused and absently-mindedly say: ‘That’s nice, dear’, and dads would shout: ‘Look at them long-haired layabouts, that’s not singing, that’s screaming, that is,’ grumbling until Pan’s People came on. Everybody watched it. A performance on the show would guarantee your record going up the charts.

  The charts came out on a Tuesday morning, and it was with much excitement we discovered ‘The Prince’ was climbing, but that was no guarantee of a slot on TOTP. The show went out on Thursday and they announced the line-up on Wednesday afternoon. We all sat in Rick’s office waiting for the phone to ring. It did, and things were looking good. Secret Affair, who were higher than us in the chart, couldn’t make the show, as they had a gig up north that night. It looked like we were on. But before we had a chance to light our celebratory cigars the phone went again. Secret Affair’s record company had hired them a helicopter so they could get to the show.

  The next week, ‘The Prince’ went up the charts again and we did get on, and watching that first performace recently, my girls said, ‘Dad, you all look so “little”.’ Thin, I tell them. It was a truly unforgettable day, but we got into a bit of trouble for messing about and not miming, which began a long love/hate relationship with the all-powerful producer Michael Hurll over our many TOTP performances to come. After one performance Mr Hurll, as usual, came rattling down the metal stairs from the gantry like a steam train. He was very red and puffing, and could barely contain himself, uttering the immortal lines. ‘You lot are a disgrace, an embarrassment to yourselves, to Top of the Pops and to the BBC!’ I was surprised he didn’t add ‘and the Queen’.

  It had been a long day, and just getting Madness to TOTP was a feat of extraordinary determination. Sonny, the TV plugger from Stiff Records, always arranged for the seven of us to be picked up individually from locations all across London. Sonny knew there was no point in trying to get us to meet at a designated time and place for one pickup. We never would.

  It was the dawn-raid approach – nick them while they’re still in bed. Which meant waiting about outside our various houses, as
various band members took various amounts of time to get themselves together. Inevitably as one got in the minibus another one would disappear, fed up with the hanging about. It was compounded by the fact we had been in trouble with TOTP in the past, in fact banned a couple of times for turning up late or messing about. So we got the earliest call time. We had to be at Television Centre by 10 a.m. For a performance that would not be broadcast till 7 p.m., that was a long day of hanging about, and we would not be allowed to leave.

  Bands would give their right arms to appear, but we weren’t the right-arm-giving-away kind of people. Although we all loved the show we weren’t too keen on being told what to do, and certainly not at this time of the day. Like the old blues musician who had to get up early for a flight once and said: ‘Wow, man, I never knew there were two ten o’clocks in one day!’

  Part of the fun of the show was knowing that all the performances were mimed, which everybody knew, and looking out for people cocking up (or in Slade’s case, playing the drums with blow-up bananas). But the BBC frowned on that. The fun police wanted some colour, but just a faint wash, nothing too vivid and no taking the piss. This was the BBC of old, where young people were to be kept at arm’s length or in the Blue Peter garden. This was serious, this was live television, albeit pretend live.

  There was this theatrical costumier in Camden called Berman’s and Nathan’s, four huge floors of proper period clobber. They would normally only hire their gear to bona fide theatrical productions – it was not for fancy dress hire and woe betide you if you tried. But for some reason, which I can’t remember now, they took a shine to the band. This was great because the gear was the real thing, one time we got our hands on these authentic coppers’ uniforms. Can you begin to imagine the fun the seven of us had out on the streets in those. ‘’Ello, ’ello, ’ello, wot’s effing well goin’ on ’ere then?’ Especially once we found out The Clash were rehearsing near us. We burst into their rehearsal rooms, kicking the doors open and shouting: ‘Nobody move, it’s the pigs!’ We were greeted by the sound of doors slamming and toilets flushing! They didn’t speak to us for five years.

  A lot of work went in to all that mucking about and over the years we dressed up as bumblebees, birds, ballet dancers, vampires, policemen, traffic wardens, Lawrence of Arabia, charladies, postmen, burglars, spivs, undertakers, soldiers, sailors, businessmen, pilots, air stewardesses, a gospel choir, giant worms, red corpuscles, human rockets, flowers, cats, golfers, gangsters, CID, kamikaze pilots, ghosts, glam rock stars, The Beatles, navvies, bus conductors, cowboys and Indians, chefs, hippies, Russians, schoolboys, chemists, teachers, prisoners, prison warders, flashers, tramps and bag ladies, Hare Krishnas, devils, Fred Astaire AND Ginger Rogers. And on the odd occasion even ourselves.

  On this particular occasion Dave Robinson, the head of Stiff Records and the man with a pen behind either earhole and the back of his hand for a diary, had convinced us that it would be a good idea to wear the Lawrence of Arabia gear we’d worn in the video for our performance of ‘Night Boat to Cairo’. Sure enough, when we arrived our dressing room was full of pith helmets and khaki army gear. We weren’t too sure.

  In the dressing room next to ours was Status Quo, so we went in to say hello. They were sitting about smoking extra-long roll-ups, in their white collarless shirts, brushed-denim waistcoats and flared jeans with an ironed crease. Some of us partook, they were really decent fellas. There was a knock at the door, and it was their dresser with their specially chosen stage clothes. She hung them up and took off the dry cleaning covers to reveal … white collarless shirts, brushed-denim waistcoats and flared jeans with a crease in them! It was with some hilarity that we re-entered our own dressing room.

  We headed up to the BBC bar, normally reserved for BBC employees, but we’d made friends with the jovial Irish commissionaire, and he let us in. That was the upside of getting us to the Beeb so early, as we’d made ourselves honorary members of the subsidised bar.

  A couple of rehearsals came and went as the day dragged on, until eventually we got our call to get ready for the show proper. Sonny had found us through much trial and error, because Television Centre was like a maze. The building was circular, and coming out of any door you were never quite sure whether to turn left or right.

  Time was now tight, as we were due on set in twenty minutes. For all the messing around we liked Sonny and half appreciated what a stressful job she had, what with us on one side and a particularly prickly BBC producer on the other. We dutifully followed her out of the bar and down the corridor to the lift. The giant doors opened to reveal Hot Gossip, the dance troop that had taken over from Pan’s People, and who once a week would interpret a song with a raunchy dance routine.

  The lift was big but there were already seven of them in there, but none of us wanted to be left behind, especially with the chance of being squashed up to Cherry from Hot Gossip. We all piled in, and the lift went down, straight into the basement. Sonny reached over and frantically pressed the button again. Nothing. Lee started jumping up and down, and then we all did. Someone screamed ‘Stop!’ I think it was Sonny. We were stuck in there for quarter of an hour before someone from the technical department rescued us. We now had five minutes to get changed and on set.

  Any qualms about looking like Carry On Up the Khyber extras had evaporated. Until we bundled, blinking into the stage lights, onto our stage. Opposite, The Specials were about to sing ‘A Message to You Rudy’, and on the other stage stood Dexys Midnight Runners, cool as you like in their On the Waterfront donkey jackets and black bobble hats.

  Suddenly I wasn’t feeling at my coolest, Status Quo’s ‘stage clothes’ didn’t seem quite so hilarious. It came our turn to perform and instead of playing from the spot we’d been designated, so the camera man knew where to find us, Lee leapt off the stage and into the audience, with the rest of the band following, and proceeded to conga round the studio. As Kid Jensen wound up the show, there was the inevitable sound of irate producer feet clanging down the metal stairs.

  STOP MESSING ABOUT

  We had left 2 Tone and signed to the legendary independent record label Stiff Records. ‘If it ain’t STIFF it ain’t worth a fuck.’ Although we’d been fêted by all the major labels, we’d gravitated to a company that cultivated good ideas, rather than palm trees in the lobby.

  Stiff had been started by two inspired young chaps called Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson, fiery, determined and full of beans. The label was a home for all sorts of mavericks and eccentrics, and some great artists – Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric, The Damned, Kirsty MacColl, The Pogues, Nick Lowe, our hero Ian Dury & the Blockheads. Artists the major labels were wary of, and had every right to be, and didn’t know quite what to do with. Perfect, it felt like home straight away.

  Dave had been interested in signing the band, but hadn’t had a chance to get to a gig, so he invited us to play at his wedding. Not sure how pleased his missus was about that, but it was a great night, ending up with Elvis Costello and the rest of the Stiffites joining us in a conga round the dance floor. Dave liked what he saw and a week later we were agreeing a deal in the pub next door to Stiff Records in Westbourne Grove.

  Stiff Records relocated from West London to the heart of Maddyland, Bayham Street in Camden, the very street Charles Dickens lived in and of which he was so enamoured. Dave Robinson had had the vision to imagine how popular music videos were to become – you have to remember when we started making them there were very few places to show them. There was no MTV. TOTP would show one once a week. Otherwise there was nothing more than the occasional showing on Saturday morning kids’ TV. Dave had an instinct we would get on in the medium. A correct one, because we’d been brought up on a diet of visual comedy: Tommy Cooper, Max Wall, Morecambe and Wise, Benny Hill.

  And in his centre of operations in Camden, Dave invested in an old Steenbeck editing machine. It was fascinating when we had finished filming one or other of our ridiculous promos, watching the art of editin
g when it was still cutting and gluing rolls of film. The videos were very spontaneous. We’d sit around with Dave in a rehearsal room, throwing round ideas of varying preposterousness. Dave drew up a list and worked out which were actually feasible, then we’d go off in a van for a couple of days having the most fun imaginable. I wanted to fly like I was Superman going down Oxford Street, so I found myself hanging off the front of an open-top double-decker bus, with half the band hanging on to my legs and my torso hanging over the top. Superman Suggs.

  We dropped a Morris Minor through a ceiling in the ‘Driving in My Car’ video, which involved Dave sawing through a rope on cue. I remember once Dave bought some footage of an advert he’d seen in France, of a van falling out of an aeroplane and then being parachuted to the ground. We were going to use it for one promo, ‘Tomorrow’s Just Another Day’, I think, but it didn’t fit in. Then suddenly we realised the next single was going to be ‘Wings of a Dove’, so we got this footage of the van falling, then we cut to us in the back of a Bedford van. We just shook the van about a bit and jiggled the camera around. Someone threw in a stuffed vulture and we made it look like we were falling through the air in the back of a van. It was all very DIY, and there were never any expensive effects, just a lot of imagination, and Dave was aware that we were extrovert and interesting blokes but with a short attention span. He had a knack of capturing that, and we never did anything more than twice. Mainly because we’d get bored and run off to do something else.

  We had a lot of fun making the video for ‘Night Boat to Cairo’. Tommy Cooper’s fez appeared, but this time in the context of our version of some cod Egyptian stroke Moroccan place stroke somewhere in the Middle East attire. Not being particularly well travelled at this point, we plumped for somewhere in the middle.