by Zoe Howe
Lee Brilleaux
We undertook two world tours with Gypie, worked very hard and burned ourselves out.
Let’s just take things onto a personal level for a moment: Lee had insisted that he never wanted private life to ‘get in the way’ of the work that was so important to him, but similarly the man was not made of stone. He was in love with Shirley, and after their last bust-up, he didn’t want to risk losing her again. It was time to make a commitment. ‘We got married on the twenty-fifth of July 1981,’ said Shirley. ‘Four days before Charles and Diana.’ The pair were spliced not on Canvey but in the Alfords’ family church in Hammond, Louisiana, ‘to please my mother,’ explains Shirley. ‘It meant a lot to her.’
Chris Fenwick would be the best man, and he would also be the only guest to make it over from the UK. Lee was a little put out that Sparko ended up getting married on the same day, so they were both unable to attend each other’s weddings, but post-ceremony, the party at the local Country Club rocked, the champagne flowed and ‘for years afterwards I was hearing stories about what had happened to various people who’d attended our reception,’ said Shirley. ‘One friend of mine woke up in one of the golf carts and had to hitch a ride back to New Orleans, a number of people nearly got divorced after that day … We really had a blast.’
The bubble burst when, two days later, Lee grabbed his bag, kissed his bride and rushed off to the airport with Chris. He had a show booked – and the Feelgoods never cancelled a show (so, if you happened to see Dr Feelgood in the late July of 1981, I hope you appreciated it – Brilleaux had to eschew any chance of a honeymoon for your entertainment). ‘I was like, really? I was so annoyed,’ said Shirley, who then elected to stay in Louisiana for nearly two months. ‘What was the point of going back to England if he wasn’t even there?’
The Feelgoods were touring Scandinavia during the summer of 1981, and one show in particular stands out in Big Figure’s memory. It was a council-sponsored afternoon event in Sweden (‘I can’t remember which town’). Lee no doubt was missing Shirley, and his mood was not enhanced by the fact that ‘in the council’s wisdom, they had decided to enforce an alcohol and drug-free policy. Of course, we were struck with horror,’ continues Figure, ‘as not only were we deprived of a pre-gig drink, Lee was deprived of his gin and tonic. Any bottles on stage were forbidden.’ Fortunately, and as one would expect, the Feelgood mobile contained a well-stocked rider and this, and Figure’s ingenuity, saved the day. Figure had noticed some crockery in the kitchen next to the dressing room: ‘teacups, teapot … you can probably guess the rest.’ Grabbing the gin and several bottles of tonic, he commenced mixing a teapotful of G&T, filled the sugar bowl with ice and on went the show.
‘Lee spent the gig quite disgruntled that he had to have his favourite tipple poured from a teapot and supped from a teacup all presented nicely on a tray on stage,’ said Figure. ‘There was a complete lack of understanding on the promoter’s face – the tea being poured was transparent and came with ice cubes, and by the end of the gig it had had an effect on Lee that was quite different from tea. I remember Lee holding the cup up and wishing good health to the audience, a blank look on their Scandinavian faces. We got away with it.’
This would be the first year the Feelgoods didn’t release a new studio album. Like many classic blues artists, they had been turning out records at a prodigious rate, but 1981 would be different. The live On The Job, released in August, would be their last album to feature their ‘winning lottery ticket’ Gypie Mayo, while their second release that year, Casebook, would be a compilation and career retrospective, harking back to the Wilko days. (Wilko, meanwhile, had been absorbed into Ian Dury and the Blockheads.) Sadly, Casebook would also be the group’s swansong release on Liberty.
‘UA was a major label but with a small staff,’ explained Lee. ‘Apart from film scores, they only had a small rock’n’roll department – it was great, it was like being in a small independent company but under the umbrella of a big company, the best of both worlds. Then unfortunately the company was bought out, and I’m afraid poor Dr Feelgood were too small to be taken care of by a big company like EMI – they were looking after Cliff Richard and Sheena Easton … a little band like Dr Feelgood soon got lost.’ Considering the end of this relationship, not to mention the lowering esprit de corps, there was now an ominous sense that the winds of change might blow the Feelgoods apart completely.
On The Job, recorded the previous year at Manchester University, displayed Lee on formidable form, but it was far from one of their most vibrant, or essential, releases. ‘It’s hard to remember they were once the catalyst that sparked the imaginations of thousands of befuddled, guitar-totin’ kids,’ wrote journalist Steve Sutherland. ‘On the Job’ indeed … Still boozers, still bandits, still the best but not quite so eager.’
Gypie, by all accounts, felt he was plateauing in the Feelgoods, but he had also been scorched by the road, flattened by the schedule and was in dire need of recuperation. The party line was that, in Lee’s words, ‘he got married and his wife didn’t want him to go out on the road and, goodness me, all this business, you know the score?’ ‘Score’ may well have been about right – as Pete Zear recalls, the guitarist had also been ‘getting into the hard stuff’, and his partner wanted him away from the temptations of the road. ‘But I think Gypie was also fed up of going to colleges bashing out the same old stuff,’ adds Zear. ‘Gypie was a pure musician, a wonderful player. Lee wanted me to join after Gypie, which is something I couldn’t do anyway, I wasn’t good enough.’
Brilleaux would also tell the press Gypie had said he ‘felt that playing R&B had run its course, as far as he was concerned’. But Sparko and, the following year, Figure would leave as well. Figure had actually been trying to leave for some time, but Lee would always cajole him into staying. ‘Every year, we’d go, “Oh come on, Fig, stay another year.” We’d coerce him and force him to stay,’ admits Lee. When Figure gave notice for the last time, agreeing to work out the year, Lee was saddened but not surprised.
‘It was getting to me, especially when we were out in the Far East, Japan,’ said Figure. ‘I thought, no matter what the consequences, I’ve got to spend more time at home. Lee and Chris weren’t prepared to cut back on the schedule to allow for that, because they were so much in love with what they were doing – and I respect that. At the time, Lee was only twenty-nine, how could he understand?’
Lee was more shocked when Sparko announced he was quitting. ‘He was always the sort of bloke who was most likely to be outrageous at any moment, didn’t give a damn about anything,’ said Lee. ‘All of a sudden he met a girl, fell in love, married her and she just went, “No more going on the road.”’
Lee would be more sympathetic in later years, describing his bandmates’ respective decisions as ‘inevitable. It’s a very hard slog doing 220 gigs a year; if they’re married or have children they’re going to be separated from their families. It gets to you after a while.’ But it seems at times that Brilleaux rather begrudged the influence of his bandmates’ partners. ‘To see [Sparko] tamed was an awesome sight,’ said Lee. ‘A demonstration of the power of woman over man, I can tell you.’ Tamed, or just exhausted? There’s no doubt that the Feelgoods’ partners will have simply missed them, but they also worried about them. It would be reductive to pretend the forthcoming split was nothing to do with the obvious distress ‘the road’ was beginning to cause. It’s understandably preferable for the one being ‘left’ to blame outside forces, even though this situation would arise three times in relatively quick succession. There was no coincidence here. (Lee may also have been projecting a bit of his own conflicted situation onto what was happening with his bandmates – Shirley was not enjoying being home alone all the time, to put it mildly.)
‘I was just sick of being constantly on tour,’ said Sparko. ‘You couldn’t have any personal life. If someone said, “Do you want to do something next week?” You’d say, “I don’t know.” Even if
you had free time, the phone would often just ring. You remember the old phones with the dials? The ringing noise they made still haunts me.’ Sparko had started to feel like he was ‘in the army, always being told where and when to go’. Figure, on the other hand, felt the lifestyle was becoming like that of ‘a biscuit salesman’.
The weird, wired world of the Feelgoods was also causing some members to experience a bit of an identity crisis. They’d all projected their ‘characters’ for so long, reality and fantasy was starting to merge. Figure explains: ‘I’d always been encouraged by the others to become “The Big Figure”. The white suit and the ponytail, maybe the slightly aggressive attitude on the TV … that wasn’t really me. Lee was able to switch off. I saw him at home and he was always quite relaxed – but I remember coming back from tour still being The Big Figure. My wife would have a go at me after a couple of nights and go, “Oi. You’re at home now, chill out!” You get caught up in it. It all got a bit much.
‘It was purely my own decision,’ continues Figure. ‘I didn’t take leaving lightly. I think Lee, at the same time, was hoping to bring me round again. I don’t think he realised how seriously I took my decision. It was just unfortunate we were being worked so hard that we ran out of steam. What we needed was a three-month break to reflect and get ourselves together, but it was literally: back for two days, off somewhere else, back for a few days, off somewhere else. Then we’ve got an album out, then we’ve got a TV [show] in Germany … it was just going on and on.
‘If we had only had the presence of mind to say, “Look, the three of us are going to have a break for six weeks, we need to get our breath back.” But because it was all haphazard and in the middle of work we sort of broke at different times.’ Gypie was just the first to snap, and a press release duly winged its way to the NME who read between the lines – or just shared what they actually knew – noting Mayo had left ‘“for personal reasons” – read gone stone Canvey crazy …’
After a round of auditions, Count Bishops guitarist Johnny ‘Guitar’ Crippen was recruited: a striking presence, a fellow blues nut and, most importantly, a powerful player and a writer to boot. The Feelgoods promptly picked up their tools and got straight back to work. ‘It’s a bit like a football team,’ Chris Fenwick observed dispassionately. ‘One leaves, another arrives, but as long as you keep the team standard up, and keep the spirit of the team moving forward, and for what we were after, making it a quality class act, that’s what was important to us.’
There would be one more Feelgood album with Figure and Sparko – the Vic Maile-produced Fast Women & Slow Horses – and, as it would turn out, their only recording with Johnny Guitar. It would also be released on Chiswick Records, their contract with UA being no more, and the title was certainly appropriate. Never mind slow horses, these steeds were decelerating to a complete stop despite being whipped and spurred.
The resulting album, released in October 1982, was more relaxed than the usual Feelgood fare, proving vaguely Springsteen-esque at times, and Paul Strange at the ever loyal Melody Maker wrote that ‘everything’s on heat. Brilleaux’s in there, shouting the odds, napalming hysterically with his harp.’ The record features ‘Monkey’, a song written for the group by Squeeze, and some material Brilleaux had written in collaboration with Johnny Guitar (‘Rat Race’ and the country-inflected ‘Bums Rush’, reflecting Lee’s enthusiasm for country musicians such as Johnny Paycheck) and classic covers such as ‘Beautiful Delilah’ by Chuck Berry.
‘Educated Fool’ would feature some noticeably Wilko Johnson-influenced guitar licks, and Johnny Guitar would provide songs including the artless single ‘Crazy About Girls’. Lee delivers a killer harmonica solo, but the song is not their finest hour. There are brighter moments, but the album is far from their best and it seems to reflect the listless, conflicted mood, not to mention the fact that Sparko and Figure already have one foot out the door. By the time the record was released in October, they had long since gone. Melody Maker described the situation as a ‘mass split sensation’. Lee and Chris were reeling but still, they immediately tried to patch everything straight back up again.
‘The whole band collapsed at one point,’ said Figure. ‘Lee was left without anybody, Johnny Guitar brought his friend Pat McMullen [fellow Count Bishop] in on bass, and I recommended a drummer, Buzz Barwell.’ Barwell seemed an appropriate choice. He’d played with Lew Lewis, Wreckless Eric and Wilko Johnson, while McMullen had worked with Screaming Lord Sutch – a fact that will have brought memories of the Wembley Rock’n’Roll Show flooding back. Lee insisted he was pleased with his new line-up. ‘If I close my eyes, I can hardly tell the difference,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wish they’d relax and go their own way but they won’t hear of it.’ It might have been easier on him if they had – Lee must have missed Sparko and Figure keenly.
What also proved to be a strain on Lee was the fact that, behind closed doors, things were more than a little turbulent. Mr and Mrs Brilleaux had sold their home on Canvey, and after a few months lodging at Feelgood House, had found a property in Hillside Crescent, a quiet road just over the water in Leigh on Sea. ‘The house was more than Lee wanted to pay,’ said Shirley, ‘but we loved it. I wanted it immediately! We moved in the spring of 1982.’
This house would famously become known as ‘The Proceeds’47, that is, paid for by the proceeds raised by rock’n’roll. The name was suggested by Larry Wallis, who would become a regular house guest there, ‘examining the virtues of Rémy Martin brandy with Lee, spending Christmas in the East Wing’.
‘We lived there quite happily for maybe six months,’ remembers Shirley, ‘but we had a major falling out, and I ended up leaving and going back to the US. I don’t even remember what we’d fought about – we fought all the time. I guess I was fed up being left at home while the band toured. They just never stopped working. Part of what I’d been unhappy about was the fact that when we’d got married, almost the next day Lee had to leave. I think I had unresolved anger issues over that! In retrospect what I should have done was live my life and get on with it, but I wanted what I wanted – I wanted him to be home more. I’m sure if he had been home more we would have killed each other.’
Gritting his teeth, Lee put his energies into promoting Fast Women & Slow Horses, and he was, initially, belligerently positive about it. ‘It really shows on the album [that they all knew it was the last], everyone was trying very hard,’ he said at the time. ‘I spoke to London on the phone yesterday and apparently we’ve got the best reviews for an album we’ve ever had, since the early days.’
Later, however, Lee would admit to having ‘mixed feelings’ about the record, ‘oscillating between hatred and passion’. It would surely have been hard not to associate this record with the upsetting period of estrangement from his wife, not to mention the loss of Figure and Sparko, but when speaking about it publicly, Lee remained discreet and concentrated on discussing the material.
‘I hate some songs like “She’s The One”,’ he said. ‘I find it too pop, but I really love the songs I co-wrote with Johnny Guitar. I will always have a certain affection for this record, the last Vic Maile worked on with us before his death.’ (Vic Maile died from cancer in 1989 at the age of forty-five.)
The reality of the situation was that, as Johnny Guitar observed, Lee was just unhappy. Everything seemed to be crumbling around him: both of Lee’s precious marriages – to Shirley and to the Feelgoods – had hit a wall; his wife was in New Orleans with apparently no intention of returning; the friends Lee had worked with for more than a decade had gone; and he’d given himself no time to recover from the trauma of either loss. ‘Lee was always great,’ said Guitar. ‘He always gave his all but he became a little ratty towards the end. It wasn’t fun any more.’ This short-lived Feelgood line-up saw out a UK tour throughout November and December before Lee called it quits.
‘Things started to deteriorate. It wasn’t working,’ admitted Lee. ‘So I just said, “Right, stop it. This is a bu
s going downhill with no driver, it’s going to end in disaster. Just stop.”’
Dr Feelgood was, as Lee put it, ‘officially disbanded’, and, for the first time, this seemingly unstoppable rock’n’roll juggernaut had ground to a halt. Chris Fenwick decided to clear his head and travel to India, but he was anxious about Lee, who was in a state of shock and needed a positive focus. ‘When I come back,’ Chris told Lee, ‘I want you to have a new line-up.’
Lee Brilleaux in full flow during an interview.
As the 1980s wore on, Dr Feelgood became known for its flexible line-up, however, Phil Mitchell (bass) and Kevin Morris (drums) are in the line-up to this very day. Guitarist Gordon Russell, pictured here, auditioned to replace Gypie Mayo after he left, and was deemed brilliant but a little too young. Johnny Guitar got the gig instead, but Russell’s time in the Feelgoods would come.
16.THE BAND THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD
Musically this is the best band, it’s very tight – of course, the original band had a magic ingredient … but those days are gone and that’s the end of it and we’re living for today, as far as I’m concerned.
A defiant Lee Brilleaux on the subject of the new Dr Feelgood line-up
While 1982 had been, in many ways, something of an annus horribilis, 1983 would be the year Lee managed to put everything back together. After three months off, Lee was bored and he’d had plenty of time to consider the future. His initial intention was not to create a new Dr Feelgood, but to form ‘The Lee Brilleaux Band’ instead. Of course, as we now know, the tempestuous Dr Feelgood daemon would not go gentle into that good night.
