Lee Brilleaux

by Zoe Howe

  Lee, as his close personal showbiz chum Larry Wallis recalls, ‘had a quiet way about him, and he enjoyed the Human Carnival wherever and whenever it was happening. Throughout our years of friendship, he often seemed to be enjoying a private joke. He did find the human race extremely amusing, and was a great one for dining and pubbing alone.’ He had ample opportunity for character observation at the Grand. While, formerly, he would be the one being observed, here Lee could almost melt into the background, confident no one would bother him, and find out more about the people he was drinking alongside – solicitors, teachers, car mechanics, travellers. It was a welcome break from the music business and he would much rather ask them about their lives than crow about rock’n’roll.

  Lee’s experience at the Grand was more understated than that at the Jellicoe – apart from anything else, the Jellicoe and its regulars had witnessed the Feelgoods’ ascent to fame. It was almost impossible to have a quiet drink there. The drinkers at the Grand just took Lee for who he was on face value – a courteous gentleman seeking alcoholic refreshment and a bit of space. ‘People tended to leave Lee alone,’ says Colin. ‘There was a gypsy bloke who would always ask Lee for money, and Lee would slip him a few quid but he always got it back. He was always very pleasant to people, but he could get quite intense.’

  Many Feelgood fans will know the following story, but Will Birch famously remembers seeing the Brilleaux temper in all its magnificence at the bar at the Grand in later years. This time, it was sheer incompetence that caused the eruption. Lee had, one afternoon, approached the bar and requested his usual gin and tonic, only to be informed that there was no ice, would that be a problem? This was, as far as Brilleaux was concerned, a big problem. Jugular vein pulsing, he called a cab, requested that the driver take him to the nearest Safeway, marched in and bought a bag of ice. Within minutes, he was back at the Grand. ‘There’s your fucking ice,’ he bellowed at the bar man, slamming the bag down on with a crash. ‘Now get me a gin and tonic.’

  By August 1984, it was time for the itchy-footed Brilleaux to head back on the road and start preparing for a six-week tour of Europe to promote Doctor’s Orders. Kissing his now pregnant wife goodbye on the steps of The Proceeds, Lee roared off in the van and Dr Feelgood travelled to Holland, Belgium, France and Germany before returning to the UK and capping things off with an appearance at a blues festival in Basildon, not far from home. Lee would, with any luck, be back at the Grand before they’d rung the last bell.

  This tour would see the Feelgoods’ return (well, Brilleaux’s return) to the Mont De Marsan festival up in the Pyrenees, this time alongside new wave Liverpudlians Echo and the Bunnymen among others. Lest we forget, in 1977 Dr Feelgood topped the Mont de Marsan bill above The Clash, The Damned, The Jam and The Police. Things had, indubitably, changed quite a bit since then, although the festival was ‘more civilised this year,’ Lee noted approvingly. ‘They’ve done it up ’andsome. All mod cons. They’ve got a chapel, an operating theatre, the lot.’ Catering for the need to pray and for urgent medical attention – it sounds like quite a festival.

  Allan Jones, after all these years, was as loyal as ever to the Feelgoods, and would travel with the band on the Dutch leg of the tour, reporting back to Melody Maker with photographer Tom Sheehan by his side. ‘A decade ago,’ he wrote, ‘Dr Feelgood came roaring out of Canvey like an R&B hurricane. Ten years on, Lee Brilleaux is still causing maximum havoc in Europe.’ And ten years on from this date in turn, Brilleaux would no longer be here at all. A cruelly short period of time by anyone’s reckoning, but even ten years can seem like twenty, even thirty, if you cram them as full of adventures as this man did.

  The ‘havoc’ Jones refers to on tour was about right. The drinking was well underway by the time the Melody Maker team met up with the band and, as well as the crushing hangovers and trademark Brilleaux rants (on this occasion reserved largely for ‘frogs in caravans’ clogging up the roads), Lee had also injured his back as a result of a ‘disagreement’ in the bar the night before. ‘Must have pulled a muscle loading the gear in last night,’ he lied, before admitting there was, ‘as it happens, a scuffle that needed quelling.’ (He only confesses to this after Fenwick dismisses his original claim as ‘bollocks’.)

  Holland had been Feelgood territory since day one, and in Brilleaux’s eyes it was ‘a damned civilised country. Nowhere’s more than a hundred and fifty miles away, we can dash out, play a gig and be back in Amsterdam before closing time.’ That said, a stroll through the leafy Vondelpark before the show riles Brilleaux once again as they find themselves picking their way through swathes of snoozing hippies who had crashed out on the grass. ‘What this place needs is an artillery barrage to liven it up,’ Brilleaux declared to Jones.

  The euphoric crowd at that evening’s show in the Vondelpark succeeded in lifting Lee’s spirits while the Feelgoods simultaneously injected some much needed life into the surrounding area (read: woke up the hippies), but Jones was surprised when, after the gig, Lee testily chivvied everyone straight back into the van and started driving – very fast – to Calais.

  This is, it must be said, a long journey, and one that has Jones wondering why they didn’t just drive to the Hook of Holland and catch a ferry there. Lee wastes no time in explaining that not only will they avoid having to contend with the rucksacked German tourists at the bar, but that he and Chris have shares in Townsend Thorensen, whose ferries leave from Calais. ‘Means we can get over for half price.’ The idea of travelling in more comfort was, at this point at least, not something Lee was interested in, but, as he often pointed out, musicians who travel in ‘limousines’ and ‘pose about’ often forget those costs are coming right out of their pockets anyway. That was something he learned early on, and that attitude would certainly prepare him for the leaner times.

  Next stop the unglamorous Basildon (Bas Vegas if you’re local, or a comedian) for the aforementioned blues festival, and Lee is now weary and in need of succour. The Grand is so close he can almost touch it – it’s within twenty minutes if the traffic’s on his side. All in good time. Turning his attentions to the stage, Lee’s face falls as he spots a local country musician tuning up. The signs are unpromising. ‘If he starts playing that banjo I’m going to have to have a very large gin,’ he growls to Jones who, understandably, takes the opportunity to ask why on earth Brilleaux continues to puts himself through it.

  ‘Threat of bankruptcy, mostly,’ Lee jokes. ‘There’s four million unemployed, I don’t want to add to the numbers.’

  There might have been a different way of doing it, but for Lee, it was Dr Feelgood or nothing – he and Chris had poured so much of their time and energy into it, and even if Lee had chosen to move forward with his original idea of ‘The Lee Brilleaux Band’, he would still have wanted to perform the same songs anyway. But from now on Dr Feelgood really was, in a way, ‘The Lee Brilleaux Band’, playing material from the Feelgood songbook.

  The concept of the ‘new’ Dr Feelgood had long encountered criticism from purist fans and those still unwilling to accept a Feelgood without Figure and Sparko, let alone Wilko, but Lee remained unperturbed. ‘That doesn’t really irritate me. People have their own ideas about the group,’ he said. ‘If I were a member of the group I’d be annoyed, but the musicians who make up the Feelgoods today are mature enough not to be undermined.

  ‘Dr Feelgood can’t be only Lee Brilleaux, because I need the others and they need me. We are a team. The group is a quartet, and the philosophy that we always pushed remains as it always has, which is why Dr Feelgood still exists today.’ Dr Feelgood was, as Shirley remembers it, ‘his baby and his life. He couldn’t conceive of doing anything else.’

  Jokes about debt and the dole queue aside, ultimately the main motivating factor for Lee would be performing for people; he loved the idea of cheering them up, putting them in a better state of mind, allowing them to switch off from their own lives for an hour or two. It seems that Lee regarded the purveyance o
f live R&B as a profoundly transformative public service that existed for the good of people’s mental health. It was needed. And as long as it was needed, he, and the Feelgoods, would be there. The onus was increasingly on the audience, and even if the travel was arduous, as with the act of giving a gift, the pleasure of entertaining was, for Lee, more than worth it. In the words of his mother Joan, ‘it’s what he lived for’.

  Shirley Brilleaux on Lee’s Sartorial Idiosyncracies

  He’d carry his stuff in an old Millwall bag. He wasn’t a Millwall supporter, but he knew the mere sight of it in this context would cause a reaction. ‘People would cross the road. His friends would say, “Are you sure?” But he’d say, “I love the fact I’m carrying this to make fun of the people who think I’m carrying this because I’m a Millwall fan,”’ says Shirley. ‘I mean, I kind of got it, but it was so convoluted it gave me a headache to try and follow the reasoning. A lot of it really was Lee just fucking with people.’ And inside that Millwall bag? ‘Twenty Rothmans, a flask of brandy – probably Cardenal Mendoza – and a Marine Band harmonica in the key of F.’

  Lee on Retirement

  Maybe when I retire from music I’ll open a restaurant with home cooking for musicians. Give it a few more years yet. I wouldn’t ever want to retire completely, maybe just cut it down to a hundred gigs a year from two hundred. I would miss terribly the opportunity to get up on stage and play. I want to do that for as long as possible.

  Kelly Brilleaux on Joan

  My grandmother loved my dad. She certainly thought he was the greatest thing that had ever happened to the world. She had pictures of him winning medals at school for reading, and she would always tell us, ‘Your dad never wanted chocolate for Easter, he only wanted books. He didn’t want toys or anything, just books.’ We were like, ‘OK … Well, we’re not that cool, sorry.’ Most people think their grandkids are way more perfect than their actual kids. This was the exception to the rule.

  Family man Lee with toddler Kelly on the beach at Costacabana near Almeria, Spain. ‘We spent many happy vacations there over the years,’ said Shirley.

  Lee with his mother Joan and baby Kelly, 1984.

  Lee tearing it up.

  Gordon Russell-era Feelgood line-up.

  17.THE TALENTED MR BRILLEAUX

  I live in Leigh on Sea, a few miles from Canvey and Southend. There is something about that part of the world which has developed a lot of rock’n’roll and rhythm and blues. All the Essex girl jokes haven’t put me off yet.

  Lee Brilleaux

  In 1985, amid a musical climate of Wham!, Five Star and Foreigner, not to mention the Band Aid charity single which, as you might imagine, Brilleaux had his opinions about,49 Dr Feelgood grimly hoisted their way back into a position of greater stability on the live circuit. Lee was also encouraged to see that, despite the plastic, over-produced nature of most 1980s chart music, there were also groups such as ZZ Top coming out of Texas and playing hillbilly rock for the masses, converting a whole new generation to rootsy blues. The ripple effect would certainly be felt by the Feelgoods, at least at live shows. Brilleaux noted with pride that the average age of their audiences had dropped considerably, and, alongside the stalwart older fans, there was a small but significant percentage of people at the gigs who were clearly just starting their respective R&B journeys.

  It must be said that when it came to new music, Lee was more open-minded than people might assume, and one of his favourite contemporary acts was Huey Lewis and the News – aka his old pals from the group Clover. ‘Bit commercial but Lee liked them,’ said Gordon Russell. ‘The song, “I Want A New Drug”, Lee really liked that.’ Another artist Lee admired was David Bowie, picking out the 1975 Young Americans album as his ‘favourite white soul album’. ‘Lee was quite dogmatic,’ Gordon adds. ‘If he didn’t like something, that was it, end of story. “Nope, don’t like that, it’s rubbish, get it off.” But he wasn’t completely shut off.’ Will Birch recalls the amusing incongruity of hearing Lee singing along with The Bellamy Brothers’ ‘Let Your Love Flow’. ‘He loved that song. That was quite strange, but he did have a broad appreciation of stuff.’

  Plans were underway for a new release that would stand out in the latter Feelgood canon as authentic and exhilaratingly raw; interestingly, Brilleaux himself would produce it. After years of taking a back seat in the studio, Lee would step up, break all the rules, and the result would be the scorching Mad Man Blues, a record that really sounded like them, like him – at times invoking that seductive Deep South juju that had attracted Lee to the blues in the first place.

  Brilleaux’s confidence in the studio had increased somewhat because he had recently been invited to produce some material by the French R&B band ART 314, a group very much in the Feelgood mould. ‘I said I’d never really produced anybody before, but they said they didn’t mind, and they would pay me to come to Bordeaux, so I said OK. It’ll be a new experience for me. I’ve spent a lot of time in recording studios, obviously. I think I know what to do.’

  The opportunity to ‘go back to France and eat good food’ – one of the reasons Brilleaux once jokingly (I think) gave for wanting to continue the band at all – probably sealed it, but he would subsequently transfer skills he never realised he had into Mad Man Blues. The process of working with ART 314 in this way showed him he could take control, follow his instincts and allow his ideas to come to the fore. This approach would pay dividends, artistically and personally if not commercially. For a start, the usual pressure of finding original material went out of the window.

  ‘None of the songs are written by us,’ said Lee. ‘They’re all classic blues songs. There’s hardly any production on it, we just pressed the buttons on the recorder.’ The songs Lee had chosen included the ageless ‘Dimples’, ‘Dust My Broom’, ‘Rock Me Baby’ and, of course, ‘Mad Man Blues’, a track suggested by Gordon Russell, opening with maniacal, distorted laughter courtesy of Brilleaux before they launch into the song, Lee’s vocal wildly schizoid, snarling and shivering in turn.

  Mad Man Blues, initially a mini-LP ‘primarily intended to calm the impatience of fans,’ as Lee put it, was recorded at Southend’s then brand new Trackside Studios, just off Victoria Avenue, a five-minute drive from home. ‘I horrified the engineer [Paul Page],’ laughed Lee, in conversation with Blues Bag. ‘He’d just opened this new 24-track studio and wanted us to use all his new toys. I walked in and said, “Nah, nah, nah. Take all these mics away.”

  ‘On [‘Mad Man Blues’] I sang through a little blown-up amplifier so that the voice sounded like it was cracking up, which resulted in him asking me not to mention his studio on the album credits … [But] to me, that’s how Dr Feelgood should sound.’

  Summer was spent working on Mad Man Blues, but the road soon beckoned, and the Feelgoods were off again until the end of the year, the mini-album being released that October. The European tour would not be without incident, and a fair amount of blood would be spilled – some of it Lee’s. One of the shows would be at the Tavastia Club in Helsinki, a venue the Feelgoods always played when in Finland. During this visit, a potential catastrophe would threaten to undermine the stoicism and professionalism that the band was famous for, and rather more besides. The incident was, as club manager Juhani Merimaa described it, ‘a critical event, as the group was on its way [back] up’.

  As soon as the Feelgoods had started their set, Lee became aware of a group of drunken fans at the front of the stage. Good-natured but out of their respective trees, they were holding their pints up to the singer like offerings to a rock’n’roll oracle, slopping their glasses around and, in one especially inebriated fan’s case, repeatedly splashing Lee’s suit. It was tantamount to a child ill-advisedly prodding a tiger with a stick. Sometimes Lee could treat instances like this with humour, even working them into the show, but tonight he was not in the mood. ‘Brilleaux lost his temper and placed his boot smack in the middle of his face,’ recalls Juhani. ‘The guy just fell straight to the fl
oor.’ The injured fan had to be carried out of the venue for medical attention.

  ‘After the gig, Brilleaux was very concerned,’ continues Merimaa. ‘I told him [the fan’s] nose was at least a bit broken. He asked about the consequences: whether he would lose his passport and whether there would be any legal [proceedings]. Luckily the guy was a fan and was apparently content with having tasted the boot of his hero. He was cool about it. I hope his nose is all right.’

  Later that year, as London tarted itself up for another Christmas, the Feelgoods played their old haunt, Dingwalls in Camden. ‘Lee was wearing one of his lovely suits,’ remembers Gordon, ‘His “powder-blue suit”. He’d slipped over just before he went onstage and he cut his knee on some glass. We were playing the gig and Chris came up and said, “Do you want to carry on?” He said, “I’m fine.”’

  The rest of the group hadn’t realised he had fallen over, and, up until this point, hadn’t noticed the blood pouring out of Brilleaux’s knee, his light-coloured trouser leg turning a dark red alarmingly quickly. ‘You’re looking at your instrument, looking at the audience, you don’t really look at the singer’s legs,’ said Russell. ‘He really did hurt himself. Chris took him to hospital afterwards and he was told to take it really easy.

  ‘The next time I saw him, he’s got a walking stick – and he really enjoyed this, it was a very smart cane. We went to Belgium to do a New Year’s Eve gig, and he had the cane with him onstage and of course, he was being Lee Brilleaux, taking no care at all about his leg. He just did his show and I think it made it even worse. But he would just not give in.’

  The Feelgoods were lacking much in the way of financial support at this stage in their career. Lee admitted that, while they had plenty of contacts at record labels, they ‘weren’t Duran Duran’ and therefore weren’t of interest. Will Birch, however, a figure who had always had the Feelgoods’ back, had been doing some production work for Stiff Records, the label Lee himself had given his support to in their early years.