by Phil Collen
The guitar for me was always a tool for expression. I never really had any of those teenage angst situations, because I always had this escape valve. I found out about teenage angst later on. Some of my friends would smash people over the head with bottles or commit random acts of violence. A lot of this emanates from frustrating situations of oncoming adulthood. There’s hormones and the opposite-sex thing happening because of puberty, and all of a sudden you have a little more knowledge and experience. There’s a lot of self-discovery happening at this time, and therein lies teenage angst. I never really experienced those frustrations about not knowing how to express myself. I think it’s because I was expressing myself through artistic means. That’s the only thing I can put it down to, because I wasn’t as pissed off about life as some of my friends were. Case in point: a guy I had known since I was about four years old committed suicide when he was about twenty after coming back from a tour of duty in the army. He was always a tortured soul and overly intelligent. But he had a real dark side. I remember when the school hamster died. He suggested that we all go over to his house and cremate it. That’s pretty deep thinking for a seven-year-old, but he did it just to fuck with the girls who were present, who started crying. Mission accomplished. But when you think about it, what the fuck are a bunch of seven-year-olds doing on their own in a house anyway? I’d had some other friends who committed suicide, not necessarily a teenage angst thing, but probably more due to a general dissatisfaction with life.
Since I was a young kid I always fantasized about visiting America. After all those years of soaking up so much American pop culture, from the music, to movies, to Levi’s jeans, to TV shows I loved, like Rawhide and Batman, I was dying to go to the States. We had such huge access on our black-and-white TVs to all things American. It wasn’t uncommon to hear American accents and view American mannerisms because of what I had seen on TV. This was nowhere more evident than in the music we were listening to. Everything was influenced by American pop music. The Beatles, the Who, the Stones, etc., were paying homage to their American idols. That’s how they would sing the songs; hence, that became the way we sang. That pretty much answers the question that I’m always asked by Americans, which is Why do you guys sing with American accents but you don’t speak with one?
Once I got it in my head that I might be able to actually travel to the States, all I needed was money. Together with Jeff, one of the guys I worked with at Profile Typesetters, and my cousin Dave, we took advantage of an amazing airline deal on Laker Airways. Sir Freddie Laker was a British airline entrepreneur. He was one of the first to adopt the no-frills business model for airlines. Laker made it possible to do a round trip to the States for sixty-six quid, which was less than a hundred bucks back then. So we did it. In 1975 (or ’76—I can’t really say for sure), we flew to New York City. From the moment I set foot in America I was in total awe. None of us had ever seen skyscrapers before or anything like Times Square. We went to the Statue of Liberty and climbed up into the crown. It was humid, metallic, and sweaty inside. Everything really was larger than life.
Then, just like something out of a Chuck Berry song, we got on a Greyhound bus and started motoring west. We visited Chicago, St. Louis, Las Vegas, and San Francisco (where we stayed at the notorious YMCA), among other cities. We spent a good couple of weeks visiting as many places as we could, and while no one could see all of the country in that amount of time, I felt like we at least made a dent and got a chance to see firsthand many of the things that I had dreamed about—from the Empire State Building to the Golden Gate Bridge. We slept on the bus most nights. We actually broke down just outside Vegas. It was really fucking hot, but they sent another bus to come and get us. America was fascinating. Each state was different from the next, the way countries varied in Europe, and I was having the best time ever. There was not just one kind of American person or personality. I also loved all the different styles of music. There was soul music, the little jazz clubs in the bigger cities, country and bluegrass down south, Chicago Blues, all of the great pop music being made in New York and Los Angeles. But best of all for me was the fact that this was where rock music was born. We were tourists, yet there was something about the trip that made me feel right at home. I had a sense that someday I would be back to spend a lot more time here.
Rock music, derived from the blues, is prevalent everywhere in American society. It is practically in every American’s DNA. Yet at that time the British yearned for it; bands like Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and the Stones were faithful disciples of what Americans took for granted. That’s why Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would wait at the train station for each other with blues records in hand to share in this exclusive “club.” And that’s how I felt. In England we had to seek it out. We had The Old Grey Whistle Test and Top of the Pops. Think of those shows as England’s equivalent of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and Don Cornelius’s Soul Train. They were our only TV shows. We had one radio station, BBC Radio One, a family station. That was it. We had to search it out—discover it. And that made music mystical and exciting. America was the home of it all.
That said, once we returned to England, it was back to work delivering proofs for Profile Typesetting, and I was totally cool with that. My move from working in the burglar alarm factory to becoming a motorcycle dispatch rider for Profile Typesetting was a huge step up for me. It was really liberating to be outside, whizzing around, learning London on a Suzuki GT250 for three years even in ice, rain, and snow. I already knew how to ride a motorcycle, so between that and driving the firm’s van, it was fun. It also taught me how to be a safe driver. I used to ride my motorcycle with teenage reckless abandon. But after a few near misses (like flying over the top of my bike and being hit by a car), I grasped the advantages of being a safer rider and driver. About ten years after I stopped being a dispatch rider, I actually got back on a bike and was petrified about how vulnerable and mortal I felt. Like I have always said, the day job was a means to an end. I always viewed my early jobs as temporary. I knew I was going to be doing something else. I was going to play music for a living. The guys at Profile were really supportive, above and beyond, of my passion for becoming a working musician. I once fell asleep at the wheel at a traffic light somewhere in London because I had been playing a gig the night before. The guys said, “Just sleep it off.” This support would continue until my band Girl finally got a record deal. Then I could quit my day job. But before that I would go through a few other bands to get to that stage.
One night I was hanging with Fred Ball, one of my best friends from school, who was a great singer and drummer. We caught this really cool blues/rock band called Tush, obviously based on the ZZ Top song, in Stoke Newington in East London. Tush were about to break up. Their lead guitarist and singer, George Junor, was relocating back to his hometown of Glasgow in Scotland. So Mickey Tickton, Tush’s bass player, became the new leader singer in the band. I somehow ended up playing guitar, with Tony Miles on guitar and Bob White on drums. Bob eventually left the band and Fred joined. We did a few gigs around London before we ended up as a three piece—Fred, Mickey Tickton, and me. By now I was about nineteen years old. Ironically, I reconnected with Bob White in New Zealand in 2011 and with Tony in 2012. Both are doing well, and we had a blast reminiscing over old times. I speak to Fred regularly, too, and he still makes me laugh till I can’t breathe. He’s one of my oldest friends.
FRED BALL: Okay, here goes. We met in the playground of Sir George Monoux boys’ school. It was in our first year there. Two boys named Steve Crossley and Gary Saint found out through the school grapevine that I was a drummer and began pitching my knowledge and taste in music against their friend Phil, who played guitar. I was actually messing around in a little band that had a guitarist called Steve Hewer, who always claimed to have taught Phil how to play. Phil and I collaborated on a few fledgling projects: Cheap Thrills was one; Seagoat was another. Seagoat entered a talent competition at the Green Man pub in Leytonstone, Lon
don, and won it playing “Too Rolling Stoned” by Robin Trower. Then Phil sent an audition cassette to UFO, hoping to replace Michael Schenker, but was unsuccessful. We eventually formed a band with Pete Webb, a bass player who was younger than us, and a guy named Jeff Hepting, who was the son of a school caretaker. It was in the school that we began to rehearse. It was the late ’70s, coming out of glam rock, which we loved, and going into punk, which we also loved. We were always poncing about with our hair, highlighting and bleaching it until my girlfriend’s dad, Cliff Norris Sr., said, “You look like a load of dumb blondes,” and the original Dumb Blondes were born. We played the pub circuit and the occasional university. We recorded a demo at De Lane Lea studios in Wembley and were presented to various music-biz folk by our managers, Victor Andretti and Vernon Sollas. Despite some great times and naïve fumblings, we achieved only a mild cult status, and Phil was soon off auditioning with various people until he joined Girl. Obviously Phil is a brilliant musician, the best it has been my privilege to know and play with. (You should see the shower of shite I’m with now—only joking.) He did in the early days have a problem with tuning his guitar. It was a Gibson SG and it was in tune when he bought it! I hope my rambling memories can be of help. I won’t bore you with birds, booze, and burger stories, but will only mention, “God, you’re a beautiful creature.”
Doing a complete 180, Tush morphed seamlessly into the Dumb Blondes, which was me and Fred’s wet dream of getting a glam-rock band together. We recruited Pete Webb, a bass player who had played with me in Lucy, and Jeff Hepting, a lead singer who had never sung before. Jeff was my buddy who I’d hang out with. We’d date all the same chicks. His audition was us telling him, “You be the singer.” The other person we kept from the Tush era was our manager, who was an ex-boxer who had bought a pub called the Spread Eagle in Hoxton. Now it’s a trendy area, but it used to be really rough back in the days. He also opened up a restaurant called the Ringside Café. His name was Victor Andretti.
Vic looked like a lightweight version of Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. He was a former British lightweight champion. Initially upon meeting Victor you’d think he was a bit intimidating. He had the flat nose and the thick Cockney accent. Vic was from London’s East End. The Spread Eagle was our base. It was at the beginning of Hackney Road, not far from where Jack the Ripper committed many of his murders. We rehearsed and played there. I think a lot of sports guys end up running bars and pubs because they have the know-how and patience to keep shit in check if things get out of order. It was perfect for him and his buddy Joe Lucy, another former boxer, who also used to run a pub called the Ruskin Arms Hotel in East Ham. Vic would call Joe, and then Joe would book us at the Ruskin Arms to play a gig. This would also be the place where I would meet my good friend Rudi Riviere, who would teach me how to do the Eddie Van Halen finger-tap technique on the guitar.
Stevie Marriott and the Small Faces had their first meeting there before it became famous as a heavy metal performance space for early versions of Status Quo, Iron Maiden, and other soon-to-be metal legends. The Dumb Blondes tried to mix punk with glam rock, but I think we ended up looking more like construction workers in drag.
RUDI RIVIERE: As a couple of penniless guitar mates who cut our teeth on a staple diet of mid-’70s glam rock and with the unrelenting belief and financial support of his mum, Connie, I watched a lad driven by a zest to succeed and do what he needed to do in order to achieve his goal. We all had phrases and nicknames. Mine was Rudi “I Go Where My Rock ’n’ Roll Takes Me” Riviere, whilst Phil was plain old simple . . . Phil. On one occasion we passed ourselves off as brothers for half an hour, which was no mean feat, as I’m a black man. Once we heard Leppard had recruited Phil, I witnessed such jealousy and backstabbing, I found myself defending my mate in his absence for years to come. The boy had done good! Looking back, maybe I was the weirdo, because to this day, I have been happy and proud to say Phil Collen is a mate of mine.
The glam thing—dyeing our hair, painting our fingernails, and wearing mascara—all started when we were about fourteen years old and completely influenced by the Bowie/T. Rex era. It kept going with the emergence of punk rock. So it seemed really normal for us to dye our hair, wear makeup, and play in a rock band. At first our parents were a bit weirded out, but it passed quickly when they saw what we were trying to emulate. We’d borrow our girlfriends’ clothes and makeup. This was a regular thing for us, although it did raise a few eyebrows at the Ringside Café.
We wanted to be theatrical and one day found out that KISS used pyrotechnics. So we went to the theatrical store and bought some gunpowder. We tested it out in my back garden and blew a crater in the lawn. We almost blew up Fred’s mum’s front door. We figured we should use a little bit less when we did our gig at the Ruskin Arms, so we stole a metal trash can from someone’s front door and wired all of this stuff up for the moment of our entrance to the stage. However, some silly twat tripped the explosive off before we even went onstage, sending hot metal and shrapnel all over the pub. The place was filling up and had a few bikers and locals in there. Thank God it wasn’t full, because it would have been carnage. Pete Webb kept his cool, though. He was always a pretty calm and laid-back guy. After all, he was a bass player.
PETE WEBB: It was about 1975 when Phil placed an advert in Melody Maker looking for a bass player for a local rock band. I lived in Walthamstow, London, with my parents, and on answering the ad discovered that Phil lived with his parents on the boundary of Walthamstow and Leyton, about a mile and a half away. How nervous I felt as Phil and another young guy turned up on my doorstep one evening. They had ridden over on Phil’s motorbike he had then—a Honda 250, I recall? I was about fifteen. Anyway, I distinctly remember playing along to Slade, Sweet and other glam-pop tunes (rather well, I must add), but then Phil asked me if I knew of any Deep Purple songs! I didn’t, but I didn’t want him to realize my naïvety, so I said that I knew of them but hadn’t had a chance to learn any yet!
Well, they said fine and that they would be in touch, and to be quite honest, I thought that I had blown it but was intrigued to find out more about this so-called Deep Purple band! (I must admit, the only heavy rock band I had heard of was Uriah Heep, because they were local, and to this day they are still one of my favorites.)
A day or two later I got a call from Phil saying he was impressed (either that or they never had any luck in finding anyone else) and would I be interested in joining his new band and could I pop around to his address? Well, of course I said yes, and when I got there I remember being invited into the front lounge, which wasn’t a lounge, as it was just full up with musical equipment, records, guitars, cassettes, and a couple of speakers and amps.
There were a couple of other dudes there who I had never seen before (who later became my bandmates). Phil was strumming along to a couple of tunes, and then he put on “Highway Star” and played the riff exactly how it was on the record, but I was waiting for the solo and thought that he would probably improvise around to that. Fuck me! It was exact! Even the second part of the solo, where it speeds up! I had never heard anyone play like that apart from on record. I knew then that I had to pull my socks up and stay around with this guy. He’s for real and he’s going to be going places.
I was still stunned and flabbergasted over what I had witnessed, when Phil’s mum, Connie, came in and offered tea and biscuits. I was just as amazed, as she had been in the other room with Phil’s nan, watching television. Is this for real? I thought. How can this guy get away with having all these people round, playing rock albums, and playing guitar, while in the very room next door, some sort of normal home life is going on! I quickly learnt that Connie was absolutely 200 percent behind Phil’s playing. She was every young boy’s dream of an ideal mum to have when you were trying to break into this crazy world, instead of saying, “Why don’t you go and get a real job and stop making all that racket?” Connie became a mother to all of us in the future. She would later take in our stage pants
and clothes for us! I think Phil’s nan used to moan a lot, though, and many a time Connie would argue with her and stick up for what her son was doing. Pity his nan wasn’t around for when Phil hit the big time.
Unlike what most young people may have gone through when faced with telling their parents they wanted to make music for a living, I had total support from my mum and dad. My mum accompanied me to my school for Career Day. I told the career officer that I wanted to be a guitarist, to which he replied, “Well, you can’t do that. But if you’re interested in that, then maybe you can work in a guitar factory or a guitar shop.” When we left the school, my mum said, “Fuck them.” It was the first time I had ever heard her use a swear word in a sentence directed at me. So fuck them I did.
My dad was our roadie. He’d drive us to gigs in his van. My mum would make breakfast for all the guys when they’d come over and stay at the house after the gigs. Even before I was in Def Leppard, Steve Clark and Joe Elliott would come down and stay on the couch at Connie’s—we’d become friends by being on the scene together. They’d get tea and bacon “sarnies” (sandwiches). I had total support around me. The support translated into belief. Even then I could feel that I didn’t have that worry. Even to this day, after everything I’ve been through, I still remember what that feels like. It’s a rare thing.
But even with all the encouragement, the Dumb Blondes’ days were numbered. While Victor would score us the odd gig at the Marquee Club or the Music Machine (an amazing circa-1900 theater infamous for being the spot where AC/DC’s Bon Scott drank the night he died), and even managed to get us on the cover of the infamous British tabloid The Sun, the Dumb Blondes just really didn’t have what it took to break through.
