Complicated Shadows Page 4
Rusty played eighty-eight gigs in 1972, the year in which Declan could justifiably claim to have first become a working musician. But it was never a band based on a great social bond. ‘We never did the girl thing,’ says Mayes. ‘I don’t remember him ever drinking. I don’t remember any rock ’n’ roll camaraderie, but then I don’t remember us ever having an argument, either.’
They played mostly to sympathetic audiences where people would listen, or at least not interrupt, but they quickly became used to a kind of polite apathy. ‘Ninety per cent of the room when we were playing was full of other musicians,’ reckons Mayes. ‘The only people who weren’t musicians were wives, girlfriends or someone who was a friend of somebody. There was no one booking us. We’d just go and play for nothing. There was no actual drawing power of people on the street.’ It was essentially background music.
* * *
In the early summer of 1972, Declan sat his final exams and left Campion. He escaped with one A-level in English, insufficient for college or university even if he had shown the inclination. Virtually everybody who has ever worked with him over the years picks up on his daunting brainpower and ability to assimilate information at an astounding rate; The Brodsky Quartet’s Paul Cassidy describes his brain as ‘turbo charged’, while composer Richard Harvey even goes as far as to rate him as ‘one of the three or four most intelligent people I’ve ever met’. Clearly, he would have done better in his exams had he been inclined to put the hours in.
But life was overtaken by music. At the same time as he was enduring his final exams, Rusty secured a weekly Tuesday night residency at the Temple Bar on Liverpool’s Dale Street, which would have been far bigger news to Declan. The venue became a home-from-home for Rusty, their weekly spots continuing virtually uninterrupted from 6 June right up until Christmas.
The end of school meant the beginning of a greater sense of freedom. Over the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of 13–15 July, he and Allan drove down to London, staying with Ross and Sara. It was the first time Allan had met Declan’s dad, and he remembers him being ‘off the radar’ compared to other people’s fathers.
‘He had a copy of Playboy on the coffee table and loads of LPs and could talk about ‘King Of The Road’. It was just too bizarre for me. Dads were supposed to be: “Get your bloody hair cut,” yet this guy was: “Grow your hair, son, and have you heard the new Grateful Dead album?” It was just too weird.’
While in London, Rusty played gigs at the New Bards Folk Club, the Half Moon in Putney and the Troubabdour in south Kensington, supporting Ralph McTell, Bridget St John and Swan Arcade for free. Significantly, over the same long weekend they also took in an all-nighter in London featuring Lou Reed and Brinsley Schwarz.
In 1972, Brinsley Schwarz had just released their third album, Silver Pistol. Their first two records – Despite It All and Brinsley Schwarz – had been lumpen, progressive affairs, and the band were looking to change direction and take on board a neater, sharper sound. They were managed by the garrulous, no-nonsense Irishman Dave Robinson, who worked as tour manager for Jimi Hendrix in the late ’60s. Robinson subsequently went into PR, and ‘masterminded’ the Brinsleys’ disastrous launch in New York in 1970, when a planeload of British journalists were flown over to watch the band play at the Filmore East and had returned distinctly unimpressed. Despite that blip, in his capacity as manager and a promoter, Robinson was an essential component in creating the nascent pub-rock scene in London in the early ’70s, helping to turn Brinsley Schwarz into the movement’s leading band and their singer and bassist Nick Lowe into perhaps its finest songwriter.
One night in 1971, Robinson had stumbled upon a San Franciscan band called Eggs Over Easy playing at the Tally Ho! pub in Kentish Town, north London. In such inauspicious surroundings, they had shown him the light. ‘It was Eggs Over Easy who I essentially stole the idea of pub-rock from,’ he admits. ‘Here were four guys playing three-minute songs, one after the other, great singers, great playing, great style.’
Knocked out by what he heard, Robinson whisked the band off to meet Brinsley Schwarz at the group’s communal house in Northwood, Middlesex. Eggs Over Easy played for – and with – the Brinsleys all night, and by the morning they had passed on the torch. ‘The penny dropped that here were people who were real musicians, real songwriters and they could teach the Brinsleys,’ says Robinson. ‘I was doing my best to drag them out of the Stone Age of English prog music. And they did learn. Nick Lowe learned very quickly, and it came from that.’
Robinson helped Eggs Over Easy build a following at the Tally Ho! and spread the word around town. He began getting the Brinsleys gigs, then another outfit called Ducks Deluxe, until the Tally Ho! swiftly became the hub of the new scene. In this way, the classic pub-rock prototype of the band who could play a bit of everything that was deemed righteous and good – country, R&B, blues, rock, funk – was born.
Soon there were hundreds of them, but the rejuvenated Brinsley Schwarz were at the top of the tree. From the goodtime, bar-room piano roll of ‘Dry Land’ through the Hammond-soaked ‘Merry Go Round’ to the final, slipperwearing lilt of ‘Rockin’ Chair’, Silver Pistol was a laidback, home-cooked slice of whimsy and charm, very much of its time. It hasn’t dated particularly well, and yet placed in context its Anglo take on the rural American sound was significant.
For Declan – hopelessly smitten with The Band and the charms of Americana, and looking for something closer to home about which to get excited – Silver Pistol was a watershed. ‘If you really want to know the album that changed Declan’s life, it was Silver Pistol,’ says Mayes. ‘We played everything off that album live.’ Indeed. At the final Rusty gig in June 1973, the duo played no less than eight Brinsley Schwarz covers, including four from the record.
The band became Declan’s new obsession. He went to see the Brinsleys whenever he could, both in London and Liverpool, and some time in 1972 he bumped into Nick Lowe, as he was preparing for a show at The Cavern Club in his favoured fashion. ‘We were playing at the Cavern, and we were in The Grapes across the road, sitting there having a cocktail before getting ourselves set,’ Lowe later recalled. ‘He came in, and somebody said, “Look, there’s that weird-looking geezer who’s been at a few of our shows.” And I thought, “Well, it’s about time I bought him a pint and I introduced myself,” because he never used to come back stage or anything.’28
The two hit it off, talking exclusively about music. ‘I seem to remember at that time, Jesse Winchester we were keen on, and Bobby Charles & The Amazing Rhythm Aces. When you meet someone and you shove a couple of names out and they react to it, you think, “Oh, this is a pretty decent guy”.’29 Declan frequently looked Nick up at Brinsleys’ gigs thereafter. It was to become a key friendship.
* * *
Wherever Rusty performed they would play several of Declan’s own compositions: ‘Warm House’; ‘Sleeper At The Wheel’; ‘Sunflower Lancers’; ‘Two Day Rain’; ‘Dull Echoes’; ‘Are You Afraid Of Your Children’; ‘Sweet Deceiver’ and many more10 poured out around this time.
Although he was really only cutting his teeth as a writer, it was quickly apparent to Allan Mayes that this was somebody with an unusual amount of talent. ‘It was staggering, really. Every time he played a new song I knew that the songs I were writing were just a joke. He’d sit down and go into this intense shit, shut everything else off, play the damn song and immediately I loved it. But I have no memory of anybody ever saying, “God! His songs are stunning, aren’t they?”. I was the only one who ever thought that.’
Lyrically, the tracks were staunchly impenetrable, and read today the words tend to sit awkwardly on the page: ‘Sunflower lancers, where do you go/Out in the morning, out in the cold/Rings of silver, rings of gold/ These I will bring to save me,’ is the creaking opening salvo to ‘Sunflower Lancers’. It doesn’t get much better. Later, he muses: ‘Old night-time story’s endless refrain/“Lady, have you come to save me?”.’
‘Dull E
choes’ – not perhaps the most tempting of song titles – evokes similarly pastoral images, again with a distinctive, early ’70s hippy flavour: ‘My mandolin picks out of time/And out of tune as well/A simple song I learnt a while ago/ While you were sleeping.’ And later: ‘Go down to the water/And lay down at the water’s edge/My waterfall is endless/But I also have a fountain.’
‘Two Day Rain’ is at least a little more promising. ‘Do you fit your situation to someone else’s song?’ he asks in the middle, and it’s tempting to hear a soon-to-be characteristic sneer in the voice; while the concluding bitter-sweet flourish is genuinely affecting in a way that the future, invented Elvis Costello persona would no doubt have scoffed at: ‘Look at what you had to sell/Because you said goodbye/ No sweeter than you said farewell.’
Allan Mayes admits to having absolutely no idea what Declan was trying to say, with one exception. ‘Warm House’ was one of the best things we ever did,’ he says. ‘It was about thinking he was going to get beaten up while walking the streets on the way to a gig. This was back in the skinhead days, when it was not unknown in Liverpool to get jumped for no reason. I remember him saying, “God, I was so glad when I got to the club, because I was sure these guys were going to beat me up and steal my guitar”.’ Declan himself has long been dismissive and characteristically unrevealing of his earliest attempts at songwriting. ‘Like anybody’s first steps at doing anything, you wouldn’t want to put them under the microscope,’ he has reflected. ‘They were probably pretty awful.’30
* * *
No longer tied to school, Declan began seeking out employment. He wasn’t looking for any long-term career outside of music, but with the work ethic and the idea of earning his keep already firmly instilled in him, he went for anything that was going in the newspaper. With his A-level in English, he was thought unsuited for the role of tea boy. He was briefly considered for the arcane job of Admiralty Chart Corrector in a ‘Dickensian office’, but his handwriting wasn’t up to scratch. Eventually he got a job working with computers in a large centre run by the Midland Bank.
When he finally broke through in 1977, Declan’s work with computers – along with the glasses – would be one of the major incriminating factors adding fuel to the flames of his carefully cultivated geek persona, but the truth was far more prosaic. It was not the hi-tech, highly-attuned vocation that it is today, and required little skill. ‘I knew nothing about computers,’ he said in the ’80s, back in what was still the dark ages of that particular type of technology. ‘But really all that’s irrelevant. It’s just button-pushing and dealing with tapes and printers. It’s manual work, really, but it has a sort of status attached to it because it’s modern technology.’31
His new job also revealed a problem with his eyes. Until the age of sixteen his sight had been fine, but working every day with computers made him realise it had deteriorated. He started wearing glasses to correct astigmatism, although at first it was only to read or watch television. ‘He’d wear glasses occasionally,’ says Allan Mayes. ‘These trendy, Easy Rider-types.’ The famous horn rims wouldn’t come until much later on.
Employment made little impact on Rusty’s rounds of folk clubs, schools and ad hoc poetry meetings. There were occasional appearances at a concert hall as part of a oneoff event, but they were few and far between. Nevertheless, the duo got to tread the boards at such notable venues as Liverpool University and St George’s Hall. A poster advertising the entertainments on offer at a charity folk concert at the College Hall, Widnes on Friday, 15 December, 1972 lists Rusty as fifth – or if you prefer, bottom – of the bill, beneath such luminaries as Bullock Smithy Folk Group and Cyder Pye. Admission was 40p.
Declan’s parents continued to encourage the young singer in his musical ambitions, with the clear proviso that he did most of the legwork himself. But Ross wasn’t averse to using his connections in the music business to give Declan a nudge in the right direction. One night, as Rusty were setting up to play in the Yankee Clipper club in Liverpool, Declan mentioned to Allan that Ross had got them a job accompanying him in the studio to record a song for a lemonade commercial.
‘I remember almost doing a lap of honour around that club, thinking “Oh, studio!”,’ says Mayes. ‘As far I was concerned, it was the most glorious moment of my life.’ As the months went by, Allan kept pestering his partner about the advert, until one day Declan simply turned around and said: ‘I did it last weekend.’
‘I’ve never been so dejected in my life and I have never forgotten it,’ Mayes recalls. The song that Ross and Declan recorded for the R. Whites lemonade advert became somewhat legendary, running on British television between 1973 and 1984. The ridiculously catchy jingle – ‘I’m a, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a secret lemonade drinker’ – marked Declan’s studio debut, adding his already distinctive backing vocals behind Ross’s voice of the drinker.11 He would have made only a little pocket money from the recording session, but it was another invaluable experience, and one he clearly had little inclination to share.
Soon afterwards, in early 1973, Declan decided to move back to London. ‘I came back to London after two years because I realised there wasn’t any scene in Liverpool to get into,’ he later remembered. ‘It was completely dead.’32
The dreary combination of traditional folk music and serious rock based on a love of Yes, Caravan or Led Zeppelin were the twin alternatives in Liverpool, and held little appeal. Meeting Nick Lowe had made a profound impact on the way he perceived his own music. While Allan Mayes’ later claim that Declan ‘went chasing Nick Lowe’ to London is perhaps rather overstating the case, the rapport with a like-minded soul and the possibilities of the kind of music he could play in London was highly significant in his move back south.
Declan rather half-heartedly sounded out Allan as to whether he was also willing to make the move, but Mayes was reluctant. ‘I was going on twenty, but still way too scared to take that kind of chance,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t prepared to starve for my art.’ Rusty’s unlamented last stand was two shows supporting Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel on 24 June, 1973 at Warwick University in Coventry, booked months previously. Declan travelled north from London and Allan travelled south, before they finally went their separate ways. They would keep in touch – with increasing infrequency – up until the early 1980s.
So Declan went to London alone: to his dad; to the heart of the music business; to a burgeoning pub-rock scene. He was ready for something new. There were probably a hundred good reasons for going back home.
Chapter Two
1973–75
MARY BURGOYNE WAS JUST EIGHTEEN at the time she became Declan’s first serious girlfriend. Although the exact circumstances of their initial introduction are unclear, the couple met in 1973 and were very much an item by the end of the year. Mary lived on the Redwood Estate, Cranford Lane in Heston, just off the M4 motorway and a few miles from Heathrow airport, where she worked.
They had much in common. Her Irish roots were stronger than Declan’s: although she may have had an English accent, she had been born in the Republic of Ireland, but had moved to Britain as a child. Mary was also an avid music fan, a factor which would have played a significant part in the attraction. Although her father – Patrick Victor Burgoyne, known as Vic – was a salesman by trade, he had been a veteran of the thriving Irish dance band culture back home.
Allan Mayes recalls meeting Mary briefly when she accompanied Declan on one of his family forays back to Liverpool and being impressed. ‘I clearly remember thinking, didn’t you overachieve!’ he says. Mary was very pretty, with a passing resemblance to the actress Jenny Agutter, a favourite of Declan’s. She was also bright, loquacious, funny, temperemental, with a bouyant sense of humour, and by all accounts could give as good as she got in the intense battles which tended to characterise her time with Declan.
‘The two of them were that classic thing: couldn’t live with each other, couldn’t live without each other,’ recalls Steve Hazelhurst, who bega
n playing with Declan in 1974. ‘When they were together they were always scrapping.’ The relationship quickly became serious.
Declan had returned to London in the early spring of 1973, having arranged a transfer to Midland Bank’s computer centre in Putney. He moved in with Ross and Sara, with whom he had apparently established an amiable relationship, at 16 Beaulieu Close in Twickenham Park.
His first gig back on home turf took place on 18 April, a mixed set of covers and originals in the Barmy Army pub in Twickenham. Although he was still going out solo, he was already beginning to forge the friendships that would help him establish Flip City, the first significant band of his career. Ken Smith – who now runs the Elsubsta record label in south London – became their de facto manager by virtue of booking gigs, having a few budding contacts in the record industry, organising occasional recordings and being singularly unable to play any musical instrument.
Smith first bumped into Declan in the late spring or early summer of 1973, at The Royal Charter in Kingston upon Thames, a music pub better known to its regulars as The Three Fishes. Declan had some new friends in tow: the first was Michael Kent – known to all as Mich12 – whom Declan had met at a Brinsley Schwarz gig in St Pancras Town Hall not long before. The other was Malcolm Dennis, who knew Mich from school. A bass player and drummer respectively, they were slightly older than Declan, but soon came together, united by their similar tastes.
The DJ at The Three Fishes played a lot of San Franciscan music: everyone was into the Grateful Dead, while Clover – who eventually backed Declan on his first album – were also popular. Bruce Springsteen had just recently appeared, and Declan took to his first two records – Greetings From Astbury Park, NJ and The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle – with relish, probably because they were wordy, musically rich and clearly influenced by Van Morrison. He also still loved The Band,13 and indeed all the future members of Flip City bonded over their mysterious, timeless sound and the superlative songwriting of Robbie Robertson. On the British side of the Atlantic, pub-rock was burgeoning in the capital. ‘I was totally into the pub-rock scene at the time,’ recalls Ken Smith. ‘Going off to see Kilburn & The High Roads, Ducks Deluxe and all those bands. Brinsley Schwarz were my favourites and Dec had seen the Brinsleys in Liverpool and London, so there was kind of common ground.’