Before We Was We by Mike Barson

Author:Mike Barson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780753553947
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2019-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Down in the Dentist’s Basement

LEE: Early ’78, I was in and out the band. There’s spots I missed out. I kept wandering off like the Scarlet Pimpernel or something … Halley’s Comet … ’cause I’d have a row with Mike.

SUGGS: Lee kept leaving. He kept going back to Luton. Mike was getting more serious, and the feeling was that Lee wasn’t. I think he was, but he was still learning how to play. The feeling from Mike was that he was messing around a bit.

MIKE: Everybody kept effing off. It was hard. Maybe none of them really believed there was much point to it. Or maybe people around them were saying, ‘What are you doing wasting your time?’ and stuff like that. People would drop in and out. There was a period when Lee stopped turning up.

And in those days, I never questioned my opinions, y’know? I always thought I was right. At the same time, I was quite realistic, and maybe he wasn’t so realistic. But also, I wasn’t very appreciative, because I was just seeing: ‘This is what we need to do. You’ve got to play these notes, not those notes that are wrong. You don’t play a different song when we’re playing this song.’ So, if he thought that was bossy, I don’t know … but maybe it was necessary.

I suppose I wasn’t thinking about his life: how it was for him when he had to go back up and down to Luton. I wasn’t thinking about his family life and what was actually happening; how would it be, having a dad who’s in prison all the time. Everything was just accepted as it was. But at the same time, you’re thinking, ‘He’s gone to Luton?! Is he going to move to Luton and you’ll never see him again?’ He might have done.

CHRIS: Lee kept going in and out, and a friend of mine’s sister – this girl called Lucinda Oestreicher – could play sax. So, she came and played with us with at our next gig at City & East London College. It turned out to be the only gig she played with us. We’d got this other guy called Gavin Rodgers on bass who was the brother of Kerstin, Mike’s girlfriend at the time. By then, we were starting to get quite good.

There was some guy there at this gig that Suggs knew, some scary kind of hooligan, called Binnsy, because he had these big jam-jar glasses. He was stood at the side of the stage as we were playing, and just looked shit, and I was like, ‘Look … ’, trying to tell him to get off. He was going, ‘You just do your stupid music and don’t threaten me …’ I was like, ‘Alright … anything you say, Binnsy.’

LEE: For some reason I joined this guy Dave Banks’s band. They were called Gilt Edge. It was very soul boy. Bruce Springsteen meets Bob Dylan type of stuff. It was great to practise along to, but I pined for my boys.

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