I have referred to The Hearts unfortunate propensity to lose drummers. I can distinctly remember saying to the band on one occasion, “Now, think. Where did we put him last?” I have been reminded however, (rather sharply, I thought) by Mike Smith, our current sticks operative that he has been with us for 15 years now. This is a according to a drummer’s sense of time of course, not always to be relied upon, but he is probably correct.
Like so many Hearts before him he fell, Icarus-like, into our orbit one night as a dep. Caught by the gravity of the black hole that is The Hearts, he has been with us ever since, unable, like light, to escape. To be fair we didn’t ask him to join, he just did. He probably felt he ought. “I’ll play drums but, and this is very important, I’m not doing the PA and the sound” he said determinedly at his second gig. Doing the PA and the sound, for bands and special events is his living. He humps gear around, sets up the system, flys the desk and packs it all away again at 2 am in the morning. It’s his job. He was absolutely determined this was not going to be another band in which he was required to do all that as well as play the drums. After a couple of gigs he surrendered to the inevitable. “Christ I’ll do the sound then. Have none of you guys ever bothered to learn how to use an actual mixing desk? How long have you been playing for God’s sake?” We looked bemused; we thought the first three numbers of a set were supposed to sound like they were being broadcast on the World Service beamed direct to Botswana. Those unnerving ethereal howlings were part of the act. Fortunately it offended Smiffy’s professional pride and he has been responsible for the sound and the PA ever since.
He is a very able sound guy as well as a fine drummer. He has, I have been told, cornered the Manchester market in Jewish family and religious occasions. You want a Bar-Mitzvah? Smiffy is your go-to soundman. There is a reason for this. He is, apparently, the only sound engineer north of Stoke-on-Trent who can mike up a rabbi’s beard without it sounding like he is reading the Torah whilst eating popcorn through a hedge. The lapel mike has to go actually in the beard itself it seems, otherwise you can’t hear anything. It’s quite a skill, and only Smiffy has mastered it.
He is a talented drummer who has played professionally with some great bands and artists. Chuck Berry for example. Why he sticks with The Hearts is anybody’s guess but we are grateful for it. He’s odd of course, that goes without saying, he’s a drummer. His charming wife, Michelle, is a successful casting agent. Mike once wandered into the kitchen at home to find Peter Kaye there discussing some new project with Michelle. At that point Eric Clapton rang to check on arrangements for Peter Kaye to MC his show at the MEN that evening. Me, I would just have had to try some sort of conversation, and no doubt have been hopelessly star struck and gauche. Smiffy just rooted around for the sugar bowl picked up his coffee and wandered back to his study, oblivious.
Even before Smiffy The Hearts have had a series of very good drummers, enfiladed throughout our 25 years as a band. As far as I can recall, we have only had one duffer and that was a dep for a gig in the Lake District one night, a sort of mini-festival. Pete, the singer at the time had got hold of him and we were a little desperate, no-one, for some reason was returning our calls. "Hello Roger, It's the Cheating Hearts. hello... hello? Funny, thats the fourth time the lines gone dead!" None of us knew the drummer who turned up pleased and suspiciously eager that night.
It became apparent after a couple of numbers that he wasn’t quite up to the mark but Pete ploughed on regardless, determined to give the audience his usual two one-and-a-half hour sets, (excluding encores). “I’m keeping going”, he murmured to me between songs,”until that useless bastard gets one right”. We had to keep going for quite a long time. After one ill advised and spectacularly incompetent fill clattering round the kit and coming back in on beat two and half Shug leaned into my ear and said, “listen to that would you? It's like a sack of King Edwards down a fucking lift shaft”. After two hours our unfortunate dep was going slightly puce, a Hearts set can be strenuously long and drumming is a lot more physical than the other instruments. He drove off that night with a wan and unconvincing smile assuring us he had really enjoyed it, which was more than we had frankly. I heard later that he had had to sit for half an hour when he got home with his forearms in a bucket of warm water.
In about 1993 I had been asked to help run a big blues festival in Redcar. I was in charge of one of the stages, and great fun it was too. A nice hotel room, all expenses paid and the chance to meet and watch dozens of bands throughout the weekend. One band I was slightly anxious about were a Burnley based outfit called ‘The Outsiders’. Now, if we were to be candid and frank about things,musicians, as a species are rather susceptible to over indulgence and an often regrettable lack of moderation. It appears to be part of our nature. There is an eternal quiddity in us that tends towards the personally careless, if not the downright self destructive. Not all of us of course, that would be an unreasonable generalisation. Just about 98% of us. Ethnologically we are not great at deferred gratification. I know, who would have guessed?
‘The Outsiders’, led by a wild, outrageous and very funny guy called Mel were even by musicians standards spectacularly sybaritic. I was therefore stood on the seafront at Redcar looking apprehensively up and down for their van and wondering if they had actually managed to disengage themselves from the pubs of Burnley to get as far as the Middlesbrough area. Eventually a Transit pulled up, a seriously pissed off driver leapt out and walked briskly round to the side sliding door and with something of a flourish of dissaproval pulled it open. Five of ‘The Outsiders’ spilled out in a groaning and drunken heap onto the pavement. From the bottom of the pile Mel squinted up at me in the sudden and expected sunlight. “It’sssh Nick” he said, looking wildly round. “ We may” he added confessionally, “have got a little inadvertently pisshed” He squeezed two fingertips together in a gesture to assure me it was indeed only a tiny bit over the mark. Then he fell asleep with a contented smile on his face. It took a while to scrape them off the road, get their gear in and set them up to play. We then had to round them up again from the various bars and lobbies of the hotel to get them on stage. I’m not entirely sure we got them behind the correct instruments but at least we got all of them together in the same place.
They did get through the gig although I am not at all sure how. There was a small kerfuffle when Mel swung the mike at the full extent of the cable only for it to tangle itself up in the rotating fan on the ceiling resulting in a brief but spirited man against machine tug-of-war which Mel barely won, winning the mike back but going behind on points in the dignity section. Imagine ‘The Who’ fronted by Woody Allen.
Later in the hotel bar while the rest of ‘The Outsiders’ helped themselves, perhaps unwisely, to its assorted delights and temptations with gusto I sat in a corner chatting to the drummer who was also prt of the sound crew for the weekend and so had mercifully not travelled in the van with the rest of the band.
“Well” he said attacking his pint of lager knowing he was going to have to put in some serious effort to catch up with his fellows. “At least he didn’t throw up over my kit”.
“Pardon”?
“I thought it was one of those gigs he might be sick over the drums”
“Does he do that often”?
“Well, I wouldn’t say often, but sometimes”
“Wow”
“I know when it’s coming though, he grabs the mike stand with his left hand and his head starts swaying from side to side”
“What does he do then”?
“Throws up over my kit”.
“What do you do?”
He looked at me. “I lean back”.
Now, at the time, to be honest I took this to be a bit of a tall tale. Part of the growing folklore surrounding ‘The Outsiders’ and their merry tales of scatological excess. We musicians have a tendency to elaborate, to be a little liberal with the verite. Perhaps you have noticed.
A few weeks after this I was in a boozer in Burnley catching up another drummer friend of mine called Paul Fieldhouse* who happened to be in the pub.
“Anything new?” I asked.
“Depped for a band in Clitheroe the other night” said Paul.
“How was it”? I said, sipping my pint
“Bloody terrible” said Paul
“Band not so good?” I sympathised
“The band was alright” said Paul, “It was the singer”.
“Oh?”
“He was sick, all over my sodding drum kit”.
We found ourselves one evening set up in the plush surroundings of Shug’s carpet emporium, Shug’s Rugs, 'The right job at the right price!' (terms and conditions apply, batteries not included). We were waiting to audition a new drummer. This was rare, usually we simply poached one from another band and relied on our charm, wit and good humour to keep them in the band. As I say, we get through a lot of drummers.
The candidate arrived, seemed a little tense and began to deposit on the floor the tattiest rusty drumkit I have ever seen. We watched him set up, fascinated. He picked up each part of the kit, looked at it thoughtfully, furrowed his brow and put it on the floor. Then he stepped back, gazed at it for a minute and picked it up and moved it slightly to the left. It took him an hour and a quarter. When he had finished I have never seen a drum kit set up like it. The kick drum was to his right, his snare was out of reach and one tom was clearly upside down. All the stands were interconnected in a manner that suggested Escher on mescaline and the end result looked like something from IKEA when the instructions are missing. “Maybe he’s a jazz drummer” said The Watson hopefully out of the corner of his mouth.
We counted him in and eight clattering formless and deafening bars later it became evident he had never played drums in his life before. It was excruciating. After half an hour, the bare minimum without being totally embarrassing, we thanked him and said we’d let him know. We helped him load his car and waved him off with some relief. “Right”, said The Watson, “Whose drummer can we steal”?
Later that month I had recourse to visit the local tip. As I was throwing some stuff in one of the skips in that furtive way one has when you are smuggling something awkward and metallic into the non-recyclable section there was a tap on my shoulder. It was our mystery drummer. “Haven’t heard anything from you yet”, he smiled genially. “Still got people to see” I said startled, “You know, like drummers and stuff”. “Well, you’ve got my number”, he gave me a sidelong look. “I’ve been practicing”. “Jesus, what on? “ I thought. He had clearly simply found a drum kit in one of the skips and thought ‘How hard can it be”? (Well, quite hard actually, as he was to discover). We haven’t auditioned since.
The Watson’s day job was a window cleaner. So was Van Morrison’s for a while. I have been to see Van Morrison several times. I suspect being in The Watson’s band is a whole load more fun than being in Van’s band. In about 2002 we were playing a private party in Accrington. (The Hearts, not me and Van Morrison). The house was big enough to accommodate us and the guy that booked us was frightfully well heeled although to be fair, that isn’t saying much. In Accrington ‘well heeled’ is being able to use cutlery. It was a good night, we played I guess you'd say semi acoustically and threw in loads of interesting stuff we might not normally play. After we had packed up Shug and I went to find the lady of the house who was going to pay us. Quite a generous fee in fact. We found her in the kitchen, doing things to Vol-au-Vents. “I think I know your singer chappie” she said, in cut glass tones, There was a brown envelope on the table and I noticed she was sliding a few extra tenners out of her purse. “I think he does for us”. We looked blank. “Cleans our windows”, she explained. “Oh, does he come round and chammy your fanlight too missus”? Said Shug in a fine end-of-pier voice. I groaned inwardly and developed a sudden interest in my shoes as she gazed levelly at Shug. “Your fee I think” she said humourlessly, gesturing towards the envelope and sliding the tenners back into her purse. I glared at Shug as we came out of the kitchen. “What?” he said.
Later that year, I got a call from another drummer called Liam. He played for a guy called Tony Thorpe. Tony was very highly regarded locally. He was a great player, a teacher and he had in the past hit the big time with a pop band called ‘The Rubettes’ whose path, oddly enough, I had crossed many years before in London. More on that later perhaps. Tony needed a keyboard player and an extra guitar player for a gig, could The Watson and I oblige? He had had my name recommended from someone he knew, a bitter and resentful ex-friend with a longstanding grudge perhaps. For once I didn’t have to cajole The Watson using my usual levers of guilt tripping and hurt silences. He had a lot of respect for Tony Thorpe and was up for the gig. He even asked what numbers we might be doing, demonstrating a welcome and hitherto hidden seam of professionalism that took me by surprise. Little did Liam know that within a month he would be the Cheating Hearts new drummer. (If The Hearts were a film we would be less 'A Star is Born' and more 'The Return of the Bodysnatchers')
Tony Thorpe is pretty uncommunicative. He didn’t say hello and avoided eye contact on stage, which was a little disconcerting. The show went well enough but it was difficult to gauge how happy Tony was with it all. The following day he rang The Watson. “Shaun, I enjoyed last night, I was wondering...” the Watson preened a little, he had played particularly well as it happens. Tony Thorpe’s band would be a respectable berth, decent gigs and definitely better money. “I was wondering” continued Tony affably, “Would you come and do my windows?”
* Paul died not long ago, quite unexpectedly as far as his fellow musicians were concerned. He will be fondly remembered for his gentle nature and his self effacing kindness. Perhaps not so much for the two kettle drums and the gong he would occasionally be tempted to bring to a gig with him, but much missed nonetheless.