Radcliffe - Showbusiness : The Diary of a Rock n Roll Nobody

Table of Contents

Mark Radcliffe was born in Bolton, and attended Manchester university. He is currently employed by the BBC to talk between records on Radio 1. He is married, has one daughter, lives in Cheshire, supports Manchester City F.C and drinks in the George and Dragon.

www.hodder.co.uk

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works: Ghost Town by Jerry Dammers 1981 Plangent Visions Music Limited

Get It On by Marc Bolan 1971 Westminster Music Ltd of Suite 2.07, Plaza 535 Kings Rd, London SW10 0SZ. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Sceptre

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright 1998 Mark Radcliffe

The right of Mark Radcliffe to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781444755565

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

For B and H and the ghost of Jimmy L

Thanks to my mum and dad who bought me the drums and put up with the noise for years, as did Jaine and Joe. Thanks to Matthew and Andy for the day job and Jeanne and Ian at East West for helping to take the joke too far. Thanks to Angela at Hodder who believed a disc jockey could construct a sentence. Thanks to everyone in the bands, especially Phil and Marc. Finally thanks to Bella for love, support and, not least, typing.

Its an addiction. Simple as that. For most of my adolescent and adult life Ive had to accept its hold over me. There have been times when Ive tried to fight it, but resistance is futile. Its an addiction and thats all there is to it.

Most kids have at least a vague idea of what they want to do when they grow up. My idea was anything but vague: I wanted to be in a band. Ive been in so many bands for so much of my life that its hard to say how it all began. I can remember as a little kid being very keen on a television programme called The White Heather Club, which was a weekly showcase of Scottish music. So great was my enthusiasm for imitating the jigs and reels that my mum ran me up a kilt out of an old travelling rug. Donning it religiously five minutes before Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor and the rest of the White Heather regulars came on became a familiar ritual, and Ive come to look on this as an early expression of the desire to become a musical performer. At least, it doesnt appear to have been an early expression of the desire to become Scottish.

It was at my grandma and grandads house in Farnworth that I became a drummer. Every Sunday afternoon, after the remains of the cold brisket, onions in vinegar and sherry trifle had been put back in the pantry, my grandad would turn on the radiogramme to make sure the valves were warmed up in time for Pick of the Pops presented by Alan Freeman. Meanwhile, I would run round the house snatching various appliances and small pieces of furniture with which to construct a makeshift drum-kit: a suedette pouffe for a bass drum, a pan lid for a cymbal, a washing-up bowl in lieu of a snare. Suitably prepared, I would then spend a blissful hour clattering the aged household effects with splintering knitting needles while the rest of the family drew closer to the telly in order to hear Songs of Praise above the smash-and-grab swoop on an ironmongers that was taking place in the front parlour. Eventually my mum and dad bought me a couple of real drums, probably on the assumption that it was a cheaper option than constantly replacing grandmas ovenware, and once I had the drums I had to have the band. And thats how it all started. Ive been in dodgy bands with dodgy names ever since, and the first of these was the Berlin Airlift.

I was fourteen at the time and in daily attendance at the imposing sandstone establishment known as Bolton School, an admirably christened institution, being, as it was, a school in Bolton. Under the occasionally watchful eye of Mr Derbyshire we were tracing the course of the Second World War, and the name of the band was taken from the index of a history textbook, having been selected from a shortlist that also included Polish Corridor, Warsaw Pact, Scapa Flow and the Warmington-on-Sea Home Guard. The latter was suggested as a joke at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight and the eventual realisation that we were a bunch of rank amateurs with no chance of achieving anything, it now looks by far the most appropriate. Another short-lived contender was Derbyshire Is a Git. Despite being a bewitching name for a beat combo, however, it didnt really count, because it hadnt actually been printed in the index but scrawled there by Carl Walters, and as Mr Derbyshire was not only our housemaster but also the bloke who booked the bands for the school disco, we quickly dismissed that option, tempting though it was. Take it from me, youll never get anywhere in showbusiness if you insult the promoter. Your chances of playing Wembley will be severely dented if you insist on calling yourselves Short-Arse Arvey Goldsmith and the Little Fat Bearded Bastards.

The members of the Berlin Airlift are now, of course, the stuff of rock legend and Pete Frame Family Tree. For those unfamiliar with the full epic saga, and I cant think there are many, I can only point you in the direction of Albert Goldmans incisive critique, From Bolton School to the BudokhanBerlin Airlift: The Wonder Years. The list of former Airlifters who went on to become musicians of international repute is too long and fictitious to print here, but if I were to mention names like Jeff Carry Carrington, Mark Stocky Sayers and Michael Doris Lipsey youll understand the calibre of artist were dealing with.

Undoubtedly, though, the true Airlift aficionado will always hark back to the original line-up, the seminal four-piece whose blend of glam and metal sent reverberations not only through my sisters bedroom but out on to Carlton Road if she had the window open. So who were these four kick-botty horsemen of the rocknroll apocalypse, meticulously honing an act that would one day take them all the way to Bolton Lads Club at the bottom of Chorley New Road? Well, for starters, there was me on drums and lead vocals.

Many people find the concept of singing drummers an odd one, but you have to remember that archangel Peter Gabriel was still the front man with Genesis at this time. This kept the Artful Codger Phil Buster Collins in his rightful place behind the kit, so no one really knew how deeply unpleasant the phenomenon of the vocalising tub-thumper would prove to be. Its also been suggested that its not exactly a riveting visual feast for the audience if the lead singer is hidden behind what looks like the contents of a small hardware emporium. Im not convinced that this is a bad thing have you seen Simple Minds? Personally I think its infinitely preferable to have a vocalist whos pretty much invisible rather than some podgy ponce in a girlie blouse prancing up and down the stage shouting Woooah... do you feel all right... let me see some hands.