by JamesFearnley Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:05 pm
Jon Moss played drums for a time with the Nipple Erectors. He left to go and join Culture Club. He came to visit me one night, at my flat in Camden Town, with a demo tape. His new group, he said, had a qualm or two about the guitar-player, though their career outlived whatever qualms he said they had. We had to listen to the demo in his car parked on the street because I didn't have a tape-player. Well, the music was fairly poppy, as you know, and there we were, the drummer from Culture Club and myself, sitting in the front of the car, with the lights off, on a darkened street, in Camden Town, tapping our feet, rocking the car.
Freddie Mercury, too, went to Ealing Tech, but before my time there. (I didn't sit in a darkened car, tapping my feet, rocking the car, to Queen demo tapes, in case you're thinking.) I started a degree course in what's called Modern European Studies, but after six weeks changed to a Humanities course, to which I was better suited. I had an alright time there. I've stayed in contact with just a couple of people. I had long hair then and was painfully shy. I used to live across the road - Sunnyside Road, I think it was called - in a squat, and then up on the Grove, where the Queen Vic is (where Mott the Hoople used to be regulars - with whom Shane and I did some recording way back when, after my time at Ealing Tech, at Pete Watts's house, in Acton or somewhere - coincidentally too, it turned out that the Pogues first John Peel session we recorded with Dale Griffin, Mott the Hoople's drummer, who was by that time an engineer for the BBC).
After Kirsty's funeral and wake, at her house north of Ealing Broadway, I went on a sort of pilgrimage down St Mary's Road, feeling sad and bereft and everything and had a pint in every pub I used to go to up and down St Mary's Road and the Grove and wandered the buildings at the college and wondered where that Nissen hut of a bar had gone to, amazed how fucking ugly the place is. I can't remember how I got home.
As far as Pogues-nearly-in-major-bands stories - I don't know of any, off-hand. I'll think about that. Though, working with Mott the Hoople's pretty cool, in my book.
Jon Moss played drums for a time with the Nipple Erectors. He left to go and join Culture Club. He came to visit me one night, at my flat in Camden Town, with a demo tape. His new group, he said, had a qualm or two about the guitar-player, though their career outlived whatever qualms he said they had. We had to listen to the demo in his car parked on the street because I didn't have a tape-player. Well, the music was fairly poppy, as you know, and there we were, the drummer from Culture Club and myself, sitting in the front of the car, with the lights off, on a darkened street, in Camden Town, tapping our feet, rocking the car.
Freddie Mercury, too, went to Ealing Tech, but before my time there. (I didn't sit in a darkened car, tapping my feet, rocking the car, to Queen demo tapes, in case you're thinking.) I started a degree course in what's called Modern European Studies, but after six weeks changed to a Humanities course, to which I was better suited. I had an alright time there. I've stayed in contact with just a couple of people. I had long hair then and was painfully shy. I used to live across the road - Sunnyside Road, I think it was called - in a squat, and then up on the Grove, where the Queen Vic is (where Mott the Hoople used to be regulars - with whom Shane and I did some recording way back when, after my time at Ealing Tech, at Pete Watts's house, in Acton or somewhere - coincidentally too, it turned out that the Pogues first John Peel session we recorded with Dale Griffin, Mott the Hoople's drummer, who was by that time an engineer for the BBC).
After Kirsty's funeral and wake, at her house north of Ealing Broadway, I went on a sort of pilgrimage down St Mary's Road, feeling sad and bereft and everything and had a pint in every pub I used to go to up and down St Mary's Road and the Grove and wandered the buildings at the college and wondered where that Nissen hut of a bar had gone to, amazed how fucking ugly the place is. I can't remember how I got home.
As far as Pogues-nearly-in-major-bands stories - I don't know of any, off-hand. I'll think about that. Though, working with Mott the Hoople's pretty cool, in my book.
