Culture Club

[Phoenix Saint]

Hello James - seeing as you have frequented here a few times of late - i thought i'd ask you how true was the rumour that you were invited to join Culture Club? Any regrets at not taking up the offer? Seems you would have had a totally different experience of the music biz in Culture Club, as opposed to the one you had in The Pogues. Or maybe not(?)

Were any other Pogue members almost a part of other major bands?

This question is totally self indulgent - sorry all. Did you go to Ealing College of Higher Ed ? What course did you do there? I went there in 1990, having read The Lost Decade...... oh, and also getting crap A Level's. Happy memories?

[JamesFearnley]

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.

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply James. Made my morning - by 'eck you've made my day! They got rid of the Scout Hut aka Phoenix Bar in '92. It was a pretty wild night from what i remember - everybody there could pretty much trash the place and act like a rock star! They moved the bar into that one storey old red brick building (across from the hut) that housed a couple of the nicer looking lecture rooms. Ealing has quite a lot of character pubs, although sadly they seem to be getting 'refurbished' and modernised - we used to frequent The North Star on Uxbridge Rd and The Spinning Wheel in Northfields. Not sure if you watched IISFFGWG but Shane's dad refers to Ealing as the 'piss hole of the world' or something equally fond.
If you'd like a literary reminder of the area - Robert Rankin is a really funny read - The Brentford Triangle, East of Ealing etc.

[rockers1977]

about 3 or 4 months ago i was in line behind culture club's guitarist at the Sav-on Drug at 3rd and Fairfax here in Los Angeles. so it looks like you would have wound up here either way, james. but thanks for sticking with the pogues.

[JamesFearnley]

Oh, it wasn't a matter of sticking with the Pogues. First of all, the Pogues wasn't even a twinkle in Shane's eye (unless his ranting to me one afternoon, about getting a band together that would wear togas and gladiator gear and would play music from Crete could be described as a twinkle in his eye) and in any case, Jon Moss drove off in his cramped Datsun, with his demo-tape and I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since.

[DzM]

(unless [Shane's] ranting to me one afternoon, about getting a band together that would wear togas and gladiator gear and would play music from Crete could be described as a twinkle in his eye)

This would be really amusing. Right now I'm having a great time just thinking of names:

Cretens
Olympia's Angry Sons
Nero's Inspiration
The Proteans
Gluteus Maximus and His Trojans (one of those names that is quickly changed as commercial success looms on the horizon)
Aphrodite's Shame
The Mighty Titans (somehow this seems right for a band doing ska)
The Wake of Medusa (a personal favorite)
Promethus' Mistake
etc

[firehazard]

Band name - how about:

Kiss my Aristotle?

[JamesFearnley]

And there was an tiny old cantankerous guy with glasses and a cardigan who I think was called Paddy, but I'm not sure, who ran the place. I'm not sure about the rock star thing at Ealing Tech Bar - don't remember that - but the rugby team would come in after a win, after a lose, didn't really matter which, and they'd drink pints of beer standing upside down, and lift girls' skirts and take their willies out and put beer mugs on the tops of their heads and shit like that, and I learned that Saturday night was probably not the best night to go to have a drink at the scout hut.

The North Star - I do remember that place, but not the inside of it. I'm not sure if I went in there all that often, though I did cover a car with fish and chips on the way back from there one night. Sunday lunchtimes at a pub on a street corner along the Grove, right opposite the squat where I used to live, that had piano playing and a fireplace. I went in there too, the night of Kirsty's funeral.


The Queen Vic - oh it's sad - well, it was sad from the outset, when my mum and dad brought me down to Ealing and stayed the weekend and we went in there and it was all pith helmets and khyber rifles and shit. Now, it's a black hole with videos in it.

Ealing the piss-hole of the universe? Throw a fucking stick.

[jaffa]

another greek band name :" THE GLAD-HE-ATE-HER'S" ha!ha!

[Rich]

To add to that "it's a small world" vibe, Jon Moss was the drummer on Kirsty's debut single "They Don't Know," which is one of the truly great pop records of the 20th century. And if the stories scattered around the Web are to be believed, he was also in Kirsty's touring band in 1981 with none other than Terry Woods!

[philipchevron]

My understanding is that Terry Woods was actually the Tour Manager for that jaunt, and Frank Murray the Manager. Is it any wonder the poor girl took so long to overcome her stagefright after that?!

Thanks Rich, for your kind words about Manhattan Moon elsewhere on the forum. It does sound great on the box set and I think Nigel Reeve has done Kirsty's legacy proud with the whole thing.

But now I better run before James evicts meagain.

[JamesFearnley]

Ah, Philip, you're always welcome, as the proverbial feckin' flowers in May.

[Mick Molloy]

So nice to see you still love each other after all these years