And so my life as a ‘full time musician’ A.K.A. – ‘signing on’ began.
I arranged a photo shoot for jump-rope to go with the release of ‘Burn’. An Australian lady by the name of Kim took some snaps for us in Hackney, fairly close to where we lived in Highbury.
I’m wearing my 1970’s hooker’s jacket I got from a great vintage clothes shop in Endell Street, Covent Garden and some blue plastic trousers. Round my neck, I have an Olympus Trip I had bought from a shop which sold second hand cameras and music equipment, called Blue Audio Visual on Upper Street in Islington. I’d had my hair cut shorter, dyed brown and had hair grips in.
I’d wanted an Olympus Trip since I’d seen the adverts with David Bailey in the 1970s when I was a kid. This advert also features a young Phil Daniels!
After spending £15 on it, I hammered a nail into the living room wall of our basement flat and hung it there, taking it down for this photo shoot and occasionally putting a film in and taking a few pictures myself.
Ironically, just as Danny and I had quit our jobs to go full time, our American drummer got a job. He started work at the National Film Theatre Cafe on the Southbank. We were able to fit rehearsals around his shifts.
We remained as busy as we could, with gigs I organised. Playing on Monday 3 April supporting a band called Star 69, at the Splash Club, held at The Water Rats, Kings Cross. (Where I had seen Oasis the year before).
Patch, the drummer from The Sundays and friend from Fleet in Hampshire, played with Star 69 at this gig. He also drummed on two singles, ‘Mama Don’t Let‘ and one more, both recorded at his Blah Street, studio in 1996 and released by Organic Records. After that, Patch returned to his duties with The Sundays, so left to record ‘Static & Silence‘ while Star 69 relocated to L.A., where singer, the very glamourous Julie Daniels was from.
We had an interview with the Melody Maker‘s, Paul Mathur, (who had made ‘Burn‘ Single of the Week in February) in a pub in Soho. The following week, it appeared.
‘Singer Jo has been known to stay out later than the MM Party Terrorists’. Hoorah!
Our friends Pusherman, managed by Marcus Russell, (who managed Oasis), had been given a couple of gigs supporting The Verve. So Danny and I drove up to Liverpool to see them at The Lomax.
The Verve had recently finished recording their second album, ‘A Northern Soul’ and were on tour to promote the single that preceded it’s release, ‘This Is Music’.
It was a tremendous night – both bands throwing out sonic grooves for their dark haired, dark souled front men. Richard Ashcroft‘s singing was incredible. He moved around the stage, crouching and stalking, bare foot and full of charisma.
I told him how brilliant I thought his vocals were in the dressing room when they came off stage. He agreed he was ‘one of a kind’.
We went back to Pusherman‘s hotel, Danny and I had booked ourselves into the same place they were staying. All in the bar afterwards, the band plus ourselves, Martin‘s girlfriend Jess and Marcus Russell. They stopped serving drinks, so singer Andy, jumped over the counter and attempted to help himself to a bottle of brandy, only to get caught and asked to put it back.
We decided that was the moment to head up to bed.
The Verve in New York a couple of months later…
I got a call from Lisa Paulon who was setting up Sub Pop‘s European office, just down the road from me, near Highbury Fields. She needed a hand with a 7″ she was releasing as part of a Singles Club she had started – the first release had been an Elastica single in red vinyl in 1994.
I went in for a few days and helped her with with Supergrass ‘Lose It’. Packaging up 7″s to send out, taking them all to the post office.
On the 19th April, The Stone Roses had played their first gig, since Glasgow in 1990. They started off with European dates, the 19th being in Oslo. The tour wasn’t due in the UK until the end of the year, visiting America, Canada and Japan beforehand.
4 May – The Conservative government’s fortunes continue to decline as the local council elections see them in control of a mere eight councils, while Labour control 155 councils and the Liberal Democrats control 45. The Conservatives now have control of no councils in Wales or Scotland.
Desperate to see them as soon as possible, I booked us tickets for the Paris gig at L‘Elysee, Monmartre (where I would play a disastrous gig as It’s Jo & Danny in a few years time) on 11 May. Their seventh date with Robbie Maddix on drums. Reni’s replacement.
Danny drove. We picked up Jess and Martin from Newington Green, then Andy Winters from Stoke Newington and headed to Dover.
We got there the day before the gig – Martin is an Arsenal fan and they were playing in the final of the 1995 UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup Final also in Paris. He didn’t have tickets for the match but we found a bar showing it, mobbed with Arsenal supporters. Jess and I stayed outside drinking while the boys all went in. Sadly for Martin, Arsenal lost 2:1 to Zaragoza.
Paris seemed to be full of football and Stone Roses fans.
A friend of Andy’s, Maria Kane was living in Paris as Director of the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers. I knew Maria too, she is great friends with Fiona Clarke who co-managed Dodgy with Andy. Maria lived and worked in Paris for a year but said she ‘spent most of my time seeing bands…Dodgy and Fiona and Andy Winters kidnapped me and took me on tour with them at one point!’.
Maria suggested a late night bar we could head to – Lili la Tigresse in Pegalle.
We went back to our hotel to freshen up and oddly, bumped into Elastica! They had played a gig a few days earlier and were in Paris to do promotion, we invited them along to the bar with us. Justine declined, deciding to opt for an early night, but Donna, Annie and Justin came with us.
The bar was great fun, if a bit odd. There were pole dancers and women in cages. We had a booth and stayed there drinking until around 1am when it closed. Donna tried to teach me how to do a drumming paradiddle on the table surface. Jess asked if she could have a go on one of the poles and had a fairly impressive attempt. We all went back to the hotel, where the general consensus was that we should continue partying. We went to Donna’s room, where she had a cd player, switched that on and chatted, laughed and generally were rather loud. There was a knock on the door. The night manager had received a few phone calls and he asked us if we could be quiet please. I came up with the brilliant idea, that all was well, we could continue in our room. So we clattered down the stairs and continued there for another hour or so before the same, now slightly frazzled looking manager knocked on the door and said he’d had a few more calls. We decided to call it a night, not before I’d taken a few photos.
The next morning Danny and I had to move the car. We were both slightly worse for wear but managed to get it to a long stay car park and head back to the hotel. At this point, everything caught up with Danny and wanting to be in better shape for the Stone Roses gig, he went back to bed, while Martin, Jess, Andy and I caught one of those funny tourist trains, up to Monmartre for lunch.
The evening of the gig arrived at last. Shuffling in. Catching the eyes of other Brits, Mancs, Roses fans. A packed venue, buzzing atmosphere. Cries of ‘Ian, Brown, Brown, Brown! (the night before it had been Ian Wright, Wright, Wright!). On they came. Tears in my eyes. ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ as the opener. Looking at each other, big smiles.
But I couldn’t get rid of the voice in my head going ‘he’s not as good as Reni‘, ‘Not as good as the 1989 gigs’.
Robbie was on the beat, not that magical in between the beat, groove that Reni somehow found. The rock wig outs weren’t as great as the first album’s songs. I was actually bored during ‘Daybreak’ – an emotion never felt at a Stone Roses gig before. They also now had a keyboard player – Nigel Ippinson. I really felt these two guys were just session musicians, visually and the overall sound.
A grand night all the same.
14 May – Blackburn Rovers become FA Premier League champions, earning them their first top division league title since 1914.
Back in London, Dodgy were on the front cover of the N.M.E. . ‘Staying Out For The Summer’ had become a hit, on it’s second release.
Thanks very much to @nothingelseon on X who posts these brilliant vintage copies of the music press!
This insanely great record was released and I bought the cd single. Classic song.
20 May – Everton win the FA Cup with a 1–0 win over Manchester United at Wembley Stadium.
Pulp received a rare, but in this case, utterly deserved thing – Single of the Week in both the N.M.E and Melody Maker for ‘Common People’.
One of Jess‘s friends, Lou from Portsmouth, now living in London was going out with Gem Archer. Gem‘s band Heavy Stereo were signed to Creation and getting a fair bit of attention. Originally from the North East of England, Gem had two members of another band Andy had managed, also from the North East, called Two Lost Sons, join his ranks. They played the Africa Centre in Covent Garden and we went along to see them. Gem’s shot at stardom wasn’t to be with Heavy Stereo though, but with Oasis, a few years later.
Thanks very much to Pete Cole, who’s eagle eyes have helped source lots of these great old adverts from NME and Melody Maker.
jump-rope supported Velo-Deluxe at the Garage at the other end of Highbury Fields, so a lovely local gig for us, on Friday 2 June. We knew the band Out of my Hair who were on after us, they were managed by Paul West, who also managed Senser, so it was a nice social evening.
Velo-Deluxe were a great band, formed by Blake Babies guitarist John Strohm. They released one album on Mammoth Records and toured extensively in 1995, supporting Dodgy and Del Amitri. (A couple of interesting support bands on this Garage advert – Space on 26 May and the Long Pigs on 19 June)
This is ’Skin and Bones‘ by Velo-Deluxe.
14 June – Pauline Clare is appointed as Chief Constable of Lancashire Constabulary, becoming the first woman to hold the office of Chief Constable.
23 June – The latest MORI opinion poll shows that Conservative support has reached an 18-month high of 32%, but Labour still have a 22-point lead over them.
The Stone Roses were due to headline the Saturday night of Glastonbury. No longer working in the music industry, we managed to buy backstage passes through Pusherman, who had been able to get some through Marcus, as Oasis were headlining the main, Pyramid Stage on the Friday night.
John Squire fell off his mountain bike in California, on the American leg of the tour and their Glastonbury headline slot was cancelled. John had broken his shoulder and needed time out to recover.
The slot was to be filled by Pulp. An inspired choice. Unless they were one of the Guest Artists on the 1995 poster, which still has The Stone Roses as the Saturday night headliners, they weren’t even due to perform. They were number 2 in the UK singles chart. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that doesn’t like ‘Common People‘ or Jarvis Cocker.
Danny once again was on driving duty. We were giving Jess and Susie Babchick a lift. Susie was the American girlfriend of Andy Frank, lead singer of Pusherman. Jess suggested we drive through the night to avoid the Glastonbury traffic. They arrived at our flat late, and we eventually set off at around midnight. All well and good for Susie and Jess in the backseat, drinking vodka and needing to stop to take a pee at regular intervals, then crashing out, but poor Danny had to drive. I tried to stay awake to keep him company. Anyway, we got on site a dawn, around 5am.
Danny and I pitched our small tent, already getting warm inside from the early morning sun and tried to grab a few hours sleep. This was a hot, sunny Glastonbury. We were camping back stage, not far from the bar. We woke at around 11am and headed over there, groggy but happy. Pusherman and lots of other people we knew, Dodgy, Andy Winters and the wonderful Fran. Senser and other bands and people we knew, all started to appear. Paul Gallagher was also in the backstage bar – brother of Liam and Noel. He had a sort of minor celebrity status – the closest we could get to the Oasis Gallaghers. I talked to him for a while. He was quite an ordinary bloke really. Funny his two brothers weren’t like him at all.
And as we all know – Pulp were absolutely wonderful that night. I don’t know what it would have been like if The Stone Roses had played. Nothing like as good as Pulp were I’m sure.
Jarvis had been waiting to become a star for a very long time.
And now he was.
Indie Through The Looking Glass 
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