Spider from Mars Page 23

  After the Hammersmith gig we all agreed it had felt really special and that if the opportunity came up it would be fun to do more concerts.

  That opportunity did come up in 1997 when an agent I knew in Birmingham was able to arrange a small series of UK dates for us, playing as the Spiders, plus an evening at the Olympia in Dublin on 7 August. By a strange coincidence, Bowie was due to play there on 8 and 9 August on his Earthling tour.

  On the flight over to Ireland Joe mentioned that as he lived close to Dublin it might be a nice idea if we all stayed at his place. It would be more relaxing and we’d save on hotel rooms, so Trev and I agreed.

  As I was about to start unpacking my bags, Joe came into the room and said, ‘Are you wearing a baseball cap tomorrow night for the gig?’

  ‘Yeah, probably, haven’t made up my mind yet.’

  ‘Check out the cabinet,’ he said. ‘Just grab one if you want.’

  I opened the doors to the large cabinet in my bedroom and blinked at the sight of about fifty baseball caps in every colour and design imaginable. I spent about fifteen minutes trying on different ones. Then Joe came back into the room with a leather cowboy hat in his hand.

  ‘What do you think to this?’ he asked. It wasn’t something I saw myself wearing for a show . . . but I didn’t want to offend him so I said, ‘Actually Joe, I always preferred playing the Indian when I was a kid.’

  ‘No, you prat,’ he said, ‘read it.’ He handed me the hat and I saw that on its rim was written ‘Just go for it, kid. Cheers, Woody Woodmansey.’

  ‘Where did you get this?’ I asked.

  ‘I queued up with two of my mates after watching you in concert with U-Boat at the Top Rank in Sheffield, in 1976. We had a chat and you were really encouraging and you signed my hat for me and I’ve kept it ever since.’

  This really touched me, especially the fact that he still had it all these years later.

  The gigs had been going so well that Joe had the idea of recording the show at the Olympia. He had the gear at his place and arranged for it to be brought to the venue. We were so happy with the result we decided to go in to Bow Lane Studios while we were in Dublin and record four more songs, including ‘All the Young Dudes’, which Joe said was his favourite song in the whole world.

  The evening after our show Joe, Phil, Trev and I went back to the Olympia to watch Bowie. His people got us the royal box and as Bowie walked on Joe and I were leaning on the rail, looking at him. He glanced in our direction and gave us a friendly nod.

  I’d never sat in the audience watching a Bowie concert; my only previous experience of him performing live was when I was actually on stage with him. It was electrifying. He didn’t have a rock band with him, as such, and the musicians didn’t create the same effect that we’d created as the Spiders, but it was just as powerful. He was a charismatic frontman with complete control over his audience. He could create any effect he wanted, and it made me realize yet again what a true artist he was. He was unique.

  We flew back to England the next morning, and travelled up to Hull, where Maggi Ronson had organized another concert to raise money for the Mick Ronson Memorial Stage in Queens Gardens. Dick Decent joined us on keyboards. Many of the artists were the same as at the first memorial but there was the addition of a Japanese rock band called Yellow Monkey, who had even brought 600 of their Japanese fans with them. The Saturday night concert was at the Hull Arena, and all the bands seemed to be on form that night, no doubt encouraged by being in Mick’s home town. The audience response was fantastic.

  The recording we’d made in Dublin was released in June 2001 as Cybernauts Live, a limited edition album available in Japan only, on Universal Music. Earlier we’d talked about the fact that we needed a name for the band and the album. We were driving to one of the gigs one day and talking about Dr Who and the Cybermen when a truck overtook us. Emblazoned on the back was the word Cybernaut . . . and we all laughed and said, ‘That’s really spooky . . . That’s got to be the name for the band.’ It was a sign.

  Sales in Japan were healthy enough for us to be offered a few dates over a two-week period and so in 2001 we left for Tokyo. The audiences were a mix of Leppard, Bowie and Spiders fans and the show went down brilliantly every night. While we were there we had the opportunity to record ‘Panic in Detroit’, ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ and ‘Time’, which were finished off in California and Dublin for an internet-only release called The Further Adventures of the Cybernauts.

  On one of our nights off in Tokyo we decided that, as we were in the home of karaoke, we had to try it out. Our two Japanese translators booked us into one of the best karaoke clubs, which was only about eighty yards from the hotel. It was a great night and a brilliant way to relax, singing songs we knew and many we just about knew. We’d agreed that everyone in our party should have a turn, whether or not they could sing. Our two translators tried to wriggle out of it but we told them it was a matter of honour, that it would be considered disrespectful if they didn’t join in. They reluctantly agreed to sing together.

  They chose that old karaoke favourite ‘The Final Countdown’ and were doing quite well until Joe nudged me. ‘Watch this,’ he said. There was a key change control under the desk which Joe proceeded to turn up. This meant our two Japanese friends now had to sing the next verse in a higher register, which they almost managed. But Joe didn’t stop there, turning the knob further and further, the key getting higher and higher. By about the third chorus their faces were bright red and you could see the veins standing out on their foreheads as they strained to reach the notes. It had become increasingly funny as the song went on and by the end the entire band was rolling around on the floor holding our sides from laughing so much.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, don’t do it any more, we can’t take it,’ I said to Joe.

  We stood up and gave the Japanese guys a round of applause and admitted what Joe had done, which they took in good spirits.

  Most of us had been drinking sake at the club, but no one seemed drunk until we left and stepped out into the warm evening air. Trevor asked if anyone wanted to join him in a taxi back to the hotel as he didn’t think he could walk very far.

  ‘Trev, that’s the hotel,’ I said, pointing to it across the roundabout directly in front of us.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not it, it’s miles from here.’

  We all tried to convince him but he was determined to hail a cab. The rest of us strolled across the road and arrived at the hotel minutes later, just as Trev’s cab pulled up next to us.

  ‘I thought you weren’t getting a taxi,’ he said as he got out.

  ‘We didn’t, we walked,’ we told him. It then dawned on him what had happened . . .

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he groaned, ‘it’s just cost me $15.’

  The perfect way to round off a great night.

  My youngest son Dan and my oldest son Nick both play drums – although I’d made a point of never encouraging them to become drummers, after hearing a cautionary tale from a friend. Geoff Appleby, the bass player in the Hunter Ronson band and one of the original bass players in the Rats, had two kids and lived in Hull. Geoff was a frustrated lead guitarist, and wanted his son to play lead guitar. His son was quite keen so Geoff bought him a guitar for his eleventh birthday. Geoff would hear his son practising in his bedroom and if the guitar was out of tune or he was playing the wrong chords, he couldn’t help taking the instrument off the boy and showing him what to do.

  ‘One day,’ he told me, ‘I went into his room to correct something and Shane threw the guitar against the wall and smashed it to bits. I was totally shocked but when I thought about it I realized I’d been the interfering dad.’

  A short while later Geoff’s wife, Moira, had asked him if he was coming to his daughter’s piano recital at the school. ‘I didn’t even know she played piano; she was really good and had just passed a high grade!’

  The moral to this story for me was ‘don’t interfere’. I’d be really pl
eased if any of my sons wanted to be a drummer but it should be their choice, and I’d answer any questions they had about drums or drumming but leave it at that. When Nicky was small he would watch me practising at home for a few minutes and ask questions like, ‘What is that thing called that you play with your left foot?’ I’d say, ‘It’s a hi-hat’ and give him a quick demo, after which he’d walk away quite happy and continue playing with his toys. Much as I wanted to show him how to hold the sticks and play, if one of my older relations had tried to do that to me when I was a kid I would have thrown the sticks away.

  Then June came in one day and told me that Nick had asked if she knew anyone who could give him drum lessons. Somehow he hadn’t made the connection that Dad could teach him. To be honest, all I did was show him a couple of simple beats and he took to it like a duck to water. He now has his own jazz fusion band called Emanative and he’s a great drummer.

  As for Dan, when he was eleven he watched me do a solo at a festival in front of a couple of hundred people, which went down really well. He came up to me and said that he wanted to go up on the stage and play a drum solo. I stared at him blankly, because as far as I knew he’d never even sat at a drum kit before or expressed any interest in the drums. I didn’t want to knock his confidence, though, so I said, ‘It’s not up to me, Danny; we’ll need to ask the promoter, because he decides who plays.’

  He ran off, found the promoter and came back saying, ‘I’m on after this band!’

  Now June and I were panicking. Did he think that you just sat at a drum kit and a solo magically happened? We couldn’t face being in the hall so we found a side door where we could watch the stage from outside. Dan walked on, cool as you like, and played a 4/4 beat. The audience started singing ‘We Will Rock You’ and he added drum fills. June and I couldn’t believe our eyes and went back in, clapping along with everybody else, the very proud parents.

  Afterwards I asked him how he did it, and he said, ‘I’ve been playing in my bedroom, hitting my legs with sticks. I just figured I could do it.’

  I thought it was incredible – six months later, I’d ask him how to play a part by Nine Inch Nails or someone, and he’d teach it to me. He can listen to a beat and get it instantly.

  By 2006 I was mainly concentrating on session work. Martin Smith, who had been the lead guitarist with U-Boat, had a recording studio called the Garage close to where we lived and he would often call me to do stuff. A lot of it was music for commercials and soundtracks for film and TV, with sessions for the occasional band or solo artist.

  I had kept up the ‘solo’ drum performances at small local festivals like ‘Battle of the Bands’ and ‘Say No to Drugs’. All three of my boys were into cutting-edge artists like DJ Krush, DJ Shadow as well as hip hop and electronic music. My middle son, Joe, was DJing in London clubs. They were continually playing new music to me which definitely influenced me and broadened my tastes.

  I suggested to Dan and Nick that we get together and create some instrumental tracks based solely on drums and percussion and it was a real joy to be playing drums with two of my sons. We’ve played together live in the UK and USA – including an appearance at the Womad Festival where we had great fun trying to get three drum kits across a very muddy site and onto the stage – and even recorded an album called Future Primitive under the name 3-D. The album fused traditional drum rhythms with electronic samples and live instruments, drawing on influences as diverse as tribal, Latin, jazz and funk.

  I’d stayed in touch with Ken Scott ever since we recorded the Bowie albums and in 2007 he asked if I’d take part in his new project. Sonic Reality, a sounds sampling company in the US, wanted him to create a package of drum samples called ‘The Ken Scott Collection, EpiK DrumS’, featuring the drummers he had worked with during his career as a producer. I told him I’d love to do it.

  It was typical of Ken that he wanted to meticulously recreate the exact conditions and equipment originally used by the drummers involved. My silver-sparkle Ludwig kit from the Bowie era had mysteriously disappeared after that last Hammersmith concert. I did occur to me while writing this chapter that maybe Steve Jones had made a second visit to the Odeon after that farewell gig, and maybe he has another confession to make to clear his conscience completely – but I’m sure he would have mentioned it during that LA radio interview.

  Ross Garfield, who has a company in LA that supplies kits to drummers, managed to find a vintage kit that was a duplicate of my old one and even got hold of all the same skins I had used in those Bowie recordings. Meanwhile, Ken managed to locate a studio called Emblem, in Calabasas, LA, that had the same Trident A Range desk (only thirteen were ever made) that he’d had in the studio originally, so we were all set.

  As we worked we couldn’t help recalling the original recording sessions and how we had tuned the drums and used whatever was available at the time to eliminate any unwanted tones or odd ringing sounds, using masking tape to stick cigarette packets or pieces of tissue paper to various skins. This time around, though, we were both more experienced and I was able to eliminate unwanted tones through better tuning and only the odd piece of masking tape. The drums really did sound exactly the same as they had all those years ago. As my style had obviously developed since that time, Ken had me play along with the tracks from the Bowie albums so that I could reproduce what I’d done, and this was recorded for the samples. So now any artist or producer wanting that sound and style as part of their own music could use Ken’s program to achieve it, without all the blood, sweat and tears we had gone through creating it. And it preserved it as part of rock ’n’ roll history.

  I also did a project with Ken in LA for movie director Steven Soderbergh, a soundtrack for a film that has not materialized . . . so far. Steven had specifically asked for the drum sound and style that was on Ziggy so Ken had said to him, ‘Well, as a matter of fact . . .’

  My parents finally reconciled themselves to the fact that I was a drummer and eventually stopped asking me if I was going to get a proper job. Throughout the late eighties we kept in touch regularly by phone and I would pop back to Driffield now and then. I even went on a few fishing trips with my dad who had definitely mellowed. During one of these he said if he had to raise a family again he would probably do it a lot differently, and thought he’d been too tough as a father. Knowing him, this was his way of trying to make up, which we did. My parents had both passed away by the early 2000s which meant that they didn’t have to suffer the death in 2010 of my sister Pamela. That was a really dark time for me. There had been a period of some years when she and I weren’t in touch, because she stayed up north and I was always down in Sussex or touring abroad. Four years before she died, we became close again and I spent some time in Yorkshire with her and my youngest son, who she loved, just catching up. I realized that there had been a big hole in both our lives as a result of this distance and getting to know her husband and her kids better was really nice.

  She told me that she clearly remembered the day I left Driffield to go and live with Bowie in London. She was fourteen at the time, and was watching out of the window as I walked off down the road. We’d been close when we were kids and now she didn’t know when she’d see me again. She didn’t want me to leave – but she didn’t communicate that at the time, and I guess I was so wrapped up in myself and my plans to become a rock star that I didn’t notice how she felt.

  Pamela died when she and her husband were visiting Madeira on a walking holiday. It was the first time she’d left England. A month’s worth of rain fell in a matter of hours, and their taxi was swept away in a torrent. Pamela’s husband managed to get her out of the taxi and onto safe ground, but then he was pulled away by the water. He was dragged out of the floodwater about a mile away and taken to hospital by his rescuers. Pamela’s body was found later; the whole area where she had been standing had been swept away as well. It was a terrible thing to happen.

  I worked with Trevor again early in 2013, getting him in to pl
ay bass on a week’s worth of sessions that I was doing. We’d always had a natural affinity, getting an amazing sound without even thinking about it, but we didn’t know if that feeling would still be there. It was, immediately. And, as ever, when we worked together we had to make an effort not to sit up all night just chatting. We still called each other nearly every week to catch up, something I think we both looked forward to.

  During these sessions he told me that he had to go for a medical checkup when he got back to Hull, because he thought he might be anaemic. He called me up a couple of days later and told me the awful news that he had pancreatic cancer. He had surgery to remove some of it, and then he had chemotherapy, but it made him feel worse. The next thing I heard was that he was taking some tablets in place of the chemo, but they were making him feel terrible.

  ‘Maybe you should be on a lower dose?’ I said.

  He went to see the doctors and they told him that he was indeed on too high a dosage, and reduced it. I wondered what the hell they were playing at.

  He and I talked a lot through that period, but in May he went downhill really fast. After a few days of being seriously ill, he was gone. He was only sixty-two. It hit me hard. His wife, Shelly, told me that Bowie had rung him a couple of days before he died and said some really nice things to him and I was glad about that. I was also glad I was able to say a few words at his funeral up in Yorkshire, even if I only just got through it and ended up breaking down at one point.

  I thought of Mick and Trevor when I found myself on stage the next year, at the Latitude festival, playing ‘Five Years’ and ‘Ziggy Stardust’. I was there thanks to Tom Wilcox, the financial director of the ICA. As part of their 2012 Bowiefest he’d asked me to do a two-hour interview in front of a live audience, which would cover the ‘cultural impact of the Ziggy Stardust period and my contribution to it’. I jokingly said to him, ‘After that, what are we going to talk about for the next hour and fifty-five minutes!’ As it turned out, I really enjoyed the event and agreed to be interviewed for another ICA outing at Latitude, this time by Miranda Sawyer. Tom had also put a band of musicians together to cover songs from those four albums, including Steve Norman of Spandau Ballet and Clem Burke, the drummer from Blondie, both of whom were fans of Bowie’s early albums. They asked me to join them as a special guest for a couple of songs, and I really enjoyed myself. In fact, it was incredibly difficult standing at the side of the stage watching Clem playing all my drum parts to a dozen other Bowie songs during the set.