Job Done, Tick......Tick (part 5)

We booked another studio session.  We decided we were going to bring out another single (see the introduction) and Pete Farrell set it all up for us and Paul took us up in his car.  I think he might have took us all which meant there were 6 of us.  No?  That can’t have been right.  Did Pete Farrell drive?  I’m not sure now.  I’m not going to go through the whole story so here’s my bulleted memories of the day I knocked up for the EP release.  Alas, not with the physical copy but in the PDF with the download.  

• Turning up without drums and cymbals. We were told the studio would supply the drum-kit. We didn't know Paul still had to bring cymbals. Pete Farrell looked at us as if we were idiots because we didn't know. Paul had to go back for them.
• Fatigued With Dub originally had chaotic conversation at the start but we were persuaded by Gav to edit it out. We didn’t call him Gav by the way.
• Car running out of petrol on way back and we got caught by police acting suspicious round Paul's house trying to get some petrol in car so he could get to Billingham Bottoms to fill up and take us home.
• Gav telling us that the keyboard had in the past been used by Elton John.
• Punishment of Luxury had recorded there few weeks before us and I think Tygers of Pantang. Also didn't Discharge and Tery Tranz record their records there?
• We wanted to record My Swelling Heart live but Pete Farrell and Gav persuaded us it wasn't the way, so we tried to do it studio stylee. It sounded sterile but thankfully I kept fucking it up so after a fraught session and fish and chips for our tea, Gav let us do it live.
• Paul's drumming. Gav's rock production. Tick Tick rocked. Respect. 

The only other thing I would mention about the day was Gary’s clarinet on Fatigued with Indolence.  The epitome of less is more,  just 3 notes, nothing more to add.

We were on a high.  We were always confident about our songs but this was a new sound, it was just so dynamic.  There were some embryonic talks about releasing the single.  We even had talks about what the cover would look like but it never happened and not long after I heard Richard had left the band.  He might have told Gary or we might have heard it second hand but he never told me, I can’t remember being that bothered either way.  I would imagine people were bending his ear about how great Drop were compared to the average Tick Tick but Richard was strong willed and single minded.  I don’t think he will have taken much notice of them.  It was more likely about creative freedom and wanting to do things his way.   

Before Tick Tick it looked like he had a promising musical career in front of him and in the fast moving music scene any window of opportunity of “making it” had gone and he’d spent the last year arsing about with some kids from council estates in East Middlesbrough.  He was very creative and must have felt restricted in Tick Tick.  Sitting here writing this and reading it back I realise how great it was to have Richard in the band.  And in the 3 decades since then Richard has single handedly kept the name of Tick Tick alive smouldering away in the ashes before fanning the flames back to life.  Salute.

Life Without Richard

Me, Gary and Ste went on a holiday to the South of France with my brother Ian and discussed what to do with the band.  We decided to change our name and settled on "The Maid’s Neck".   We decided the name on a whim using an adaptation of the Dadaist cut-up technique selecting the words at random from a Jean Genet book.  We would each sing our own songs and I would buy a synth for me to play.  Ste was insistent I should buy a Wasp synthesiser, they were all the rage.  He’d recently seen the German band D.A.F. and he liked the sound.  More importantly  than the music though was we all read the Dice Man by Luke Rhineheart and all bought into the idea of randomness, chance and making decisions on the roll of the dice or flick of a coin including dangerous options.  It certainly helped make some of our live shows interesting.

So we came back from holiday, raring to go and went down to Guitarzan at South Bank to buy a synth.  Thank the lord they didn’t have a restrictive Wasp (it made the sound of a wasp and nothing else).  Instead they offered me a Roland monophonic synth and demonstrated in with a state of the art sequencer.  It sounded brill, you could play tunes but also change the frequencies and bend the notes to create some strange effects.  Sounds nothing now but....back in the day.  “Sold to the man at the front with the new credit card” for a bargain bucket (not) £250!

We started again from scratch.   As a non-musician I had no interest in learning to play the synth like a conventional keyboard.  I just wanted to make weird and funny  sounds.  When Ste sang his songs I think I mainly just replicated the bass line but when Gary sang I was given freedom to play more randomly.  I certainly didn’t have any inclination to learn about music, £250 was commitment enough!

I stopped writing “proper” songs.   I started writing a basic framework and improvising around it in practice and in concert.  I’d seen Scritti Politti at the first Futurama festival improvise every other song they played and was interested in the challenge.  Sometimes it would come off and sometimes it didn’t, it was the chance I took.

Paul continued to drum great and our songs were good.  Our playing became looser, less conventional and more instinctive but based on a very strong and tight rhythm.  We played some great shows and some not so good (more later) but it always sounded at least ok.   

It didn’t last long though.  We heard a rumour at the Dovecot that Paul had decided to leave us to join Blank Frank’s new band Makaton Chat.  We know it was true.

As I said earlier we loved his drumming, no matter what went on in front of him, he just held it together so well and we practiced at his house and he had a car.  With the benefit of hindsight I can see why he left us though.  He was a skilful musician and wanted to progress but the biggest problem was he was just so different to us.  He came from a posh family and didn’t share our political views.  I also don’t think he appreciated our anarchic attitude to things.  Great cheerful lad though and plenty of happy memories though and after we got over the initial shock of him leaving there were no hard feelings.

Back to Tick Tick and Peckover

We decided to change our name back to Tick Tick and started thinking about getting a new drummer when one came our way, Peckover aged 15.  He put a postcard advertising himself for a band in Cleveland Music.  We rang him up and he was in, there was no need to audition.  He had all the qualifications he needed, his own drums, he told us he could drum, his dad had a car and he had somewhere for us to practice.  It was a workingman’s club long since demolished.  No idea what the club was called but it had one bar downstairs and a snooker room upstairs.  His dad was the steward and allowed us to practice amongst the handful of members sitting there having a (now not so) quiet pint.  It was brilliant we just practiced and then went up for a game of snooker.  Peckover wasn’t that good to be honest and we only played 2 shows with him (more later).  I remember at one practice we tried to explain one of Paul’s drum pattern and the poor lad just wasn’t getting it so his father took over and had a go before telling us it was impossible for a drummer to do what we were asking.  I told you Paul was a genius on the drums.