FROM RAGS TO RICHES.

Or How became superstars overnight.

By Pete Frame. (First published in ZIGZAG Magazine in 1971)

A flashy title, but unfortunately (or fortunately) not true.

They didn’t have any bread when they came up to our cottage last summer.....but that didn’t appear to perturb them at all.  They just lay on the lawn, in the sun, sat on the swing, climbed the trees, enjoyed the grass, and generally did bugger all, all day..... Just like they had done the day before, and the day before that etc.,

You see, not only did they have no money, they didn’t have any instruments.  They had nothing except a common (but hazy) musical direction, the vague notion that they were a band, a gig sheet as blank as virgin Andrex, and mixed and varying feelings of optimism, enthusiasm and ambition.  Their manager John, a bloke more Falstaff than Brian Epstein (and who I suspected knew about as much about management as I did) talked vaguely about his plans, but it was abundantly evident that he had precious few concrete ideas about their future, and only a flimsy faith that they even had a future, getting through the present was enough..... We will think about the future when it comes.

The group Help Yourself, had left Famepushers along with Brinsley Schwarz, and their existence was in the balance for most of 1970. But I’m jumping the gun.  Malcolm (whose shirt when he visited us, as I recall, was no more than a vest of the type favoured by road digging gentlemen) gave a brief resume of their history when I spoke to them again recently.  ”Dave and I originally started with Sam Apple Pie, but I quit that a week or two later because of money troubles, bother amplifying the piano properly and an accumulation of other things-and I packed it in completely until this freak of nature, this whole Famepushers thing and the strange circumstances of our meeting".

He met Richard in a cosmetics factory; they weren't buying their lipstick wholesale, they worked there - humping tubs of powder around for the benefit of Strand Cosmetics, "Manufacturers of the Eylure range". Richard had come south, passed through several bands who have since hit the big-time (Working Mans Clubs), but ended up in a temporarily destitute, directionless and disillusioned state in the factory.  Their foreman just happened to be manager John, who had the idea of getting a group together within the factory.  His interviewing of job applicants was simple; those with short hair were eliminated straight away - no chance, and freaks were interrogated thus:

"So you've chosen to seek a career in cosmetics?"

"Er, yes, that's right".

"I see. Can you play drums?"

"Er, well, er, no".

"What about bass?"

"Er, no, I....."

"Thank you, goodbye.  Miss Goodbody, could you send in the next one please?"

Around this time however, John, Malcom and Richard broached their ideas to Stephen Warwick with whom John had previously collaborated on film scripts, and he agreed to finance them through his company Famepushers Ltd.  This was around October 1969 and whilst they were still looking for a bassist and a drummer, Famepushers signed up a second string, Kippington Lodge (later to become Brinsley Schwartz).

Malcolm continued: "For one reason and another Dave decided to leave Sam Apple Pie, and so we were three, and then one day we bumped into Ken in Portobello Road.  (Groovers!).  Paul, our roadie, knew him from somewhere, said "hello", and we passed by.  I asked who he was and Paul said he was a bass player he knew. 'Well, aren't we looking for a bass player', I said after about 10 minutes, when it had sunk in; and we went to see him and that was it".

Ken, an ex-journalist and veteran of many a semi-pro band (including 3 years with a bunch called Growth (?)), was pissed off with doing auditions for groups who required him to do Dread Zeppelin emulations, and joined with all haste.

So, by January 1970, they were a band, complete with manager and roadie and a comprehensive range of impressive and costly gear:

  One Vox AC30 amp (approx 900 years old),

  One set of Broadway drums,

  One Framus 12 string with a cracked neck,

  And that was all, except for Richard's old stratocaster, which they persuaded him to sell so they could eat.

They ate.... and played too, sometimes, in a one legged sort of way.

When the bread was there, they received a salary, but they couldn't get off the ground because nearly all the money was being diverted into the 'bringing Brinsley to the nation' campaign, leaving none to buy equipment.  "I’m not beefing about our treatment, because Famepushers did a lot for us.... we were just four totally unknown musicians and they paid us while we got to know each other properly.  We always thought the equipment was just around the corner - John would come in and say "it's tomorrow", or "next week, definitely", or "Stephen says it shouldn't be more than a couple of days now".  So they improvised with what they had and what they could borrow, and of necessity became a very soft, gentle band.... But Famepushers at least kept them out of the Eylure factory.

Everyone who reads Zigzag will know that last summer Dave Robinson and John Eichler carted their bands away from Famepushers (and have now formed their own management company, Down Home, with Ernie Graham and Mighty Baby also joining them).  So from then until last November, when they did their first gig (a week after Dave had procured some gear for them ), they did nothing but sit around, wait, and play together when they could.  During that time, they went into Olympic Studios one day, just to try out a few numbers and see how they came out.  Richard, having no other, was using a domestic tape recorder as an amplifier.  "But we've got all the recording apparatus here already" explained a puzzled engineer, seeing him carrying it in.

"Let's talk about management ", I ventured to John.

"No, man, don't talk to me about management".

"You didn’t know an awful lot about it when you started, did you?"

"I still don't, man".
"Well, I was going to ask you something like 'how did you accumulate this vast amount of knowledge?'".

“I didn’t, man…. I dunno…. I think that management involves being able to talk to the musician’s side and the straight side; if you can do that, you’re into management.  You’re just a mediator, as well as which, you have to keep money and all the other things which musicians aren’t capable of doing, together”.

He’s pretty good at laughing too…. A right jolly bugger.  I’m sure if the roof had collapsed he’d have emerged laughing. “Like I say, we grew up as a bunch of happy amateurs really, and I suppose we’re doing everything to get away from the Famepushers star trip, because we’re just ordinary people and not into that league at all”.

“But you’re superstars!”

“That’s just it – so many people, even on this low level, think they’re something different”. (I know what he means  - I’ve met many a “massive star”).

So anyway, last month Liberty released Help Yourself’s first album, which I fink very pleasant… Hesitant it may be, derivative it certainly is, and technically it may be slightly less than George Martin’s idea of perfection, but I like it.  Nice.  Lying, as I was, in a wretched condition listening to it, I somehow found myself thinking about an old (late fifties) hit that I used to play to death – it was called ‘Jennie Lee’ by Jan & Arnie, and was allegedly recorded in a garage. Now I ain’t exactly saying that the Help Yourself LP sounds like a garden shed job or anything, but it’s got a good feel of polish absence – a sort of uncontrived simplicity, towards, a real album, a credible, non – clinical like the economical guitar in ‘katherine’, and the way that they’ve unwittingly insinuated their character onto the record.

“What are you going to say”, I asked them, “when the reviewers inevitably start making Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield comparisons?”

“We’re going to say ‘so what?’”

They are, of course, right.  So what? A first album must reflect your influences. (Look at the way everyone put down Mott as Dylan impersonators, and now listen to the beauty of parts of their third album).  The shelves of their record collection may be top heavy with Poco, Neil Young, James Taylor, et al, but I think that’s in their favour.

What I’m really trying to say, is that for a first album, I think it’s good.

How was it recorded?  Well, most cuts have live backing tracks, recorded at second or third take, and then decorative guitar bits were added.  Vocals were usually done last of all, but some – Katherine, for instance – were done completely live.

“The whole thing was really very strange. We were so unsure of ourselves…. We had never been on the road, we didn’t know what we even sounded like, and we hadn’t even sung through a microphone before”.

Was the album just a wee bit premature, in that case?

“No, it was a necessity, and a good thing. We’d had these songs inside us nearly a year.  But I know the next album will be absurdly different – not necessarily better, but different - much more of a band thing, rather than a collection of songs which came together under adverse conditions. A lot of aspects of the record hang us up, but we’re pretty satisfied on the whole.  It holds back, but it’s a good direction finder. You see, nobody had heard us, clapped us, said ‘too much, man’ or anything - so we had no confidence.”

What about production?

“Well, in all we did about 10 days in the studio, spread over a period of several weeks around Christmas.  Basically we played and Dave Robinson sat in the box – he made a lot of suggestions, some of which we rejected, got the best sound he could form each instrument and let us get on with it”.

What about the mixing – things like deciding where each instrument should be placed on the stereo spectrum?

“Dave did all that -  we were there though, to make our suggestions…. It was very much a joint effort”. (Of that, I am sure).

Their current music is far removed from the album because, as they say, what they recorded was developed during their embryonic months.  When it was recorded, they were “hesitant and worried”, and “the whole recording trip was a paranoid experience – but we had to record to get the bread to get the equipment, so we went in with what we could scrape together.  No-one had any confidence in the equipment or themselves, so the whole thing held back considerably. Not that we’re putting the record down or that we’re ashamed of it – we think it’s really nice”.

Well, that’s the end of the article as such, but there’s something more I want to add. Help Yourself’s music is often described as “country rock”.  I don’t know how to define ‘country rock” anymore than I know (or care) where to draw the line between Cajun Rock and Swamp Rock, but I know what they mean.  Now, I was bothered, in my cynical way, by the way that the ex-Famepushers mob were gathering themselves a contrived ‘country rock’ image……. Their publicist seems to have latched onto this angle, the management call themselves ‘Down Home’, some of the musicians wear check lumberjack type shirts and work-shagged Levis, and so on.  But I needn’t have worried, because basically I know what they mean, and I know it isn’t a piece of superficial contriving or the latest line in hype.  I’m aware that Headley Down (where Help Yourself live) ain’t exactly your big wheat country, and I can appreciate the difference it has on one’s life (and music and style of creativity) if you spend a lot of time lying in the grass, looking at trees, earth, skyscraperless skylines, with clean air circulating in your lungs…. forgetting what a stone drag is the city shadow, dust, concrete and a million psychological pressures.  This is a long paragraph without a conclusion. Draw you own.

Hello and Goodbye.                        Pete.