Around
the beginning of February, the group
left the UK for a tour of America
supporting Siouxsie And The Banshees.
The group say that they really enjoyed
the tour for the effect it had on them
to dispense with the trivialities of
setting up for a gig and simply get up
on stage and play. The pressure of being
a headline act was off them, and
consequently, their sets were often
shortened to just 40 minutes.
To
coincide with the tour Polygram released
'Welcome To The Cheap Seats' as a single
in America - for which a rare appearance
as musical guests on the popular David
Letterman late-night chat show programme
was secured. With the other members not
wishing to appear due to an excessive
intake of alcohol the night before,
Miles performed the track with the
in-house group. Feeling that the track,
at around 2½ minutes, was too short the
backing band fleshed it out a bit with
additional instrumental breaks and vocal
assistance. Despite being regarded
as an excellent rendition of the track,
footage of the performance has never
been seen in the UK and a soundclip did
not emerge on the Internet until 2005.
Martin Gilks, upon hearing he could have
earned an appearance fee of £150 by
being on the show that day, was reported
to have expressed more than a little
regret.
Whilst
on the tour, the band also played their
own headlining dates during gaps in the
Banshees' touring schedule. Due to many
of their fans being unable to see them
as a result of the prohibitive 21+
licensing restrictions in many of the
venues that Siouxsie played, the band
arranged a series of gigs held at record
store car parks, including one at Tower
Records in California.
NEW YORK RITZ, FEBRUARY 1992
The Ritz show is two-thirds
of the way through The
Wonder Stuff's support tour
with Siouxsie And The
Banshees and, although the
cabalistic hordes of wannabe
witches may not be the
perfect Stuffy audience,
Miles and Co.'s
Goth-grabbing tactics appear
to be working well. No
Sisters Of Mercy cover
versions for these boys, no
sir. The Stuff get 40
minutes to poach punters,
and they go for the hard,
fast and right-between-the
eyes approach.
'Red Berry Joy Town' and 'A
Wish Away' have already
flashed past at full
throttle before Miles finds
a moment to politely inquire
"How the fuck are you?" By
the time 'Circlesquare' and
'Cartoon Boyfriend' have
beamed past, the wedge of
generic rock lads down the
front are well into their
human volleyball 'bodyswimming'
act.
Maybe it's not having the
pressure of carrying the
whole evening, but the Stuff
seem especially focused and
relaxed. Gilks, dapper in
pale blue knee-length
shorts, nonchalantly flicks
around the drum kit.
Clifford, dapper in black
shorts, bounces with the
bass lines. Treece and Bell,
dapper in long trousers,
trade banjo lines and gnarly
riffs. Hunt, also dapper, in
a black windcheater-esque
jacket, suggestive of a man
who's just got off his
bicycle and popped in out of
the rain, hits all the right
notes, and keeps the verbals
down to the odd jolly jibe.
"I've got one piece of
advice for you tonight," he
tells a hushed hall in
presidential tones. "Just
stop buying records by The
Farm. They don't get any
better. They just stay
consistently shit."
Oddly, there is not a single
dissenting voice raised.
With the entire venue united
by a shared Farmophobia, the
Stuffies power on through
the crème-de-la-crème of
their back catalogue,
harvesting eyeliner victims
by the song. 'Golden Green',
'Size Of A Cow' and 'Don't
Let Me Down, Gently' are
delivered with enough
ebullience to thaw out the
iciest of Ice Queens.
'Donation', with Hunt
yawping "motherfuckers"
through a megaphone and
jigging like a boxer, is
fiery enough to squeeze
juice out of Ice-T.
As they turn their
collective heel on the
spotlights, the
Siouxsie-ettes in the
balcony are starting to
fiddle with their 'Stiff
Stuff' clogged hair, and
wondering whether a nice
clean 'bob cut' like Miles'
might not be a good idea.
The Anti Nowhere League's 'I
Fuck Sheep' is still the
best-selling 'button' on The
Ritz's badge stall, but
there's a new one saying
'Miles Lives!' which is
starting to do good
business.
Roger Morton, New Musical
Express |
Back
in the UK, 'Welcome To The Cheap Seats -
"The Motion Picture" video' was
released. Filmed as a documentary about
the group (spanning the period between
June 1990 to November 1991), it featured
the videos for the singles released from
'Never Loved Elvis' plus live tracks,
behind-the-scenes banter, interviews,
and some previously (officially)
unreleased material such as 'Room 512',
'Sing The Absurd', The Jam's 'That's
Entertainment' and an extract of
Steppenwolf's 'The Pusher'.
With
the success of their third album and the
popularity gained from a string of
successful singles and concert dates,
the video went straight into the Number
1 position in the UK video charts.
Initial plans were for the video to
feature more live performances and
interviews, but these were cut out prior
to final mastering of the movie and
opportunities to see tracks such as
those recorded at the Minsthorpe High
School gig were lost. Although
artwork proofs for the longer version of
the video exist, it is doubtful whether
any copies of the actual video itself
were produced.
If the
group had got their way, this
chart-topping video would also have been
joined by a budget-priced album of
tracks taken from the documentary
including live, rare and re-recorded
material. Unfortunately, Polydor weren't
so keen on the idea, preferring to keep
the work back for use on future album or
single releases and choosing instead to
simply use the 'Welcome To The Cheap
Seats' single as promotion for the video
and 'Never Loved Elvis' album.
It was whilst on their tour of the States,
watching the success of their new
long-playing video from afar, that Miles
awoke in his bunk whilst in Newhaven
after one booze-fuelled night to find
himself - or rather his underpants -
covered in blood. "There was a ludicrous
feeling of pride," he recalls. "I
thought, I'm a real boozer now! What
must've been a pint of blood was all
over them. I thought, Jesus, boy, this
is too much plonk - your arse can't cope
with it and has exploded." The incident
led to Miles penning a new track
entitled 'A Great Drinker', also aimed
as a tribute to the American cult poet &
author, Charles Bukowski. Miles' love
affair with the writings of Bukowski -
whose most famous work was the 1987 film
Barfly which starred Mickey Rourke as
Bukowski's alter-ego, Henry Chianski -
had developed after NME writer, and
Wonder Stuff fan, James Brown had given
Hunt one of his (Bukowski's) novels. The
work of Bukowski led to Miles
discovering John Fante and both of these
authors would eventually turn out to be
the inspiration behind another song,
'Hank and John' during which Miles
namechecks titles of some Chinaski/Bukowski
books - [Dreams From] Bunker Hill, Dago
Red, Bring Me Your Love, Ham On Rye and
Barfly.
Prior
to their Atlanta gig, Tommy Roe turned
up wanting to join in when the group
sang his song, 'Dizzy'. Miles: "We had
to, like, decline, 'cos it's hard enough
to get across what we do in 40 minutes
without confusing everybody totally with
Tommy Roe." On initially meeting the
Stuffies however, Roe was heard to
enquire "where's this Vic Reeves fella?"
Hearing that Vic was actually a
comedian, Roe seemed to take great
offence - "so he thinks my song's
funny?".
Following their return from America in
March, the
group made their first UK appearance of
the year. Leicester
University was the venue for a tribute
gig for an ex-roadie, Spike, who had
earlier died in a car crash in Germany.
The gig was billed as featuring the
Milltown Brothers, Crazyhead, The Wonder
Stuff and A Very Special Guest - the
results of which can be heard on the
bootleg album 'The Very Special Guest'.
The 'very special guest' referred to was
Loz Hardy of Kingmaker who filled in for
Malc who had been taken ill with the
flu. Called up only a few days days
before the gig in front of a thousand
people, aside from a brief soundcheck
this was the first time Loz had played
with the group and the other members of
Kingmaker all stood in the front row of
the crowd hurling abuse! It was during
the soundcheck for the gig that the
group premiered a new track for those
able to attend, an acoustic number
called 'Cabin Fever'.
The
Summer of 1992 found the group
playing at various festivals in Europe,
and the band confirmed a headline
appearance at The Reading Festival.
Being a headlining act at the Reading
Festival should have been one of the
high points in the band's career, but
was not the case. Malc remembers how the
gig felt to him, "We got away with it,
but that's not what you go to do. Going
on so late with no soundcheck, the
pressure of headlining, and having to
entertain the crowd for an hour and a
half, it's very difficult. At some
stages you could tell the crowd were
losing the sound." However, Miles
recollection of the event was that "it
was a thrill to do - I thought the
audience were absolutely fantastic. I
was happy with the gig, but maybe that
was because I was drunk." Indeed, in
Miles' own words at a later date, 'A Wish Away' "was
shit" and he apologised for "one
of the most incredibly poor performances
in rock". They did, however, give
a taste of things to come when they
publicly aired new track 'Cabin Fever'
at the festival, though this version saw
more of a full group contribution
compared to the version soundchecked at
the Leicester gig.
To
coincide with the 20th anniversary of
the festival the group also donated a track
to 'Reading: The Indie Album', a
compilation album featuring tracks by artists who had
appeared at the festival. As the group
didn't feel happy to follow the lead of
other artists on the album and use a
previously released track, they
recorded a new track - 'Room 512'. An
acoustic version of the tracks, played
and sung by Miles, was originally featured in the
'Welcome To The Cheap Seats' video
although Martin Gilks appears onscreen
playing the guitar having been taught
the chords to the track only a few hours
previously.
Shortly
after the Reading Festival, and to commemorate the 40th
anniversary of the Spastics Society, the NME (in conjunction with the charity)
released an album featuring modern-day
artists covering a selection of number one
singles from the past 40 years. The Stuffies elected to cover 'Cuz I Luv
You', a track which originally reached
number one on October 30th 1971 when
recorded by fellow Midlanders, Slade.
However, when they began to rehearse the
track Miles found he had difficulty
getting the lyrics right so he contacted
Slade's Dave Hill who faxed over the
correct lyrics to Miles in the studio.
"It was done the same way we do any
cover version," Miles explained, "We
play the seven-inch on the multi-track
in the studio and then copy it. When we
did 'That's Entertainment' we even
copied the mistakes on the drums."
The Slade cover also features on a
sampler for the album, 'Ruby Trax Gems'.
With
the festivals over and work on the new
studio finally finished (once an
air-conditioning unit had been installed
after they found out that it became a
sauna in hot weather!) the group spent
time demoing new material for their
fourth album. Sessions were interrupted
only briefly by an appearance, at
London's Town & Country Club show on
October 10th for XFM Radio. The
station, partly owned by The Cure's Robert
Smith, were attempting to provide a
specialist radio station for the
capital and, initially, secured a four
week trail broadcast to gauge audience
responses and ratings verdicts to see
whether the station would be viable.
The group performed a short thirty-five minute
set on the final night of the
station's four week broadcast. Admission (by T-shirt only) cost £7
and the band were supported by, amongst
others, The Frank & Walters. The set
opened with 'Radio Ass Kiss', premiered
three new songs plus 'Cabin Fever' and,
as part of the encore, Miles co-hosted a
celebrity raffle with comedian Sean
Hughes before the band closed the show
with 'Don't Let Me Down, Gently'.
Having
finished work on their last album in
1991, of which almost half of the tracks
had been written around 18 months
previous when Rob Jones was still part
of the group, the group had a massive
collection of subjects and ideas that could be put
to music - not forgetting the tracks
that had been planned for the abandoned 'Welcome To The Cheap Seats' soundtrack
album. As a result, the
group came up with over 30 tracks that
they considered to be worthy of
recording sparking rumours that the next
album would be released as a double album? "It's a
terribly sort of dinosaurish thing to do
really," rued Miles in an interview
in Guitarist
magazine. "I think music like ours has a
short attention span, so to ask anybody
for more than 40 minutes of their time
is a bit much. We're old fashioned in
that way; a single should be like two
and a half / three minutes and an album
should have 12 tracks. That's the rules,
and we stick to them."
After
trying out all of their ideas, the group
moved to the Greenhouse Studios in
London to begin recording tracks for the
new album with Pat Collier, producer of
'The Eight Legged Groove Machine' and 'Hup',
back at the production controls. Partway
through the proceedings, Miles briefly
took time out to appear on BBC Radio
Five's Fantastic Voyage - a radio
version of the cult 1970's film in which a
crew in a submarine were miniaturised
and injected into a human body to travel
around and find out more about it.
During the broadcast, Miles performed a
solo rendition of 'Sing The Absurd'.
In
April 1993, Miles gave an interview on
BBC Radio 1FM's Evening Session
programme in which he hinted that the
group were planning on making keyboard
player Pete Whittaker a full-time member
as he was now becoming an important part
of the group both in the studio and on
stage. He also bought along a tape to
the interview for broadcast on-air which
contained an exclusive track that final
mixing had
only recently been finished, 'I Wish
Them All Dead' - an attack at the Man
Boy Love Association, a paedophile ring
in the US.
By the
end of May, the recording sessions were
finished with just a few final mixes
remaining. To try out the new
material, the group played some European
venues where they appeared alongside
Hothouse Flowers & Leonard Cohen at the
Rock In Vienna Festival, Anthrax, Rage
Against The Machine & Suicidal
Tendencies at the Berlin Rock Festival
and Status Quo at their Le Zenith gig in
Paris. They then returned to the studio
in mid-June for more mixing work. At
first they brought in Matt Wallace, who
had previously worked with Faith No
More, but things didn't work out as
hoped and the group eventually opted for
Mark Stent.
Within
a couple of months, the album was
completed with just the final
tracklisting and
running order to be decided upon. This
was eventually determined as a result of
the group, their management, Polydor
representatives and close friends
writing down what their ideal track
listings from a list (and tape) of all
the tracks recorded and then choosing the
most popular tracks from the responses.
Keen not to waste those that didn't make
it onto the album, it was decided that
any singles released from the album
would come out as four track
cross-format EP's with the single title
track included alongside three (or more
in some cases) of the tracks.
The group
began preparing for a September release
for the album, with a single to come out
shortly beforehand when, on July
30th,
it was
announced that Rob
Jones had been found dead in his New York
apartment at the age of 29. Despite the ill-feeling
and animosity that had developed between
the group members, this was a double
tragedy for Miles as there had already
been a death in his family only days
before.
Though
they hadn't seen or heard much of The
Bass Thing since his departure at the
end of 1989, they hadn't forgotten him
completely and there was always
something that would spring up from out
of nowhere and remind them of him. A
book called 'Rock Talk' by Jim Driver
collected together stories from various
groups about tour experiences and Miles
contributed a chapter taken from one of
his US tour diaries in which he had
included the line "it was Bob's birthday
yesterday, but I never said anything to
anyone 'cause I didn't know how they
felt about it."
WONDER STUFF BASSMAN ROB
DIES, AGED 29
A Midland pop star has died
suddenly in America. Rob
Jones, a founder member of
rock group The Wonder Stuff,
is believed to have suffered
a heart attack. He was just
29. Jones is not thought to
have been suffering any
illness and was attempting
to get over the break up of
his marriage to American
wife Jessica.
The bass guitarist, from
Kingswinford, near Dudley,
had moved to New York in
1990 after quitting the
group. Jones formed The
Wonder Stuff in Stourbridge
in March 1986 with singer
Miles Hunt, guitarist Malc
Treece and drummer Martin
Gilks. He played on two
albums and four Top 40 hits,
including 'Who Wants To Be
The Disco King?' and 'Don't
Let Me Down, Gently'.
Jones, better known as 'The
Bass Thing', provided the
backbone of The Wonder
Stuff's early sound and was
a cult figure amongst their
fans. Singer Miles Hunt
recalled the night Jones
finally left the band after
a gig in December 1989. "The
final night was sad. I
remember leaving the bar of
the Holiday Inn in
Birmingham and using one of
my friends as a crutch. I
was quite tearful and so was
Bob. He stayed up till 6am,
got a lift to Heathrow and
went to America. I never saw
him again."
Jones settled down in New
York and attempted to form a
band called The Bridge And
Tunnel Crew. Despite plans
to tour and to bring the
group to the UK, the whole
enterprise fell apart with
the deterioration of Jones'
marriage.
The Wonder Stuff release a
new album at the end of
September.
Gurbir Dhillon, Sunday
Mercury |
Although little news had
come out about Rob
since he left for New York, having cut off
contact with his family and most of his
friends, Rob and Jessica's songwriting
had eventually led to them forming a
group called The Bridge And Tunnel Crew.
With Rob on lead vocals and rhythm
guitar, the group had been preparing to
approach US record companies to get a
recording contract and had recorded an
excellent demo tape. Sadly, the
relationship between Rob and Jessica had
started to sour resulting in them
splitting up earlier in the year driving
Rob into depression although they still
remained close friends. With at
least one label expressing an interest
in them, Rob contacted a small number of the
Wonder Stuff's road crew telling them
that his group had been given a slot at
the legendary CBGB's in New York and
asking them if they could get any
UK record labels interested in attending
the gig in order to try to pick up wider
interest for the group. Sadly,
with the passing of the driving force
behind the group, the labels withdrew
their interest and the tracks that were
recorded have never been heard outside
of Rob's close family and friends.
Whilst
Rob's mother organised a small service
in the UK for his family and friends,
Jessica, as his legal next-of-kin,
arranged for Rob to be cremated in New
York. His ashes were scattered at
a number of locations where she felt Rob
would have been at home - close to the
Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, near
the Parachute Drop at Coney Island and,
bizarrely, in a flowerbed by the
swimming pool at Tammy Wynette's house
as Rob was a big fan of her music.
As Rob's time with the group had drawn
to an end, he had made no secret of his
dislike for the UK and how he had felt
that America, and New York in
particular, had started to feel more
like home for him.
At the
end of August, The Wonder Stuff played
an exclusive gig at Birmingham's Irish
Centre for members of their fan club.
This would be the first time that they
had played most of their new material to a
home audience though it wasn't until
nearly three-quarters of the way through
the set that Miles mentioned Rob,
dedicating the track 'Piece Of Sky' to
him. Although never intended to be a
tribute track for anyone, the lyrics now
seemed so much more poignant and many of
the fans regard this is Bob's track. The
majority of this gig can be heard on a
bootleg CD, 'A Tribute To A Bass Thing',
though the gig was never meant to be a
tribute performance.