Shadowplay, Part Two

Shadowplay part two then...

So, Shadowplay was left with just the bare bones of me and Paul then.  We'd got a great rapport between us by this time, and I was learning sort of quickly on the guitar.  It had started with learning some chords and basic strumming technique, and then I starting to learn picking and scales.

We wrote 'What Can I Do?' together at his place, his music and my lyrics.  I'd go around to his to keep learning guitar and some rudimentary bits on the piano as well.  We also listened to a lot of music there.  We both loved Queen, he especially liked the rockier numbers.  He introduced me to Metallica's Black Album.  I had heard bits before that I liked, such as Nothing Else Matters and Enter Sandman.  In fact, I learnt Nothing Else Matters at that time, which helped with learning picking techniques.  I'd heard Guns 'n' Roses before as well, but he got me to love them.

Contrast this with the fact that he gave me a love of jazz, because he liked Miles Davis and John Scofield.  I miss putting Kind Of Blue on to go to sleep to at night - such bliss.  So many greats from Miles Davis, such as Sketches Of Spain and In A Silent Way.  He played me the song Birdland by Weather Report, and I immediately went out and bought three of their albums sort of hearing of Jaco Pastorius, but not knowing what albums to get really.  I bought Weather Report, Heavy Weather, and Black Market.

I introduced him to a lot of disco and soul music, especially Chic and Sly & The Family Stone.  Basically we turned each other on to different music.  I've always been open minded when it comes to music, and I still love it when I discover something new that grabs my attention.

Paul heard of an acoustic jam night at The Portland Arms in Mansfield Woodhouse on a tuesday night, and suggested that we both go there and do a couple of numbers.  I'll look at the books sometime that I kept, but I think we did four numbers.  These were, I believe, What Can I Do, Things You Do (a Jim Annison song that I altered the melody and chord structure to), Nothing Else Matters, and I Used To Love Her (Guns 'n' Roses).  I think that's what we did anyway.  We played at every one of these then until they stopped doing them.

One time Paul was ill, so I bit the bullet, took my acoustic along with my harmonica and harmonica harness.  I played my songs Wasted Times Wasted Years and What The Hell's Going On, as well as Eight Miles High, Eleanor Rigby, and Closer To The Heart.

At the last of these we played probably about 12 songs with the landlord joining us up on stage.  We had grown quickly.  I couldn't play every song, so resorted to tambourine.  Over these acoustic gigs I'd gone from playing tambourine on What Can I  Do and I Used To Love Her, to now being the rhythm guitarist on them.  Not a major step I suppose, but that was only over a period of about eight weeks or so I think.

By late October Paul brought Tim Betts in on drums and Andy Coppin on bass.  We weren't gigging then though, except for mine and Paul's acoustic sets at The Portland Arms.  We tried rehearsals and were teaching Andy to play bass.  Unfortunately Andy wasn't getting the hang of it very quickly, and Paul decided to let him go and asked me to take over using a bass that Tim had - a gorgeous tortoise shell Fender Jazz style copy.  Eventually I bought my own - a Washburn B something or other, which was eventually replaced by my having both a Hohner Steinberger and a real Fender Jazz.  The latter got stolen a couple of laters later from a gig, and the Steinberger was sold to someone before the loss of the Jazz.

Me and Paul had already been into the recording studio to do four songs acoustically.  I don't know why I didn't mention this sooner.  We recorded I Used To Love Her, Things You Do, Axe Blues (a fun piece that Paul wrote) and Rock Around The Clock.  The last song featured my granddad Tom Mountney on harmonica.  Me and Paul had been going around to granddad's for a while playing songs with him, and having so much fun.  We thought it would be nice to record a song with him.  We recorded at Bandwagon Studios in Mansfield.  Four songs recorded and mixed in one eight-hour session.  I played harmonica on Things You Do as well as rhythm guitar.  I'm glad I recorded with my granddad because it gives me a memory of him, and my whole family like listening to that recording of him.

The day after firing Andy on bass, the trio of me, Paul, and Tim showed up at Bandwagon and recorded two songs.  What Can I Do had an almost punky feel to it and featured Paul singing lead vocal.  Fly Free was a song of Jim Annison's that me and Paul altered the music to.  That featured me on lead vocal.  I did really well on bass, considering it was my first time playing.  The engineer for the session was Alex Searle, who kept referring to me as Freddie, because of my moustache.  I had three bass lessons from Alex I think, which included learning Thankyou by Sly & The Family Stone, Naked In The Rain by Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a couple of others.  I said how I loved Level 42 and he said how he didn't - oh well, didn't know a good thing there did he.

In November/December, we did a few gigs.  We played a full band gig at The Portland Arms, also at Stockwells (or whatever it was called then), and Tim arranged a support slot for us at The Frog & Nightgown in Worksop.  Three of us with all of our equipment in Tim's tiny Ford Fiesta.

I loved meeting the band Primary, and I got to know them well, because we talked about Prog Rock, Rush, Led Zeppelin, and all sorts of stuff.  We were doing well with the set until we got to Stairway To Heaven.  Paul started to play it and the equipment got switched off.  I'm so thankful, because I hated murdering that song with my voice.

Also in December, we went into the studio again and recorded to more songs, this time with Guy Elderfield engineering.  They were mixed in January by David Lawrence of Slaughterhouse 5.  I was actually working at Bandwagon voluntarily as an assistant to their Administrator Andrea Hall.  All those qualifications in admin, and here I am a security guard... Oh well.

While there I was sitting in on sessions and trying to learn what I could about recording.  They had 24 track reel-to-reel which had the ability for automation, but no one seemed to use it.  It was fascinating to me.  There are things that I wish I'd have tried that I know of now but didn't then, such as double tracking vocals and reverse echo, etc.  Experimentation wasn't that long in coming though.

Anyway, the December session... Paul and me got our friend Andy Mason to come with his guitar.  For the song Hope, Paul and Andy took a solo each on the six and a half minute song.  I was a song made from a chord structure I'd been playing with that we used for the verse, Paul came up with a simple but effective chorus progression, and Jim Annison wrote lyrics to fit it.  Once again I was lead singer on a set of Jim's lyrics.  Give Me An Inch was written by me and Paul, with my lyrics and mine and Paul's music - his verse and my chorus.  That song was just me, Paul & Tim.

We carried on into the new year, working on learning more songs, including me learning every Red Hot Chili Peppers album, the Appetite For Destruction album, and other stuff.  We did a second gig at Stockwells, where we met the bass player from Sham 69, who was a record scout at the time.

Tim had a friend who wanted to sing, so we tried that out.  I even remember going to Tim's for a party there were we were asked to sing, so me, Paul and Tim did Weather With You by Crowded House acapella (no music, just singing).  That was actually across from Morrisons in Mansfield Woodhouse where I am working at the moment I'm writing this - spooky.

In April Tim said he wanted to leave... And then the next stage came.

Thank you for reading, I hope it wasn't too boring.

Marv - 11th February 2011 (40 years, 2 months, and 16 days old)