In the last days of 1981 we had a recording session at The Playground Studio in Camden, London. I’m still not sure how this happened, who paid for it and why… but Robert (Smith) organised it with the producer Mike Hedges who was thinking about starting up his own record label.
I felt the unique atmosphere that London has very strongly at that point in my life; the masses of people of all descriptions and the seemingly endless acres of streets, shops, museums, galleries, theatres and all else it offers made it the polar opposite to what we were used to in rural Worcestershire. I liked it. At least for a while.
It was the first time we’d been in a professional recording studio with its huge mixing desk like something that had been taken out of a spaceship and the racks of effects lit up and flickering in the subdued light. We were impressed and slightly daunted. Robert had intended to be with us but he was becoming famous, was in great demand and couldn’t make it.
One of the things that you learn with experience is that while the drums are being miked up and checked you leave it to the drummer and the engineer and get the hell out of there… as far away as possible, for as long as possible. Not knowing this, we all sat and stood around the desk trying to look interested while Nick went round his old Shaftesbury kit from the snare to bass drum, to floor tom and so on for… three or four hours while the poor engineer tried to make it not sound like hitting different sized cardboard boxes.
Eventually, with skill and patience, a decent drum sound was settle on and we were able to start playing and recording some songs. When I went into the vocal booth to record my vocals I was utterly amazed. I put on the headphones, stood in front of the microphone and I could hear my clothes; my shirt sleeve as I bent my arm. I could hear, loud, the sound of my mouth opening.
The music sounded like it never had before too. ‘The tease the tear’, ‘So this is silence’, ‘And also the trees’ and the one I enjoyed the most - ‘Out of the moving life of circles’, which sounded fantastically remote and celestial.
Our first gig in 1982 was in the St Francis hall in Bournville, Birmingham. I suppose we booked it because it was near to where I was working as a trainee photographer in the big Cadbury Schweppes studios and it was just opposite the art college where Nick was studying.
As an aside, although we aren’t sentimentally attached to the hall, it has a place in the Jones family history as it’s annexed to the church where our parents were married, where Justin and I were christened together and is the actual room where our parents first met at a dance during the second world war.
However, all I remember from the gig is the part after the performance when we were packing away our PA and equipment in the carpark and were circled by a group of skinheads acting in that menacing, piss-taking way that is the speciality of bullies everywhere.
At the point when ignoring them was becoming impossible and I was weighing up the various possible outcomes, none of which I felt very enthusiastic about, I saw two, narrow figures approaching us from the hall, one short one tall.
It was two guys from the marketing department I’d become friends with through the many hours we’d spent together photographing confectionary products. They’d clearly gone straight from the office to the works club before the gig, as they were still dressed in suit and tie and were walking in the loose, carefree way that people have when they’ve consumed what they, at that moment, consider to be the optimum amount of alcohol to take on just about anything.
“All right Simon - what’s going on here then?” said the shorter one - “nice gig by the way mate” then, turning to our aggressors, - “what the fuck are you lot looking at?”… and, to everyones complete surprise, they went for them.
For me, walking on stage is like entering a separate reality. I find it a highly charged, emotionally diverse environment … and I could say a lot more about it but I’ve got a feeling it would be a bit self indulgent so I’ll leave it at that for the time being. Afterwards, I feel entirely drained and remember little about what I’ve just experienced. So when I think back to past performances I’m often left with just peripheral events and fleeting images like this one, ending with my two workmates disappearing into the Birmingham night in keen pursuit of the fleeing skinheads.