On January 12th 1980 ‘And also the trees’ played live for the first time. We think of this as the beginning, the day ‘And also the trees’ became a real band.
It was in Alcester at The Greig hall, at a benefit gig for the Cambodia fund supporting a band called ‘The Fragiles’. We knew Alcester well, it was where my family shopped. There was no super market then, just a high street with a big church at the end of it and a variety of shops: Buntings general store, Bowens drapery, Mr Preece’s toy shop and shoe repairs, the Butcher, the Baker and lots of pubs. The Greig Hall was a 1950’s building that stood between the old town centre and the newer housing estates.
I have to say I don’t remember a lot about being at the Hall. I had never felt so nervous in my life and spent the afternoon driving my old mini clubman round the housing estates and out into the country lanes and back listening to a Peel session version of ‘The good missionary’ by ‘Alternative TV’ over and over again on my car cassette. For some reason it was all I wanted to hear.
Back in the dressing room I felt as though my insides were boiling. My main fear was that I would freeze, forget all my words and look like an idiot, so I kept reading over my lyrics which I’d written out on the sheets of card you get inside boxes of 5” x 4” sheet film. Justin was tuning his red guitar, he looked small and very young… he was, he’d just turned 16 three days before. Nick was still 15. Graham was a skinhead at this point and was good at looking menacing, skinheads like that sort of thing, but of course he was just Graham to us. It felt a bit unbelievable that the four of us were about to go on a stage and play music in front of more than a hundred people.
The first song we played was an instrumental called ‘A to Z’, so I stood in the wings still holding onto my lyric cards. When I finally went on stage something happened which is hard to describe in a few words but the most noticeable thing was that I wasn’t afraid any more. I didn’t need to remember my words, they just came.
We played and people clapped after the songs. The one song I was sure I wouldn’t be able to remember the words for was called ‘Hit man’ - it was a narration and I had the idea of gaffer taping the words inside a newspaper. So for that song I stood there in my raincoat with the previous days ’Telegraph’ opened up in front of me. The headline on the front was about Russian troops invading Afghanistan. I was full of adrenaline and my mouth was dr