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My life in music

This could be very very boring but Sunshine suggested I write up the history of all the bands I've been in. To all whose reputations get slurred here I'm very sorry! Apologies if I miss out any details or names as a lot of this happened a long time ago.

I started playing guitar about the age of 8, the same time my dad was learning how to play. He mostly played Irish and Country stuff so those influences have rubbed off a fair bit in my writing I guess. Skipping onto my teens the music I was listening to was punk, so needless to say I was sitting in my bedroom learning Dead Kennedy's and Sex Pistols riffs. I was in a school band at this time, we were called "Zealous" I don't quite remember how we got this name, I think we just looked through a dictionary. Our set list consisted of Queen, Status Quo, Dire Straights and T'Pau covers. We rehearsed all the time but only did one performance at a school open day, it was a lot of fun though, I think there is even a copy of it still floating around on tape! The band line up (a mixture of students and teachers) changed from time to time but as I remember the main line up was:

Kevin Stroud - Guitars, Piano, Keys, Clarinet & Vox

Me! - Vox & Guitars

Claire Pollendine - Piano, Keys & Vox

Hitesh Bhat - Drums

Karl Brooks - Bass

John Mullen - Piano

Has to be said it was a real good laugh!

Next came metal, bands like Iron Maiden and Guns 'n' Roses were what I was into, I found at this time I had no talent for lead guitar and focused on rhythm. Then came the Indie and Grunge explosion in the late 80's and as I was clubbing at alternative venues this influenced me big time!

It was around this time I decided to try a band out of school, I got together with a few guys and we started rehearsing more covers and some original material. We didn't last long enough to have a name, though I think someone came up with the idea of "Question - life?" It was really awful though, after trying to get a friend (Big Al Gorden) to be out vocalist (he looked the part) and then finding out he couldn't sing, then sacking him, I lost heart and decided to leave.

A friend told me a friend of his was looking for a guitarist, so I went over for the audition and met a vocalist called Paul and the bassist Rob, they were well impressed and I got the job, the catch was, it was a Goth band! Not really my bag baby! But still, I pulled in the keyboard player, Sean Meacher (AKA Gadg3ts) from my old band and after a few auditions we found a drummer…. "The Alpha State" was born.

Me - Guitars

Dave Bateman - Percussion

Sean Meacher - Keys

Paul Nemith - Vocals

Rob Field - Bass

I'm not quite sure how long this lasted but I think it was a couple of years, we did a load of gigs, all at a place in North Wembley called The Flag, a great little venue, which is sadly a pool hall now! We had quite a following and packed the place out every time we played there. There are even recordings of these gigs about, damn I'm cursed!

One gig I remember we absolutely packed out, everyone was moshing and stage diving, I remember one gut called Chris staged dived and had the same effect Moses had on the Red Sea. Everyone moved out of the way. But he did what people do when they fall down in the street, he just got up and pretended like it didn't happen, I guess everyone was laughing, not that we'd have heard at the volume we were playing at. At the same gig another of our groupies we nicknamed Dr Death, who was a lanky skinny guy who looked like a tramp on a serious chemical diet, fell unconscious and was being crushed up against the stage with his mates waving him around. That gives you an idea of the gigs!

The band broke up for a number of reasons, I'd been taking singing lessons and wanted to do more of my own stuff. Paul managed to piss Dave right off by trying to tell him how to play the drums, it was more or less at this stage that someone tried to put a cymbal stand through Paul's head, we did a final gig and went our separate ways, almost.

A few months later I felt ready to start a band off. I'd written a few songs and convinced Dave to drum for us. I wanted a four piece and advertised in Loot for a lead guitarist and a bassist. Once found we did a number of rehearsals but the guitarist we had Rob (AKA Silly Bollocks (named by Stu, the owner of the rehearsal studio we were using at the time) was unreliable, always late and his guitar was always broken. He didn't turn up for the rehearsal before our first gig so I sacked him. So we went on stage as a 3 piece, "Chuck 'u' Farley"

Me - Guitar & Vox

Dave Bateman - Percussion

Dave Bollen - Bass

We were also accompanied by Big Al Gorden on the tamborine

Our first gig was somewhat funny, at the Railway Inn in Wealdstone (where the Who played their first gig) a rumour had got out to the press I was going to be playing wearing nothing but a sock. That one got in the Daily Star, the police threatened to arrest me and the promoter if I did.

We played a few gigs there and at the Rock Garden in Covent Garden, we had a lot of fun and eventually found a lead guitarist Paul Vale and changed our name to Violent Dreams. After a year of that it all fell apart, people didn't want to rehearse and lost interest so it was back to square one again, for me anyway.

Four Dead Men

At this point I couldn't be bothered with starting another band, I advertised in Loot again but this time I was looking for a band already together, plus I wanted to drop the guitar and just do vocals. After a few interesting calls (one from these 2 Canadian guys who when I asked for their influences said, "we like Ride man". I said, "cool, what else". "We like Ride man.") I got a call from this mad Irish guy who played me an entire song down the phone. I'll admit it sounded good and the guitarist sounded well cool so I agreed to go down to Twickenham for the audition. Martin, mad Irishman and bassist, sent me a tape with 3 songs I had to learn plus 2 they wanted me to put lyrics too. I went down and met Martin who was kinda strange, and the guitarist Paul Delderfield turned up. I was well impressed with his playing and the stuff he'd written. He must have liked my vocals and lyrics cos I got the gig!

They didn't have a name at the time, I think they were playing around with the idea of "Beggars Belief." I went down to my first rehearsal with them and met the drummer Caddy Lee who was really good, I did one more rehearsal with them after that and saw it wasn't going to work out. Martin, who was phoning me twice a day to see if I was still in the band, was awaiting trial for smuggling immigrants into the country, Rock and Roll eh? As it turns out he got 12 months at her majesties pleasure, that was a bit later though.

I phoned up Martin and said, "look I'm sick of the hassle I quit." Then phoned up Paul and said, "The band sucks BIG TIME, I don't know what you're doing wasting your time with them, let's get a decent band together." He was in agreement and has been my writing partner to this day, the thing is when we sit down together to write, the songs just roll out one by one. I hate to blow the bands trumpet but they are usually well class!

We got together and started writing material, Paul knew a drummer called Steve Sylvian (obviously he made up that surname) and we started getting some songs together. I can't begin to tell you what a joke Steve was, didn't even bring his own drum sticks to rehearsals, was always late, with excuses like, "I turned the wrong way down the M4." I pulled in Dave Bollen from Violent Dreams and Four Dead Men was born. We had a couple of gigs before I finally managed to sack Steve, we had a few drummers after that. Dave Bateman from Violent Dreams for a while. Ian, punk drummer, seriously thick and more concerned with drinking than music. He was moonlighting in a punk band at the time, whose songs were things like "Dog Shit" & "Michael Jackson". Ran, Japanese drummer with no sense of timing, to be honest I think it was the copious amounts of skunk he was smoking, this also impaired our attempts to communicate with him!

Dave Bollen left the band to play with the remnants of Violent Dreams and a couple of other guys in a band called UHF. The last I heard they decided to sack Dave Bateman for wanting to rehearse more, don't try and make any sense out of that!

After Dave left we Found Sean Owens, Paul had been helping his band out and we needed a bassist, so Sean said he's fill in for us, he liked what we were doing and stayed, lucky for us as he's the best bassist I've ever played with.

More recently We found Dan, our drummer, he's very good and has loads of good ideas for the songs as well, we now have the stable line up we want!

There will be more information on Four Dead Men later.