Jill Bryson interview
9 June 01
So how did you get signed?
You know, it was just weird, the whole thing was SO weird. We'd been playing a few gigs in Glasgow and people obviously thought of it as a weirdo band of its time and place. I think Orange Juice had been signed by that time and it was Jim Kerr. Because he was one of the first Glasgow punks he remembers Rose particularly and I used to go to parties and I'd see Charlie Burchill and Jim Kerr, and they're very sweet people when you meet them, they're very nice. And I don't really like Simple Minds, but they were being interviewed, I think it was on [Radio 1 show with DJ] Kid Jensen, and he asked them what's happening in Glasgow, what other bands are good. And he said 'Strawberry Switchblade, they're good', so Kid Jensen's producer got in touch with us.
We had to pick four songs, and there was only the two of us so we had to get a band together. James Kirk from Orange Juice played bass and we had a guy called Shahid Sarwar, who we all called Shahid StarWars, played drums. He was in a band in Glasgow, I can't remember what they were called [The Recognitions]. We borrowed him and James and there was another guy who played a little bit of keyboard when we went down there. Basically it was the four of us and we had to rehearse. And we were all 'it's OK, it's only four songs, we can do it we can do it', and then John Peel's producer got in touch with us and said that he wanted us to do a session.
Had he heard the Kid Jensen session?
No, he just heard that we were doing a session for Kid Jensen, so would we do one for them.
He hadn't heard you at all?
No!
Isn't that weird?
Yeah, really weird.
Do you know how many tapes Peel gets, and yet he hires people who he's never heard!
At that point it was the Peel session you really wanted to get rather than a Jensen session, but we weren't going to turn down either. So we ended up doing two sessions within about two weeks of each other.
[BBC archives confirm the Peel session was recorded 5 Oct 82, Jensen 7 Oct 82]
We had to have eight songs to do it and we only had six so we had to write another two! [NOTE: Those songs would be Little River and 10 James Orr Street - the other six tracks are on a recording of a gig on 15 June 82]. The Jensen session was a bit more upbeat, the Peel session was a bit quieter. It was just weird, it was wild, absolutely wild. I remember the Jensen session was the first proper recording we did and the producer was Dale Griffin and another guy from Mott The Hoople and I could hardly sit next to them. I could remember them from when I was fourteen, I was hyperventilating, I could hardly play.
We did that and then Bill Drummond, who was Echo &The Bunnymen's manager, phoned us and said he'd heard the sessions and wanted to sign us. At that time he was working for Warner Brothers publishing. Him and David Balfe came up to meet us. David Balfe had been in Teardrop Explodes [also managed by Drummond] and he wanted to get into management. The Teardrop Explodes had just split up, I remember him playing their last album to us, the one that never got released.
It got belatedly released in 1990 as Everyone Wants To Shag The Teardrop Explodes. It's really not very good.
I remember thinking that when I heard it at the time. He was obviously very proud of it, he'd had a lot to do with it. So, I remember them coming up to see us in somebody's flat, I think it was Edwyn's, and they talked to us and said they'd like to sign us to Warner Brothers Publishing, and they'd like to put out a single too. They put out Trees And Flowers on Ninety Two Happy Customers Records.
Did Ninety Two Happy Customers exist before? The catalogue number is HAPS001 which implies it's a first release.
It was Will out of the Bunnymen's label, I don't know if anything else ever came out on it. [There was only one other release on the label, Sergeant's solo album Themes For Grind, released March 1982]. I remember going to this studio in London and having all sorts of people coming in, the drummer and bass player from Madness, and Roddy Frame [from Aztec Camera].
It's an incredible pedigree for a session, getting the rhythm section from Madness and Roddy Frame to play guitar, and at that time when they're at the peak of their powers. I see the connection with Roddy Frame from Postcard Records, but what's the connection with Madness?
David Balfe knew them for some reason, I think maybe it was through a girlfriend or something. I remember going out to dinner with people, when we first came down to London once we'd signed they'd go 'we're all going out to dinner in this wee place in Camden' and there'd be several members of Madness there and we'd be going, [incredulous gaping face] 'this is just bizarre'. I think Balfe had met them, the Teardrops probably came across Madness.
Bill Drummond and David Balfe had moved to London at that time. Bill Drummond is such a gab and he's so enthusiastic, he would get to know people, the pair of them were like that. And Bill had been managing the Bunnymen for a good while and wanted to branch out, so he was an A&R man in Warners publishing. When they signed us we had to go to London to see them and I couldn't get on the train cos I was so agoraphobic. I could get out and about in Glasgow but the thought of getting on the train..... I remember my boyfriend Peter and Rose's husband went, and Peter asked the managing director of Warners publishing to borrow a fiver so he could get back to the station! And they still signed us!
Then we got a support slot with Orange Juice. We did this tour with Orange Juice and half way through we signed the contract with Warners publishing, in Liverpool. Then the single was released. It was such a bizarre tour, we did it in a hired car, just the two of us and a reel to reel tape deck. Drew, Rose's husband, set it up with programmed drums and bass on it, and the pair of us would play guitar and sing. It worked, although sometimes the tape would keep going when we'd finished and stuff.
How come Postcard never put anything out of yours?
I don't know. I suppose by the time we were going to release stuff Orange Juice had signed a major deal and were recording their album and they were spending a lot of time there....
But you were around earlier, in 82
But I think all that was happening by then. There was talk of us being on Postcard but it never happened, and then we did the demos and James Kirk who was in Orange Juice helped us. We probably would've done it with Postcard, but it all happened so quickly, it was just bizarre.
Did Trees And Flowers do well?
It did well as an indie single, yeah. Top ten in the indie charts, and the indie charts at the time did sell quite well. And it was the only single we had that had posters. I remember seeing flyposters round London, we got our picture taken in front of one of them!
What about later touring, didn't Balfe play keyboards?
He played keyboards when we played another support tour. We did a support tour with [giggles] Howard Jones! He was on Warner Brothers as well, and we'd signed to WEA [Warner Elektra Atlantic] so they said 'you're going touring with Howard Jones'. The only good thing about that was we got to play places like the NEC. Balfe would play keyboards and change the backing cassette.
There's a reference in one press interview to playing the Royal Albert Hall. What was that?
[laughs] that was on the Howard Jones tour! It was good in some respects - we got to play the Glasgow Apollo before it got flattened, I'd been to see so many bands in the Apollo, it was great. We did that and we did the NEC which was a bit scary.
The idea of Howard Jones being that big is a bit mad.
I know! The Albert Hall was the London gig, which was just wild. I'd just recovered from chicken pox as well, so I was a bit spaced out anyway. Backstage in the Albert Hall's quite a strange thing as well cos it's really elaborate and there's lots of space for when it's used by choirs and orchestras. I'd only done some of that tour cos of the chicken pox.
What happened without you?
Rose just went out on her own. She went out and said I wasn't well, and I think she just played songs with a guitar. I think everybody was really nice because she did it. The record company sent a bunch of flowers and said 'at least you got polka dot disease'.
Were you always using backing tapes and programmers?
We also had a band at one point. I think Madness had split up or they weren't working or something cos I remember rehearsing with the rhythm section of Madness but it kinda didn't work, it didn't sound right. And so then we had this jazz guitarist, a really nice guy Simon Booth he went on to be in a band called Working Week. The drummer Roy Dodds went on to be in Fairground Attraction or something, and there was a bass player, really jazzy kind of players, kinda weird.
I can sort of see it, cos it would be important with Strawberry Switchblade to have musicians who don't rock.
That's it, yeah, that was it.
Not just because it's important that your records don't rock but whilst maybe you'd get away with a bit of a noisy guitarist, having a rocking bass player and drummer would kill the subtlety and delicacy. The jazzy thing, at least it's not rocking, it's about subtlety and warmth rather than bombast, I can understand why you'd have tried that.
They were pretty good as well, they didn't overpower. So we played a few gigs with them but it didn't really work.