Getting Notions

Flash In The Pan

Reporter:
In April 1978, Weavers of fate released the highly anticipated Flash in the Pan double album, unsure whether or not they would still have an audience, or live up to the record's title. They feared they were yesterday's news, but they couldn't have been more wrong. The release of the album sent the world into a frenzy, and there was not a teen with access to a radio or a Rolling Stone magazine who wasn't talking about it.

Raymond Silver:
People didn't know what had happened. Kids thought that their favorite band had broken up, and no one had seen 3 of the four members for months on end. People feared the worst, and when a double album hit the shelves, they had to buy it.

Mike Wayne:
The team decided to do very little advertising for that record, left it as what we called "a snake in the long grass." You didn't see it coming, but once it bites, everyone's going to check it out. People get talking. Curiosity killed the cat, but made the record execs very rich.

Sandie Stevens:
None of us expected that record to do as well as it did. Don't get me wrong, it's a spectacular album, we knew the magic was there when we recorded it, but we never expected it to outsell Notions.

Jay Selby:
From a sales point of view, a double album never does as well as your single, or a traditional 7-15 track record. Because you know yourself, you walk into a record store, and you see a double album, it'll always cost more. So if you had the choice to buy Flash In The Pan, when you could get, say, Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull, and a Scratch Perry record, along with Roxanne by the Police for the same price, which are you going to pay for? Very few ever say the double album. I know I wouldn't.

Sandie Stevens:
We released only one single for that album. Rich or Poor. That was not, by any stretch of the road, the best song on the album. But Eimear was insistent on it. She straight up refused to have a different song as the single. I never understood why.

Jay Selby:
I asked her, loads of times, why that song?
And she never told us why.

Raymond Silver:
She told me.
She said that,
"It's not the best song, but the best introduction. You hear that rhythm, that simple yet bluesy riff, with that strange hard rock meets country tone, and those harmonies, and you know, that it's us. Not us strung out, but us as we should be."

And she's right. That song sums up Weavers of Fate. It was a message. E's way of saying "look at us! We're back in the saddle!"

She was always cryptic like that.

Mike Wayne:
I trusted Eimear when it came to choosing singles. She had a real ear for what songs the audience should hear first.

Jay Selby:
Mike begged Eimear to reconsider that song for the single. He was scared that it was too deep, and no audience likes to hear self pity coming from a rockstar.

Sandie Stevens:
He was wrong, of course. That song was vulnerable enough to be relatable. It talks about how, not matter what background you come from, life still manages to fuck you over, and you have no choice but to get up and move on from it. It worked, because we've been both ends of the spectrum. We lived with barely enough money for food and rent, to being rich enough to fly to Italy on a whim. And because Eimear's a good enough songwriter to not come off tone-deaf and tasteless.

-End of Recording-

Reporter:
Two months after the Release of Flash In The Pan, Weavers of Fate went on their first worldwide tour after their comeback. It would be the first tour they did sober, and the only one.

Raymond Silver:
It felt great, to come back after so long, recording an album, sober, and have it do so well. It was a reason to keep going, to stay clean. Well, at least it was for me. I wanted to take it further, to try a tour. That tour was my idea.

Sandie Stevens:
Everything was going so well with E and Silver. We thought it would be okay. We rushed into things too quickly. And we should never had allowed Thin Lizzy to tour with us.

Jay Selby:
Eimear was dead set on getting them on tour. She loved their sound, and they were right up her alley. Sandie was really worried about Phil Lynott's drug problem.

Sandie Stevens:
The man was doing pretty much everything at the time. The band had promised that they'd stay clean on tour, or at least keep the drink and drugs to a bare minimum, and out of sight of Ray and Eimear, out of respect. I never believed it for a second. I'd dealt with E in the height of her addiction long enough to recognise empty promises.

Raymond Silver:
It was a stupid thing for Mike to come up with, lets be honest. No way in hell were the band going to get clean while on the road. And you can't expect them to play a show every night while going cold turkey. And "keeping the drugs out of sight" doesn't work. I learned that the hard way, with Eimear.

Jay Selby:
To their credit, they managed to keep it together for the first leg of the tour. They did really well. Too well, in fact.

Sandie Stevens:
To quote ourselves,

Nothing good ever lasts
for us poor rich bastards.
Satan always gets the last laugh.
On us Poor Rich Bastards.

Mike Wayne:
There was no problems with the two bands on the first leg. No one overdosed, or relapsed, or was too strung out to perform. The whole thing ran smoothly, like clockwork. So, when the second leg came around, the label didn't see the need to keep both bands on two separate tour buses.

Look, I know I'm not the most honorable man, but even I saw a problem with lumping Weavers with Thin Lizzy. I actually brought that up with the label. The money was there, and it was for both bands' safety. I played into the idea that Silver was a loose cannon. But my arguments were ignored. Stevens chewed me out for not fighting harder, but what more could I do?

Sandie Stevens:
When Mike told us that they'd cut the second bus, I was fuming. It was a recipe for disaster, and I told him that.

Raymond Silver:
I kind of knew that Thin Lizzy weren't going to be able to keep up being clean for the second leg. Hell, they wanted to have fun, to live that "rockstar life." Not only were they denied taking drugs before a show, they were also now not denied the one opportunity they had to take anything at all.
Bands spend most of their time on a bus. You get bored as hell. And when you're trying to get clean, boredom's what kills you. Not the headaches, the nausea, the pain, or even the hallucinations. Not the numbness and deep depression that comes after. It's the boredom. When you've absolutely nothing to do but think about all the fun you could be having with a few lines and a bottle of Jack.

Sandie Stevens:
Or in Lynott's case, a needle and spoon.

Jay Selby:
Phil was the first to crack. I don't blame him, it was a shit situation to be in, anybody would have done the same. But Sandie always held it against him. Which was unlike her.

Sandie Stevens:
He promised me, before the tour, that he would not fuck up. He and Eimear got really close. I knew, that she was still in a fragile state. If he cracked, so did she. And I couldn't deal with the thought of almost losing her again. In my head, I kept thinking back to her in the passenger seat of Jay's car, slumping about like a ragdoll. I was so damn scared.

But it's because of him that Eimear started on Heroin. He might not have given her the first hit, but he planted the idea in her head.

-End of Recording-