The Eejit

Chapter 6 Up In Smoke

For the next few weeks I was still smarting from the deep embarrassment I had felt as a result of being the patsy in Steve's doomed publicity stunt but the pain was eased by the knowledge that I had now repaid my debt to him in full. The lifetime of gratitude and subservience that I felt I owed him from the moment of my non-appearance at that lunch months ago had evaporated the moment I hadn't been arrested on the steps of the MOD.

I had for some time by now been concentrating on getting a full band together with a view to doing proper gigs in bigger places. Just being out there playing in places like Jimmy's had been enough for me to meet a varied pool of other musicians who were always interested in giving new projects a try and from this group of people I began to select a band. Actually it didn't work like that at all. I never had the heart to not choose anyone so the band ended up being everyone that I knew who was a musician.

There was Simon Nelson, perhaps the most talented of us all, who was a fantastic guitarist and could also sing. His equipment always worked and he was really maintenance for a man of such talent. If Steve was musical Haute Cuisine, then the rest of us rated from salad to doner kebab. There was Guy, from Jimmy's (remember) who played guitar and banjo; Guy's mate Dermot O'Connor, an unbelievably good mandolin player, with a stellar musical CV, who hard a sparkle in his eye and a can of Stella, Dermot's mate Brian who played drums and drank even more, and Ian Cochran, an old friend of mine from University, who played bass and seemed to have an endless supply of dope. As well as this list of luminaries, we had a large assortment of fiddle players, whistle players and harmonica players who would join us when their need for a free beer got the better of them. We were clearly set to go right to the top.

Dave Atwater from the Tea Rooms Des Artistes on the corner of North St and Wandsworth Road, a place that still reminds me of Karen btw, had agreed to give us a regular gig on Sunday nights and we didn't need to be asked twice. There were about ten of us playing most nights on a small stage and we hadn't really rehearsed at all. The result was mostly ramshackle and chaotic but occasionally we hit the target and people seemed to like it. Most importantly, Dave seemed to like it and we became a regular thing. We went under the name of Toby Bourke and the Riverboat Band. To say we were ill – disciplined was an understatement. Brian the drummer even fell asleep during the set one night because he was so pissed, and it took some serious work to bring him back for the rest of the set. None the less, we managed to pull in a big crowd and that was enough in itself to earn us a residency there and a growing list of other places. We played a mixture of songs. Some were my own, some were of the New Country variety like Steve Earles 'Copperhead Road' or Nancy Griffiths 'I Wish It Would Rain', and, of course, there were the inevitable Dylan numbers such as 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'All Along the Watchtower', which, because it only had three chords, even we couldn't make a hash of. Over a month or so, our repertoire grew and we became better and tighter as a band. Even Brian managed to spend prolonged minutes where he remained relatively sober.

After one gig there, I approached by a small Glaswegian bloke with a moustache, who introduced himself as Mike Alison. He said that he owned a studio in Notting Hill and wanted to talk to me about what I was up to and whether I would be interested in a chat about recording. Has any budding singer ever said know to this proposition? Literally if Fred and Rose West had a home studio they would never have had to leave the house to look for victims. Obviously, I said that I would be and we agreed to meet the next day at his studio.

ACM records, as it turned out to be, was situated in the basement of a large house in the All Saints Road. As soon as I had been buzzed in on the intercom I was hit by that familiar shroud of thick, pungent smoke that only quality grass could ever generate. As I walked down to the studio I could see a few people through the haze, one of whom I recognised to be Mike. Mike had been a successful producer and songwriter who had worked with the likes of Olivia Newton – John and the ridiculously named Englebert Humperdink (and to think he changed his name to that – I have no idea what it was before but it must have been bad, like Albert Buttock). He had, he told me, also written a song or two for Cliff Richard and the substantial royalties thereof had provided him with the studio we now stood in.