Espedair Street

Now, I'd always assumed they'd been at it constantly since long before I knew them (over a year previously by then), and apart from that... shit, I just objected to the whole idea, and not solely because I was jealous. Asshole, I remember thinking.

Two: middle-class planning again. A few years ago I asked Rick Tumber why even when we had a perfectly good mix on an album, ARC always re-mixed the songs before issuing them as singles. Rick grinned the way people do before they put a Royal Running Flush down on top of your three aces. 'For the singles album, Danny boy,' he told me, 'your real fans'll buy everything you've ever released, but even some real fans never buy 45s; they wouldn't buy a singles album either, if they already had all the material on the albums they've already bought, so we make all the mixes different and then they have to buy the singles album too and so you and I make even more money than we would have made anyway because they've bought seven albums not six, or eight not seven or whatever it is or however you count it, but what the hell; we sell more albums even though it's all the same material and it's cost the same amount of studio time and so on, not that that accounts for much of the unit cost but you know what I mean, and....' This explanation lasted another ten minutes. Never guess he'd just filled his nose with Columbian Ajax, would you?

But do you see the point? Jesus, I'd never have thought of that. They were looking at least four or five albums and maybe the same number of years ahead; that's real forward planning. That's middle-class thinking. That's looking ahead. The middle classes are brought up like that. They get salaries they make last all month, they'll take out Life Assurance without getting the hard sell, they'll invest in the future, they'll buy a wee stupid car so their kids can go to a good private school (and it makes good sense anyway; so economical). They can keep drink in the house without having to drink it all. Not like your working class at all. If you've got it, spend it; if it's there, drink it. Hence the weekly wage and the local off licence.

But there are common denominators everywhere. I can remember when it was a matter of real importance to know of a group more obscure than those your friends knew about; not just any old group, but a band playing progressive music. If that band then went on to become really famous (even though that would be regarded as selling out), then your status as a person of immense good taste was assured. It's called gambling, or investing. Looking for a horse they've been shoeing with lead until now, or a stock quoted low but about to rise. Everybody plays the same game; it's just some people make more money out of their version.

Then came All Wine Tastes Sour. From that, 'Old Budapest' (the song about the note lying in the grate) only made number eight, but 'You'd Never Believe' hit number one, and stayed there for three weeks. Davey sang that. He was very pleased. It was only knocked off the top spot by Rod Stewart's 'Sailing'; so, no disgrace.

The first album went gold the same week the second got to number one. The songs on All Wine... were credited to me. Dave and Christine shared a twenty per cent arrangement fee. That had led to some tension, but I felt I was in a position of power; nobody else in the band had written anything worth recording on anything other than a cassette machine. If what I said didn't go, I would. Take it or I'll leave.

Dear God, such arrogance shames me now.

UK tour; breaking in the States so over there for a two-week whistle-stop promo tour, answering the same questions and waking in Holiday or Ramada Inns and staring at the ceiling and wondering, Where the hell is this?, then back into the studio to record Gauche, and then, thank God, a rest.

Why do I remember these pastorals?

We'd recorded Gauche at Manorfield Studios, in Herefordshire; Lord Bodenham, socialite and photographer, had put us up at his little place while we were working. This wasn't just sixties style Hey-look-how-hip-I-am; he was a major shareholder in ARC. Took the snap on the back of the first album, even though everybody remembers the photo on the front; a solid tear of 24-carat gold caught with very fast film as it smashed into blue-stained water with a thin covering of ice (publicity made a lot of the fact that it was real gold and the tear-shaped blob weighed sixty pounds and there were three security guards in the studio when the shot was taken... all my idea, I am half-ashamed and half-proud to admit).

October again already, my goodness. Lord Bod had pissed off to Antibes, but he'd encouraged us to stay, so we did. We'd used backing singers on the UK tour, and kept them on for Gauche. One of the three girls was a lady called Inez Rose Walker. Tall, raven and ravishing, statuesque and stately, always well- spoken and occasionally foul-mouthed, Inez had impressed me no end. I suspected she'd impressed the good lord rather a lot as well, but nothing seemed to come of that.

Set the scene. The Sex Pistols were still in captivity, a year away from bringing the language of every street corner to a single television studio. Malcolm McClaren was presumably still fine-tuning the neat concept of turning the turntables on the big record companies; instead of a band selling lots of records and them not getting any money, he had the Sex Pistols act so unpleasantly that although they didn't sell any records the companies gave them lots and lots of money just to go away. Springsteen had just released 'Born To Run' in the States; the shock waves had yet to rock Britain. And Led Zeppelin were still selling very well indeed, thank you.

Mind you, so was James Last. Oh, and Disco was big.

Party time. ARC were saying 'Thank you' because Gauche had entered the album charts at number one, on advance orders alone. The fact that we had now completed our three album deal and could now go wherever the hell we wanted for as much money as possible had, of course, absolutely nothing to do with such conspicuous extravagance.

ARC brought a small circus to Lord Bod's. Lions and tigers and elephants too. Fire eaters and jugglers and trapeze artistes, multitudinous chimps and a human cannonball, not to mention three alcoholic clowns with real red noses.

I'd never seen a lady trapeze artiste in the flesh before, and immediately fell in love with the one that turned up. God, those muscles. It was only thanks to Inez that I got over her; I fell for Inez instead. As well. Both. Oh, Christ, I don't know. There was no safety net, I'll tell you that.

'You don't know what you want to do, do you?'

I looked aghast at her. We were walking up a narrow road in the place called Golden Valley, between a village called Vowchurch and another village called Turnastone. It was a bright autumn day, blue sky and fresh wind. The leaves were just starting to fall off the trees and we were walking up a clefted road between the two villages, high banks of earth and trees to either side, red, brown and yellow leaves beneath our feet.

'What?' I said. 'Of course I do. I know exactly what I want.'

'What then?'

'Well...'

'Ha! See?'

'No; come on... be fair. I'm thinking.'

'Oh, dear; you think that's an excuse?'

'Hey! Stop giving me such a hard t-time here...'

'Oh well, I'm sorry. . ,

'... I know exactly what I want to do. I want to... change the world!'

'Oh, I see. For the better?'

I laughed. 'Of course!' (I never could see when I was having the piss taken out of me.)

'Oh, well, good. That'll make a change.' Inez nodded, stared ahead up the slope of the steeply banked road.

'I'm not just in it for the mmm-money, you know. I know what it's like to be p-poor. I mean... 'European' and 'No Lesson For Us';' — she'd sung on both — 'they've both got mmmmessages. I don't know if you could call them protest songs, but they're...

'Commercial. They're commercial songs. Bits off an album. Don't kid yourself.'

'Jee-zuz! You're really so cynical, aren't you?' I was amazed. Inez walked beside me, arms crossed, marching up that slope through the scattering of golden leaves.

'I'm cynical!' She laughed.

The sun broke through the clouds then, and at the same time a wind blew up from behind us, stirring and swirling the goldenbrown leaves around our feet, lifting her hair and mine and combing our faces with it, and belling out her long dress. The wind settled and strengthened, the leaves started to move, and as we walked up that short