I`m An Upstart

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THE DECCA WADE STORY
Deciphered by
RONAN FITZSIMONS
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In memory of Colm Callanan
Friend of punk and punks
Sadly missed
Decca extends his love and gratitude to Colm’s family
for their friendship and inspiration
.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Live and Loud
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Kids on the Street
Teenage Warning
I’m an Upstart
Shotgun Solution
Lust for Glory
Capital City
Not Just a Name
There’s a Drink in it
One of the Boys
CHAPTER 10
Out of Control
CHAPTER 11
Lost and Found
Notorious
CHAPTER 12
Epilogue: Can’t Kill a Legend
Photographs
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Firstly, a big shout-out for the work undertaken in previous incarnations of the project by
Colmand Nigel.
Decca would like to thank: Lynette; my family; my daughters Caroline, Georgia, Dallas
and son Connor (sorry I haven’t always been there for you); my late and beloved
grandfather Jonas Patrick O’Connor. The late Eddie Wright is remembered here. Cheers
also to The Angelic Upstarts, Garry Bushell, Angela Carrington at The Bigger Picture,
Dave and Lynne Clark, Crashed Out, Kevin Donnelly at GSP (UK) Ltd, Gerry Evans RIP,
Popeye FitzSymons,
Mike Mageary, Rob Mageary, Councillor John McCabe, The Moscow Mules, Keith Newman
at Highlights Public Relations, Grant and Carol Nixon (who saved my life), John Peel RIP,
Cozy Powell RIP, Jimmy Pursey, John Robb, Scarred for Life Records (Stevie Smyth and
Danielle Earley), the residents of Stothard Street (whose tolerance of their punk
neighbour has never been in question), Phil Sutcliffe.
Ronan would like to thank the following people, for interviews, stories, memories, and for
helping out or being part of the project in various ways: Michael ‘Olga’ Algar, Nicky Buck,
Garry Bushell, Angela Carrington, Mond Cowie, Michelle Delaney, Nicky ‘Rocky Rhythm’
Forbes, Tony Van Frater, Billy Gilbert, Neil Hughes, Ian Kinsman, Dave Linehan, Carolyn
McCluskey,
Kev Miller, Tony ‘Feedback’ Morrison, Keith Newman, Leesha Paradise, Fred Purser, Jim
Reilly, Dave Robinson, Steve Ross, Terry Slesser, Tom ‘Von’ Spencer, Max Splodge,
Lynette Taylor, Jeff Turner, Derek Wade Sr, Joan Wade, Kerry Wade, Chris Wright, Lee
Wright. Oh, and Decca Wade.
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INTRODUCTION
Once upon a time, on a chilly, September morning, I was standing next to Decca Wade in
the vocal booth of a recording studio in the North East of England, belting out the backing
vocals to a song. This in itself was not especially noteworthy, except that the song we
were singing was in Japanese, a language neither of us speaks or understands. Between
takes, I pondered that this would easily have entered my Top Ten Bizarre Events of All
Time, but for Decca, it would barely have scraped into his Top Thousand – or Top Million,
for that matter – Surreal Moments. The other five lads helping out on mob vocals had
come equipped with throat lozenges and mineral water; Decca had fetched a 16-pack of
lager. Our scarcely controlled excitement at singing on an album was countered by
Decca’s seasoned, old-hand’s approach to studio work: just another day doing the job he
loves in the place he loves. And drinking lager. And cracking gags. Jaysus, the gags.
Amid oriental harmonies in a minor key and cans of Foster’s in a major quantity, we
got talking about the process of piecing together Decca’s life in written form. Two
previous attempts had been made, but for various reasons the project had not reached
completion. Well known Irish punk, roadie and fixer Colm Callanan had put the wheels in
motion, but his untimely death in 2010 necessarily meant the book was shelved. Nigel
Connolly, a long-term fan and friend of Decca’s from the North East of England, stepped
in and offered his services, before work commitments made his continued involvement
unmanageable. Both authors had brought a wealth of enthusiasm and ideas to the table,
and Nigel in particular had already conducted some invaluable interviews covering
Decca’s early life, which helped immeasurably in putting his first quarter-century into
context.
The sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle – liberally sprinkled with stories to make the
listener laugh, cry and wince in rotation – was to be fully expected, and dozens of hours
of tape recordings stand as a glittering testament to one of the punk movement’s more
colourfully led lives. Decca has always had a persuasive streak in recruiting buddies to
head out for a night on the lash: even people who would be a bit out of their depth in
Decca’s hell-raising circles. As former Upstarts bass player Tony Feedback told me: ‘I
don’t know how I ever got involved. I was such a nice boy! But I ended up being part of it
for quite a while – the whole air of madness that surrounds him.’
But beyond this straightforward image of the twinkly-eyed heavy drinker, the picture
that quickly began to emerge was that of a universally loved figure, a rascally court
jester, a joke machine on overdrive, but also a sensitive man (some would say little boy)
with a complex web of contradictory traits and emotions shrouding his life.
Decca’s musical genius – I stand resolutely by the use of the word – and drumming
ability have never been in question. Plaudits heard over the years have ranged from ‘the
best drummer in the world’ to ‘the best punk drummer in the world’, but whatever
category is under discussion, the superlative ‘best’ is a constant. The man himself is
characteristically modest: ‘I’d say I’m the best Decca Wade-style drummer in the world.’
The term ‘style’ seems far too narrow to cover the skills and experiences of such a
versatile drummer, who has turned his hand intuitively and effortlessly not just to punk,
but to reggae, heavy metal, skiffle, country & western, jazz, glam rock, swing and funk,
among other genres. Nor has his work been limited in its scope: already an accomplished
percussionist and live drummer while still at school, he took to touring and the purveying
of beat-perfect on-stage punk rhythms like a duck to water (or like a drummer to lager).
The alertness of his ear and his speed on the uptake had leading artists queuing up to
secure the services of a remarkable session drummer dubbed ‘One-Take Wade’ by studio
engineers. Then, of course, there’s his studio work with his own bands, which for many
people reached its peak with The Angelic Upstarts’ seminal album 2,000,000 Voices. If
you’re in any doubt, listen to this LP in the company of any expert drummer and get them
to tell you about the quality, precision, length and complexity of his fills.
Over his long career, has Decca fulfilled the potential his early drumming ability
promised? Most people I interviewed referred to the unbelievable speed and accuracy of
his drumming, but several also hinted at the dynamic between his natural percussive
ability and the uproarious social life he’s always enjoyed. Could he have been an even
better drummer if he hadn’t spent four decades pissed and drugged out of his head? It’s a
moot point. The conclusion seems to be that maybe his 4/4 timekeeping could have been
the tiniest fraction better (though still light years ahead of most of his peers) if he’d ever
tried drumming sober, but counteracting that would be the loss of Decca the Party
Animal. Let’s not forget that rock ’n’ roll has never been just about the precision of the
music – far from it.
‘Decca has a huge talent as a drummer,’ Jeff Turner of The Cockney Rejects told me,
‘but there’s always been the question mark that maybe he’s wasted that talent to a
certain degree. Then again, that’s just part of what makes him who he is: a great bloke,
a survivor and always great crack.’
Despite the public’s ready association of Decca with The Angelic Upstarts, this is not a
book about the band. Inevitably it touches upon – and seeks to chronicle fully and
faithfully – the periods of Decca’s life when he was with the band, but there are so many
more avenues (and the odd cul de sac) he’s explored in his childhood, youth, famous
years and post-fame reflective era, that the Upstarts actually end up playing something of
a minor role.
In many senses, Decca’s story mirrors that of his friend and fellow North East hellraiser Paul Gascoigne. We can reflect on the similarities of two precocious talents, jawdroppingly skilled at what they do and unstoppably confident as jack-the-lad jokers on
public display, but suffering from crushing insecurities and shyness behind closed doors.
There’s the desire to be loved, the unstinting loyalty, generosity and openness, set
against the brutal ups and downs of love, loss and friction with their kids. And, of course,
we’ve witnessed the inevitable slide into alcohol and drug abuse, followed by the black
days of rehab and the green shoots of recovery. In both cases, it’s encouraging to note
that the ultimate corner has been turned and that, even though it might be considered
that the ‘glory years’ of their chosen professions are over, there are still legions of fans
across the world who revere them for what they were (warts and all), what they are, and
what they will continue to be.
Talking to Decca, many of the traits mentioned above are patently clear, and I hope
this book will manage to convey what I’ve learned about him. Most of our interviews took
place either in the pub or at his home in Jarrow, where he feels about as settled as it’s
possible for a semi-retired, recovering-alcoholic punk drummer to feel. There is a
palpable sense of balance and contentment in his soul, which will come as a relief to
those who at various points in his 57 years have feared not just for his sanity but for his
life. Crucially, he’s surrounded in Jarrow by a close-knit community of no-nonsense, saltof-the-earth people, who know and love him and who, he is fully aware, would kick his
arse if he ever tried to play the rock star in their presence. In a touching display of
warmth, neighbours aged three to ninety-three greet him with a cheery ‘Alreet Decca’ as
he passes by, and girlfriends have often joked that they needed to allow an extra hour to
get round the supermarket for their weekly shopping, as everyone wanted to stop him
and have a word. A loving family, as we shall see, also sits quietly at the bedrock of his
existence. With a support-network like that to protect you, why would you ever want to
live anywhere else?
It’s been an eye-opening experience working so closely with Decca on this project (and
I can confirm that what people say about running the whole range of emotions has held
true), but above all it’s been hilarious. I never really listened in maths class at school
when the teacher waffled on about ‘tangents’, but within an hour of chatting with Decca I
found I was fully aware of the force of the term.
While we’re on the subject of linguistics, we trust purists will forgive the phonetic
transcription of the possessive ‘my’ as ‘me’, and the reflexive ‘myself’ as ‘meself’.
Everyone knows these forms are a natural part of North East English speech, and to have
Decca saying ‘my’ and ‘myself’ all the time (other than when quoted in a newspaper)
would seem a bit out of kilter. The speech of other interviewees is generally represented
in standard English.
All quotations used in the book are from interviews conducted by me or by Nigel
Connolly, unless otherwise attributed. Other ramblings have been paraphrased from
moments when Decca was present either in spirit or in spirits, and gently adapted to
illustrate whatever point we were originally attempting to cover. Naturally, there needs to
be some kind of disclaimer regarding potential inaccuracies in the book, so we’ve divvied
the responsibility up as follows: the author (10%), Decca’s hazy memory (10%), sundry
drugs consumed over the years (10%), and the worldwide manufacturers of industrialstrength lager (70%).
Ronan Fitzsimons
2013
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CHAPTER 1
Take a walk along the main shopping street of any industrial town in the North East of
England on a Saturday afternoon. Wait until the street is at its busiest, then take a photo
of a cross-section of people passing by: shoppers laden down with bags, families
mooching, pensioners dawdling, toddlers bawling, teenagers snogging and eating their
chips (sometimes simultaneously). Print the photo off and stick a pin in it at random.
Statistically, the person you’ve just stabbed will be of Irish or Scottish descent, probably
three or four generations down the family tree; continue the assault by cutting away at
the tree’s bark, and you’re likely to discover Catholic sap if you chip far enough down. The
only variable will be the reason why the victim’s forefathers came to the region in the first
place. If you’re in Ashington, they’re likely to have been miners in search of work in the
richly seamed collieries; if you’re in Consett, they’ll have been enticed by the thriving
steelworks; and if you can see a wide expanse of the River Wear or the River Tyne from
where you’re standing, then it’s a fair bet that shipbuilding will have been the settlers’
trade.
Hugging the south bank of the River Tyne, the town of Jarrow, where Decca Wade now
lives, has been associated with a string of famous people throughout its history – not all
of them punks. It was the Venerable Bede who first put the town on the map, and more
recently the late novelist Catherine Cookson’s gritty social fiction was instrumental in
bringing the area to wider public attention. Between these two lives – lived over a
millennium apart – stand two key dates that serve to explain the type of town Jarrow has
become. In 1852 the industrialist Charles Mark Palmer opened a shipyard bearing his
name, which at a stroke not only brought secure employment to the town, but also
carved its identity. At its peak, the yard employed four out of every five of the town’s
working adults, and was noted for its efficiency and the quality and breadth of its activity.
When it closed in the mid-1930s after an ill-fated takeover, the local population was left
on the brink of destitution, and saw a march to London as their only means of protest at
the brutal mass unemployment affecting Jarrow. The town continued to receive scant
attention from Whitehall, and by the time of the punk revolution in the late 1970s, a
gloomy fog had descended over the banks of the Tyne. Naturally enough, the area is
staunchly Labour in its political outlook, and it is easy to imagine the effect on local
people’s psyche when the detested figure of Margaret Thatcher swooped to power just in
time to receive a good kicking from the area’s punk and post-punk musicians.
*
As is the case with any punk book worth its salt, our tale begins a century ago in rural
County Sligo, on the west coast of what is now the Republic of Ireland. It was from here
that the Wade family landed in the North East of England to set about forging a better
life, bringing with them not only a notable sense of closeness as a family unit but, more
interestingly for our story, an established musicality and talent for entertainment. In fact,
stretching back along all lines of Decca’s family tree, we encounter comedians, singers,
harmonica-players and pianists. But there have also been heartbreaks scattered around
the various genealogical branches: a great-uncle was gassed in World War II, another
relative was murdered and an uncle on the maternal side of Decca’s family died in the
workhouse, an inveterate alcoholic. The discovery of this last case was to lead Decca into
a period of deepreflection about the hereditary nature of alcoholism during his time in
rehab.
Students of North East comedy will know the name Derek Wade – Decca’s father – as
a leading stand-up comic, harmonica-player and all- round entertainer from the local club
circuit; so high was his stock in the later years of his career that Tyne Tees TV once voted
him comedian of the year. His charity performances at Newcastle City Hall, as well as his
countless shows at the legendary Dixielanders venue, attest to his popularity and
effortless skill in working an audience. Anyone who has met Derek will speak warmly of
the sharpness of his wit, his ability to make a quip – never a malicious one – on
practically any topic, and his capacity to embark straight-faced on a 20-minute tale, for
his audience to realise only at the punch-line that he’s been having them on. The tales
(and photographic evidence) of his friendships with all the greats of the golden age of UK
stand-up comedy are legendary, as are artefacts such as his treasured letter from Tommy
Cooper’s management – typed on headed notepaper emblazoned with the obligatory fez
– requesting Derek to write some material for Tommy. Bernard Manning assessed Derek’s
act and gave him some invaluable advice about re-shuffling his quality gags and
structuring his set to make it funnier and more marketable. But it was never about
money: even now in his 70s, Derek will be far more likely to spend money rounding up a
few turns and putting on a good show for a charitable cause, than to think about making
a few bob himself. Equally, a potentially life-changing offer 50 years ago – to join
Canadian music troupe The Merry Monarchs as a professional harmonica-player – was
summarily turned down because, welcome though the money would have been, he didn’t
want to leave his young family. Whenever famous comedians came to the Wade house
for their tea, Derek would in effect give them jokes for free alongside their Battenburg
cake. It’s easy to see where Decca gets his facility with humour, as well as his generosity
and sociability.
Derek’s long list of celebrity friends also extended beyond the comedy circuit. The
boxer Brian London, who fought Muhammad Ali, was a good friend with whom Derek
used to meet up in the clubs around Brian’s home in Blackpool during family holidays. As
a nice gesture, and partly as a tactic to keep an unruly young Decca on the straight and
narrow, Brian donated his punch-bag, which Decca treasured. The mention of Blackpool
opens up an interesting split in the Wade family: while Decca and his mam Joan describe
themselves as ‘culture vultures’, enjoying exploring museums and looking at architecture
while on holiday, Derek favours the ‘pure entertainment’ of Blackpool or Benidorm. It’s
intriguing what our genetic make-up can do for us, but clearly, if something’s in your
blood, you’re stuck with it.
The links also point to leading stars in the North East rock music firmament: Decca’s
Aunt Annie taught both multi-instrumentalist John Miles and Animal Alan Price to play the
piano. There’s a delicious circularity in the Price link, as it was he who rekindled public
awareness of Jarrow with his post-Animals 1970s hit ‘The Jarrow Song’, on a storming
version of which, 30 years later, Decca played drums during his time with Crashed Out.
From my first conversation with Decca, it is clear that his Irish roots are fundamental in
the jigsaw of his identity. Even though his blood may have been diluted through a few
generations, his Irish spirit, pride and sense of belonging remain undiminished, and woe
betide anyone who questions his British-born right to consider himself Irish. His
philosophy on the matter is straightforward: ‘Just because a dog is born in a stable, it
doesn’t mean he’s a horse.’ As we shall see, the ‘Old Country’ of Ireland was destined to
provide not only sentimental, but also musical opportunities for Decca later in life.
To complete the trio of pillars supporting Decca’s upbringing, alongside innate
musicality and Irish heritage, we return to the closeness of the family into which he was
born. The event took place on 27 May 1956 in South Shields, a town sandwiched between
the Tyne and the Wear on the North East coast of England. Derek and Joan had met at a
local dance, as was often the case in those days, and embarked on a respectful courtship
before marrying while still in their teens, with Derek resplendent in a suit borrowed for
the day from his father. Decca – christened Derek after his dad, with the middle name
Patrick – was their first-born, to be followed by four daughters over the next few years. A
few months after Decca’s birth, Derek joined the army, so the mini-family lived with
Joan’s parents on High Street in Jarrow. Decca’s memory just about stretches back to
himself, his mam and his baby sister Denise sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Only in
the late 1950s, when Derek bought himself out of the forces and got a job as a riveter at
the local shipyard, did the family get a place of their own, in Eldon Street, South Shields.
From there, at the turn of the 1960s, they had the opportunity to move to the newly built
BrockleyWhins estate, where Derek and Joan have remained ever since.
Not unsurprisingly, as a loving yet long-suffering mother, Joan remembers Decca’s
childhood fondly:
‘He was a very advanced little thing, quick on the uptake for his age. He was coming
out with all these long words by the time he was a year old. Everyone ruined him, mind.
He used to ask us all the time to get him a little brother, as all his mates had brothers to
play with and to stick up for them. In fact, in Decca’s case, his sister Denise used to play
that role, as she’s only twenty months younger. She would always fight for him at school
and out and about.’
The move to Brockley Whins meant a bit more space for the family – ‘though I still
don’t know how we all fitted in,’ says Decca now, ‘it must have been like the fuckin’
Waltons’ – but also a new world of fields for young Decca to explore and trees for him to
climb. Naturally, he sought out the company of like-minded toddlers to join him in his
adventures, several of whom, as we shall see, were destined to become Angelic Upstarts
later in life. Decca grins as he refers to this period as one of ‘petty mischief’, when he
cemented his growing reputation as a cheeky scallywag. Typical afternoons and evenings
would be spent smashing windows and playing football – sometimes Decca would
multitask and put a football through a window to save the bother of hurling a half-brick.
Such a combination of tasks can only have stood him in good stead for his later life as a
drummer, when coordination was paramount.
There were also moments of touching roguery in the house. Denise remembers
spending ages decorating the Christmas tree one year, and dangling little chocolate
treats in their foil wrappers in beautiful patterns across the branches. On Christmas
afternoon, however, when the family came to pick a handful each to round off their
turkey meal, the foil wrappers offered very little resistance to their fingers. It was
discovered that some light-fingered little chap had unwrapped every single one, scoffed
the contents and carefully replaced the wrappers in their places on the tree. Despite
Decca’s wide-eyed pleading, there was really only ever going to be one culprit.
The fearlessness Decca has always enjoyed was illustrated at the age of three, when
he disappeared from his usual play haunts. In those days, it was normal for kids of
whatever age to spend the whole day out in the fresh air, and parents would not
automatically worry as they would now about the dangers of traffic or paedophiles.
Nevertheless, once darkness fell and Decca’s mates had all returned to their respective
homes, Derek and Joan began to worry for the little man’s safety. Late that night, they
found him wandering down by the ferry port without a care in the world. Another time, a
search party was sent out to find him after he had stayed out hours beyond home-time,
and he was eventually discovered swinging from the rafters of a half-constructed house
on the other side of the estate.
Much of his time was spent in what they called ‘the horses’ field’, running around,
playing football and – yes, you guessed it – riding the horses. Slightly further away was
‘the burn’, a stream running through the area, where local children would love to play.
One day, a man was behaving oddly up at the burn, and Decca and his cousin Ken
watched in bemusement as the man exposed himself to them and asked them if they’d
like to ‘go for a dip’. Touchingly, in his innocence, Decca assumed the man was referring
to a delicacy known as the ‘saveloy dip’, a very popular foodstuff in the South Shields
area, consisting of a saveloy sausage served in a bread-bun with accompaniments such
as pease pudding or gravy. Being a hungry soul, Decca replied that he’d love to go for a
dip, before Ken saw through the man’s true intentions, and the pair ran off laughing.
Derek recalls that he and Joan didn’t share Decca’s amusement at the incident. When
Decca came home and reported what had happened, Derek and his brother grabbed
Decca and they raced back to the burn to look for the man. As they scanned the area,
they heard the thunder of hooves behind them. Looking round in alarm, they saw a
raging bull speeding towards them, and had no option but to leap up into a tree, like
cartoon characters – they just managed to get clear of the bull’s horns before it butted
their arses.
‘It was a close thing,’ says Derek now, ‘but we just sat there in the tree laughing our
backs off for ages.’
Decca remembers a lot of names from this period – Matty Stiddolph, Robbie Young,
the Whitelaw brothers, Lol Walls, Billy Clark, Keith and Brian Nellist, Eddie Johnson and
Geoff Ditchburn, among others. Geoff Ditchburn lived on Queensland Avenue, next door
to a little boy a few months younger than Decca called Thomas Mensforth, already going
by the nickname ‘Mensi’. A short time later, Raymond ‘Mond’ Cowie became part of the
gang and, though at this stage we’re still 15 years off the advent of punk, friendships
were being formed that would metamorphose into musical allegiances when the time
came around.
The bulk of South Tyneside – and in particular the eastern side – is staunchly proSunderland in its footballing tastes. ‘Newcastle’ is a dirty word, and years later when
playing gigs north of the Tyne, The Angelic Upstarts would experience prejudices –
sometimes gentle teasing, sometimes a bit stronger – for where they were from. In the
earlier years, though, the rivalry was referred to (if at all) in beautifully innocent terms:
‘Mond had a dog called Monty, named after Sunderland’s goalkeeper Jim Montgomery.
He used to get the piss taken a bit coz the dog was black and white. But I think deep
down the rest of the kids understood that it was unrealistic to expect Mond to get a red
and white dog. Football wasn’t a problem really when I was growing up – it was just
something we played and followed.’
You’ll never hear Decca falling into Never ’ad Nothin’ mode when he talks about his
upbringing. For sure, money was scarce, but he is absolutely clear about his parents’
principles of ensuring all the bills were paid promptly and the kids were properly clothed
and fed. Very seldom were any of them on free school dinners. Even when Decca got into
trouble and various fines had to be paid, his parents were quick to pay what was due. On
one occasion, young Decca and his mates had caused serious damage to classroom
furniture, breaking several desks. Each family was landed with a bill for £10, which in
those days was a phenomenal sum of money for a young family to find, but Derek and
Joan coughed up straight away, learning subsequently that they were the only family to
do so.
A generation earlier, Derek had gone to school barefoot and, like many in that
position, he was damned if any child of his was going to suffer the same hardship. The
Wade children were therefore shod with Clark’s shoes (the height of quality and
durability; far removed from the Stylo brand favoured by most families), were always
smartly turned out for school and any social events, and always had the best presents for
birthdays and Christmas that the family budget would allow for. Decca recalls dreading
the approach of Easter each year, when he would be dragged into the town centre of
South Shields – not exactly wailing and screaming, but certainly glowing with
embarrassment as his mates stood by and took the piss – for a new outfit. Details are
sketchy, but it’s intriguing to imagine a four-year-old Decca in a sailor suit.
With Decca’s parents starting their family so young, he has always felt his mam and
dad were more like a brother and sister to him. Certainly they would exercise discipline
on him and his siblings, but there has always been a friendship – as well as a parental –
bond in play. Derek embodied the figure of the strong North Eastern dad: old- fashioned,
strict, firm, and hard as nails when he needed to be, but never a bully. The importance of
respect and togetherness of family was key. Comedy aside, he would of course have his
darker moments, often bottling his feelings up and suffering in silence. Decca has only
ever seen his dad cry on three occasions: once when a relative was murdered, once when
Joan developed breast cancer (from which she happily recovered), and a third time when
Decca was playing with a band in Ireland, singing a song about ‘missing your old man’.
The relationship has remained strong and close into Decca’s second half- century: he still
speaks to his parents every day and tells them he loves them, which is not as widespread
a practice in North Eastern working- class environments as perhaps it would be
elsewhere. From a very early age, Decca has always thought of his dad as his mate, and
despite all his success, he has still derived no greater satisfaction than being able to
appear on stage with his dad during his teens.
Equally, Derek is immensely proud of what Decca has achieved, and has been known
to beam in the pub as he announces: ‘This is my famous son.’ He often says that he can
go anywhere in the world, hear music playing in a club or emerging from an adjacent
building or a passing car, and state confidently, ‘That’s our Decca playing the drums.’ In a
fond reflection of Decca taking ages to get round the supermarket because so many
people want to talk to him, Derek recalls attending the funeral of a friend from the
comedy circuit, and being asked for autographs simply for being Decca’s dad.
The fondness by association extends across the generations. A few years ago, Decca’s
son Connor found himself walking home from a party in Newcastle without a penny to his
name. He’d got about halfway when an unknown bloke stopped him:
‘You look like someone I know.’
‘Do I?’
‘Aye. What’s your dad’s name?’
‘Decca Wade.’
‘You’re Decca Wade’s son? Wait here!’
The mysterious Good Samaritan proceeded to go to a nearby cashpoint and pull out
forty quid: ‘twenty for your taxi, and twenty for tomorrow.’
Also crucial to Decca’s happiness as a child was the role of his granddad Jonas, to
whom he was extremely close. One of Decca’s greatest regrets was that Jonas never got
to see his grandson on the telly, dying as he did just before The Angelic Upstarts started
to make it big. The two had joked during Decca’s teenage years about appearances on
TV, and Decca later quipped that a cameo on programmes such as Crimewatch would
have looked far more likely at the time. Jonas was, above all, the sort of multi-skilled
granddad we don’t see so much these days. He had Roses chocolate tins full of clock
mechanisms with which to tinker; he was a more than capable handyman, and could
cobble shoes and repair children’s clothes. He taught Decca the rudiments of practical
work with household tools: ‘let the hammer do the work, son,’ he would always say. This
led to Decca’s competence in woodwork and metalwork at school and, as we shall see,
progression to a technical apprenticeship before the bright lights of rock ’n’ roll beckoned.
Jonas had, in the view of everyone who knew him, ‘a lovely pair of blue eyes’. Decca
has always liked to think that, as well as many of the appealing character traits handed
down to him genetically, he also inherited his granddad’s eyes.
‘I used to get quite a bit of attention when I was a kid, coz apparently everyone liked
me eyes. The ice cream man used to sing a song about little blue eyes when I was
getting me cornet. Actually, years later in Ireland, I remember a woman once looking at
me and saying, “I’ll trust you – you’ve got an honest pair of eyes”. It’s just a shame I
spent so much time with red eyes with being on the pop.’
With Jonas’s gentle manner came a staunchly protective streak and sense of
upstanding morality. One week at junior school, Decca had been mucking about, and the
teacher slapped him on the head and dragged him along by his ear. On hearing about the
incident, Jonas took Decca to school on the bus the next day, barged in and felled the
teacher with a curt ‘do not humiliate my child’. Decca always felt a sense of relief that the
incident happened during classroom-time and not after school: the consequences for the
teacher’s face could have been far worse. There was never any more bother with that
teacher.
Decca still remembers his granddad Wade (Derek’s dad), who died young in South
Shields when Decca was about four. There is an on- going chuckle in the family regarding
the whereabouts of granddad Wade’s money on his death, as there was no way he would
have trusted any of the high street banks. Derek and various uncles scoured the house,
ripping up the floorboards and prising the plaster off the walls to find where the money
was hidden, but all in vain. Eventually the conundrum was solved through the family’s
love of music. Tinkling on granddad’s piano was proving difficult – the keys were jamming
and it seemed out of tune. An internal inspection revealed the cause of the problem,
neatly laid out in denominations of one, five and ten pounds.
Decca’s mam Joan, like so many North East mams, gets on with her life quietly and
efficiently, but also speaks warmly of her son’s success. However, there’s also a sense of
level-headedness in her outlook, as Decca witnessed a few years ago when a question
was gnawing away at him.
‘Mam,’ he asked, as his mother was washing the dishes one day,
‘can I ask you a question?’
‘What is it, son of mine?’ came the reply.
‘Are you proud of me?’
Decca’s mam looked out of the window for a few seconds, pondering the question.
‘Well, son,’ she answered measuredly, ‘you’ve brought us a lot of happiness, but a lot
of heartache too.’
There were signs from a very early age of Decca causing hassle for his parents –
though they would probably have thought of his shenanigans as headaches rather than
heartaches at that stage of his development. We’ve mentioned the cheeky-chappy
behaviour, and the petty vandalism, most of which would have been considered
boisterous japes in that era, a time before the age of educational psychologists and the
like. At the root of it lay a desire to perform, to entertain, to be seen and heard, the
centre of attention.
‘That’s right,’ confirms Joan. ‘He was always wanting to put on a show, of whatever
type. He was a little bugger, but he was a lovely little bugger.’
One of the manifestations of his animated conduct – probably from the age of three –
was making a racket at home with whatever pots, pans and tin-lids would make the most
noise. Unsurprisingly, given the family’s keenness on music, there were always records
playing (especially Tom Jones) in the house, and if the record-player was off, then Derek
was just as likely to be entertaining family and visitors alike with his harmonica. Decca
was too young to have learned an instrument systematically, but to his audience’s
astonishment, he quickly revealed himself to be blessed with a natural sense of rhythm
and timing as he bashed along to the ambient music, using his mam’s knitting needles as
drumsticks. Combine this with the urge to entertain, and before long you’ve got a
confident little lad – scarcely into his school years – heading out onto the main street and
performing as a one-man band, to the delight of passing shoppers. Store this image
away: it’s Key Stage One, the first of several snapshots that chart the development of the
little boy who was to go on and become one of the world’s leading drummers.
With a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, the choice of school for the four-yearold Decca was always going to be a problem. As it turned out, he chopped and changed:
beginning his primary school years at the local Church of England school in South Shields,
after a few months he moved to St Peter’s and Paul’s (where Catherine Cookson had
been a pupil many years previously), before completing his junior school education in
1967 at St Oswald’s. His friends from this stage of his life included Michael Reid and John
Holmes. John had had polio during his early childhood, and suffered bullying at school on
account of his limp. In an early display of solidarity with the oppressed, Decca would
always stand up for his little friend.
Decca’s junior school years were enjoyable, though not for academic reasons. Having
fun was his primary objective – ‘me favourite subject was playtime’ – and he managed to
forge his way onto the school football team, scoring a few goals from his position of
outside-right.
‘People used to say I was like a little Stanley Matthews,’ he recalls with a chuckle. But
his academic progress was slow, particularly in the core subject of maths. ‘Do you know
your 12 times table?’ asked the teacher one day. ‘No,’ replied Decca, quick as a flash, ‘but
I know the tune.’ The irony has never been lost on him that drummers need to be able to
count efficiently, but he was always terrible at maths, hiding behind a screen of humour
to counterbalance his weakness in that subject. More often than not, he would spend his
days staring out of the window wishing he could be outside playing. His inertia irritated
his teachers, who all thought of him as an intelligent kid who just didn’t want to know.
This Decca accepts as fair comment, freely admitting that he was ‘a horrible little fucker’,
whose commitment to school only rose when it was time for sport or music lessons. A
halfway-house was to join the school choir, which meant that Decca could make a racket
and immerse himself in music, while simultaneously managing to miss a few lessons.
Junior school can be a telling time in the development of a child’s musical ear. As we
have seen, Decca had already displayed his early sense of rhythm before he started
school, and he was pleased to see his interest encouraged by his teachers. When given a
percussion instrument to bash during music sessions at junior school, he knew
instinctively what to do with it. In our interviews for the book, it was interesting how
often the terms ‘instinctively’ and ‘intuitively’ cropped up in descriptions of Decca’s
drumming. Clearly he received no formal tuition in percussion, so to pinpoint the factors
behind his prodigious skill, we would have to conclude that he added self-taught layers on
top of a natural talent. In his own words, ‘I just seemed to know what to do from the
start.’
Away from school, the mischief continued, with more broken windows, the smashing
up of a few bus shelters and, for the first time, forays into the murky world of petty theft.
This was in no way a reflection of his upbringing – in fact, the senses of morality and fair
play in the Wade household were paramount – but rather a consequence of living in a
deprived area, knocking about with dodgy company, and with very little constructive stuff
to do. By the age of ten, Decca was already suffering the indignation of having the police
knocking on the family’s front door. But not all of his exploits resulted in capture. One
classic tale involves a neighbour chatting with Joan outside the house, and saying: ‘I’ve
just seen your Decca riding a motorbike down the main street.’ Joan was puzzled: ‘you
can’t have done – he’s only ten!’ Ten years old, but with the street wisdom of someone
twice his age, Decca already had the control and the audacity to ride not a powerless
scooter but a chunky 250cc motorbike on a public road. Joan remembers another
occasion on which Decca took motoring matters into his own hands:
‘There was one time he borrowed an older friend’s mini to impress a lass – well, he
had no licence or insurance or anything. So they drove all over the place, then Decca
discovered a five pound note on the dashboard. As it happened, the local cinema was
showing The Italian Job, with the three minis, so they used the friend’s fiver to go to the
pictures. He paid the money back, of course, but it was another example of how crackers
he was.’
The visits from the boys in blue continued, and their attention would soon transform
into formal cautions, court appearances and fines. Derek and Joan always paid the fines,
but felt a sense of desperation at Decca’s spiralling bad behaviour. It was then that they
decided to buy him his first drum kit (which Derek acquired through a contact at work), as
a means of keeping him occupied and focused, even though they knew the din was going
to deafen them. Another interesting string to Derek’s bow is that he, too, can play the
drums (as can Decca’s sister Janice, who has done a few turns behind the kit at local
clubs and been very well received). He’s left-footed and right- handed, which must have
made for complicated coordination as he bashed out his own rhythms.
The purchase of the first kit coincided with a spectacularly prolific period of wrongdoing on Decca’s part, and Derek had no option but to ground his son. This was Key
Stage Two in Decca’s drumming development, when enforced periods confined to his
room meant that he could tighten up his techniques and grow in confidence. It was also
at this time that the fledgling Decca broke through into the world of public performance.
Derek’s career on the local variety scene was going very well, and he could more or less
choose the format of each gig he wanted to offer: some would be more comedy-based;
others would embrace more musical acts, with combinations of vocalists and groups
taking the stage to perform their turns. Before he knew it, Decca found himself sat at his
drum kit facing an audience of dozens, and sometimes hundreds of people, beating out a
rock-steady rhythm to back up whichever singer was performing. Drumming, it was
becoming clear, was serving the dual function of honing Decca’s stagecraft and keeping
him out of trouble.
Decca’s secondary school was St Cuthbert’s (later St Wilfred’s), in Harton Lane, South
Shields, which he attended – OK, fair point, ‘on whose register his name featured’ – from
1967 to 1971. By now, the pattern of Decca’s early life had been set: school when he
could be bothered, messing about with his mates in his free time in the evenings and at
weekends, indulging in petty crime when the opportunity arose (sometimes getting away
with it; sometimes not), getting into fights and, above all, sitting behind his beloved drum
kit. His love for the drums – whether performing on stage with Derek’s concert party and
different variety acts, or sitting in his bedroom working on his techniques – was
increasing by the day: he had the advantage of having found his niche very young, and
had an obvious talent he had all the time in the world to perfect. Decca is fully aware –
and is clear that he also knew this at the time – that his teens were a period when he
was ‘an obnoxious fucker’ to his family, and he recalls those years now with a huge sense
of shame. His disobedience and waywardness were a disappointment to Derek and Joan,
but it’s a mark of their love, tolerance and commitment that they never gave up on him,
preferring to let him focus on drumming. All parties now agree that his drum kit saved
Decca from an adolescence viewed through the bars of young offenders’ institutions.
There were glimmers of light at school, not so much on the academic side, but in
terms of a few teachers trying to break through Decca’s veneer of indifference and coax
something positive out of him. Mrs Balfour, the librarian, had a certain warmth towards
Decca, calling him Jimmy Cagney, even though, behind her back, Decca and his mates
were ripping the back pages out of new books received by the school. Miss Douglas, the
music teacher, recognised his talent and enthusiasm and attempted to harness it, though
without much success. But the teacher who stands out in Decca’s memory was Billy
Mann, who taught maths and metalwork. This was the type of teacher we’d all love to
have had, who had empathy with difficult kids and tried to show them some compassion
and develop whatever flair they had. It was Mr Mann who encouraged Decca to join the
school swimming team, and who took the time simply to chat to him and show interest in
his life: always encouraging, never bollocking. Years later, after his first wave of success
as a musician, Decca bumped into Mr Mann in the Catholic Club on St Patrick’s Day. ‘Can I
buy you a pint, sir?’ asked Decca. Mr Mann smiled. ‘Aye, you can, Decca, but my name’s
Billy, not sir.’
But matching the light was the darker side of secondary school life. Any teachers who
riled Decca and his mates – or, on occasion, hit them – would suffer the irritation of their
car tyres being let down, and one of these teachers in particular, a science master,
refused to let up in his tormenting of the young lads. As a result, he entered the
chemistry laboratory one day to discover that his beloved tropical fish, displayed proudly
in a tank on one side of the lab, had been poisoned. No culprit was ever discovered, but a
certain group of ne’er-do-wells can’t have been far from the top of the list of suspects.
In a grim echo of the incident at junior school when Decca’s granddad had intervened
in reaction to harsh treatment by a teacher, the secondary school gym master made the
mistake of taking corporal punishment too far, giving Decca a black eye one day during
class. The following day, Derek arrived to avenge the abuse of his son, rocking the
hapless teacher off a row of metal lockers and telling him in no uncertain terms that
giving a young lad a black eye was not the way to maximise the learning experience.
Again, there was no further hassle.
Decca had been friends with John Holmes and Michael Reid right the way through from
junior school. He remembers their early teens as being a time when they would hang out
quite a bit at Reidy’s grandma’s house, where she would make them something to eat on
her old-fashioned range. With a devilish twinkle, the grandma was also happy to write
the lads notes to get them out of sundry lessons or activities at school. The ruse worked
fine for a few months, before the curls, slope and wording of three identical notes were
detected by an eagle-eyed teacher. Grandma had been rumbled, and the lads trooped
wearily to whatever activity they had been confidently planning to sidestep. Decca’s
reputation as a ‘proper fuckin’ nightmare student’ remained intact.
Other friends at school included a couple of girls, one called Dot, and another, Maria
Robson, whose role was to dare Decca to perform various acts of mischief and grin
broadly when he accomplished them without being caught. Despite his shyness in certain
circumstances, he was by now finding it easier to interact with girls, and before long he
was going out with his ‘first proper girlfriend’, Rosalind Moat. As is the case with early
relationships at that age, they didn’t go out for long, but nevertheless it was a significant
milestone in Decca’s youth. As a footnote, years later Rosalind married Mensi’s cousin.
Girlfriends could be easily categorised in Decca’s mind: there were those that Joan
approved of, and those she didn’t. Not a word was ever passed between mother and son
in respect of the suitability of any young lasses who came a-calling, but the old maxim
that actions speak louder than words was never more clearly illustrated:
‘Aye, if she didn’t like the lass, me mam would disappear into the other room and read
the paper until she’d gone. It was as simple as that. She never said owt, and she was
perfectly pleasant and all that, but you just knew.’
School, as it was turning out, was something not to be enjoyed, but to be endured. As
soon as Decca was legally old enough to leave, he planned to do so. The shiny new
decade of the 1970s had dawned in the world, music was occupying more and more of his
time, and at the age of 15, there was nothing to stop him stepping out of the rigid
discipline of formal education and into the adult world of work. What none of us can know
at the start of each decade is where we’ll be at the start of the next one. If Decca had
had a crystal ball in 1971 to show him images of life in London with the rock ’n’ roll jet set
in 1981, even he would have struggled to make sense of it. What is ‘punk’? Who is this
Jimmy Pursey fellow of whom you speak? What is this Stringfellows place where I seem
to be based? Isn’t that a photo of me and me drum kit in Abbey Road? (Oh my God, The
Beatles haven’t reformed with me on drums, have they?) And why am I drinking
champagne every day?
First, though, there was the more mundane matter of pleasing his parents by getting
himself a trade.
.
CHAPTER 2
Decca left school at the age of 15 in 1971, at a time when employment in manual trades
in the North East of England was plentiful. Strange though it may seem at this remove, a
school-leaver in the 1960s and early 70s would progress almost automatically from
secondary school into an apprenticeship for his or her chosen trade, usually within spitting
distance of home. Recommendations from the school were given far greater importance
than paper qualifications, so if you kept your nose even moderately clean you were likely
to be in with a chance of landing a job. Generations of South Tynesiders would follow
their parents’ career options, often joining the same employer. Whilst wages were not
sky-high, the sense of security – even the concept (unheard of today) of the ‘job for life’ –
was justifiably taken for granted. As we know with the benefit of hindsight, all this was to
change both in the region and nationally, but the teenaged Decca blithely finished school,
kicked his heels for a couple of weeks, then segued straight into an office job at the
Brigham and Cowans shipyard, where his father was working as a riveter.
The idea was that Decca would gain some experience of working life, and start to earn
a crust, before moving on to a conventional apprenticeship as a boilermaker when he
turned 16. Perhaps this idea was a bit optimistic, as the year he spent handling and
mishandling paperwork equipped him with a knowledge not of shipbuilding and
administrative practices, but of waggish scams and how best to diddle the system.
The sleight of hand started early in his career. That first winter in the shipyard was a
particularly cold one, but the Wade residence glowed like a bricks-and-mortar version of
the Ready Brek kid. Neighbours scratched their heads as to how the Wades could afford
to bring so much coal into the house and hence keep the fire going for such long hours,
but Dereks junior and senior had their system working slickly. Coal was an essential
ingredient in the shipyard to keep the furnaces flaring, and with huge quantities stored in,
it was inevitable that the odd ‘spare’ sack would be diverted from its intended purpose
without being missed. This ‘diversion’ was not without risk, but the supervisors were just
as likely to be getting their heads down for an hour as they were to be monitoring coal
stocks, so the scam worked smoothly and the house was always red hot. ‘Aye, the
goldfish died gasping for oxygen,’ Decca quips.
In one memorable incident, it was agreed that a number of sacks of coal would be
thrown over a particular section of the perimeter wall during a night shift, for collection
the following morning. The removal of the sacks was undertaken without incident, and
Decca and his dad hefted their plunder confidently over towards the wall, anticipating a
toasty hearth at home the following day. Simultaneously, they hurled the first of the
sacks over the wall, only for an ear-splitting metallic clang to pierce the silence of the
South Tyneside night air. Decca jumped up onto the wall, and beheld a police car eight
feet below him, its bewildered occupants hastily wiping sleep from their eyes and
struggling to fit their helmets as they scrambled from the car.
But it wasn’t just coal. The shipyard was equipped with all sorts of ‘removable’ gear,
ranging from generic stuff like tins of paint (needless to say, the Wade house added a
colourful gleam to its level of warmth), through lengths of cable to very specific items like
welding machines and even a ship’s propeller. Oh to have been a fly on the wall in the
pub as they tried to offload that one. Typically, if the plunder obtained during a shift
wasn’t needed in anyone’s home, it was sold on for 50p a barrowload. Cigarettes had
their own tariffs, and were acquired by the application of tool-making skills to the vending
machine on the wall.
The emptying of the fag machine was actually one of the incidents that brought the
scammers closest to capture. Management noticed that the machine had been fiddled
with and called the police. In a scene almost worthy of a comedy film, a local bobby was
seen whistling his way along the road on his pushbike, and leaning it against the wall as
he reached the shipyard to investigate the crime. The culprits closed ranks and put on
expressions of mock horror at what had happened, but it was clear to the copper that
there was no way the matter could go any further, so he went to get his bike to cycle
back to the police station. But where was the bike? The same sea of concerned faces
greeted him as he shook his head in disbelief, asking Derek, Decca and their buddies if
they thought he should call the police to report the theft.
Another vehicle with two wheels, though this time a motorised one, featured in
another of Decca’s underage motorbike japes. One day at work, Derek got some grit in
his eye, and it was agreed that the quickest way to get him to hospital to have it seen to
was for Decca to take him on the nearest available motorbike. Decca was 15 by now, half
as old again as when we last saw him riding a motorbike illegally at the tender age of
ten, so in principle Derek figured his son would be a trustworthy (albeit unlicensed and
uninsured) chauffeur. The hair- raising journey to the hospital left Derek, in his own
words, ‘shittin’ mesel’ all the way’.
With the benefit of a warm house and a few bob in his pocket, Decca found life
enjoyable in this period. Working alongside his dad – with all the social advantages this
brought about – was proving ideal in terms of the bonding, camaraderie and banter to
which he was exposed every day. Particularly enjoyable was the Friday afternoon ritual of
easing off on work, having a drink on work time and sometimes making a bit of music.
Outside work, he still knocked about with the same lads, and got into the same tangles
with the law, and now that he had grown a bit (though he was never exactly tall), other
boys were less likely to try and start a fight with him. One lad who did try it on – a selfproclaimed local hard case – was surprised to see Decca fail to back down. Egged on by
Derek to see justice done, Decca shaped up to the bully in the back yard and, within a
couple of minutes, had ‘kicked the shit out of him’.
In a slightly more organised context, Derek told me about a boxing trainer who had
had a good look at Decca and was impressed by the weight of his punches. A fight was
set up against a local kid – at 15, the same age as Decca – who was unbeaten in 16
contests in his amateur boxing career. To astonishment at ringside – but as no surprise to
Derek and the trainer – Decca knocked the other lad out in the first round.
Controlled and spontaneous fights aside, there was generally a bit more structure to
his existence now. This was helped in no small measure by Derek’s growing fame on the
variety circuit, and Decca was now fulfilling more and more drumming engagements in
the evenings. As well as enjoying his music, he was unconsciously becoming increasingly
adept and confident as a musician – developing the sort of stagecraft that only prolonged
and repeated exposure to the live circuit can bring.
As to the female of the species, whilst there were girlfriends, it’s also true to say that
Decca’s innate shyness often outweighed his apparent confidence. As he jokes: ‘I would
go into the next room to change me mind.’ Through to his mid-teens, he still suffered – if
that’s the word – from being every girl’s friend but being too reserved to persuade them
to be his girlfriend. However, this was a comfortable state of affairs: he had his family,
his job, his mates and his music – plenty to be getting on with for a lad of 15.
*
All too soon it was time to start his apprenticeship, at the nearby Mercantile Dry Dock. His
chosen trade was that of boilermaker, which he figured would bring a decent chance of
work after his training was complete. More importantly, much of his work would be
undertaken in the warmth of the boiler-room, which was far more desirable than the
plight of, for example, the riveters working outside in the freezing cold. Decca’s
apprenticeship – like all such periods of training – involved blocks of time spent ‘studying’
at the local Marine Technical College, and intensive hands-on experience gained by
contact with expert practitioners back in the shipyard. This experience was to prove both
socially enjoyable and professionally invaluable. The enjoyment stemmed from the laidback approach to background music as the lads worked. Decca recalls spending languid
afternoons sitting on an oil- drum listening to the LPs of the bands of the day, particularly
Free, whose track ‘All Right Now’ became a boiler-room anthem.
His supervisor Cyril ‘The Squirrel’ Wilson happened to be an expert military drummer,
and noticed Decca sitting one day, drumming on his thighs with two bits of metal. Cyril
produced a pair of drumsticks and, improvising on an oil-drum, showed Decca a series of
techniques such as the paradiddle. This was Key Stage Three in his percussion training,
and Cyril’s input helped immeasurably as Decca sought to expand his range of styles,
putting them to immediate use in his moonlighting life as a show-band drummer.
Key Stage Four happened over an extended period of time. Part of Decca’s walk to
work involved crossing a busy road, where he would usually have to wait for a couple of
minutes for the lights to change. Invariably he would find that, as he dawdled yawning on
the pavement, a diesel taxi would pull up alongside him, waiting to make its turn at the
junction. The rhythms the cab’s engine and transmission threw out were pulsating and,
for the kind of ear specialising in percussion, an absolute godsend. Decca would stand
enthralled in his overalls, double-bass-drumming with his right foot, experimenting with
funky open-hi-hat patterns with his left, incorporating offbeat snare work with his left
hand while his right hand diddled along on the imaginary ride cymbal. It made perfect
sense to everyone other than the bemused taxi-driver, who would suck heavily on his fag
and drive off into the murky morning, shaking his head.
Before he knew it, Decca’s earnings from his evening performances were starting to
outstrip his apprentice’s wages. The more people saw him on stage, the more the word of
his talent would spread, and soon he was being called upon to drum with a range of local
acts. It reached the point where he could earn £50 a night or, amalgamating several
different types of gigs, up to £200 over a busy weekend. This compares with the £8 he
earned every week during the college blocks of his training (though slightly more in the
work-based, practical years of the apprenticeship), and the £80 a week Derek earned as
a riveter after 15 years’ experience. Life was rosy.
*
A recurring theme in conversations with Decca is that, whatever jobs and activities he’s
undertaken in his varied life, ‘it’s not just been about money’. Even as he made his way
confidently through his musical apprenticeship in tandem with his industrial one, there
was always time for charitable work. There’s an instinct across the Wade family to help
out in times of need; to do what they can to help those requiring a hand. Accordingly, as
well as helping out at benefit performances given by his dad, Decca could often be found
drumming at a range of other charitable shows. One amusing moment happened when
Decca was in his late teens and performing at a fundraiser at Felling Club. In keeping
with his lifelong willingness to embrace all manner of musical styles, Decca was
drumming for a gospel choir, and halfway through a number entitled ‘Journey’s End’, the
young drummer started to feel uneasy about what was going on alongside him. He kept
the beat on his snare drum and leant over to whisper in the ear of the band leader, who
was standing on the other side of the drum kit as he sang along.
‘Gaffa, the organist’s fallen off the organ,’ said Decca.
Years later, the band leader reflected:
‘When Decca said that, I thought it was one of his jokes, but I looked round and all I
could see was a pair of hands sticking up in the air. The guy was foaming at the mouth.
Apparently he was a diabetic who had forgotten to take his insulin, and he’d taken the
job at just a few minutes’ notice. He was fine in the end, though.’
It wasn’t the only charity event to bring a smile to Decca’s face. At another 1970s gig
at Pelaw Club, the pianist inexplicably fell asleep during a song, leading to tears of
laughter and ribald piss-taking from the rest of the band. Then, years later, Decca and his
dad watched with tears rolling down their faces as Paul Gascoigne’s mate Jimmy Five
Bellies dropped off, knocking his head on the microphone, during an instrumental break in
a song he was singing.
*
The money he was earning at the weekends was, however, helpful in Decca’s eagerness
to upgrade his drum kit. The first one he bought himself (to replace the initial set, which
his parents had bought for him when he was ten) was a Rhythm Kings kit, costing him
£17 during his apprenticeship. It wasn’t the multi-tom-tommed set-up Decca would favour
in later years to allow for his famed fills and rolls, but it was a step up in quality of sound.
From there, he progressed to a Broadway kit, costing £50, and eventually to a fuller Pearl
kit, which he would later use for the recording of ‘Liddle Towers’. He still talks
energetically of the early days of the Pearl brand’s introduction into the UK market. As far
as he is aware, when he acquired his Pearl gear there were only four such kits in the
whole of England, two of which were in the North East: one owned by Decca and the
other by his mate Tommy. These days, of course, the brand is widespread, but in the
early 70s it was still something of a novelty, albeit an extremely desirable one. Getting
hold of his Pearl kit seemed like the peak of achievement to the young Decca, who could
not possibly have guessed at this time that, before long, drum manufacturers would be
queuing up to offer him endorsements – free kits, replacements, upgrades, flight cases,
endless sticks, the lot.
Meanwhile, through a mixture of boredom, lack of commitment to his trade, and
tiredness after so many evening musical ventures, Decca’s attendance at work gradually
started to waver. He would find any excuse – medical or otherwise – to stay away from
the shipyard: ‘I was off for six weeks with a broken flask’. Perhaps because he was such a
livewire and noticeable employee, anything Decca did in the yard (including his absence)
was spotted, and his misdemeanours started to build into a portfolio of grievances
against him. As soon as anything went missing, Decca would be the first employee
summoned into the office, even on the rare occasions that he hadn’t been responsible.
The issue reached a head a mere two weeks short of the scheduled end of his
apprenticeship, when he was called in by management and sacked. In a characteristic
retort when he was invited to comment on his dismal record as an employee, Decca
grinned and said: ‘I love the glamour of the shipyards’.
Luckily, the neighbouring Hebburn Palmer’s shipyard (taken over by Swan Hunter in
1973, so its name varied a bit) was able to offer Decca the opportunity to be ‘made up’ –
ensuring that his missing time could be completed and his boilermaker’s card, as a
qualified tradesman, could be awarded. He was grateful for this lifeline and chance to
serve out his time, but it was clear that the boilermaker’s trade was never going to
provide Decca’s primary means of making a living. Despite this, he remained a union
member and always paid his fees, even the VB (vacant book) variant when he was away
later on, touring with The Angelic Upstarts. Loyalty to your family, your trade union and
the Labour Party was simply an assumed part of life.
So Decca was now a qualified boilermaker, but an unemployed one. The notion of an
adult son living at his parents’ house for free, without contributing to his board and
lodging, would have been unthinkable in any North East working-class family at that time,
so Decca had to find a solution quickly. This came as a result of a conversation with
Mensi, who had been working down the mine at a big colliery in Westoe since he left
school. ‘What’s it like?’ asked Decca. ‘It’s dark, but it’s OK,’ replied Mensi. That was all
Decca wanted to hear, and the next day he approached the pit management to see about
a job, which was duly granted. Looking back, he jokes that despite working underground
he never actually ‘worked’ underground, but during the months he was there, he enjoyed
the crack with Mensi and the rest of his new workmates, and had exactly enough money
to pay his mam and dad what they needed to cover his living expenses. The one
anecdote that stands out from his time at the colliery was when his line manager checked
the records, scratched his head and called Decca to his office.
‘Are you working two days a week here, Mr Wade?’
‘Aye.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, I couldn’t manage on just the one.’
*
In his late teens, Decca was – in the parlance of the time – going steady with a local lass
called Jenny Forshaw. Jenny had been very understanding and supportive of Decca’s dual
existence of boilersmith- cum-miner by day and rock drummer by night, but in the dying
embers of 1974, the young couple’s carefree vibe was altered dramatically overnight.
Pregnancy outside of wedlock was, by this stage, not such a big deal, but the Anglo-Irish
Catholic traditionalist within Decca prompted him to sit straight down with Jenny and
discuss marriage. During their talk, Jenny’s strength of character was to shine through in
a line that Decca has never forgotten:
‘Decca, you don’t want to be getting married now. You’ve got enough on your plate
with your drumming career, and it wouldn’t be right for me to tie you down. We’ll manage
fine as we are.’
In August 1975, Caroline – Decca’s first child – came into the world, and lived up to her
genetic make-up by growing into a very individualistic ‘wild child’. Decca takes up the
story:
‘Aye, Caroline was a great kid, lovely. When me and Jenny went our separate ways,
she was brought up by Jenny’s new bloke, Brian Connor, down in Peterborough. Brian’s a
great bloke, and he’s always done right by Caroline and by Jenny – she was ill with
cancer, poor thing, but thank God she pulled through. Caroline’s got two kids of her own
now, and she’s been in touch over the years. Sometimes she calls me “Dad”, sometimes
“Decca”, but the right connection’s there.’
*
The job down the mine was one of several posts unrelated to music Decca has held over
the years, each coming at a time when he had temporary cash-flow problems or, when
financial matters stepped up a gear later in his career, to help keep the taxman off his
back. One that sticks in his mind was that of ‘tank cleaner’, where it was his task to climb
inside an industrial tank and clean all the oily crap off the inner surface. Decca was
mindful of his granddad’s words of advice: ‘never ask someone to do something you
couldn’t or wouldn’t do yourself’, so rolling his sleeves up and getting on with it was not a
problem, and the money was good. That said, his commitment to the job soon landed
him the upgraded post of shift supervisor – or ‘nightshift gaffer’, as he preferred to call it
– whereupon he hastily organised a rota to ensure that all the lads in the team got
enough periods of sleep to get them through the night. Astonishingly, the work got done
and the lads ate their breakfast with fresh faces. Maybe Decca missed his vocation in life
as a captain of industry. Then again, we would all have missed out on 2,000,000 Voices.
I asked Decca at what point he considered himself to have become a professional
musician. His reply was unequivocal: he’d really kept up his apprenticeship and finally got
it completed just to please his parents, particularly his dad. From then onwards, whatever
fill-in jobs he had to do, whichever direction life took him, he knew deep down that both
his heart and his daily crust lay in the music business. That isn’t to say that he ever
planned to become famous (dreamt, yes; expected, no), but his teenage years had
already taught him that there was a living of sorts to be made from doing the thing he
loved and understood best: drumming. In short, he was playing to the strength of his
talent and following his real vocation. A message for us all.
Away from work, Decca was spending a lot of time with Mensi. They would talk about
what bands they were into, but the musical conversations never went any deeper at this
time. Higher on their list of priorities was mischief, which by now had cranked up a few
notches from their childhood pranks of smashing windows. A couple of stand- out
incidents give a flavour of their off-duty escapades.
The youth club in the Simonside neighbourhood was a popular haunt for local
teenagers – in fact, in the absence of much else to do in the area, it was a godsend.
Decca would spend a lot of time there with his mate Micky Burns, practising music in the
venue’s toilets (Decca tells me this without any apparent irony, and I’m too polite to ask
why they didn’t use the main hall). One day, Mensi and Decca were bored and decided to
break into the youth club. Decca, being the smaller of the two, climbed in through a
window and opened the door, and they proceeded to trash the place, stealing all the
club’s records. To help cover their tracks, they turned up the next time the club was due
to be open for business and turned the kids away at the door, saying: ‘Sorry, lads, the
youth club’s shut – we’ve been burgled.’
Another popular pastime was stealing cars. In a step up from the less significant thefts
of their younger years, Mensi and Decca had for the last year or so been into taking cars.
Soon enough, the police started to knock on the door, and further court appearances and
fines ensued. On one occasion, they were due to attend court to answer charges of car
theft, realised they were running late, and stole a car in order to get there on time.
But it was not all crime and misdemeanour. The music was going from strength to
strength, and Decca was now involved in a series of bands, often involving Micky Burns
and Mond Cowie. Mond has happy memories of the local music scene at that time:
‘I got my first guitar when I was about 12, and I remember we used to lug Decca’s
drum kit and my guitar over to Simonside Youth Club, where there was a room we could
practise in. We used to rehearse with Micky Burns, who was already a good guitarist, and
a lad called Colin McKeith, who was a really good singer. We would do all sorts of Beatles
covers, and songs by bands like Free, Deep Purple and Led Zep. Anything that was easy,
really. We weren’t good enough to do any gigs but it was a great learning curve.’
In the early stages of his post-school music career, Decca was still using the same kit
his mam and dad had bought for him at the age of ten to keep him out of trouble – it
comprised just a bass drum, a snare and a single tom-tom, but it was more than enough
for a skilful percussionist to demonstrate his prowess. As the involvement in better and
better bands increased – with correspondingly large amounts of cash handed over at the
end of each gig – he was able to upgrade to the equipment described earlier in the
chapter, each kit producing a more professional sound in keeping with the guitars,
amplifiers, speakers, PAs and microphones used by other band members. He was in a
group called Geordie Express with Alan Waggott (later of Thin Lizzy tribute band Black
Rose) and Graham Normandale, and also remembers with fondness his time in local
covers band Stony Broke shortly after leaving school. Another band was called Brodie.
These bands found plentiful work in the social and working men’s clubs of the area, but
there was a catch, as Mond recalls:
‘The club scene was massive at the time. The big thing in those days was that the
bingo was the real star in the social clubs, and the band was really just the support act.
But the places were always packed at the weekends, so you got to play in front of big
audiences and it was great experience. The social clubs were a great breeding-ground for
talent: everyone started off there. I remember John Miles had a band called Influence
doing the circuit, with Paul Thompson – who later played on a few of our tracks – on
drums. Jimmy Nail and his band The King Crabs were doing the rounds, and even Brian
Johnson, later of AC/DC, started off there, singing with The Gobi Desert Canoe Club.’
Allied to the satisfaction of playing in bands, his burgeoning musical reputation led to
pleasing knock-ons such as being recommended to other, more established groups who
were looking for a drummer. A local bass player friend put a word in for Decca to join the
legendary American skiffle star Johnny Duncan, who had recently relocated to Sunderland
and was touring and recording again with his band The Blue Grass Boys. This was a big
gig, but naturally it didn’t faze Decca, serving instead to give his broadening of styles yet
another unexpected turn.
Throughout his career, Decca considers himself fortunate to have worked with great
musicians, and is clear that their influence (and, sometimes, their aura) has brought out
the best in him. Somewhere in the mix is his desire to please, to be applauded, to do the
right thing for other people’s benefit, but on a simpler level, who would ever turn down a
job doing what they love? The term ‘great’ works on several levels, all of which apply:
back in the North East in his teens, the guitarists and singers alongside whom he worked
were the best in the local business, in terms of their musical skill, commitment and
stagecraft; in later bands with professional record deals, the sense of camaraderie was
second to none; and at the top of the tree, as we shall see in later chapters, Decca was
selected to do session and live drumming and percussion with some of the world’s leading
pop and rock acts – truly ‘working with the greats’.
Even when Derek grounded him for his tangles with the police, Decca would use the
enforced incarceration constructively, sitting in his bedroom drumming along to Free, Thin
Lizzy, Alex Harvey, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Cream and other groups whose music –
and particularly whose drummers – he loved. Unsurprisingly, he cites Ginger Baker, John
Bonham and Keith Moon as his early influences, and used the time in his bedroom to
repeat their techniques until he had them mastered. Many years later he had the
pleasure of meeting some of his rock idols, among them Ian Paice, Ginger Baker and Cozy
Powell. Whilst all around him, life was kicking up experiences to oppress him, chain him
to a schedule, entangle him with the law, music provided an escape – drumming was the
sole activity with which he never got bored; his practice ethic and quest for perfection
were relentless.
This level of commitment, coupled with his burgeoning experience on the live circuit,
increased not only his confidence, but his time- keeping tightness and his ability to
embrace different percussive styles without blinking. Whilst one show-band might require
him to fill a complete gig with straightforward 4/4 rock beats, another might ask him to
provide jazz grooves; there might be faster rhythm and blues stuff, blue grass, some 70s
funk and, with one outfit, a set crammed full of Bob Marley’s finest reggae. It’s a measure
of how attuned Decca’s ear was, that he simply listened to Marley’s records, picked up his
sticks and got on with it. His modesty is endearing – ‘reggae’s easy: you just put all the
beats in where they shouldn’t be’ – but it belies the view held by many drumming
experts: that The Clash’s Topper Headon and Decca are the two best white reggae
drummers in the world.
But mostly it was rock. The rock-covers-band concept, merging into the ‘pub rock’
explosion of the mid-1970s, was fully representative of what the live music circuit had to
offer at that time. With hindsight we can see pompous progressive rock morphing into the
less serious (and much funnier) format of glam rock, followed in turn by the emergence of
pre-punk R&B outfits like Doctor Feelgood. The lineage is clear: live music was becoming
less up-itself, more simplified, but at the same time faster and more confident. Surely the
world of popular music was only one step away from something massive.
*
In early 1977 Decca and Mensi listened to The Clash for the first time. Their reaction was
positive and, as luck would have it, the band were touring the UK, including a show at
Newcastle University at the end of May. In the week of Decca’s 21st birthday, the two of
them got on the bus to Newcastle, had a few beers and watched the gig, preceded by
support acts Subway Sect and The Slits. The lads were blown away by The Clash, but
couldn’t help feeling that pretty much anyone could pick up a guitar and be as good as
the two opening bands. They discussed the matter at greater length as the evening wore
on, but no conclusions were drawn.
As Decca slept off his hangover the next morning, Mensi was up and about, having got
it into his head that he was going to form a band and emulate The Clash. He roped in
local lads Micky Burns and Mond Cowie on bass and lead guitar respectively, and
appointed himself lead singer and lyricist. All that was missing was a drummer. Without
further ado, and in what was to become known as the full DIY spirit of punk, the fledgling
band crossed the street, marched up to the Wades’ house and knocked on the front door.
It was a knock that was destined to change Decca’s life and lead him along paths that the
little drummer boy could never have imagined.
.
CHAPTER 3
There was no instruction manual for forming a punk band in North East England in the
spring of 1977. Penetration in Ferryhill were just starting to find their feet, Blitzkrieg Bop
on Teesside and The Carpettes in Houghton-le-Spring were getting their acts together,
but otherwise there was very little precedent. More specifically, whilst new bands across
the region were springing up – inspired mainly by The Sex Pistols and The Clash – there
was nobody to imitate locally to harness the anger, the angst, the inertia of the North
East. Additionally, would-be musicians could see that they shared none of the art school
background of some of the bands making waves nationally; their life was real, their
frustrations born out of joblessness, boredom, urban decay, industrial failure and bleak
landscapes. As such, it was very much a question of ploughing your own furrow, finding a
unique angle to get yourself and your music noticed.
Ironically, in the case of the four friends from Brockley Whins planning to take the
world by storm, the person best equipped to present a public face was the least musically
able. Whilst Mond and Micky already knew their way around a guitar and Decca, as we
have seen, had been playing drums live on stage for a decade, Mensi brought no
instrument other than an untried voice to the table. But that was the whole point. The
Angelic Upstarts were perfectly representative of the punk ethos in that they were aware
of their limitations but saw no barriers to getting their point across. There was a public
ready to be spoken to, thirsty for directness, dynamism and energy, eager for someone to
make music that reflected their reality, their lives, their language. In this sense, as a
confident, bright, outspoken man about to turn 20, Mensi was well positioned to forge a
role as a local champion, the people’s poet, the voice of an oppressed local generation.
There had actually been a slightly earlier, prototype line-up, comprising Mensi, Mond, a
bassist called Brian, Ski on drums and Hodge on saxophone. Mond shudders as he recalls
their first gig:
‘We played at Jarrow Civic Hall, and the audience attacked and a massive fight broke
out. We got kicked to fuck. So there was a big change of personnel, and that’s when we
started again with Decca on drums.’
The band’s name came about through the fusion of two ideas from within the ranks:
Upstarts had been a strong candidate, but there had also been votes for something
involving the ironic term Angelic. The compromise was straightforward, but how
differently things might have turned out if they had gone with another early frontrunner:
Headlice! Decca was, for some reason, uncomfortable with the name at first, but was
reassured when he and Mond did a feature on Tyne Tees Television and the interviewer,
Andrew O’Connor, said the name suited them perfectly.
It’s doubtful whether the band set out with the term ‘ideology’ foremost in their minds,
but their impeccable left-wing credentials – and the message they aimed to give across
through their music and their anti-fascist stance – were soon picked up on by music
writers. Years later, Mensi told Alex Ogg for No More Heroes:
‘In the early days I used to say a lot of things for a shock reaction. I never set out to
be political or anti-fascist. I evolved into a staunch, active anti-fascist, which I still am
today and will be till the day I die. If we can be remembered for one thing and one thing
only, let it be our unswerving and staunch anti-fascist stand.’
Equally debatable is their bracketing within the first or the second wave of punk. These
things tend to be discussed long after the event, so in a sense, it wasn’t really relevant at
the time. What was clear was that they were embracing all of what punk stood for, and
were working-class kids with something to say in revolt against the system. This was
what would extend their pigeon-holing into the emerging Oi movement a couple of years
later.
The music was to be angry, loud and fast. Roles were defined from the outset, and the
songwriting dynamic settled into a collaborative pattern, with Mond supplying most of the
melodies, Mensi the lyrics, and Decca and Micky contributing ideas for arrangement, and
grooves to keep the material tight. The first songs the lads put together during early
rehearsals were ‘Police Oppression’, ‘Leave Me Alone’, ‘Youth Leader’ (inspired by Mensi’s
hatred of the lads’ own youth club leader) and ‘The Murder of Liddle Towers’, which
combined with covers of ‘Let’s Dance’ by Chris Montez, a couple of Pistols songs and The
Clash’s ‘White Riot’ to make up their first set. As they rehearsed in local church halls and
youth clubs, the sound started to gel, and Decca was particularly happy to be allowed to
execute a drum solo in ‘Let’s Dance’.
When other venues were unavailable for rehearsals, the band would sometimes
practise in Derek and Joan’s back yard, which was tolerated with good grace by all the
neighbours since, in actively taking up music, the lads were not roaming the streets and
getting into trouble. Derek was sitting in his armchair one day, with the back door open,
tapping his feet to the music, when the bloke next door looked through the window with
an expression of alarm on his face.
‘What’s the matter?’ Derek asked.
‘Have you seen your electricity meter?’ cried the neighbour, pointing to the wallmounted dial. It was spinning every bit as fast as the records the band dreamed of
making. Very quickly, Derek encouraged the lads to keep their practices to places like the
youth club, where the exorbitant utility bills would be someone else’s concern.
Soon they were ready for their first gig, and it seemed sensible to stick to their local
Percy Hudson youth club, where they could be assured of a packed crowd of their mates
and teenagers from the surrounding estates.
‘We only had six songs,’ Mensi told Ian Glasper in Burning Britain, ‘but did them all
three times, and it was fuckin’ mega. We played in front of about a hundred kids.’
The plan to stay local and pack ’em out proved well gauged, and more gigs quickly
followed at venues ranging from youth clubs to pubs. It’s fair to say that some of the pub
audiences weren’t sure what to make of the band’s sound at first, as it was like nothing
that had gone before. On their home turf, though, in front of a youthful punk- inspired
public, they were unstoppable.
In awe of the band from their earliest days was teenage guitarist Tony Van Frater,
later to star with Red Alert and work his way through the ranks to his current employment
with The Cockney Rejects. His attention was immediately drawn to Decca’s performance:
‘You could tell straight away that he was an amazing drummer. Even at that stage, you
could imagine the band going on to better things. What struck me was how they were
starting to go a little bit along the Clash kind of lines, bringing a bit of reggae-inspired
stuff in, even that early on. And that’s not an easy style for a drummer to play. But Decca
already had it. Whenever I hear him playing on Upstarts tracks that have any reggae
influence, I think of him alongside the other great white reggae drummers like Topper
Headon or Dave Ruffy of The Ruts.’
From the word go, the plan was to rebel, to shock, to upset as many people as
possible. Early gigs included cameo appearances from spiders and snakes, together – as
we shall see – with another key element of livestock. In terms of the band’s image, one
of the early decisions was to sport swastika armbands for public appearances, interviews
and gigs. This was a staggeringly controversial move, little more than a generation after
the death of Hitler and the end of the Second WorldWar, but it achieved the desired
effect of getting the band talked about. The flip side of this, of course, was that the public
assumed – not unreasonably in the circumstances – that the band had fascist leanings,
and it wasn’t long before undesirable extreme-right-wing elements started to infiltrate
their gigs. Mensi took this in his stride, viewing it not as a reason for conflict, but rather
as an opportunity to educate, to convey a persuasive anti-fascist message through the
band’s music. To his credit, he went to great lengths to talk to the audience between
songs, using his powers as an intelligent, opinionated frontman to express what the band
were trying to do. Decca has always rated Mensi in this department: ‘he’s a great lyricist
but also a fantastic frontman, the best – only Chris Wright of Crashed Out comes close’.
One critic in the early days agreed about Mensi’s effectiveness as a frontman, but rather
unkindly referred to his on-stage face as resembling ‘a bulldog licking piss off a nettle’.
But many of the meatheads could not be educated, and continued to see Upstarts gigs
as battlegrounds, opportunities simply to hurl fists, bottles and abuse at anyone with
differing opinions. An extreme – and widely reported – example of how nasty the
atmosphere at the band’s gigs could turn, was a show at the Lafayette Club in
Wolverhampton in the early summer of 1979. In a lightning strike during the first song,
fifty National Front supporters stormed the stage, causing uproar and an official injury toll
of six, including at least one stabbing. The club’s management had been aware of the
likelihood of such violence and had laid on what they thought were adequate reserves of
personnel in the form of rotund bouncers. Unbelievably, though, despite the evidence
emerging in front of their eyes, they still thought the bouncers would be able to handle
the trouble, and refused to call the police, thus adding further bloodshed and a sense of
legitimacy to the ugly events happening on stage. As Mond told the NME:
‘It was definitely an organised thing. We could see these guys pushing their way
forward. They weren’t punks or skinheads or anything like that; they were all wearing
flared jeans and T-shirts – just ordinary guys.’
For sure, such behaviour lent the shows a certain atmosphere, but it was invariably a
nerve-jangling one, in which genuine music fans and working-class kids were unable just
to relax and enjoy the music. Several consequences stemmed from this. Firstly, band
members, Decca included, stopped enjoying the live shows once the violence started to
escalate (standing with a mic or a guitar in your hand at least allows you to swerve out of
the way of flying bottles; not so easy for a drummer marooned on his stool). In addition,
a growing number of venues got wind of what this band’s gigs were like, and banned
them in advance of any bookings – as such, the parameters for live work were vastly
reduced almost as soon as the band had started. In an echo of the fate suffered only
months earlier by The Sex Pistols, this trend quickly extended across the North of England
and further afield, so that when the band were ready to spread their wings and cobble
together larger tours, their way was often blocked. Thirdly, it was not long before police
officers started to turn up at gigs, monitoring conduct in general, maybe keeping an eye
on specific troublemakers in the audience, but also watching for signs of what is
nowadays termed ‘unsociable behaviour’ on the part of the band. If ever there was a
justification for the penning of a song entitled ‘Police Oppression’, this was it.
Perhaps as a reaction, or maybe as a simple goading device, the band shifted up a
level from the swastikas and adopted the wearing of a policeman’s helmet on stage
(Mond, in fact, had the full uniform), while kicking a genuine pig’s head around. A local
butcher had been more than happy to help out as supplier-in-chief, offering the band a
full pig. What the friendly butcher didn’t offer was tuition in butchery skills – on more than
one occasion, the lads set about the carcass with an axe and nearly took their feet off.
Taunting the police force was considered fair game, particularly as it was soon evident
which audience members were the plain-clothes officers – the term ‘plain- clothes’ was
something of a giveaway here, with officers donning the blandest casual gear they could
lay hands on, in an attempt to merge with the denim- and leather-clad punks and
skinheads bouncing along at every show.
One famous manifestation of the Upstarts’ on-stage antics took place at the notorious
gig at Acklington Prison, where the prison chaplain sanctioned a performance by the band
for 150 inmates, on the vague understanding that they were a morally uplifting gospel
music outfit. Unable to do anything to stop the gig, staff looked on forlornly as Mensi and
the crew stormed through tracks such as ‘We are the People’, ‘Police Oppression’ and a
lively cover version of Sham 69’s ‘Borstal Breakout’, altered to ‘Acklington Breakout’ for
the occasion. Socialist Worker reflected that, among various rants from the stage, Mensi
had advised anyone able to vote at the next general election to vote Labour, as the
menacing cloud of Thatcherism seemed destined only to pour cold rain on the trade union
movement. Wise words, and presciently timed. Anyone whose sentence was to last
beyond the election was comforted with the reassurance that life in jail would be far
preferable to life on the outside under Thatcher. Predictably, there was a huge outcry,
mainly among the tory branches of local government, but the band left them to it: they
had pulled off an extraordinary coup and brought yet more notoriety and hilarious
publicity to their name.
Mensi has always been a marked man in the eyes of the local constabulary. His
teenage petty crime hadn’t helped, of course, but more than anything it was his role as
anti-police, anti-system, anti- fascist spokesman within the band that led to closer
attention being paid by the boys in blue. Without it ever seeming like a persecution
complex, Mensi felt – with plenty of justification – that the police had it in for him. One
day, he and Decca were driving with two girls down to the beach near Sunderland, when
they became aware of being followed by a police car, which eventually overtook them
and pulled them over. The officers were keen to get Decca and Mensi out of the car, but
Decca whispered to Mensi to stay put, not to get out angrily and play into their hands. As
it transpired, the police took it upon themselves to lay into Mensi, leaving him with two
black eyes before driving off to continue their day’s work stopping crime.
Meanwhile, the violence in the audience refused to die down, and it became something
to be expected – never acceptable, but accepted as inevitable. As Max Splodge was to
observe wryly a couple of years later, ‘I went to a fight once and an Angelic Upstarts gig
broke out.’
Despite what you might think, there was one element of punk-gig behaviour that
Decca always abhorred: spitting at the band. (He wasn’t alone in this: Stiff Little Fingers
have always been vociferous in their condemnation of gobbing, though bands like Chelsea
seemed actively to encourage it.) Decca’s struggle to accept being spat at reached a nononsense climax at a show in Manchester:
‘At that show I got so fed up with these lads at the front of the audience gobbing at
me that I got up, went to the front of the stage and pissed all over them. It maybe taught
them a lesson, but it also saved me from having to interrupt the gig and go backstage for
a slash.’
On stage, the live set was becoming tighter and tighter, and audiences bigger. There
was a feeling in the air that the lads were acquiring a genuine sense of celebrity. Tom
Von Spencer recalls an early occasion:
‘We supported them when I was with The Rebels, at a room off Seaburn Hall, and they
were light years ahead of us. Even at that early stage, it was kind of hard to get to talk to
them. They were always accessible – I don’t mean they were standoffish or anything –
but the kids were already holding them in a kind of awe. It’s strange, but apart from a
nervous greeting and all that at the gig, I didn’t actually get close enough to speak to
Decca properly until years later, when I saw him backstage at a festival. Actually, that
was quite funny, and when I remembered it recently it made me chuckle about the whole
journey Decca’s been on from backstreet gigs to mixing with the stars. He was standing
backstage with his arm around Toyah, chatting and joking with her. I was a bit pissed, so
I shouted across: “How Decca, any chance of me getting to sleep with Toyah?” Quick as a
flash, he shouted back: “Get her asked yerself, ya fat cunt”. That was actually the first
proper exchange I had with Decca, so it’s kinda memorable.’
Back at home, Joan and Derek were revelling in their son’s growing fame.
‘Even from the early days,’ Joan told me, ‘we’d get kids knocking on the door, wanting
to know if Decca was in or asking us stories about him. As the band got bigger there were
a lot of posters that Decca used to send us from London. We’d give these away to the
kids when they knocked. Decca always said it was important to give them something as a
thank-you for showing an interest in the band.’
The band’s reputation was enhanced by a couple of specific events. The first was a
review of a live show at Bolingbroke Hall, South Shields, written by rock journalist Phil
Sutcliffe and published in Sounds in March 1978. It’s difficult to imagine the importance
for a fledgling band from the North East, of having something positive written about you
in a national magazine in the days before the instantaneous information-overload of the
internet. Back then, magazines such as Sounds, Melody Maker and the New Musical
Express (NME) were bibles for pop and rock music fans of all persuasions: they were the
only means of reading about national trends, tips for bands to watch out for, and so on.
This was a step up for Decca and the lads, and led to further coverage in the nationals.
Another early review noted Mensi flinging down his microphone-stand in disgust at the
fighting breaking out around him, and storming off, before coming back on to finish the
set. In the same piece, journalist Glenn Gibson waxed lyrical about the on-stage
atmosphere generated by the band:
‘At the front it’s like the Hong Kong rush hour during an attack of flying scorpions.
Mensi dances some kind of deranged, dry-land version of the Australian crawl; roars, bent
forward in classical Pursey-pose, eyes burning as if in blood-lust frenzy; or hangs from the
microphone, gathering strength for further excesses.’
Also worthy of mention was the famed ‘garage roof’ gig, where the band set up their
gear on top of a garage in the Brockley Whins estate and proceeded to play as loudly as
they could. Predictably, the police were called to break up the assembly and pull the plug
on the noise – although this was never confirmed, the call was probably made as a
deliberate attention-grabbing ploy by the band’s recently acquired manager, Keith Bell.
Bell had been involved in the band’s affairs from early on. Initially, a mate called Kevin
‘Skin’ Brown had acted as the band’s roadie and de facto manager, fixing up gigs, doing
all the driving and whatever else needed to be organised. Keith Bell was known in the
area as ‘The Sheriff’, and had a past as a gangster as well as a degree of success as an
amateur boxer. His reputation locally was that of a wild man who would stop at nothing
to get his own way: there was a joke doing the rounds at the time that he had escaped
from a circus and run away to join a council estate. In the couple of years immediately
prior to his association with The Angelic Upstarts, he had been linked with gang- driven
shenanigans involving firearms and petrol bombs, and had been handed a suspended
sentence for a drugs offence. He liked to keep an eye on what was going on in the South
Shields area, and quickly saw signs of violence and disorder at the band’s gigs. Although
no contract was ever signed, they soon found Bell on board, as if it had happened
invisibly. The gist of his approach was: I’m a hard man; you’re a punk band. Punk bands
need a hard man like me to stop them getting into hassle. I’m now your manager.
The promises made by the new management were, essentially, to up the number of
gigs he could lay on, and to provide security at each show through his shady contacts.
Skin thought – and continued to feel, years later – that he should have been allowed to
retain a role in the band’s activities, but it was not to be. Bell did indeed increase
dramatically the number of live shows, most of which were packed, but it started to dawn
on the band members that none of the resultant ticket money was filtering down to them.
Suspicions were rife that he was simply pocketing the lot, while fobbing the band off with
excuses about expenses and further promises for better times ahead.
One example that sticks in many fans’ minds about the scamming tactics was the
Bolingbroke Hall gig reviewed by Phil Sutcliffe. In a novel door policy, Bell is alleged to
have charged punters coal and soup to get in, informing all and sundry (including the
reviewer) that this was in support of needier elements of local society. Sutcliffe
commended the band for their stance in helping the poor, while in reality their manager
appeared to be keeping hold of the lot.
The band, in effect, had their hands tied. There were positives to be had from the
upturn in gigs and publicity, but cracks quickly began to appear as the finances became
muddier and muddier. More notably, such was Bell’s fearsome reputation in the area, that
band members were reluctant to say anything. Privately, they were unanimous that Bell
had to be asked to leave, but broaching the issue was a different matter. In what, viewed
retrospectively, was a conversation full of foresight, they raised concerns as to the safety
not just of themselves but of their family members, should they ever get round to sacking
their unwanted manager.
The pennilessness, in tandem with the continued hostile atmosphere both at gigs and
within the band’s camp, meant that the working relationship was close to breaking-point.
Something had to give, and Micky was first to announce his plans to leave, followed
shortly afterwards by a loss of interest on the part of Decca himself. It was hard to give a
year’s solid graft to a professional project and be rewarded with a total of only £25 per
head. Even in 1977-78, this was a sum that could be earned within a couple of weeks by
signing on the dole. It seemed ludicrous that the band should be working their socks off,
only to see the fruits of their sweat being siphoned off into the pockets of a brash,
unaccountable manager. Current estimates suggest that Bell still owes each band
member something in the region of £6,000 for their work in those early months, but
chasing the debts down was (and remains today) nigh on impossible.
Before the rhythm section could leave, however, there was just time for the band’s
initial forays into recording. The first demo was cut at the AIR Studio in Spennymoor,
south of Durham, with the track-list comprising ‘The Murder of Liddle Towers’, ‘Police
Oppression’ and ‘Leave Me Alone’. Cassettes were produced of this session by Bullseye
Records, most of which, unsurprisingly, were sold at gigs and the proceeds seemingly
retained by the management.
‘Liddle Towers’ sprang from an unsavoury incident when a 39-year-old Birtley man of
that name, variously a bouncer, boxer, scallywag and popular figure on the gay scene,
was arrested by police in January 1976, held overnight in the cells and beaten up. He
died a few weeks later from the injuries he had sustained in what was defensively
described at the time as a ‘justifiable homicide’. Resentment was rife across the region,
and it was one of the first songwriting projects The Angelic Upstarts wanted to address.
Mensi had some ideas for words and for the shape of the song, so in democratic fashion
the lads sat down in the pub with scraps of paper, fragments of lyrics scribbled on
beermats, and hummable bits of tunes to put the song together.
As a follow-up to the demo, which had enjoyed positive reviews from local fans who
had managed to get their hands on a copy, it was decided to self-release a bona fide
single, with ‘Liddle Towers’ the obvious choice for the A-side, and ‘Police Oppression’ a
firm favourite for the B-side. This was quite an undertaking, involving the lads chipping in
£25 each (a figure you’ve heard mentioned before?) towards the cost of the studio. That
said, it was very much in keeping with the DIY punk ethic: why bother touting your raw
material around dozens of uninterested London record companies, when you could do it
yourself and see (and, crucially, sell) the records more quickly and more easily? The
chosen studio was Impulse at Wallsend, which was already a favourite with ambitious
local bands and was to go on to enjoy even greater favour in years to come. Prior to
entering the studio, the only notion the lads had in mind was Mensi’s preference for the
guitar sound to resemble what had been achieved on ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ by The
Who. The recording process was speedy, smooth and enjoyable, with Decca doing the
half- time drumming and fills in pretty much a single take. He and Mond were also
responsible for building up the whispered ‘who killed Liddle?’ lines, which have sent
shivers down the spines of listeners ever since. Micky’s bass is a bit out of tune in parts,
but overall the lads were proud of the recording, and thrilled to see the copies emerge
with their pristine labels. I asked Mond for his memories of the recording process:
‘It was the first time any of us had been into anywhere as professional as that, so we
were a bit naïve. We just had to rely on the engineer, as we couldn’t afford a producer. I
wasn’t too happy with the guitar sound: it was a bit weak, not big and powerful like The
Sex Pistols were producing, but the engineer told me not to worry, he’d beef it up in the
mix. Unfortunately that was another learning curve: you start to learn that engineers are
always saying they’ll “fix it in the mix”, and it never happens. But there you go. Actually, I
was listening to it recently and I was really surprised with some of the ideas we came up
with for a first recording. The whispers and guitar harmonics at the start, and the guitar
solos and fills at the end, were pretty inventive.’
Initially, not everyone shared the band’s enthusiasm: Melody Maker found it to be ‘thug
rock, clumsily played and clumsily conceived’, but the lads had the last laugh as they
watched the publicity – even bad publicity – converting into record sales and interest
from bigger fish in the music industry in London.
The local constabulary also failed to see the funny side. As Mensi told Alex Ogg: ‘I
wasn’t exactly Mr Popular with the police, but my problems increased a hundred-fold after
the single […] I was subjected to constant abuse from individual officers.’
The 500 copies in the initial pressing of the single sold like hot cakes. The idea had
been to sell them at gigs, but the lads also gave some copies to a friend called Pete
Edmonds, who had a record shop in South Shields. These were sold in a matter of days,
and Pete kept asking for more until the pressing had sold out.
The release of ‘Liddle Towers’ was the swansong of Decca’s first spell in the band. He
watched from afar as within a matter of months the single was taken up by Small
Wonder, then distributed by Rough Trade before, through some quick thinking on the part
of another friend, Chris Gray, a copy ended up in the hands of Jimmy Pursey (who, as
Mond recalls, ‘loved the energy and enthusiasm of it’). The rest, as they say, is history,
but luckily for us, it’s a history in which Decca will turn up time and time again, like the
proverbial bad penny. The record reached Number 1 in the Independent Singles Chart in
Sounds and stayed there for a year. It went on to be named in Mojo magazine’s Top 100
Punk Singles of All Time, and was picked up on in subsequent material by The Jam and
Tom Robinson. For their part, Liddle’s family loved the song, and were touched that there
should have been so much public indignation in reaction to their relative’s treatment and
death. Decca reflects emotionally today on the quality and significance of that first single:
‘I was proud of me input, as it’s become a modern-day classic. It’s a great combination
of control and anger. I was chuffed with me involvement with the arrangement, to fit in
with Mond’s chords. He was really good at working chord patterns. I hear the single’s
changing hands now for £700, would you believe? It’s really stood the test of time, but I’d
love to have a go at re-mastering it, using modern technology.’
Decca’s immediate plan was to sever his ties with the band and look for something
else – ideally something safer and better paid – to do with his time and his talents.
Leaving a group can often be emotionally difficult, but in the first few months of the
band’s existence, with no formal contract signed, it should be a straightforward process.
You wouldn’t have expected the founding drummer’s departure from The Angelic Upstarts
to have caused any ripples, would you? How wrong you would have been.
.
CHAPTER 4
There was a knock on the front door. Diane Gosling and boyfriend Decca Wade were
having a quiet evening babysitting, and were not expecting visitors. Wondering who it
could be, Decca went to the door and was confronted by a familiar face. Keith Bell
wanted to have a chat with Decca about his failure to attend a recent rehearsal, his
rumoured decision to quit as The Angelic Upstarts’ drummer, and about whispers of the
band’s preference to drop Bell as their manager. Although this remained unspoken, the
clear subtext was that, if Bell were to be removed from the Upstarts’ set-up, he would
lose his gravy train of money-making schemes. He suggested they should go for a drive.
Decca agreed, and was led to Bell’s van, in which he discovered sundry thugs. Most
unnervingly, at the wheel of the van was an anxious-looking Mensi who, it seemed clear,
had been forced to drive
the van under duress.
This ‘chat’ was to trigger a period of raised tension between the band and its
management, which had already manifested itself in petty arguments, but was now to
lead to threats of violence against the lads and their families, countered by acts of
retaliation on the part of the band. The situation was already nervy, to say the least; now
it was quickly becoming untenable.
Before he knew what was going on, Decca found himself the defendant in a kangaroo
court in the back of the van. Keith Bell, as judge, jury and counsel for the prosecution,
found Decca ‘guilty of insubordination’, and the sentence handed down was that the only
way he would be allowed to leave the band was through his death. The van drove to the
beach, where Decca was held by the henchmen and subjected to a horrifying beating by
Bell: he lost most of his teeth, had his eyes blackened to the extent that they were
almost fully closed, broke several ribs and had his hands – the tools of his percussive
trade – cruelly stamped upon. Back in the van, Mensi was powerless to do anything to
help his friend. When the assailants felt that Decca was on his last legs, they stripped him
naked, threw his limp body into the sea, vowed that ‘next time, you’ll be going off the
pier’, and drove off.
Decca came to in the shallows of the North Sea, worked out approximately where he
was and what had happened, and staggered to the home of a relative of his partner
Diane to raise the alarm. Diane phoned Derek, who came straight away, took one look at
the sorry state of his son, and swore that this would not be the end of the matter.
*
The incident on the beach lit the touchpaper for a series of tit-for-tat aggressions and
reprisals, which zigzagged between both factions over a period of months.
Keith Bell and his gang began by tormenting Mensi’s family, issuing warnings to his
sister, threatening his mam and kicking her windows out. The Wade family were also
singled out, and a catalogue of obscene anonymous phone calls began at irregular times
of the day and night. Joan Wade recognised Bell’s voice on a number of occasions, and
other times she was insulted by a different voice but could hear Bell’s tones in the
background telling his underling what to say. It began to affect the family’s sleep patterns
and their nerves. As Joan told an interviewer from the local press at the time:
‘We’ve been getting calls, waking us up through the night, and rather than take the
phone off the hook, which would let them know we were there, we put it in a washing
basket and covered it with washing so we couldn’t hear it.’
The use of the phone to taunt the family continued, this time summoning unwanted
taxis to the Wade home, sometimes multiple times in the same evening. In one extreme
case, seventeen taxis showed up during a single night. Then the campaign stepped up a
gear: a fire engine arrived, seemingly as a warning to the family of what they could
expect if Decca did not rejoin the band and ensure things went back to how they had
been in the Upstarts’ camp.
Tellingly, aside from the beating on the beach, there was no physical attack on Decca’s
family or their property at this stage (perhaps any potential assailants were aware that
there were likely to be weapons in the house, or were wary of the effectiveness of any
physical reprisals). However, abusive graffiti began to appear in the vicinity, with slogans
insulting Joan, Derek and their family.
The phone campaign continued, and peaked with one extremely unsavoury incident
when an anonymous caller arranged for an undertaker to visit the Wades’ home to inform
Joan that Derek had been killed during his shift at work. It’s impossible to imagine the
grief Joan must have felt as she took this spoof news in; it contributed in no small
measure to a breakdown she suffered amid this maelstrom of unpleasantness and worry.
*
In the early months of 1979, parallel to the various strands of the hate campaigns being
waged in the North East, things had been moving quickly for the band (by this time with
Keith ‘Sticks’ Warrington as Decca’s replacement on drums). Jimmy Pursey had got hold
of his copy of ‘Liddle Towers’, and had offered to sort the band out with a recording deal
with distribution through Polydor, brokered via his own JP Productions.
‘Jimmy actually signed us and a band from Yorkshire called The Invaders,’ recalls
Mond. ‘They were not so much a punk band but a bit more electronic – sort of Duran
Duran leaning towards punk. The idea was that they would probably be successful and
sell records, which would enable Jimmy to keep The Angelic Upstarts, who he really
liked.’
The first recording session was at Polydor’s studios, just off Oxford Street in London.
The session – literally just one day – was clearly something of a whirlwind affair, but with
hindsight, perhaps in the minds of the band, the pressure was off as they raced through
the songs they had prepared?
‘As far as we knew, we were just recording a series of demos,’ recalls Mond. The
assumption was that these rough and ready tapes would be used for whatever purposes
the record company saw fit, but a completed album was the last thing on the musicians’
minds. The reality check came when Jimmy Pursey told them, a few weeks later, that
their debut album was ready. The level of surprise and excitement is difficult to imagine,
as nobody had told them they had recorded anything other than demos. All the teenage
dreams of releasing your first album, then it arrives through the back door.
The involvement with Polydor was to be short-lived, on account of the much-publicised
ding-dong Mensi had had with the label’s head of security, during a snowball fight that
went wrong. The security guy complained to management and the band were summarily
dropped. Crucially, though – echoing the Pistols’ success in pocketing advances before
being asked to move on – The Angelic Upstarts had already received £25,000 from
Polydor. Mond takes up the story:
‘Yeah, so Jimmy Pursey and our new manager then took us to Warner Brothers, who
gave us an advance of another £30,000. Not bad for a week’s work, though we didn’t see
much of it. We were on a weekly wage of about £25, I think.’
This came as an enormous relief to Mensi, who had indulged in all the natural dreams
of fame and fortune, world tours and the like, shared by every young rock musician. After
his skirmish at Polydor, he panicked that his world might be about to come crashing
down. As he told John Robb in Punk Rock: An Oral History:
‘I nearly started crying. It meant everything to us to get a record deal, and I thought
I’d blown it in one fight. But then our manager showed us four or five telegrams, all from
major record companies, saying “we want this band – tell us your price”. We signed to
Warner brothers the next day.’
The weekly wage, however, continued unaltered. The discrepancy between weekly
financial realities and the huge zeroes wafting round at management level was
poignantly underlined by Mensi, who said in an interview at the time:
‘I hate it when you go down to The Marquee and kids come up to you to buy them a
drink and when you tell them you ain’t got no money they don’t believe you. Sometimes I
get very cynical with the kids.’
The arrangement with Pursey entailed two important considerations for the immediate
future of the band: firstly, they would have to relocate to London – this was seen as
desirable from the point of view of their immersion into, and exposure to, the music
industry, as well as allowing some much needed breathing space away from Keith Bell
and the cauldron of resentment enveloping them in South Shields. Secondly, Pursey put in
place all the necessary arrangements in London for them to sign a proper, professional
management deal with Tony Gordon.
Hooking up with Tony Gordon represented a seismic shift in terms of the direction The
Angelic Upstarts would now follow. Fully aware of his ability and track record, the band
trusted him without question, even though there was still room for a bit of gentle banter
at his expense, and indeed at the expense of other early benefactors. As Mensi jested in
an interview with Rising Free fanzine:
‘[To put an end to British army involvement in Northern Ireland] they should send Tony
Gordon over there; he’d sort them out; put them on a weekly wage that they couldn’t
afford to live on. With twenty-five pounds a week they wouldn’t have enough money to
buy bombs. Or they could send Jimmy Pursey over to talk them to sleep, and Garry
Bushell: he’d scare them with his spots.’
Despite the piss-takes, the change of management was unanimously viewed as a
sensible and constructive move. It was, however, a move which was to raise one specific
set of hackles 250 miles to the north.
*
Back in Shields the aggro continued, and Derek, by this point, was very close to snapping
at the antics of the people causing distress to his family. He openly invited Keith Bell to a
one-to-one confrontation at a quiet spot next to the nearby pigeon-lofts, and a time was
agreed. Bell failed to show up.
For their own part, Decca and Mensi conducted a series of acts of revenge of their own,
some of which were detailed in the formal legal proceedings which were to follow; others
remained strictly anonymous and were never pinned on anyone.
As we reached the summer of 1979 things really began to kick off. On 27 August, it
was reported locally that the campaign of action reached its climax when Keith Bell and
his wife drove past the Wades’ house, then got out and started hurling insults at the
family. Decca’s sister Denise was there, and claimed to have suffered a physical assault
as well as a range of unveiled threats. When Derek became aware of what was
happening, he reported at the time that the Bells had threatened him and had said they
would blow up his house, before driving off.
Decca found out about what had happened, and in an act of retaliation on 30 August,
he and Mensi targeted a car owned by an associate of Bell, putting bricks through its
windows. They were spotted doing so by the car’s owner, arrested and charged with
criminal damage. In the ensuing court case, the pair admitted: ‘we did it to get even with
Keith Bell and his crony. They’ve been giving us alot of harassment recently.’ They were
fined £25 each, plus costs and restitution totalling £55 each.
Things had reached a head, and Derek knew it was time to take a stand against the
campaign of threats and violence that had been conducted against his family. The troops
were rounded up, and a plan quickly hatched. A small number of trusted and capable men
– including Mensi’s brother-in-law Billy Wardropper and another friend, Kenny Pearce –
decided to pay Keith Bell a visit and give him the fright of his life, thus putting the whole
issue to bed once and for all.
Accounts differ wildly as to the exact chain of events leading up to what happened on
31 August 1979. What is certain is that a sawn-off shotgun was procured, though its
origin was disputed, both anecdotally and later on in court. Other weapons assembled in
an effort to maximise the fright to be meted out to Keith Bell and his associates, included
an axe and a cut-throat razor, taped up to remain in the open position. The five men then
got into a car and headed for Bell’s street in South Shields.
Bell was shocked by the nature of the visit, but perhaps not surprised, as he had
henchmen there with him. There was a verbal and a physical altercation, which ended –
as reported in the local press – with a gun being discharged at least twice, one shot
hitting the wall next to Bell’s front door, another hitting one of Bell’s crew in the leg.
The visiting squad promptly left the premises, having made their point. The police
immediately became involved, and the machinations began to untangle what had
happened in the days and weeks leading up to the incident. It was fully anticipated that
Team Decca would end up facing some serious criminal charges when the matter reached
the Crown Court.
*
The press, by this stage, were taking a keen interest in the development of the feud.
Reports detailed how Keith Bell, seemingly unwilling to let things lie, embarked on the
next stage of his relentless campaign to undermine and intimidate the members (and exmembers) of The Angelic Upstarts and their families. At the beginning of October 1979,
just over a month after the shotgun incident, a stable belonging to Billy Wardropper and
his wife (Mensi’s sister) was burned down. Along with the building itself, expensive
equipment was destroyed and – most notably of all – a thoroughbred horse perished in
the blaze. The Wardroppers had been mindful of potential attacks, and had borrowed an
Alsatian to guard the premises, but the dog was powerless to act as the perpetrators
used paint thinners to start the fire.
The police quickly sought to unravel what had happened, and came knocking on the
door of Keith Bell. He had been on holiday in Morocco, and claimed that he could not
possibly have had anything to do with the incident, but gradually the jigsaw began to fit
into place, and the police charged him with instructing others, in his absence, to carry out
the burning of the stable. Accordingly, arson charges were levelled at four of his younger
accomplices, and the four men were convicted at Newcastle Crown Court in early January
1980.
*
A few weeks later, the five defendants from the shotgun incident appeared at Newcastle
Crown Court, severally and jointly accused of a variety of charges, ranging from
possession of sundry offensive weapons, to malicious wounding, to conspiring to commit
assault causing actual bodily harm.
In court, Kenny Pearce spoke of the lengths he had gone to in warning Keith Bell, as
civilly as he could, to stay away from The Angelic Upstarts, but that his warnings had not
been heeded. He added that he and his own family had been threatened by Bell’s
‘muppets’, and that the situation had become intolerable. He stated that, on the night of
the shooting, the gun had been taken purely as a device to frighten Bell, and that there
had been no intention to shoot any human being. The shot that had hit the victim in the
leg had been aimed at the ground, as a warning.
When it was his turn to take to the dock, Derek concurred with the carrying of the
weapons to frighten Bell and his gang, and spoke passionately about the trail of terror to
which he and his family had been subjected over so many months, wrought by Bell and
his associates:
‘There is a breaking-point to everyone’s life when you can’t take any more.’
For the prosecution, Bell himself claimed that the five men had been sponsored by
Mensi to the tune of £1,500 of the singer’s own money, to settle the running dispute once
and for all. As he told the court:
‘These men were paid to blow my legs off.’
At length, the case reached its conclusion, and Billy Wardropper and Kenny Pearce
were jailed for unlawful wounding, with another man, Stan Hilton, receiving a year’s
custody for possession of the axe as an offensive weapon. Derek, for possession of the
firearm and the razor, and for his part in the conspiracy, was given a suspended two- year
sentence, and ordered to pay £200 in costs.
Derek’s solicitor David Gray had, coincidentally, been Liddle Towers’ brief four years
earlier, and did a solid job in preparing the defence. There was clearly a deal of sympathy
for the harassment Derek, Decca and their family – as well as the other defendants and
band members and their families – had endured, but the Judge’s verdict was unequivocal:
‘I accept that all of you suffered a severe amount of provocation, which was none of
your seeking. But at the same time I have a duty to condemn the use of firearms,
particularly a sawn-off shotgun.’
*
Next up was the conclusion of the burning of the stable. After his underlings had been
convicted in January, Keith Bell himself was summoned to a separate hearing at Teesside
Crown Court in March 1980. A jury found him guilty – by a ten-to-two majority – of
procuring arson, and he was sent to prison for four years. An earlier suspended sentence
for a drugs offence was activated in addition, raising the jail term to four years and six
months. Sentencing him, the Judge stated:
‘It was a diabolical revenge that you plotted … I can only take a serious view of the
matter.’
The members, past and present, of The Angelic Upstarts heaved a sigh of relief, but
immediately there arose another opportunity to see further changes added to Keith Bell’s
sheet. It emerged that Sticks had claimed to have been assaulted by Bell for joining the
band and going along with the decision to move to London and become cosy with a new
management set-up. This attack joined the original assault on Decca on the beach and a
further twelve charges – ranging from threatening to kill, to actual bodily harm, to
possession of offensive weapons – in a new legal action to be faced by Bell. This case
was heard at Newcastle Crown Court, and concluded in December 1980 with Bell being
convicted of four of the charges – threatening to kill Decca, assaulting Decca and Sticks,
and threatening to blow up Derek’s home – and being sentenced to an additional 18
months in prison. His old foe Judge Hall was once again in the chair:
‘The conclusion I have come to in the course of these proceedings is that you were a
man who, mostly acting through others, was quite prepared to use violence and threats
of violence to get your own way with people who did not want to go your way.’
*
It’s not a surprise to learn that, in the period after he left The Angelic Upstarts for the first
time, Decca suffered a nervous breakdown. For all his bravado and – when required – his
physical toughness Decca was, and remains, a sensitive soul, and this was a period in his
early 20s when a range of contradictory forces were being exerted on his life. He was
starting to sample a degree of musical success, and was aware that so much more might
lie ahead of him, but there was also the pull of his home life, the simplicity of his routine
with his family and mates. There was the desire for peace and quiet, which had been
hammered at by the whole caper with Keith Bell. Also in his mind was a feeling of ‘why
me?’ – he was a talented drummer who just wanted to keep his head down and play his
music both live and in the studio (which was already occupying a greater chunk of his
imagination), but circumstances were gnawing away at him and placing him in the
public’s awareness for the wrong reasons.
This period was difficult not just for Decca, but for the rest of the family too. Derek
was doing a charity show in support of a local spastic child, when a drunken man came
over and said, ‘I bet you think you’re great, but you’re not – you’re shit.’ Derek was
unable to react, as he knew that the terms of his current probation (a strict curfew, daily
visits to a named police station, and a heavy financial surety) would have meant any
indiscretion landing him in deep water. But still, unthinking idiots continued to provoke
the family, and finally Derek snapped:
‘Me dad had taken me sisters to see [drummer and bandleader] Eric Delaney, and he’d
forked out £25 for the tickets,’ recalls Decca. ‘Lo and behold, some bloke comes straight
up and insults the family, telling me dad his wife and daughters were cows. Well, a fight
broke out, and me dad laid out four of them, flat on their backs. To this day he never got
to see Eric Delaney play live, and Eric died a couple of years ago.’
*
It was time to give the North East a wide berth for a period, while the dust settled on the
Bell affair and Decca sought to regain his physical and mental strength. A lady he knew
locally told him that her nephew, Dave Wray, was playing in a band down in Doncaster
called The Kickstarts, and they were looking for a new drummer. Decca was wary of
taking the job, primarily because Derek was on remand in Durham Prison following his
arrest over the Keith Bell affair, leaving Decca as the only male in the household to take
care of his mam and four sisters. But Joan told him it was best if he took the job and
carried on boosting his career; the fact that it was away from the region was seen as an
advantage.
With a heavy heart but excited at the prospect of a new start, Decca got on the train
south. As the train pulled into Durham Station half an hour later, he was overcome by the
enormity of recent events and the plight of his dad, and nearly got off the train, but he
kept his nerve and was in Doncaster a couple of hours later.
The band was essentially a punk covers act, doing material by groups like The Jam and
The Undertones. It had forged a bit of a circuit in the nightclubs and working men’s clubs
of the Doncaster area, enough to keep the band members in beer money, though there
had not been any talk of formal recording. The band sidestepped the problem of their
punk background being adversely vetted by venue committees by making bookings under
a false name and description, then rocking up as themselves and storming into a string of
punk numbers. In hindsight (and with knowledge of the innocuous nature of the bands
whose material they were covering), it seems a very petty stand for the committees to
have taken, but even then, the power of the press was ever-present: a Chinese whisper
of the word ‘punk’ would be sufficient for a concert chairman to veto an act.
Decca rented a flat and quickly settled into life and work with his new friends, forming
a strong musical bond with his fellow rhythm section musician, bassist Glyn Warren. It
turned out that the band’s slightly madcap image suited his sense of humour perfectly:
they would wear masks or false Quasimodo humps on stage, throw beer over the
audience, turn the amps up to 11 and watch them catch fire. Even the occasional ban
from a venue was just put down to experience: there were plenty more places to play,
evidenced by the fact that the band often played seven nights a week, in some cases
getting out of the van in the early hours of the morning and the ‘working’ members
heading straight to their day-jobs without any sleep.
Support slots included opening for The Fall and for The Showbiz Kids, a North East
outfit featuring a young Michael Algar on lead guitar. This was Decca’s first encounter
with the artist later to find fame as Olga in The Toy Dolls; a heart-warming trail of mutual
support and favours began at the turn of the 1980s, as we shall see, and has continued
zigzag fashion to this day.
By this stage, Decca had fixed up a management deal with a guy called Barry
Atkinson, who owned the local Rotters nightclub. In the autumn of 1979, about a year
into Decca’s time with The Kickstarts, the band suddenly imploded for various reasons.
Quick as a flash, Barry was able to find Decca a job drumming with another group, The
Nerve, who immediately headed out on tour with neo-mod band The Lambrettas. Work
was plentiful, and once again we see the seamless movement between jobs of a
supreme, sought-after percussive talent. Barry also took the opportunity to introduce
Decca to other acts in his charge, and to once- and twice-removed music contacts. Thus
began Decca’s friendship with larger-than-life, handsomely-tongued ska king Buster
Bloodvessel, who was already achieving success and notoriety with Bad Manners. The
forging of friendships with musical (and non- musical) celebrities was to multiply once
Decca moved to London – as we’ll explore in later chapters – but the interesting thing is
the authenticity of all Decca’s showbiz buddyhood. As Olga puts it:
‘Loads of people waffle on about how many famous people they know, and it’s usually
an exaggeration. The difference with Decca is that he really is mates with everyone he
says he is.’
Tom Von Spencer agrees, and puts his finger on Decca’s spirit:
‘You can add up loads of people Decca’s met and been friends with over the years –
people like Gazza, Alex Higgins – and his own idols, like Keith Moon or George Best, and
while the common denominator might be alcohol, that’s actually not the point. They all
liked a drink, but the real factor is that they were characters. I’d put Decca in the same
category. He can light up any occasion just by being there. He doesn’t even need to say
or do anything – mind you, once he starts saying and doing, you know about it.’
Before leaving Doncaster for good, Decca found time to perform a helpful task which
would prove key not only in the beneficiary’s career, but also in Decca’s own. The Angelic
Upstarts were looking for a new bass player, and wondered if Decca had any suggestions.
This wasn’t the first time Decca had been instrumental in supplying a bassist for the
band: when Micky Burns left, Decca and Mensi were in the Bowler Hat club in Whitley
Bay, and got chatting to a local bricklayer-cum- musician called Steve Forsten. After a
brief chat, they gave him the job as Micky’s replacement on the spot. Now in 1979, Mensi
was on the hunt again, and trusted implicitly Decca’s recommendation that Glyn Warren
was both musically and socially the man for the job. Glyn got the nod, and all seemed
rosy for him, except that his move to London, which at a stroke catapulted him into the
premier league of the punk movement, cost him a messy divorce. As they say, that’s
show business.
*
By the end of 1980, after an interminable series of events, counter- events, police
intervention, charges, court cases and convictions, the feud seemed finally to have been
settled.
Decca recalls moments of dark humour during the various trials, such as Keith Bell
taking the stand and accusing Decca of being an active member of both the National
Front and the IRA. As one attendee put it, it’s difficult to imagine a more incompatible
pair of organisations to put together on your CV. This snippet of evidence was given short
shrift by the jury.
Derek was responsible for one of the funniest moments of his trial, executed purely by
telling the truth. The counsel for the prosecution was attempting to create the impression
in the jury members’ minds that the extended Wade family were a bunch of wrong ’uns:
Counsel: ‘So, Mr Wade, is it true that you have a brother nicknamed
‘Bull’ by his family and friends?’ Derek: ‘Yes, sir.’
Counsel: ‘And would it be true to say that he earned this nickname by being a
fearsome, aggressive man?’
Derek: ‘No, sir.’
Counsel: ‘Then please tell us, Mr Wade: how would you account for your brother’s
nickname?’
Derek [to the judge]: ‘Do I have to answer that question, sir?’ Judge: ‘Yes, Mr Wade.
Please answer the counsel’s question?’ Derek: ‘Well, sir, it’s because he’s got a big cock.’
There was also a gloriously surreal scene played out on the steps outside Newcastle
Crown Court when senior legal figures in their wigs approached members of The Angelic
Upstarts to ask for autographs.
As is always the case with this type of situation, the passage of time lessens the
harshness of moments endured; incidents (and their causes) slip further back into
people’s subconscious, but are never fully forgotten. All the individuals involved will have
their own deeply- rooted memories of the affair, but for anyone looking for an enduring
portrayal of the band’s take on the night the shooting happened, the track ‘Shotgun
Solution’ on the We Gotta Get Out of This Place album offers a stark, uncompromising
narrative.
The most important outcome of the court cases was that, finally, a line could be drawn
under the whole sorry business. From Decca’s point of view, it was better to look ahead
rather than back, and the life he had by now begun in London was offering rich pickings
for a drummer with a taste not only for rock ’n’ roll, but for all the financial, social,
alcoholic and narcotic benefits the industry laid on.
.
CHAPTER 5
There’s a funny scene near the beginning of the film Grease, where high school term is
starting and T-Birds Danny and Kenickie meet up for the first time after the long summer
vacation. The two friends are thrilled to see each other and fall into a warm embrace,
before instantly realising this compromises their cool image and separating, reaching for
their combs and checking to make sure nobody has spotted their moment of weakness.
It’s tempting to think of Decca’s re-ushering into the Upstarts’ fold in such a scene.
Mensi was looking for a new drummer, as Sticks Warrington, who had replaced Decca,
was now moving on to The Cockney Rejects. In the briefest of conversations, Mensi asked
Decca if he fancied doing a month-long tour, then without much (if any) further
negotiation, a tour turned into an album. Seamlessly, Decca had rekindled life in the band
alongside his old friends Mensi and Mond, and his more recent buddy Glyn from The
Kickstarts.
The band had relocated to London when, through a chain of events involving Sham
69’s Jimmy Pursey getting hold of a copy of ‘Liddle Towers’ and passing on strong
recommendations to his contacts in high places, they found themselves with a record
deal. Their first two albums – Teenage Warning and We Gotta Get Out of This Place –
had both charted in the UK (getting to Number 29 and 54 respectively) and sold well,
boosting the band’s public profile and, crucially, serving to restore their image after the
wall-to-wall live-venue bans and associated bad-boy press of the early days back in the
North East. Now, for their third LP, they were entering the hallowed portals of EMI, under
the giant corporation’s Zonophone label. Offered the chance to re-join a band with all this
in place, there could only be one answer from a drummer with music and mischief on his
mind.
In the more relaxed post-Keith Bell era, the band were now managed by Tony Gordon,
famed for his earlier associations with Mungo Jerry and Lulu and, more recently, with
Sham 69 and The Cockney Rejects. Needless to say, the contact was brokered by Jimmy
Pursey, whose influence and assistance were easing The Angelic Upstarts’ career at every
stage. Given his experience and current management of bands with similar styles, ideals
and fanbases, Tony Gordon was a breath of fresh air. He also had the nous to hold firm
when, from his prison cell, Keith Bell launched a claim for £50,000 in lost revenue from
the time when the band had edged him out. One evening Decca was on the guest-list for
a Gary Moore gig at the Lyceum Ballroom and got chatting with the doorman, who said
that Bell had been upsetting people in London, too, so it seemed it was not just a North
East thing.
Initial lodgings were interesting, to put it mildly. There was a spell in which the whole
band stayed at Jimmy Pursey’s house in Hersham, before a house was provided in Wood
Green, closer to the centre of London. Decca shakes his head as he describes the set-up:
‘It was just like The Young Ones, man. Or a cross between The Young Ones and The
Addams Family, just with Uncle Fester and Cousin It missing. We had an open-door policy
for any mates to drop in, and they brought their mates, so it ended up being like a kind of
halfway house. The neighbours got a petition together to try and evict us because of the
noise.’
As young men with efficient metabolism, a balanced diet was the last thing on the
Upstarts’ minds in those early days. That didn’t mean, however, that there was no
concern on the part of Decca’s family.
‘I used to worry myself sick that he wasn’t eating properly,’ recalls his mam. ‘I would
send him little Red Cross-style food parcels with whatever I could afford – the neighbours
would chip in, too. We’d maybe send him some spuds, a tin of corned beef and a packet
of tea- bags. I usually tried to put some tabs [cigarettes] in as well – there was no way
he was going to give up smoking.’
And did Decca benefit from the sustenance his family had sent down south?
‘We were never sure,’ says Joan. ‘As far as we knew, it was just the lads in the band in
that place in Wood Green. But every time I phoned to ask if Decca was OK, a different
female voice would answer, and you could hear all sorts of voices in the background.
Mind you, the lasses were always very polite, and always said they’d received the
package and were grateful and had enjoyed the contents. It was never clear whether
Decca himself had eaten any of the food, though.’
One unsavoury moment occurred when a Hersham-emblazoned box van arrived in
South Shields to collect the remainder of the lads’ stuff. With it duly filled up, the band set
off back to London in the van, only to suffer a major scare as soon as they had joined the
A1, when one of the wheels fell off. It was clear that the wheel-nuts had been loosened
but, though suspects were few in number, nothing was ever proven.
On a more positive note, Decca learned an interesting studio technique from Jimmy
Pursey, who had invited him to drum on some solo tracks. Prior to this, Decca’s recording
procedure had just been in effect to play the track live, doing a second take if need be.
Understandably, given the time and financial constraints of his early recordings, he was
often accompanied by guitar and bass also playing live but miked up to different tracks.
The engineer would then sort out the mix. But now, with a step up in studio quality and a
more relaxed approach to time management, Decca found himself chatting at length with
Jimmy about how to tease out the best and fullest sound from each instrument. Jimmy
encouraged Decca to listen to the song through his earphones and just hit one drum per
take. Each drum would be recorded on a different track, and the whole sound would come
together in the final mix. Decca was stunned at the improvement in sound quality, though
he did find it difficult to hold himself back from adding thunderous fills at every juncture.
It’s one of the many things for which he holds Jimmy Pursey in major esteem, and would
take every opportunity to thank this punk mentor for all the leg-ups (and leg-overs) he’d
found for Decca and the band.
‘Jimmy Pursey was a top man,’ he reflects. ‘He helped us out no end. You know what?
So many people thought he’d lost the plot and was just a nutter, but he’s not. Jimmy
Pursey’s a very clever bloke – he knew exactly what he was doing all through that period.
Basically, I wouldn’t have had a career without his help. Last time I saw him I got him a
bottle of Jack Daniels and said “Thanks for me career”.’
‘You’ve no need to thank me for anything, Decca,’ Pursey would always reply when the
drummer started to gush with gratitude. ‘You’re just my favourite boys from up north.’ A
rumour – never substantiated but tantalisingly credible – continues to circulate that Sham
69’s
‘Angels with Dirty Faces’ was written about The Angelic Upstarts.
The band’s immediate remit was to combine touring and the recording of their third
album, to be entitled 2,000,000 Voices, a reflection on the current UK unemployment
figures (which were destined to get much worse, but at the time, two million was an
astonishingly high number). Once the 1980s had begun, Decca recalls a sea-change in
public perception of the band. Where previously their touring had been blighted by
widespread bans (either in advance of a gig at a new location, or as a result of violence
kicking off during the last visit to the same venue), now things started to improve. Even
though as late as January 1981 Mensi grumbled to Sounds about it having ‘stopped being
fun when you can’t play anywhere. You gotta involve politics coz that’s why we can’t play.
How can anyone do anything if you’ve gotta audition for local councillors before you can
play?’, it was nevertheless true that previously closed doors were now being opened,
albeit cautiously. Decca puts this down to two factors:
‘Yeah, we suddenly became flavour of the month again. By this time most of the
violence and the Keith Bell thing was in the past, and also we were signed to a
respectable record company with a lot of clout, so things got easier.’
Being flavour of the month again also meant that the band were clocking up some kind
of longevity, against a backdrop of first- and second-wave punk bands falling by the
wayside. Decca compares this with the present day: ‘Nowadays bands don’t last longer
than me next pint.’ What was also helpful was that the original fanbase had held firm
from the band’s inception in 1977, and was being added to by layers of new recordbuyers, gig-attenders and radio-listeners.
I mentioned caution. Whenever there was a TV or radio event on which the band were
due to perform, Tony Gordon’s secretary Jean had to go to the relevant studio in advance
with a full breakdown of what was planned for the performance, including lyrics for every
song, so that the producers could give it the green light.
‘Yeah, that was fairly typical. We were booked to do a TV show called Something Else,
and I remember the BBC wanted a lyric-sheet so they could censor it. They were a bit
frightened of the band’s reputation – you’ve got to remember we’d been banned from
pretty much every major venue across the country. Tyne Tees Television were very wary
of putting us on any of their music or youth programmes, coz of what they thought we
might incite. It wasn’t just the telly, either. There was one point when there was a threat
of Newcastle City Hall losing its performance licence if they put us on. People were
nervous, and you can understand that. Our image didn’t fit with everyone’s ideal, and I
suppose our lyrics were hitting back at society; uncompromising.’
It seems odd, at this remove, to think of a period when so much censorship was in
place, but at that time, the spectre of The Sex Pistols’ Bill Grundy caper evidently still
hung over the broadcast media.
The evil shadow of censorship stood in amusing contrast to the nonchalance with
which the North East public were starting to accept the Upstarts’ mad antics. They had
set out to shock the population, and had achieved this in no small measure, but the very
fact that the public were expecting the unexpected meant that some of their shenanigans
had less than the flabbergasting effect they might have deserved. On the same episode
of Something Else mentioned above, Simon Donald of Viz was booked to appear as a
guest, and he remembers making merry in the BBC bar with the Upstarts. ‘Yeah, I met
Decca and the rest of the band, and we had a few drinks,’ he told me, adding, without
any apparent sense of irony or unease: ‘one of them had a snake.’
Back in Brockley Whins, the growing number of TV appearances brought a great sense
of pride in the Wade household and among their neighbours and friends. Unfortunately,
the first major TV appearance was marred, as the family sat down to watch Decca doing
his stuff:
‘Oh, yes, we were all sitting there waiting for the music programme to begin, and our
Kerry [Decca’s youngest sister, aged seven at the time of the story] wanted to watch
Wonder Woman. She kicked up such a song and dance that we had to change channels,
so we missed Decca. This was before the days of video recorders, as well.’
Lynda Carter has a lot to answer for.
*
So to the recording process. One of the obvious boons of working with EMI was their
stewardship of the world-famous Abbey Road recording studios. Quite simply, if you were
an EMI artist, that’s where you got to make your singles and albums. You didn’t have to
beg, you just turned up wide-eyed (or, in this case, bleary-eyed), and were treated to the
very best in recording hardware, acoustic surroundings, cutting-edge engineers and – how
shall we put this? – generous catering facilities. There was a fee attached to studio use –
which, even at the time The Angelic Upstarts were terrorising the place, was around
£600-700 per day – but this was subsumed into the impenetrable inner workings of EMI’s
accounting system and its financial relationship with the artist. In short, there was no
reason for the band to worry about economics: food and drink, plus other reasonable
expenses, could be put on the studio’s account.
A few tracks had been pre-recorded in other London studios, for a variety of reasons.
‘England’ had been recorded for release as a single, at Trident Studios in Soho, a location
favoured by a stunning array of previous artists: The Beatles had recorded The White
Album there in 1968, and Bowie had worked on Ziggy Stardust there four years later.
‘Last Night Another Soldier’ was done at Wessex Studios in Highbury, as Mond states
proudly: ‘simply because The Clash and The Sex Pistols had recorded there – that’s why
we chose it.’
One of the first tasks on arrival at Abbey Road was to befriend the security staff,
because you never knew when acquiring the trust of these key workers would end up
paying dividends of some sort. In fact, the beefy door staff loved having the Upstarts
around – as Mond puts it: ‘they thought we were as daft as brushes, and enjoyed having
a laugh with us, which was something they couldn’t do with any of the other artists they
were working with.’ Accordingly, the mutual trust was implicit, and blind eyes were turned
at opportune moments over the coming weeks and months.
Once work started at Abbey Road, The Angelic Upstarts were allocated Studio Two,
which was where The Beatles had preferred to work in the 1960s. From the first day,
Decca nailed his anti-Beatles flag to the mast, when he was shown with great pride on
the part of the producer the area in which Ringo Starr had positioned his drum kit.
‘Righto,’ said Decca cheerfully, and promptly shifted his drums to the opposite corner.
Mond, conversely, enjoyed learning about the various studios and their uses and
history:
‘I loved it. It was a strange set-up in Studio Two, with the control room way up aloft,
looking down on the studio. Studio One was massive and impressive: that’s where they
used to do all the big orchestra stuff. In Studio Three, I remember we met a soul singer
called Roy Young, who was also on EMI. We became great friends with Roy, and we even
got him to sing on “Different Strokes”, one of our singles.’
Decca freely admits to having been ‘coked out of me head’ throughout the recording of
2,000,000 Voices. The availability of drugs, and of the money to pay for them, meant that
the band’s creative process was enhanced beyond measure. It’s worth noting that the
structure, harmonies, precise guitar lines and drum patterns for this album were pretty
much made up there and then, in the studio. The only pre-planning had been the usual
pockets full of scribbled- on beermats and scraps of paper. It’s perhaps a distant echo of
how The Beatles would have operated in the same studio 15 years earlier, though I’m
sure it’s not a comparison Decca would relish hearing.
In keeping with this degree of ‘planning’, the intention was to record as much as
possible of the new material ‘live’, in the sense that tracks would be bashed out at full
song-length, and only then analysed to see what, if anything, needed tweaking or rerecording. The style created an authentic energy, a dynamism in the band’s work, and
whilst it’s a bewildering task to try and imagine the combination of a record sounding
both ‘polished’ and ‘raw’, Decca feels that the Abbey Road process managed to achieve
just that. He likes the analogy of a racing car for the way the band set about the
recording: from zero straight up to flat-out, then jam the brakes on at the last moment
for an abrupt halt. There are, of course, times when musicians will have to bow to the
expertise of producers and engineers in tweaking the final sound but, where possible,
Decca has always lobbied to eliminate overdubs and fade-outs from his own work. For the
same reason, he has always striven to avoid dampeners being put on his kit (whether it
be a cushion stuffed inside the bass drum, or gaffer tape or beermats applied to the
centre of the snare and toms), preferring to use his own ability to make a cleaner, more
resonant sound. He much prefers the ‘fresh’ feel of unadulterated drums.
He has further interesting views on the nature of the kit in front of him – not only the
sound it can produce, but how the drummer interacts with it:
‘It might sound strange, but the drums talk to me. There’s a real relationship there. For
some songs, you just feel that the drums want you to sit on the song, keeping time,
moving it along; others, you really want to push them with energy and volume, and the
drums respond to that. I’ve always thought of it as light and shade. Me career has
involved all sorts of styles – I love working with brushes, for example, or doing jazz stuff,
or styles like Georgia Brown.’
Using, and continuing to use, your own kit is vital to the development of your own
sound – in the same way as trade technicians always work better with their own tools –
and using someone else’s kit can be a weird experience. The example of festivals is
illustrative here. Particularly when the festival is abroad, bands will fly in with just the
essentials, which will generally exclude a bulky drum kit (though sometimes a favoured
personal snare can be transported), and a solitary kit and amps, speakers, mics etc. will
be provided for all the bands performing. Decca can often feel his energy sapping as he
bashes away at an alien kit whose bounce and resonance have been worn away with use.
This, in turn, gnaws away at his sense of morality: ‘if the punters have paid hard-earned
money to turn up and watch you at a festival (or at any gig, for that matter), it doesn’t
matter how tired or pissed off you are: it’s up to you to put on the best show you can.’ He
would love to be always able to play his own beloved kit at festivals, to enhance both his
performance and the levels of energy with which he can play – alas, it’s simply not always
possible.
‘I’ve always preferred the biggest kit possible,’ Decca told Radio Northumberland. ‘The
more drums there are to hit, the more comfortable I feel. Sound engineers reckon I’m
their worst nightmare, coz there’s so much kit to set up and mic. Mind you, I haven’t
always needed them to set up two bass drums, coz I’ve got fast feet, so I can do the
double work with just the one.’
Back in the studio, it was Mond who perhaps set about the recording task with the
keenest eye for detail. Many were the evenings he would stay late, adding layer upon
layer of guitar work, lapping up the fact that whatever ideas he had and wanted to
incorporate could easily be handled by the skilled engineers around him. Decca isn’t alone
in tracing Mond’s later success as a music producer back to those halcyon afternoons and
evenings at Abbey Road: watching, listening, learning and storing away tricks and
techniques for subsequent use.
That’s not to say it was all work and no play.
‘No,’ agrees Mond. ‘There was a bar/restaurant downstairs, and it was like a West End
nightclub. Anything we ordered was just signed for and it got put on the bill. Decca and I
used to take girls there from The Marquee or The Ship on Wardour Street to impress
them, wining and dining them on the studio account – even after we’d finished the album
we still went back all the time to woo the lasses!’
I’m intrigued by the romanticism of working late into the night at a world-class
recording facility like Abbey Road, when musicians can tinker with arrangements, spend
quality thinking-time honing their lyrics in an atmosphere of hushed reverence, maybe
cradling a tumbler of single malt whisky. Was this the kind of early-hours activity Mond
and Decca would have enjoyed? Despite the hard work he put into the album late at
night, Mond also admits to an ulterior motive:
‘Decca and I were so late one night that we decided to kip over in the studio. We
ended up finding the room where they kept all the microphones, some of which were
serious bits of kit, worth upwards of a thousand quid, even in those days. Needless to
say, when we left in the morning there were a couple of very obvious bulges down our
trousers.’
There’s an obvious innuendo there, but I’m reluctant to ask Mond for details of any
amorous conquests the lads might have managed during their time in Abbey Road. Before
I can formulate my next question, he saves me the bother:
‘I was the first musician to christen the new penthouse studio which was being built
there at the time. We had taken a couple of girls back and Decca was in his favourite
position at the bar with his lass, so I decided to take mine for a tour of the facilities. We
ended up in the penthouse studio, which was just being finished and still had the plastic
covering on the mixing desk. There were these thick-pile carpets on the floor, which
aren’t called “shag-pile” for nothing. The lass probably didn’t think she’d be making rock
’n’ roll history when she dimmed the lights.’
Decca, for his part, was so quick in reaching perfection with his drum work that he had
plenty of time for mischief in the green room and elsewhere in the EMI empire, about
which more later. Nevertheless, the patterns the team were developing often meant that
several takes were kept as useable, to give the finished product greater depth. Looking
back, Decca has always said that, given the fluency of the band’s playing and the skill of
the technicians at the control desk, any of the takes could have stood on its own as a
finished product. The amounts of time, expertise and dedication at the band’s disposal
reflected an entirely new experience for them, a far cry from having a sum total of, say,
eight hours in comparatively mundane surroundings to record and mix a demo or an early
single. This was EMI, and the pursuit of perfection allowed for as much studio time as the
artist’s creative whims demanded. Other, better-known acts using the Abbey Road
facilities at the same time illustrated this point: Greg Lake spent a full year recording an
album, which, given the rates quoted above, would be enough to give any accountant
sleepless nights, and would certainly have made the Upstarts’ eventual £80,000 bill for
2,000,000 Voices look like small change.
The beauty of EMI was that, with so many labels under the corporate umbrella,
catering for so many different musical styles, it was inevitable that Decca and the band
would rub shoulders with a variety of other musicians. He likens a day spent in the
company’s offices to the sights and sounds of working in a factory, with a vast conveyor-
belt of familiar faces crossing your path. On a typical day, he might chat with label mates
from Queen to Kim Wilde to David Coverdale of Whitesnake, all of whom were charming,
down-to-earth and ready to chat as equals. As a selection of musicians sat shooting the
breeze one day, a buzz of electricity zapped around the building as
Stevie Wonder passed through to discuss a collaboration with an EMI artist. At first, the
band drooled open-mouthed at such events but, after a while, they became very much
the norm. Very few of us can talk of swapping the adoration of the rock heroes of our
youth, for friendship with those same heroes, who suddenly (and surreally) know your
name and are interested in having a pint with you and hearing how your album is
progressing.
Also in frequent attendance at the studio were a collection of musicians who
theoretically had nothing to do with the recording, but who were there because they were
good mates of the Upstarts, they were funny to hang out with, and they had learned that
Studio Two’s bar bill (and the associated restaurant account) seemed willing to embrace
them, too. Already old hands at the punk game, Stiff Little Fingers had completed their
third album and were prodigiously thirsty. Mond chuckles as he remembers this:
‘The lads from Stiff Little Fingers – especially Jake and Jim – plus Terry Sharpe and
Spud from The Starjets, were all really good singers, so we used to get them in doing
backing vocals for us, and we would supply the drink for them, on the Studio account, of
course.’
This practice was, and remains, common enough in the recording world, but the
Upstarts were baffled to learn many years later that during the recording of their first
album Teenage Warning, such vocalists had actually been drafted in without their
knowing it. A chance conversation with drummer Dolphin Taylor in a pub revealed that
Jimmy Pursey had shipped in a range of musical mates to beef up the Upstarts’ mob
vocals and harmonies. The tracks had been recorded by the band as what they thought
were demos, then a few weeks later they had been gobsmacked to receive a phone call
from JP Productions, informing them that the LP was completed and ready to go,
brimming with additional voices.
Back in Abbey Road, Decca became good mates with SLF’s Jake Burns around this
time, and they had a lot of classic nights together in the pub. Max Splodge recalls one
such:
‘There was one evening we were all out in a nightclub called Gossips, and Jake walked
in. It was good to see him as ever, but we were especially pissed that night. I remember
Jake got the beers in and I drank the pint he’d got me straight down in a couple of
minutes. He laughed and offered to get me another one. I jokingly asked if he could
make it a massive tequila. He brought this back to the table and I necked it in one and
promptly puked up all over Jake’s lap. I remember Decca was pissing himself at that one.
From Jake walking in to me hurling in his lap must have been just a matter of minutes.
That was the kind of night we used to have.’
Alongside his friendship with Jake, Decca was particularly close to SLF’s then drummer
Jim Reilly. Jim, at the time, was going out with a British singer soon to become extremely
famous, and was instrumental in setting Decca up with another soon-to-be-chart-busting
singer, whom he dated for a couple of years. Tantalising though it is to conceal identities,
there are solid legal (and other) reasons why this one has to remain under wraps. Sorry.
As Decca quipped in asking me to keep the girl anonymous: ‘we have to keep everyone in
suspenders.’
Jim was famous, during the time of the Abbey Road recordings, for taking the
restaurant account piss-takes to a whole new level. Each night, after a long day of
backing vocals and prodigious eating and drinking on EMI’s account, he would order a
medium-rare steak to take home for his dog. As Mond told me: ‘he must have been the
best fed mutt in the whole of London.’
The mention of apparently ‘free’ catering brings to mind a cautionary tale Decca
experienced during one of his frequent walks down Oxford Street in London. A man
stopped him, clearly knowing who he was, but drew blanks from a baffled Decca.
‘I’m your accountant,’ said the man. ‘Shall we have lunch?’
Decca had been about to buy a sandwich, so readily agreed. As the two men settled
into their restaurant seats and ordered champagne, the man, who by this time had
introduced himself as Melvin, asked if Decca needed any petty cash:
‘What would you need? Two hundred? Three hundred?’
‘That will suffice,’ said Decca. ‘Will you excuse me just for a moment?’
He left the room and hurtled into the nearest phone box.
‘Mond? You’ll never guess what’s happened! Get yer arse down to Oxford Street.’
Half an hour later, as Melvin and Decca tucked into their posh nosh, a dishevelled
Mond arrived and was warmly greeted by his hitherto undiscovered financial guardian. He
ordered more of the same, and before he could work out whether he was dreaming it, he
too was offered £300 in petty cash. The lads partied even more spectacularly than usual
that evening, and it was only a long time later that they were gently informed by Tony
Gordon that they were doing themselves no favours by eating and drinking all their
royalties before they’d even earned them out.
‘Eh?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
Nevertheless, ‘Melvin Money Spider’ continues to occupy a warm corner of Decca and
Mond’s memory-store.
One of the things that baffled a lot of fans about 2,000,000 Voices – and alienated
more than a few – was the inclusion of bizarrely non- punk instrumentation such as
saxophone and violin. Two factors explained this: the band were eager to broaden their
sound and range of influences, not really caring about people’s criticisms; and EMI had
the budget and the cachet to attract the very best session musicians to perform the
necessary riffs. Decca has fond memories of the day the violinist turned up at Abbey Road
to do his bit: ‘There we were with our scruffy hair, ripped jeans and leather jackets, and
in walks the fiddle-player from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with his jacket and
dicky bow. We just stood there open-mouthed as he played – he was absolutely brilliant.
We offered him a line of coke but he laughed and said he was sorry but he had a concert
to do that night. I would have loved to have had a pint with him.’
The songs themselves were the typical output of what we can, by now, refer to as the
Upstarts’ collaborative process, but with Mensi and Mond sharing the official songwriting
credits. Content-wise, we saw the expected strong elements of politics, current affairs (at
home and abroad) and social comment across the board, but a couple of songs in
particular brought up amusing knock-on stories.
‘Mensi’s Marauders’ was written with a strong, bouncy country & western beat in mind,
but Decca recalls how he altered the drum patterns to take it along a different path. ‘I
had loved The Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz”, and thought that this new song would be ideal to
try and follow that kind of style, so that’s what I did. Everyone agreed that the final song
sounded fantastic. [He grins] I still get panic attacks that the lads from Sweet will knock
on me door and accuse me of plagiarism, but I’ve got away with it so far.’
The track ‘England’ was Mensi’s attempt to retrieve the notion of pride in one’s
Englishness from the grubby hands of the National Front; to separate the jingoistic
bollocks from the pure sense of celebrating what is good about the country of one’s birth.
The meaning was widely accepted as intended – though naturally enough, as we shall
see, some right-wing elements still tried to commandeer it for their own purposes – and
everyone was ready to get on with their lives, until the song’s popularity took an
unexpected twist. With one eye on the following year’s football World Cup, to be held in
Spain, a growing swell of opinion fancied ‘England’ to be used as the official England ’82
song. Discussions started within the A&R department at EMI to see if, with the right
sleeve and blanket marketing exposure, the idea might have legs. One idea the band
were asked to consider was having their photograph taken for the cover, all wearing
England football shirts. Decca summoned up all his powers of cussedness and threw an
unanticipated curveball at the A&R men:
‘I’d prefer to wear an Ireland shirt, if that’s OK.’
Much embarrassed coughing and scratching of heads.
‘The thing is, Decca, it’s all about the England team, so we’d need
England shirts. It would defeat the point if you were dressed in green.’
‘Well, couldn’t someone else wear a Brazil shirt or something? Then
I wouldn’t look like the odd one out.’
In the end, the project came to nothing, though not because of any colour-coded
obstinacy on the part of the drummer. Decca laughs at the incident now, but has a
serious point to make about the song itself:
‘Mensi’s always been really modest about how good that song is, but I’ve always
thought it’s superb. I felt sorry for him when it first came out, with the National Front
latching on to it. If Lennon or McCartney had written it, you can bet it would have been
like a second national anthem, but because Mensi wrote it, first there’s the NF trying to
claim it as their own, then because of that, you get the swing in public perception. Stuff
gets said and the public take it as gospel. It’s a shame. I think it’s a song that would be
brilliant on a Greatest Hits album.’
2,000,000 Voices climbed to number 32 in the UK album charts on its release in June
1981. This was not only an important time in the post-punk period, with the growth of the
Oi movement, but also a pivotal year in British sociocultural history. Images of riots
spreading across the country that spring and summer will always be associated in
people’s minds with the track ‘Ghost Town’, by The Specials. The Angelic Upstarts’ third
album had landed at a key moment, and its strong political and social messages were all
the more forceful, given the backdrop against which the nation’s youth were listening to
their music. The sentiment was captured in this snippet of an album review published in
the NME:
‘Musically, they’ve moved away from the iron spikes and black spaces of punk and back
to cultural roots, which are English, specifically Geordie. If they weren’t rockers, using
studios and recording for a record label, they’d be singing folk songs. Musically, this LP is
a great leap forward from their first album Teenage Warning, with the addition of
saxophone and folk dance violin. It should enlarge their following from politically-minded
punks to politically-minded English youth in general.’
Melody Maker added, hinting at the broadening of the band’s musicality:
‘For those of you who’ve always ignored the Upstarts like the plague, considering them
little more than a bunch of sub-Sham, flash- in-the-pan, three-chord louts, Two Million
Voices should serve as the proverbial short, sharp shock.’
Sounds was also generous in its praise of the album, noting its political credentials:
‘It represents the band’s most cohesive album achievement to date and further proof,
if any is needed, that the Upstarts stand for the most conscious, most humanist wing of
street punk.’
For his part, Mensi summarised his contentment with the way the album had turned
out, telling Alex Ogg: ‘I think 2,000,000 Voices was done at a time when the band really
gelled, and like anything it was a case of right time, right elements, and it all fell into
place.’
In short, in one dazzlingly musical and powerfully radical package, the Upstarts had
tapped into the Zeitgeist of a nation, leaving a bunch of songs that spoke from the heart,
harpooned listeners’ feelings and, over three decades later, continue to resonate in all
who appreciate the significance of punk and post-punk British music.
*
Immediately after the release of studio album number three, another prestigious hat-trick
was achieved with the band’s invitation to record a third John Peel session, this time with
Decca on the drum stool. If recording an album at the Abbey Road studios wasn’t the
peak of any young musician’s dreams, then being picked out as interesting and edgy
enough to feature on a Peel session was about as good as it got. It’s difficult to
exaggerate the importance to a band of being offered this opportunity: not only within
punk and new wave, but across a range of genres with something alternative, passionate
– and often, but not always, political – to say, John Peel was the ultimate adjudicator of
what was worth listening to. And we listened to him – in both senses of the term.
The preparation for the session kicked up an interesting story which illustrated Uncle
John’s willingness to play a subversive role in his support of favoured bands. Just as Tony
Gordon’s assistant had been forced to plod around studios with details of songs to be
played, the BBC imposed similar stipulations. John Peel knew full well that both he and
the band were keen to have ‘Liddle Towers’ feature in the session, but there was no way
the BBC would have sanctioned the choice. Hence, to Peel’s eternal credit, he hatched a
plan with the lads to list this track as ‘New Values’, with some spurious lyrics ready just in
case. The plan worked to perfection, and only on the resultant album The BBC Punk
Sessions is the song listed ‘correctly’.
As we can easily imagine, Decca had a whale of a time at the recording, which took
place at the Langham 1 Studio on 23 June 1981. Decca appears not only in his role as
drummer, but also as purveyor of crisp vocals, while, as he says with a warm smile,
‘Mensi got on with his shouting and bawling’.
In a touching footnote, Decca and Mensi were walking along Oxford Street a long time
later, and bumped into John Peel. It was a warm encounter, in which the two punks left
Uncle John absolutely clear as to the significance his sessions had held for them, and
what a pleasure it had been to work with him. They could not thank him enough, but Peel
smiled benignly and told them the pleasure had been his, and good luck for the future.
*
In the aftermath of 2,000,000 Voices, EMI were considering what to do next with The
Angelic Upstarts when, in one of his many ‘meetings’ with senior management, Decca
came up with a suggestion: why not release a live album? EMI were not keen: a live
document would not be as ‘polished’ as a studio recording and, inevitably, the band would
lobby for inclusion of their older, more provocative crowd-pleasers in the chosen set. This,
the company’s management felt, would sit uneasily against the current virus of social
unrest Britain was experiencing. Even though, as we have seen, the band had managed
to turn the corner in terms of public perception with their affiliation to EMI, circumstances
were taken out of their hands by what 1981 would bring: with riots springing up across
England, bands even tangentially associated with Oi – a movement which, in the public
eye, was wrongly given a blanket link to right-wing extremism – were summarily banned
from playing in major venues. The Angelic Upstarts, through no fault of their own, were
back to square one.
The counter arguments were persuasive: the band was still riding a wave of popularity
with fans and the critics, and after four years together (albeit with changes in the rhythm
section, though with Decca back on board, even the drum stool had gone full circle back
to its original occupant), their live act was tighter and more explosive than ever. Surely a
snapshot of the band in their natural milieu on stage would make musical and commercial
sense? It would prove to doubting Thomases within the industry that they could really
play, and would also pacify the elements of their fanbase who had baulked at the more
complex instrumentation of recent studio recordings. Decca piled on the pressure:
‘I told them that we could do a great job of it, and the rest of the lads agreed. Even
though it’s a completely different kind of music, I pointed out that Thin Lizzy had nailed it
a few years earlier with Live and Dangerous. That was brilliant, full of energy, capturing
the live spirit. OK, we were very different as a punk band, but the live show, in its own
way, had plenty of energy, and we were musically tight. You could see that the managers
were starting to see me point.’
Eventually, senior management caved in and agreed to the recording and release. The
only problems were those of finding a venue, in the light of the widespread bans
described above, and ensuring that violence didn’t break out during the recording – which
would potentially ruin the atmosphere to be captured on vinyl, as well as smashing the
expensive technical equipment being used. A compromise was reached, by which the
audience for the gig to be recorded would comprise selected, trusted invitees and, on
that basis, the event went ahead.
The band’s belief in the project was more than vindicated when Angelic Upstarts Live
was released in September 1981, as it spent seven weeks in the UK album charts,
peaking at number 27, which was to be their highest ever placing.
*
But despite everything apparently being rosy in the band’s garden, Decca was again
having second thoughts about his continued involvement. Given the period’s social
constraints, the live work the band could undertake was patchy. Added to this, as he was
not a credited songwriter on the band’s recordings, the line of finance filtering down
through songwriting royalties was closed to him. Luckily, through strong management,
and via formal and informal contacts within the music industry, he was now being offered
more and more session work. Such work offered a range of aspects to suit him perfectly:
the hourly and daily rates were fantastic, professional satisfaction was assured, and it
was Decca’s choice alone whether he accepted a particular engagement or opted instead
to stay in bed or in the pubs and clubs of London where, after a difficult first few months
of acclimatisation, he had now found his spiritual showbiz home.
.
CHAPTER 6
Life in London – as any North Easterner who’s ever lived there will confirm – is an
expensive business. Rents, food, entertainment and public transport are a stretch for
anyone on all but the highest of salaries, so over the years many residents have been
obliged to turn to more than one job to make ends meet.
By now established in London, Decca found that his hopscotch involvement with The
Angelic Upstarts over the final couple of years of their initial phase of existence (their first
split was in 1983) meant that he had to spin various plates to fund his social life. The
lifestyle he’d fallen into was achieved, as I imagine is often the case with musicians
moving to London, through a jigsaw of invitations to events, meeting label-mate bands
and being introduced to their friends, gate-crashing other people’s parties, and hence
rubbing shoulders with celebrities from other walks of showbiz, who in turn take you
under their wing and invite you to further parties, where you meet yet more famous
people. That’s if it all goes well and you’re a social animal. Which it did. And Decca was.
The weekly wage he’d been on during his more ‘professional’ stint with the Upstarts
was dwarfed by the offers of session work that began to flood in. In an organisation the
size of EMI, there are plenty of acts either without a permanent drummer (solo singers,
usually) or whose drummer is temporarily indisposed or, to put it bluntly, too crap to
perform competently on record. At times of crisis, record companies or needy producers
will call upon a skilled drummer who is quick on the uptake and won’t cost them
thousands by requiring hundreds of takes to get the basics right. Enter Decca ‘One-Take’
Wade.
For a typical session, Decca was paid £25 per hour for his services. The irony wasn’t
lost on him that this hourly sum was precisely the amount he’d earned in a whole year
with The Angelic Upstarts the first time round. Sometimes these sessions would be for a
particular single being recorded by a famous artist, which we’ll discuss shortly, but other
times the jobs involved background tracks for TV and radio commercials. It didn’t matter
a hoot to Decca – he was in his beloved studio environment, doing meaningful work using
an instrument that still commanded his fascination and adoration. The ease and
frequency with which he was summoned to these sessions flew in the face of the lazy
assumption perpetrated by the press that ‘punks can’t play’. On the contrary: not only
could Decca play the drums with a high level of intuition, flair and precision; he could also
read and write music and play the piano and the guitar.
In addition to the hourly pay, commercials for a specific product usually included some
free samples of the item being advertised. It’s amazing that his weight didn’t balloon
during this period, as he munched his way through free boxes of Mars Bars and Toffee
Crisps, for which products he’d laid down perky percussion. The advertising agency
responsible for producing the Pernod commercial for cinemas should really have known
better than to employ a renowned drinker like Decca to play drums on the ad, but employ
him they did, and Team Decca gorged on Pernod and assorted mixers for as long as the
freebie crates lasted. That was an unforgettable weekend.
In an even more comical scenario, which took place earlier than the bulk of the
commercial sessions, he was offered a TV advert for Lee Cooper jeans. The ad – which
actually became something of a cult classic for its ‘Don’t be a Dummy’ music and lyrics by
Gary Numan and its zombie choreography – brought Decca boxloads of free jeans, not all
of which he could wear himself. Fast forward a couple of weeks and the image transfers
to the back streets of the North East of England, where Decca the entrepreneur is offering
‘amazing deals at cost price’ to delighted buyers of high-quality denim. As soon as one
cardboard box was emptied, it was replaced by another until the batch ran out. Ker-ching.
As Derek might have quipped, it’s all in the jeans.
Aside from the session work, which was going swimmingly, Decca was always on the
lookout for other opportunities to make a few bob. We may be tempted to think that,
since he moved to London and signed up to a respectable record company, the days of
his dodgier dealings were long gone. Surely the type of pranks he’d employed to nick
coal, cable and – let’s not forget – ship’s propellers during his apprenticeship days were a
thing of the past? Wasn’t he older and wiser by now? Let’s consult the evidence.
EMI never seemed to question Decca’s tendency to hang out more than would be the
norm at their offices. Even at times when he was not, strictly speaking, part of the band,
he was still to be found there. They took his requests for ‘meetings’ as a sign of
dedication, proof that he was truly a part of the EMI family and far from the stereotypical
persona of the aloof, snarling punk. He was engaging with his employers, thirsty for
creative knowledge, eager to impress. Unbeknownst to senior management, Decca’s
knowledge of EMI’s systems ran deep. He had located the storeroom where the company
kept copies of each single and album recorded within the organisation – copies which
would be sent off to radio stations, for example, in advance of public release. A racket
quickly emerged which saw Decca and Mond filling flight cases with albums and flogging
them not only to their mates, but even to record shops. One EMI manager was horrified,
and promptly furious, to see Kim Wilde’s album proudly displayed in a record shop not far
from HQ, a full three weeks before the official release date. Queen albums worth £6 were
offloaded for £4, with everyone therefore quids in apart from EMI. The boldest aspect of
the scam was the means by which the lads got the batches transported: burly but
unsuspecting company security guys were brought in to help shift the flight cases into a
waiting EMI van, which would then be driven by an EMI driver to a destination of Decca
and Mond’s choice. Decca laughs at the barefacedness of it all:
‘Aye, it was just for the sheer divilment of it. We were bored in the company’s offices
while there was no specific recording or whatever going on, so we thought we’d make a
few bob, which kept us in taxi fares for a while.’
When the two lads had amassed a total of £500 each, they called a halt to the con,
and went to the pub to celebrate. They were just clinking glasses when in walked Mensi.
They felt they had to tell their singer about the fiddle, but rather than feeling put out at
not being included, Mensi just figured he should go out there and do something
equivalent. Before they knew it, Mensi was striding joyfully through the door of their
house with an EMI video-recorder under his arm.
A similar dodge took place in the company of the band’s new bass guitarist Tony
Feedback. Tony takes up the story:
‘Because we had the contract with EMI at the time, we had some illustrious labelmates like Sheena Easton and Cliff Richard, among others. We were in the EMI offices in
Manchester Square one day, just when Duran Duran were about to release their second
LP, which was quite a big deal as they were the latest pop sensations. Anyway, me and
Decca managed to get hold of six boxes of 25 of this new LP, which were destined for DJs
and other people who were usually given promotional copies. We knew we could get a
couple of quid each for them in record shops in the West End, and then have a night out
on the proceeds while we weren’t on tour. As we came down the steps into Manchester
Square, there were half a dozen Duranies there, young girl fans, so we gave them a copy
each, then set off for the second-hand record shops around Berwick Street and Rupert
Street. After selling off all our “stock”, we’d made £250, which was several weeks’ wages
to us. I had dreams of buying a new guitar or taking my girlfriend out a few times, but
Decca said we should go for a drink. Big mistake! We started at a restaurant in St
Christopher’s Place, where we’d never normally have been able to afford to go, and
ordered a decent meal and champagne. Even during the meal I was thinking that, OK, I
would maybe still have £100 left over and I could go home after the meal. No chance.
The night went on and on: bars, pubs, nightclubs, spielers, until eventually we headed
back to Decca’s place. When I woke up, I didn’t even have the bus fare left to get back to
my place in West Kensington. None of that would have been too bad, except that I didn’t
even drink at the time! I wish I could say it was the greatest evening of my life, but
unfortunately after about 6pm I can’t remember a thing about it!’
Little did Decca realise it at the time, but over thirty years later, the music of Duran
Duran was to come thundering back into his life, for a very different and totally
unexpected reason.
*
Life at EMI worked very much on an expenses basis – there was so much catering,
entertaining and travelling to be done, that everything was joined up by a bewildering
lattice of expense accounts. The more senior the management, the greater the perks that
could be legitimately enjoyed. Even bands like The Angelic Upstarts were given their own
system of things they could claim back (or have paid for them) on allowable expenses,
but this was basically things like ‘food while working’, or ‘necessary transport during
periods of recording’, and was at a far lower level than the sorts of delights the managers
could get for free. Decca often wondered what mischief he could wreak if he could just
manage to convince the suppliers of goods that he was, in fact, a senior manager with
access to the relevant services accounts. After a while, he finally got his breakthrough.
One fine day, Decca chanced upon the code for an account EMI held with a London
supplier of limousines and high-end cars. He tried his luck. Phoning the company, he
quoted the code ‘1171’ and stated that the required car was for manager Chris Marshall
at EMI. The receptionist on the other end of the phone respectfully said that the car
would be with Decca in 20 minutes, and would indeed be charged to EMI account 1171.
Did ‘Mr Marshall’ have any preferred type of car?
‘No, just a straightforward limousine, please.’
‘Certainly, sir. Your car and driver will be with you as soon as possible. Thank you for
your call.’
The car arrived, and set off towards Sloane Square, before Decca thought it might be
better if he went home to get changed first.
‘Would you mind diverting to High Barnet, please?’ he instructed, giving the name of
the area in which he was now renting a flat.
‘Certainly, sir.’
The limo was beyond anything Decca had ever experienced, with its plush seats,
walnut drinks cabinet and so on. It would have seemed rude not to have partaken of the
contents of the cabinet, so Decca duly tucked in.
Later the same day, he remembered that he was supposed to be over in Kensington
for a band rehearsal, so he took his courage in both hands and made a second call to the
limo company. They were as polite as the first time:
‘We can offer you the same car and the same driver as earlier today if you like, Mr
Marshall.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No problem, sir. The driver’s name is Bob.’
‘Bob will be fine,’ replied Decca, warming to his role.
Over the forthcoming weeks, Decca and the rest of the band hammered the 1171
account as much as they could, partly for the crack and partly for the glorious
convenience, but also because they were convinced they were going to be rumbled at
any moment, and wanted to make hay while the going was good. Accordingly, they
shifted the scam up a notch: Glyn got a Jaguar to take him to Doncaster to see his mates.
The lads held their breath. No suspicion. No problem.
The following day Decca rang his dad and asked Derek what he had planned for that
afternoon.
‘Nowt much, son,’ came the reply. ‘Just going down to the dole office to sign on at
three o’clock.’
Quick as a flash, Decca got on to the limo company and secured a Rolls Royce, which
set off straight away to South Shields, breaking its exhaust and requiring two tanks of
petrol on the way. Right on time, just as Derek was setting off to walk down to the dole
office, the car pulled up and a familiar face in the back seat beckoned him to climb
aboard. The afternoon shoppers of South Shields were then treated to the beguiling
spectacle of The Right Honourable Derek Wade Senior, dressed in a string vest and
chauffeur’s cap, waving regally from the front passenger seat of a Rolls Royce, his famous
son the punk drummer smirking uncontrollably in the back, flanked by two page- three
models.
At one point in the journey, Derek spotted a group of his mates on the pavement, and
got the chauffeur to slow down next to them. Winding the window down, Derek put on a
straight face and addressed his pals with some words of wisdom:
‘See, lads: this is what you would have got if you’d remembered to do your Spot the
Ball coupons last week. See you later.’
Later that month, the scam was still in operation, but the lads felt bad for Bob and the
other drivers, so they came clean. Bob was representative of his colleagues in not giving
a damn – on the contrary, the Upstarts’ frequent £20 tips were more than useful to
supplement his driving wages. Amusingly, the dynamic between driver and ‘client’
changed instantly: Decca and Bob took a line of coke each, got changed and went out on
the piss.
Before long, Chris Marshall a.k.a. Decca had run up a bill of £7,000, but even then,
there was no reason why Decca in particular should have been suspected, until he got so
out of it one day that he signed the chit with his own name. A middle-ranking
administrator took Decca to task over the matter, and Decca, ever the quick thinker,
assumed an air of indignation as he defended himself from these scurrilous accusations:
‘If I was running a fiddle like that, do you really think I would sign me own name?’ He
threatened to speak to the administrator’s superior, and in fact there were harsh words in
the office later on about treating the company’s bands with respect.
But eventually he was indeed rumbled, and the scam stopped. It also had a knock-on
effect on the hapless Kajagoogoo singer Limahl, who had managed to clock up a bill of
£5,000 on the same fiddle – not quite matching Decca – before his run of luck was
curtailed.
But despite this blatant abuse of company funds, Decca was always well thought of by
senior EMI management. (History doesn’t relate how he got on with the company’s junior
mail boy at the time, who went by the then unknown name of Simon Cowell.) Managing
Director Cliff Busby took a bit of a shine to Decca, and would take him out for posh
lunches. He knew all about the limo scam but thought it was hilarious. After a while he
introduced Decca to his daughter, and Decca took her out a couple of times. It was all
extremely cordial, and further proof of the sense of family Decca felt within the
organisation.
*
In May 1982, at a point when Decca was available for Angelic Upstarts work, the band
were invited to go on a North American tour with The Professionals. The flight out was
scheduled for 27 May, which happened to be Decca’s birthday. Not the wisest of moves,
but there you go. Following a taxi sprint worthy of an Ealing comedy, Decca arrived at
Heathrow Airport directly from Stringfellows, with only the clothes he stood up in and the
sum total of £4 to his name. Luckily, his crumpled passport was discovered in his back
pocket.
The flight was about as lively as you’d expect from a transatlantic flight involving two
former Sex Pistols, a full complement of Angelic Upstarts and, for good measure, the
figure of music journalist and Oi spokesman Garry Bushell sitting across the aisle. Decca’s
birthday was considered reason enough for an industrial-scale celebration, and in fact this
milestone became a theme for the entire tour. As Decca recalls: ‘I pretended it was me
birthday for the whole three months of the tour, so I got champagne for free every day.
Other times we were putting stuff on the promoter’s account, or putting room service
meals in other people’s names, just blaggin’ all the time. We were on a daily allowance of
20 dollars, so I obviously spent that, but I still had the four quid in me pocket when we
got back to London.’
The tour was gruelling, but an eye-opener in terms of visiting new places, some of
them hallowed in the music industry. The Ritz in New York was a venue where Frank
Sinatra had played, and for Decca it held a special relevance, thinking of his mam and
dad back home and the associations they would have made. The itinerary had the lads
progressing through Newark, Connecticut and Boston, and a long haul in the south of the
USA, plus a short tour of the main Canadian cities. At one stage they bumped into Joe
Strummer, and Decca was privileged to have a drink with the great man one night. As a
result, the two became good friends, and Decca laughs as he tells the tale of a flophouse
hotel that musicians used to use back in London. On one occasion, Strummer, various
Upstarts and – bizarrely – A Flock of Seagulls were drinking into the night there, and Joe
decided he was tired. The rest of them bade him goodnight and carried on drinking, but
laughed as Joe kept reappearing, complaining that he’d tried practically every room in the
hotel, but couldn’t manage to get to sleep. The funny thing was that, as he rode the lift
up and down looking for comfortable rooms, the lift attendant had been on duty
throughout, and Joe had felt morally obliged to give the guy a tip on every journey.
Decca regrets that he never got to play alongside Strummer (and secretly always
dreamt of drumming with The Clash). The nearest he got was at an Upstarts gig once,
when Iggy Pop and most of The Clash were present and everyone was trying to persuade
Joe to get up and join the Upstarts on their cover version of ‘White Riot’. Joe was
reluctant, so it never happened, which was a shame. Decca did, however, work briefly in
1983 on a track entitled ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Lonesome’, on which Paul Simonon played
bass. That, he recalls, was ‘very, very cool’. More about this later on.
Back on the North American tour, it was the Canadian leg that stuck in the music
world’s memory, as a result of what happened at the Montreal show. It’s appropriate to
fill in some details from the earlier part of the day, when the two bands were ‘relaxing’ in
the hotel bar, and Steve Jones took it upon himself to order cocktails all round. Being
from the North East of England, and this being 1982, Decca had never had a cocktail
before, and wasn’t sure of the etiquette for drinking them. As such, the first one went
down like a half of lager, cherries, umbrellas and all. Jones laughed, and ordered him
another one. Before long Decca went to the toilet to relieve himself, and re-joined his
buddies in the bar stark naked apart from a pair of white socks and a waiter’s towel over
his forearm. ‘Would sir care to see the wine list?’ he asked the assembled punks, in as
posh a voice as he could muster. Steve Jones had to turn away, his face streaming with
tears of laughter.
The incident, including a photo of Decca in full maître d’ pose, is fully recounted in an
interview he gave to Phil Singleton for the Cook and Jones official website. He recounts
how, that night, The Angelic Upstarts went on first, already pissed, and sensed an
undercurrent of brewing aggro among the rednecks in lumberjack shirts at the front of the
audience. By the time The Professionals hit the stage, the idiots at the front were cruising
for a bruising, which they promptly received via the traditional ‘guitar to the head’
technique. A full- scale riot broke out, which briefly abated then was reignited in the
street when the bands tried to leave the premises after the show. The melee left, in
Decca’s words, ‘bodies all over the place, car windows smashed, the lot’. Decca praised
the unrestrained violence with which The Professionals’ security guy Steve English
hammered all-comers, saving both bands from a savage beating, allowing them to get
back to the safety of the hotel and carry on drinking. That, as they say, is rock ’n’ roll.
Also considered very rock ’n’ roll is the practice – much favoured by musicians the
world over – of availing themselves of whatever sexual invitations are offered by adoring
fans. There’s a cast-iron rule of honour here: that what goes on tour stays on tour. The
only circumstances in which this agreement can be broken are when (a) it was over thirty
years ago, (b) there’s a biography to be written, and (c) that biography tells the story of
a hell-raiser like Decca Wade.
By the time of the American tour, The Angelic Upstarts had now recruited bassist Tony
Feedback, formerly with Long Tall Shorty, into their ranks. At this stage, Tony was not a
major drinker, which may be a factor in why his memory was – and remains – razorsharp. He shared some chuckles with me about life on tour with the Upstarts across the
Pond.
‘People used to say I was a reasonably good-looking fella, but there was no way I
could keep up with Decca’s conquests on that tour. As I recall, he managed to sleep with
twenty-six women in the first month, which put my success level to shame. The
difference was that he had something I didn’t have: a chat-up line that never failed him.
He used to say: “Alreet, I’m Decca Wade, Rod Stewart’s cousin”. It worked every time.’
It wasn’t all fun and games, though – at least not for Decca.
‘No,’ Tony remembers. ‘In a small town in a southern state somewhere, the inevitable
happened, and Decca asked me to take a trip to the pharmacy with him. It was like the
embarrassment of the first time you go into a shop to buy condoms when you’re a
teenager, only a hundred times more embarrassing. Eventually we barged in and Decca
asked the woman behind the counter if she had anything for lice. “Lice? What sort of
lice?” “Well,” Decca replied, trying to keep his voice down, “I’ve got them on me body.”
“Oh,” said the woman in the loudest American accent you’ve ever heard, and in a really
crowded shop, “you mean crabs!” Poor Decca. Still, we had a couple of days of fun, crabhunting in the tour bus.’
*
To his regret, Decca never appeared on Top of the Pops (Sticks was behind the drum kit
when the Upstarts were invited onto the show), though in saying ‘regret’, it’s more a
question of the pride it would have given his family and friends. Decca wasn’t bothered
about missing out as far as he himself was affected:
‘No. I mean, it’s one of those things you can always look back on, and say you were on
the national institution that was Top of the Pops. They can’t take that away from you. But
Mensi and the rest of the lads had a fuckin’ horrible time when they were in the studio for
it. Everyone just ignored them or turned their backs. It wasn’t the whole great laugh that
they would have expected. I was fine with it. I got to do plenty of other telly, and the
clips are all over YouTube if anyone fancies a laugh.’
The lads’ grim adventure at the Top of the Pops studio is indeed well documented. A
happier occasion took place one day when Decca was out and about with other members
of the band and a crew of other musical celebrities. They were walking down Oxford
Street (inevitably) and bumped into SLF drummer Jim Reilly. He was pissed and excited:
‘We’re on Top of the Pops tonight. D’yous wanna come?’ That’s not the sort of question
that has to be asked twice, and before they knew it, a sundry squad of Upstarts, plus
members of, among others, The Cockney Rejects, Bananarama, The Specials and The
Sex Pistols were backstage at the BBC, making merry with a range of controlled
substances. For the purposes of BBC approval, we’ll just say that a vol au vent and eggand-cress sandwich combo was as racy as things got. ‘Billy Idol was the worst,’ recalls
Decca. ‘He was absolutely coked out of his face.’
*
One of the people Decca met at this time was to become one of his closest friends, a
status that endures over thirty years later. Max Splodge, who rose to fame with his band
Splodgenessabounds and their 1980 hits ‘Simon Templar’/‘Two pints of Lager and a
Packet of Crisps Please’ and ‘Two Little Boys’/‘Horse’, was part of the same hell-raising
social set into which Decca was inducted shortly after his arrival in London. The pair
would join Gerry Evans (former flatmate of Keith Moon, which sets the scene), Jimmy
Pursey and other pals on a boat they had on long-term hire at Windsor for the
astonishingly cheap rental of £6 a year. Boating doesn’t sound like quite the punk way of
spending your leisure time, but it starts to make sense when Decca tells stories of them
loading crates of beer onto the boat in the morning, getting pissed then sailing up and
down the Thames, terrorising the lives of mild-mannered residents of posher towns like
Maidenhead who were trying to enjoy the sunshine in their verdant back gardens facing
the river. What is it about punks and boats on the Thames?
Max recalls spending a lot of time in The Ship pub on Wardour Street, but also that the
Upstarts were playing a lot of gigs at London’s 100 Club, where he himself was also a
frequent performer. It seemed inevitable that the paths of these two boisterous hellraisers were destined to cross.
‘The thing that very quickly became the norm on a night out with Decca was the
unpredictability of the whole thing. We would meet up in The Ship, and neither of us
knew which way the evening was going to go. I say “evening”, but it was just as likely to
be a week or something. We never knew where we would end up, who we’d be with, or
what we’d be drinking, smoking or sniffing. But the other thing was that he was up for
anything. There was one afternoon we were in The Ship, and I was doing a show that
night at the 100 Club. It suddenly occurred to me that I’d forgotten to tell my drummer
about the gig, and he’d gone off on his holidays. I mentioned this to Decca, and asked
him if you’d fancy standing in. He said no problem, except that his kit was over at the EMI
offices. So we went straight over there, and managed to cram everything into this huge
flight-case, which Decca then proceeded to push all the way to the 100 Club. It was
hilarious – you can imagine Decca pushing the thing up the middle of Oxford Street in the
rush hour, stopping the traffic. All the drivers were blaring their horns, and Decca was
flicking the Vs and telling them all to fuck off.’
Decca smiles warmly as he recalls meeting Max.
‘When I first met Max, I think it was Jimmy Reilly who introduced us in a bar. We
shared some coke, then all ended up piling back to Max’s place in Kent. That first time I
went AWOL for about a week. That was the kind of sessions you’d get involved in with
Max, which suited me, obviously. He had hundreds of stories, one after the other, so
maybe that’s why we got on so well from the word go. He’d say stuff like: “My dog bit
Cliff Richard”, and we’d have to go for a pint to celebrate. But he used to get us into all
sorts of scrapes – he’d set them up, then do a runner, leaving me to take the rap. Time
after time he’d dare me to go and do something, then once the event or the aggro was
over, I’d see this pair of eyes peeping out from behind a row of bins on the street. It was
like something out of fuckin’ Tom and Jerry.’ One day Max and Decca were in the pub
when they spotted a man at an adjacent table with a peculiarly shaped instrument case
on the seat next to him. Max was powerless to stop his curiosity from getting the better
of him:
‘What’ve you got in there? Let’s have a look.’
‘It’s a French horn. Be careful – it’s very expensive.’
‘Does it make a loud sound? Go on, play it for us.’
The man – who turned out to play with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and was
enjoying a quiet drink before heading off to a rehearsal – politely refused, but Max and
Decca were not to be beaten. They plied the poor bloke with more drink than he could
handle, and within an hour the pub was being treated to a rousing, drunken rendition of a
medley of classical pieces by a previously self-effacing gentleman in a bow tie.
Another day, in another bar, but with the same duo of drinkers, Decca noticed that the
groups of people standing in the middle of the floor drinking had suddenly parted. In the
gap that had opened up, a girl was having an epileptic fit, and nobody seemed sure what
should be done. The only person in the pub unaware of what was happening was Max,
who drained his pint, made his way to the middle of the floor and ‘joined in’, thinking that
the girl was in fact performing what he perceived to be ‘some kind of funky dance’:
‘Yeah,’ Max told me. ‘Her shoulders went back, her arms went up, and I thought it was
kind of interesting. I was doing the twist in front of her, which I thought complemented
her dance pretty well. I had no idea she was having a fit, until I saw Decca pissing
himself and he explained what had happened.’
But with Max, it was not just about the social life. Very soon, Decca found himself
chatting to his new mate about collaborating on some of Max’s forthcoming tracks. Max
was thrilled to have Decca and Mond come in to do some recording for him, and of the
first batch of tracks they did together, for many people the stand-out song is ‘Mouth and
Trousers.’
‘That’s a cracker,’ says Decca. ‘The lyrics are very clever – full of clichés and
expressions – and it’s produced in a way that gives a very Madness sort of feel, which did
the song no harm, as Madness were huge at that time. Max fetched in a brass section,
and they did a really tight, sharp job. It’s a fantastic track, and I’m really proud of the
work me and Mond did on it. I still listen to it now and then, and it’s stood the test of
time. Oh, and we mustn’t forget the Alsatian dog, barking at exactly the right time. He
was the star of the show.’
I ask Decca for his reflections on the process of recording with Max in those early days.
‘The thing about Max was he always used to prefer night-time recordings. He liked the
peace and quiet, and we could also go there straight from the pub. So one night I went
along there with Mond and a bass player Max had brought in – RCA had booked the
studio, so it was all set up. Mond and the bass player got tuned up and we sat around
and waited for Max to turn up. No show. It got to 5.00 in the morning and there was still
no sign of Max, so the three of us went to a club. We wrote a song in Max’s absence
called “Play it again, Sam”, which was full of Peter Lorre voices. It was a great laugh.
Yeah, Max was a bit unpredictable with turning up at places, but when he did turn up,
you knew you were in for a laugh.’
Beyond this single, which deserved to have charted, but didn’t, Decca was involved in
further work, on Max’s second album, In Search of the Seven Golden Gussets (the first
credited to ‘Splodge’; the first LP, Splodgenessabounds, had used the former, full name of
the band):
‘The track I really remember being the best laugh in those sessions was “Delilah”, the
old Tom Jones classic. It was released as part of an EP that Max was doing jointly with
Garry Bushell, then added in to a version of Max’s album. We gave it some welly, I can
tell you. There was me and Max, Garry Bushell, plus Knox from The Vibrators and Pete
from The Adicts. We had a great time doing that. We absolutely hammered the song. I
don’t know if Tom Jones ever heard it and, if he did, what he thought of it, but we didn’t
give a shit.’
The involvement of Garry Bushell came at a time when, having split up in 1979, his
band The Gonads had re-formed as a wind-up, joke outfit, collaborating loosely with likeminded musicians. Max and Decca were perfectly placed to get involved with both the
musical project and the social capers that followed. Garry recalls the session with a
chuckle:
‘In 1982 we were doing this EP called “The Punk EPic”, by Max ’n’ Gal (The Brothers
Gonad). Decca played drums on all the tracks, and I remember he had us all in stitches,
cracking gags like a stand-up. It was Decca’s idea to do a pathetique version of “Iko Iko”
[which emerged on the B-side under the title “My Grandma (Hurly Burly)”]. He and Max
changed the words so that, rather than “sitting by the fire”, the poor old grandma was
“pissing on a fire”. Decca was great to work with – a very funny guy, a wild drummer and
always great company.’
Were there opportunities to play live with Splodge, as well as the burgeoning studio
work?
‘Aye, we had some great laughs playing live. There was never a dull moment with Max
on stage – you just never knew where the next prank was coming from. He was really
unpredictable, which was funny. The strange thing about playing with Splodge was that
something really clicked with me style. Maybe I was relaxed, or just extra happy with
who I was working with, or summat. But I always played absolutely mint with that band.
I remember making a crack to Max: “That was fuckin’ brilliant. Imagine how good we’d be
if we actually rehearsed!” He laughed his back off at that one.’
Aside from his close friendship with Decca, Max is clear that Decca’s musicianship was
just as important, and that he would always have sought his mate out as first choice to
do any bits of interesting session drumming that cropped up.
‘He was definitely one of the top drummers in the punk scene at that time, no
question,’ Max reflects now. ‘It was amazing how quick he was on the uptake, as well.
You would just give him a concept, tell him a couple of ideas, and he’d have it sussed
straight away. Take that EP with Garry Bushell, for example. A couple of the songs I’d
basically written the night before, and the rest of the lads in the studio didn’t know them
yet. So I strummed the basic structure on the guitar for Decca, and asked him to start
with one of his trademark drum rolls and just take it from there. So we played the song,
and he absolutely nailed it first time. He was amazing. It was no wonder they all called
him One-Take Wade.’
*
The new friends Decca had made through his expansive social circuit led to some
interesting ‘off-duty’ musical collaborations. One loosely constituted group, known as the
Muswell Hill Ridgebacks, comprised various combinations of Terry Slesser (vocalist with
Back Street Crawler), Gary Moore, Neil Murray (bassist with Whitesnake), Paul Thompson
(drummer with Roxy Music), plus Mond and Decca.
Viewed on paper, this was truly a rock super-group, but in fact the lads were quite
happy to spend the odd free evening modestly playing low-key gigs in local pubs, doing
numbers by Bob Seger, Free etc. Terry chuckles as he recalls Decca demonstrating every
inch of his fondness for making drum rolls and fills as everlasting as possible:
‘I remember dismantling Decca’s drum kit as we played live in a bid to stop him hitting
every drum he had in front of him, and shouting “Keep the fucking beat, you twat!” He
was a nightmare for running out of drums and forgetting to get back to the hi-hat and
snare.’
Gary Moore – to whom Decca was introduced by The Professionals’ Ray McVeigh –
became a good friend, and would later invite Decca to his wedding in 1985, and to lay
down some drum tracks for his hit of the same year, the Phil Lynott collaboration ‘Out in
the Fields’. (The inclusion of Decca’s work in the final mix is unclear, as other drummers
were involved, but it was, he maintains, ‘a real pleasure to be invited to work with such a
legend’.) Decca talks with great fondness and respect of a handful of incidents involving
Moore: one in the studio, one at a gig and one ‘behind closed doors’.
A collection of musicians were in the EMI studio one day, waiting for Gary to arrive to
play a guitar riff as a favour to Greg Lake. Decca takes up the story:
‘He arrived with a Les Paul guitar and got set up straight away. He asked if we were
ready for him in the control room, and we gave the thumbs-up. He then launched into an
absolutely note-perfect guitar solo, nailing it first take. Our jaws just dropped. I’ve never
known such a respectful silence. We were absolutely in awe of him. He went on and did
six further guitar tracks straight off – it took him maybe half an hour in total.’
Mond has a further recollection of that day’s session:
‘Aye, I remember a 100-watt Marshall amp and cab went missing that night once the
recording had finished, in very mysterious circumstances. Nobody ever got to the bottom
of what had happened. The amp is still for sale, if anyone wants to make me an offer.’
Gary Moore didn’t take much persuading to come to an Upstarts gig, and was, Decca
recalls, a particular fan of ‘Last Night Another Soldier’. He’d said to Decca he was
absolutely willing to get up on stage and play with them on that track, and Decca picked
him out in the audience, enjoying the gig and counting down the songs until his own
appearance. But in the end, it never happened: other members of the band were not so
keen to be collaborating with ‘hippies’, so the moment passed.
One night, a group of friends had been carousing in one of their favourite haunts, The
Ship on Wardour Street, and Gary invited the assembled punks to come back to his house
for more drinks. At some unspecified point in the wee hours of the night, with the party
starting to die down but everyone still present, Decca was on the point of nodding off but
was shaken from his reverie by the opening bars of ‘Parisienne Walkways’. He looked up,
and there in the dimmed lamplight was the great Gary Moore, standing with his eyes
closed, guitar plugged into a practice amp, pissed out of his head but still note-perfect.
The shiver that ran down the lads’ spines is something Decca will always cherish having
experienced.
In those days, we didn’t talk about ticking boxes, but nevertheless Decca was by now
bumping into his heroes at an alarming rate. And not just his musical heroes. He met
Lenny Henry at a Jimmy Pursey gig, and also found a kindred spirit in ill-fated Northern
Irish snooker world champion and hell-raiser Alex Higgins, with whom he shared some
riotous sessions.
One such was at a fund-raising event held at a huge theatre in London, comprising in
essence a 24-hour marathon pop quiz. The teams in this were BBC Radio 1 versus the
Music Industry, and the specific panels of contestants changed every hour or so
throughout the event. This rolling format was particularly welcome to contestant Decca
Wade, a panellist on the Music Industry team, who was busy rolling other things at the
same time. And sniffing things.
‘During a break when I wasn’t on the panel, Alex came up and grinned, pulling a bottle
from inside his coat. He said he needed a drink after Cozy Powell had driven him to the
event at 140 mph on the motorway. So we tucked into that, and had a few lines of coke.
To be honest, it was always difficult to distinguish Alex’s voice and mannerisms when he
was coked and when he wasn’t. He had that particular thing about his voice, and all the
twitching. But I’ll tell you what: he was absolutely hilarious, and we had some great
laughs together.’
There is sadness in Decca’s voice as he reflects on his time with Alex Higgins,
particularly as the story involves Cozy Powell, another of Decca’s friends to have sadly
departed this life. I ask when he last saw Alex.
‘It was during the later period, when he’d taken to wearing the trilby and overcoat and
all that. I was walking through Covent Garden one day on me own, just getting some
fresh air, when I heard this high- pitched voice saying me name. I looked round for ages
but couldn’t work out who was calling for Decca. Then I saw this trilby and a little hand
waving, which then did the motion for suggesting a drink. I laughed and went over, and
that was the last fresh air I saw for a couple of days.’
Life in London in those days, I put to him, didn’t ever seem to involve sessions lasting
just a few hours or one full day. There seems to have been a catalogue of full weekends
or weeks on the lash.
‘Aye, and you know what the funny thing was? I was seeing this lass up in Barnet, just
outside London, and sometimes I’d get involved in these spontaneous sessions, like with
Higgins or other people like that. Then I’d go back to the flat maybe three or four days
later, and she’d be asking where I’d been. I would tell her the truth: that I’d been out on
the piss with Alex Higgins, and one time she hit me round the head with a frying pan. She
refused to believe I’d been out with someone as famous as him, and assumed I was just
seeing another woman somewhere. The way she saw it, I was just a jobbing session
drummer who didn’t mix with celebrities. Well that was right during the day, but out of
office hours I was lucky to meet all the drinking stars like that in addition to the musical
stuff.’
Unsurprisingly, the Music Industry team were roundly thrashed in the 24-hour quiz,
with Radio 1 swots Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read stealing the show. But victory was the
last thing on Decca’s mind, preferring to mix and drink champagne with other musical
celebrities and enjoy his night.
‘All the greats of the musical scene of the day were there,’ he recalls.
‘Adam Ant was on great form, I remember, and I had a good old catch- up with Kim
Wilde. She was a good friend of mine in those days – I thought she was a great singer
and really good company – but I haven’t seen her for years now.’
The late actor Marty Feldman was one of the least predictable drinking buddies in
Decca’s circle, but an early-80s photo shows the two of them with John Miles’s bass
player Bob Marshall, living it up in Stringfellows. Feldman was being negatively influenced
by the directions in which some of his ‘friends’ were trying to lead him, so a
straightforward drinking night out with someone like Decca was actually very appealing
to the actor. At the end of the first night out, they all landed back at Bob’s house for more
drink, and Decca crashed out on the sofa. He was woken in the morning by a voice
whispering, and looked up to see the famed thespian Marty Feldman – ‘the only man who
could watch a tennis match without moving his head’ – saying goodbye to him. Feldman
had an early start, as he was appearing on the TV show Pebble Mill at One in Birmingham
that lunchtime, but he promised to give Decca a ring. This he did – instigating his
endearing habit of calling Decca ‘Love’ – and they became good friends.
*
‘Did I tell you about the time I met Bowie?’
‘No, go on.’
‘Aye, it was in 1981.’
‘Was it at a musical event?’
‘No, it was in a kebab shop.’
‘So you’d been for a night out and went for a kebab on the way home?’
‘No, this was on the way out.’
‘At the start of the night?’
‘Aye. I was on me way to a party with Mike Kellie, the drummer from Spooky Tooth,
and a lass who was one of Rod Stewart’s ex- girlfriends.’
‘Whose was the party?’
‘It was Bert Kwok’s engagement.’
‘So did you know Bert Kwok well?’
‘No, not really, though I did have a piss next to him once in Covent
Garden. No, Mike knew him, which was how we got the invite.’
‘So where does Bowie feature in this?’
‘Ah, right, yeah – well I was next to him in the queue for me kebab. I remember he
was wearing one of them creased hand-made shirts, and grey trousers.’
‘Did you have time to get his autograph?’
‘Aye. We shook hands, and he wrote “Bowie, with thanks” on me kebab paper.’
‘Nights out don’t get any better than that.’
‘True, true.’
*
But, above all, there were surreal moments when musicians – and particularly drummers
– would come enthusiastically up to Decca, greet him by name, compliment him on his
recent work and ply him with drinks. It was, as he puts it, ‘really hard to get me head
around. I was spending time with Rat Scabies and Captain Sensible from The Damned,
drinking with Robert Plant, and one night I was at The Marquee and Ian Paice from Deep
Purple made a beeline over to shake me hand. I really had to pinch meself that night –
he actually knew who I was!’
He wasn’t the only one. Another night, Decca was standing watching a band at
Dingwalls, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked round, half expecting some kind
of aggro, and was startled to see the grisly figure of Lemmy from Motorhead grinning at
him.
‘Fancy powdering yer nose?’ enquired Lemmy with a theatrical jerk of his head in the
direction of the venue’s toilets. It turned into yet another memorable night, during which
Decca used the effects of the narcotics to reflect on this surreal new life into which he’d
stumbled: a place where godlike musicians and celebrities actually wanted to be his
friend, to chat, drink and get stoned with him and, above all, to interact with him as
equals.
Soon there was only one living drummer that Decca still harboured hopes of meeting,
but the London music scene in the early 80s was a small world and, before he knew it, a
seemingly innocuous evening in The Ship was turned on its head when the legendary
Cozy Powell walked in. Decca happened to be drinking with a guy who had done tour
manager work with practically every band under the sun, and within minutes he was
standing at the bar being introduced to the artist originally known as Colin Flooks. Gulp,
thought Decca. I’m talking to the guy who recorded ‘Dance with the Devil’, the fella who
used to be in Rainbow, and he knows me name. Bloody hell. ‘Can I get you a pint, Cozy?’
The pint turned into a skinful, and, in the way of these things, it was then back to
Cozy’s place for a spontaneous party extension. The script almost writes itself. Decca is
shown round Cozy’s house, and they enter a room containing a huge, top-of-the-range
drum kit. Decca tries to remain cool, but betrays his excitement with a wide-eyed look in
the direction of his host. ‘Go on, then,’ says Cozy, ‘you can have a go if you want.’ Why,
oh why didn’t punks have access to camera phones in those days? They had a drink
together whenever they coincided at events or in bars they both frequented, and always
joked about their relative drumming talents. ‘You’ve got to give me lessons, Cozy.’
‘Don’t be daft, mate. You don’t need lessons from anyone, least of all me.’
An unfortunate reality of the music industry is that, each year, a sprinkling of musicians
die, many of them through excess or misadventure. We mourn them and have no option
but to move on, but there are always a handful whose memory burns strong in our
hearts. Such is the case of Cozy Powell in Decca’s memory. Decca was returning from a
spell in Ireland when Cozy was involved in the car crash that ended his life in 1998, and
was so ill prepared to receive the unexpected news that it hit him like a ton of bricks.
Into the 1980s, it’s interesting to learn that there was still interaction between The
Angelic Upstarts and iconic bands from the first wave of punk. Decca remembers meeting
up with John Lydon in a London pub a couple of hours before the band were due on stage
at a nearby venue. He instinctively offered the former Sex Pistol a drink.
‘Pint o’ lager,’ came the reply. ‘I don’t like the Upstarts but I do like that “England”
song of yours.’
‘Thanks very much. We’re doing a cover of “Pretty Vacant” in tonight’s set. Do you
fancy getting up with us?’
‘Fack orff.’
Nevertheless, Lydon accompanied them to the gig, and a great night was had by all.
They were all on magic mushrooms and French Blue pills – Decca recalls that four would
have been enough, but he took 16 ‘just to be on the safe side’. This spirit of excess was
very much the norm, and nobody can blame Decca for living his life to the full. By this
time, he was in his mid-twenties, basically fit, and with the kind of metabolism that would
allow him to ingest whatever rock ’n’ roll could throw at him, and still get up the next
morning, splash some cold water on his face and, within an hour, be sitting in a recording
studio bashing out impeccable percussion in a session for one of the world’s leading stars.
At that age, the last thing you want to think about is planning for the future: for the
moment, the session work was plentiful and suited him; if it carried on for a few more
years, so much the better. Then – who knew? – there might always be some further
surprises round the corner.
.
CHAPTER 7
By 1983, the first incarnation of The Angelic Upstarts was coming to an end. Mysteriously,
given the critical and chart success of the first three albums, plus the live LP, the band
were once again dropped, bringing an end to their colourful dalliance with EMI. Being
ditched by a record company after a solitary album is commonplace nowadays, when a
chart entry at anything less than Number 1 is considered a failure, but for a punk band
who had sold as prolifically as the Upstarts did, while maintaining a fiercely loyal fanbase
and a top-notch live performance ethic, the curtailment of their deal was a major puzzle.
It was not only the band and their fans who were baffled. Throughout the half-dozen
years of the Upstarts’ first spell, support had come from the most unexpected of sources.
Today, when we think of the BBC Radio 1 Roadshow, we envisage teenage boybands,
girlbands and ‘R&B’ artists miming to their whiny chart hits in a park or on a beach
somewhere, with livewire DJs whipping up the passions of the moist-knickered adolescent
crowd. Back in the early 80s, however, things were different: Radio 1 producers had a bit
more balls, and were prepared to involve gutsier acts in the day’s programme. Like The
Angelic Upstarts, for instance. Decca recalls being part of one such day in Bristol, when
the vibe was fantastic, the only negative being the attitude of Simon Bates, who literally
turned his back on the band. Hmm – big loss. But Mike Read, whom Decca knew slightly
from his social circuit, was a great fan of ‘Last Night Another Soldier’, and confirmed in
Bristol that he was amazed the song had not been a huge hit. It was good to hang out
with such movers and shakers in the music industry, in the knowledge that they genuinely
liked your product. The love-in continued at breakfast the next morning, when hotel
guests were treated to the unlikely spectacle of Noel Edmonds sharing a breakfast table
and deep in conversation with Mond. Also a fan of the band’s music, Edmonds promised
to put the Upstarts on the station’s playlist for Decca’s birthday. History doesn’t relate
whether this was one of Decca’s genuine birthdays, or one of the ‘official’ variety which
served to wipe his bar-tabs clean around the world.
Even in the periods when he was not drumming with the band, Decca was still very
much part of the set-up in London, offering his services as freelance roadie, companion
and social hell-raiser. As such, the flow of partying anecdotes continued unabated.
Another fan of the band in their early days had been Tom Robinson, who had latched
onto both the release and the sentiments of the ‘Liddle Towers’ single, going on to do a
live version himself. The band eventually got to know Tom socially, and there came a
point when Mensi and Decca had plotted an elaborate wind-up at the expense of Mond.
Firstly, a copy of Gay News was sent to Mond, care of the record company, by Mensi.
Mond was baffled, but assumed it was just some kind of database mistake or clerical
error on the part of the publication’s admin staff. Mensi then adopted his finest straight
face, and approached Tom Robinson who, at this time, was already openly gay:
‘Look Tom, I’m not homophobic, but I’m concerned about our guitar-player. I think he’s
confused about his sexuality, and he may not be out of the closet.’
‘Don’t worry,’ replied Tom with a mischievous gleam in his eye, ‘I’ll bring him out of the
closet.’
So it was that Mond found himself invited out to some classy Soho joints by the man
who had brought the music world ‘Glad to be Gay’, and had no idea what monkeybusiness was afoot on the part of his bandmates. He was bought drinks and engaged in
lively conversation all evening, and was touched, a couple of days later, to receive a nice
card from Tom saying ‘Thanks for a great evening’. What he couldn’t see as he read it
was Decca and Mensi giggling like Muttley off Wacky Races behind him.
But wind-ups aside, the first Upstarts years also brought episodes of heart-warming
camaraderie. By 1981, The Toy Dolls had released both their debut single and a fivetrack EP, and following Decca’s original contact with Olga from the Kickstarts / Showbiz
Kids link, a friendship had developed between the Dolls and the Upstarts. This was
manifested in invitations to tour, but what Olga was really lacking was a high-profile
recording deal. By chance, Decca laid hands on a copy of the EP, and was taken by the
track ‘I’ve Got Asthma’. He immediately took it to Cliff Busby at EMI and invited him to
have a listen. Cliff loved it too, and set up a meeting with promotions guru Malcolm Hill
and other senior managers.
The day of the crucial listening dawned, and Olga and Decca stepped into the plush EMI
boardroom to learn the track’s fate. For anyone not familiar with the song, it charts Olga’s
own asthma, but initially got him into deep water with charities and individuals thinking
he was mocking the afflicted. Back at EMI, the EP was given a spin, and a half-dozen
grey-suited managers sat back in their chairs to listen. Just under three minutes later, the
song climaxed with Olga’s voice faking an asthma attack, and the moment had come for
the jury to cast its vote. Decca remembers noticing a certain uneasiness among some of
those present, which was soon explained as he was taken to one side and informed that
one of the managers had lost his daughter to asthma. If ever a song was badly matched
to an audition, this was it. But the story ended happily, as the band were granted their
(ultimately unsatisfactory, as it turned out) deal with EMI’s Zonophone label, on the
proviso that ‘I’ve Got Asthma’ would be sidestepped in favour of another track on the EP,
‘Everybody Jitterbug’.
1983 was a stand-out year in Decca’s life in that he was granted a solo deal, which
resulted in the single ‘If It Wasn’t For Rita’. In fact, the deal that was cut was for two
singles with the option of an album, but Decca was so busy with session work and
recording jingles that – in his own words – ‘Mars Bars got in the way and I never did the
second single or the album’. In part, Decca was also concerned that the record company
might be trying to turn him into something he wasn’t:
‘I was a bit uneasy. There had been so much electronic stuff coming out over the last
couple of years – dance music, I suppose you’d call it – that I think they were trying to
get me to dance to their tune. I was nervous about that. I didn’t want to end up as the
next Kraftwerk or whatever. Very uncool for a punk drummer. In the end, I never formally
left the deal, and I was never sacked – it just kinda fizzled.’
The deal was hatched when one of the managers from the record company asked
Decca one day if he could sing, as they had a song in mind for him, entitled ‘I Don’t
Wanna Be Lonesome’. The song, at that stage, existed in demo form, with a primitive
drum machine doing its tinny best in the background. With drums by Decca and bass by
Paul Simonon, the track was radically improved, but ultimately it was given to vocalist
Terry Slesser.
The song that did get the Wade vocal treatment and was issued in his name, ‘If It
Wasn’t For Rita’, was written by Decca’s then manager Chris Bryan Smith and Larry
Bartlett, with lyrical ideas of Decca’s own drafted in. It’s a song ‘about morals’ and, whilst
Decca maintains it was written as ‘a bit of a piss-take’, it does relate to Jenny, the mother
of Decca’s first child. Trivia buffs will be keen to learn that the guitar on the track is
played by Simon Climie, of Climie Fisher fame, with drums by Decca himself. The song
came within an inch of major exposure, as 1983 was also the year of the blockbusting
film Educating Rita, based on the Willy Russell play and starring Julie Walters and Michael
Caine. Decca’s song was in the running to form part of the film’s soundtrack – in fact as a
bit of a craftily hatched ploy on the part of both the record company and the songwriters.
However, time was short in one crucial aspect of its development: nobody was able to
find a suitable Scouse vocalist in London (which, it was felt, would lend warmth to the
track and assist in its quest to make the cut as the film’s title song), so a Geordie – or
near enough – was hastily considered to be an acceptable alternative.
Disappointingly, the film deal didn’t come off, so Decca never made the related riches
that had been tantalisingly dangled in front of him. That said, the solo deal itself did
involve an advance, and the night before learning the details of this, Decca spent an
excited few hours pricing up Ferraris and Porsches. However, the reality was much more
mundane, and once the studio costs, musicians’ fees and other expenses had been
covered (and, naturally enough, once Decca had ensured that everyone was bought a
drink for their trouble), the advance was pretty much eclipsed.
For over 20 years, he was actually without a copy of his own solo single, until Colm
Callanan found a copy, bought it, framed it and presented it to Decca in what now, in
retrospect, was all the more poignant a gesture.
I’m not sure there’s a standard means of celebrating being offered a solo deal, and
Decca certainly wasn’t aware of one, so he went to the pub with Max Splodge. Max, at
this time, was going through a phase of carrying his drugs around in a violin case, which
he had with him on the day in question. The case also – logically – had room for other
stuff, including – illogically – a saw, which he’d acquired from a cupboard in the St Moritz
venue in London while staggering around upstairs looking for the toilet. As the beer and
vodka flowed, Max felt that the optimum way to mark Decca’s signing of his deal was to
take out the saw and set about sawing a wooden table in half, much to the bewilderment
of fellow drinkers and the pub management. As Max told me:
‘It was one of those actions that made perfect sense at the time. We were pissed,
Decca had been offered the solo deal, I had the saw, and there was a table in front of us.
So we had all the necessary ingredients. It seemed like the most natural thing in the
world just to saw it in half. Compared with some of the stuff we got up to – loads of
which I can’t even remember – that was fairly tame.’
To their credit, EMI tried in more than one way to widen Decca’s recording possibilities
and strengthen his sense of membership of their musical family. In 1983, Leesha Paradise
was signed by them as a solo artist, and released a single, ‘Waiting’, which is still highly
regarded on the dance music circuit three decades later.
‘I’d been working with Boney M,’ she told me, ‘and landed a solo deal with EMI.
Obviously you got to meet other EMI artists, and they would give some thought to
possible collaborations. One of the things they were thinking about was for Decca and me
to record together. It was talked about, but unfortunately it never happened. It would
have been fantastic if it had.’
The throwing together of such a diverse roster of acts was one of the delights of the
EMI family. But I wondered what Leesha had thought of Decca the bloke, as opposed to
Decca the musician.
‘Oh my God,’ she replied without hesitation, her voice dripping with honey down the
phone. ‘I was absolutely in love with Decca Wade. How could you not be? I’ve still got his
photo on my wall.’
Decca remembers that period equally warmly. I ask him about it, and there’s a faraway
look in his eye as he ponders his response:
‘I should have married Leesha, you know? In our own way we were love’s young dream.
It was just one of those things you could never have predicted, going into an organisation
as big as that, as a scruffy drummer in a punk band.’ He pauses. ‘But it wasn’t to be.’
*
Elsewhere in the punk world, The Revillos’ drummer Rocky Rhythm was paralysed down
one side of his body in a road accident and, whilst unwilling to give up his place on the
drum stool, clearly needed help. Max Atom had been working with Mond, who suggested
Decca as the ideal man for the job. Decca had in fact been known to the band for some
time, as well as sharing an EMI link with them – yet another example of the benefits of
being associated with a huge record company – so they were doubly happy to ask him to
step in and assist them during the live performances for a few months until Rocky was fit
enough to continue on his own. Decca accepted on the spot, and was told he had to get
to Edinburgh that very evening for three days of intensive rehearsal before the tour
began.
‘The Revillos treated me very well,’ he reflects. ‘They weren’t the rowdiest of drinkers
and party animals, but Rocky was a good drinking partner on the tour. Musically it was a
good laugh as well. We had two kits set up, as Rocky couldn’t use a bass drum, so we
were each doing certain bits of the drumming – it worked very well, and I loved using the
mad luminous drumsticks.’
In his book of memoirs, The Rhythm Method, Nicky Forbes (a.k.a. Rocky) recalls the
set-up working very well:
‘I kept the beat with what functioning limbs I had, and Decca played bass drum and did
the fancy rolls around the tom-toms and cymbal crashes, of which my right arm was
incapable. “Hey, this is great!” I shouted across the stage to Decca as we tub-thumped
together. “It’s like being in the Glitter Band or something”.’
Decca recalls one night of merry-making, when he, Fay Fife and a few others got back
to the hotel only to find that the main door was locked. Fay was due to carry on home in
the taxi, but hung on to see if they could find a solution. Glancing up at the main façade
of the hotel, they could see other members of the Revillos’ entourage in a lit-up window
four floors up. Quick as a flash, Decca started to shin up the drainpipe, to Fay’s horror.
The cheesy grin on Decca’s face as he reached the window safely and gave the thumbsup back down to Planet Earth must have been something to behold, as were the faces on
the assembled band and PA crew as Decca slipped noisily in through the window, wishing
everyone present a fond ‘good evening’.
‘Aye, it was funny,’ he agrees. ‘I remember Max Atom was in the room playing pool, and
I was clambering over everyone on me way in through the window. He couldn’t fuckin’
believe it. Actually I’d forgotten about that one, and it was Max who reminded me of it
when I saw him a few years back.’
The temporary involvement as Rocky Rhythm’s sidekick produced another of a long
series of Brockley Whins tender moments, when Joan and Derek Wade came downstairs
one Sunday morning to find a full- strength Revillos posse (never the smallest band in the
world) snoring raucously on the living-room floor. In an action-packed morning, Joan went
for the biblical approach to catering for her son’s guests, in a flurry of food and drink that
became known locally as the Feeding of the 5,000 Punks. Maybe Eugene and Fay had
heard from The Angelic Upstarts what a cracking Sunday dinner Joan could lay on, as
they were frequent beneficiaries of the famous Wade hospitality.
In another notable ‘fill-in’ job around this time, Decca turned his hand to heavy metal,
doing some album work with Pete Way and Fin Muir’s project Waysted. His audition was
pretty straightforward:
‘Yeah, I just had to turn up at 4pm one day. I played two songs and got the job straight
away. The deal was just to be a straight rock ’n’ roll drummer, which was no bother – it’s
just a different speed. Pete Way seemed astonished that I was a punk who could actually
play. I mean: fuckin’ hell! I took it well, though.’
Decca contributed to the band’s eponymous second album Waysted, spending an
interesting few weeks in the lap of luxury at a mansion-cum-recording studio the band
had chosen to use. Control of the budget was clearly the last thing on anyone’s mind, and
Decca recalls daily deliveries of sundry varieties and quantities of drugs for Messrs Way,
Muir and other partakers to enjoy. In the absence of any disciplined programme of work
for many of the days he was there, Decca amused himself swimming in the heated pool
and drinking as much as he could. When he could drink no more, his mates the Geggis
brothers from The Cockney Rejects were happy to come along and lend a hand. Per diem
wages were sometimes hard to come by, but food, drink and drugs were never in short
supply. Such was the lax air of control – not just over budget but over assets in general –
that Mensi ‘borrowed’ Waysted’s van for six months before anyone realised it was
missing.
However, his involvement in the band was to be short-lived. As Garry Bushell put it in a
1984 interview for the magazine Music For Nations, Decca ‘turned out to be too wild even
for Waysted’. Wow. This, you need to be aware, was a band featuring, at various times,
musicians from legendary party animals UFO, Def Leppard, Motorhead and Ozzy
Osbourne’s band.
During one particularly riotous session of debauchery, music management guru and
sometime talent show judge Sharon Osbourne looked in horror when she saw which
specific hell-raisers were leading the festivities. She was unable to contain herself:
‘Get that Decca Wade out of here!’ she screamed. ‘He’s a bad influence on my Ozzy!’
Now that’s a badge of honour. In fact, despite the hilarity and the craic with Waysted,
Decca felt he was being set up for a fall. He was never sacked as such, but was paid off
with a one-off fee of £200. From this, he had to pay his own way home to the North East,
meaning that there was very little left over – other than a king-size hangover and a
drumming credit on the record – to show for his efforts.
*
More than one young North Eastern actor has, over the years, spoken of the difficulty of
forging a career in the region because of the predominance of what is known locally as
the ‘Geordie Mafia’. Seemingly, whenever a drama, comedy or film project is mooted as
likely to be filmed in the area, all the parts and supporting roles are immediately snapped
up by ‘the usual suspects’, leading to suggestions of a closed shop. A similar perception
existed in the sphere of popular music, where certain local ‘dinosaurs’ would always be
asked to work on film scores, incidental music for television, and so on. In 1985, however,
an event took place that would change the region’s perception.
Following Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s herculean efforts with the Band Aid movement in
the autumn of 1984, a chain reaction was set off as other organisations worked to
produce more and more money for Africa through charitable events. One such was the
Geordie Aid initiative, dreamt up by Lindisfarne’s Ray Laidlaw, which saw around 35 local
musicians assembled quickly to record a single to raise funds for Ethiopia. The song, ‘Try
Giving Everything’, was written by Mike Waller and featured lead vocals by Brian Johnson,
John Miles, Irene Hume of Prelude and Olga of The Toy Dolls. Various footballers, Auf
Wiedersehen Pet actors and other local showbiz faces also took part.
Here’s the thing, though: far from the aloof, closed-shop mentality that had prevailed,
this gathering was about as inclusive as it could possibly have been. Sure – if you’ve got
Brian Johnson in your local ranks, you’re not going to deny him a lead vocal, but it was
good of the organisers to give Olga some lead work. That said, his stock was high at the
time with the success, during the Band Aid weeks, of ‘Nellie the Elephant’, but it did show
that the project was attempting to embrace more than one genre. As Mike Waller put it
at the time, referring to the recording session and the shooting of the promotional video:
‘There was an eagerness about the whole thing, and no ego- tripping.’ Accordingly, Mond
and Decca were phoned up and invited to take part.
Decca speaks warmly of the time he spent working on this project, belting out his
harmonies and filming the video. Although there was no requirement for him to lend his
drumming talents – Ray Laidlaw himself had done all the percussion in advance of the
main recording session – it was still a fine opportunity to get involved and do his bit for
such a huge charitable cause. He also enjoyed having a pint with the then local TV news
anchorman Mike Neville, who was also part of the backing-vocal choir:
‘I got to know Mike quite well at the time. He was very funny and always up for a pint.
Actually it was quite funny how I met him. Me and one of the roadies had stopped off at a
motorway service station down south somewhere, just after I’d moved to London. We
went to the bog and there were two urinals left, one either side of a bloke who was
already having a piss. It turned out to be Mike Neville. The first person he glanced at was
the roadie, who was a mean-looking fucker with the red mohican and all that. I think he
felt a bit nervous, then he glanced the other way at me, and I smiled and said “Alreet,
Mike?” and that put him at his ease. We had a good bit chat, and he brought the incident
up when I saw him at the Geordie Aid thing. Nice fella.’
*
Away from music, the latter half of the 1980s marked the beginning of Decca’s first
proper stab at family life. Despite having something of a weakness for the amorous
trappings the music business supplied almost automatically to red-blooded males, Decca
had been with girlfriend Diane for several years. Decca reflects now that he had not been
fully sure about his commitment to Diane, but there had not been any intrinsic problem in
the relationship, and he had enjoyed playing in a band with her brother. The domestic
arrangements had been complex, but had worked: Decca retained a rented flat in
London, for use when he was down there with work, and he got back up to the North East
as often as he could to spend time with Diane:
‘After the first period, when we’d been with Jimmy Pursey in Hersham then we got a
band place in Wood Green, I branched out and kept a rented place in Barnet, just by
meself. It was a good laugh there, and if there was no particular musical stuff going on, I
used to do up people’s houses for them. Designer Dec, that’s what I called meself. Owt to
keep me in drugs.’
During the period of his work with Waysted, Decca and Diane discovered that they
were expecting their first baby. As had been the case with Jenny a decade earlier, Decca
was eager to ‘do the right thing’, and this time it was agreed that the parents-to-be
would get married. The wedding took place at the local St Mary’s Church in November
1984, and daughter Georgia was born at the end of May the following year.
Decca’s status as a premier league rock ’n’ roll party animal was confirmed by his choice
of best man for the wedding: step forward Max Splodge. Weddings are generally
characterised by months – sometimes even years – of planning, and an appropriate
degree of detail was indeed looked after in the run-up to Decca and Diane’s hitching. Of
the many elements to be considered, one of the tasks traditionally associated with the
best man is the organisation of the stag night. With Max at the helm, this was never
going to be an easy ride: in October 1984, he summoned Decca to what was referred to
as his ‘stag month’, which resulted in Decca faithfully promising Diane that he would be
back in time for the nuptials, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Max duly delivered the groom
to the correct church at the appointed time, but otherwise has little memory of the
proceedings:
‘I think the stag month probably took it out of us a bit. Once we were finished with that,
the wedding was a bit of a blur, I’m afraid. I can’t even remember writing my speech,
never mind delivering it. Most people I’ve spoken to who were there have talked about
my “best man’s slur”, which just about summed it up.’
The wedding, in fact, very nearly didn’t happen. Decca and Diane had called it off the
previous Tuesday after a big argument, only to make their peace and resurrect the plans
48 hours before the scheduled date. This caused major hassle among guests, particularly
for Diane’s family, whose confidence in the wisdom of their daughter marrying Decca
Wade had been seriously dented. Items of bridal wear had been slung away in anger
after the argument, only for replacements then to be hastily sought. As it turned out, the
bulk of guests attending the wedding were from Decca’s side. Joan remembers the event
fondly:
‘After all the uncertainty of the run-up, we had a lovely day, with the reception at the
Robin Hood. I felt very proud when the band played at the reception: they had John Miles
singing, Bob Marshall playing the bass and Decca on drums in his suit, bless him.’
The presence of a baby made the North-South commuting lifestyle far more
problematic, but it made sense for Decca to continue to have a base in London, as his
session drumming work was continuing to expand, and was proving both lucrative and
flexible. Nevertheless, the couple set up home and were happy for a few years, as
evidenced by the arrival of a second daughter, Dallas, on Decca’s birthday in 1988. This
addition to the family doubled the workload on Diane in Decca’s absence, but also
marked the beginning of a definitive strain on the marriage. The strain was reinforced by
Diane’s assertion that Dallas was not, in fact, Decca’s child.
‘We liked Diane,’ Joan recalls, ‘and we had no idea that there was anything wrong, but
you can never tell, can you? It was a shock when the marriage broke up.’
In lighter moments, Decca refers to the break-up of his marriage as a blessing in
disguise, but he also reveals that it caused him a lot of hurt, both emotionally and in
terms of his pride. Sometimes his reflections come across as bravado, shrouded in his
trademark humour: ‘Me wife fucked off with me best mate. I don’t half miss him!’
There was also a moment of mirth when the Child Support Agency required a photo of
Decca to be sent, to formalise his access arrangements to see his daughters. Always up
for a bit of mischief, Decca put his glasses on, read the paperwork carefully and reassured
himself that ‘at no point did it state how recent the photo had to be’. Quick as a flash, he
popped a favourite snapshot in the post, and chuckled as he imagined a bureaucratic face
frowning over the image of an eighteen-month-old Decca Wade, sitting on his mam and
dad’s front step, sucking moodily on his dummy, ‘like the baby off The Simpsons on fuckin’
acid.’
Of great importance when the split happened was the comforting presence of his old
mate Mensi, who was there straight away to help pick up the pieces. Decca has never
forgotten that. There were
numerous legal wrangles associated with the house, followed by some unpleasant
incidents with Diane’s new boyfriend who, she claimed, had been hitting her and
generally causing aggro in the household. Decca saw the need to involve himself in
defence of his kids, firstly with a series of warnings, then with something sterner and a
deal more physical:
‘I was looking at two years in the nick for sorting him out, which was bad timing, as I’d
just been offered a mind-blowing job, doing a resident drumming gig on the QE2. But I’ll
tell you what: the police were disgusted by how I’d been treated there. They kinda
understood me; saw that this bloke had cruised in and landed a ready-made home that
I’d worked hard to pay for. Me revenge was to wreck the place. The ironic thing was that
the guy was supposed to be a handyman, but he can’t have been that handy – it took him
six months to get the fuckin’ house straight again!’
Derek remembers the unsavoury episode in less light-hearted terms:
‘Decca was wound up, really angry, and you could understand that. But he was up for
GBH with intent, and we had to get him to see that there was no point in going to court
all sharp-suited and arrogant. He had to dress down and play a careful game, and
emphasise the fact that he had been a victim too. In the end, he played a blinder, all
tearful and moaning that the other guy had taken his house and family, and I think the
judge saw the situation for what it was. He avoided jail and just got a fine.’
It took a long time for the wounds to heal, and for all parties to move on, but move on
they eventually did, and something told Decca that this would not be his last opportunity
to find love and happiness.
*
In the meantime, the session work showed no sign of drying up. One of the great
unknowns of this period was exactly which of Decca’s hundreds of drumming tracks on
songs by respected artists actually ended up being used on the released version of a
record. Often, his work would be included in the penultimate mix, then a producer would
decide upon an eleventh-hour change of pattern for the song. A quick phone call to Decca
would reveal that he was tied up with other artists for the next fortnight, so rather than
risk mixing different drummers’ styles on a track, and with time being of the essence, the
producer would be forced to look for an alternative session drummer at short notice and
start again. Far from being precious about the use (or non-use) of his work, Decca was
sanguine about it all, shrugging his shoulders and asserting that he wasn’t bothered
about the credits: he’d enjoyed working with great musicians and had been paid for his
work, and that was all that concerned him.
One such track – as mentioned earlier – was ‘Out in the Fields’ by Gary Moore and Phil
Lynott. Decca received no pay for his time, and the disputed nature of the inclusion of his
work is irrelevant: he met, befriended and worked with one of the period’s superlative
guitarists, and that can never be taken away from him. A further illustration of Decca’s
adaptability as a multi-styled drummer and percussionist was his work in the pure pop of
the late 80s: the Danny Wilson track ‘Mary’s Prayer’ – it is thought – ended up featuring
the work of a different drummer, but in an earlier mix, no prizes for guessing who turned
up cheerfully at the studio, knocked out his track with the minimum of hassle and went
off whistling into the smoggy London air.
Other work is even harder to pin down, but what Decca treasures are the memories of
meeting the artists, chatting and drinking with them, quickly finding common ground and
sharing a genuinely pleasant time, with lots of laughs. Nik Kershaw and his wife were
utterly charming with the punk wastrel, and somewhere on one of Kate Bush’s albums is
a minor track featuring the vocal talents of Messrs Wade and Splodge.
‘That was a hoot,’ recalls Decca. ‘Kate Bush answered the door to the studio herself. I’d
met her a few times at the EMI offices, which is how we got invited to work on the track
through Malcolm Hill, but every time I saw her I’d forgotten how small she was, and also
how quietly-spoken but hilariously funny. She was brilliant: lovely to us, and an amazing
talent. We’d been brought in for some extra vocal work – to give it more vibrancy, was
how she put it. It was a great laugh all round. It’s times like that when you start to feel
your worth in the musical world.’
But some work was propelled straight into the charts, with no question as to the
identity of the man on the drum stool. Decca has fond memories of his work with
extravagantly dressed American nutter George Clinton, for whose UK Number 57 track
‘Loopzilla’ he was on drumming duty. George was there in person at the studio for the
recording of the various instruments, which was just as well, as Decca had never heard of
him.
‘It was a bit of an eye-opener – he had this three-quarter-length jacket with feathers
on, so the scene was set for a couple of days’ worth of madness. Of course I already
knew me way round Abbey Road, so I remember leading the guitarist astray – poor lad, I
got him coked out of his head, and we got all the usual food, drinks and taxis chalked up
to EMI. Musically it was a good challenge as well – the track needed lots of fast bassdrum work, which was ideal for me. We had time to do the pre-recordings for his
appearance on The Tube as well. Aye, it was good money and a funny experience.’
Around the same time, and adding another diverse swerve to the music Decca was
being called upon to play, US disco singer Melba Moore arrived in London to record her
track ‘Mind Up Tonight’. Yet again, ‘One-Take Wade’ stepped valiantly in and supplied the
required drums and percussion, then sat back and watched the song leap to Number 22 in
the UK charts. Not that chart success was ever important – ‘not at all, it was just nice for
the singer, you know? It made no difference to me. I always thought of session work as
just being me crust – a way of keeping me in life’s little necessities: food, drink and
drugs.’
*
You’d be forgiven for wondering whether someone as prolific in studio sessions wasn’t
ever offered the logical step into doing live work with one or more of the artists he’d
helped out. Join me in your mind’s eye as we skip across London to the Olympia
conference and exhibition centre in West Kensington, where we see the London
Philharmonic Orchestra tuning up, and a selection of talented pop musicians, handpicked to add contemporary style to the music of the artist for whose World Tour they are
here to rehearse. The first rehearsal is about to begin, but one musician is missing. There
is a crash as the stage door is flung open, and in walks Decca Wade in his ripped jeans,
to be enthusiastically welcomed and hugged by his employer for the rehearsals and the
subsequent World Tour: none other than Scottish pop princess Sheena Easton.
‘Aye, that was a stroke of luck for as long as it lasted,’ reflects Decca now. ‘I was
brought in on recommendation as a stand-in, as the first- choice drummer couldn’t make
it for whatever reason. It was good crack, working with all the classical guys, and nailing
the instrumental arrangements. It was all going great, then out of the blue – at least
that’s how it seemed – she met Prince and wanted to move out to the US and change her
approach to everything. So it all got scrapped. That would’ve been very tidy: it was gonna
be a grand a week for me to do the tour, but there you go – these things happen.’
That sounds like a very upbeat reaction to what must have been a major
disappointment. Decca grins.
‘No, it was fine. Anyway, it had its perks. I managed to bag a whole load of tour Tshirts, and all three colours of the ‘Sheena Easton – Big Boys On Tour’ blouson jackets.
There was a blue one, a red one and a grey one. I was cutting quite a dash when I went
back to Jarra with them on, I can tell you. The only difficulty was working out which one
to wear. It’s all about choosing the right colour to set me eyes off the best, so the blue
and the red worked well, depending on how much I’d had to drink.’
The Sheena Easton story wasn’t the only so-near-and-yet-so-far experience of this type.
Way back in the day, Decca’s name had been put forward as a candidate for many rock
fans’ idea of the ultimate drumming gig: sitting behind the stool with AC/DC. Decca
needed to speak to his manager Chris Bryan-Smith about it, because massive and
lucrative though joining AC/DC would have been for any drummer, Decca had committed
to the recording of a whole series of jingles in London, and was always reluctant to let
such clients down. There was also the age-old, fundamental conflict in Decca’s head:
however gifted, professional and fluent a live drummer he is, his heart lies in recording,
and while he’s always found it flattering to be linked with tours and one-off performances
in the company of top-notch musical luminaries, the more stubborn gremlin within him
tells him that he’s much happier proving his worth in the studio. Sure, it can be glamorous
travelling around the world with a band – and with AC/DC, the chances are that the
hotels on the roster would be a bit plusher than those on offer for The Angelic Upstarts –
but a musician on a lengthy tour still has to haul his arse across the globe, away from his
family and friends. The negatives are heightened when, as is the case with Decca, the
musician suffers darker periods of loneliness and self-doubt, and is acutely aware that
when the tour is over, the spotlights have been switched off and the adulatory applause
has died down, there are four grim walls waiting for him back home. As it turned out, fate
played a hand:
‘It took a bit of discussion to work out a slot for the audition. Oddly enough, AC/DC
were apparently interested in me not just for me drumming, but they said I was exactly
the right height for the band, as they’re all short-arses like me. Anyway, the day before it
was due to happen, I was busy recording a jingle and one of me drumsticks split and I
got a spelk [splinter] right in me eye. So we had to cancel the audition, and they gave
the job to someone else. That was the story we told AC/DC’s management, anyway.’
There was a glint in Decca’s eye as he spoke the last sentence, and I was eager to hear
more, so I rang Max Splodge.
‘Yeah, I remember that well,’ said Max. ‘I was really excited for him, coz that was a
huge opportunity. So anyway, in the way of these things, we went to the pub the night
before, after he’d finished the session work he’d been doing. We got talking to these posh
girls – I suppose you’d call them yuppie types – and they ended up taking us off to this
house party somewhere in a massive house in the middle of nowhere. It was one of those
surreal moments where you glance at the person next to you in the car, and realise it’s
the racing driver James Hunt. Weird. Then the next thing I knew it was nine o’clock in the
morning and we’re still going strong. So Decca suddenly says he has to be somewhere.
I’d completely forgotten about his big audition. Then this girl walks past and winks at
him, and that was that. In a moment of weakness, Decca decided getting it on with this
lass was a more immediate concern than his potential career with AC/DC. You’ve gotta
love him.’
So the sore eye was a handy excuse, then?
‘Yeah,’ confirmed Max. ‘I think a sore dick would have been more likely that morning.’
Once he’d sobered up, was Decca regretful about a missed opportunity? He shrugged
his shoulders, grinned, and said there were always compensations to missed chances like
that one.
‘Actually, me mam was relieved I didn’t join AC/DC. She had this kinda premonition that
it would have spelt the start of a slippery slope downhill into drug excess and all that. Fair
point, I suppose. Different story with me dad, though – you could tell that me drumming
with a band that big would have been the peak of his dreams.’
Achingly for Decca’s dad, word filtered back that AC/DC’s management and the band
themselves had spent a long time poring over videos of Decca’s live performances –
noting his stagecraft and confidence – and had listened long and hard to his prowess on
record. The result was that they were as good as convinced, in the lead-up to the
audition, that he was the man for the job. All that was required was for him to turn up on
the appointed day, run through a few songs with anything resembling fluency, and tick
the box in the band’s minds that they were likely to gel in the social sense. Then they
would nod their approval and get him to sign on the dotted line.
Years later, the rumour went round the local pubs that another rock god, Neil Young,
was looking for a drummer to tour with him, and Decca’s name had been recommended.
By coincidence Decca bumped into Miles Knox, an old contact who had acted as agent to
steer some of the teenage Decca’s first professional musical adventures back in the early
1970s. There was talk of £54,000 for two months’ work on tour, so it seemed sensible to
have an agent to oversee the finer points of financial negotiation. Mysteriously the deal
fell through and, whilst nothing was ever made clear in subsequent feedback, Decca can
only assume that Miles pushed the negotiations too far and asked for too much money. If
that were the case, it is a great pity, as Decca would have happily done the tour for far
less than the sum mentioned.
‘Aye, it’s a shame. Bands always need drummers, and now and then you hear that
they’d been thinking of asking me, but were too shy coz they thought me CV was out of
their league or I’d be some kinda standoffish pop star or whatever. But usually they’re
afraid to ask coz they just assume I’d be wanting too much money, which is never the
case. Obviously I need to cover me expenses and make it worth me while financially, but
it’s never been about money. I’d love to have been asked more to work with bands, to
tell you the truth.’
*
One band with which Decca did end up playing and recording during this period was
Rebel Run. Yet again, a recommendation had come in via EMI, and the drummer found
himself heading up to his native North East to join them. The band included the brother
of Dave Black, famous for founding the late-70s band Goldie, and had a lot of money and
major managerial expertise behind it. Decca recalls that the songs were great, but the
management lacked the personal touch he would have preferred: ‘there was a bit of
attitude going on’.
They did some well received live shows, one of which was punctuated by the bass
player singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to his girlfriend, who had turned seventeen that day and
was in the audience, right at the front. The incident, seemingly innocuous and
inconsequential at the time, was to prove a trigger for another aspect of our story,
destined to take place many years later.
Within a few weeks, the group were lined up to compete in a kind of battle-of-thebands event, organised by Metro Radio in the North East, with Brian Johnson of AC/DC
and The Toy Dolls’ Olga as the judges. The competition was huge, with sponsorship
dripping all over the place. The prize on offer was a recording package at Windmill
Studios, working with notable producer Gus Dudgeon, who had risen to fame for his work
with Elton John and David Bowie, among others. Needless to say, Rebel Run walked away
with it, and duly headed for the studio, but Decca felt that the vibe among the people he
was working with wasn’t right, and jumped ship after the recordings, heading back to
London and the proven musical embrace of Malcolm Hill.
Little did he know it at the time, but as the 1990s approached, Decca’s riotous years in
the capital city were nearing their end.
.
CHAPTER 8
As the 1990s dawned, Decca found himself going full circle and returning to his roots as
an entertainer in a resident club band. The work was at the Neon club in Jarrow, and far
from feeling like a comedown after his years at the top of the music industry, Decca was
chuffed to be able to play the drums on his own terms, mix with the people he loved and
trusted and hold down a steady wage.
The wage was particularly important at this stage, as Decca and his partner Sharon
McCoy discovered, at Christmas 1991, that they were expecting a baby. Connor – Decca’s
fourth child and long-awaited first son – was born in August 1992, to general delight
across the family. The choice of Connor’s name was a nod to Decca’s beloved granddad
Jonas O’Connor on his mam’s side of the family.
The heady lifestyle he had enjoyed in London now seemed like a million miles away,
but in truth much of the excess was still present in his life. His drinking had not abated,
and in fact the ready-made social life of the Neon, the local pubs and his friends – many
of whom he’d known since his schooldays or his years in the shipyards – made it very
easy to slide into that dangerous second or third pint, which would then trigger a session.
Equally, he had not shaken off the cocaine habit which had been the source of both
thrilling highs and gloomy lows during the years he had spent as part of the London
musical and social premier league. This took some funding, and there were times when
Decca would go without food for days on end to be able to afford – and, as he puts it,
‘give the necessary attention to’ – a few snorts of the old Colombian marching powder.
Any image he wanted to convey as the sensible family man about town, was dented
somewhat when he borrowed a friend’s car one evening and ended up going for a few
pints. The inevitable challenge by the police happened, unfortunately for Decca, later
rather than earlier in the evening.
‘I was pissed out of me head. The coppers walked around the car, so I got out and
walked around as well, trying to look thoughtful and sober. I walked around five times in
the end. I think they figured by that stage I’d had a few.’
The resultant two-year ban, sizeable fine and 200-hour community service order meant
that he would now be relying on public transport to get around. Ironically, this only
served to increase his drinking, as there was no longer any need to be guarded about the
quantity he was consuming if there was no car to be driven later in the evening.
*
One of the few times Decca has been back on the road since that court case – which was
followed by a self-imposed refusal to bother getting back into owning and driving a car –
was in relation to a veritable local phenomenon. The people of South Tyneside are
jocularly proud of a series of home-grown variety acts, whose performances across the
pubs and working men’s clubs of Jarrow and the surrounding area always register full
houses. Known affectionately as ‘The Jarrow Roadshow’ or, by less complimentary
punters, ‘The Freak Show’, these are performers who may not be at the top of their game
in any conventional sense – certainly not in any sense recognised by the likes of Simon
Cowell (not that we need to take his views on what constitutes ‘talent’ as gospel) – but
their innocent belief in the power and quality of their acts has endeared them to
generations of local people. Over the years, some have had diagnosed mental illnesses,
and debate has raged as to the appropriateness of their being on stage, egged on by
packed houses. Defenders of the show talk of laughing ‘with’, rather than ‘at’, the acts,
and point to their willingness to get up, do their thing and be paid for it, helping to keep
the local economy ticking along during hard times. Performers have included Simonside
Le Bon (whose first name relates to a neighbourhood close by), Malt Loaf, Junior Elvis,
Jarramiroquai, Jon Bon Tempi (a bald bloke whose tinklings on the ivories of his miniorgan, using the tried and trusted ‘one finger technique’, set the audience’s knees atrembling); and the late Hebburn Cliff (a ‘tribute’ act to the far less entertaining artist
formerly known as Harry Webb) and Gino with his maracas. Perhaps most importantly of
all, stood the spectacle known as Jarra Elvis. Footage is scarce, but those who have seen
Jarra Elvis on stage will be hard pushed to forget their evening. For anyone wishing to
combine street punk and Memphis rock ’n’ roll via South Tyneside, there’s a cameo
appearance of Jarra Elvis towards the end of Crashed Out’s In The Office live DVD.
One day, Decca and a couple of mates acted as roadies to take Jarra Elvis to a gig in
Crook, County Durham. Decca had had a certain amount of involvement with the
Roadshow, bringing the acts on for a few charity shows, fixing up a keyboard player to
work with them, supplying a PA system and so on. Decca and Elvis had a genuine liking
and mutual respect for each other, and the car journey they shared was full of laughing
and joking. (If ever there was a sentence I never thought I’d type, that must be it.) What
opened Decca’s eyes to the extent of Elvis’s pull was when they reached the venue and
saw that it was packed to the rafters. Chatting with the landlord, Decca learned that they
would have loved to book Elvis every week, but that it just wasn’t possible. The crooner
commanded a handsome fee for the show, was provided with as many tabs as he could
smoke and a brand-new shirt for his act, and had his stage clothes washed and ironed for
him before he left.
After a lively evening, the Jarra posse were making their way back, when they had to
stop for petrol. Decca filled the tank and popped into the kiosk to pay. When he emerged,
he took one look at the spectacle in front of him and froze: a police car had pulled up
alongside them on the forecourt, and the officers were peering through the window in
disbelief at a middle-aged Elvis waving benignly at them. This in itself wasn’t a source of
worry, but Decca was still serving his driving ban. Luckily, with this being a different part
of the North East, Decca wasn’t known to the officers and, as they had no reason to
question him about anything, they smiled and allowed the party to make its way home.
As a parting shot, Decca couldn’t resist making reference to the importance of ‘getting a
legend safely home to Jarra.’ The coppers nodded sagely and waved him on.
A follow-up story recounts a tender moment when Elvis and Junior were round at
Decca’s place and happened to mention that they were both in need of a haircut. Such a
scenario presents no difficulty to a famed jack of all trades such as Decca Wade, and he
immediately leapt into action. Sister Kerry takes up the story of her brother’s straightfaced improvisation:
‘He cut their hair there and then with an old pair of wallpaper scissors. He was keen to
make a professional job of it – what with the importance of on-stage image – so he went
out the back and sharpened the blunt scissors on the back step.’
*
On the occasions when he was back down in London during this period, Decca spent a lot
of time with stunt motorcyclist Eddie Kidd. The pair had been introduced years earlier
through Bob Marshall, John Miles’s bass player, when John had signed to EMI, and they
had hit it off immediately.
‘I learned a lot from Eddie, and we had a lot of laughs. Actually, it was him that
encouraged me to start getting me hair streaked. That was what you did back then, I
suppose.’
Eddie had been invited to Decca’s wedding in the mid-80s, but had been tied up with
some stunt performances and hadn’t been able to make it. He did, however, spend some
time with the Wades up in the North East.
‘I remember we all met up with him at a hotel down in Redcar,’ recalls Derek. ‘He was
a lovely bloke, a real gentleman. Aye, we had a great time with Eddie, and he and Decca
were great pals.’
Kipping over at Eddie’s place was a delight for Decca. The easy humour and taste for
champagne the two shared made for highly amusing evenings, and Decca always looked
forward to Eddie’s speciality at breakfast time: the best scrambled eggs he’d ever tasted.
At one stage, Eddie was making an album – as well as his stunt- riding and modelling
he was, let’s not forget, also a singer with several singles to his credit – and Decca was
asked to help out on drums. Disappointingly, the pair’s schedules and geographical
disparity meant that, in the end, other drummers filled in instead. (Decca is unsure about
this, but there’s a possibility that Cozy Powell might have stood in.)
He remembers his time with Eddie – in the years leading up to the latter’s horrific and
life-changing accident – as being ‘memorable and great fun’, and speaks warmly of
Eddie’s generosity of spirit:
‘At one point he asked me if I fancied looking after his stunt-bikes for him on a tour of
South Africa. It was a lovely thought, but it just wasn’t possible with other commitments.
Nothing was too much trouble for Eddie. One time he was working on a James Bond film,
and he got me onto the set, introduced me to loads of people like the stunt-coordinator.
It was a great day, right up there with working with Hot Gossip.’
*
In the summer of 1990, a supremely talented but hard-drinking, fun- loving party animal
from the North East of England found himself in a buoyant position in the UK Singles
Chart, to the delight of his local community. This time, however, it wasn’t Decca.
Footballer Paul Gascoigne had stolen the nation’s collective heart with his exploits and
antics on England’s way to the World Cup semi- final in Italy. Now he was riding a wave
of astonishing popularity, which had led to a memorable collaboration with folk-pop band
Lindisfarne on their celebrated song ‘The Fog on the Tyne’.
About three years prior to this, Gazza had declared himself to be an Angelic Upstarts
fan, which had made various pairs of ears prick up within the band’s merrymaking ranks.
Unsurprisingly, after the single was recorded and Gazza’s stock was sky-high, it was
Decca who made the advances to ask Gazza if he fancied a ‘quiet pint’. Recognising a
kindred spirit, Gazza was more than happy to accept the offer. The problem, however,
was how and where, at a time when Gazzamania was at its peak.
Thus began a drinking partnership of epic proportions, which convened as secretly as
circumstances would allow, to shield Gazza from the full force of media attention.
Amusingly, Derek and Joan Wade’s house became a kind of haven for Gazza in times of
need, and a tender bond of friendship was forged between the wayward football star and
the Wade family. Derek recalls one particular incident which, with the passage of time, he
came to view as hilarious:
‘The phone rang at 3.00 one morning. I picked it up and it was Gazza on the other end.
“Alreet, Derek?” he asked. “Aye,” I said. “Good,” says Gazza. “I was just ringing up to see
if you were awake”.’ Joan and Derek still look back fondly on the times they spent with
Gazza, remembering his warmth, and how his humour had them in stitches, but also the
tenderness he would show. When his first book came out, he was at a signing event in
Waterstone’s in Newcastle when the Wades walked in. Gazza sensed the arrival of
friendly faces, looked up from his table and abandoned his signing, making a beeline to
greet his friends.
‘He did us a lovely inscription in the book,’ says Joan. ‘In fact, he was full of really nice
touches. One day he sent a car to pick us up, and we were whisked off to The Duke in
Seaham for a lovely meal. I used to worry about him because he was maybe even too
generous to people, often people he’d never met. I used to try and warn him not to be
too soft, but he would just smile and laugh it off. He would dish out tenners to the kids at
the door whenever we were out somewhere, and one time I remember he heard that a
young lass was ill and wanted to go to Disneyland before she died. Well Gazza just gave
her £2,000 there and then. He’s a lovely fella, but you could always see that mixture of
the confident lad in public and the little-boy-lost in private, like our Decca. The thing you
noticed about Paul was that he was never a womaniser – not like the way the media
would try to make out. I often think of him and pray he gets better.’
Gazza’s TV appearances over the last couple of years have worried some people, who
applauded his post-rehab recovery in the UK but harboured concerns that he was still not
fully right. This view was consolidated early in 2013, when Gazza flew to America to
undergo another detox and a prolonged period of rehab treatment. Decca wonders
whether Gazza has been a little too open, baring his soul slightly more than has been
good for him. He recalls a conversation during the early days of their friendship, when
Gazza’s vulnerability came to the fore, albeit with humorous overtones:
‘We were having a pint one day, and he went all thoughtful. He says: “It’s all right for
you, Decca, you can go home with anyone you want. I have to go home with a kebab.” It
was funny, but I kind of worried about getting that level of fame. I still worry about him,
to be honest. But his life is elsewhere now, and there’s always good people he can call on
when he needs them. But I fully understand the sorts of demons he’s battling. It’s a dark
place to be, and I just hope he can turn the corner.’
The pair’s drinking exploits are an unending catalogue in themselves, but a couple of
stories stand out. In the late 1990s, Gazza spent two years playing for Middlesbrough,
and was a habitué of a bar in Seaham, on the County Durham coast. A bit hit with all the
regulars, Gazza would spend hours playing pool, at which he excelled. He was often
challenged to frames for financial stakes, and try as they might, none of the locals could
beat him. One Sunday morning, when Decca and his pint were in attendance, a bloke
with long, lank hair and a moustache challenged Gazza, who agreed to the frame, on one
condition:
‘If I win, I’m cutting your hair.’
The stooge accepted, and was duly thrashed. With relish in his voice, Gazza asked the
pub management for a pair of scissors. These were produced, but proved ineffective in
hacking through the hapless man’s mane. Gazza, however, had a plan B, and asked his
mate Jimmy Five Bellies to find a pair of shears and an extension lead. Jimmy sent
another mate off to find these, and Gazza set about shaving the poor guy’s head. Spurred
on by the hilarious caper, and several drinks to the good herself, a female local asked if
Gazza could cut her hair, too. Gazza obliged, and the freshly bald woman headed outside,
took off her sweatshirt and revealed her braless body to whoever happened to be
passing. ‘Whoever happened to be passing’ was defined, at that moment, as several
dozen bemused people in their Sunday best walking sedately along the road to Mass at
the local church. Gazza was horrified, and stuffed a £20 note into the woman’s hand,
saying ‘here, get yerself a bra’.
*
Whilst Jimmy Five Bellies is famed for being Gazza’s sidekick and drinking partner, what is
less known is his talent at singing. Even without the Gazza link, Decca knew of him
through some mutual friends, and had watched him doing a more than reasonable Neil
Diamond impersonation in a karaoke bar. He and Jimmy got chatting, and as more beer
was consumed, it started to make more and more sense that Jimmy’s voice would be
perfect for a version of the Men Without Hats hit ‘The Safety Dance’. Accordingly, they
booked a studio up by Lambton Lion Park, and Decca transported his drums there. The
recording session went very well and the completed track was ‘a belter’, but it was never
released. What also stands out in Decca’s memory was the fact that he, Jimmy and the
assembled musicians actually set up a series of formal rehearsals in advance of the
recording:
‘Aye, the full pre-production. Actually, we mostly went to the pub. In fact that’s all we
did. I remember one day I was waiting for them in the bar, and Jimmy comes in pushing
a Swedish guy with blond hair in a wheelchair. The Swedish guy then wheeled himself up
behind the bar and pulled his own pint. You can probably guess who it was.’
*
Years later, there was a touching moment reported in the Jarrow and Hebburn Gazette,
when Decca had been involved in a charity event to raise funds for a local girl who
needed a new wheelchair. He and his current band (an earlier incarnation of The Moscow
Mules) were playing, and Gazza had been lined up to come and make a speech to
encourage donations.
Gazza approached the girl in the car-park:
‘Whey hinny, that machine’ll never pass its MOT, but maybe I’ll be able to magic you a
better one. Would you like that?’
‘Whey aye, man,’ replied the girl. ‘Anything is better than getting pushed around in this
old jalopy, Gazza.’
Without missing a beat, Gazza grabbed Decca’s mobile phone, made a call and issued
some clear instructions. Within a couple of hours, a gleaming new electric wheelchair had
arrived, with Gazza covering the cost and the girl beaming. The footballing star then
proceeded to win a capful of pound coins on the fruit machine in the bar, casually handing
it over to an old couple and inviting them to
‘have a drink on me’.
The incident was typical of Gazza’s understated kindness (he also made sure that
young Connor Wade was well kitted out with signed footballs and Middlesbrough and
England shirts), but also of the hundreds of such charity events to which Decca has
contributed – sometimes as organiser-in-chief – over the years. This is unsurprising, as
it’s merely a continuation of the decades of similar work done by Derek, for whom the
smile on the beneficiary’s face is all the reward and thanks he’s ever required.
In charity events such as this one, a typical component would be Decca’s famed
speciality drum solo, designed to thrill and amuse the audience. It follows a more or less
fixed pattern: beginning with a maverick beat in the style of Keith Moon, Decca proceeds
to keep this rhythm going while climbing round his kit, never losing the momentum, and
ending up standing on the rack facing the opposite way from what you’d expect. The
most astonishing part of it is that Decca doesn’t actually require a drum kit to perform
this beat. Lee Wright of Crashed Out remembers one illustrative night:
‘He was standing on the bar tapping his sticks against all the bottles and pint glasses,
hitting everything in sight and making crazy noises. He then moved along the bar, hitting
all the optics as he developed the beat, and he was so into what he was doing that he
lost his footing at the end of the bar, landed on a table and nearly broke his neck. It
didn’t stop him, though: he jumped straight back up and carried on. It was a proper Del
Boy moment, that one.’
*
Towards the end of the 1990s, after the break-up of his relationship with Connor’s mother
Sharon, Decca started going out with a club singer who had worked at his old resident
haunt the Neon in Jarrow. Her mother had just moved out to Kinsale in County Cork,
Ireland, and the couple were invited over for a bit of a holiday. Their accommodation was
an isolated bungalow in which, as Decca put it, ‘I could make a right fuckin’ racket’.
One day, they were out walking and heard the strains of ‘Parisienne Walkways’ coming
from a pub. They walked in and there was a rock band doing a decent line in cover
versions, but with a high-quality PA, stage-lights and so on. Decca was impressed, and
got talking to one of the band – ‘he was Rory Gallagher’s nephew, would you fuckin’
believe it?’ – who informed him that, as coincidence would have it, they were looking for
a new drummer. He started rehearsing with them and thoroughly enjoyed himself,
playing some gigs and sharing the craic in what felt very much like his spiritual home.
The week’s holiday turned into a six-month stay, surrounded by music and drinking.
‘Yeah, at one stage we were living in the same lane as Noel Redding, so that was a bit
of an inspiration – close to another legend, but not in the sort of location you’d imagine.
There was other funny stuff in that period. I worked on a chip van for a bit – brilliant, a
great laugh. I was happy as Larry. One time I had a few drinks and some lines of coke
with Keith Floyd, as he’d bought a place in Kinsale. We had a really good little bond, even
though we were chalk and cheese, as you can imagine. It was funny talking to him and
listening to his posh voice and all that, but he levelled with me and he was up for the
crack. His stories were hilarious, and he was keen to hear more about my career. He was
a truly nice fella, though I have to say we never compared recipes.’
Happy days, and yet another incongruous celebrity to have made merry in Decca’s
engaging company. The good times in Ireland, however, ran their course, and Decca
headed back to the North East of England just in time to learn of the tragic death of his
drumming hero and friend, Cozy Powell.
*
After his return from Cork, Decca was renting a bungalow in the village of Widdrington, in
Northumberland. The rental arrangements were a complicated affair, with multiple co-
tenants, some of whom had theoretically left and others were less formally still in
attendance. It was a bit like the Upstarts’ Young Ones-style residency in Wood Green,
London, only in a far more picturesque setting.
One fine day, under obscure circumstances that had nothing to do with Decca, a
telescope belonging to the property went missing. The police were called, and the matter
dragged on without any sign of closure. At one stage, Decca was so fed up with being
wrongly associated with the theft that he travelled to Blyth police station of his own
volition and asked to speak to the most senior officer available in an effort to wrap the
whole business up once and for all. Nobody senior was available for a spontaneous
interview with an angry punk, so a junior officer was given a pencil and a writing-pad and
invited to get on with it.
‘So it’s about the theft of a telescope?’ asked the officer, confirming the issue.
‘Aye.’
‘And what is it that you want to tell the police today?’
‘Just that my lawyer is looking into it.’
Decca waited for a reaction – to be fair, there had been no warm-up act to precede
him – but none came. The acne-ridden youth with the clip-on tie stuck his tongue out in
deep concentration as he faithfully copied Decca’s micro-statement onto his pad, and
looked up.
‘Is that everything?’
‘Yes. So will you be looking into it as well?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Decca shook his head and left the premises in an orderly fashion. The matter was to
resurface in a more sinister way a few years later, when Decca received a tip-off from a
friend. His name and photo had appeared on a police ‘Wanted’ website along with nine
‘proper criminals’ who were being sought for a variety of offences. The Crimestoppers
phone number was supplied, so anyone aware of Decca’s whereabouts could ring the
police and report him. Furthermore, a piece had appeared in the local press, drawing the
public’s attention to the website, and selecting four of the ten faces to reproduce in the
article; unluckily for Decca, his was one of the four.
Decca was incandescent:
‘At first I thought the friend was winding me up,’ he told the Shields Gazette, ‘but then
he said it was for real. I phoned the police station as soon as I found out. I originally
spoke to them a few years ago about this matter. I expected a call from them, but I have
heard nothing. They seemed happy with what I had told the officer I spoke to, but I have
never heard anything more. I can’t believe that this is happening.’
Aside from the embarrassment of his name and image being publicised in such galling
circumstances, there was a very practical consequence:
‘Yeah, I was lined up to do some touring work in the USA for six weeks,’ he told me,
‘on a project fixed up by Tony Van Frater. But because of that business with the “wanted”
status, we realised there was no way I’d be able to get a work permit for the States, so
they had to give the job to someone else. I was absolutely gutted, as it would have been
good money, and seizing on drumming opportunities like that one is what I do for a
living. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just knock on me door. They had always had
me name and address, since I’d talked to them about it in the first place. Putting me face
on a “wanted” website was just plain daft and way over the top.’
In his interview with the Shields Gazette, he talked further about his reactions and the
effect on himself and his family:
‘I’m considering suing the police. It is defamation of character and I think it is
disgusting. I am going to talk to my lawyer about this. It is having a huge effect on me
and my family. My mother is just recovering from a stroke. She just doesn’t need this
stress.’
Happily, after realising the error, the police took down Decca’s image from the rogues’
gallery, and nothing further came of the issue. That’s not to say, though, that the damage
had not already been done in the mind of anyone viewing the website or reading the
paper but, on balance, it’s fair to conclude that the people of Jarrow and South Shields
know the difference between a scallywag who is telling the truth and a hardened criminal
on the run.
*
As is well documented, the excesses of Gazzamania led to a protracted struggle on the
part of the footballer to deal with his overnight fame, and to reconcile his top-drawer
performance on the pitch with the physical and psychological demands of his riotous
social lifestyle.
At a different level, but just as tellingly, Decca was suffering his own periods of
melancholy. The 1980s had been good to him musically, socially and financially, but now
in his early 40s he was increasingly finding himself in an emotional dark place. Every day
was proving to be the same as the previous one – sleep, drink, drugs, empty laughter and
meaningless socialising – and the reality was that often Decca didn’t even know what
day, or what year, it was. Every demon that had ever tormented him was lined up on his
shoulder, taunting him, mocking his inability to sort himself and his life out.
Viewed with hindsight, this was nothing to do with the loss of the bustling, capital-city
lifestyle he had enjoyed in London, nor was it to do with the absence of celebrity
‘characters’ with whom to share his days – his mates back in the North East were every
bit as entertaining and loyal as his musical cronies in Soho. He had simply reached a
point at which years of abuse were starting to take their toll on his middle-aging body,
and the lack of a disciplined routine – combined with the deadly desire to please and
inability to say no – meant that he was drifting, and drifting dangerously. A new focus
was urgently needed, otherwise the future looked as if it could be looming black.
In a moment of despair, he sat down in his mam’s kitchen and poured his heart out:
‘I’m fed up, mam; I’m sick and tired of music, and the music business. I just wanna get
out of it.’
Joan was plain-spoken in her response:
‘You should count your blessings, son. There’s plenty of young lads who would love to
be doing what you’re doing.’
Decca realised his mam was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to face up to his
predicament. His first – and, as far as he knew, last – wave of fame and fortune was past
its peak, and his life had become a maelstrom of occasional musical jobs, encased in
wall-to-wall drink- and drug-fuelled partying. He was tired, depressed and in need of help
but, eager to please as ever, he simply carried on regardless, putting away a prodigious
amount of booze and lacing it with whatever drugs he could get his hands on. The
trappings and unyielding excesses of his rock ’n’ roll lifestyle were proving impossible to
shake off, and more than a few people around him were starting to feel concerned. But
was there a solution? Any alcoholic will tell you that, at times of depression, a drink is a
quick fix, and a desirable one. Nor is it easy for your family and friends to get through to
you: they don’t want to risk offending or angering you, or sending you into an even worse
downward spiral.
Whilst fully aware that he needed to change, Decca found he didn’t have the strength
to do anything about his plight. It seemed the damage had already been done: partly by
Decca’s low levels of self- control, but also by his relentless exposure to what the music
industry had laid on for him. As he quipped wryly in an interview with Radio
Northumberland’s New Wave with Newman show: ‘You don’t finish with the music
business; it finishes with you.’
.
CHAPTER 9
A new millennium, a new challenge.
Street-punk band Crashed Out had been going since 1995, quickly gaining enough of a
North East fanbase and musical development to justify the issue of two self-released
albums in the late 1990s. But by 2000 their existing singer and drummer wanted out, and
the search began to find replacements.
Stage one turned out to be easy. Guitarist Lee Wright’s elder brother Chris was up for
it, and quickly slotted in as vocalist, which left the head-scratcher of what to do for a
drummer to sit at the back, beat out a rock-solid rhythm and contribute to the dynamism
of the after- show piss-ups. It dawned on the lads that there was a legendary punk
drummer sitting on his arse locally twiddling his thumbs, so Chris was dispatched to suss
out Decca’s possible level of interest.
‘Chris just barged over,’ says Decca, ‘and asked me if I’d fancy drumming for the band.
Well, what could I say? I was just back from Ireland and up for something new to do. It
was a no-brainer really, so I went over to their Viking Tattoo shop to discuss it.’
Decca’s try-out began on familiar turf, with a run-through of the old Upstarts song
‘Leave Me Alone’. Lee, Chris and bass-player Geordie Brown could see straight away that
the inclusion of Decca – and, crucially, Decca’s very specific drumming style – was going
to be a serious bonus to them. Given his partying reputation, far-reaching contacts and
godlike name in the punk world, it would also do their publicity no harm, but his
drumming was the key. In the band’s own words, with the addition of Decca, they
‘developed a fresh sound that combined the urgency of punk rock with the musicianship
and full-on force of rock’. Lee recalls the initial stages of their collaboration as being
surreal:
‘I remember being nervous playing in front of Decca for the first few practices. As a kid
I would buy Angelic Upstarts records and try to copy what they were playing in my
bedroom when learning the guitar. Now here I was playing alongside one of them years
later. If you’d told me that when I was 14, I would never have believed it.’
Equally, Decca felt at home with the Crashed Out lads:
‘They’re great musicians and great lads. I’ve always thought that Chris Wright is one of
the best front men around. He’s got this real stage presence – actually, a real presence
full-stop – that suits the band’s style of music.’
Not to be outdone, Chris has always been a fan not just of the Upstarts, but also of
Decca as a performer. He made an interesting parallel once in a conversation with Decca,
suggesting that The Who and The Angelic Upstarts were the two bands in rock history
where the singer and the drummer had enjoyed equal billing in the public’s perception:
‘Drummers don’t usually get that much attention, but you’re right up there with Keith
Moon in getting people talking.’
The Keith Moon comparison is more than apt, and was to be vividly illustrated in one
of Decca’s early performances with Crashed Out, as Chris explains:
‘We played in Grimsby, and at the end of the gig we had a lock-in at the pub. Decca
went missing for a bit, so I asked one of the lads where he was, and he said he was
looking at the landlord’s collection of mini-motorbikes in the back yard. Just as he said
that, we heard the sound of a two-stroke engine, as loud as hell. The door bursts open
and Decca comes flying in on this mini-motorbike race replica, bollock naked – he didn’t
have a stitch on. He was flying around the bar, around the pool table and everywhere
and people were diving for cover. The pub landlord couldn’t move for laughing.’
With the new line-up starting to gel, the band continued their hectic live performance
schedule, which by now was starting to take in the wider reaches of the UK, plus much of
continental Europe. Such a style of work was, of course, nothing new for Decca, but he
certainly felt a new injection of energy in his early years with Crashed Out. But there was
an additional factor on offer:
‘Aye, occasionally if Lee snapped a string on stage and it had to be fixed there and
then, they’d hand me the mic and I’d fill in for a couple of minutes with a bit of stand-up
comedy. As they say, it’s all in the blood!’
In 1993 Crashed Out released a very tasty video to promote their scaled-up version of
the Alan Price tune ‘The Jarrow Song’. Among other things, it allowed the public to see
with their own eyes that the Decca Wade they remembered from his Upstarts days was
still recognisably himself, providing speed, rhythm and shape to what is, for many fans,
one of the band’s stand-out songs. In particular, evidence in the drum-fill into the second
verse, and the percussive launch into the ‘Burn them down’ coda, suggested that this was
a punk drummer whose skills were undimmed by years away from the limelight.
In addition to his live duties with Crashed Out, Decca also played on two of the band’s
albums. Of these, 2005’s Pearls Before Swine represented a phenomenal step-up in
category, being released by the Captain Oi label. This ensured that the album would
receive a serious boost in publicity and, given the existing roster of label-mates, a useful
leg-up in terms of invitations to tour, pick up support slots and feature in the line-ups for
the major punk festivals.
The album featured Olga of The Toy Dolls doing guitar work on the track ‘Freakshow’,
and in fact Lee and Decca had already returned the favour with some backing vocals on
the Dolls’ 2004 release Our Last Album? Backing vocals, and another of the crazy things
Olga can get his buddies to do once he’s cajoled them into the studio, as Decca recalls:
‘Aye. He had us all playing kazoos. Have you heard the version of Europe’s “The Final
Countdown” on that album? It’s fuckin’ brilliant. We had a whale of a time doing the
vocals and the kazoos for that. Olga’s got a brilliant imagination for things like that, but
he’s a bit of a taskmaster. He just thinks I’m a fuckin’ nutter. We had a good laugh in the
vocal booth, sorting out all seriously who was going to play “lead kazoo” on a particular
take. Brilliant.’
Later in the decade, Decca went on to feature on The Toy Dolls’ ‘live’ album Treasured
Tracks, and there seems to be little likelihood of the pair’s tender music collaboration
ever ending.
As if life wasn’t busy enough with his Crashed Out work, Decca accepted the latest
(and, as it turned out, last) in a series of offers spanning nearly 30 years to re-join The
Angelic Upstarts. In a radical re-jigging of the workforce, Mensi had brought in Lee Wright
on guitar, and now added Decca to the fold. This, it was assumed, had the potential to be
problematic if they were ever to be supported by Crashed Out, conjuring up memories of
the period when Robert Smith had fronted The Cure and played guitar with Siouxsie and
the Banshees on the same bill. Sure enough, what should be fixed up, but precisely that
touring combination. Decca’s powers of stamina and drinking were tested to the full, but
never was the expression ‘sweating it off’ given a fuller display. This line-up also
produced one of Decca’s most memorable live-performance moments:
‘Yeah, The Angelic Upstarts played an outdoor gig, sponsored by Kerrang Radio, next
to a castle in Croatia. Crashed Out were supporting so I was doing both sets. It was a
beautiful setting, and the stage was all brilliantly lit for the night-time performance. It
looked incredible. Anyway, I got meself behind the drums, and we were opening with
“Liddle Towers”. I’ll never forget it. Mensi had a radio mic on, and starting offstage he
gradually came on, whispering “Who killed Liddle?” It built up dramatically. Brilliant. I tell
you, me spine was tingling. It was one of the most amazing moments – probably the best
live moment of me life.’
Earlier the same day, when Crashed Out were due to sound check, Decca took the
opportunity to grab the microphone and do some stand-up comedy to fill in a few minutes
of delay. Lee Wright takes up the story:
‘Practically the whole town had turned out to watch us sound check. It was a boiling
hot afternoon and Decca decided, as he does, to entertain the locals with his repertoire. I
walked up to the stage, picked up my guitar, turned round to plug it in only to realise
Decca was standing bollock naked. He had decided it was too hot to play with his clothes
on so he stripped off and played the drums in the flesh. We were pissing ourselves
laughing, but carried on through the sound check.’
There is a theory – confirmed by a number of people I interviewed for the book – that
if you want to egg Decca on to greater mischief, all you have to do is laugh at his first
joke, or the first hint of silliness. You can then be assured – in the manner of pouring oil
onto a fire – that Decca will take heart, redoubling his eagerness to please, and his
behaviour will swiftly snowball along whatever path of tomfoolery he has chosen to
follow. Back to our correspondent Lee in Croatia:
‘Well, with the applause and laughter of the crowd, Decca was unstoppable. A couple
of local music journalists thought it was great, and started taking photos of Decca and
laughing. The next thing we knew, Decca was down off the stage, leaning against a tree
like some kinda gay pin-up model, posing in all sorts of positions for the journalists. It
was hilarious. I often wonder where those photos ended up.’
The Croatia show also produced a more macabre moment when Decca glanced to the
side of the stage during his performance and was convinced he had caught a glimpse of
his late cousin Ken in the form of a lad standing on the edge of the stage, who promptly
disappeared. Ken had been found dead in South Africa in unclear circumstances, and his
loss was still the cause of grief and torment in the family. Between songs, Decca
summoned a security guard over, and was assured that there had been nobody there. All
Decca could conclude was that there had been a bizarre Doppelgänger visible for a splitsecond, there presumably to convey some sort of message.
For anyone thinking that the nakedness thing was a one-off – OK, a two-off, as there
had been the Montreal incident, too – Chris Wright is happy to disabuse them of this
notion:
‘Yeah, we were playing in Spain once and Decca came out of the dressing-room totally
naked. He played the full set in the buff. Some of the crowd were a bit shocked, but by
the end everyone was either laughing or applauding. Well, at the end of the last encore,
Decca stood up, took a bow and stepped back, but as he did so he disappeared.
Unbeknown to him the five-foot stage had no back wall – it was set in the middle of the
hall with only a back curtain behind the drum kit. So as he stepped back he went right off
the end of the stage. Everyone thought it was a part of the act. I think he sprained his
ankle and had a few bruised ribs, but he was fine after a few more beers.’
*
Jetting all over the world has brought out an unexpected aspect to Decca’s character: the
inexplicable ability to turn up at the bar of international airports and find musical friends
with whom to share a quick pint, or something slower. Several musicians I interviewed
spoke of their astonishment at seeing a diminutive drummer with bleached spiky hair and
red eyes rock up to the bar, pull up a stool and ask what everyone was having. Stories I
heard involved airport bars in cities from Los Angeles to Dublin to Berlin, as well as a few
from the UK. Tony Van Frater laughed and nodded when I mentioned this phenomenon:
‘Aye, it’s unbelievable. It’s always fantastic to see him, as he’s such a lovely bloke, but
if you ever see him at an airport bar, you’ve got to be really disciplined in keeping one
eye on your flight time. Over the years I’ve kinda eased off; you just can’t take the drink
to the same extent you used to – unless you’re Decca. The guy can drink forever. I
remember one time I was flying back from the States with the Rejects, and had a
stopover of about an hour in one of the London airports, and who should rock up but
Decca, who was on his way back from somewhere else. We had about an hour before the
connecting flight up to Newcastle, which we reckoned was good for a quick pint,
maximum two. We only had about £25 between us anyway, so there was no danger of a
session. Next thing I knew it was the following morning and I was drooling into the
airport floor, clutching my guitar. Luckily I had my credit card, so I had to get us both a
new flight that morning. He’s such a nice bloke and a great storyteller, though, that the
time just passes by and you’re having a great time.’
*
As momentum gathered across Europe for Crashed Out, the next step was to make
inroads into America. An opportunity arose to tour the West Coast, which the lads
grabbed with both hands. The touring itself was a hard slog, but worthwhile as they
sought to make more of a name for themselves in an important new market. For part of
the tour they were based in Los Angeles, and were – not unnaturally – concerned about
possible gang violence, shootings, etc. Dave Teague from The Dickies reassured them
that the city was perfectly safe, and that he’d never seen anything gang-related in all the
time he’d lived in LA. Just as the lads were making their way back to their hotel on
Sunset Strip after a few drinks, there was a chase across the road, a shot rang out and a
man lay face down on the pavement. As Crashed Out were trying to get their heads
round what had just happened, a guy stepped out of the shadows and offered them some
theme park tickets. Chris Wright was astonished: ‘There’s a guy there just been shot, and
you’re trying to sell us tickets!’ The tout was sanguine in his reply: ‘Hey dude, this is LA –
people get shot all the time. Now do you want the damn tickets or not?’
In 2007, The Angelic Upstarts had committed to a series of shows, but Mensi fell ill
shortly beforehand. The options were to cancel the gigs, or to find a replacement. In a
neat continuation of what was becoming something of a theme, Crashed Out happily
loaned out Chris Wright to ‘be Mensi’ for the duration of the commitment. We’ve already
alluded to Chris’s power, presence and personality as a front man, but the challenge of
filling such a big and renowned pair of boots caused no difficulty for him, proving that he
also had the bollocks to step up when the occasion demanded. One such occasion is
glowingly recalled by Decca:
‘There was a festival in Rostock, northern Germany, and we had Chris in on vocals at
that time. We were all backstage preparing – well, preparing, I mean drinking, though I
never did drugs before a gig, only drinking. Anyway, word got back to us just how many
people were out there in the audience. It was 24 fuckin’ thousand. But there was no way
we were gonna let Chris know about that. We just had to leave him open to the two
possible options: either he’d shit himself or he’d absolutely storm it. And you know what?
He played a fuckin’ blinder. I love Chris Wright.’
Decca then made a point of telling Chris’s mam and dad how proud he was of their
son, and they glowed with their own pride. Chris, at this stage, was in his late thirties.
Bless.
*
Always a popular figure with his mates’ parents, Decca’s uncanny knack for appealing to
people across the human spectrum continued unabated. Tom Von Spencer remembers
sitting having a midday pint with Decca about this time, and Decca enquired after Tom’s
mam, who had not been well over the preceding few weeks. Tom replied that she was a
bit better, but still not fully right.
‘Let’s go and see her,’ said Decca.
‘What, now?’ replied Tom, aware that they were a full twenty miles from his mother’s
home.
‘Why not?’ said Decca, and off they went.
For the next four hours, Decca sat and chatted to Tom’s mam, making her laugh and
refusing all offers of beer, food and hot drinks. The following day he made her day again
by sending her a bunch of flowers.
‘And even now,’ Tom told me, ‘he rings her up at random times just to ask how she is,
chat to her and make her laugh. She always knows it’s him phoning, coz he always starts
in a Mexican accent. He’s a fuckin’ headcase, but that’s the thing: we could go on for
hours about the punk image and all the hardness that entailed, but beneath the top layer
you’ve got diamonds like Decca who just want to make people happy. He’s got a heart of
gold, though he’d probably not thank me for telling you that.’
From older fans to the very youngest, Tom also recalls a time after a show in Croatia,
when he, Mensi and Decca got pissed out of their heads and ended up aboard a posh
boat – ‘some kind of 100-foot tourist ship thing’. The captain was very pleased to see
them but less pleased to see dozens of young kids itching to get aboard and spend time
in the company of their musical heroes. He was all for pulling up the gangplank and
sailing away into the sunset, but Decca pleaded on behalf of the kids – who clearly didn’t
have two pennies of local currency to rub together – and sure enough, the captain
relented and ushered them all aboard. The kids were thrilled to bits, and an amusing
evening was had by all.
‘The last thing I remember about that night,’ concludes Tom, ‘was going to the front of
the ship and doing that Titanic thing, stretching out and pointing. But I was with a sixfoot-five lass – I think she was a lass, anyway – and I was so pissed that she had to take
the role of the bloke. Decca says it all made sense at the time.’
*
The period with Crashed Out was also a time when Decca briefly shared his life with a
girlfriend who, to put it mildly, was less than stable in her disposition. Various
interviewees attest to her ‘having a screw loose’ and being ‘fucking mad’, so it seemed
prudent not to name her. Or request an interview.
All correspondents agree that the problems stemmed from the girl’s possessiveness
and jealousy: she was fundamentally uncomfortable with Decca’s popularity and
flirtatious nature. This resulted in frequent verbal tear-ups and a series of break-ups,
most of which were undoubtedly hard to handle at the time but, viewed retrospectively,
were laced with elements of comedy gold.
One friend recalls Decca rushing to find him one day, white as a sheet, saying that the
girl had kicked off with him for spending too much time out drinking, and had burnt his
clothes, leaving him pretty much with just the jeans and T-shirt he was wearing.
Admittedly, he had been on a three-day bender at the time, and was walking along the
street on his way to the next bar, when the girlfriend drove past in her car.
‘She spotted him on the street there, and decided to mount the kerb and run him over
for staying out all that time. So Decca legged it and jumped over a school wall to make
his escape. So he’s walking across the school playing-field, breathing heavily, thinking
“phew, that was close”, then he hears an engine revving and looks around. She’s
managed somehow to get the car through the gate and onto the field, and she’s going
full throttle at him. So Decca had to run for his life half the length of the field, and just
managed to get over the other wall at the far end. He was that close to being crippled.’
At the next band practice with Crashed Out, there was further carnage. The girlfriend
had turned up at their rehearsal room above the Brit pub in South Shields, obtained the
bar staff’s permission to pop upstairs on an errand for Decca, and ‘slashed the fuck’ out of
all the skins on his drum kit.
The final straw came when Decca turned up one day at the Viking Tattoo Studio with a
suitcase under his arm. The girl had kicked him out, definitively this time, for sundry
misdemeanours, and Decca wondered if Chris would mind if he left the case at the
premises, as he wanted to go out on the piss to drown his sorrows. That was the last
anyone saw of him for a few days, as he eased himself into singleton life by embarking
on an epic drinking session around the pubs of Shields and Jarrow.
After a few days, Chris became suspicious of a strange smell which was starting to
permeate the otherwise sterile atmosphere of the studio. Eventually he concluded that
the source could only be Decca’s suitcase, which he opened to confirm his hunch. The
smell that met his nostrils is something that, mercifully, only Chris ever had to endure.
Many of us are fond of the aroma of freshly-seasoned prawn vindaloo, but I doubt any of
us would relish coming face to face with a three-day-old marinade of tropical goldfish in
curry sauce, served on a delicate bed of Decca’s dirty laundry, complete with a fiery side
order of unconcealed hatred.
Decca lived to tell the tale, and the band set to work on writing and rehearsing a
commemorative song called ‘Psycho Wife’. It was on the verge of inclusion on a
forthcoming album before the band members looked meaningfully at each other,
grimaced and concluded, unanimously, that they were all ‘deep down, a little bit scared’
to record it.
*
The West Coast tour of America sadly marked the end of Decca’s time with Crashed Out.
There was no bad blood, and no diminishing of friendship between Decca and the rest of
the lads – his decision to leave was based mainly on exhaustion. The US tour had not
been particularly well organised by the promoters, and had been a tiring (and not
financially rewarding) experience. They got back to the UK, and jumped straight into a
van to travel to Brighton to support Rancid, a gig for which the payment was beer and
petrol money. Another promoter got in touch to offer a second tour of the States, and
whilst Chris, Lee and Geordie were up for it, Decca broke the news that he had had
enough. It was perfectly understandable – Decca was, by this time, entering his fifties –
but was viewed by all parties as a shame, pure and simple.
*
After the split with Crashed Out and, later on, Decca’s definitive parting with The Angelic
Upstarts, there was still room for another – this time international – project before the
end of the noughties. In 2009, Decca and his then partner Carolyn decided to go to the
Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, to have a drink or two, hang out with punk buddies old
and young, and listen to the whole range of musical delights on offer. Needless to say,
Max Splodge was in attendance to catch up with Decca, and the pair can be seen on
YouTube having a laugh as they dish out the prizes at the end of Max’s famed bingo turn.
Later in the festival, Decca was tracked down by Dublin guitarist Dave Linehan, who was
setting up a band to be called Hooligan, and was interested in pitching for Decca to get
involved.
Just before Decca’s final stint with The Angelic Upstarts came to an end, the band did
a double-header with Spolodgenessabounds at Fibber Magee’s in Dublin, and Dave was
once again in attendance. His plan was to spend some more time with Decca, have a few
drinks and try to persuade him to come across and play drums on Hooligan’s first
recordings. In fact, Dave’s task was made immeasurably easier by an unexpectedly
surreal occurrence.
‘Yes, it happened during Max Splodge’s set,’ recalls Dave. ‘There’s a local character
called Aidan Walsh – a kind of Dublin version of Jarra Elvis – and he was at the show that
night, dressed in all his finery, including his golden cape and boots. He’s well known as an
eccentric and a wild man. Anyway, during the set, much to the dismay of some of the
more serious-minded audience members, Aidan took to the stage on his wooden rocking
horse to sing “Two Little Boys” with Max.’ Decca immediately saw the antics of a kindred
spirit in Aidan, and promised him that as soon as he got back to Jarrow, he would make
Aidan a wooden horse. This not only augured well for Dave persuading Decca to get
involved – the decision was sealed there and then – but actually served to strengthen the
madcap links between Dublin and Jarrow (aside from Dublin, Jarrow is the place that has
provided the most ‘likes’ on Aidan’s Facebook page).
So plans for Hooligan progressed apace. Decca was in pole position to head across the
Irish Sea and take his place behind the drums, and Dave was to be the singer and
guitarist, with Aidan Parsons on bass. In the event, Decca’s involvement was to be fairly
short-lived – just two trips to Dublin – but it allowed him another opportunity to immerse
himself in the city’s hospitality and craic, and to do his thing once again in the recording
studio. Everyone he met and worked with seemed to be a mate of Bono, which suited
Decca as he’d been a great fan of U2’s earliest work, and there was also a pleasing
philanthropic angle to the project, raising money to help Irish handicapped kids.
The spell in the studio – Temple Lane Studios in Temple Bar – was to result in the
band’s April 2010 debut EP, ‘Punk Rockers and Hell Raisers’, and it was conducted via a
series of cut-price overnight sessions (which, at 100 euros a night, were something of a
bargain). There was a solitary rehearsal by way of pre-production before they went into
the studio.
‘In that rehearsal,’ Dave told me, ‘the first thing we all noticed straight away was that
the band sounded a million times better with Decca behind the kit. In the immortal words
of Buddy Rich: an average band with a great drummer sounds great; a great band with
an average drummer sounds average.’
A bonus was that Carolyn contributed a short spoken cameo to one of the songs. Dave
explains the circumstances:
‘That was on the final day. Decca was having a snooze on the sofa in the studio;
meanwhile we’d been busy with Carolyn recording her voice. Then everyone lined up to
watch Decca’s reaction as we cranked up the volume of the studio speakers and looped in
this snippet of Carolyn’s voice. She was berating Decca in the manner of a Geordie wife
whose husband has been missing in the pub for too many nights. He woke with
something of a start, to put it mildly!’
Poor Decca’s befuddled brain must have been trying desperately to process which of a
catalogue of girlfriends was bollocking him this time for his dirty-stop-out shenanigans,
only to regain his composure and realise that it was a piece of spoken fiction and all the
musicians and technical crew around him were pissing themselves laughing. The cameo
featured on ‘Leave This Place’, the final song on the EP.
I wondered what the band’s thoughts were on having a seasoned campaigner like
Decca involved in the studio. Dave replied without hesitation:
‘Not only did Decca bring his amazing drumming skills; there was also his vast studio
knowledge and experience, so we learned a lot from him. It has to be said that he also
helped to enliven the proceedings in his trademark way, making them the most
memorable recording sessions I’ve ever been involved in, before or since. After a couple
of days, when everyone was starting to get a bit stressed, I remember turning round
during some guitar takes to see a stark bollock naked Decca sauntering into the control
room, to the general hilarity of everyone present.’
The sessions also threw up some interesting dynamics between Decca and the
technical crew. At one stage, Decca found that his patterns were proving too complex for
the engineer to keep up with, so he had to simplify the structure of his playing so that it
could be laid down correctly. The 21-year-old engineer was blown away by some of the
techniques Decca was using: he swore that there were some things for which you’d need
two bass drums, but Decca was effortlessly doing them with just one. At first it was
amusing, but it did become a bit wearying, having to reproduce tracks that had been fine
in the first place. Dave, meanwhile, turned out to be something of a perfectionist in the
control room, which is a great quality in terms of ensuring quality of output, but Decca did
briefly worry whether an insistence on repeating tracks ad infinitum might also militate
against the importance of keeping to a budget: the longer a band stays in the studio, the
more the experience can turn into a money pit. It all worked out fine, though.
Dublin being Dublin, was it fair to say there was time for a moment or two of
relaxation away from the studio? Maybe a pint or two?
‘There was indeed,’ confirms Decca. ‘I’ve always loved Dublin – whether playing there
or just socialising. It might be some kinda affinity tucked away in me blood somewhere,
but really it’s just that the people are brilliant – so laid back and welcoming. You can’t
help but have a great time there. I love it.’
In another off-duty moment, an unexpected phenomenon reared its head, as Dave
explains:
‘I hadn’t realised this, but Decca has a fascination with the paranormal, and one time
he was telling us that he felt sure the studio building – which is quite old – was haunted.
This was actually backed up by some of the studio staff, and Decca kept returning to the
idea throughout the sessions. He was not only able to ascertain the gender of the ghost
(a female), but he even came up with her name: Molly Walton. I realised a little later, by
coincidence or otherwise, that the name was an amalgamation of Molly Malone – Dublin’s
famous fishmonger from the ballad of the same name – and Walton’s music shop around
the corner, where Decca bought his drumsticks.’
I asked Decca for further clarification of this issue, and he was forthright in his
response:
‘Aye, you could say I’m a bit of an expert in the world of spirits. The amount of vodka
I’ve put away over the years, it’s only natural.’
Decca left Dublin energised by the experience of enjoying his music and spending time
among such welcoming people, and would relish the prospect of returning to do some
more work in the city. Dave speaks warmly of such a prospect, recalling Decca fondly as
‘a character and a half’. It was just a shame – the rest of the band felt – that he was not
able to commit to living there full-time. Unless you’re an outfit of jet-setting
multimillionaires who can afford to take years off between tours and albums, only getting
together in the same country when you have to, an internationally constituted band is
seldom going to work in the longer term. On reflection Decca felt flattered that he had
been invited to take part in the project, largely on the strength of the name he still
enjoys in punk circles. As we talked about the Dublin recording sessions, Decca reached
into a drawer and pulled out a copy of the EP.
‘Here you go,’ he said, ‘putting it into the CD player. ‘See what you think.’
We had been listening for less than a minute when a drum-fill rang out that could only
have been produced by one drummer on the planet. I glanced across to where Decca was
sitting in his armchair. He was already grinning.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I just can’t help meself, can I?’
.
CHAPTER 10
The crashed out years – which, as we have seen, partially overlapped with Decca’s most
recent spell on the drum stool for The Angelic Upstarts – coincided with a spectacular
crescendo in his alcohol consumption. At one point, he found himself out on tour with
both bands for a full 36 weeks – with the unrelenting partying that entailed – and coming
back down to earth with a bump when he got home at the end of it. Not for the first time,
he talks gloomily about closing the front door and staring at the four walls of his sparselyfurnished flat back home in the North East:
‘It was awful, man. It was silent and eerie – you still hear the music, the sounds of the
shows, and the laughing of the band and crew and the fans, even the chugging of the van
engine. But you’re on your own, completely alone. It was frightening, and I’d say
sometimes deathly. I felt it all very intensely, but there was nowt I could do about it.’
There was certainly a realisation on Decca’s part that he was not a well man, that he
needed help in various ways, but his immediate concern was to try and banish the
demons that were dancing around in his head. His fondness for carousing, a tendency to
bury his head in the sand, and his naturally weak self-discipline proved to be a brutal
cocktail:
‘When you’re feeling like that, a bar brings company. I didn’t want to be on me own; I
wanted to carry on the momentum of the tour I’d just finished, to be around people and
carry on laughing and joking, but of course that leads to drink.’
As Decca now entered his fifties, things were getting out of hand, even by his farreaching standards. He was sad, lonely, feeling regretful and guilty at what he perceived
as the balls-up of losing his wife and family: in short, life was conspiring against him and
dragging him down to the lowest of ebbs. Though he told nobody of this at the time – at
least, not as far as he recalls – he was starting to resent the music business for its role in
getting him to where he was, away from his kids and clutching a vodka glass for
company. A dilemma which, in earlier years, had seen him get heavily into drumming to
numb the pains in his private life, now saw him reaching out for a more ominous solution.
Echoes of his mam’s voice telling him to count his blessings counted for nothing; cheery
voices telling him what a great drummer he was were futile.
‘I was too weak to keep it under control. Everyone still saw me as the indestructible
party animal, the life and soul, the mad drummer, and I just played along with it. Nobody
could see the sadness behind the old blue eyes. It was like that Who song. But the
drinking never stopped – there was no way I could make it stop, to be honest. It wasn’t
me mates’ fault. They looked upon it as just social drinking, like they were happy to see
me down the pub as usual, always the joker. I suppose what they didn’t see was the
extent of the drinking, the need for it.’
People who have lived through alcoholism – either as sufferers or as family or friends
in a supporting role – will talk about the blurred line between wanting to drink and having
to drink. Decca found himself firmly encamped in the latter category. The booze was
helping him to maintain his chirpy image, even though the mechanics of getting pissed
weren’t necessarily all that enjoyable: what he sought was the resultant state, not the
process.
As will become clear as we detail the trough of Decca’s struggle with the bottle, there’s
a vast difference between the drinks of choice – and the effects each has had on both his
health and his behaviour. Former partner Carolyn put it succinctly:
‘When Decca was drinking normal stuff like beer – pints of lager – he was fine, much
more pleasant and full of common sense. It was a pleasure to be with him, and he made
perfect sense even to his rock ’n’ roll mates like Knox [of The Vibrators] and [UK Subs’
singer] Charlie Harper. But with vodka inside him, he turned into an arsehole, a blithering
idiot. There was also the difference in his confidence: he had none of it until he was full
of drink and drugs, then he was a cocky shit. He was a different person.’
*
The Clara Vale Complex, close to Ryton, was considered in the early 2000s to offer an
idyllic rural setting for bands to record their albums and relax in the manicured grounds or
on the adjacent golf course. Off-duty North East footballers and other celebrities were
often in attendance. It was marketed as truly a place to be seen, to spend quality time
and to hobnob with people like Cheryl Cole (or Tweedy, as she was then). The manager,
Dave Clark, was proud of the facilities on offer, and despite having a taste for luxurious
vehicles and the finer things in life, made a point of stressing the honest simplicity of the
place – above all, its rustic tranquillity.
I mentioned ‘luxurious vehicles’ and ‘rustic tranquillity’. In one of the least expected
capers of the complex’s short history, one of the former was to shatter the latter one fine
morning as celebrities were forced to leap out of the way to avoid being hit by some kind
of contraption making its way riotously across the golf course. At the helm of Dave Clark’s
hovercraft – yes, hovercraft – was the intrepid Decca Wade, who had clearly graduated
from 250cc motorbikes and was seeing what the hapless craft could do.
‘I had a bit of a spluttering start,’ says Decca, as if referring to a round of golf or a
quick go on someone’s skateboard, ‘but once I got the throttle fully open it started to go
pretty smoothly. I managed to miss all the trees heading back towards the complex, then
I hit the brambles. What a bastard. I’ve still got the scars to this day.’
I’m at a loss as to what question it would make sense to ask next, so I just say: ‘what
happened then?’
‘He just gave it away, I think. He didn’t wanna sell it. Chris Wright was absolutely
gutted, coz he would’ve really fancied it himself.’
The matter of how Decca had got himself into that position in the first place seems
just too profound for me to cope with, and somehow it seems fitting to leave it shrouded
in a fog of mystery. Accordingly, we open another can and do some more drinking.
*
At the peak of the vodka years, Decca was down the pub drinking from dawn to dusk
every day, not bothering to eat, and would generally shift a couple of litres of vodka –
and occasionally as much as two two-litre bottles – a day. This led to a weekly bar bill
averaging £800 – think of this as £40,000 a year on vodka and it hits home hard.
Alongside the boozing and the jokes, there was cocaine aplenty and, at choice moments
of bizarre experimentation, the snorting of rum and even chilli from his favourite spoon.
For a time, both his pocket and his liver seemed to be handling the excesses, but soon
enough things were about to take a more sinister turn.
He began to struggle with random vomiting fits and with hot and cold sweats, one of
which – perhaps mercifully – happened while he was round at his mam and dad’s house.
Derek and Joan were naturally alarmed, and tried to encourage Decca to get the help he
clearly needed. He promised to go and see the doctor but, as is the way with these
things, he couldn’t be persuaded of the urgency of the matter. Just as his mates viewed
him as indestructible, maybe that’s how Decca saw himself, too; there’s also the lurking
suggestion that, deep down, he was afraid of what the doctor might say.
Medical thoughts vied with spiritual ones in his mind. Whilst not an overly religious
person in the sense of practising an organised faith, Decca does hold his Catholic roots
dear, and is just as likely to sign off a phone call with ‘God bless’ as with ‘cheers’. He
often jokes about his belief in the afterlife, quipping that if he ever gets to return to life
after his death, he’ll do so specifically to haunt ‘every bastard who’s made me life hell
first time round.’ I can’t help feeling that many of the victims may prove to have strong
links to the music business.
One day, staggering out of the pub, he headed in desperation to the nearest church,
genuflected (the Catholic instincts never leave you), and sat down in a pew. Over the
next hour, Decca sat, stood and knelt, praying, pleading and weeping openly as he tried
to get his head around what was happening to him. He lit a candle, closed his eyes and
prayed that his predicament could be relieved. As he left the church, a wave of calm
spread over him, and he had a sharp vision of the value of his life. A weight had been
lifted, at least temporarily; now there were tough decisions to be taken.
*
For most people, it would be an image from a surrealist film, or a snapshot clipped from a
horrendous, post-hallucinogenic nightmare. For Decca, it was simply a day-to-day reality.
Mensi had recently taken ownership of the Alexandra Hotel pub in Jarrow, and Decca was
living upstairs, making his commute to the office the simple matter of tottering
downstairs. As he and other regulars swigged their pints, they were habitually joined by
fellow-drinker Peter Dolan and his friend Peggy. Peggy was only 12, but after a while, the
locals got used to watching her standing at the bar drinking pints of John Smith’s bitter
and eating a bag of crisps, and no moralistic comments on underage drinking were
passed. Nor should they have been, for Peggy was a horse. Decca laughs as he
remembers Peggy’s antics:
‘She was great. She would behave like a dog, taking orders from
Peter, and helping people out on the quiz machine. She loved her John Smith’s – if
we’d been quicker off the mark we could maybe have fixed up some sponsorship with the
brewery!’
So how did all the press interest come about?
‘A reporter came around Jarrow from [Newcastle-based newspaper] The Evening
Chronicle looking for funny stories, so I took him to the bar. Sure enough, Peter and
Peggy walked in and ordered their pints, so the story got published with the photos and
everything. It was on the local TV news the next day, then it went national and
worldwide. There was all the Breakfast TV thing, and interest from Canada. The clip got
onto one of those Animals Do the Funniest Things-type shows, and it was on the telly in
Germany. We were a bit worried the RSPCA might take umbrage, but it was OK in the
end, even though there was a bit of a sad ending. The story was basically that the new
owner, after Mensi, was refurbishing the pub and wanted to ban the horse to keep the
place clean. So after all the TV stuff, she had to stand outside and have her beer and
crisps. But all in all, Peter got a few bob out of it, and he slipped me the price of a drink.’
*
Eventually, Grant and Carol Nixon, his friends from a local pub, managed to impress upon
Decca the seriousness of his situation. There were glum silences, harsh words and tears,
but as a result of the conversation Decca took his courage in both hands and made an
appointment to see a doctor. He was examined physically and questioned thoroughly,
and the doctor rubbed his chin for a moment before asking a very straight question:
‘When did you last take cocaine, Mr Wade?’
Decca being Decca, he took the opportunity to lace his answer with jaunty wit and an
air of light-heartedness:
‘Just before I left the pub this morning!’
It was not the answer the doctor had been hoping for. He sat down to make a few
notes before looking up and delivering an alarming prognosis:
‘If you carry on like this you’ll not see the year out. I’m willing to refer you for a 12week rehabilitation programme, before which you’ll have to detox for a week. Would you
be up for that?’
Decca gulped and turned pale. Given the seriousness of his predicament, there was
only one possible answer, so he was duly booked in for a three-month residency at the
Huntercombe Centre in Grangetown, Sunderland. His hope was that an enforced removal
of alcohol and narcotics would go some way towards purging his system, but also that the
specialist staff at the Centre would be able to re- train him in his habits, to work on him
psychologically to eliminate his need for the booze. In the conversation with the doctor, it
became clear that the gravity of the situation was down primarily to the shorts (mostly
vodka, but others, too). He had done himself no favours in hammering the vodka to such
an extent, but nor had his mates, lining up the double-shorts for their favourite drummer
and comedian when it was already clear that he’d had more than enough. Later on, those
closest to him would be horrified to hear the stories of how his buddies had contributed to
his downfall, and would themselves witness further jokey attempts by his circle of friends
– even after the grim depths of rehab – to get him back on the vodka. Whether they
meant any ill or not, people had failed to grasp the severity of dangling a dangerous
commodity within reach of a man not yet physically and mentally equipped to say no. Not
that Decca saw it in such moralistic terms at the time.
Micky Fitz of The Business, himself a recovering alcoholic, said at the time – and has
maintained since – that he didn’t feel Decca was quite ready to go into rehab and give up
the booze when he did. He felt that maybe a bit later, with more time to ease off,
prepare himself and think it through properly, it would have stood a better chance of
working, but for the moment, Decca was booked in, and the Centre was awaiting his
arrival.
The regime at the Centre was, in one sense, quite laid-back: clients (as the Centre
refers to those undergoing programmes, though Decca thinks ‘inmates’ is a much funnier
term) were allowed to walk out at any point, and could receive family visits between 6.00
and 9.00 in the evening. Seeing his family on their frequent visits was, for Decca, the
hardest part, as it brought to a head all the emotions, shame, hurt and self-loathing he
had been harbouring.
‘It was hard,’ his mam recalls. ‘We would just be shaking our heads and asking him
how he’d ended up there, and Decca would be asking himself the same question. It often
reached the point where I was in floods of tears, and so was Decca.’
On the other hand, there needed to be some fairly rigid rules: naturally, alcohol was
out of the question, and cigarettes were also banned – this was something Decca had not
banked on, as it was not at the core of his addiction, and he found it difficult to be
without them. There was also an overnight curfew system designed to remove the
temptation for inmates to succumb to the wares of local hostelries. He was subjected to a
strictly enforced and nutritionally balanced diet – though ‘with fuckin’ Netto beans’, as
Decca noted at the time – and quickly began to suspect that the Centre would change the
chefs around to stop patients befriending them. Inmates underwent a programme of
discussions, therapy, counselling, group-sessions and other forms of treatment. Some of
the activities Decca found bizarre: ‘drawing on your hands, playing mind games’. Soon
enough, he began to tire of being asked how he was each day, and how he was feeling
‘within himself’; he just wanted to be left alone to read a book and forget about
everything else, in effect allowing the time to pass without booze (or reminders of
booze), and hence building up an ability to do without it. The group-sessions, he felt,
were counterproductive, in that they just brought the memories of his alcoholic jaunts
flooding back: ‘the staff were mentioning alcohol more than I was.’
On reflection, he does feel he learned a lot about himself from the experience, and
was glad he didn’t drop out half-way through, but he didn’t react well to some of the
techniques employed. For instance, he was put on sedatives, to which he would respond
by simply spitting them out. Attempts to make patients mingle were not having the
desired effects:
‘The staff were complaining because I mix in the outside world but I didn’t seem to be
mixing in there. But I had nowt in common with the other inmates, man. They were all
nutters. Proper ones. All the therapy shite might work on druggies, but it wasn’t washing
with me.’
Staff divided naturally into two categories:
‘One of the nurses was me favourite – she’d been an addict herself and had turned her
life around. She would get me twenty tabs when I needed them; she always made sure I
was all right.’
He pauses. I sense there must be a serious flip-side on its way.
‘Most of them were OK, but a couple of them were awkward with me, coming into me
room and unplugging stuff. Two of the male nurses had a problem with me, coz the
female nurse they fancied was an Angelic Upstarts fan. But there was another one in
particular – she was like Hitler with tits. She was so ugly even the tide wouldn’t take her
out. She made me life hell. I used to wait in the games room until she was sitting down
for her meal, then set off the alarm. When she came in to shout at me, I would just tell
her I was sorry, but I thought I was pressing the dartboard light.’
Alongside reading, Decca’s preference was to get the time to pass –
‘putting the hours in’ – by watching TV or doing quiet activities such as jigsaw puzzles
and crosswords. ‘I was the Centre’s Hungry Hippos champion,’ he declares proudly. In this
sense, he was doing exactly the right thing, keeping his head down and letting his body
and mind readjust to the new regime. However, there were times when it was tempting
to escape:
‘The weekends could get very lonely. There was one Saturday when all I fancied was
to get the hell out, get some fresh air and read the newspaper. But I wasn’t sure I was
quite ready to resist the temptations of the outside world.’
Logically, the body will have been recovering, but that didn’t stop
Decca feeling horrific every morning:
‘For as long as I could remember, I don’t think I’d ever had a day without some sort of
alcohol. Now that I had none, I was feeling fuckin’ awful in the mornings, worse than I’d
ever felt when I’d been on the booze. I really felt like I was dying. Terrible. It made you
think.’ The incident with the alarm was the beginning of what Decca calls his ‘private war’
against the more problematic staff.
‘I used to do all sorts of banned stuff, like feeding the wild rabbits, and refusing to
answer the phone in me room. That pissed them off. I went on hunger strike for a bit,
then one classic night I really decided to wind them up. I got dressed up and went out for
the evening, promising to be back by the curfew. So later on I came back in sober but
making a right fuckin’ racket, wearing a party hat, carrying a vodka bottle full of water,
with all streamers hanging off me. It was a hell of a laugh. Well, maybe not for them.’
As well as the brief hunger strike, and in keeping with his policy of non-cooperation in
group activities, Decca decided to boycott whatever had been planned on one particular
morning. He stayed in his room reading, then there was a knock on the door later on:
‘Mr Wade, we didn’t see you at the session this morning.’
‘I didn’t fancy it.’
‘You really should have attended. It would have been useful for you.’
‘What was it, like?’
‘A film.’
‘Oh, aye? What film?’
‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’
‘Oh, fuckin’ hell. You wanted to subject me to that? It’s already like the fuckin’ Shining
in here.’
In that kind of spirit, the time passed (including a few days off to see Connor), and
eventually the 12 weeks were up. When he left rehab, Decca was taken to Asda to get
some new clothes and other shopping, and had to spend ten minutes on his way in
reassuring concerned passers-by enquiring why they hadn’t seen him for so long, that ‘I
haven’t been to prison.’ He told the people he was with to go on ahead: ‘I’ll see you in
the wine-aisle – JOKE!’
*
Back on civvy street, Decca tried to reshape his life, but staying fully clear of the booze
was a struggle. Temptations were all over the place – the very fact that he was back in
circulation and people were glad to see him led to offers of celebratory drinks, which for a
drummer in a delicate state was a tough notion to deal with.
Very soon he started going out with Carolyn, who was aware of his history of problems
with drink and drugs, but was nonetheless startled to witness the extent of his addiction
and related problems:
‘He was getting awful sweats during the night. The duvet would be dripping wet in the
mornings, so it would constantly be in the wash and drying on the radiators. The vomiting
was still there too. I was having to keep a close eye on him.’
Aside from his happiness at meeting Carolyn, things weren’t getting any easier for
Decca in coping with his difficulties. It was soon clear that more help was needed, so with
the benefit of Carolyn’s warmth and dedication, they decided on a twofold action of
alcohol counselling and detoxification. For the detox part, Carolyn had to administer
Decca’s medicines several times a day throughout the period, which lasted eight days.
During this time, he was particularly susceptible to collapse, so she had to monitor him at
all times, even when he was in the bath.
Allied to the detox, they attended counselling sessions as a couple. The process
involved the (by now familiar) discussions of the root causes and effects of Decca’s
drinking, and brought up an interesting plan of action to try and counter his dependency.
Firstly, they were encouraged to keep a drink diary, noting every drink taken, with types,
quantities, times and so on. More radically, a culture was proposed whereby Decca should
nominate one type of drink, and stick to it. This could be any type of alcohol he wanted,
and he would be allowed as many drinks of it as he wished, but mixing was to be strictly
prohibited. The overarching idea was that banning alcohol would be futile: it would be
better to have drink available in the house, but to keep a close eye on controlling its
consumption. Decca opted for lager, thinking that this would be the least injurious bevvy,
and the plan required him and Carolyn to monitor the number of cans he was taking to
begin with, then reduce the amount of lager by a tiny bit each day, until his intake was
dramatically reduced.
Thus the couple settled into a routine which showed definite signs of improvement.
Helpfully, Decca was showing less and less inclination to go to places where it would be
natural for him to drink: the busman’s holiday for a musician of going to watch bands now
held less interest for him, and he was developing the strength to turn down the offer of a
trip to the pub. He had company and comfort at home with Carolyn, the drinking was
under flexible but caring control, and he was gradually starting to get his life back on
track. Mornings were no longer the dour endurance tests they had so recently been.
‘I used to try and get him to paint more,’ recalled Carolyn. He was a good artist, and
he could think about selling his work, even if it was just in a piss-take way like Charlie
Harper. But the important thing was that when he was painting, he wasn’t drinking – or
not as much. His mind was occupied, and that meant that whole afternoons or full days
could go by without him even remembering that he had a drink problem. It was just
keeping the demon out of reach of his memory.’
One indication of just how much better Decca was faring on a controlled drinking diet
of lager, was when a friend gave him half a bottle of leftover wine, and he drank it. It
was a slip-up, but only the next morning would he find out the consequences. Waking up
the following day, Decca felt abysmal, and concluded there and then that sticking to the
planned lager and nothing else was absolutely the way forward.
Carolyn sensed that this was the correct move, but also had a stern resolve
underpinning it. With a couple of difficult and abusive relationships under her belt, there
was no way she was going to let herself go through further torment – actually, she wasn’t
planning to get involved with anyone else in the first place, but then Decca and his blue
eyes worked their magic on her. But now, in the context of protecting Decca against
himself and his appetite for the booze, she was absolutely clear:
‘I always said that if he succumbed to any sneaky offers of booze from his so-called
mates – they were the ones doing him the harm – then he would be a fool. It used to
make me so angry when he was doing so well, then someone lined up a vodka for him
and he could easily have a moment of weakness. But I always said if he started reaching
for the spirits again, I’d be packing my bags. I refused to see him destroying himself,
intent on killing himself.’
The recent state of affairs is certainly rosier: Decca is capable of letting a month or
more go by between drinks, which is something of a record when viewed against the
totality of his adult life. Some days it’s better simply not to start – not to take the first sup
– and this can stave off any further longings. Other times, Decca and whoever happens to
be round at the flat will open a few cans while watching the telly or listening to music in
the evening, and no serious hammering is done. The mid-fifties Decca is a man with a
good life expectancy if he keeps things under control, but he’s also fully aware of the
nature of his relationship with the demon bottle, and the language with which to express
it:
‘It’s definitely a case of needing alcohol, rather than wanting it. That’s what they
concluded in the counselling sessions around the time of the detox, and it’s right. It’s a bit
like the need I used to feel for the drums in the early days – a feeling in me gut, whether
I liked it or not. The need is always there, and I have to fight it every day. Also, I’ve
worked out that this need is happening again, as opposed to still – it’s gone full circle
since the rehab. Even through I’ve still got me struggles, I think it’s been useful to learn
all the psychological stuff. Mind you, the urges are still strong enough to rip through all
that if the mood takes me. But I do feel more at peace now.’
In short, Decca now leads a more sedentary life, based around the homeliness of his
flat. The addition of the internet in the house means that Decca can keep in touch with
far-flung friends (about whom, more later) and can also check out occasional clips of
himself and his various bands performing live or in videos. But the latter is something he
keeps to a minimum: he’s still very reluctant to listen to himself play on records, suffering
a kind of bashful helplessness when his drumming can be heard in the background. Nor is
he particularly keen on watching himself on TV:
‘The last time I was on the telly I was sat with our Kerry – she was enjoying it but I
just kept me head down. I couldn’t watch it. I was cringing.’
But I wouldn’t bank on this shyness lasting forever. If one thing has rung out as a
constant throughout Decca’s life, it’s the improvement that can be made in all
departments simply by his enjoying the company and love of a female who is tuned in to
his wavelength. This can reap benefits to his health – within reason: this is, after all,
Decca Wade we’re talking about – and brings him a tangible feeling of harmony within
himself. It means that he’s far less likely to pick up a bottle or a can in anger, and will do
so purely for gentle, social reasons. Most notably, a stable relationship can trigger
quantum leaps in boosting his sense of self-worth. It’s amazing what the love of a good
woman can do for a drummer’s confidence.
.
CHAPTER 11
There are no recorded incidents of grisly punks sitting their grandchildren on their knee
and plying them with Werther’s Originals as they spin yarns of the good old days of the
late 1970s. But that’s not to say there isn’t time for reflection. The cultural phenomenon
that was punk has stood the test of time, proving its worth through a multitude of
offshoots and re-workings down the generations. As the snowball has rolled, each
category, each branch, each movement, each band has enjoyed its moment, compared
itself to what has gone before and looked ahead to what the future of punk held. At no
point has the punk door closed; the flame in its soul has remained stoically lit, and wave
after wave of teenagers have rolled up their sleeves and followed their own interpretation
of the punk ethic – above all, they have continued to make a din and annoy their parents,
which is where it all started.
Despite the hammering Decca has given his body in his decades in the music industry,
his brain and memory remain pleasingly intact. With such an action-packed life behind
him – and, who knows, ahead of him too – there’s plenty for him to reflect on, and it
would have deprived both him and us of a catalogue of laughs if his memory had given up
the ghost.
A recurring theme in our conversations has been his continued love affair with
drumming as a concept, a skill, a profession. As we saw earlier in the book, the teenage
Decca would go in and out of fads, get bored at school and dip in and out of trouble, but
– family and friends aside – drumming was the one constant in his life. He never lost the
spark of excitement in sitting on his stool and bashing away; nor was the flame
diminished as time passed and his hefty bashing matured into a sensitively delivered
array of styles. Drumming is the sap of Decca’s soul: there are times when it will be drier,
and other times more gushing, but it will always be there, flowing within him, nurturing
his energy. It’s now over 45 years since Decca first sat behind a recognisable drum kit
(more if we include the pots and pans of his infancy), but has there ever been a time
when he’s got fed up with it?
‘There have been times when I’ve got sick of playing the drums, but mostly when I’ve
been down for other reasons, or maybe just knackered after a long tour or something. I
always come back to it, though. The skills never really leave you. I can tell when I’m a bit
rusty if I haven’t drummed for a bit, coz I have to think about it, but it all comes back
quickly, as does the buzz of performing for people. I’ve always had this mentality that I
should play every gig as if it’s the last time I’m ever going to pick up me drumsticks,
giving me absolute all every time. It’s the only way: people have paid to see you play, so
it doesn’t matter if you’re tired or pissed off or whatever, you’ve got to give them the best
show you can. I remember one time in Italy when I came off stage gutted as I didn’t
think I’d given the kids a good enough show. I was having a bad time and I thought I’d
let me personal life affect me drumming. But the promoter and all the crew said the
audience couldn’t have been happier. Maybe I was just over- analysing it.
‘Carolyn was really helpful when I had downers on drumming. She always said: “You
should do whatever you want. If you want to stop playing the drums, do it, and take up
something else. The important thing is to be happy in what you’re doing; it’s not always
about making other people happy. You should focus on yourself for once. If you even
want to retire from music, so be it. If people are miffed, fuck ’em.” And she was right.’
Another of the things he is asked from time to time is whether he ever feels aggrieved
not to have made more money out of his musical career. The answer is an emphatic ‘no’,
and Decca gives a balanced overview of the ups and downs of the 35+ years since The
Angelic Upstarts formed. There was plenty of money – and non-monetary tangible
benefits – accrued during his years at the top, but Decca was acutely aware of the
fleeting nature of rock ’n’ roll fame, and chose to make merry while the going was good.
Not for him the squirrelling away of a nest-egg for leaner years: imagine how un-punk
that would have looked.
‘No, I always got by comfortably, but you can imagine how much I spent on coke and
drugs, and I’ve always been a heavy drinker. I’ve done all the usual things of buying
flashy clothes and watches and stuff, but that moment has long since passed. I’m happier
how I am now.’
Decca’s relationship with the tax man has been delicate at various points in the past,
and it has taken some nifty footwork by understanding accountants to keep Her Majesty’s
Revenue and Customs away from the Wade door. As we chat about the extremes of
playing in a successful band and earning undreamt-of money each week, versus sitting
quietly at home on the dole, a moving sentiment emerges, which Decca repeats almost in
a whisper:
‘You know what? I’d be scared to look too closely at the PRS [Performing Rights
Society] situation. There must be God knows what waiting for me in mechanicals and
other payments due, but I’m happier not to get into it. I’d hate to go back to where I was
before, when I had money – I’d be afraid of what might happen.’
But, money aside, how does Decca feel nearly a half-century in music has shaped him?
What kind of feelings has it triggered in him? People who have never been in a successful
band often wonder whether it really can be bish-bash-bosh and eternally happy days, or
whether a dark shadow might be lurking, casting fingers of regret across musicians’ lives:
‘The only thing I regret about me musical career is not being able to leave Connor a
proper legacy – only his surname and a few records with me name on. He knows I’m
always there for him, though. I’d much prefer to have lived the life I’ve lived, rather than
never to have made music or dabbled in fame and all that. But if you asked me if I’d do
the whole thing all over again, I’d have to think long and hard. Catch me on a bad day
and I might say no.’
That there have always been grimmer sides to a life in punk’s fast lane is not in
question. These aspects get filed under ‘Shit’ and are wheeled out to counterbalance the
good times – archived as ‘Dog’s Bollocks’ – when punk has its day of reckoning. But one
indisputable fact is that the early period of high-level punk was a fairly finite concept: if
you were a star of it, and a leading figure for iconic, musical or hell-raising reasons (or, in
Decca’s case, all three), you’re stuck with it. It’s a fact: you were there; you did it; folk
worshipped you, bought your records, came to your gigs, imitated your style. Your name
and fame will forever be associated with the genre, and that must produce a
tremendously proud feeling of achievement:
‘It makes me happy to have been in the punk scene, yeah, and to be still considered a
part of it. Being in The Angelic Upstarts was like winning the lottery – it was great, but it
was also a cross to bear. You can’t imagine a more dream job for a young lad, but
everything happens at 1,000 mph and you don’t know who your friends are. Maybe that’s
a parallel with winning the lottery. But I definitely think young bands these days should
get better advice and training on how to deal with fame and all the trappings that can
happen overnight. We could have done with some better advice – not that we would
have listened, like!’
We constantly read tragic reports of musicians and other celebrities who, once the sun
begins to set on their careers, cope badly with the dimming of their flame. Some turn to
drink and drugs, but that would be a kind of busman’s holiday in Decca’s case, as he built
a career on precisely these stimuli. Others slump temporarily into a dark place or, in more
extreme cases, are medically diagnosed with depression. This, in turn, can result in the
unthinkable. What kind of ‘place’ does Decca feel he’s in nowadays, geographically and
mentally?
‘It’s cool to get recognised around Jarra, as well as places further away round the
world, like Sunderland. Sometimes I get strangers coming up to me in other towns and
saying, “You’re that drummer, aren’t you?” I always smile and say, “I am he”, and we
both have a laugh at it. People are very friendly, and I’ve always enjoyed talking to
people who might have been interested in the bands or bought the records I’ve played
on, or whatever. It’s actually a great tonic. It keeps your feet on the ground a bit, coz the
people are the salt of the earth, and it also feels good to think they like you. I’ve been
through the dark times, but if you’ve got the right support, you’ll be OK.’ This is
reassuring to hear, but is also demonstrable in day-to-day life. A stroll through the centre
of Jarrow invariably triggers a fanfare of car horns, but Decca solemnly swears that he
doesn’t pay the drivers to toot them.
This local fame, together with its counterparts at a national and international level,
can be a drug as potent, addictive and destructive as any other, and it’s one that has
kindled mixed emotions in Decca’s philosophy:
‘Fame’s great when everything’s going well, but it can also be hateful. There are times
when you just want to be on your own. Like I said before, I always try to be friendly to
people who stop me and want to chat – that’s great. But I remember times in the past
when people would always be asking, “Where are you going next with the band?” rather
than “How are you?” This would maybe be at a time when I was struggling with the drink
or the drugs, and people didn’t realise the extent of it all. They meant well, but just
asked about the band, when I was crying out to talk about me health. I used to miss the
proper, personal side of it.’
At the peak of his fame, did he experience the notion of the rock ’n’ roll hanger-on?
‘Yeah. When you’re in the public eye and appearing on the telly and in interviews with
the band and all that, you get all the attention that seems brilliant at the time, and you
don’t even think that it might be artificial. Then they suddenly move on when you’re no
use to them anymore. There were times when I felt like the fuckin’ Pied Piper to all the
hangers-on. It’s only when you get a bit older that you realise the importance of your
immediate family, your partner and your close friends. They’re the ones that give you
stability, the ones you can trust. In fact, it’s more than that. They’re the ones who know
about the two Deccas: the riotous drummer on the one hand, and the shy Decca you can
see here and now. Very few people understood that difference or knew that the quiet
version existed and had his particular problems away from the public eye.’
*
One of the people who best understood Decca in his contemporary incarnation was his
former partner Carolyn. It’s clear that the four years of her presence in his life had a
stabilising effect, not just in helping him to control his excesses, but also in building up
his fragile sense of self-confidence. The notion of the two Deccas cropped up frequently in
conversations about their relationship, and mercifully Carolyn was acquainted – and able
to cope – with them both. She also understood his limits: ‘I knew that if he said “Decca
doesn’t wanna talk anymore”, that was shorthand for saying politely that I was being too
quizzical, and I gently backed off.’
Gone are the days when Decca would return home from a gig or a tour and feel the
crushing absence of a stage on which to continue performing. The image of the four walls
and their brutal loneliness has been cast aside. Decca and Carolyn found out early in their
relationship that they had similar interests; in fact, Carolyn was instrumental in retrieving
from the murky depths Decca’s interest in listening to music. As she put it: ‘can you
believe that a musician could have been living in a sad little place with no music to play?
He’d got rid of all his records, and was just sitting there playing with his digibox.’
Carolyn had had a strange premonition about meeting someone new in her life, and it
was consolidated by the oddest of events. A gypsy woman knocked on her door, and
predicted various snippets, a couple of which made her prick up her ears. Someone was
coming into her life with big blue eyes; there was the mention of either a twin or a
Gemini [Decca’s birth sign], and alcohol.
‘But what stood out the most,’ she recalled, ‘was that she correctly stated I’d had two
abusive relationships, and she was convinced that the new person coming into my life
was a musician. Bearing all that in mind, I was intrigued to see what would happen, and
guess what? I got lumbered with Decca Wade!’
Like the majority of the local population, Carolyn had always been aware of Decca –
his name and fame. She remembered once seeing him staggering along the street and
falling over, and she said to her friend:
‘There’s that drummer Decca Wade.’ A passer-by said sternly to Decca:
‘Are you drunk?’ ‘No,’ came the crisp reply, ‘I’m just trying to break up the bar of
chocolate in me arse pocket.’
When they first got talking in the pub Decca was, unsurprisingly, already several pints
to the good to combat his shyness. He leaned over and asked Carolyn:
‘Do you recognise me coz I’m a famous drummer?’
‘No,’ Carolyn answered, unable to mask the devastating force of what she was about to
say, ‘your sister Denise used to babysit me.’
Decca took a long, pensive swig of his pint and attempted to piece his ego back
together. However, all was not lost, and the pair started texting each other, before
arranging to meet up in the same pub the following week. For a long while they never
looked back. Carolyn was a big hit with Decca’s family, and revived Decca’s sense of
trust:
‘I lost me wife and me family, and really got hurt, shot through the heart, so I had
trouble trusting women again. It got to the point where the only woman in the world I
would trust was me mam. Carolyn brought me round, and I’m fine now – she was a good
woman.’
*
We chat for a while about his successful and less successful chat- up lines, and joke about
the Rod Stewart set-piece he’d used on the Upstarts’ North American tour all those years
ago. Once again, I’m reminded of the clear difference between the shy, unassuming
Decca in moments of sobriety, and the unstoppable force that is Decca in his cups. He
recalled the early stages of another relationship on South Tyneside, when he’d been
chatting to a woman for the first time, but the next steps were far from clear.
It turned out that he’d loosely agreed to meet the woman one Sunday, but had been
out on the piss and had completely forgotten. The woman was lingering outside the
nominated pub, wondering what had happened, when a van containing tribute band The
Next Pistols screeched to a halt and Decca tumbled out of the back, pissed out of his
head, and asked her if she wanted to ‘come back for a shag’. The sentiment was
reinforced by a barrage of lewd exhortations from within the van, as various Next Pistols
reassured her that ‘he really fancies you.’ Ever the silver-tongued cavalier, Decca’s
courting ritual, on this occasion, fell on stony ground.
Decca chuckles as he recalls the first time he stayed over at another girlfriend’s place.
‘It was getting later in the evening, and it wasn’t clear-cut which way things were
gonna go, so I just said: “What time shall I book the taxi to come in the morning?” It
probably wasn’t me best line ever.’
In that relationship, he initially stayed for a couple of days and was, to put it politely,
travelling light. The girl was concerned:
‘Do you not need some more clothes?’ Decca grinned.
‘Are you asking me to move in?’
Cue mock swooning and an affectionate smack around the chops.
*
One of the lesser known facets of Decca’s recent life is his relationship with Madonna.
There is precious little documentation about this in the public domain – certainly, there
has been no official statement from Madonna – but I can confirm that there is
photographic evidence of her sitting on the sofa in what is clearly Decca’s flat in Jarrow.
On the understanding that I would be the soul of discretion, I was invited to the flat to
meet her and, sure enough, found her sitting on the sofa watching the telly. She barely
registered my presence when I walked in, and I was immediately on my guard that I
might have set myself up for one of those famed ‘difficult’ journalistic encounters. She sat
quietly as I accepted a cup of tea and opened my file full of notes and press-cuttings; her
only reaction was to shoot a nervous glance at the door as it opened and Siouxsie Sioux
came in. This was getting weird. To compound my bafflement, his partner shouted
through from the kitchen:
‘Decca, where’s Max?’
Eh? What is this? Some kind of musicians’ hideaway?
‘He’s in the other room,’ replied Decca. ‘Max. Max! Come on through and meet Ronan,
mate.’
So it was that I became acquainted with the three cutest pedigree Persian cats you
could ever wish to meet, and listened slack-jawed as Decca spoke tenderly of his
fondness for cats and how his life had been enhanced by the loveable trio. It’s not the
kind of topic you’d expect to be discussing in the household of a former prince of punk,
but it was touching to behold.
The cats feature prominently in a story I heard from Kev Miller, a friend from
Sunderland. His mate John Woppet was fitting a new window at Decca’s house, and was
joined for the day by a bloke called Brian Lydon, tasked with wallpapering the front room.
The tradesmen were greeted by Decca, who informed them that he had to go out for a
few hours and instructed them that they were allowed to have a drink if they wanted, but
on no account were they to let the cats outside. Once Decca had left the building, Brian
discovered a short- cut out the back leading directly to an off-licence, and proceeded to
avail himself of the necessary booze to get him through the day. When Decca returned,
he discovered that only two half-strips of wallpaper had been applied, and Brian was
‘sparked out on the settee, cap round to one side, snoring his nuts off’. Of the cats, there
was no sign. When confronted, Brian replied indignantly: ‘Excuse me, I was minding your
cats!’ Decca invited him to show him where the cats were, and this scuppered Brian’s air
of certainty. They were subsequently located out the back, playing happily and mercifully
unharmed.
The occasional sourcing and purchase of a new cat in the Wade home is a procedure of
military-style planning and precise logistics. After the kitten has been chosen online,
there is a whirlwind of activity, starting with the procurement of a driver. As in all the
best Kray brothers movies, a driver is selected and formally asked if he’s up for the job,
and he will nod solemnly in acceptance, aware of the importance of the task ahead of
him. Next, the finances are put in place. There’s the purchase of the cat itself, of course,
but there’s also the petrol money for the driver to be considered. Finally – and most
importantly – a complex mathematical algorithm is deployed, involving the distance in
miles to be covered, divided by the likely average speed, times the number of occupants
in the car, multiplied by the number of cans of lager required by each, on the basis of a
mean rate of consumption per hour. The maths is buggered up a bit at the end, as drivers
are generally assumed to be on half-measures of lager for the duration of the trip, but
with experience – just like the retention of drumming skills – these matters become
second nature to Decca Wade.
*
As our musical conversations draw to a close, Decca’s reflections scurry across the
decades and across genres. We turn, once again, to the memory of Joe Strummer, the
tenth anniversary of whose death was marked in 2012. From there, we recap on a range
of drummers – many also, now, sadly departed, but others still going strong – who
influenced his styles. Aside from the rock gods such as Cozy Powell, Decca has the utmost
respect for Andy Anderson, whose career has embraced a range of styles and bands from
Hawkwind to The Cure (and, notably for Decca, his work with Max Splodge). Rat Scabies
stands out, as does Paul Cook – ‘a fuckin’ metronome,’ as Decca puts it. But he remains in
awe of one punk drummer in particular:
‘I’ll tell you what: Marky Ramone was something else, and not just during his time with
The Ramones, when I don’t think he got as much adulation as he deserved. We
supported him when I was with Crashed Out, and I remember standing in the wings
watching him during the sound check. What a fuckin’ performance. That was the best in
punk drumming – he was incredible.’
My Chemical Romance get frequent mentions as a band making challenging,
worthwhile music. But less obviously, Decca is vociferous in his support of Irish band The
Script, a couple of whose members he met while working over in Dublin. He cites them as
an example of a group who had been working hard for years, before finally getting their
deserved breakthrough. It still astonishes him that they haven’t featured more highly in
the ever-burgeoning music awards culture.
Equally, stars from later generations of the punk community have shown not only
fandom but also reverence of Decca’s part in the movement. Lars Frederiksen of Rancid
had a short spell playing with The UK Subs in 1991, and became good friends with (and
vocally praising of) Decca. There was also a touching meeting with Billie Joe Armstrong of
Green Day, who gushed that he hoped that one day the band would be able to cover
some Angelic Upstarts tracks as a token of their esteem.
This esteem is shared by a vast family of followers on Decca’s recently established
Facebook page. His previously vibrant MySpace profile – run by fans – has gone
mysteriously blank, so the wealth of information and photos Decca provided are, at least
for the moment, inaccessible to the general public. Facebook, however, has really taken
off for him, and has enabled him to communicate daily with friends old and new, a liberal
sprinkling of bona fide celebrities (musical and otherwise), and hundreds of fans who
relish the simple pleasure of being able to address – and receive a prompt and individual
reply from – their idol.
Naturally, I continue to prod for memories of Decca’s various periods with the Upstarts,
and we segue into what a strange experience it was to be watching – as opposed to
playing in – the band when he saw them at one of the now traditional September punk
festivals at Durham University. Didn’t he miss being up there on stage? What went
through his mind as he watched the gig?
‘I remember thinking how well the songs have stood the test of time. I’m very proud of
the part I played in those early songs. The band sounded good, too, but maybe I’d prefer
a return to the one-guitar set-up. I often think of the old days, but of the later years, one
line-up I thought really worked was Mensi, Lee Wright, Gaz Stoker and me.’
I press Decca for his thoughts about whether he could ever return to the stage with
The Angelic Upstarts:
‘It’s doubtful. I know Mond wouldn’t be keen, as he moved on so long ago. But I would
never say never. Let’s just say this: if the opportunity ever came up for the original lineup to get back together for one kinda nostalgic show, I’d be up for it. More than up for it.
I think that’d be a great way for the curtain to come down on me career.’
*
It was a toss-up between Carol Vorderman and Decca Wade. Warm Zones, a not-forprofit organisation working with South Tyneside Council to offer free cavity wall and loft
insulation for people’s homes, was looking for a celebrity to give up an hour or so of their
time for free to boost the company’s awareness campaign, and the pun possibilities from
drum rolls and insulation rolls were too persuasive to let slip. Accordingly, as local folk
opened their copies of the Shields Gazette, they were treated to a big colour photo of
Decca and his bass drum, accompanying an article in support of the initiative. Decca
joked to me at the time:
‘They insulate your house for nowt. If only they’d existed back when I was on the
shipyards, I wouldn’t have had to nick all that coal to keep the house warm.’
Far from considering that the little drummer boy had sold out or taken a step back
from the spikiness of his former image, the people I spoke to thought it was a ‘lovely
piece’ – referring to the article, rather than Decca – and that it matched their perception
of him: a local lad who’s remained true to his roots; someone who loves, and is loved by,
his community.
*
True love, as we all know, has its ups and downs, but if it’s meant to linger, then linger it
will. It would be a big ask – to say nothing of emotionally brutal – for anyone who’s
worked with Decca over the years to forget the great times they’ve shared with him: in
the studio, on stage or on the lash (or various combinations of the above). Accordingly,
when in the autumn of 2011 Decca’s two most cherished bands – The Angelic Upstarts
and Crashed Out – decided to release a split album, there was an important phone call to
be made to ensure that the little fella was involved. The album – entitled The Dirty
Dozen and featuring six tracks from each band – was recorded at Trinity Heights in
Newcastle, and the Upstarts track ‘Not Like it Said in the Song Frank’ was set aside for
Decca to drum on. This he did with relish, before joining Fred Purser and Upstarts
guitarist Neil Newton in the control room to help out with mixing and producing the
album.
It was a fitting demonstration of friendship and nostalgia, and an acknowledgement of
the important role Decca played in shaping the fortunes of these two bands.
.
CHAPTER 12
It shouldn’t have surprised me. After an oddly quiet couple of weeks, early in 2013 I got a
jolly-sounding phone call from Decca, with a whirlwind of garbled information.
‘Change in the domestic set-up,’ he informed me. ‘We might have to re-write the end
of the book a bit.’ There was a pause, then a trademark guffaw. ‘But I’ll tell you what: it’ll
make for an interesting final chapter.’
The episode requires us to take an unexpected trip back to the early 1980s, when
Duran Duran were flying high in the charts, and would have made even more money if
someone hadn’t stolen box-loads of their LPs and flogged them for filthy lucre in the
second-hand record shops of west London. North East guitarist Andy Taylor was riding the
wave of new-found fame with the band, loving every second of the adulation he was
receiving from his teenage fans.
Meanwhile, his younger sister Lynette had a focus to her own adulation: a blue-eyed
drummer who had been enjoying his own slice of fame and fortune in London with The
Angelic Upstarts.
Jump forward thirty years, and Decca’s relationship with Carolyn was on the rocks. I
hadn’t seen them as a couple since just before the preceding Christmas, so it was difficult
to pin down exactly what was going wrong, or what perhaps had already gone wrong.
The brief facts thereafter were that Decca’s eye had started to wander, and Lynette had
contacted him after the best part of three decades to see if he fancied meeting up for a
drink.
To cut to the chase, Carolyn found out that this dalliance was quickly becoming
something of more substance behind her back and, quite understandably, the relationship
ended there and then. Decca disappeared to allow Carolyn to remove all her stuff from
the flat, and the landlady quickly fixed her up with an alternative place to live. The bleak
truth was that the vast majority of the furniture, white goods and other items in the flat
belonged to Carolyn, so when Decca returned, he was faced with the four walls about
which he’d spoken to me so many times:
‘It was like the Marie Celeste in there,’ he said. ‘But very quickly, people started to turn
up with all sorts of things – a bed, kitchen stuff, a telly, everything. In fact I think four
tellies turned up within twelve hours. It was amazing. One fella, bless him, brought us an
electric cooker, but we had to tell him the kitchen works on gas. I started to worry when I
found meself staring at the window and the walls, scratching me chin and starting to see
everything through the eyes of an interior designer. Very punk.’
An army of relatives and friends rocked up with cleaning materials to give the flat a
good, old-fashioned dollop of elbow grease, and before long it was starting to resemble
the sort of home it had been until very recently. In his own time, Decca then began to
reflect on this new twist in his complicated love life, and to chat about how it was
weaving in with other recent, non-amorous events occupying his attention.
*
Back in the musical branch of his existence, in the early summer of 2012 I had received a
different sort of phone call from Decca, asking me to come to Newcastle to help out with
some backing vocals on a track he was working on with The Moscow Mules. I wondered
idly what it was:
‘It’s a tribute track to Cozy Powell – a reworking of “Dance with the Devil”, to mark the
fifteenth anniversary of his death. We’ve got a few people together, and it’s sounding
great so far.’
So it proved. Decca had been approached by Nicky Buck, former drummer with The
Toy Dolls and The Whisky Priests, to discuss a formal, creative response to a throwaway
remark by Simon Cowell, that ‘punks can’t play musical instruments’. The maths of the
anniversary was also borne in mind. Through the timely brokering of Keith Newman at
Highlights PR, Kevin Donnelly of the Ashington company GSP (UK) Ltd had offered to
sponsor the recording, so all was in place.
When I arrived at the studio, the track in its raw state was blaring through the
speakers, displaying a veritable wall of sound owing much to multiple layers of funkily
pounding drum tracks laid down by Decca, with some input from Nick. The bass –
including a very nifty bit of Level 42-esque slap – had been the work of Tom ‘Von’
Spencer, former member of Sunderland punk band The Rebels, and the precise guitar
tracks had been conjured up by veteran North East six-string-hero Tony Van Frater, now
plying his trade as bassist with The Cockney Rejects. Other essential elements, such as
lager, were also in attendance, and for anyone still in any doubt as to Decca’s fondness
for getting his kit off without provocation – see earlier stories from Montreal, Croatia and
Spain – I can confirm that he did just that as Tony, Von and I were eating our
sandwiches. Salted pork, if I remember correctly. It served as a healthy reminder to us all
that, though the purpose of the day was deadly serious, it was very much a rock ’n’ roll
event.
In a quiet moment during some editing work, I spoke to Decca (now fully clad) about
the project’s genesis:
‘It just seemed right to choose summat classically non-punk to show what we can do.
The plan is to get a massive swirling effect of guitar tracks – there’s already thirteen on
there – and add even more drums to bring in a fuller range of styles.’
As gently as I could, I broached the subject of what kind of backing vocals would be
required on what is, in effect, a classic instrumental track. Decca laughed. ‘Don’t worry –
we just need some “hey-hey- heys” to be looped in, fading out on certain lines. It’ll all
make sense, honest.’
And so it did. The track, in its polished form, was formally released late in 2012 on the
Belfast label Scarred For Life Records – actually a few months ahead of the fifteenth
anniversary of Cozy’s death – and it garnered quite a bit of publicity in the media. As Nick
told the press:
‘This version is possibly even more technically complicated than the original, and it
sounds modern and fresh. I’m delighted at the way that Decca and the band have
recorded this single.’
Decca added:
‘We’ve shown that we’ve still got the drive and enthusiasm to produce a potential hit
single after all these years in the business. The song cuts across all musical genres and
will appeal to rock, punk and even dance fans. I really believe it is the best track I’ve ever
recorded.’ Later in the evening of the recording, many cans to the good, Decca reflected
on the importance of the track in the context of his worship of – and subsequent
friendship with – Cozy himself:
‘Well, as you know, he’d been pretty much me number one drumming hero when I was
a teenager learning me drumming trade. Getting to meet him was one of the highlights of
me life, and I was proud to have known him and called him a friend. Working on this
track has been just the right sort of tribute. It’s brought back loads of memories of poor
old Cozy.’
*
Memories play a meaningful role in the story of how Lynette became attracted to Decca.
‘It goes back a long way. Decca knew my brother Andy through musical circles, so I’d
been to his house and all that. He was with Diane in those days, so obviously I had to
keep my feelings in check, but I took a shine to him very early on.’
Decca confirms that he had known Andy pretty well from the local music circuit, as well
of being very fond of the Taylors’ father, Ron, who passed away a few years ago.
Regardless of the company in the room, he proceeds to pay the guitarist a heavyweight
musical compliment:
‘I think he was actually kinda held back by the early Duran Duran stuff. He’s a far
better guitarist than the band’s music needed him to be. But he made the best of it, and
fair play to him – he’s done really well.’ The conversation is then steered back to the
situation in hand. More recollections from the 1980s emerge, and Decca is sitting with an
uncontrollably happy grin on his face, so I press for further details.
Lynette obliges:
‘At one stage he was playing in a band called Rebel Run, and I was going out with the
bass player. Well it turned out that they had a gig on my seventeenth birthday, so they
stopped the show at one point so my boyfriend could sing “Happy Birthday” to me. It
sounds terrible, but even as he was singing it, I couldn’t take my eyes off Decca. I was
completely smitten.’
Decca himself recalls the gig, and was also fond of Lynette, but his friendship with
Andy and the fact that he was with Diane at the time meant that he would never have
considered breaking up his relationship. What he remembers in particular was feeling
flattered at the rumours that someone like her could have been interested in him. So it
looked like they were just two ships passing in the night, and that they were destined
never to get together. Or were more persuasive forces at work?
‘I made up my mind there and then,’ Lynette told me, ‘that however long it took, I was
determined to land Decca Wade at some point in my life. It took 28 years, but it’s been
worth the wait.’
Not for the first time in our conversations, Decca brings up one of his favourite words:
serendipity. He’s a great believer in the power of fate, of destiny chipping in with
unexpected events and outcomes. And he’s got a point. Even something as apparently
simple as me working with him on this book came about through a monumental chain of
events, contacts, timings and circumstances. His contentment at beginning a relationship
with Lynette is complete: that their worlds collided was quirkily uncanny. Serendipitous.
In no small measure, their meeting this time round was due to the power of social
media. A friend had drawn Lynette’s attention to the fact that Decca (‘remember him?’)
was on Facebook, and that it might be a laugh to get in touch and say hello. The next
thing Decca knew, there was a ‘friend request’ from a familiar name, and the two began
to chat online. Very quickly the memories started to come flooding back, and shared likes
and dislikes began to be explored.
*
But it’s not just memories. With his place in every punk fan’s personal hall of fame
assured, his drinking under control, and his private life at its happiest in a long time, what
of the future? Are we likely to see him up on stage again?
The ‘Dance with the Devil’ project triggered another intriguing possibility which, at the
time of writing, it is hoped will come to fruition during 2013. Decca’s manager Keith
Newman is sketching out the nationwide logistics of a concept tour entitled ‘An Evening
with Decca Wade’, in which a Parkinson-style interview and multimedia input from a
variety of musical figures will lead into the centrepiece of the evening: a blistering live set
by The Moscow Mules. The very thought of this event will make many a mohican stand on
end, in some cases for the first time in thirty years.
That aside, there are two projects he really wants to see happen before he hangs up
his drumsticks. The first is the recording of a full Moscow Mules album, working not only
with Von and Tony but also, for the first time in more years than Decca can remember,
with Mond Cowie. At the time of writing, the bulk of the proposed songs are more or less
in shape, having been crafted in Tony’s home studio. The mayhem to be enjoyed during
the recording sessions themselves will, without doubt, be mouth-watering. Then there’s
the prospect of an album by an assembly of Decca’s friends who also happen to have
played important roles in the history of punk. Finances are in place, and several songs
written, for a fusing of the might of Decca, Max Splodge, Olga, Lee Wright and Fred
Purser to lay down a celebratory album, capturing the spirit and production values of
2,000,000 Voices. The term ‘supergroup’ is not to everyone’s liking, but I’d be first in the
queue outside Trinity Heights to watch such a collection of legends doing what comes
naturally.
Decca remains reluctant to consider a more permanent return to live performance,
though there are chinks in his armour when he occasionally betrays a little spark of
excitement at the prospect. For him, studio work continues to provide the most
persuasive pull. Additionally, his dabbling in production, in the UK and Ireland, has given
him a thirst to get involved more in projects from the viewpoint of the control room. Dave
Linehan has recently been back in touch, chatting about Hooligan’s subsequent, postDecca releases. One of these, their ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’ EP – bristling with punk
heritage in its echoes of John Lydon’s autobiography – took Decca’s breath away, but he
feels that he would love to have a go at re-mixing it with Fred Purser at Trinity Heights.
The discipline, as well as the joy, of producing (or re-producing) a good piece of music
would, he thinks, do him the world of good, professionally and creatively.
‘I need to be pushed, though. You need to drag me to actually get me to the studio,
but once I’m there, I absolutely love the buzz. There’s nowt like it. I’d love to do more
production work as well as the drum tracks.’
So there’s no danger of Decca ever going back to his original trade as a boilermaker,
then? He had a laugh about this in an interview in 2006, as he told the Evening Chronicle:
‘It’d be a bit like riding a bike,’ [Decca] says unconvincingly. ‘Though, with the shakes
and my eyesight, the calibrations could well be a bit out.’
*
The internet age has opened all sorts of doors to those of us in search of instant
information or gratification. It’s now commonplace to turn on a laptop rather than get the
bus down to the local library to satisfy a query that’s been raging in your head. With this
in mind, Decca sat down one day to gird himself with information relating to a very
grown-up step to be taken in his life. He was 56, so he figured it was about time. He
tapped the name of a popular search engine into his browser, and typed a chain of words.
He then sat back to study the results. They did not fill him with enthusiasm. ‘Paris’
seemed to feature prominently, as did ‘red roses’ and ‘soft lighting’. He scratched his
head, then stood up and went outside for a walk and a tab. He was convinced there was
something better out there, but it was just a question of finding it. Decca stubbed out his
tab, went back into the house and set to work.
*
With so much common historical ground to be covered, and so much happiness to be
shared, these are heady times in the Wade household. A few miles away in South
Shields, Decca’s mam Joan is prudent in her view of her son’s complex love life:
‘As a parent you never stop worrying. At various points we’ve thought our Decca had
fully settled down and our prayers had been answered, then the next thing you know he’s
chopped and changed. But he certainly seems to be very happy at the moment, which is
the main thing.’
To suggest Decca is happy is to put it mildly. ‘Shorty’, as he is now referred to indoors
by ‘Nettie’, gets on with his life in a bubble of blissful companionability, and laughs as he
notes how the jungle drums in Jarrow have matched his own kit for speed and intensity.
‘Aye, the grapevine has been hard at work. All the old dears have been stopping me
and asking how I’m getting on. The neighbours that know about 80s music are all
nudging each other and saying that, eeh, y’know, she’s the sister of the fella from Duran
Duran, and all that. I think they reckon it’s kinda appropriate, coz of the musical
connection.’ He chuckles. ‘Well, I can’t let these people down, can I?’
The flat is now unofficially known as ‘Party Central’, which to anyone who has ever
been out on the lash in Decca’s company, will conjure up a mixture of wistful memories,
wincing around the liver, and perhaps a dash of concern that the great man might be
starting another slide into dangerous drinking territory.
‘No worries there,’ he reassures me. ‘Aye, there’s plenty of drinking – just lager, like
I’m supposed to – but it’s happy, social drinking, nowt rushed. And there’s food as well.’
This is comforting to hear.
‘Aye. I phoned up for a Chinese takeaway the other day, and when I went to collect it
there were loads of people there chatting away to me, and saying how well and happy I
looked. I had some crack with the local councillor, John McCabe, who’s a nice fella – I’ve
known him for years. It was quite funny actually, coz he was shouting over and I couldn’t
see who it was – I’m like Mister fuckin’ Magoo without me glasses on. But aye, it’s nice
that the community seems happy for me.’ After the barren years of Decca living on his
own and feeling no urge to listen to music – whether his own or that of other bands – in
the house, his time with Carolyn had brought him back out of his shell in this respect. The
umbilical cord linking Decca to music has been re-connected with a vengeance; in fact, in
his new life with Lynette, matters musical have been upped a notch indoors:
‘We’ve got Kerrang on all the time now,’ he tells me airily. ‘It’s great to have on in the
background, and I can feel it coursing through me veins. When you get back to proper
rock ’n’ roll you have your faith restored in music. I can feel the old connection coming
back, which I guess is how it should be. I also know that, if I feel happy and excited
listening to music in the house, that’ll have an effect on me getting up off me arse and
making music meself. It’s a powerful force.’
Has Lynette heard The Moscow Mules’ version of ‘Dance with the Devil’?
‘She absolutely loved it. She hadn’t heard it before, and wasn’t even aware we’d
recorded and released it. So I put it on one day, and she was gobsmacked. She went
really silent, then told me she couldn’t believe how good it sounded instrumentally. That
was a good endorsement. It makes you realise you’ve done something decent.’
*
‘Ah,’ thought Decca, looking with satisfaction at his computer screen, ‘this is more like it.’
A brainwave had led him to the (unfortunately, now defunct) website www.punkengagements-and-that.com, whose contents looked far more promising. He put his
reading glasses on, and a wide smile crept across his face. Within minutes, a location and
a date had been fixed up with all the crucial elements: a soon-to- be fiancée, a ring
(sourced via a friend who was more than happy to help with the recommendations and
the final choice to suit Lynette’s preference), a bar and a large circle of friends. Oh, and a
live band with a very prominent drum kit sending subliminal, ‘come and play me’
messages out to an ecstatic Decca.
Very soon the day dawned, and Decca’s engagement to Lynette was confirmed amid
waves of loving vibes at the Black Bull pub in Gateshead. It would have been too much to
ask for the evening to pass by without a cameo percussive performance from the little
drummer boy and, true to form, that was precisely what happened. From her perch in the
audience, Lynette looked on with pride and the faintest of ‘what is he like?’ smiles.
‘It was a great night,’ recalls Decca. ‘The band playing were called Stassi 77 – mostly
punk covers and that sort of thing. It was really good of them to invite me up to play
drums with them for a few songs. Actually, the funniest thing was that one of the lads in
the band is a copper, and we were doing “Police Oppression”. He had the helmet on and
everything. Before I knew it I was transported back more than 35 years!’
The musical circle is almost complete. With Decca momentarily teleported back to
1977, those present were able to see the full evolution – and the undimmed talents – of
their favourite drummer, from angry punk tearaway to middle-aged man, happy in his
skin and loving every second of his life.
But the circularity doesn’t end there. Fittingly, there was another moment the same
month, when a local pub band of gentlemen of a certain age, playing rock classics,
spotted Decca in the audience and hauled him up to play drums with them. The opening
bars of Free’s
‘All Right Now’ took us back to the early 70s, to Decca’s time in the shipyards, sitting
on an oil-drum in the boiler-room, sharing musical stories with his mates and picking up
drumming tips from Cyril ‘The Squirrel’ Wilson. Cares were few, and Decca knew that as
soon as the day’s work was over, there was a drum kit waiting for him at home, and
weekend performances to be offered to an adoring public.
Those earliest times of his professional career in music are stamped indelibly on his
memory: sometimes in sepia, sometimes in black and white, but always evoked with
affection. Ahead of him lay happy years of work in his chosen field, the adulation of fans
worldwide, and musical and social opportunities beyond the dreams of so many people
from his background. In music – as in life – the road has been rocky at times (and the
tour bus has not always been the most salubrious). But with a garrulous personality, a
twinkle in his eye and stunning percussive talent, the little drummer boy has wielded his
two magic wands, embraced life’s moments of serendipity and left us all with a legacy of
pleasure on which to reflect.
‘Well, I’ve been lucky,’ he concludes modestly. ‘The drums have always been me
constant. It’s always been about rhythm – that’s what’s driven me forward. Punk
quickened the time signature a bit, but the beat’s always been there, and it’s given shape
to everything I’ve done. That’s not to say I’ve always lived me life in 4/4 time, like.’
*
Last orders, Decca. We click open our final cans, and I ask the closing question:
‘So, Decca: you waded in at the deep end, but kept afloat as you swam through the
punk years, the jet set partying, and the peaks and troughs of a life lived in the fast lane.
Tell me it’s all been worthwhile.’
‘Having a good memory is both a bonus and a curse,’ he replies. ‘I remember all the
highlights, but there’s a lot of negative stuff lingering as well. But overall, yeah, if I died
tomorrow, I’d have to say that I’d be happy to have done everything I’ve done in me life.
Musically and socially, I hope I’ve managed to put on a good show.’
As Charlie Harper once said, ‘Decca, you’re a show unto yourself.’
.
EPILOGUE
Once upon a time, on a chilly, September morning, I was standing next to Decca Wade in
the vocal booth of a recording studio in the North East of England, belting out the backing
vocals to a song. This in itself was not especially noteworthy, except that the song we
were singing was in Japanese, a language neither of us speaks or understands. Between
takes, I pondered that this would easily have entered my Top Ten Bizarre Events of All
Time, but for Decca, it would barely have scraped into his Top Thousand –or Top Million,
for that matter–Surreal Moments. The other five lads helping out on mob vocals had
come equipped with throat lozenges and mineral water; Decca had fetched a 16-pack of
lager. Our scarcely controlled excitement at singing on an album was countered by
Decca’s seasoned, old-hand’s approach to studio work: just another day doing the job he
loves in the place he loves. And drinking lager. And cracking gags. Jaysus, the gags.
So began our journey. The studio in question was Fred Purser’s Trinity Heights in
Newcastle, and the album we were recording was The Toy Dolls’ The Album After the
Last One. After the Japanese song, Decca went out to sit on the back patio for a while.
The sun came out, and between spurts of work we all kicked back, ate our sandwiches
and talked the sort of bollocks folk talk in these situations. Time ticked by, and clusters of
us were called in by Olga to record specific fragments, before being allowed out the back
again.
By 4.00 that afternoon, Decca was onto his sixteenth and final can, when he was
surprised to be singled out by Olga to record a clapping track on a song to which, at that
point, the lead vocal had not yet been added. Decca staggered into the booth and,
together with a couple of the other lads, clapped a beat-perfect accompaniment to the
final two choruses of the selected song, while the rest of us watched in admiration from
the control room. He remained blissfully unaware of the significance of his action.
*
On 19 March 2012, two related events took place. The Album After the Last One was
released by Secret Records, and Decca was able to scan the track-list on the back of his
CD and read Track 12: ‘Decca’s Drinkin’ Dilemma’. It was Olga’s tribute – light-hearted,
but tinged with the concern of a loyal friend – to Decca and his struggle with the demon
bottle. Its positioning in the running-order – in the key slot just before the traditional
‘Outro’ track – spoke volumes of Olga’s respect for the little drummer boy who had
provided so much inspiration, help and advice in the early stages of Olga’s own career.
The same day, a Newcastle-based graphics wizard, Mick McNeil, identifying himself
only as Toonarama, revealed his animated video of ‘Decca’s Drinkin’ Dilemma’, which he
had developed with Olga’s input and blessing, completed and kept under wraps until the
agreed release date. Keep an eye out for it on YouTube and elsewhere – it sums up so
much of what I hope this book has managed to convey about the boisterous, the
distressing and the tender edges to Decca’s personality.
It’s debatable whether the local councils in South Shields or Jarrow will ever see fit to
erect a blue plaque to mark the career of this loveable rogue. If they don’t, they’ll be
failing to recognise the decades of pleasure Decca Wade has given to audiences at a
local, national and international level, his peerless percussive ear and intuitive
musicianship, and the joy and tears of laughter he’s provided for generations of his
friends across the world.
But maybe, with a dedicated song, a video of that song, his Cozy Powell tribute single,
the chance of a tour in his own name and honour, some albums to work on, and now a
book out there in the public domain, he’ll have several more reasons to smile as he looks
back on his life and times as a legendary drinker, consummate party animal and drummer
extraordinaire: the little fella with two magic wands and a heart of gold.
God bless you, Li’l Man Wade.
.
.
.
This revised edition published in 2014 by Urbane Publications Ltd
20 St Nicholas Gardens, Rochester
Kent ME2 3NT
First published in 2013 by
Ardra Press
PO Box 78
Cottingham
HU16 4WT
United Kingdom
www.ardrapress.co.uk
© Ronan Fiztsimons 2013, 2014
The right of Ronan Fiztsimons to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
SBN: 978-1-909273-43-6
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, translated, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
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