times and played it to all our friends, and also, and especially, to people we didn’t like. We were In Business. We were best friends. It was very exciting, but we began to separate from the lives we’d lived before. All our friends were either unable to relate to what we were so excited about, or slightly envious. We went up to Manchester Square to meet everyone at EMI. There were a lot of people to meet: a product manager, a press lady, a TV promotions man, a radio plugger, lots of people behind desks and fax machines, the marketing department, the head of the label, the head of international sales, the chairman. It was a five-storey office building full of people who worked for us.
We still had to make a video. Balfe wanted to do something weird. He said, ‘Lets build a really mental flashing doughnut and wobble it around in the dark. It’ll be brilliant.’
When we got to Pinewood Film Studios, the light wasn’t quite as mental as we’d been led to believe it would be. It was a bunch of neon hoops. There were problems with wobbling it, too. It flashed quite nicely, though. There were dozens of people running around, speaking into walkie-talkies, smoking and sipping coffee out of plastic cups. It was very cold on the hangar-sized set, but glamorous women strutted around saying ‘OK, darling?’ and kissing everybody, even the scary looking light wobblers and grumpy focus pullers. There was make-up, there was hair, there was wardrobe, there was catering, cameras, playback, riggers, grips, lampies, sparkies, producers, commissioners, runners and drivers. No wonder film stars have trouble with the real world. This seemed like a much nicer place. All that fuss over the song we’d written before we went home for the Christmas holidays a year ago, the chords I’d sat up in bed playing when I should have been reading eighteenth-century French literature.
Daytime radio would have trouble with the word ‘high’, they said at the label. Really it was just too slow and too indie and not quite brilliant enough for daytime radio. It got played a bit in the evenings, on Mark Goodier’s show, and the BBC offered us a session at Maida Vale.
Graham wasn’t phased about going to the BBC. He’d been on Blue Peter , twice, playing his clarinet. Dave’s dad had worked at Maida Vale and Damon took everything in his stride. The BBC reminded me a bit of college. They do things properly at the BBC and Maida Vale was even more impressive than Battery, a titanic complex of sound studios, from huge rooms for recording orchestras to little voiceover cubicles. It’s steeped in history, and you couldn’t move for sitting somewhere Jimi Hendrix had sat, or standing where a Beatle had farted. It’s quite serious at the Beeb. I suppose it has to be. Everyone there knew exactly what they were doing. The staff are all cherry-picked from the best of the best, and it was all so illustrious it made me want to scream. It’s hard to rebel against. You can’t really have a career in music unless you can interface successfully with the BBC, and you sort of have to do it on the BBC’s terms, which are reasonable enough. You’ve just got to do what you do; if enough people like it, pretty soon they’re knocking on your door.
Food really liked ‘There’s No Other Way’, one of the new songs we recorded on that session. We all thought it was a B-side but were pleased they were nice about something. Most radio is broadcast live. It’s more exciting to do things live, but it does take a while to get the hang of talking on the radio. There are only really two rules in broadcasting: no swearing and no silence. Silence does not broadcast well. People who haven’t been on the radio very much tend to think that the few words they are about to say are what they’re going to be remembered for, and they tie themselves up in knots trying to say too much. In my experience no one can remember much about what I’ve said on the radio, just odd lines
We still had to make a video. Balfe wanted to do something weird. He said, ‘Lets build a really mental flashing doughnut and wobble it around in the dark. It’ll be brilliant.’
When we got to Pinewood Film Studios, the light wasn’t quite as mental as we’d been led to believe it would be. It was a bunch of neon hoops. There were problems with wobbling it, too. It flashed quite nicely, though. There were dozens of people running around, speaking into walkie-talkies, smoking and sipping coffee out of plastic cups. It was very cold on the hangar-sized set, but glamorous women strutted around saying ‘OK, darling?’ and kissing everybody, even the scary looking light wobblers and grumpy focus pullers. There was make-up, there was hair, there was wardrobe, there was catering, cameras, playback, riggers, grips, lampies, sparkies, producers, commissioners, runners and drivers. No wonder film stars have trouble with the real world. This seemed like a much nicer place. All that fuss over the song we’d written before we went home for the Christmas holidays a year ago, the chords I’d sat up in bed playing when I should have been reading eighteenth-century French literature.
Daytime radio would have trouble with the word ‘high’, they said at the label. Really it was just too slow and too indie and not quite brilliant enough for daytime radio. It got played a bit in the evenings, on Mark Goodier’s show, and the BBC offered us a session at Maida Vale.
Graham wasn’t phased about going to the BBC. He’d been on Blue Peter , twice, playing his clarinet. Dave’s dad had worked at Maida Vale and Damon took everything in his stride. The BBC reminded me a bit of college. They do things properly at the BBC and Maida Vale was even more impressive than Battery, a titanic complex of sound studios, from huge rooms for recording orchestras to little voiceover cubicles. It’s steeped in history, and you couldn’t move for sitting somewhere Jimi Hendrix had sat, or standing where a Beatle had farted. It’s quite serious at the Beeb. I suppose it has to be. Everyone there knew exactly what they were doing. The staff are all cherry-picked from the best of the best, and it was all so illustrious it made me want to scream. It’s hard to rebel against. You can’t really have a career in music unless you can interface successfully with the BBC, and you sort of have to do it on the BBC’s terms, which are reasonable enough. You’ve just got to do what you do; if enough people like it, pretty soon they’re knocking on your door.
Food really liked ‘There’s No Other Way’, one of the new songs we recorded on that session. We all thought it was a B-side but were pleased they were nice about something. Most radio is broadcast live. It’s more exciting to do things live, but it does take a while to get the hang of talking on the radio. There are only really two rules in broadcasting: no swearing and no silence. Silence does not broadcast well. People who haven’t been on the radio very much tend to think that the few words they are about to say are what they’re going to be remembered for, and they tie themselves up in knots trying to say too much. In my experience no one can remember much about what I’ve said on the radio, just odd lines
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