Read Online Wild Boy by Andy Taylor - Free Book Online
Authors: Andy Taylor
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skintight Lycra leggings or miniskirts, just like Hot Gossip, the sexy dance troupe from
The Kenny Everett Show.
Giovanna caused a stir by shaving her head bald like a character from
Star Trek,
which was a very bold thing for a girl to do in the eighties. The Rum Runner was very exclusive—the doormen would make customers line up outside the entrance, and then they would deliberately turn away anyone who didn’t look cool enough to be let in. This just made everybody else all the more desperate to come inside! Nick was a great DJ. He used to work in the club, and he really knew how to get people onto the dance floor.
I soon discovered that lots of local celebrities liked to party at the Rum Runner, including the footballer Frank Worthington, who played for Leicester City and who lived in a Holiday Inn, which was considered the height of luxury at the time. We’d sometimes go off to the Holiday Inn for late-night boozing sessions. Roy Wood from Wizard was another regular at the Rum Runner, and all the characters from Black Sabbath would hang out there, too—so there used to be some pretty full-on partying.
We would stay up until six in the morning in a little drinking posse at the back of the club after it closed. It didn’t take much to encourage us. I was known for being very loud and for having hollow legs when it came to drinking. Nick could drink copious amounts of champagne (which meant Roger and I had to collect even more glasses). John, in contrast, used to get drunk on two pints of beer, and he’d lose his spectacles and walk into walls!
SO my first memories of life in Birmingham aren’t just about the band but everything that went with it. It was like walking into this ready-made rock-and-roll world that was filled with excitement. What we desperately needed, however, was a front man, so for our first big task we auditioned a singer named Guy Oliver Watts. He was a lovely bloke and stayed around for a couple of weeks, but we just didn’t click. I was flattered when the other guys asked me what I thought of him—because I was still very much the new boy myself and it showed they valued my opinion—but I told them I didn’t think Guy was right for us. We sent him packing, which seemed a bit brutal at the time, but it was part of the process of elimination that we needed to go through in order to form a perfect band. We did some demo material on which John wrote some lyrics and I sung some vocals, just to have some singing on our music, but it wasn’t very productive.
Then one of the barmaids told Mike Berrow that she shared a flat with a guy who had sung in a band and he had written a lot of songs.
“He could be just what you are looking for,” she said, so Mike arranged for him to come down to the club one afternoon.
So there we all were, in the Rum Runner, when in walked this tall, good-looking guy with long legs and lots of confidence.
“Hello, I’m Simon Le Bon,” he said in a Southern accent.
The first thing I thought was,
Fuck me—he looks just like Elvis!
He reminded everyone of a young Presley because he still had a lot of boyish puppy fat around his face . . . You knew straightaway that he would be a hit with the girls. The only slightly unfortunate thing was that he was wearing skintight pink leopard-print trousers! The flashy pants had been Simon’s way of making a grand entrance, and I can assure you that all the stories that have been repeated over the years about how outrageous he looked are true. He was perfect, our own ready-made Elvis (albeit one who looked like he’d been to the chip shop a few times)!
Simon explained that he’d been in a punk band called Dog Days when he was seventeen. He’d also done a bit of singing with seventies pub bands. He sang us a few numbers and we were impressed. But most important of all, we discovered he could write lyrics. Simon brought along an A5-sized book with a paisley pattern on the cover, which was packed with his own handwritten
The Kenny Everett Show.
Giovanna caused a stir by shaving her head bald like a character from
Star Trek,
which was a very bold thing for a girl to do in the eighties. The Rum Runner was very exclusive—the doormen would make customers line up outside the entrance, and then they would deliberately turn away anyone who didn’t look cool enough to be let in. This just made everybody else all the more desperate to come inside! Nick was a great DJ. He used to work in the club, and he really knew how to get people onto the dance floor.
I soon discovered that lots of local celebrities liked to party at the Rum Runner, including the footballer Frank Worthington, who played for Leicester City and who lived in a Holiday Inn, which was considered the height of luxury at the time. We’d sometimes go off to the Holiday Inn for late-night boozing sessions. Roy Wood from Wizard was another regular at the Rum Runner, and all the characters from Black Sabbath would hang out there, too—so there used to be some pretty full-on partying.
We would stay up until six in the morning in a little drinking posse at the back of the club after it closed. It didn’t take much to encourage us. I was known for being very loud and for having hollow legs when it came to drinking. Nick could drink copious amounts of champagne (which meant Roger and I had to collect even more glasses). John, in contrast, used to get drunk on two pints of beer, and he’d lose his spectacles and walk into walls!
SO my first memories of life in Birmingham aren’t just about the band but everything that went with it. It was like walking into this ready-made rock-and-roll world that was filled with excitement. What we desperately needed, however, was a front man, so for our first big task we auditioned a singer named Guy Oliver Watts. He was a lovely bloke and stayed around for a couple of weeks, but we just didn’t click. I was flattered when the other guys asked me what I thought of him—because I was still very much the new boy myself and it showed they valued my opinion—but I told them I didn’t think Guy was right for us. We sent him packing, which seemed a bit brutal at the time, but it was part of the process of elimination that we needed to go through in order to form a perfect band. We did some demo material on which John wrote some lyrics and I sung some vocals, just to have some singing on our music, but it wasn’t very productive.
Then one of the barmaids told Mike Berrow that she shared a flat with a guy who had sung in a band and he had written a lot of songs.
“He could be just what you are looking for,” she said, so Mike arranged for him to come down to the club one afternoon.
So there we all were, in the Rum Runner, when in walked this tall, good-looking guy with long legs and lots of confidence.
“Hello, I’m Simon Le Bon,” he said in a Southern accent.
The first thing I thought was,
Fuck me—he looks just like Elvis!
He reminded everyone of a young Presley because he still had a lot of boyish puppy fat around his face . . . You knew straightaway that he would be a hit with the girls. The only slightly unfortunate thing was that he was wearing skintight pink leopard-print trousers! The flashy pants had been Simon’s way of making a grand entrance, and I can assure you that all the stories that have been repeated over the years about how outrageous he looked are true. He was perfect, our own ready-made Elvis (albeit one who looked like he’d been to the chip shop a few times)!
Simon explained that he’d been in a punk band called Dog Days when he was seventeen. He’d also done a bit of singing with seventies pub bands. He sang us a few numbers and we were impressed. But most important of all, we discovered he could write lyrics. Simon brought along an A5-sized book with a paisley pattern on the cover, which was packed with his own handwritten
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