PASCAL's
KEVIN COYNE HOME PAGE 
STEVE BULL REMINISCES...
Steve Bull played keyboards with Kevin Coyne in the 80s. He played
on Pointing the Finger and Politicz (he wrote half of the songs of the album).
In septembre 2003, he joined the Kevin Coyne Web Group and delighted everyone
with his memories.
I was a classically trained pianist,from a jazz background.I had played in a few bands with the fantastic bass player Steve Lamb, who is from the same town as me, we had a great jazz-rock band called 'First Moves'. Brian Godding asked Steve to join GLS, Kevin saw GLS playing in London and would sing with them sometimes. Eventually they sort of became his band and they did a few tours ,in-between tours GLS (Godding, Lamb, Sheen) asked me to join and we did some gigs, radio shows for the BBC, and recording at Alvic Studios which became 'Pointing the Finger'.
Kevin was always changing his musicians, and there was a lot of talent (too much sometimes!!) in the Coyne, Godding, Lamb, Sheen line up, lots of drinking and therefore rows! Then I recall Kevin hired John Etheridge on guitar, who was another very gifted musician but possibly with problems of his own.
Kevins road manager at the time was a guy called Ian Francis, a very influencial guru-like figure. Ian had set up a squat (free housing commune) in Kennington, south London. Living here amongst drug dealers, car thieves, glamour models, city workers were some fine Musicians/artists including Ian Dury and some of his band, another band called `The Quireboys` and myself, Steve Lamb, Dave Wilson who was our percussionist with First Moves (and later became Kevin's drummer) and an amazing Parkeresque sax player called Martin Normington (also from First Moves)
I remember one evening.Ian Francis, Kevin and I were drinking Youngs bitter in Kevin's favourite pub 'The Plough' which was across the road from his house in Wandsworth. He was due to drive to Germany the next morning to play and compere the Schuttorf open-air festival, and they asked me if I wanted to go with them! Absolutely I said, so we borrowed Dave Wilson's car and off we went.
Well,what a gig! Frank Zappa was headlining, Simple Minds, Stray Cats, Kid Creole amongst others. We stayed in the same hotel as Simple Minds. They were very young then and had just recorded the brilliant New gold Dream album.They were nice guys, even asking if I wanted to go to Amsterdam for the day with them ,but I said no cause there would have been 7 in the car. I remember they admired Kevin ,he asked them how much they were being paid by the record company '£150 a week' said Jim Kerr proudly. 'The same as a well paid dustman' (rubbish-collector) replied Kevin.The Simple Minds crew had a laugh about that one!!
Anyhow, sorry for rambling on, but these memories keep coming back now. Kevin asked me if I wanted to play a few songs with him, so I borrowed a couple of keyboards off one of the support bands, and he had his acoustic guitar (a Guild for all you guitar freaks!), we took to the stage,and I was petrified, I was quite young at the time. There were at least 70,000 people there ,you couldnt even see the back of the row of faces. He said hello to the crowd, and then, to me 'What shall we play Steve?'` !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So around that time I joined Kevin's band, and the line-up became Pete Kirtley gtr ,Steve Lamb bass, me keyboards, and the afore mentioned Dave Wilson drums.This was a fine line up,a great blend of youth and experience ,Kevin was inspired and performed with great passion and sense of theatre as we did many tours, England, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia etc.
So I must stop now but will come back if you like later to tell more stories of touring and how we made Politicz in 2 days with absolutely no preparation ,pre writing or rehearsal.!!
So,as I was saying, Kevins approach to recording albums was ahead of his time! Most bands then would run up large debts with the record companies,recording in overpriced studios for weeks and months. Kevin had done a bit of that with Virgin ,I believe he was the second artist they signed (the first being Mike Oldfield-Tubular bells,you may have heard it?!!).So after that he was looking for a deal where he had more control. He got a good advance from Cherry Red for both Pointing and Politicz but kept the recording expenses to a minimum, and payed off his mortgage on his house with the change!
With
Pointing the Finger, I believe he got the balance right.We recorded
it in Alvic Studios in West Kensington,which was a good little low budget
studio, only 16 track analog, but we had recorded there before and we knew
they had a brilliant young engineer called Mike Gregovitch who recorded it
superbly. Nothing was spent on the mixing which could have been better but
the end result was good enough. The songs also were well developed, Brian
Godding had written a lot of the music and we had played some of it instrumentaly
with GLS. Kevin also had some songs he had been working on for a while so
the end result was very strong.
Also there was a great pub across the road,which used to be called The Nashville, and many famous bands, especially punk bands like The Sex Pistols had performed there, so the whole vibe was good.
I used to like recording in London because there was a vibrancy and intensity about the city and the people, so even when you had a break, or were travelling to and from the studio, it became part of the feel of the project.
The musicians on that album were excellent and it was a pleasure and an honour for me to be able to work with them. I learnt so much from Brian Godding, who to me is a genius. Some of the sounds he produced from little melos tape echo boxes, and old effects pedals he had used with `Blossom Toes` were tremendous. He also knew his stuff as far as production technique and his huge talent made Kevin raise his own standards as he was quite competitive! Dave Sheen was/is a very good musician,technically superb and he had worked with a lot of jazz musicians and you can hear that in his playing I think. He was great fun to work with and a character in his own right. Steve Lamb (bass) plays superbly on this album ,and just listen to the lovely tone of his fretless bass! This guitar was hand made by Steve Edgar who lived in our joint home town, Kendal, and it has an almost cello-like sound at times. Steve is a marvellous player, his technique is so good he can play funky thumb slapping style bass on a fretless and always be in tune! Remarkable.
So, for me,this was an excellent record. My favourite track probably being 'One Little Moment'.This is in 7/4 time which is very difficult to play,but the band made it seem effortless, and Kevin's lyrics and voice blended perfectly with the music.He had recorded a great album on very little money and everyone was happy, but then there was Politicz..................!!!!
So where were we?Ah yes, Pointing the finger was a low budget album,but
brilliant `A slice of life,and life isnt perfect` as Kevin put it. Politicz
on the other hand could have been much better from my point of view. I had
a little 4 track cassette `portastudio` in my bedroom at Oval Mansions and
I had written some songs for my publishers, the best of which were used by
my band at the time `The Japanese Blondes`. This band was about as far away
from Kevin Coyne as you could get, 2 blonde glamour models, me singing and
synthing and Berni Davis on guitar. It was very throw away synth/glamour/pop
with lots of hair gel and makeup,mainly on the guys!!
Anyhoo, somehow Kevin heard some of these and asked if he could use some of them, so I gave him a copy, even the ones that had been rejected by my band.Before I knew it we were out in the wilds of Surrey in a very cheap studio, and we had, as I recall, only 2 days to make the album. On one track the engineer even used the cassette demo as the master! I was very young, and honoured (and paid a session fee!) to be involved,but I felt a little embarassed as the tracks were nowhere near ready to go out on an important album. I would have written better tracks if I had been given the time, and I dont think Kevin was at his best, he went to the pub as we recorded the backing tracks, then came back and, slightly pissed,jammed along to the takes.
So,this couldve been a much better album, both sides, although I still think there are some good songs, especially the acoustic ones, I like the funflesh song the best.
Life certainly isn't perfect, but your bad days are not usually recorded for others to buy and listen to. Dont get me wrong, some of Kevins very best and strongest work is about his dark days, but these were very well recorded for posterity. Anyway, that was Politicz, there were some good and some dark days ahead on the road..............but thats the next posting.
[more to come!!]