DAVID BOWIE

ROKSNAPS #8 SMILE AND SAY ‘WAVIS!’

/ Alikivi

Roksnaps are photograph’s taken by fans which captured the atmosphere of concerts in the North East during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Already posted are fan pix of Motorhead, Fist, Penetration, The Damned, Whitesnake, Tygers of Pan Tang and much more.

Gig t-shirt’s, programme’s and autographs were hunted down to collect as souvenirs – and some people took photograph’s of meeting their musical heroes.

One fan who kept his pics and shared them on the blog is Wavis O’Shave…

On some days when I got bored I’d pop out to see visiting music celebs for a bit of fun and settle for having a nice cup of tea with them and take a snap – not a ginger one. Here’s a few I managed to find.

The punkies! I’ve popped out and met Iggy Pop a few times – once walked past him on the Portobello Road, carried on walking for 500’ and thought’ That’s Iggy! before whizzing after him.

Here he is in the pic above signing stuff for fans before he suddenly exploded and ripped up a fan’s album.

Here’s a young Toyah below – she was living in a warehouse in Battersea and sleeping in a coffin at the time. She once asked me to record one of my songs with her!

A bit of rock next – that looks like the world’s thinnest man, Lynott innit?

‘Phil, can you get me in the show tonight?’ ‘I can’t, it’s sold out.’ ‘I know, that’s why I’m asking you!’ He did though, bless him. All I had to do was let the security on the door know that I knew the number of his hotel room.

After standing at the wrong arrivals at the airport and letting David silently walk past me, after a car chase I finally caught up with Bowie at his hotel where he gave me the scoop – ‘Life on Mars is about parallel dimensions’.

He signed my collectors original Space Oddity album – shamefully sold for £50 in 1985. Imagine its value now. Here’s a pic from his show that night.

The Queenies. Met them twice. This pic is from Sunderland Locarno a while before they had ‘made it’, six years later in 1980 I saw them at a hotel and Freddie kept calling me ‘Dear.’

I’d gotten hassle from hotel security as I was not a paying guest. I told Roger but all he did was squeak like a mouse!

Excuse me while my knees weaken. It’s Debbie whom I’ve met twice. Very pretty lass. I was allowed permission for the pix from Chris who had to ask her first after promising them I wouldn’t sell them – they were extremely fussy about who should have free gratis pix of Debs and were signed up to exclusive photographers for that purpose.

I’ve met dozens of ‘big names’ accumulating dozens of pix and autographs – that’s wot you do, yeah? and sadly over the decades losing or misplacing 99.9 percent of them.

All pix copyright of O’Shave.

Alikivi   December 2020.

BURNING ON THE INSIDE with Bill Newton former guitarist of ‘80s post punk band SILENT SCREAM

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Silent Scream were very much influenced by what was going on around us. There was so much fantastic music in the late ’70s and early ’80s: punk, post-punk, new wave, futurism, new romanticism, Bowie’s Berlin stuff and really fresh sounding early hip-hop and disco-pop such as Grandmaster Flash and Was (Not Was).

We all loved bands like The Only Ones, The Scars, Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, Wah! Heat, Japan and The Associates.

Silent Scream were alive between ‘80-82. The line up was Stephen ‘Stesh’ Miller (vocals) Steve Newton (bass) Steve Bell (drums 80-81) Bobby Greenland (drums 81-82) and Bill Newton (guitar)…..

There was a vibrant music scene in Newcastle during the early ’80s with some excellent bands, like Deda, Rival Savages and Treatment Room. I’m surprised things didn’t explode like it did in Manchester and Liverpool.

Silent Scream did attract quite a following as we were very much part of the developing new romantic/futurist scene.

People came to see us to hang out, pose and be seen. The audience were an intrinsic part of the movement and were as important as the bands at that time.

When did you start gigging ? 

Around 1980 I had been playing guitar in a band with my brother, Steve on bass, and a friend from school, Steve Bell on drums. I met Stesh at a Chelsea punk gig in Newcastle and decided to form a band there and then.

I remember that Silent Scream had this idea of wanting to be elusive and mysterious, so we only played a small handful of gigs between ‘80-81.

We played our debut at Newcastle University and I’m ashamed to admit I don’t remember much about this apart from being really nervous.

Bauhaus had just played a storming gig at the same venue and I remember thinking, ‘How the f*** are we supposed to follow that?’

We played The Cooperage, where we were awful, Balmbras in The Bigg Market, Newcastle, twice where we were pretty good, and Rumours in Sunderland which I thought was our best gig mainly due to a sterling performance by Steve Bell on drums.

We also travelled to London to play at the renowned Moonlight Club in Hampstead as part of a showcase of North East bands. We shared the bill with Zap! and Red Performance.

Stesh was sadly lost to us some years ago. He was such a creative talent. He could turn his hand to anything and was acclaimed as an influential DJ in Newcastle after Silent Scream split up.

There was also talk of us supporting The Psychedelic Furs at Newcastle Mayfair on their 1980 album tour but unfortunately this fell through.

Who were your influences in music ? Was there a defining moment when you said ‘I want to do that’ ?

Seeing Bowie perform Starman on Top of the Pops in 1972 made me want to be a musician. I’d been playing guitar pretty badly from the age of 13.

Punk exploded when I was 15 and gave me that DIY ‘you-don’t-need-to-be-Carlos Santana’ confidence to explore the guitar with a different mind set.

I was massively influenced by the spiky, staccato energies of John McGeoch, Keith Levene, Will Sergeant, Wire, Gang of Four etc.

Hearing Magazine’s Shot by Both Sides in 1978 was a pretty defining moment, and my favorite album of all time is Never Mind the Bollocks.

Did the band have a manager ?

We were managed by Dave Baird who was a guiding influence. He arranged gigs, studio time, photo shoots etc. Dave is still in the business today producing new music.

What were your experiences of recording ? 

Silent Scream recorded two demos. The first at Impulse Studios in Wallsend in 1980 with Steve Bell on drums. The cost of this would have been laughably cheap by today’s standards and we were so young and naïve.

I don’t think we really knew what we were doing or how to get the most out of the experience.

Stesh had already recorded a marvellous single, I Don’t Wanna Know, with his previous band, The Voice Of The Puppets so he had a bit of savvy. He was also a little bit older than the rest of us so we looked up to him.

The track list of the first demo was Deadline, Fate, All the Promise, Thin Ice, Trapped and Pantomime. Copies have mysteriously disappeared over the years, and I haven’t heard it in ages. Maybe someone reading this will have a copy.

Our second demo was recorded at Guardian Studios in Pity Me, County Durham over two days in October 1981 with Terry Gavaghan as producer. Bobby was drumming at this point and three songs were recorded. This became known simply as EP. The tracks are The Maze, Drown and Join Together.

Did you get any press or appear on radio ?

Our recorded material and gigs were well reviewed in the local press, and I remember we featured in an early edition of i-D magazine. The demo was sent to various labels and was picked up by The Shadows guitarist, Bruce Welch, who loved our sound.

We also had interest from various record labels. Unfortunately, before we could even negotiate any kind of deal we had split up.

What are you doing now and are you still involved with music ? 

I am writing and recording under the name Psykobilly and have recorded a number of songs at Smiley Barnard’s Sunshine Corner Studios. The man himself plays drums, bass and produces.

Smiley is, among others, ex-Joe Strummers Mescaleros and is currently drumming with The Alarm and Archive.

I’ve released a single Leave It All Behind and a low key, lo-fi EP Social Media Influenza on all major digital platforms. I’m releasing my first album, with a working title of Black Candle in early 2020.

It’s taken a long time for me to do this on my own as I don’t have much confidence in my singing voice and have produced, mixed and engineered over half of the album independently, learning on the go really.

I try to write in a way that doesn’t make me easily pigeonholed or categorized. It’s broadly dark pop, but a mix of ballads, rock ‘n roll and ‘80s influenced synth pop.

I’m lucky to have the very talented Trevor Johnson working with me. Trevor has produced official videos for the songs, and we like to think of our project as a way of marrying sound and image in a deeper, kind of dark cinematic style.

Trevor is influenced by the Situationist movement. His visuals are an important part of my work as they bring new and challenging perspectives to the soundscape.

You can watch all of the official Silent Scream and available Psykobilly videos on You Tube. French label, The Evil Has Landed, is in the process of releasing the Silent Scream EP on vinyl although I think copies might be pretty rare. Worth checking on Discogs. The demo is also available digitally on Bandcamp

The first track on the EP, The Maze, is going to be included on the marvellous compilation album series Killed by Deathrock Vol. 3 on the Sacred Bones label based in New York, USA.

There has always been an appetite for lost, hard to find and enigmatic stuff that came out in the post-punk explosion, way before the invention of smartphones and social media.

The EP is pretty widely available on various YouTube channels and has almost 10,000 views.

These days of course, everything is captured and can be stored for posterity. But in 1981 it was a different story.

Thank God photos and footage were taken and kept, and good people like yourself Gary are archiving some of these independent treasures from almost 40 years ago.

Interview by Gary Alikivi    October 2019.

DIRECT ACTION – with TV/Media director & producer Chris Cowey.

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On Tyne Tees programme ‘Check it Out’ broadcast in 1979, presenters Chris Cowey and Lynn Spencer interviewed punk band Public Image Limited featuring ex Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten (Lydon). The piece also featured Mond Cowie from Angelic Upstarts….

Firstly, Mond Cowie isn’t related to me, his name is the rich branch of the family, like Sir Tom, with an ie rather than my Durham pit yakker spelling of ey. Mond is a top bloke and a damn good guitar player. Angelic Upstarts were an underrated band I reckon.

The infamous PIL chat was my first live studio interview and a real baptism of fire. I was and remain a big fan of Lydon and his music. The whole pantomime was their way of getting themselves noticed and being in the press, which sells records.

The programme of course was instrumental, even complicit, and the interview with Mond was designed to wind them up.

I was, as you can tell from the clip, just a teenager and thought I was going to have the shortest TV career ever, but a lot of people realised that and sympathised with me.

I was kind of numbed by the whole thing. But a sort of survival instinct kicks in, the fact that viewers and press backed me made me feel better, but I still would rather have had a proper discussion, rather than a childish strop.

My memory of the show is that the band had got themselves really relaxed by the time the studio session started, and they were ready to do their usual argumentative schtick but were out manoeuvred this time.

The point of the interview, which gets lost in the aggro, was that they’d just brought out their Metal Box album, which was a set of 12-inch singles in an elaborate film-tin type of packaging.

It was hugely expensive, and very designer chic for someone who was supposed to be so street, anyway everyone won, they sold records, the Check It Out show was on the map, and I did about seven series of it.

It was a combination of Check It Out and the music show Alright Now that prompted Channel 4 to commission The Tube, which of course PIL appeared on too, and I had a fabulous five years making the show.

Alright Now, Check it Out, The Tube – why did the North East have a reputation to produce good music shows ?

Tyne-Tees already did some good old entertainment shows before my time, like Geordie Scene or What Fettle, but they were obsessed about their ‘Geordieness’. The Tube and all those shows you mentioned really wasn’t, it was all about good music, because we were music obsessed.

It also had a great blend of old school time served TV people, blended with new people with fresh ideas, and a kind of irreverence which all blended and came out in those shows.

Having said that it was really important that it came from the North-East because of the passion and the swagger and the total commitment.

It’s not just that Geordies like showing off – although they undoubtedly DO! – it’s because the history and attitude of the region can be really inspiring, creative and hugely fun.

It really breaks my heart to see what’s happened, not only to Tyne Tees, but a load of gigs and venues, clubs and pubs across the whole area. I have an unshakable belief that it will rise again though…. don’t get me started though!

When did you first get interested in music and what was your first TV break ?

I was always obsessed with music and did school discos in the hall every lunchtime. When I was 17 and doing my A-levels I lied about my age and got a couple of jobs DJ’ing in nightclubs, the biggest of which was The Mecca in Sunderland.

It was a great learning curve for me, with a vast range of music from funk to metal. There were some amazing live bands too, Ian Gillan, Tom Robinson, Crown Heights Affair – check them out if it’s before your time!

There was live music just about every night I worked, I was bitten by the live music thing. I was also into Drama/Theatre/acting which led to my TV break, I guess.

My mentor was Malcolm Gerrie, who a lot of people will remember from his Tyne-Tees days. He’d been my English and Drama teacher from my Comprehensive school, and he suggested I audition for Check It Out.

A lot of the same gang of music fans were the nucleus of Check It Out, Alright Now, The Tube, TX45. Razzmatazz, production teams.

It was a real blend of old school Tyne-Tees TV expertise and young whippersnappers like me. That’s how it worked so well, we had a good run, but I could see it was going to dry up, so I bailed just before The Tube ended, because I knew it was going to be the last series.

Is entertainment in your family ?

My family all worked down coal mines, and some in breweries! I was very lucky that I had an older sister and brother who bombarded me with pop and rock music from an early age.

Also, my school was a real proper comprehensive that did ‘Tommy’ and ‘Stardust rather than Shakespeare or Gilbert & Sullivan. My school was amazing, great teachers, a radio station, school discos, drama, music, it really helped to shape my future. Just a regular comprehensive in a little County Durham former mining village. I loved Ryhope… I still miss it.

Lately I’ve interviewed North East bands Tygers of Pan Tang and White Heat and soon will be chatting to Dave Woods (Impulse Studio/Neat records). Did you come across any of them ?

Yeah, I knew all that bunch. They really did create a strong identity for the Newcastle music landscape. The city is world renowned as a major centre for good old fashioned rock’n’roll, and there’s nowt wrong with that.

Dave Woods is a North East music legend, we made many a film and studio show with his bands….a film about Venom is a fond memory. He was a really important figure in Newcastle’s rich musical history and heritage, and should be very proud of his achievements.

What differences did you find working at Tyne Tees then going to Top of the Pops, and how did that job come about ?

The BBC came and poached me to take over Top of the Pops after I made a C4 show called The White Room, which was like a stripped-down version of The Tube in some respects.

It wasn’t trying to re-create The Tube though, it was much more how I thought Top of the Pops should be if it wasn’t so weighed down by its own traditions.

So, when I got to the BBC as Executive Producer and director of the world’s biggest music show, I gave it a massive kick up the jaxi, and it worked.

It went from a show on the verge of being axed, to a huge national and international success, and I didn’t have any of my mates with me for once, except Big Clive.

It was great fun and I’m really proud of what I achieved there. I loved working at the BBC too. Massively different in many ways from Tyne-Tees, but I put together a diverse production team again, and made it a happy show, which is critical I think.

I did it for six years, but the BBC’s ambitions for the show weren’t the same as mine, so we parted company. The show sadly died after my successor turned it into a kids show again!

Was there a magic moment during your career when you had the feeling that ‘This is where I should be’ ?

Yeah, loads of times! Doing Top of the Pops, The Brit Awards, Glastonbury, The Tube, The White Room…. when there’s an amazing talent on stage, and I’m directing a load of cameras, having booked the act and devised the whole shebang….I get huge job satisfaction from that. I get paid for doing something that it’s a privilege to be involved in. I’m a very lucky lad.

Can you think of a couple of memorable moments in your career and also a nightmare situation where things went wrong ?  Memorable moments? SO many. The Foo Fighters, working with David Bowie, particularly the banter we had in New York. Or freaking Beyoncé out by taking a Concorde trip to see her.

I could go on for hours with stories and bore you to death. Not all good though, I had a bit of a tiff with George Michael, told Ricky Martin to F**k Off with his Persian Rug, and many a drinking session that seemed like a good idea at the time.

What are you doing now Chris ?

I’m still doing the same thing really, music, events, tv. The business has changed radically in my time, and I’ve diversified into all sorts of areas.

A lot of things go straight to Facebook or YouTube these days, but I’m still keen on regular broadcast tv, both here in the UK but also around the world, and there’s always something in development.

I’ve even directed video games and London West-End theatre, hi-tech, 3-D, holograms, all sorts really.I love new challenges and to keep learning new skills.

Of course, my heaven would be to make a new music show, so watch this space!

For further information contact Chris at    http://www.chriscowey.tv

Interview by Gary Alikivi    September 2019.