Slaughterhouse 5

Family Business

by Enormous on August 20, 2009

It’s just so bally busy around Enormous Towers at the moment. What ho!

One hasn’t had time to think, let alone write some agreeable nonsense to keep you all entertained. To this end – keeping you entertained – I have rooted out a rather jolly recording of me and Nelson Galaxy singing Family Business, an old Slaughterhouse 5 song that Enormous are planning to re-record at some point in the near future.

This acoustic version was recorded live one windy Autumn afternoon a couple of years ago in the studio control- room during one of Nelson’s increasingly infrequent visits. The tambourine was played – rather spiffingly, if you ask me – by Graham Boffey, the Enormous drummer.

It’s a close duet with Nelson taking the lower part and me the higher one. You can easily tell who is who. I’m the taller and better looking one.

Pip-pip!
[podcast]http://www.enormousreloaded.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Family-Business.mp3[/podcast]

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Cherry Outburst

by Enormous on August 22, 2008

What is that constant ridiculous sound in the background of the Verve’s new single Love Is Noise? It sounds like a herd of geese. It makes Audrey bark like some kind of crazy female madman every time it is played on XFM. It ruins what is otherwise quite an average song.

Actually, I would rather like the Verve if they weren’t so . . . well, crap.

I met Richard Ashcroft once. Slaughterhouse 5 had just finished a disappointing gig at the Borderline in London and after we left the stage he ambled over to me at the noisy bar where I was busy drowning my sorrows. He slapped me hard on the back. ‘I’m Richard Ashcroft out of the Verve. I’m gonna give you some advice, and you’d do well to listen.’

‘Okay, I will,’ I told him, and got a solemn nod in return.

He bellowed in my ear: ‘Your guitar, that black Les Paul you’re using?’ – He had bad breath – ‘Wrong colour for your music, mate. You need to swap it for a cherry-sunburst seventies model, much more your style.’

I finished off my Guinness. ‘Thanks for telling me that,’ I shouted. And in calm, elegant italics, I added, I’ll see if I can find one.

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Golden Handshake

by Enormous on October 10, 2007

Once, after a meeting with our A+R man – the infamous punk rocker Gene October – we were whisked off to a busy London hostelry with drinking funds provided by our record company IRS Records. As I recall, I did not drink too much during that charming afternoon in Soho and neither did my fellow band members. It was a completely different state of affairs for our boozy A+R man though.

October got so drunk that he could hardly stand up. He had a gig later that evening with his band Chelsea and we felt slightly responsible for his inopportune condition. We were forced to escort him to the sound-check at 4pm, but we quickly made our excuses to his fellow musicians and beat a hasty retreat.

We refreshed ourselves at Nelson’s flat in Stepney and returned to the venue later that night to witness a show that was a spectacular disaster. October, who had evidently carried on drinking, was falling all over the small stage. He was constantly causing Marshall amplifier stacks to go crashing to the floor and was collapsing with expert precision all over the drum-kit, sending pieces of it flying towards the bemused audience. When he could manage to hold the microphone, the band launched into their hit Right to Work, but Gene replaced the lyric in the famous chorus with ‘F***ing c***s, f****ing c***s.’

The shocked onlookers were also treated to an impromptu cover version of the old rock’n’roll number Little Queenie during which the controversial frontman frightened Dave Graham (Slaughterhouse 5’s genius bass player) to death by clumsily trying to invade his rear end in a drunken public display of homosexual affection.

When the ‘gig’ was over, a young reporter from the NME tried to interview the singer and took the opportunity of asking him a few questions when he found himself standing next to October in the gent’s toilet. Unwilling or unable to provide any comprehensible verbal answers, Gene decided to urinate all over the poor man. For the reporter, it was an absurd embarrassment, but for Gene October it was all in a day’s work – and I must say, in my opinion, his comments were delivered with a sort of admirable simplicity.

About half an hour later, I rescued Tom, Slaughterhouse 5’s young and good looking guitar technician, from October’s evil clutches. He had promised our Tom a ‘party’ back at his place with beer and fat joints. I chased them down the street. ‘Leave him alone, Gene,’ I demanded.

‘No! He’sh coming wiv’ me,’ he shouted, his arm held tightly around the naïve boy’s waist.

‘He’s not,’ I said and pushed Tom into our van.

‘Look,’ October leaned on me and hissed into my face, covering me in punky spittle, ‘It’s not easy being me, you know.’

Is I look back now, I must say that I am slightly puzzled by the respect and admiration we had for the man – and still have to some extent – because to say that he could be difficult at times would be something of an understatement.

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Taxi for Mr Fantastic

by Enormous on September 22, 2007

Slaughterhouse 5 were playing a gig at Falmouth College of Art a few years ago when a man in the audience died.

Every night on tour, in the dressing room, just before we took to the stage, I would say to my fellow band members: ‘Gentlemen, guitars on stun.’ I do not think, however, that our playing contributed in any way to the man’s death on that particular winter’s evening in Cornwall.

The show was called to an immediate halt, and standing there watching the shocked audience file out of the fire exits, I could not help but reflect on how unlucky we were as a band at times.
(Not as unlucky as the dead guy – Ed.)

I stood there on the edge of the stage watching three ambulance men – who were delightfully lit by a powerful, red follow-spot – try in vain to revive the poor chap. I could see my life stretching in front of me. And what I saw seemed rather pathetic and depressing.
‘I am staring into the abyss,’ I muttered to myself.

My reverie was broken by John ‘Fat’ Beast, the band’s erstwhile manager. John was a very odd fellow. He weighed about 20 stones and had a rather unhealthy obsession with collecting photographs of prolapsed hernias in Greek men. He had had a difficult childhood: he was dropped on his head when he was a baby and was later penetrated in Blackpool by an organ grinder when he was twelve. ‘Come on, Napoleon,’ he said. ‘We have to put the amps in the van.’

‘Problem solved,’ I thought. ‘I can fill the abyss by carrying musical equipment into vans.’ I found this prospect, if prospect it was, oddly comforting.

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Dye Another Day

by Enormous on August 21, 2007

I was planning on paying a visit to the chemist’s in the village today and to take again the opportunity to tease the little old lady who works there. (In my view, they charge a ridiculous price for some of the hair-care products that they stock.)

I need to purchase hair dye for the weekend. Nelson and I plan to polish our mojos and see if we cannot each snare a lovely young female-woman one evening while he is here.

I shall have to make the trip to the shops tomorrow, however, as today I cannot stray too far from the immediate vicinity of the downstairs toilet.

I made a vegetable chilli last night and, like a fool, I used a whole packet of army-strength chilli powder. Not surprisingly, my insides are now like volcanic magma.

If only I could not be so greedy and if only I were less idiotic, then perhaps the effects of the meal would not have been so devastating. But, as usual, I went too far. I ate so much and made the food so hot that I think I actually burnt my spine.

I once made a chilli con carne on a rare night off when Slaughterhouse 5 were on tour, and the band were so internally violated by my cooking that we had to cancel the following night’s gig.

We always considered ourselves to be rather hardy souls. We were musicians who played neither by note nor by ear: we used brute strength.

Well, youthful and resilient postpunk-pop rockers we may have been, but a match for Davy’s famous chilli we definitely were not. Nor would we ever be, as it turns out.

On the Fantastic hi-fi today:
Innervisions – Stevie Wonder

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The Cream Also Rises

by Enormous on July 26, 2007

I have just been scanning some old publicity shots for the Slaughterhouse 5 website and was reminded of another boozy photographic session we did with top rock photographer Ed Sirrs.

We were very in awe of the famous snapper; but although he was so well-respected within the industry and had such a glowing reputation, he wasn;t scary or pretentious at all. We found him to be very friendly, avuncular and down-to-earth. We were so nervous; we were shaking like French soldiers when we met him at the station. But he soon made us feel at ease. We spent all day on the session wandering around Mansfield and visiting several of our favourite watering holes, aiming for an authentic, angry, northern working-class feel to the shots. (I was obsessed with Alan Sillitoe and D.H. Lawrence at the time.)

Our record company had given Ed £100 and had told him that it would be an absolutely marvellous idea to get us drunk. Not because they were concerned that we would feel very self-conscious, uncomfortable and embarrassed wandering around our home town, but because Miles Copeland saw us as a sort of wayward and confrontational art/punk band, and hoped that we would cause some drunken commotion or other that would lead to our eventual arrests and thus develop into some kind of local controversy. A publicity stunt in other words. You may be astonished to hear that nothing like that happened. We simply became very inebriated and relaxed, and ended up with reel upon reel of amazing shots.

I recall that, towards the end of the afternoon, we decided to have a party in the house that we all shared. The young Nelson Galaxy was with us at the time. (We were, and still are, always together, him and me. We are so close, we’re like brothers; in fact, we are brothers.)

In his capacity as band gopher, Nelson was despatched to the local bakery to buy dozens of cream cakes for the evening’s celebrations. We didn’t save them for the party, however. They were hastily scoffed in the pub as Ed snapped away.

The cakes did indeed make a rather predictable reappearance later that evening, though. I remember pleading with Ed not to photograph me, whilst – playing to type – I was filling the kitchen sink with liberal amounts of creamy vomit.

Ed endeared himself to us throughout the day by regaling us with endless tales of the hundreds of colourful sessions he had done with famous musicians and bands. One story in particular really made us laugh: He was photographing an infamous and very serious (You mean sober – Alcohol Ed.) Scandinavian heavy metal band who were very popular at the time. They were renowned for being very dour, dark and doom-laden. (I can’t remember their name, I’m afraid. It was Thor or Thor’s Hammer or something. Maybe Mr. B. can enlighten me.)

Ed asked the po-faced lead guitarist to step forward and kneel on one knee in order that the dreary, all-standing-in-a-line composition be improved for a few shots.

‘I kneel for no man,’ Ed was told in no uncertain terms by the pompous Norwegian rock god in a voice so deep and resonant, it sounded as though it had emanated from the very depths of hell.

We reasoned afterwards that what he was actually saying was: ‘I kneel for Norman.’ And if Norman had been present, perhaps Ed would have got the shot he was looking for.

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More Lines

by Enormous on June 30, 2007

Please allow me to indulgence myself again and present to you a further selection of more of my favourite lines taken from some of my own songs. I have also incorporated a verse from Nelson Galaxy’s song Between Us, which I think is worthy of inclusion in such a collection.

‘It really suits you wearing clothes like that
You ought to pose for dirty photographs’
Stupid Cupid

‘This makes you nervous I can see
Destroying things we own can hurt us all
We seem to spend our lives collecting things
That we don’t need and
The things we do we just ignore’
Really Start To Happen

‘How can you say you love me
When you’re dead?’
Pathetic Girlfriend

‘What an unexpected treat it was
To have my day brightened up by something
Good – like you and me meeting up
In this deserted place full of weird goblins’
Between Us (Nelson Galaxy)

‘Oh, it’s not that I don’t love you anymore
You know I do
No, it’s just that I can’t stand you
And I’m sure that you can’t, too’
Something In My Heart

‘I wish that she was totally devoted to me
But I know that she probably isn’t’
Devoted

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