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| Sheet music |
It was 40 years ago today. We were holed up in the now-demolished
Queen’s Hotel, Westcliff-on-Sea, writing and learning songs for our third
album. The hotel was still in business as a pub, ‘restaurant’, and dance hall,
but the three upper storeys, that once offered 4-star accommodation for
visitors to the town, were mothballed and patrolled by ‘security guards’. In a nightmare
not far removed from The Shining,
Alsatian dogs roamed the corridors and shat wherever they fancied. The canine
excrement was rarely cleaned up, and we had to step over it each morning when
we turned up for work during that long hot summer.
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| Queen's Hotel, Westcliff-on-Sea |
Recording contract-wise, we had been dropped by Jonathan
King’s UK Records after two poorly-selling albums. We were about to work with
producer Mike Batt and ‘CBS were gonna pay a great big advance’. Kursaals
guitarist Graeme Douglas and myself had written some songs, and Paul and Vic
and Richie were also becoming productive. We had an item called ‘Little Does
She Know’, which started life as a waltz time country song, music composed by Graeme. I had written the lyric and both Paul and Graeme added further musical ideas, including changing the time signature and transforming it into a 'Spectoresque' production with a 'Be My Baby' beat. By the time Batt got
his hands on it at Wessex Studios, it became a grandiose
production with orchestral sound effects.
Punk rock, as in the Pistols and the Damned, was still in development,
yet little did we know the upset punk would cause; as a working group we made
our living on the club and college circuit, but it wouldn’t be long before
promoters and social secretaries were fancying a flutter on Rat Scabies and his
custard pies rather than the more conventional entertainment approach that the
Kursaals and similar bands offered. That August, ‘Clash’ would open for us at
London’s Roundhouse, and the signs were obvious, to me at least. I loved the punk onslaught and have never stooped to using the word ‘energy’
in describing those groups.
Here are 'the Kursaals' on TV:
Here are 'the Kursaals' on TV:
Come autumn 1976, we were signed to CBS and touring the UK
and Europe in support of our ‘Golden Mile’ LP. ‘Little Does She Know’ was
released as a 45 and it slowly scaled the hit parade, aided by our appearances
on Top of the Pops. Though not all of
us would admit it, we had generally longed to become ‘pop stars’, and for a
fleeting moment we were. We are ‘one hit wonders’, as those who score a
solitary fluke hit are often known. It was a briefly
fabulous time and strangely feels like yesterday.
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