Beginnings by Simon Withers

Nottingham can site a nomenclature of ‘successful’ music acts. It is perhaps helpful to reference a few of the City and County born musicians who have gone on to achieve National and/or International status within the classification of ‘The local boy or local girl has done good’; Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, Anne Briggs, Deep Purple’s Ian Paice, Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden, Swing Out Sister’s Corinne Drewery, Indiana, Andy Fletcher from Depeche Mode, Shane Fenton aka Alvin Stardust, Stuart A. Staples of Tindersticks, Jake Bugg, the Animals keyboard player Dave Rowberry, Sleaford Mods and David Longdon.

As I reflect on my own memories of the local music scene in the early to mid 1980’s I can recall various bands that were ‘doing the circuit’ and to which the band David and I formed called Greenhouse would enter. Dawn Trader, Fatal Charm, Sense, Splash, Bad Axe, Sovereign, Pinski Zoo, One Million Fuzz-tone Guitars, Andy Boris & Keith, Hendrix Dead Boy and the Sick Boy Federation, Paralex, Medium Medium, Solvent Abuse, The Left Wing Rednecks and B-Movie. C Cat Trance, a post-punk band was formed by John Reese Lewis following the demise of Medium Medium, drummer Pete Clark would later join David’s band The Gift Horse.

Although by the mid 1980’s Greenhouse played out its common purpose, for David music continued and I journeyed into art. I remember watching some late night Central television programme and seeing David perform with The Chettles. Craig Chettle would go on to be a tour manager, sound engineer and music producer for acts such as Tindersticks, Whycliffe (Andy Limb the drummer for Whycliffe would subsequently join The Gift Horse), Maria McKee and Nick Cave. In 1984 Craig would establish Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies in Nottingham.

Some of the aforementioned names may be unfamiliar to the reader and locating any shrapnel on the Internet about a handful of these performers can be illusive. Absence implies that some of these acts (and others not cited) could be destined for complete music oblivion. I like to think that one day someone will inscribe a genealogy of the Nottingham music scene, a Notts equivalent of a Pete Frame family tree…so there is still a possibility that local bands and singular musicians who created a stir upon an unsuspecting public in Nottingham…even if only for one gig or possibly two may not be totally overlooked. There are meta-stories to be written about each and every band…who played in which band, where they performed and who went on to join with whom? All this is for another occasion…for the moment the past shapes the present.

In the academic year of 1982 David and I respectively screwed up our exams. David had decided he no longer wanted to continue to undertake his music course at Bilborough College and applied to join the one-year O’level Art foundation course at West Bridgford College of FE. I had decided to re-sit my O’Levels and undertake a further year on the art foundation course…accompanied once more by friend Andrew Hooton who likewise had not attained the required exam results to progress on to the two-year A Level Art course.

On the day of David’s interview Andy and I were working in the college’s ceramics studio. I was elated when I saw David arrive for interview. In many ways David and I felt joined at one hip, we met up regularly for band rehearsals, attend gigs and to live out our lives within our secret world. One of our art lecturers Steve Handley would show each candidate the facilities on offer before taking them into the inner sanctum for interviews. David and I acknowledged one another and spontaneously laughed…David had told me he was thinking of applying but what he did not say was that he had an interview. The gregarious Steve hollered over to me: “you know this chap then…we’re in for trouble!”

David, Andy and I had the finest of years; in many ways we brought the best out of each another and for the subsequent three years (including two years undertaking a B-Tec Art and Design course) we three worked diligently across the creative subjects, equally we had a great deal of fun…at least once a week during our extended Thursday lunchtime breaks (we had all passed our English exams and were not required to attend the lectures) we’d get drunk on Old Peculiar and Sam Smiths at the Olde Trip to Jerusalem pub before returning to college and to continue with our studies…three hours of still-life or observational drawing or attending an introductory block of weaving with Ross. Such was our bond that Steve Handley would refer to the three of us as, The Andy Hooton Gang. At other times we’d make best use of our Easy Rider bus passes and go exploring…taking different buses to the farthermost termini to look around the area…in the main we found ourselves in the peripheries of housing estates and more often than not we took to eating our respective packed lunches on the bus…it felt safer! On other occasions our mutual friend Philip Groom came to college in his red VW Beetle and we’d all pile into Phil’s car and take trips out to Wollaton Park…and attempt to climb trees.

On Wednesday afternoons all students were obliged to undertake ‘electives’. From a decent list of options, electives were seen as a way of introducing students to something unlike the subjects being studied; importantly these electives were not allied to taking and passing an exam. David, Andy and I were studying art and design, art history and photography. David and I elected to enter the ‘play the guitar’ gatherings. These sessions were to be held in one of the music rooms at the near by West Bridgford School. All we had to do was simply walk across the schools playing field and climb in through an open window (prearranged) and into the practice room. Guitarist Ian Wheatley ran the sessions and his only students were David and me. In the practice room was a piano, a few old drums and shattered cymbals, disassembled music stands and disemboweled brass instruments.

After the first week the three of us decided to ditch the electives concept and thereafter we’d make use of the equipment available to us. Subsequently Ian played the piano, David the guitar and I made use of the drums. Each Wednesday I’d take to college my drum peddle…and pick up from the school grounds two-house bricks that were used to steady the base drum. Ian was a regular performer at Nottingham’s The Bell Inn and as part of The Omega Jazz Band, Ian could draw upon an extensive list of jazz standards to play though…oddly I can only recall us playing ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’! These sessions continued until the end of the college year and for David and me, we had our band Greenhouse.

In 2013 David composed a song called, ‘Make Some Noise’ for the English progressive rock band, Big Big Train. This beguiling rock song reflected back to me and to David our unsophisticated beginning; the song lyric drew inspiration from Greenhouse and our ‘Embryonic Journey’. The lyric told a familiar narrative that will resonate with countless other musicians…groups of mates getting it together, jamming out standards, fashioning homegrown songs and then forming a band.

One summer in the early 1980’s whilst David and I were still at Kimberley Comprehensive School, we formed our first ‘proper’ band, Greenhouse. Prior to this David and I started jamming with a few school friends. Our first tentative sessions were held in a garage in Awsworth belonging to the parents of bassist Neil Buxton. At these gatherings accompanying Neil, David and I were guitarists, Nigel Stiles and Steve Pike. After several practice sessions (the only songs I can recall us rehearsing were a song written by Neil called ‘Circles’ and jamming through several Hawkwind tunes, ‘Brainstorm’ and ‘Master of the Universe’ as well as ‘Smoke on the Water’) the sessions ceased.

Whilst at school David took up the flute and in between our jamming sessions David began to rehearse with folk singer Deborah Dilkes (who was several years older than us). For several weeks David, Deborah and I hired out the Nuthall Church hall and invited friends and family to hear us rehearse. If I look back the set-up of the stage was like the majority f village halls…think of the photograph on the reverse of Fairport Conventions LP, ‘What We Did On Our Holidays’ David’s father borrowed an open-back van so we could transport and man handle David’s keyboard to the venue. We had no PA system so David and Deborah performed from the stage whilst I set up on the floor level. We played through ‘Feel Like Making Love’ and ‘Shooting Star’ by Bad Company, ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’ by Procol Harum and a song penned by Deborah called, ‘Dawn on my Horizon’. I look back to these sessions with some unease. I knew that both David and Deborah were far more adept than I and I never got to grips with performing Deborah’s song…in many ways I was still new to playing and yet perhaps (as David and I would reminisce many years later over coffees in Ikea) we were still experimenting, learning, finding out as much about what we didn’t want to play as to what we wanted to play…in time Nuthall Church Hall would become part of the Greenhouse story.

It was perhaps only several weeks later that David, Neil, Steve and I reconvened to practise in the attic room of my parent’s house. I can recount the four of us playing in the attic bedroom on two back-to-back occasions. On the second day Neil had needed to return home early so the four of us walked into Kimberley and from there Neil carried on home and the three of us returned to the house in Nuthall. David picked up Neil’s bass guitar (the instrument had earlier in the day fallen down the full length of the wooden stairs) and played the instrument for the first time. We plugged the bass into my brother’s 50-watt Carlsbro cab and turned up the volume to the max…something clicked between us the music created developed energy… vitality we were elated!

During the summer of 1981 we reconvened at number 75 and on Steve’s suggestion we decided on a name for our group, The Zanti Misfits (taken from an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show). We continued to jam (with volume) through various Hawkwind tunes, ‘Breadfan’ by Budgie and ‘Violence’ by Mott the Hoople…the valves in the amplifier added to the sizzling heat in the room…most of the time the window remained fastened, but during that hot summer we released the catch and opened the window…and we continued to play as loud as we could…sometimes both David and Steve would jointly stand atop of my bass drum and create noise…it was not so much about letting the air in but more about letting the sound out…we wanted the world to hear what we were doing…and following a complaint from the neighbour’s the police called to number at 75 and we were politely asked to turn our music down!

…To be added to, refined and continued!

Door One by Wayne Smith