LL: I had a very idealistic outlook when I first went to college. First of all I thought I would like to go to drama school. Then I met quite a few people involved in the acting business and I found that they just gave me the creeps. I couldn't think of having to grease round people to get a part of something, which seemed to be the thing to do. I then thought that Fine Art was the thing to get involved in. I got heavily involved in that and it took me just a little longer to realise that it's just the same thing that happens there. Really, in all forms of art there's this perverted and corrupt atmosphere surrounding it and you just have to learn to cope with it.
-Was this the time you got involved screaming for horror movies?
LL: Well, that happened a little later on. I did try to get on at art school and I was very serious about it but I just got a little depressed about the whole thing because my tutors weren't very helpful and they thought I was a bit nutty! They just left me alone because they thought I was in it or therapeutic reasons! So, having the free time, left me to discover that music is the best art form to be involved in today because it really involves everything - visual activities, acting and dancing.
-Going back to the horror films, was that a London company you worked for?
LL: No, I don't know exactly where it ended up. It wasn't a big deal production. It had a Japanese director and the main activity was in France. I didn't see the whole thing anyway. It was more of an experimental thing.
-Talking of France, I gather you got involved with Cerrone.
LL: What happened with Cerrone was that he made his name by being the first person to make, more or less, one track last for a whole side of an album - which he couldn't find a buyer for. So he made his own company and he had a big success with his first product that he put out and then around the time that we did "Supernature"... you see disco music had got into all this heavy breathing and erotic sounds and Cerrone, being a smart guy, realised that perhaps people were getting a little bored by this and he wanted someone to give him a story that had a bit more imagination. So I wrote the story and the words for the song.
-Did you sing on it as well?
LL: I didn't actually do any lead singing, that was done mainly by session singers in London, but I was there at the vocal sessions. My job with Cerrone was just writing words and supervising vocal sessions.
-Have you actually been credited for this?
LL: Well, I've never been credited by Cerrone on any of his albums as being the lyric writer. He has his own policy, I suppose for not giving me credit...
-...I've heard various rumours about Cerrone's business dealings...
LL: I prefer not to discuss this! But if Cerrone's reading this - please send me my contracts!
-I gather he has some unorthodox business backing...
LL: ...Um... yeah...
-Were you involved with anything musical before Cerrone?
LL: I was doing some musical things before that. In fact I was working on the continent at the time... I got a call from Cerrone when I was working in Finland. So I flew from Finland to Paris.
-How did you end up in Finland of all places?
LL: Well, I was working with a carnival orchestra and I was playing all kinds of music... tangos... this was mainly playing saxophone. The reason I was in Europe was because previous to that I had been involved, for about two years, with a band. I was sax player and back-up singer in a band called Diversions which was basically a soul band, you could say, very American influenced but we wrote our own songs. It wasn't really my thing, although I enjoyed doing it all the time.
-Was that when you first met Les Chappell?
LL: No, we'd been together at art school and we'd stayed together, off and on, since then. So when I came back from working with Cerrone we more or less decided from then on that we were going to try and write our own songs. It was not until then that I felt confident that I could do something worthwhile.
-So, I presume this story from Stiff about Les driving you back from Europe in his VW is apocryphal?
LL: Well, Stiff have very vivid imagination... I can't blame Stiff... I can't understand why people are taking this so seriously! Stiff were very much put upon the spot because I would not say anything about my background. My own policy was not to reveal very much and that was because I didn't want people to have a biased opinion about my music so that they would just accept what they heard. People are too quick to make judgements on you. I mean, I hadn't played with Jeff Beck or done anything world shattering! I just wanted people to take it with an open mind.
-Talking about taking things with an open mind... Can you tell me where your Christmas single fits into all this?
LL: Yes, there's no problem about that. Various people have tried to make me embarrassed about that but I'm not because there's a story behind it. When we were with Diversions we were with a company called Polydor. They signed us up, gave us some money and then washed their hands of us. The person who signed us was the head of the A & R department and he left six months later. Nobody was concerned about us or wanted to know we had a hard time making ends meet and we found ourselves running out of money. So we devised a plan whereby we could get some more money. What we did was... both myself and the lead singer of the Diversions managed to get ourselves a solo singles deal with Polydor. So I thought, "What will Polydor fall for? What is the sort of thing they'd really dig?" We came up with the idea of doing this corny Christmas song. It's kind of a cute song and I quite like it. In fact, what we did, in order to have some kind of creative credit to the record, we - without Polydor knowing of course - when the session finished, Les and I, just the two of us, quickly whipped off what we considered to be our own Christmas effort. It's called "Happy Christmas" and we felt it was more us. I played the violin, Les played mandolin and we had synthesisers.
-How much material have you had out under the name Diversions?
LL: With the Diversions we had only one official single out on Polydor called "Raincheck". They put it out very half-heartedly, which seemed to be their policy. We were then promised a tour of Britain with two other Polydor acts but they said that in order to do this you need an album because we need something to sell. We'd had a very hard time playing unsuitable venues humping the gear ourselves so we thought that the idea of doing a proper tour was really good, so we said yes. We went into the studio and started recording, having cancelled all the gigs that we had planned for about three months ahead, because we'd been re-booked at a lot of colleges, and then Polydor said, half way through making the album - oh, the tour is cancelled. So, by then, everyone was thoroughly depressed. But we finished the album. It was fairly good but morale had dropped considerably. What finally hit it on the head was that Polydor then decided that they were not going to release the album. That's when the band broke up.
-Who was in the band?
LL: Les Chappell on guitar, myself, the lead vocalist and trombone player was Steve Saxon. The keyboard player was Jeff Smith, who also played keyboards on "Stateless". The guitarist and sax player was Glenn Cartlidge who was with The Real Thing for a while - but he's got his own band together now. We had various drummers and bass players. The last bass player that we had was called John Currie and the drummer was an Australian called Gregg Sheehan.
-What happened between the Diversions and Stiff?
LL: Well, I felt pretty wrecked after the Polydor fiasco so I cried out of the band and ran away to Europe. We were still contracted but there was nothing they were going to do. I floated around Europe doing various things, mainly playing the saxophone. When I came back I was really out of touch with the music scene in London and I got in touch with a guy called Charlie Gillett, who used to be a DJ on Radio London. He had a little spot on his show where people could ring up and if they needed a gig they could advertise themselves. So I advertised myself and sat by the phone - and nobody rang up! I wasn't going to give up so easily so I wrote him a letter and told him about me and he was putting together a band for a Scottish singer-songwriter called Bobby Henry...
-Ah...
LL: Do you know him?
-Well, I noticed there's a single out on Oval by him and you're credited as having lent him your cardigan for the photo session!
LL: Well, I knitted that cardigan for Bobby! Yeah, well... that was the plan. I was going to be in Bobby's backing band, but what happened was that we were rehearsing in a place where the sound wasn't very good. We thought we were doing OK. It was a pretty big band and when we got to an 8 track studio we realised we had about three bands in one because me, Les and the drummer were pulling things in one direction and one of the players was pulling it in another direction and so on. So we decided to finish recording the demos. By then Charlie was encouraging me to sing a bit more and I showed him some songs I'd written with Les and he just thought he knew where I should be and took me along to see Dave Robinson. Now Charlie used to manage a band called Kilburn and the High Roads, Ian Dury's old band, so there's quite a strong connection between them and of course it was down to Charlie's programme that Graham Parker got his record contract (Robinson's also Parker's manager). We played him a demo of "I Think We're Alone Now" which was originally done by Tommy James and the Shondells and so Dave Robinson said, yeah, he liked it a lot and let's not mess around - let's make an album! More or less just like that!
-Has Charlie still got an interest in you because your records are credited as being Oval Records Productions?
LL: Well, yes, because Charlie found us and the arrangement is as if Charlie's got a production company and everything we do is via Oval. But it is still Stiff - I'm still responsible to them.
-Moving on to the first album, I notice that on the Sounds/Stiff compilation there was a track "Monkey Talk" which wasn't on that album.
LL: That song was written after the first album was completed in the week between finishing it and going on tour. Stiff had the idea that they wanted to put some material on that album that wasn't available elsewhere at the time. So, I more or less wrote that song specifically to go on the Sounds album as a point of interest. I had just read a couple of books, one by a person called Charles [Darwin] and another by someone called Pierre ["Planet of the Apes" by Pierre Boulle], which were both concerned with monkeys.
-I was surprised at the choice of "Lucky Number" to be the single as I thought there were stronger tracks on the first album.
LL: "Lucky Number" has always been one of my favourite songs and Stiff and I thought that it was the most representative of what I can do vocally and of the sound of the instrumentation I use. Actually, for a long time there was a lot of argument about which song we should put out because different people have different ideas and we run things pretty democratically at Stiff. In the end we decided that it was most representative on a wide basis.
Everybody had the right spirit. We were very, very determined that the tour was going to be a success because, let's face it, we didn't have absolute support from the press, who very often tried to slag us off. In fact, I know that certain members of the press were told to try and slag off the tour. We were very determined that the tour would be a success because it was a case of sink or swim for Stiff.
-On the flip side there's a "version" of the song. Are you influenced at all by the reggae?
LL: Yeah, I listen to reggae a lot. I think that reggae music in the last few years has been one of the most inventive forms of music. There are no rules as far as dub reggae is concerned. That's what I like about it.
-I wondered if you were at all interested in the local styles of reggae because you have an unusual style yourself.
LL: My policy is to do whatever is necessary, and I don't have any rules myself. If I think a certain sound is right then I make that sound. I don't care how I do it I just do it! Maybe it's a little unconventional, but I think you must do whatever it takes.
-Looking back on the Stiff tour, how do you view it now?
LL: Well, at the risk of sounding very sentimental about the whole thing... Our last gig was at the Lyceum in London, and personally, for me that was the one of the most difficult gigs to do because, to be honest, by the time we got there - and by that time it wasn't known that we were going to New York - I just couldn't help being depressed about the whole thing. It had been just an incredibly amazing experience. I mean there were 50 people constantly with each other. Every time we went anywhere it was a constant party.
-Stiff sank an awful lot of money into that tour.
LL: Of course they did - and it just makes me mad to think about all the big companies and the money they have. Stiff have got the right attitude. They put themselves on the line and do what they think is necessary even if it means taking a few risks.
-How did things go in New York? How did the Americans react?
LL: We didn't know how they would take us, to be honest. We were pleasantly surprised. I didn't know there were so many Stiff fans in New York. It was an incredible feeling to see people queuing up to get tickets for the Bottom Line to see us. We did 2 shows a night and the whole thing was a virtual sell-out. I mean all the early shows sold out and the late shows - they didn't finish until 4.00 in the morning - for the people to come out, and it was quite often the same people every night (we did 4 nights) was wonderful. We didn't go out of New York but we found a lot of people coming from as far as Washington and Boston to see us. We're going to back there soon. I believe Stiff have the idea that we want to sell records in America and the best way to do that is to make our mark in New York. Everybody went except for Mickey Jupp...
-...who's (cough) scared of flying...
LL: Well, if that's what he wants to say! He unfortunately didn't come and I feel that if he did come he would have been very well received. His backing band came. Doing the New York gig was like doing an encore. We all felt that Mickey's band had worked very hard on the tour and that they deserved to go.
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