Magic Muscle #5

RR: "It's a state of mind really, a certain confidence in one's abilities combined with an urgency to communicate this ability with as many people as possible... like preaching the gospel ha ha! I had held such a low opinion of myself for so many years that I had lost that confidence. I regained a lot of self respect during the Jellymonsters/Jellyclouds months which primed me perfectly for what was to come. In early 1988 I received word from Colin Hill that Zippo label boss Pete Flanagan had visited him and heard the Magic Muscle tapes I had sent him and was very impressed in fact, keen enough to release some of the studio stuff on his new 5 Hours Back label. So I contacted Pete F and he said "Great, send me a cassette full of the best-recorded studio stuff' which I duly did He chose what he thought was the best recorded stuff (and therefore worthy of vinyl) but not the best music by any means, although some nice 'blows' ended up on side two of the eventual album. It wasn't my choice of music but I didn't care: it was gonna be Magic Muscle and we were going to get it released at last. He eventually got back in touch with me and told me to bring the master tapes up to London. We worked out a deal and I left the tapes with him, the only problem now being: the sleeve-art??

We had already agreed that it must be called "The Pipe The Roar & The Grid" In the last couple of weeks of 1987 I journeyed to Bruton in Somerset where Pete Biles, Thos Ensor, Big Pete, Ian Davis and other 'survivors' from the old commune lived/live. I took a tape recorder with me and interviewed them. They also provided me with some old, rare artwork and photos plus lots of information that would help with the sleeve notes. I knew that 1988 was going to be a very busy year so I went back to Somerset to see New Year in with the old crew. What a party!! I discovered that Magic Muscle's old drummer and artist/painter supremo Kenny Wheeler was working as a full-time producer in a recording studio in Bristol called Sound Conception. I rang him there and we arranged to meet... at, of all places, 49 Cotham Road our old commune (he knew a student who was still living there). We eventually met at the old place (really spooky to be there again) and explained that I intended to not only commission him (on behalf of the record company) to paint the sleeve art of the album but I also intended to try and get the old band back together again! He was astounded but (still crazy after all those years) delighted as well. He immediately began to get ideas for the painting and we talked for a couple of hours and got very stoned back in the old 'castle of dreams' where Magic Muscle was first born. All this was on January 23rd 1988.

I offered to do the sleeve notes for the album, so I sat back writing all these anecdotes and basically the story of the band But then I thought "Colin started this, he's a journalist and he's a beautiful writer", so I took everything that I'd written (which seemed o.k.) and sent it down to Colin and said "lf you want to add anything to this or subtract anything, do what you like with it... really, you ought to round this off'. And he put it in the order that it now appears in on the sleeve notes; he just filled it out. It wasn't a lot, but what he did to it was very tasty and makes it read much better, flow much easier: So that's why it's Rustic Rod/Colin Hill on the sleeve notes. And indeed if it wasn't for Colin it wouldn't have come out when it it did at all.

On the 29th February "The Pipe The Roar & The Grid" was 'cut' in London. On 2nd March the 'draft' painting of the cover arrived On the 19th the test pressing arrived back from London... but I wasn't satisfied with the order of the songs: the a-side started the same as it does now but after the "Fly Brothers" song the rest of the side was comprised of "You Better See"... which didn't sound right at all the sound levels were all wrong The b-side started with "Schoolgirl Love" and "Feel It Fear It " followed by "Spring Green Blues", "Desert Sands" and lastly the three "pop" songs "Here & Now", "Large Transit Van" and "Long Hard Road" Definitely a total mix-up of sounds and vibes (although l bet this is the sort of unreleased mix a collector would kill for, ha ha!). Anyway, on the 20th April I oversaw a brand new test pressing personally at Porkies. The only way to get the sound right seemed to be: forget the chronological order in which the music was recorded and divide it into two separate sides, "The Muscle" and "The Magic", This is the form in which it was eventually released.

When the LP was just coming up for release Huw Gower got in touch again; in fact, our letters crossed in the post, after all those years! I'd just found out his address, he'd just found out mine after 11 years. He had since married, gone to live in New York, and our letters crossed in the post! An extraordinary coincidence. And I thought "the Magic starts here" you know, "it's gonna happen again" And Huw had rung me from New York City, saying "look, we can do it, I can get over there again this summer and we can do it If you could just set up one gig, for a reunion, it would be enough after all this time" So we started hatching plans for a way for him to get over here from the States. He was working for Venus Records then (busy promoting the first Mooseheart Faith LP) and he was due some holiday time. Pete Biles sadly wouldn't be able to make any get-togethers because he and his family spent every summer at his in-laws in Canada. However, this meant that his cottage remained empty for that time, so at least we had a place for Huw and his family to stay if we could persuade the record company to pay his air-fare.

Before we could get that resolved we suffered another setback. Kenny Wheeler (having delivered the most exquisite and apt original painting for "The Pipe The Roar & The Grid') said he wouldn't be able to drum for us this time as not only was he very out-of-practise but his wife was about to give birth to their first child any day now and needed his complete attention. Fair enough, but what were we to do now? We thought it would be a gas to book someone from the same era as ourselves. It was suggested that, as The Pink Fairies had recently had a(nother?, L.) reunion, perhaps it would be quite apt to use one of their drummers. Since we'd played a lot of gigs with The Pink Fairies in the past and we'd gone on stage as the Magic Pink Wind on several occasions, we thought about either Russ Hunter or Twink So I rang Twink and told him Magic Muscle were getting back together. He was really keen but asked about finance for the tour. I said "What finance? Listen, sort it out with Pete Flanagan at Zippo". A few days later Flanagan got in touch, said he'd spoken to Twink and to go ahead Having set up some 'terms' Twink had agreed to join 'Muscle for any tour we could throw together in such a short time as well as (likewise) any recording.

Pete Flanagan had been sent some complimentary tickets for the grand opening of Moles Recording Studios in Bath, situated right over the famous club. As he was unable to come down he sent them to me along with his pass and an introduction and asked if I would go as a representative of Zippo Music. Of course I went, since there was the distinct possibility there might be some special offers for the first bookings; which indeed there were. It was crazy really: I was so amazed by their new 24 track studio, as well as TV monitors (making communications with any band playing live downstairs really easy) that I cheekily booked it on behalf of Zippo to record a live concert by Magic Muscle. I think Pete sort of thought I wouldn't have gone so far as to actually book it, you know, but there you are, it was done. This would be their first recording session in the new studio so I got a special deal because of that... which was another reason why Pete Flanagan couldn't really say no. If he was going to do it at all, NOW was the time.

Pete subsequently got in touch with them to tell them I'd booked in a bit early and ask if it would be possible to get the same rates on August 1st. And Phil Andrews at Mole's Studio agreed so August 1st was booked in. I was by now also in touch again with Micky B from Flower Of Wisdom and one of the central characters of Muscle) who agreed to help all he could~ in fact our first gig, the 1988 Magic Muscle reunion was going to take place on board a white ship docked in Bristol harbour! This massive floating fun palace was/is called The Thekla and Micky B booked it for July 27th. Now we had a date, Steve Lines of Acid Tapes (and Crohinga Well, nowadays, L.) did two posters for us of which we chose the one with the kind of 'Silver Surfer blowing his mind' on it for this first reunion gig (still on my wall to this day and the border of it is still used in my Mail Order ads). It was agreed that Stormclouds would do the entire tour with us and fill the support slot, also, Christine came along and worked really hard selling merchandise alongside Twink A regular little "market" it was.

Of course although the local scene had diminished somewhat since 1985 there were still plenty of bands going and in June of '88 The Mardenbeat and its supporters took part in the Council-backed Calne Music Week Although too busy to get involved in anything too constraining I nevertheless did a solo gig at The Landsdowne on June 16th. For me, it was frantic activity on all fronts as everyone and everything contacted me, from the press and various promoters to the record company and individual members of the band.

I eventually booked three rehearsals in the basement of The George, a place where Rod & The Sceptres and The Pack had rehearsed as well as, more recently, The Doctors Pond etc. This basement was known as 'The Crater' and on Saturday 23rd July Twink arrived with Adrian from London), Huw arrived from Somerset (the first time we had met since 1977) and, finally, Micky B from Bristol who was going to listen to us that evening and decide if we still had "the magic" I referred to it as 'The Micky B Command Performance " (the Boschburger had been lost but we improvized... piped muzack?). They all came and stayed here, in the flat.

I told Twink afterwards that he was supposed to be notoriously difficult to work with; he was interested to hear that, but needless to say he was really great at the time (we knew The Fairies way back but Twink was on his notorious trip to Morocco at the time so we did not know him too well, really). It only took him two rehearsals to gel into the groove. So Twink had never played with us and we hadn't played together since 1977 (11 years!). We had the rehearsals in The Crater with Micky B in attendance for the first one and... we passed the audition!!

We rehearsed on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday, after which we loaded up the van and on the Wednesday we played The Thekla; on the Thursday we played The Richmond, Brighton (after which we were interviewed by 'the Savage Pencil' him-self Edwin Pouncey) and on the Friday we played in Birmingham (all the B's were there: it was Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Bath - onward now to conquer Brussels, Berlin, Budapest, Byalistock, Bangkok and Brisbane?, L.). So the show was on the road. Unfortunately we couldn't go on like that: the last gig would be on Monday 1st August at Bath Moles Club, which would (of course) be the one to be recorded for posterity. Our old soundman Alan Obdob had come up all the way from Cornwall to be with us at The Thekla and he appeared again at Bath Moles Club along with Micky B and the entire old Magic Muscle road-crew plus our old manager Bob Whitfield and Big Pete Thorpe (ex-Elias Hulk) who got up and sang the closing number with us (also in the audience: Phil McMullen, Colin Hill and Pete Flanagan). Then, all too soon, it was over. I returned the hire van (I had driven it the entire tour) and returned to Calne wondering what the finished tapes would sound like.

After all, although Huw had written a song and I had written a few myself (in case the "magic" didn't work) which we had recorded anyway, to please Pete at the record company, there was still a load of stuff that we had completely improvised out of thin air, which I could not remember at all Luckily Alan Obdob had recorded a rough tape straight off the desk just like the old days) and as soon as I heard it I knew the the album had to be titled after the very last "magic blow" of the tour: "One Hundred Miles Below" a completely improvised jam with words made up as I went along... almost like the spiritual phenomenon of automatic writing: automatic singing? And that was how it all came about.

Meanwhile Phil McMullen had introduced me to Nick Saloman via a late-night phonecall, and on 9th September 1988 Nick rang When he asked when we (Muscle) would be playing again and I said we couldn't play because our lead guitarist had gone back to the States, he said he would like to play with us sometime. In fact I almost persuaded Zippo to pay for a stall at the Berlin Independence Days bash in October that would have featured us as their representative band (as it turned out, my next gig was for the local scene later that month). On November 5th 1988 Huw Gower did a three-hour Magic Muscle show special for Laurie S. on WFMU Radio in New Jersey (USA) featuring a live telephone interview with me. The transmission included the unreleased "Drongo Thief". I received the test pressing (on One Big Guitar) of "One Hundred Miles Below" a bit later (it is actually dated 19th January) which promised an early release and a great start to 1989.

Unfortunately, Twink quit the band as drummer on March 4th because he wanted more royalties than us (the original band!) on record sales. This plus the fact that Twink was trying to slap an injunction on Zippo to prevent them from releasing the LP at all was what caused the delay with the new album. So 1989 turned into a legal nightmare for Zippo, and the man who had been so kind to us and allowed Muscle so much artistic freedom, Pete Flanagan, now looked in danger of going out of business altogether.

However, everyone persevered and eventually Huw Gower rang from the States to say he had swung a deal with Skyclad Records for USA release (also on CD)! On July 16th a very favourable review appeared in the NME, scoring 8 out of 10 on their points system, but it wasn't until a day later that I received the first promotional copies. The sleeve was painted by Robert Williams, who 'd just had exhibitions in New York and who was a member of the Zap Comix team that had just come back together again and made a brand new Zap comic (as previously explained Zap-type cartoon work had figured highly in all the old Magic Muscle artwork and posters).