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Marillion are, of course,
the band that after John Otway, not only put Aylesbury on the musical
map, but have stayed in the mainstream for over 25 years. We spent some
time at Marillion's studio in rural Buckinghamshire and Pete willingly
and happily talked about Friars. Being a local boy he talks about it
from both sides, as punter and successful musician. Our gratitude to
Pete also for being so willing to carry on this interview a few days
later.
Pete Trewavas: I'm not
from Aylesbury originally but I've lived here since the age of six and
growing up as a teenager in town a like Aylesbury, you really
appreciated what Friars was. It wasn't just a rock club like other towns
have rock clubs, between Dave Stops and Robin Pike, they seemed to be
tuned in to what was going on musically before it happened. Dave would
manage to book bands well in advance who were big news by the time they
played Friars. I remember the David Bowie gig just before Ziggy Stardust
- my sister who was four years older than me, saw the concert and I
couldn't go! 'Oh no you can't go to Friars you’re not old enough, was
what I got from my parents. I suppose I was two young in those days and
you couldn’t get the all important membership card officially till you
were 16. . I got my Friars membership card when I 15 I think...that was
a nervous day! I remember queuing up to get in and then thinking I've
been accepted! If you came from Aylesbury, there was a real buzz about
what was happening from week to week. There was a great feel behind the
ethos of Friars, the posters designed by Kris Needs had a good feel for
the time, (the whole thing) was a schoolboy's dream.
Friars
Aylesbury Website: I mentioned in my website introduction that even when
I wasn't old enough to go, the posters and the imagery....
And the Friars handouts.
If you weren't old enough to go you had to borrow them off brothers and
sisters. I would gem up on what I should be listening to.
My older
cousin had all these Friars news-sheets and I was fascinated by bands I
never heard of and I only ever discovered these news-sheets for myself
by accident when I went into Earth Records one day and saw them on the
counter and I started collecting them regularly. I was fascinated by the
imagery etc even though I didn't know at the time who Renaissance or
Mike Heron was. They weren't ordinary bog standard and it captured my
imagination.
I saw Mott the Hoople at
Friars, I saw loads of bands. Stackridge, Gillan and Queen in the early
days. The first gig I ever saw (and at Friars), Ian (Mosley) was playing
drums for Darryl Way's Wolf (1973) At the time, I obviously didn’t know
who he was and would never have dreamed that we would be in the same
band or become such good friends. He must have only been 17 or 18 back
then.
That was at
the Borough Assembly Hall which I never experienced..
I had a real love of
that place. When it moved to the Civic Centre, it changed for me a
little bit but it was still good as they could put on the slightly
bigger bands they couldn't at afford at the BAH.
Your Friars
history goes back ages, as far back as 1976 with Orthi. And you
supported Mott in their British Lions phase when Ian Hunter turned up.
It was great, I loved
Mott the Hoople. I was a big fan for a few years and then to support
them was very special. It was great for us in Orthi, because we became
Aylesbury's top band and got voted number one in the annual polls. The
Roxette helped the mystique of Aylesbury and helped talk about much more
of a scene than there probably was. But people from as far away as
London would talk about Aylesbury. The whole thing was probably as much
down to Pete Frame who was good at that sort of thing (talking it up). I
became good friends with Frame and knew Kris Needs mainly as a friend of
my sister and Otway and that whole group of older musicians and people.
Otway, Barrett, Warren Harry many others and Kris Needs were part of an
older scene than myself and my contemporaries but I was in awe of him
because he was so rock and roll! He started the Mott the Hoople fan club
and I thought 'wow, someone who knows really famous people'!
I remember supporting
Ian Gillan and turning up scruffy and tiered and wanted to get a
shower. I asked Dave Stopps who said 'let's see what we can do' and then
I was told that Ian Gillan was lending me his dressing room to have a
shower. I thought 'Wow amazing!' Having played the Civic many times since,
I now know there are about six dressing rooms! I was probably kept well
away from Gillan and his crew! Probably for my own good as I was still
young and naive in those days.
Friars
clearly holds great memories for you...
Oh yes, as a member and
as a musician who was still learning as I was and then you go and see a
band like Manfred Mann's Earthband who were in the charts with Joybringer and I remember all night staring at the mini-Moog... this
mythical instrument and my mates were all the same! Then there was
another band I used to like, Greenslade, who had all the keyboards you
could think of and two keyboard players in Dave Greenslade and Dave
Lawson. Everyone wanted to be a musician and we all wanted to see the
bands.
Keyboard
players reigned supreme!
They did! I saw Camel.
But I didn't see Caravan (Ed - Pete cites
In the Land of Grey and Pink as one of his favourite albums)
and I saw the guy with the green pyramids....who was that...
(Mark Kelly in the
background) Steve Hillage!
Yes, Steve Hillage! I
saw Hawkwind...all these great bands made you want to be a musician and
you watched what they did. You kind of then started to understand what
they did to get people interested in what you do on stage.
Also, my wife queued in
the cattle market (where Chicago Rock Cafe now is) for Genesis (in 1980)
So did I
!!!! I remember it fondly.
I didn't go as I was in
a bit of an anti Genesis stage as Gabriel/Hackett era was what I grew up
with.
I love the
Duke (1980) album - still play it.
It is good. That Genesis
gig was huge and big news in the town.
It was!
I have just
been rescanning all the flyers for the website and you must be fairly
close to the all time appearance record as aside from Marillion, you
played with Orthi and The Robins...
We also played as
Heartbeat as well I think. Myself and Robin Boult had to update
ourselves as New Wave was just round the corner. But long hair and pub
rock, ruled at one point. Lots of good bands were around. Like Good
Habit (who became Racing Cars)...they were great (at Friars). I used to
really love Stackridge
They were
big in Aylesbury!
They (Friars) didn't
always get it right but some corking bands played. I worked for Earth
Records on a Saturday and one day I ended up (at David Stopps request)
when it was quiet in the shop helping the Procol Harum crew unload a
Hammond organ, the heaviest thing imaginable. I'm not really a humper
(roady slang for local crew) and it was very scary trying to help lift
this thing off an artic. I did, however, manage to sit in on the sound
check after all the unloading (humping) was finished.
Regards
playing at Friars..
To see our names on a
poster was unbelievable.
There were
a lot of local bands who would have given their right arms to play
Friars.
Local bands didn't
really get put on – Dave Stopps only put on bands he felt could step up
to the mark and were deemed good enough and had a good local following.
There was
definitely a quality control.
I remember the last
lesson of school with Robin Boult. We would see Orthi's orange van pull
up and we'd be thinking there was only a short time (till end of school
day) till we could rush out of school (for a gig). Thinking back that
must have made us look pretty cool.
Was it
kudos?
No, I was quite shy then
and just wanted to play music. It was all I cared about.
In terms of
musical ability, you did get noticed....Mark (Kelly) said when he joined
Marillion he knew straight away what did and didn't work and he said
there needed to be a change of bassist and that's where you came in.
By that time, I had done
a lot of live work and felt confident on the bass guitar. It's only when
you go into a studio you realise you know nothing about your instrument
and you have to be nudged in the right direction and along.
A different
discipline to live work..
Yes, in the studio, it's
all about getting the right sound. I hadn't really worried about the
sound (before). When we recorded Market Square Heroes with David
Hitchcock, it was very pleasurable as we were recreating what we did
live. His attitude was pretty much 'let them play and do as many takes
as they want' and then take the best take. His ear for music was helping
in the arrangement and getting the best out of the band in a live
environment. When we went on to record Script for a Jester's Tear, we'd
spend a day recording drums, with us all playing but just recording
drums and then the evening doing bass or guitar. It was very different
to any way I had worked before,
Back to
Marillion headlining in 1982...
I was so proud of that.
It was like being accepted at home, it really was. My dream had always
been to be a professional musician myself and to play in your home town
at the place you saw all those bands was a very special moment for me.
It was a
great day for local bands and for one to be headlining that wasn't
Otway....
Yes, I suppose Otway and
Willy (Barrett) were the only stars from Aylesbury up to that point
1983 was
the big one for Aylesbury.....Marillion got massive, Howard Jones got
massive, Kajagoogoo got massive....a great time for local bands
(Mark again!) Kajagoogoo
are local?.
Yes, from
Leighton Buzzard.
I remember playing at
the Hunt Hotel in LB. There was a local tour (of venues) you could do
because of the music scene in Aylesbury....including the Britannia pub
in Aylesbury
The first time I saw
Marillion was at the Britannia (before my time in the band). I also used
to play there in other local bands.
As you were
about to be break with Script in 1983, David Stopps really 'bigged' up
Marillion a lot on the news-sheets.
Because we were EMI's
new baby and on tour and away so much I never got to see any news-sheets
so never got to know what was going on in my home town.
There were
so many quotes on the news-sheets about the Scottish tour, the Marquee
etc.
To tie in with the
Script tour, EMI decided to get us to do record signings in the major
towns on the tour and all HMVs and chains etc. David Stopps put a
request in for Earth Records to be included on this and EMI didn't want
to know and Fish, ourselves and John (Arnison -former manager) really
pushed for that to happen.
We were sat outside
Earth Records with tables and there were seemingly hundreds of people
queuing up including people I had gone to school with - it was a
strange experience for me. There were people who wouldn’t have crossed
the street to talk to me a year earlier now queuing up for my autograph!
Very odd!
The Script
album really got you noticed with Hammersmith Odeon and the glorious
homecoming at Friars. Then you did Fugazi which I gather was an
interesting experience...
From EMI's point of view
they didn't think there was anything on there to sell. It had cost a
fortune to make as we had used Sony digital tape and put two 24 channel
recorders together to make 48 track recording possible. It was expensive
and time consuming and they had to be lined up every morning by the
engineers. We ran over budget. It cost a fortune. That's how we ended
up in Berlin recording what was probably going to be our last album for
EMI, if nothing happened. Berlin was cheap, the studio (Hansa) was cheap
with old equipment falling to bits which in the UK would have been
deemed redundant.
This was
Misplaced Childhood of course...
EMI persuaded Chris
Kimsey who had worked with the Rolling Stones for ten years to produce
us. Chris did a couple of Killing Joke albums in that studio and took
the job on (with us) to get his name out there in the industry as he had
been in one band or studio for so long and didn't want to be forgotten
as a producer. And EMI needed a cheap fix for our record contract.
A huge
success for everybody then!
Kayleigh was the first
single lifted off the album and everyone knows what happened there.
Yes, there
are many 23-24 year girls who have that song to thank for their names!
That was strange! The
single started off quite badly going in at the mid twenties. Garden
Party got to 16. Then it started to get played more on the radio. We
were on tour at the time and it kept on climbing and it got to number
two. I remember after the tour shopping in Tesco thinking I've just had
a number two single, what's going on!
What was also
interesting post Friars was when we did return to Aylesbury Civic (this
time with Steve Hogarth), and we had three massive articulated lorries.
They couldn't get round the mini-roundabouts so the police had to close
the roads to effectively make it a straight road for our trucks! It was
the biggest lighting rig we could physically get in and took the
strengths of the Civic roof to the limit to the point that weight of
snow on the roof could have had a big bearing......
We still played the
Civic even when we were playing to tens of thousands in Brazil.
As I was
saying to Mark, your website is incredible.
Marillion fans are
amazing. We have the Marillion fan weekends with a few thousand
Marillion fans and they immerse themselves in Marillion all weekend and
what is nice is that we can walk around without being hassled.
The way you
work with the website and your fans is an inspiration to any band to
show how it can be done.
Pete, thank
you for talking to us!
Marillion's official website
This interview and its
content are © 2009 Mike O'Connor/www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk and may not
be used in whole or in part without permission.
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