Chapter 4

The Bass Clarinet

Xero tried to make out that I was the “fourth member of the anarcho syndicalist collective” but all four of us always knew that I never really could have been. I am simply not a Performer. I had no desire to get up there and draw attention to myself. The very idea makes me go queasy, shudder with horror and want to take immediate flight, even now. My contribution was thus destined to be in the background, the observational and organisational stuff: the minutiae - and because of that, I was always going to be a largely unrecognised cog in any machine containing other cogs that had bells and whistles on them. And, let's face it, between the three of them they had the creative bond of their music and their shared history, making it The Works on one side and Every Other Sentient Being in The Entire Universe on the other.

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By the time “Shove It” was recorded and released, there was no doubting the fact that they were fantastically talented. The hordes of people who told them so after each and every gig could hardly have been mistaken. They didn't even necessarily have to say anything - after one gig in Ghent, a passing Walloon saw Xero standing backstage and interjected with a particularly French
“ Hey.....................................Xero!” and an equally Gallic pout and upturned thumb, before keeping on going and leaving the musician to clean the spit out of his instrument.

Eventually they came to believe it. But back then, in the days when they did not yet believe in themselves anywhere near enough, they were constantly underselling themselves to money-grubbing pub owners. In the past, they would go over to the continent with four or five dates pencilled in as definite maybes. If they couldn't pick up any more gigs, they simply busked. And did alright at that.

Once the album was out, we were booked in to do a Tour of 40 dates in 45 days in 5 countries. The three of them were scheduled to be interviewed by salivating journalists thinking they were the first to spot this bright new avant-garde act. The Works were starting to be feted by adoring crowds, paid well and fed and looked after by satisfied promoters. There was even something called a Rider appearing at every gig. No more queuing at the bar and spending everything they earnt on a few drinks.

I was the ideal candidate for the job of Administrator, Gofer, Roadie, General Dogsbody. Ok so I was the only candidate, but what the hell. Heinz and Suzie had done the really hard graft to make it actually happen, but I was a link in the chain of connections that saw the jigsaw fall into place. Of that I am immensely proud. And once it did all come together, I did my fair share of lifting the gear in and out of gigs.

Margaret Thatcher had offered to pay me forty quid a week to disappear from the billowing unemployment figures so I saw fit to set up Starship Enterprises in a nicely appointed office at Off Beat Recording Studio in wooded grounds next to the 11th Century Cistercian abbey in Kirkstall. I had a phone, a Reel to Reel and a stack of cassette decks to make hundreds of demo tapes; and I had photos and copies of reviews aplenty - after all, The Works were no artificial record company construct: they were immensely real. And I had my trusty thumb for hitch-hiking all over northern Europe. My business partner Theo “looked after the place” while I was away, although that was most certainly a euphemism for all sorts of wheeling and dealing about which I really did not want to know. I had the gift of the gab, honest eyes, a pleasant smile and a firm handshake. What's more, I believed wholeheartedly in what I was selling. In fact, to my long-suffering friends, I was in danger of veering into Jehovah’s Witness territory, of becoming disquietingly evangelical.

Once he'd made the “appointment”, Xero took great pride in introducing me as their “Manager”, but only for a couple of weeks - after which the novelty wore off and the less authoritative “Administrator” became my epithet. I knew that I’d landed the job for sure on one beautiful, crisp spring morning in Ghent. Xero and I were leaving the office of the organisers of the Gentse Feesten, the bacchanalian festival held throughout the city for a fortnight every July. It was early March and they were starting to finalise the programme for this year's carnival. We were on our way to West Germany, to Essen, the Cafe Click and the night when "Shove It!" happened to be recorded.

Xero had been going to the Gentse Feesten for six years on his own and with various Slingsby Ensembles, yet he still tended to turn up every July to play for beer and spirits, a bite to eat, a roof over his head and a bit of pocket money (which invariably went up in smoke). He loved going there and made friends galore.

With a “Manager” there to argue the toss, to push the merits of The Works and do the sales job that had been begging to be done, we walked out of there with six hundred pounds promised for one headline gig on the central stage in the main square, plus a couple of other appearances in smaller venues. And that was before we did the rounds of the bars and cafes of the town and, trading on past triumphs, nailed down ten more gigs, at the theatre, the art gallery restaurant, the Café Spago and the Café Damberd.

It was not that they didn't believe in themselves as musicians: on stage, they possessed musical self-confidence by the transit van load - a collective self-assuredness that was sometimes interpreted by others as an aggressive arrogance. But when it came to selling their talents, that’s when they let themselves down.

When I heard that John Peel was bringing his Roadshow to the Leeds University Refectory one Saturday night, I was able to get The Works on the same bill and I was quite hopeful that Peel might love them and feature them regularly on his late night radio show on BBC Radio 1 from whence so many musical careers had been launched into stellar trajectories.

Admittedly the sound that night had been piss-poor and they had not had the sort of rapturous response they so often enjoyed. Peel's followers were a fairly rock orientated crowd and Slingsby's anti-guitar music left them bemused. But when the DJ enthused to Xero as they packed their stuff away post-gig:

"That was very good. I rather enjoyed it."

Had Xero been more intent on a stellar career and less on making sure the punters got value for money, he might have come up with a slightly more diplomatic response than the gruff

"Yeah, well, you must have fucking cloth ears then!"

Undaunted, Peel did play "Shove it!" a couple of times upon its release, bless him.

Like many musicians, they weren't massively well organised. The demo tapes were usually about to be recorded, the biographies to be sent in the post at a later date. Maybe it was a case of “the commerce infecting the creativity”. After all, what true artist enjoys becoming distracted from the purity of the creative process? My own take on it was that those lingering self-doubts were causing these three performers to accept terrible wages and appalling working conditions. What they needed was a shop steward.

In this alley-way in Ghent, Xero recounted a story which illustrated only too well how things had changed.
“Six years ago I was leg-less at 5 AM. Lost my bearings completely, and I was crawling along on these very cobbles with my double bass, my saxophone case and kit-bag. The knees of my jeans were ripped and my skin raw and bleeding.”

And on this beautiful spring day here we were, walking out into the same street feeling great: the Artiste and his Manager. We both blinked at the bright sunlight and sniffed the aroma of espressos. Xero turned to me:
" I definitely want you to be our manager, you were really good at doing that in there."
“ Why...thanks… “ I responded with genuine embarrassment, knowing only too well that such praise from Xero was extremely rare.

I too was excited by this leap into hyper-earnings (Six hundred quid for one gig! Bloody Hell!).
“...do you think we should have a contract ?”I ventured, thinking 'What if they make it, what if they are hugely successful and wealthy and give me the boot?'
“ Nah. Fuck it. They’re not worth the paper they’re written on anyway ” countered Slingsby.
“ So what percentages should we work on? ” I asked, thinking 10, maybe 15, perhaps 20 at a pinch.
“ Why don’t we make you the fourth member of the anarcho-syndicalist collective and split our earnings four ways?” asked Xero rhetorically, before adding as an afterthought, “ I’ll have to check with the others of course, but they generally do what I tell ‘em”.

At this he lobbed one of his grenade-like guffaws into the conversation. He liked to think he was his own man, but in truth he had an unbreakable bond with the other two, a genuine marriage when compared to the adulterous affairs of previous ensembles. In reality, he always took on board what the other two said.

“ O.K., done!” I found myself saying. I was grinning inanely in response to that amazingly toothy grin that Xero had the habit of grinning. I thought for a moment before adding
“ And if we ever do become stinking rich through all of this, how about I buy you a Bass Clarinet?”
“Done!” said Slingsby before spitting voluminously onto his huge open palm and offering it to me. The night before he had been raving on about how good they are, Bass Clarinets that is, citing Eric Dolphy's efforts with one as evidence and getting Paul to put the Dolphy "In Europe" LP on the turntable behind the bar at The Damberd. I could well imagine what great noises might issue forth were he to ever get his hands on one.

I never did make quite the same connection with the other two members of the anarcho-syndicalist collective. I respected them immensely for their energy and mature musicianship and for their mutual, almost telepathic, understanding. I often found them funny, but mainly when they were feeding off Xero's wry observations and mad plans. I got the feeling that they both found me intensely annoying and tolerated me because, for some reason, Xero had decided that I was alright. One thing I liked about all three of them was that they were honest, often painfully so. Looking back Now, I can see that while I was trying to appear Knowledgable, Capable and Managerial, I actually still had an awful lot of growing up to do. I was, in reality, Emminently Dispensable.

But at least, I suppose, when I talked about organising demos, gigs, tours, albums and heaps of publicity, unlike the many patently flaky characters who'd approached them since their inception, I hadn't been full of shit. All of the above were duly organised. After al, organising stuff was what I'd been doing as a job for a couple of years in two temporary Community Development posts in Leeds and Otley. Once we were on tour and doing gigs and interviews day in, day out, and they were being lauded by all and sundry, Louis’ and Gene’s misgivings seemed to ebb a little.

It must be reassuring at first when everyone starts fawning over you, telling you how talented you are, how good you look, how funny you are. You could easily lie back and luxuriate in the ego strokes. All three of them seemed to relish the attention, their egos sometimes threatening to grow to ominous proportions. But their saving grace was always their ability to laugh at the world, each other and themselves. If one of us was taking himself too seriously, the others were usually quick to burst any bubbles that might be beginning to inflate.

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