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The Northwood Years
As we saw in the previous instalment of this story, by 1985 Red Hot’n’Blue was getting more and more attention. More gigs were pouring in and with its popularity rising it was soon obvious that a full length album was the next step. “Ray frensham thought there was a buck to make out of us he signed us up for a album” jokes Ashley.
The summer of 1985 was spent gigging and rehearsing new material for the planned album and in August (19th -21th ) the band went to Alaska studios (just under Waterloo station) with Boz Boorer in the producer seat to record what would be “Wait’n’See”. Cut in three days it’s an extraordinary solid work for a debut album.
It features a majority of self penned songs - mostly by the team Kingman-Zihni, but Andy co-wrote three songs and producer Boz Boorer contributed the title track - and only three covers (Yes I’m Gonna Love You, Dick Penner’s Move Baby Move and Myron Lee’s Aw C’mon Baby).
It covers a wide range of style : from boogie blues in a Slim Harpo style (Sure Like The Look In Your Eyes) to rockabilly (Clicketty Clack, Move Baby Move) a bit of jump blues (It's My Lucky Day, Bad Girl), a jazzy ballad (So Lonely On My Own), a latin instrumental with a Django Reinhardt feel in the middle (Hey Gringo) and rockin' blues in the best Chess Records tradition (Postman Blues with harp played by Little Paul (from the Blubberry Hellbellies) and the Diddley tinged Take A Walk Up The Apple Tree).
It was mostly recorded live with very few overdubs ( the guide vocals part were often kept).
Wait'n'See remains a good memory for all involved : “Most of it was cut live, then we took bits away and added different shit in its place. Amazing but kind of tedious and time consuming. Boz somehow pulled it into shape. I still think its a good record.” says Ashley. “It was good fun and I learnt a lot from it” remembers Kevin and Mouse adds “it was a happy affair and we did a cool job on it”. 15 songs in all were recorded, 13 ended on the album (the 14th track of the record, “So Lonely On My Own”, comes from the sessions made with Peter Davenport the previous November). The remaining two songs were “Without You” and a cover of Louis Jordan’s “Caldonia”. When you listen to it, it's very close to "Wait'n'See" so it's probably the reason why it didn't end on the album. It finally got released on the compilation album “The Northwood Story” on NV Records in 1991.
Mixed in September and October by Boorer and Kingman, it was released in January 1986 and received rave reviews “When it came out it got a four out of five star rating in Record Mirror and other magazines of the day, even INXS only got a 3 star rating, how things changed!”. The band toured to support the release and it sold very well though it seems that the band didn’t see a lot of money from that (same old story).
In the streets of Bristol, 1986
Even when they were headlining the all dayers, the band kept busking a lot to earn some extra cash. One day while they were playing in the street of Camden, a man approached them, gave his card and told them to call him as he liked the band. The man was Trevor Horne from The Buggles who scored several hits as a producer with Grace Jones, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Art Of Noise… It was a big chance for the band to get a wider audience than the rock’n’roll circuit but it never happened. Mouse : “Ash told Ray Frensham and Ray was over the top and too pushy and Trevor backed off the situation. This was one of the stupid things that Ray did, and the first of many as far as I’m concerned, he could be a real wanker at times…” . For Kevin it was “very sad really because we were onto big things”.
From that moment, things started to decline “[We had] a good ride for about a year and then we kind of all started pulling against each other. We let Ray get wedges in between us and me and Mouse split from the twins.” recalls Ash. Ray didn't want Dave and Andy in the band any longer and by April 1986 the twins were gone (“not a thing i enjoyed at all, i went along with it, but that was all” says Mouse). They were replaced by Stuart Simpson from the Slingshots on drums and Paul Diffen (Sugar Ray Ford and later Blue Cats) on double bass. Pat Reyford (Sugar Ray Ford too) also joined on alto sax. For Mouse “Ray was trying to run us and mould us into a jump jive sort of blues thing”.
Soon after the twins were gone, the band entered in studio with the new line-up and a session piano player called Sir James (it seems that neither Ray Frensham nor Mouse remember his name). Boz Boorer was also present and added a second guitar on some recordings. The songs made were a reworking of “Sure Like the Look In Your Eyes”, “I Wanna Tell You That I Love You”, “Without You” and “Sad In My Heart”. The latter being a cover of The Man Upstairs that had it released on single on Sideline Records in 1985. The sound was definitely fuller but in my humble opinion didn’t really fit Red Hot’n’Blue. Somewhere they had lost what made their specificity, their rocking edge, and Boz’s production this time was more “radio friendly”. This said the version of “Sure Like the Look In Your Eyes” recorded this day still stands well today. It was envisaged as a “cross over” single, backed with “Caldonia”, but it never materialized. This sides were reissued years later on Crazy Love record.
The new direction taken by the band didn’t really please them “It wasn’t what I wanted to do, I wanted to do rock n roll and blues not big band stuff, I liked it but didn’t really want to be in a big jump band” recalls the singer. It was also very hard, and costly, to take such a large band on the road and the twins weren’t too happy with the band using the name Red Hot’n’Blue. At the same time Mouse started to become a popular DJ on the London scene and slowly the excitement of the beginning started to fade away. For Ashley “it wasnt the same after the twins were gone.”. The relation with Ray Frensham weren’t that good too. There was money problems and it wasn’t long before the band and the label parted ways. The line-up changed again with Terry Clancy (Cat Talk / Scat Cat) joining on bass and John Day on second guitar but in the own word of Mouse “the band just ran out of steam and it came to a very quick final shortly after the weekender up in Southport at the end of 86.”.
That’s how end the first live of Red Hot’n’Blue. But this cats have more than one, that what we’ll see in part three very soon.
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