5 - Watch This Space!

With no guitarist and a studio booked for the following week to re-do their album, the situation was critical for the four remaining Stargazers. As we saw earlier, Peter with his writing and producing skills and his tasty guitar style was a key element in the band’s sound. Finding a replacement almost looked like an impossible task.
But for once, it seems that luck finally knocked upon their door when Danny remembered a fellow guitar player named Marc Breman who had played with him in the Barnshakers. Danny and Ricky went to see Breman perform live which didn’t convinced Ricky at all “I found this very bizarre and had major reservations about putting such a wild card into our band at such a critical moment”. But Danny managed to convince him and luckily Marc was keen on joining the band. And before they knew it the band was back in the studio to write and record their debut album.

The Stargazers second line-up, with Marc breman (guitar) on far left

Marc proved to be a good choice. “Marc is a fantastic guitarist and his influence added greatly to our sound. We were now able to develop the band musically in our own way without compromise – or so we thought” says Ricky. Anders completes “We soon discovered that Marc was an incredible musician, not only easily able to replicate Peter’s guitar parts on our old records, but brought in so many new ideas and sounds for the recordings that August, that in my personal opinion it was actually a good thing that Peter left and that we had Marc in the band for the recordings (…) he was completely open to trying any new musical idea, and had the technique to play anything we, or he, could suggest, which was quite a contrast to working with Peter….”. And it showed on the final result. Next to classic numbers like Freddie Bell’s Hey There You or Duke Ellington’s Perdido/Caravan medley, stand a bunch of solid originals with a great variety of styles written by Danny, John and Anders. With a few more sessions at CBS for Bobby Lewis’ Tossin’ and Turnin’ (produced by Nicky Graham) and Utopia (Tiny Bradshaw’s Walking the Chalk Line) and some tracks lifted from the previous singles and featuring Peter (Hey Marie, Groove Baby Groove, Pretty Senorita and Rocketship to the Moon) the debut album, to be named Watch This Space, was complete.

With its more “radio friendly” production, Tossin’ and Turnin was chosen to be released as the band’s third single backed with Pretty Senorita written by Anders. But once again it failed to chart reaching only the lower parts of the top hundred in November 1982. True Love, originally sung by Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby in the movie “High Society” was a stage favourite and was envisaged as a potential single but Kelly’s sudden car crash convinced the label and the band to abandon the idea. They then embarked on a two month tour supporting Shakin’ Stevens (both bands were on the same label). As Ricky wrote in 1999 “We found ourselves playing to a strange mix of people that consisted mainly of young girls in their early teens who had no idea of what we were all about and cared even less”. Consisting of one-nighters, this tour was very exhausting but Danny has some funny memories of it “I remember Shakey’s roadies, Tam and Peen, nailing Shakey’s Green Door shut one night for a laugh and Shakey ending up shoulder charging it open and winding up in the orchestra pit in Southampton. The rule on that tour was that if you laughed at Shakey you were off the tour… so that was a tough one!” During this tour they released their fourth (and last) single recorded at 10cc’s Strawberry studios in Stockport, a cover of Louis Jordan’s Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chicken. This time the label chose the song and the producer (Peter Collins who worked with Shakin’ Stevens and Matchbox). It’s clear that CBS wanted a modern production, which now sounds horribly dated, to get that hit that wouldn’t come. The atmosphere wasn’t the best to record a rock’n’roll number as Ricky discloses “We were asked to wait in a room and were called into the studio one by one to record our bit along to a click track”. The result was as far as possible from the good old rock’n’roll (even with modern aspects) the band used to play, using electronic drums instead of Ricky’s distinctive groove. “This was total shit” continues the drummer “We all hated it. Eventually when complete he used only a small part of my drumming – maybe 40% - the rest were added computer drums. Some time after the session we were sent copies of the single and had it played and were extremely disappointed and wanted nothing to do with it!” Peter Collins would later achieve a similar result (or sabotage depending on your point of view) with Roman Holliday. At least the buyers could find comfort with Rocketship to the Moon on the b-side, a gentle jazzy ballad penned by Janes and dating from the Davenport era of the band.

The cover of the band’s final single.

Even if it wasn’t a great record, it had commercial potential which didn’t escape the notice of Top of the Pops who asked the band to prerecord their appearance to be broadcast the following week. Appearing on national TV would clearly have helped the sales, and maybe who knows, give the band the big break they desperately needed. Sadly a relative of the band bought 6 copies at once in a “chart shop” which led to suspect a fraud and once again the sales were discounted hence no chart action and the broadcast cancelled. “Ironically, Chickens is many peoples favourite singles of ours – there is no accounting for taste” concludes Ricky.

The band embarked on another tour, this time opening for Elton John. Danny remembers: “It was straight after the Shakey one so after about 7 weeks of gigging everyday for £50 a week and back stage sandwiches we were a bit fed up and tended to get out of the theatre straight after we were done and go and get hammered.. so the memories are a bit vague. I remember Elton throwing peanuts at someone one night, I remember dropping my trousers on stage in a 5000 seater in Brighton just to freak our manager out, I remember that Elton’s manager fancied John Wallace”. But as funny as it could have been, the fact of playing for people that didn’t come to see them started to take its toll on the band.

The boys with Elton John