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THE CHAMELEONS
Being a Chameleons fan is not just about liking a band, it's a way of life. Album covers are tattooed on limbs, T-shirts still worn like a badge of recognition. Wear one to a gig in town and you'll end up talking to some stranger about this most revered of Manchester bands. Walking around Middleton today you see a town still struggling to recover from the decline in manufacturing. It was here between the mills and the vinegar factory that childhood friends Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding formed a band called Years. After one single "Come Dancing", now highly prized by collectors the world over, Mark Burgess from local punk band The Cliches joined on bass and vocals, and with the addition of drummer Brian Schofield The Chameleons were born. Their dark-edged post-punk bristled with small town claustrophobia, the hopelessness the early Thatcher years wrought on such places, and the experiments with recreational chemicals which provided some kind of escape route from it all. This caught the attention of John Peel and after one session, the replacement of Schofield with Tamesider John Lever and some fairly appalling treatment at the hands of major record labels, their debut album "Script Of The Bridge" surfaced on long-forgotten indie Statik in 1983. Listening to it today, its influence on "alternative" guitar music in Manchester and much further afield is undeniable. Burgess's deep rumbling bass and bitterly poetic lyrics, Lever's hammering drums, Smithies' timeless chord progressions and Fielding's uniquely fluid guitar sounds echoing through the late 80s indie scene to the latest crop of guitar bands barely even born when it came out. A second album "What Does Anything Mean Basically" followed in 1985, its sleeve artwork (drawn, as always, by Smithies) becoming the closest thing to a brand or logo the band ever had. The sound was more psychedelic than the debut, with songs such as "Perfume Garden" floating in a wash of keyboards and in places slightly muddied by less than perfect production, although it remains a favourite among some elements of the hardcore fanbase. Eventually that elusive major label deal arrived and the band signed to Geffen, releasing their third album "Strange Times" in 1986. How their best-known single "Swamp Thing" failed to be a hit still remains a mystery, and 18 years on it's still a staple of Manchester indie nights. Follow-up "Tears" received radio airplay and even a small piece in pop mag of the day Smash Hits, but overall single sales were astronomical then compared to today and this too failed to cross over into the big league. The band's defiant, independent spirit and lack of compromise may also have counted against them - a brief mention of “smack” in the otherwise relatively commercial-sounding "Mad Jack" resulted in the single being pulled before release in the Just-Say-No 80s. Success was looking more likely in America after a tour in 1987 which was hugely successful but completely ignored by the UK music press. However there were growing tensions in the ranks, not least over the decision to record the next album in America, and when their friend and manager Tony Fletcher died suddenly the band splintered. It is telling that the four tracks from these sessions, eventually surfacing as an EP entitled "Tony Fletcher Walked On Water", are among the greatest songs they ever recorded, leaving only tantalising speculation as to what that fourth album could have been. Burgess and Lever quickly resurfaced as The Sun And The Moon along with two guitarists from Music For Aborigines: their eponymous debut retaining a lot of the Chameleons' sound, albeit with the very personal lyrics of old replaced by a more political agenda. They too were relatively short-lived; Burgess resurfacing in the mid 1990s via collaborations with Mancunian singer-songwriter Bryan Glancy and Wonky Alice's Yves Altana, and Lever playing for a while in indie rockers Wilson. Smithies and Fielding spent much of the 1990s as The Reegs with singer Gary Lavery, releasing a couple of little-heard (outside of the loyal fanbase) albums on Middleton indie Imaginary. Yet in their absence, the Chameleons became legends. "Madchester", "Shoegazing" and "Britpop" came and went, but those three classic albums stood the test of time, old fans played them to friends who played them to friends, and the fan base quietly grew. When the reformation rumours started it felt just too unbelievable. Older and wiser, the four set aside past differences and booked a reunion gig at the Witchwood. It sold out quickly and one gig became two, three, four, five... fans from across the globe descended on Ashton. Realising they had most certainly not been forgotten, the band booked into the Academy one Saturday night in June 2000. Not the Hop and Grape, not the old MDH, but the big Academy. The atmosphere in there was like nothing I have ever experienced before or since. Although a fan in the 80s I was too young to have actually seen them before they split, I'd not been quick enough to get tickets for the Witchwood shows, and there were hundreds like me. Torrential rain lashed Manchester that day, wrecking the intricate hair of the goth contingent that bizarrely made up part of this most image-free of bands' audience. The unmistakeable introduction to Swamp Thing filled the room as it had the nightclubs and bedrooms of Manchester a million times, but this time it was live. Everywhere you looked people were in tears, overcome by emotion. "Are we back or what?" mused Burgess as he looked out across the packed venue. "I think so, I really do..." Tours of Germany and the US followed, the band capitalising on the adulation that had grown up since their premature demise. Rasta MC Kwasi Asante, who had initially come onstage for the odd track here and there, became an almost integral part of the band's live performance. This surprised a few of the old guard but it worked. A new album "Why Call It Anything?" was released in summer 2001 - reactions were mixed, some old fans almost denying its existence to this day, and in retrospect perhaps the songs would have benefitted from developing live a little longer, but the spirit was still there, "Dangerous Land" in particular quickly becoming a highlight of the live set. Further tours followed, with the 2002 tour receiving a rapturous reception across the globe. And yet even then, had anyone stopped to look, there were cracks beginning to form. "Why Call It Anything" had sold little ouside of the established fan-base, and without a record label there was little money to work on a follow-up. In their 40s, the band had their own lives, separated now by geography. A performance in Athens was scheduled for April 2003 and, as had become almost a regular occurrence, a bunch of us from the UK were heading off out there to watch them. Bags packed, I logged into the band's bulletin board to check for messages from a friend already out there. Instead there was an announcement from Mark Burgess: the previous night, the rest of the band had told him they were not going. I don't think anyone will ever know for certain what was said, but various members were unhappy with various others' plans for the band and somehow it all came to a head. Bound by contract, Mark played the show with Kwasi and a couple of technicians, but there was no avoiding the fact that he, the Greek fans and our little travelling contingent were devastated. Within a week Mark and Dave were fighting a vicious war of words on their own bulletin board - don't go looking for it now, it's long been deleted - and once again, it was all over. It could never have lasted for ever, four such passionate, creative, volatile characters - the very factors that made them the greatest band this town ever saw were the same things that blew them apart. On a blazingly hot September afternoon, five months after the Chameleons splintered, this fan stood in the sunshine on the street just off Hamburg Reeperbahn where I'd last seen the band play the November before. The corner where I shook John's hand, still bloodied from the intensity of his drumming, as he boarded the tour bus. Across the street, the strange little club where Mark and Dave had raised bottles of beer in the air and hugged like brothers after playing a 90 minute set with the energy of men half their age. It had been an unnecessarily messy ending for such a great band, now apparently beyond repair. Yet how privileged we were to have them back at all…. Being a Chameleons fan is not just about liking a band, it's a way of life – and there amongst the sex shops and seedy bars I laid to rest the ghost of my lifelong favourite band, and walked away. Or so I thought. The rumours have started around town again that they are talking again, with offers of gigs in Middleton and the USA towards the end of 2004. And whilst this is far from a certainty, the official line is “Keep the door open”…. CATH AUBERGINE 13/02/04 Dave Fielding now lives in Lincoln where he plays in a loose psychedelic guitar/beats/didgeridoo collective. Reg Smithies has effectively retired from music and still lives in north Manchester with his partner and young son. Mark Burgess lives in Hamburg with his German wife and is still writing music, playing occasional low-key gigs either on his own or with friends including Yves Altana, and is currently writing his autobiography. John Lever divides his time between Ashton and Corfu, and remains the greatest drummer in the world. Kwasi Asante MCs at Friends and Family and various other club nights around town. Cath Aubergine saw the Chameleons 35 times across the UK, Germany and America between 2000 and 2002 and only regrets that it wasn't many more... Check out: Official (and very comprehensive) Website Take a look at: Fans’ gallery of reunion tour photos (including Cath Aubergine’s USAtour 2002 photo-diary):

The Stone Roses

by Polly Dunbar I was 14 and completely caught up in the adrenalin rush of my first gig, but it was November 1995 and I was way too late. The sea of 20- and 30-odd year old blokes at the Leeds T & C wearing threadbare “She Bangs The Drums” t-shirts said it all: for the majority, this was a nostalgia trip, a chance to reminisce with mates about the hedonistic days of baggy, when the Roses were a band to really believe in. Things had changed a lot since then. The Stone Roses had recently emerged from their 5 year public absence with the Second Coming, which had been met with a near-universal sense of disappointed expectation, Reni had left amid rumours of drug excess and money troubles, and the band I saw was a band without impetus, beginning its demise. History has a habit of neatening things up; trimming the frayed edges of stories and lending them a sense of inevitability which is unsurprising when you know how they end. At the time, there was a pervasive sense that the band’s best days were over, but it wasn’t inevitable it would be their last tour, and the gig was actually a good one. Part of the magic was still alive in 1995, and there was still a distance to go before it was all over. Like the Beatles on Hey Jude, the end was protracted and grew increasingly painful, and even after Squire’s departure in April ‘96, the remaining Roses refused to quietly admit defeat, instead opting to share the band’s death-throes with a horrifed festival crowd at Reading. That was the nadir, whereas at the T&C gig the band was teetering at the top of the decline, rather than plummeting down the slope. Despite Reni’s absence and a shambolic vocal performance from Brown, this was a band with presence in spades, and excellent songs by the bucketload. Still, this was all a far cry from six years earlier, when Brown announced “The past was yours but the future’s mine” and the Stone Roses had the pop world at their feet. In the late 80s, “indie” actually meant something; in a musical climate dominated by PLW’s fluff and stadium rock, more often than not it meant shrinking from view, shying away from success on a large scale, and embracing cult status. The Stone Roses were different. They wanted to be on Top of the Pops; to have a number one without compromising or selling themselves to do it; to prove they were the band to bring the creativity which had been missing since punk back to rock. With their paisley shirts and flares, Pollock-tribute record sleeves, and jangly, Byrdsian melodies, the Roses eschewed the emphasis on alienation and all things drizzly and bleak which had characterised the approach of the former giants of Mancunian rock, Joy Division and The Smiths. Songs like Sally Cinnamon celebrated sunshine and good times, with lyrics (“You taste of Cherryade”) which evoked a sweet, nostalgic escapism, whilst Elephant Stone was mood-lifting, neo-psychedelic pop. Not that the Roses didn’t also embrace a darker side: Brown’s menacingly intoned, vindictive poetry on tracks like Turns Into Stone, on which he daydreams “Your pink fat lips let go a scream/ You fry and melt, I’m on the scene” hinted at the band’s earlier incarnation as goths. The sunshine was often shot through with a black cynicism, but overall, the spirit of the Stone Roses’ music was one of celebration, of freshness and vitality. Manchester had changed, and though the hedonistic energy of “Madchester” really emanated from and pivoted around what was happening in the clubs, rather than the music made by white boys with guitars, the Roses reflected the new mood. They exuded a swaggering confidence, an absolute cool, with Brown in particular making offhand remarks such as “It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at” which would become ideals for the believers. Unlike Ian Curtis or Morrissey, Brown didn’t feel like a prisoner of his past or present circumstances, but similarly to both, his attitude struck a chord with thousands of fans: in Brown’s case, they were attracted by the sense that you could achieve anything; it was there for the taking if you refused to be put down. Or, if you weren’t looking for a creed, you could just copy the band’s haircuts, join the party and lose yourself in the music. Like all the greatest songwriting partnerships, Ian Brown and John Squire were in many ways opposites. Brown was the perfect pop-idol, all arrogant attitude, charisma and indie-boy beauty (before King Monkey took over), whilst Squire was creative and quiet, preferring to let his amazing guitar skill, and often Brown, speak for him. Drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield combined to make an outstanding rhythm section, adding to the band’s hook-laden guitar pop an acid house rhythmic sensibility. The Stone Roses were lumped together with the Happy Mondays as key figures in the ecstasy-saturated baggy scene which crossed indie and rave. Tight funk rhythms aside, though, the dance beat only really came to the fore on tracks like the infectious Fools Gold. Their eponymous debut stands as a very retro set of carefully crafted songs, and with it, the Roses foreshadowed and provided inspiration for the 90s obsession with 60s guitar pop. In fact, John Leckie makes them sound as saccharine-sweet as Herman’s Hermits at times; despite this, for many people, it ranks as one of the best albums ever recorded. From the atmospheric opener “I Wanna Be Adored”, through the uplifting, catchy-as-hell pop of “She Bangs the Drums”, to the epic and mighty “I Am The Resurrection”, The Stone Roses is an amazing record. Things started to go wrong during the band’s 5-year sabbatical, from 1990 to 1995, a period of bitter wrangling with Silvertone, personal acrimony, and very little creativity. The part played by drugs in the story is legendary. Brown was later to describe coke as “the Devil” for the effect it had on Squire, and Brown himself was smoking weed non-stop, whilst Reni’s drug of choice is uncertain, and Mani wasn’t limiting his options to one favourite. On Second Coming, when it was finally released on Geffen, the band eschewed the 60s harmonies and jangle of their debut in favour of a much heavier sound which took its cue from Led Zep. Packed with foot-on-amp riffola and thunderous percussion, there are several genuinely excellent songs on the album, including comeback single Love Spreads, Ten Storey Love Song, and How Do You Sleep? It was a solid sophomore effort, but not the work of genius fans had been waiting for, and the mixed reviews it gained reflected a sense of anti-climax after the long period of anticipation. Relations between the band members were becoming increasingly strained. On most of the songs on Second Coming, Squire’s 70s rock-inspired riffs were at the centre of the music, and Brown has since stated that for himself and Reni, at least, it felt like Squire was pulling the band in a direction they weren’t totally comfortable with, losing sight of what had made the Roses so great in the first place. When Reni sensationally quit the band on the eve of the comeback tour, it was rumoured to have been due to his own heroin problems, arguments over money, or total animosity between him and Squire. He was replaced by Robbie Maddox, a former member of Rebel MCs, for the 1995 tour. The band seemed to have acquired a jinx and after a succession of disappointments, including cancelling an appearance at Glastonbury in 1995 after Squire broke his collar-bone, the guitarist left in April ‘96, prompting considerable acrimony. This was followed by the band’s disastrous appearance at Reading, and the announcement it was finished three weeks later. Reading buried the Stone Roses and urinated on its grave, providing a dismal curtain-call for a band whose musical legacy was so great. Find Out More Seek: Albums “The Stone Roses”, “Turns Into Stone” (an odds-and-sods collection containing B-sides like “Going Down” alongside classic singles like “Elephant Stone”) and “Second Coming” are all well worth owning, but if you can’t be bothered, then “The Complete Stone Roses” is a better compilation than the recently released “Best of the Stone Roses”. Try Also: Brown’s solo efforts, “Unfinished Monkey Business”, “Golden Greats” and “Music of the Spheres” are all meandering but intriguing, encompassing lo-fi, neo-psychedelia, dance beats, and a variety of sonic textures and effects. Squire’s debut solo album “Time Changes Everything” sees him achieving a warm, 70s rock sound. Mani can be found playing bass with Primal Scream. Avoid: “Garage Flowers”, a collection of early outtakes, charts the progression of the early days of the Stone Roses, when they were either gothing it up or emulating the post-punk sound of bands like Joy Divison and the Chameleons, and frankly weren’t very good. Also avoid “Do It Yourself” by the Seahorses, the band Squire formed immediately after his departure from the Roses. Influence: The Stone Roses were probably one of the most influential bands of all time, and certainly the most influential of their generation. Hordes of bands owe a massive debt to the Roses, and with their debut album, they set the standard for all of Britpop’s chancers. The Charlatans, Blur, Suede, Primal Scream, and most obviously, Oasis were just a few of the bands to be influenced by them, with Noel Gallagher famously stating that without the Stone Roses, there could have been no Oasis.

Easterhouse

By Rob Allen A useful tool, the internet. It gives us endless pleasure in providing message boards and forums in which to vent our spleens, instant access to distressing images of the mutated human form and the opportunity to search out of date vacancies for employment. Amongst the swamp of online casinos and sites relating to the activities of Britney Spears I had spent a little time over the past couple of years trying to locate a Manchester based band from the 80’s named Easterhouse. With my knowledge thin on the ground, I tracked down an original copy of their debut LP and visited a couple of sites with identical, unrevealing biographies. There seemed very little to reveal about a band that I thought had to be of further significance than just being a bit part in the story of The Smiths, or if there was, no one was letting on. Then, via the ‘manchestermusic.co.uk message centre’ things started to change, phone calls and e-mails lead to a direct contact with lead singer Andy Perry and he spoke up. Andy & Ivor Perry, Peter Vanden, Gary Rostock and Michael Murray formed Easterhouse in Stretford, Manchester in the early 1980’s. “I had been living in Moss Side doing political stuff for about 18 months” explains Andy “After coming back to Stretford I hooked up with Ivor and after screwing around for a while I was drafted into the band to improve the quality of the lyrical content”. Andy brought with him a determination to express different ways of thinking in a country, which he saw as insular and paranoid. “Communist thought was central to this process as it was the single most cohesive, consistent, different way of interpreting the world, Britain only had a vague idea of the subcultures that existed here. Green peppers were considered exotic!” explains the man who penned such titles as “Get Back to Russia”, responding to the predictable order from objectors to the communist view, and “Out On Your Own”, a shot across the bows of the Labour Party. The delivery itself was in a voice as impassioned as the views held by the man himself, for a guy who ‘eventually’ agreed to sing, he did an amazing job. The post-punk climate had Andy and Ivor taking contrasting opinions of the significance and value of what they had seen unfurl, Andy thinking that “the Sex Pistols and The Clash were a bit suspect”. He readily admits that as a cultural phenomenon Easterhouse couldn’t avoid being influenced, as the basis for getting involved in music had shifted and they now had a platform where they didn’t have to conform the traditional idea of British society. The brothers did eventually find a common musical appreciation in the music that had preceded the punk explosion, with a mutual love of MC5, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop plus a side order of The Doors and Velvet Underground. “The final musical ingredient was Bob Marley who used simplicity and directness in integrating political themes” says Andy. Influenced by DC Comics he had found imported from the US as a boy and coming from an Irish family still seen as ‘black sheep’, Andy had always thought wider than just that of the British mainstream and could now project that to a wider audience. Ivor Perry changed the trajectory of Easterhouse’s development dramatically in a short space of time with two actions that were either brainwaves or just plain lucky. Firstly he took a decision to visit another local performer. He found himself stood on Morrissey’s doorstep as The Smiths kick started their rise to fame and requested a support slot, which in a fit of goodwill Morrissey agreed to and lined them up to open proceedings at Dingwalls in London. Andy says he was surprised by the debut single “Hand in Glove” as Morrissey was a “weird local individual who kept his change in a purse”. Secondly, in rehearsing for the gig in the capital, Ivor wrote a song later titled “Man Alive” which sounded like nothing they’d done before. They were taken by the folky, electric feel of the song and found a whole new direction which took them further towards a commercial crowd but retained and embellished the potency of Andy’s lyrics. What followed was a deal with Rough Trade and the superb “Contenders” album, a collection of songs, which let Andy run riot over the sorry nation he found himself tolerating. Somewhere amidst the odd wailing harmonica, the band had found a formula, which touched on what we were to know as indie. Whilst never extending their repertoire to either the humour tinged maudlin that The Smiths found so saleable or resorting to the epic stadium filling anthems of U2, the album delivers a melodic document recording the unrest of the times with an open, honest suggestion of the alternative. “We were one strand of what became the legacy of punk, the alternative lifestyle strand was the one which became increasingly dominant degenerating into crusty’s, environmentalism and all that other social crap. This was personified by bands like James and the “family capitalism” of Rough Trade records.” States Andy and with this in mind, he had an alternative in Easterhouse. “It was important that the lyrical content was not based around protest or anger in a reactive sense, the purpose was not to reform or improve what was around but to offer a complete alternative. I understood that injustice was inevitable in the society we had”. Andy had vented much of what had been preoccupying him for many years but after the release of “Contenders” the line-up of the band would change. Andy and Ivor would go their separate ways, the latter leaving to form Candle with the fifth ‘Smith, Craig Gannon and the rest of the original band would eventually dissolve. It would be three years before the second and last Easterhouse record would be released, with Andy Perry writing alone. Rough Trade had hit hard times following the boom time of the mid-Eighties when they had lead the charge of independent labels into the mainstream charts. Of all the weapons that they could find in their armoury to rescue their desperate situation, Andy Perry was still signed and waiting to record, it had to be done quickly and on a budget, conforming to the stylistic trends of 1989. “Waiting For The Redbird” was released with Dave Verner on drums, Neil Taylor, Lance Sabin and Steve Lovell sharing guitar duties. The cohesion of the original band and the fire that it put into the words of their frontman had been lost amid a more plastic, programmed and polished product which slotted in with the lack of inspiration surrounding Rough Trade. The only consistent quality between the two records was the voice that didn’t lose sight of the original blueprint with songs such as “Stay With Me (Death on the Dole)” and “This Country”. “Free enterprise/But not free to strike/The privileged few can do as they like/And the rest can prepare for paying the price/I spit in the eye of your free enterprise” are typical of the caustic lyrical content that smothers the smooth, synthetic sound of “This Country”. The sound of the record was so far away from the agitation that the debut had displayed that it was obvious that what Andy had shared with Ivor was as important a combination of character and temperament as their old friends Morrissey and Marr. The sound of Manchester had changed with the rumblings from inside the Hacienda changing from shimmering guitars to thumping Chicago house, the ecstasy fuelled euphoria and baggy had shown the city a new route and subsequently wielded the axe on anyone not joining the ride. The descent of Easterhouse from the stage to the history books was complete by the end of the decade. As the band members recollections of the time become hazy, “Contenders” picks out the mood of the 1980’s from a perspective that didn’t pull any punches, sought out an alternative so far removed from the norm and put it into nine tracks of accessible electric rock. Although the internet can’t provide you with many clues as to where this modest tornado of establishment baiting rock and roll came from or where it went, the album gives you everything you need to know. Check out: Easter House Web & Info


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