THE BLUE CATS / BELTANE FIRE

One afternoon in 1980 (L to R) Clive Osbourne, Stef Edwards, myself, Mitch Caws and Carlo Edwards got together in a front room in Carshalton Surrey to rehearse for a show in Holland. It was to be our first ever gig together as The Blue Cats. Little did any of us know what kind of strange, wonderful and at times painful journey we were about to undertake.

For me, it was special from the word go. The thing about Carlo and Stef is that they weren't just a couple of Rockabillys who happened to play guitar and drums, they were gifted musicians, light years ahead of most of the others that were around at the time. Mitch was unbeatable on the double bass, and Clive, well he was just Clive ‘Rocking Mont Oz’.

There was a feeling for me that day that this band could achieve greatness together. Being part of that unit became my life, it wasn’t just a band it was my whole existence. I thought about nothing else, I loved it and believed in it one hundred and fifty percent, from beginning to end, it was to become my family for the next thirteen years of my life.

Previous to that I had spent a couple of years touring with my own band; we played our first gigs together when I was 16. One of my greatest regrets is that the true originality and difference of that band was never really seen or heard outside our own home town of Southampton. In the beginning our set comprised of nearly all original material. We had this kind of uncluttered naivety in our approach to the construction of songs that I believe would have matured into something special if we’d travelled down a different road together. One of the things that attracted me to Rockabilly was the energy, at the same time I was getting a buzz from Johnny Burnett, Gene Vincent, early Elvis and Roy Orbison, I was also getting the same from The Clash, The Skids, The Jam and others, though you weren’t aloud to say so at the time. Before long we started to play on the London Rocking scene, that’s when we got infected with the ‘sound a like’ disease and in crept the lacklustre cover versions.

We signed with a London agent who saddled us with the ridiculous name of ‘Tony n the Tennessee Rebels’ I hated that bloody stupid name. I mean what the hell had that got to do with four kids from a dockland city in southern England. I wanted to call the band ‘The Spur Dogs’ or ‘Spur Dog Run’ but was told that these names sounded too ‘new wave’ and would offend certain factions on the Rock n Roll scene. The recordings that appear on’ The Blue Cats Early Days’ albums do not, in my opinion represent what we had.

The recordings on those albums show a young band in the process of loosing its identity, those sessions were little more than rehearsal tapes and should never have been released. If I could have that time over again, I would say to hell with the agent, call the band ‘Spur dog Run’ record a demo and take it straight to Island Records.

There were two line ups:

The first (1978) was (L to R) myself on vocals and guitar, Steve Noyce on electric bass, rest easy mate, Danny Kelly drums, and Gus Guthrie on guitar.

The second (1979) was (L to R) myself on vocals and guitar, Mitch Caws on upright bass, Bruce Hobbs on guitar and Danny Kelly on drums.

It was during this period that I first met Tim Polecat, who along with his father Barry Worman and Polecats bass player Phil Bloomberg would later become the managers of ‘Beltane Fire’. One of the last things I did with the Southampton lads before joining the Blue Cats was a tour of Germany with The Polecats and The Flying Saucers. We played a night in Berlin (remember at this time the wall was still up) and I witnessed something I had never seen before at home in the UK. The audience was a mixture of rockabillys and punks all digging the music together. This was a seminal moment for me and I remember thinking this is how it should be at home, this could really take the whole thing on to another plain. I think I wrote the first line of ‘Wild Night’ the next day, and left it forgotten on a piece paper along with the spare strings in my guitar case. I finished it a year or so later, as a member of the Blue Cats.

Stef, Carlo and Clive had their own history together with The Blue Cat Trio, but that is their story to tell.

From the start we set about crafting our own sound, The Blue Cats would not be a sound a like band. We would take all the musical influences we had together and create something new. This was far from plain sailing, we had to deal with a lot of brainless morons along the road, but it was our way or nothing. That first gig in Holland was a great kick off, away from the suffocating and oppressive atmosphere of the London scene we were free to breathe and lay the foundations of The Blue Cats.

Playing a rocking club in London in 1980 was a bit like a trip to the dentist, something of a necessity you had to do but were always glad when it was over. There was this elitist bullshit going on that we refused to pander to, as far as I was concerned it had nothing to do with the reasons why I got into Rockabilly.

The Blue Cats were never part of the London rocking thing, it wasn’t until we started to play at venues like Dingwalls, The Marquee, The Rock Garden and others that we really came into our own. Then people who really wanted to see the band could come and see us in our own right, without any interference. I always wanted (and still do) for Rockabilly to be taken seriously as a credible musical influence by the music industry at large, in the same way that a band can claim Blues, Soul, Ska, etc. to be an influence on them why not Rockabilly?

Rocking Mont Oz departed just before the release of Wild Night and we became the Quartet that most of you remember.

The release of ‘Wild Night’ and ‘Fight Back’ finally gave us our own identity; it was an exciting time with each week bringing a new challenge. I remember during the recording of Wild Night, Bert Rockhouse pleaded with Carlo to tone down his solo and make it a little less contemporary, Carlo’s reply was BOLLOCKS MATE!, this is my …… solo, I’m not copying anyone anymore, I’m creating. And so he did, while the rest of us ate all Bert’s cookies.

One of the highlights of that period for me was supporting ‘The Clash’,’ it seemed then that the dream was finally becoming a reality. By now we were playing to sell out audiences all over Europe, for which we were paid a pittance, and none of us to this day have ever received any record royalties or statements for ‘Fight Back ‘or ‘Wild Night’. All the endless Rip Off’s took their toll on band moral.

The release of Wild Night also brought us major press and label interest, but we were contracted to Rockhouse and Charley records and could not take up any of the major label offers, I often wonder what would have happened if we had. One thing I have to say at this point is that the actual recording of the ‘Fight back’ album is in my opinion woefully lacking in terms of production, that album was recorded mostly live in a day and a half, at a time when a lot of contemporary bands were spending months if not years on their albums. The production lacks the power that we had at that time, plus we held back material because we were unhappy with our label.

The best recording of the Blue Cats from that period is the first version of Wild Night we did for a Radio 1 session with Richard Skinner. Other than that I believe that the real ‘Blue Cats’ were not captured on tape until 12 years later with the recording of ‘The Tunnel’. The Tunnel is really the kind of record we should have released in 1981. It is an album of which I am unashamedly proud. It’s us at our best, doing what we do best, MAKING MUSIC! together, without any interference from outside influences. I am grateful to Roy Williams at Nervous for making the recording of that album possible.

By the end of 1982 we were starting to become more and more disillusioned with the whole thing and began the transition that eventually led to ‘Beltane Fire’. Had we been given the help and resources we needed, it’s quite possible we could have taken The Blue Cats further.

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We recorded a 4 track EP under the name The G Men for which I wrote 3 songs, Gotta Go, Left Out, and Dark Train.

The G Men 1982 (L to R) Mitch, Clint, Carlo, Stef.

We then tried an experimental thing that amounted to one gig under the name La Plaz. This involved Carlo playing keyboards with myself on guitar, Mitch on electric bass and Stef on drums. Around 1983 we decided that the best thing to do, for all concerned, was to literally disappear. We would start again as if we’d never been in another band. So that’s exactly what we did, we vanished off the face of the rocking earth.

What began next was probably the most productive and musically prolific period the four of us ever had together, if I could go back and re-live any period of the bands history it would be those of years between 1983/85. We were incredibly disciplined during that period. We locked ourselves away in a rehearsal studio near Black Friars Bridge, writing and rehearsing constantly for the best part of a year. It was so liberating to let the songs take their own form, free from the creative prison we had been in for the previous couple of years.

Carlo was developing a totally unique guitar style that took the band into an entirely different realm, Mitch and Stef rebounded off that style and came up with a totally original rhythm section, using the power of the double bass as a serious instrument and not just a cabaret prop. I was writing continuously during that period, every week saw a new song added to our totally original set. It was spine tingling to feel the whole thing coming together.

There were no outside influences to put any spokes in our creative wheels, I knew we had something special and had no doubt whatsoever that we would create a storm once people had seen us.

Getting the first Beltane Fire gig in London was bloody hard work! I chose Sean at the Rock Garden as my victim and pestered the living daylights out of him, day in day out until he finally succumbed to my ravings and gave us a mid week support slot. Tim and Phil Polecat came to that first gig and a few weeks later along with Tim’s dad Barry, became our managers. From there on in the buzz surrounding the band started to grow. Tim, Phil and Barry did a great job getting the word and the whole vibe going around the clubs. They were without doubt the best management team we ever had during our time together, everything was coming together perfectly. I was convinced we were on the edge of greatness. It was also dam good fun! those were bloody good days lads! OH MY, it was a blast to be on the train.

By the summer of 1984 a bidding war for ‘Beltane Fire’ was underway. I would be a liar if I didn’t admit it was exciting to watch the advance offers going up day by day, but with the benefit of hindsight I’m not so sure whether it was such a good thing for the bands future. You have to remember that this was the first time we’d ever had the prospect of any real money in front of us.

During all our efforts with the ‘Blue Cats’ we’d earned bugger all, and now all of a sudden people were throwing hundreds of thousands of pounds at us. That was a hell of a lot of money in 1984!
This game of cat and mouse between the major labels could have gone on for months, the 80’s was the ‘hey day’ of THE DEAL! But we all agreed we’d had enough, and wanted to get on and make the record we had dreamt about for so long. So on the 21st of August 1984 we signed to CBS (SONY) records for more Nelsonics than any of us had ever seen.

Our A&R man, Jack Stevens understood what we were about but I sensed that the rest of the company were scratching their heads as to what to do with us. I think we confused a lot of people back then, which contrary to the ‘Looking for Something Different’ philosophy that supposedly exists within the music industry, we were just too different! It’s been said since that we were ahead of our time, but the long and short of it is we just didn’t fit in!

Then, for the fist time ever, since we’d come together as a band, outside influences started to infiltrate, what had been up until then a creative fortress. It was at that point that the magic (for me) started to fade. I believe that the real Beltane Fire exists somewhere between The Tunnel and the demos we recorded between 1983/ 84. I could go into great detail at this point and catalogue all the events that conspired to halt the progress of what could have been one of greatest emotive and original bands to come out of the 80’s. But this is starting to turn into a book so I’ll stop here.

Those of you who saw us live between 1983 and 1986 know what we were capable of; to this day people still shake their heads and say WHY WHY WHY!

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The years from 1986 to 89 were (from my point of view) a kind of no fixed creative abode. We experimented a lot, but nothing seemed to gel like it had in the past. Then in 1989 we decided to give it one more shot and re locate the band to America. Mitch decided not to come with us and a period in our history ended.

During that year we spent in the USA some of the magic returned. We were now a three piece called Flame of The West, I was on bass and strangely enough we became a unit again. Once more we were on our own without any interference from outside influences. We started to play around Connecticut and then New York; we got a gig at CBGB’s after playing our demo to an A&R man at Geffen records. He liked what he saw and gave us some money for demo time. We got close, but no cigar. Carlo cracked some of the discs in his spine while jumping into a pool and had to return to England for an operation.

Back home we played some gigs around London but just couldn’t seem to get back the momentum we’d had in the USA. When the opportunity to make a new Blue Cats album arose it made a welcome respite from all the doubts and pondering on what lay ahead .By now we had been introduced to the superb bass playing talents of Paul Diffin, ‘Me Laddo’ fitted in a treat and low we were a quartet again.

The writing and recording of The Tunnel was one of the easiest projects we ever undertook together, everything seemed to come together without any effort. Looking back I suppose it was just us doing what came naturally; we had nothing left to prove to anyone we were simply enjoying ourselves. I remember when Carlo and I were working on the songs together; it was such a great vibe to be working on something that we both found so instinctive.

After we’d finished The Tunnel, we did a couple more tours together and had some laughs but I sensed that a natural end was approaching. There were no cross words or falling out, just a sad feeling that our wonderful journey together was over.

Whether or not that’s where it all ends I’m not sure. The magic we had still exists within each of us, that thing that happens when we play together will never die. There may or may not be a final chapter to our story but what ever happens I am proud of what we accomplished together. My past is a sweet place for me to be, and writing this has allowed me to spend some time there again.