Memories of Steve

I wanted to wait a little while before posting anything here. I wanted to celebrate Steve's life rather than mourn his death, and I wanted to this with words, but also with music. I can’t imagine what is family and people he was really close too are going through.

I cried when I heard he had died.

Me and Steve were never best friends, back in Hull, Robin, Scott and Nick Roach were much closer, but our paths seemed to cross often, or at least until our late twenties. At a certain point in life I guess you reach a fork in the road, Steve stayed true to his creative muse, I followed the sign that read 'Complete Subjugation of the Id'.

When I think of Steve, I think of him with a smile on his face. I think our friendship was based on the fact that each one thought the other one was funny, and because we had known each other off and on for so long, I think we were just comfortable in each other’s presence.

Since his passing I've been listening to a lot of music that I associate with him. Like all real Punks he had an extremely broad interest in Music, Art and Culture. But this is really just a personal playlist of music I’ve selected to accompany some memories, and as a way of mourning.

There were times we spent a lot of time together and times that we didn't. Whenever we would meet up, particularly when we were a bit younger in the 90's and 00's he'd always be really, really late. He'd always arrive on foot and I'd see him walking down the street towards me from miles away gradually getting closer. He had so much charisma, if I was meeting him at his house ( and he was out ) there would be a series of shout outs to people he knew in the street as he got closer, he had a positive effect on the neighbourhood.

My memories of childhood are a little hazy. Adam and Steve were my next door neighbours for maybe a couple of years. We had a hedgerow between our houses and at a certain point the hedge thinned out and we were only separated by a green chain link fence. We would play together on either side of the fence. Steve's voice was quite distinctive, it was a little bit higher than the other kids, since his passing I have been thinking about his childhood voice, he would say 'Hello Deny' in a really excited way, as a child it reminded me of theme tune from danger mouse.

Steve loved TV. It was in the times before widespread ownership of a video player. I remember Adam had a small cassette tape recorder and would sometimes record the audio only of their favourite shows and they would listen back to them later. I remember Adam playing me an audio recording of Airwolf, but the shows I remember most are the A-Team, Knight Rider and Ulysses 31. Ulysses 31 is the one I associate most with Steve, but each of those shows had amazing intros.

Our houses were a mirror image of each other. There was a spare room in Steve's house that was kind of a play room, the walls between our houses were thin. So you could always hear what was going on in there. They had a small record player. I remember there was a period where they would play the same album over and over and over again until finally one of their parents would come in and switch it off. Its taken a little time to remember, but that album was 'Night Flight to Venus' by Boney M.

The early 90’s crime wave affected the whole of the UK, but in Hull there wasn't really anything to steal, so it basically boiled down to petty street crime, as a young teenage boy it was always a risk if you had to go into the town centre on a Saturday, planning the journey meticulously to try not to get beaten up. Looking back on it, it’s almost funny, but it was a constant risk, and you really felt the burden getting lifted off your shoulders when you got a bit older and weren't such an easy target, There are loads of versions of the next song, but I always feel this one is the most Hull.

25 years isn’t that long ago, but it’s hard to remember a time when we had so little communication with the outside world. Our lives were lived entirely in ‘Hull time’. Nothing seemed to ever happen, and there wasn’t anything to do. The rest of the townsfolk kept your feet firmly nailed to the ground with constant discussions about how hard life was. But we weren’t buying it, and the only thing that kind of atmosphere every really does is push people further left field. Left alone with only our imaginations, we would competitively try to outdo ourselves, who could think the most extreme thoughts? Who could be the free-ist? Who could come up with the most dazzling ideas? In terms of media, we had a couple of good second hand record stores, and everyone home taped in those days, it was both social and cultural and sharing music was also a characteristic of friendship. If I came across anything odd or weird, I would take it across to Steve, he would always have something to fire back at me. Maybe he would play me ‘Constipation Blues’ by Screaming Jay Hawkins, or something like that, and I’d play him ‘Wide Wide River’ by the Fugs. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who could have performed Constipation Blues, he had that stage presents and vocal authority. I also think that if you listen carefully, you almost hear Steve’s voice in the backing vocals of Wide Wide River. I think I came back with that from an A-Level Art trip to London.

Once again, our teenage years were 25 years ago. But my memories of these times are extremely vivid. I think it’s like that for everyone. I remember being in a heightened emotional state when my first girlfriend dumped me (quiet understandably) and I remember discussing my feelings with Steve. I remember that feeling of Oh, what will it be like spending the rest of my life living in a world without Love? I’m not sure if Steve was concentrating on what I was saying, or if in fact he was even really listening. After a while he started telling me that if I was thinking of killing myself (which I wasn’t) I should consider breaking into ‘Duncans’ a fishing and hunting shop in Hull that also sold some guns, and wait for the police to arrive.. A little way into the story it became obvious that Steve had visited this shop a number of times. He described in filmic detail how what might begin with an fairly routine phone call to the local crime desk reporting a suspected robbery in progress, would develop into a siege situation, and eventually a firefight, with the central protagonists’ silence and complete unwillingness to engage with the authorities leading onlookers to ask some deep questions about what it means to be human. In fact, later I heard him tell the story again, maybe I heard him discuss this four or five times over the next year or two, it was like he was crafting a script. Anyway, after such a detailed and harrowing tale, I was relieved to simply be a broken hearted teenager. There were a few occasions like that, in his own way he said exactly the right thing. As children of the 80’s this was of course not how we’d imagined dating would be, men didn’t really discuss relationships and things like that with their sons then, so we had to rely on TV, which in the 80’s wasn’t always accurate.

When I staring hanging out with Steve as a teenager, he was in a punk band with Scott, Nick and Robin, they had songs with titles like ‘Panic Attack’ and ‘Coming on a Horse’ it was probably more West Coast Hardcore than punk, but me and Tim joined for a while and the group became ‘Mango Deli’ Adam jammed with us too I think. Me and Tim had musical training, Steve preferred to work his own way through the guitar, his playing was kind of crude and he sort of played in a slightly different groove to everyone else, but it sounded really good. Home recording was pretty basic then, and I don’t think the bits of recording we made then captured the energy, but his playing reminded me a lot of Neil Hagerty of Royal Trux, nothings the same as Steve, but this is kind of how his guitar used to sound:

After a while I remember conceptualising a power trio ‘The Acid Blues Experiment’. It was basically a 60’s garage band, but we didn’t know what that was, so we sort of thought that we were playing a version of the blues that combined lots of other elements, sort of like the Acid Jazz that was popular at the time, so we called it Acid Blues.

At this point in my life I was listening to the ‘Velvet Underground and Nico’ LP maybe three times a day. Steve must have heard the record before, because Robin had it. But after our first rehearsal I played it to Steve and Scott. Steve latched onto Nico straight away, he started performing a highly xenophobic but hilariously funny impersonation of Nico

In my early adolescence I had a had a nice group of loyal and interesting friends that were fun to hang around with, from about age 14 I kind of withdrew from this group, I became a total loner, I started building an image. Even though I was six months old when I moved to Hull, I had a southern accent by virtue of my parents, and after having seen ‘Get Carter’, a began thinking of myself as a Michael Kane type character, up north for a couple of weeks to kick arse. I also latched on to the whole Mod thing, and started saving up my pocket money to buy cheap suits. Of course there is always a difference between how you see yourself and how people see you.

I remember once, Steven came over to my house and I spent a bit of time explaining the mod philosophy. At the end of it all he told me that yes, he liked the suits, but he couldn’t be a mod, because he was a Hippy! I remember being quite annoyed that I’d wasted so much of my time and energy on a Hippy, I remember saying, What? Sitting around all day in a field drinking cups of tea? He said ‘No. I am a real Hippy. I go out into the night and kill those people’’. I remember thinking that was really good answer! (…but I still contend that Steve was a punk!)

The last time I saw Steve was about four and a half years ago, I came over to England to see a few people before my son was born, Me Steve and Robin went to a Mod all-nighter, and at the end of the night (the following morning) we all said our goodbyes, me and Robin were getting a lift off someone, and they were drinking a flask of coffee and wanted to rest for 45 minutes before driving. Steve went off to get the Underground. About half an hour later, Steve returned having walked off in the wrong direction, he was wearing a long jacket, and I remember shouting ‘there he is - the Artful Dodger!’ You’ve got to pick a pocket or two I said. He smiled at me and danced off into the morning, I didn’t think that would be the last time I ever saw him. I guess I had a vision in my head of being old men, looking back on our lives and laughing about it. I guess that won’t happen now.

Steve looked great that night, I remember being tired, and just wearing my normal clothes. I can’t remember anything specific that was played that night. But here’s something from the cannon that’s basically essential.

At some point, in maybe 1995-1996 we pooled resources. Tim had a four track recorder, I had lots of effects pedals for guitar, and from somewhere came microphones. In a way we were all writing odd and unusual songs, but Steve had a kind of sensibility that made his music a bit more idiosyncratic. The closest thing I compare his songs to in this period is Petra Haden’s ‘sings the Who sell out’ album. This could almost BE Steve singing. I also dedicate this to the Summer 1995, a very strange, frightening, but beautiful Summer…

One of Steve’s characteristics was that he believed fundamentally in absolute freedom, he felt there was nothing you shouldn’t think or say. There was another aspect of this which was probably as a provocateur. He enjoyed rebelling against bourgeois sensibilities by celebrating anything undesirable. I think we were a generation that decided for ourselves if we had the time to be offended or not, and we expected the same of each other. One of his interests was Nazi imagery, particularly swastikas. I’ve been living in Germany on and off for a few years now, and through cultural osmosis (and sensitivity), I find it harder and harder to take such imagery lightly. But I think at the time we thought of Nazism in the Monty Python sense, and didn’t really think of it any more deeply than that, also Steve was mixed race, and he enjoyed freaking out the public with, for example a swastika drawn in biro on his forehead. Well, Marx states that historical entities appear twice, "the first as tragedy, then as farce" - Halcyon Days!

Here’s a couple of examples

Looking back on our youth, I wonder how we got away with this stuff, I guess Steve pulled it off, because underneath it all he was a really really sweet guy

I regret nothing about our friendship, like I wrote earlier, we were never best friend ( if your reading this Steve, sorry if I misread the situation) but then I never really had any really close friends ( If you’re reading this guys , sorry if I misread the situation). Steve was like that, he had a lot of friends who had few other friends apart from him. He was happy to hang out with loners, outsiders and basically freaks. One thing I regret is never really taking an interest in his films, our relationship was built around humour and music, I came across this the other day and it reminds me of Steve’s sensibility. It also reminds me of one of Steve’s first girlfriends, I’m talking about you Helen. (..its Sweet Charity synced with Nutbush City Limits)

After a short period of rehearsal, we decided that it was time for ‘The Acid Blues Experiment’ to play some gigs. I think we played a couple of gigs with our friends at the Adelphi in Hull and then I think some battle of the bands and things like that. We were all a bit too shy to use our real names (or we thought we would be more mysterious with different names, I can’t remember) I chose Albert Chambers (named after a building), Scott was Bo Marshall ( a cross between Bo Diddly and Marshall Amplifiers) and Steve was Curtis Boogie ( which was a cross between Curtis Mayfield and Mesa Boogie Amplifiers). We then shortened it to Boogie and then simply Boog. Now, Mark remembers this differently, that one day he just combined Moog and Booth and got Boog… either way Steve’s nickname became Boog, he even organized a club night at some stage called ‘project boog’. It isn’t funny but in our minds we used the phrase ‘blame it on the boogie in a Scooby Doo sense to express when something had collectively gone wrong. Steve was also the only person I’ve met who could dance like a 70’s Michael Jackson, and this song and video remind me of his dancing. We used to go to a Gay club occasionally called the Silhouette, on a weekday night they played 70’s music, I remember sitting next to Steve at the Bar and this came on the video screen. Seems like a lifetime ago. (2.50 for one of Steve’s trademark steps)

I love pretty much everything the Stylistics recorded, but Rock ’n’ Roll Baby was the first of their songs I heard and so is kind of special to me, Here’s a version from Soul Train, if I half close my eyes I can almost imagine Steve in the audience.

…and here’s another one they often played at the Silhouette while we’re on the dancefloor. Love the video also (it’s the kind of audience response we would get)

In the days after I heard Steven had died, despite having only stayed loosely in touch I felt deeply sad. I listened to the album ’So Alone’ by Johnny Thunders over and over again. I’m trying to keep these remembrances upbeat, but if you’ll allow me to be sentimental for a while, the feeling I have more than anything else, is that I owe him something. He was one of only a handful of people that made a net positive impact on my life.

Well. Thanks for the memories Steve, I never told you how much you meant to me, and maybe it was better that way, but in a platonic way, I really loved you.

That’s too sad a place to end, for someone who was so positive. After all I wanted to celebrate Steve’s life rather than mourn his death, so I’d rather end with something like this: