One in a Million.

It has taken a while to get to posting something here because it has been an extremely difficult thing to accept, my thoughts go to Steves family and partner and I send them great warmth and love. Thanks also to the team of amazing people who have bought people together and made grieving more possible with all the great memorials. Thank you.

I remember seeing Steve for the first time in enrolment at Psalter Lane. I was 19 and in this busy room of confused students someone stood out of the crowd so loudly, Mooching across the queue in slacks with his beautiful hair being twisted, and his large metal rim glasses. This was in 1997! Some time passed and after a flurry of random excitement and settling in to a new city and a new era. I moved to a different place because I couldn’t stand the uni halls. Unfortunately I took a tiny room with some lovely but very straight maths and chemical students. I was getting to know people more and more and it turned out that Steve lived opposite me ! In a cool house! with cool stuff. Well, It was Steve’s place. He Kind of took me in here, or allowed me to live in his house and go to bed in mine. He taught me so much ! He made me a better chef, he made me like noisy free form jazz that I can’t listen to anymore. We got to some standard blues type jamming and he was a great guitarist, he showed me so much new stuff, and we watched millions films, I remember when he introduced me to Juliet of the Spirits by Fillini and Jodorowsky films. Steve always opened my eyes to new things.

Then, In the tail out to the 90s there were loads of performance arts blending with art as life and there were loads of events, and we were all really into performance, Steve was fantastic at it, he would make it happen, crazy spontaneous happenings, disturbing performance art events. I remember one time, he suggested we all build cardboard cars and go to a street protest dressed as clowns and run everyone over. We all agreed and got to work building cars. They were all great, but only one stood to the challenge. We all basically ended up in Steve’s car, crammed in, little legs running and being pushed in every direction possible.

We carried on doing a lot of very funny and crazy things, often with Steve as a driving force. He wouldn’t let anything put him off. However difficult, Steve would be there until the end. We played a lot of music and all lived fantastic lives, the last of the uncharged art students. I remember The Mushy Pea Factory, Steve made this really sturdy factory set with moving conveyor, completely out of Cardboard boxes, but it was strong. He then made us all dress up like scientists and workers and chew up frozen peas to spit them out again, and conduct tests of quality. It was amazing those days, we shared a huge open studio, much to the dismay of others, a huge basement studio, mountains of soft toys (Steve’s collection for props), wooden cogs, the huge paintings of ironic scenes, giant sexual plants, the stacks of materials and paint, installations and film setups being built, and quite frequently live music being jammed out.

So we finished uni and were a bit all over the place, though we still had each other. We had been talking about making our dream band, what would that be? there was a great party scene in Sheffield we were always at the house parties, being daft, attracting attention playing up, generally having a great time, we would frequently sit and talk about this band we were going to make, Rory at this time would probably be, well perhaps you should ask him, but I remember lots of general nudity, Stuart is probably on a table singing proclaimers, Steven and I are getting excited about the potential of all this energy in this dream band. He wanted the band that should be in every great film.

We get to work with some pretty standard punk songs, in an old detached house on Sheldon Rd, Sheffield. We rattled the living daylights out of a little breakfast room. Nick was there, figuring out what to do with his machine. Steve turned up with a handful of songs Emotional Retard, Lou Reed, You Are My Baby, The Beast. After not long It was working, we had songs, we were getting very excited, basically before our time I wanted to run to the nearest venue and make a racket. Not Steve, he knew the importance of working on getting something right, being ready to actually show what you can do. Steve often waited and took a long time to do things, I found this difficult, but he taught me a lot about quality. We were still pretty awful when we started but in a truly great way.

Steve was a visionary he effected so much of me. Steve influenced huge life changing decisions and showed me a new level of controversy. Steve opened my eyes a lot and together we saw a lot of great times, truly great.

Steve and I often fought, our opinions sometimes clashed it got stressful sometimes, but we always cared for each other, we would always start a fresh, he challenged me and made me want to either run or work harder, Steve was such a dear friend. Six years of being in Pink Grease you see a lot of all of us, we were either a bad marriage or a brother hood, and although we have and had our separate ways now, that brotherhood lasts, and loosing Steve feels like loosing a brother. I hadn’t seen him since Rory got married, We spoke a lot that night about a lot of stuff, Steve really opened up and I did too and I realised how much I love this Beautiful man.

One thing I love about Steve was that he was always honest, and upfront, he would tell things how he felt them, I asked for some feedback on a video I’d made and he got back with a very frank honest answer, which I appreciated, he then got back to me with a more gentle approach.

Steve inspired me and he infuriated me, he opened my eyes and made me want to close them again, and then open them. He introduced me to so much, I can only say that I am truly thankful to have been part of our dream band, and to have seen the world with such a fantastic human. To have rocked out with our Steve whilst he rips up his machine gun guitar. We were so alive. That life that we had, the times we spent writing, practicing, dressing up, recording, touring, partying, hotel to hotel, country to country, the fashion and the glamour, that energy will live forever. As will yours Steve. I love you Brother. xxx