The next person to feature on this blog was owner of probably the most influential independent heavy metal record label in the 1980’s, a label that spawned Chief Headbangers Raven and Venom, who were major influences on the multi-million selling Americans, Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeath.
So, what was he like? Was he the Don Arden of Tyneside? Am I to be flown out by private jet to a yacht on the French Riviera or picked up by a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce and driven off to an exclusive restaurant?
Sadly no, it was just a misty September morning when I nipped on a ferry, crossed the River Tyne and taken to a café in North Tyneside by a man wearing a fez.
What or who inspired you to start Impulse Studio ?
When I left school, I ended up as a Park Keeper in Wallsend Park then found a half decent job as a Technical Assistant at Proctor and Gamble. I was there for three years, it was well paid at £11 a week so I had a few quid to go out on a Friday night with me mates, but I couldn’t see myself staying there.
For a 21st birthday present off my parents I was given a ticket to go to America on the Queen Mary.
While sightseeing in New York I came across this recording studio called Talent Masters. I went in and got talking to a guy who worked there called Chris Huston. I found out he used to be guitarist in The Undertakers from Liverpool. They had a hit record, but he left the UK to be a tape technician in the studio.
I’d always liked music, my instrument is the piano while not much of a player but was really interested in this studio.
So, when I returned home on the Queen Elizabeth ship, I began to play around with a bit of sound recording. At that time a teenager’s club was open in The Borough Theatre in Wallsend called The Manhole. This was around 1966 and people were listening to The Beatles and locally The Animals had made their name.
It was a great meeting place was The Manhole, graphics painted on the walls, flower power you know, and a lot of good bands played there.
That’s where I really got interested in the music scene. There was a similar place in Tynemouth called The Cave which was underneath The Gate of India Restaurant.
There was also a teenagers club in Beach Road, South Shields called The Cellar Club run by Stan Henry and his mother. Stan later opened The Latino and The New Cellar Club where Cream and Jimi Hendrix played.
Advert for the opening of The New Cellar Club, South Shields. Taken from The Shields Gazette December 1967.
Yes, I used to go to The Cellar. I’d drive to the ferry at Howdon, get on there with my car, you could in them days, then get off at Jarrow. It was a great building I think it was in the basement of their house where Stan’s mother ran the club.
South Shields and Sunderland had their own places to run music from, it was great. I ended up doing some work for Stan, we ended up doing his sound equipment and for a lot of other people to keep the business ticking over.
In the Manhole club I met a band called The Chosen Few, and in them were Alan Hull, Alan ‘Bumper’ Brown on bass, singer was Rod Hood, guitarist I think was John Gibson and keyboards was Micky Gallagher who eventually played for The Blockheads, and he’d also played in The Animals when Alan Price left.
They were really good and had a recording contract with PYE records. They recorded down in the West End of London at Radio Luxembourg studios. They put a couple of singles out.
Going back to The Manhole Club, that just shut one day and never reopened. I don’t know why maybe someone out there knows something about that.
The Borough Theatre was built in 1906, it was a music hall at first, then a cinema, then a bingo hall. I got to know the manager and asked him for some space to run a studio.
The studio was in the dressing room and the entrance to the studio was through the old stage door. There was a little booth where the doorman would have sat, well before our time (laughs).
How did you develop the space into a recording studio ?
Literally built it up from scratch Gary, it took years to get it all done. At first we used egg boxes for sound proofing then bricked up all the windows. Anything was used for padding because we never had enough money then and at first we only had a mono then a stereo studio.
We then purchased a 4 track, then an 8 track, eventually a 24-track machine but this was done over ten or twelve years.
This was all by the 1980’s and by then we had the run of all the building and moved the studio to the top floor, which wasn’t very popular with the bands as we had no lift. Eventually Impulse Studios were on all three floors.
What bands did you record and who did you get in as sound engineer ?
One day I bumped into Alan Hull (Lindisfarne) by then The Chosen Few had split up, he was working as a nurse at St Nicholas Mental Hospital and still writing songs so I invited him down to record some. Impulse at that time recorded local bands.
We were a progressive studio and probably recorded most people in the region who sang and played at one time in their careers. Everything then was recorded onto quarter inch tape. At that time, we started to organise pressing records.
Sound engineer was Micky Sweeney, a great character, really popular with everyone. I used to do some recording as well. Micky ended up working with Lindisfarne who were born in the studio because it was there that Alan Hull got together with various members of Downtown Faction. They played together and got to know each other and it all came together.
You recorded an album with North East comedian Bobby Thompson, how did that come about ?
I knew his manager Brian Shelley and he said Bobby is doing really well around the clubs do you fancy recording him ? I thought yeah, we’ll give it a go.
So, we recorded him in Rhyope Poplars Club and Newcastle Mayfair. This was around 1978. It was around an hours recording that we put out and got Vaux breweries to sponsor it, ironically Bobby didn’t drink then and there he was on a promo poster with a pint of beer.
Soon as we put the record out it took off, they couldn’t get enough off it, straight to number one in the local charts. Every shop was selling bucket loads. It was phenomenal.
Nobody could have appreciated the way it took off like it did, he even appeared on the Wogan show. But his humour didn’t travel well, he was shy of being in other places but up here in the North East he was absolutely fantastic.
He could relate to the man in the street up here – the debt, the poverty, the wife and the war, he was incredible really.
With the label doing well, was Bobby responsible for Neat records ?
Ha ha well with the profits from Bobby the studio came on in leaps and bounds in no time at all, so yeah, we’ve got to thank him for it.
We started Neat records as an alternative to what we were doing. A couple of early singles and one by a band called Motorway which was pop, not heavy metal, then a song by Jayne McKenzie written and engineered by Steve Thompson.
Then Tygers of Pan Tang, Raven and Fist came along and suddenly we’ve got what became a New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Venom added to that and before we knew it we’ve built up a library of metal records.
Was there any rivalry between the top four North East metal bands – Fist, Raven, Venom and the Tygers ?
Ha ha yeah they probably hated each other. No, listen, musicians are very much their own people you know. I don’t blame them.
If they are the guitarist they are a ‘great guitarist’, you can’t perform in front of a dozen, hundreds, or thousands of people if you haven’t got an ego. You couldn’t stand on stage if you are a wimp, you’ve got to have something about ya – and they all do.
For Venom, first gig they played was at a church hall in Wallsend and they decided to have pyrotechnics and smoke. That all went off at the start and that’s the last we saw of the band for the whole set – they were playing behind a screen of smoke.
Did you deal with any managers or did the bands represent themselves ?
I dealt with Raven directly but some of the bands had managers. One of them was a butcher (laughs) then Venom ended up with Eric Cook who really worked hard for them. He was very enthusiastic and got a lot of things going for them.
Thing was he had no experience but nobody else did really with this New Wave of Heavy Metal, it was all new. And that is something to remember about that whole scene, they were trying to play and we were trying to market, we (Neat) were all on the same level.
We were balancing the recording, arranging tours, marketing, it was all interesting times, sort of in development, and some nightmare situations.
How did recording on the Neat label work for bands ?
We did singles at first and they were tasters trying to get some interest, get picked up by bigger labels, that sort of thing. Some of them would end up on compilation lp’s later and some of the early Neat stuff were the demos.
The first Raven album went into the national charts which was a surprise to all of us. But that was the progress we were trying to make.
How did Tygers of Pan Tang end up on MCA record label ?
MCA were interested in the Tygers first single and put it out on their label which put the Tygers in a position to sign an album deal. Through their enquiries I got to know Stuart Watson who was head of A&R so I took the whole Neat project to MCA.
They ended up recording albums by Fist and White Spirit. But MCA didn’t get their teeth into what we were doing so it all came back to us.
It could have gone further but major companies are looking for big numbers, they didn’t want to sell 5,000 albums they wanted to sell 50,000 albums. We would have been happy to sell 1,000!
If you did sell that many how would the profit be used ?
It would all go in the kitty, we wanted to progress the studio and the label – but we didn’t have any Lamborghini’s you know.
How did the label work for Raven ?
We ended up doing three albums with them and took them to America and worked with Johnny Z at Megaforce Records based in New Jersey. They did some touring over there and Neat were managing the band at the time, paying them a retainer every week.
When they came back the band had signed with the Americans. ‘Thanks for telling us’ I said, but hey that’s all in the past and we came to an agreement to release I think a live album over there.
Was that the bands natural progression to go to a bigger label ?
Yes, I suppose that’s fair comment to say that. We had gone as far as we could as basically a smaller outfit. I liked the band, I liked the idea of a three piece because it makes it easier to ship around.
A five piece band can be much more challenging to get around on tour and in the studio.
Did the label have contacts to sell records in other countries ?
We tried to get like-minded people in European countries, Holland, Italy etc, to do that but sometimes it was hard. A lot of time was spent trying to get it up and running but perhaps the label never reached it’s full potential.
We sold to local record shops in the North East but a good outlet was actually mail order.
How does it work for a band if they released a single in say 1980 and the track ends up on a compilation album years later ?
All the contracts were given over to Sanctuary and they had a section to deal with all the necessary releases.
What were Neat paying for as in terms of recording and tours ?
We would put money up for tours and we once bought a tour bus for Fist, which was a big mistake cos it got wrecked inside. Their first single was ‘Name, Rank & Serial Number’ and ‘The Wanderer’ came much later, Status Quo ended up doing that, sounding very similar.
Doing a more commercial song is a way in. Again I liked Fist and thought they had great potential, Keith Satchfield is a great singer and songwriter.
But just managing it all, controlling it all was a nightmare. There wasn’t a bottomless pit to fund it and you just try your best with the resources.
What was surprising about bands playing in the UK was there wasn’t many chances to play on the big festivals, England was a hard place to play. America and Europe was mainly where the market was. I remember Holland was a good place for the bands to go.
Neat released a lot of singles would that have put the label in a good position ?
Yes, it helped the studio, marketing etc when the next single or album come along to record and promote.
Was there a time when Neat wasn’t in a good position ?
Yes often, I remember one time a band wanted to go on tour, and it was £4,000. A lot to lay out because you don’t get it back cos the band don’t make much playing live. There was a lot of costs involved with going on the road.
When did Neat records fold ?
Jess Cox (former Tygers of Pan Tang vocalist) got involved and we set up a separate label called Neat Metal, we put a different catalogue together, started licencing from different labels – a different approach to it.
At one time we didn’t have any of the original Neat stuff on the catalogue. Eventually Sanctuary Records came in for the label and did some re-releases. A lot of independent labels have been moved around over the years.
With that I checked my watch and time was getting on so we agreed to meet up again soon where Dave will tell more stories about Impulse Studio including Cilla Black, Joan Armatrading and Sir Lawrence Olivier.
Interview by Gary Alikivi September 2019.
ALIKIVI : NORTH EAST UK CULTURE 