Some say White Heat were the best band to come out of Newcastle who never ‘made it’. They made all the right moves – opened for Judas Priest, headlined London’s Marquee, signed to Virgin records, they were contenders – but unfortunately never got over the line.
If you asked me to list what gave me the biggest buzz I would say playing live top of the list, writing songs in second and recording in third place said Bob Smeaton. But one thing I did learn is that playing songs live and recording them in a studio are two different animals.
I love performing in front of an audience and I felt that I was a much better frontman than I was a singer, so studio work for me back in the early days was not always an enjoyable experience.
Also, the vocals were always done last, so the rest of the band were able to relax and the pressure was on me to deliver. What did I do after White Heat and Loud Guitars split? I pretty much stopped performing gigs as my career went down a different path.
After signing up as an actor for stage and TV roles, a successful career in music documentary films came next. Bob worked on programmes featuring boy hood heroes The Who, Rolling Stones and The Beatles.
Bob added…I was fortunate to start making music documentaries but I never stopped writing songs. The songs that I wrote with Alan Fish my song writing partner in both White Heat and later Loud Guitars were good songs, that’s why some of them remain popular forty years after we recorded them. I’m really proud of those records we released in the late 70s early 80s, they’re a great time capsule.
Just before Covid happened Alan Fish encouraged me to get a set up so that I could record at home, I took his advice and got some pretty basic recording equipment.
Like most of us I had a lot of time on my hands so I recorded demos of a bunch of songs, there was a couple I’d been working on for decades but never finished, I also wrote some new ones.
Shine On (The Ballad of White Heat) was a new song and it took about two hours to write, some of them took around twenty years to finish – better late than never.
I always liked songs that told stories. Narrative has always been the key for me, that’s also been my approach when I’ve been making music documentary films and to some extent why I wrote my memoir.
When growing up in Benwell, Newcastle, the first person that I met that owned a Fender Strat was Stew Selkirk. Even as a teenager Stew was a great guitarist (The photographs of Bob and Stew were taken in the backyard of Stew’s house on Colston Street, Benwell, approx.1974).
When I released my memoir ‘From Benwell Boy to 46th Beatle and Beyond’ in 2018, Stew read it and we caught up again, we hadn’t seen each other for over forty years. Stew was still playing guitar and involved in record production. I mentioned that I’d written a bunch of songs that I’d like to record.
I sent him demos which he liked and he suggested we work together. Black Wind Blowing was the first song we recorded at his studio in Wooler during October 2021.
During the second Covid lockdown to cheer myself up, I was listening to Nick Cave’s ‘murder ballads’ album and reading a biography of Johnny Cash. They were the inspiration to write the song.
When I heard what Stew did with that first track, I was overjoyed, he had taken my very basic song and turned it into something really special. None of the songs I had written had been performed live so they had to stand up purely on the basis of what we recorded. Stew did a great job.
Back in the late seventies with White Heat we played the songs in front of an audience before we recorded them so we had a good idea of what were the strongest songs based on audience reaction. Then we would pretty much record the songs in the studio how we had played them live, there was not a lot of production as such.
We never thought to change the keys to suit my voice or rearrange the songs so they would sound better on the radio. It was impossible to capture the energy of a live band in the studio.
I didn’t want to sound like White Heat but there was always going to be a familiarity because it was my voice. There is so much great guitar playing by Stew on the songs, it would have been a different album if he hadn’t produced it.
The first recording that I released from the sessions I did with Stew was Shine On (The Ballad of White Heat). I thought it was quite fitting that for my first solo single I paid homage to my former band.
I revisited the character of Sammy who first appeared in the 1979 song ‘Sammy Sez’, the B side of our single ‘Nervous Breakdown’. Sammy was loosely based on my brother Tony who appeared on the sleeve of the 7”inch. I also name checked a number of songs that Alan Fish and I wrote together.
In essence the song is about the way that music has the capacity to transport you back to a time and a place. It was written as a thank you to those people who supported the band back in the day.
I remember when we were playing gigs the excitement we used to feel when we would perform a song for the first time and how after we had played it a handful of times we would look out into crowd and see them singing along, it was a great feeling.
One of the songs I name checked in ‘Shine On (The Ballad of White Heat)’ was the Fish/Smeaton song ‘21 and Wasted’. In 1979 when we wrote the song, I was in full Springsteen mode, I was obsessed with him, this was my attempt at writing a ‘Springsteenesque’ lyric.
When we played it live it was great, but for some reason, with the benefit of hindsight, the studio version White Heat recorded for the ‘In the Zero Hour’ album fell short of our expectations.
A couple of years ago Alan re-worked the song, gave it a new title and recorded it with the Attention Seekers. I thought it was fantastic. Alan told me he had also recorded a rockier version of the backing track and that I was welcome to add my vocal to it for inclusion on my album.
I believe that in the Attention Seekers version both of the protagonists live to fight another day. In my version I will leave it up to the listener to decide what fate befalls them. It is one of my favourite songs.
In the video clip I used footage that was filmed of White Heat performing the song back in 1981 but cut to the recoding from my album.
Whenever I played Alan my songs, he would often comment on how I never wrote ‘happy songs’, when I first played him ‘Things that She Said’ he told me that I had finally written one.
The song is about the feeling you get when you meet someone who you really believe is going to have your back through good times and bad. Alan liked the song and offered to produce a recording of it, on the understanding that I let him do it ‘his way’.
During the two days we recorded at the Cluny Studios in Newcastle, I managed to keep my mouth shut. I’m pleased I did as Alan did an excellent job. It also features great work by Trevor Brewis, Sophy Jess Ball and Tony Davis. Alan was right it is a happy song.
Whenever I wasn’t busy working on music documentaries I would drive up to Wooler and record at Stew’s place. I also spent time recording at the Cluny Studio. A lot of the vocals and drums were recorded there. Trevor Brewis formally of Dance Class played drums, he was brilliant.
What are my hopes for the album? Once it was finished all I really wanted is for people to hear the songs and I was more than happy for people to listen to the album for free on the likes of Spotify and You Tube etc.
I enjoyed the writing and recording of the songs but once they were mastered all I wanted was to put them out there. The first thing I did was post the songs on the White Heat and Loud Guitars appreciation society page on Facebook. That was pretty much the sum of my promotion.
Various people offered to help promote the album or help find a record label. I didn’t want to do that, I’d been down that road with White Heat and it becomes more about the business. I didn’t view this as a money making venture, I just wanted people to hear my songs and hopefully enjoy them.
The response has been very encouraging, in that respect all the work that Stew Selkirk and I put into it has been worthwhile.
Am I planning on taking it out live? At the moment I don’t have any plans to go out and start doing gigs with a band. Putting a band together I imagine is much harder now than it was when I first started doing gigs in the seventies, we were kids then, we had less commitments.
There is every chance that I could turn up and do some support slots on my own or maybe with a couple of other musicians. The thing is that I never really considered myself a musician, I always thought I was a performer first and foremost and songs were a vehicle to tell stories which I love doing.
My guitar playing skills are pretty basic but you don’t need to know a hundred chords to write a song. Whenever I meet young musicians I always tell them to write songs and if what you write about is honest and personal to you, there is every chance it will connect with other people, we all go through similar situations in life – songs are like diaries.
When you hear a song it can transport you back to a time and a place and that is the beauty of a great song, it never grows old. As I said in one of my songs “We will shine on because we wrote it all down in a song”.
‘Another Journey Up the River’ was released 5th July 2024. The album is now available on all streaming services, You Tube and available to download on iTunes.
Links to previous interviews >
THE BOY FROM BENWELL with Film & TV Director, Bob Smeaton | ALIKIVI UK : NORTH EAST CULTURE (5 Nov ’18)
PLAY IT AGAIN – on TV & Stage with music documentary director, Bob Smeaton | ALIKIVI UK : NORTH EAST CULTURE (6 April ‘21)
Alikivi July 2024
