JOHN MILES

CHAIRMAN WOOD OF WALLSEND  in conversation with ex Impulse Studio/Neat records bigwig David Wood

/ Alikivi

The last time I met David was in October 2019 he talked about starting up Impulse Studio in Wallsend and the legendary record label Neat.

David exclusively revealed how the success of North East comedian Bobby Thompson kick started the label which went on to spawn chief headbangers Raven, Venom, Blitzkreig and Tygers of Pan Tang who in turn were a huge influence on American bands Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeath. Read the interview here >>>

THE FIXER – in conversation with former Impulse Studio and Neat Records owner David Wood | ALIKIVI : NORTH EAST UK CULTURE

We’re in The Customs House, South Shields chatting over a pot of tea and David is in a talkative mood. We talk about North East music and how influential live music show The Tube was, and how it outclassed other music TV. I was lucky to be in the audience of the ground breaking show and being exposed to different genres of music that opened my eyes and ears.

I remember The Tube. I took Venom to the studio they weren’t playing they were there to highlight the type of music they were doing and getting their name out. On that occasion Madonna and Cliff Richards were also on recalls David.

I knew Geoff Wonfor and his wife Andrea who both worked there. I was surprised when it was shut down it was a beautiful studio. Andrea worked on the Lindisfarne film in our recording studio in Wallsend, that was for local news. Unfortunately, a lot of that footage and much more has been lost. Andrea done really well she ended up an executive at Channel Four.

However, my interest in music goes back to when I was 16 year old, a long time ago I’m nearly 80 now. I remember asking a bank manager for a loan to open a recording studio ‘A what?’ he replied. There was a drummer from Howdon came to see me, he looked around ‘Is this yer studio is it. A recording studio in Wallsend? Ya must be f***in’ mad’. That just gave me a push to get on with it.

Councils weren’t interested. Music wasn’t taught much in schools then. We had only one school from Blyth who had enough sense to come down and get the kids to know what it was all about. If you encourage people to find out about things it works on all parts of their life rather than trudging about.

At Impulse I ended up recording every Tom, Dick and Harry in the North East. There was John McCoy and his band. John ran the Kirklevington Country Club near Stockton on the A19. His brother was chef in the restaurant downstairs while bands played upstairs, the club booked in a lot of big acts including Jimi Hendrix.

I have the recording here that I did for them at Impulse in Wallsend, I was 21 we had just started the studio. This must be from 1967 or 68 the time they opened for Jimi Hendrix. They were some band, I tell ya the Real McCoy could really play.

John was a nice bloke, he must be in his 80’s now, he was a really good musician (I’m in touch with John his stories will be added to the site soon). I saw the band at Middlesbrough Town Hall that was always a good gig. I used to go to the Country Club because the food was amazing – charcoal grilled fillet steak in red wine sauce with all the trimmings …beautiful.

We had bands coming to Impulse like The Sect, Half Breed, John Miles – he was brilliant, a class act, a great songwriter, it’s very sad he’s not around now he was such a nice bloke. As a studio it was how basic can you get really but we were all trying to learn new things – that’s how you start.

All the stuff we were working on in the studio was original songs – folk, alternative, punk. We had The Carpettes and Penetration from down Durham way, and from your doorstep in South Shields who else but the Angelic Upstarts! Yes, they were a wild bunch! I didn’t do an LP with them at Neat records it was only the first single ‘Liddle Towers’ and ‘Police Oppression’.

Cover for Angelic Upstarts 7″ single ‘The Murder of Liddle Towers’.

I remember years later they were on Warner Brothers and I got a phone call ‘I need the tracks you did with them to put on an LP, can you mix them and send them to us’. In the archive I had the 16 or 24 track tape they had done so it was possible. ‘When do you need it for‘? ‘Tomorrow morning’. I was up all night I couldn’t get the engineer so had to set it all up but got there in the end and they paid the bill for re-mixing.

But thinking back the Upstarts were fine lads I got on with them. I went to see them at the Guildhall in Newcastle and out comes the pigs head with a helmet on which they start kicking around the stage! I could see what they were doing. People like a bit of edge to things I see it now when you watch TV. A band wouldn’t be able to do that now – probably get them locked up.

There was a lot of musicians who really worked at it and built themselves up, there was even my milkman. Well, it was his son Gordon who used to work weekends to collect the money with his brother Phil. Thing was I used to frequent the Peoples’ Theatre in Newcastle’s Haymarket, this was around 1970, ‘71. My friend Andy Hudson talked about a Newcastle Big Band, around 20 of them – there was sax, drummer, trombone all sorts and of course the bass player was Gordon Sumner or Sting as he became.

They played all this American big band stuff there were some professional players in there like Ronnie Pearson the drummer. But sometimes they weren’t taken seriously as there were members who had day jobs or on the dole – it was a real mixed bag. Andy used to lead it and it was really good, the place would get packed out, a good atmosphere.

I used to go on a Sunday and had the idea to record them at Newcastle Playhouse. I took up a portable kit, a Revox quarter inch tape recorder and made a record which we put out, just a few hundred copies pressed. We sold them at the gigs, ironically the bands do things like that now to make money which is the only way for most bands.

Andy had good contacts and one of them was the airline to Holland. He fixed up a gig for the band to play for the Mayor of Amsterdam, it was some kind of twinning town or similar. We all got on the plane with the instruments for a 7.30am flight to Amsterdam it was only a short flight. When we got to the town hall we set up and had a bit practice. The Mayor turned up and we met him and he gave us a few drinks….within an hour we had a good skinful and were bladdered.

The flight back after the show was much later in the day so Andy suggested a walk around town. Not everyone went just the hardcore were left walking around. We eventually ended up in the red light district with its little bars and clubs. There was a few of us so we negotiated a cheaper admission into a live show.

Some lads still had their instruments with them as we sat down to watch the show. A couple got on stage and started doing their act and got well ‘at it’. One of our lads got his trombone out and waited for a certain movement by the act then played a short burst – it didn’t go down well. The lass on stage gave them ‘what fettle’. ‘We are professionals, this is our job’! The lads were thrown out by the manager. You’d have to ask Sting if he was there.

Andy then arranged a visit down to Pau in France near northern Spain. I went with my recording equipment and we took the gear in a transit van down through France. Part of the road was Le Mons race track it was so smooth you couldn’t hear the tyres. In all it took about two days.

We had a member of the band with us in the van and he had an accident in his underwear, so he chucked them into the back of the van. When you went abroad you used to have a carnet which was a document listing everything in the van to make sure you brought everything back. Everything was listed down to the name of the instrument, serial number, colour, value – you had to sit down and type out pages of it. Then apply for it, then get it stamped before you go anywhere.

We get to the border and the customs officer checked the carnet. ‘So, you are a band, open the doors and just step out the van’. We open the back doors the smell hits them. Holding their noses they quickly say ‘Hurry up, close them and be on your way’! Touring at its best.

We then went to Pau municipal casino. It was like a big echo chamber in there, I remember they played ‘Hey Jude’ with everyone singing along to the chorus. That was a good recording, we spliced it with a version from a Newcastle recording, it came out great.

We sorted out digs at the university because hotels would have been expensive for all the band and crew. As we tucked in to our first meal it was ‘What’s this? – it’s a bit tough’. It was cheval – we all had horse steak for the first time.

We crossed the border and travelled to San Sebastian, there was a jazz festival with big names on, Last Exit played in the town square, I don’t think the Big Band played there. I remember Sting played bass in Last Exit and other members of the Big Band were also in Last Exit.  

When it was all over, we headed to Bilboa and jumped on the ferry. The crew found out about the band travelling over to England so invited them down to the Pig and Whistle bar in the bowels of the ship.

It was a great atmosphere with jam sessions going on, laughter, food and a few drinks – well more than a few drinks. At the end of the session as we were coming into Portsmouth, I went to the bar to pay but the steward said ‘no, nothing’. I insisted ‘Come on the boss told me to sort it out you’ve been really good, we’ve enjoyed ourselves, how much do we owe?’ ‘Ok’ he replied ‘One pound’. Wasn’t that a great gesture.

You know it was 2011 when the Borough Theatre in Wallsend where Impulse studio and Neat records were based was eventually demolished, it had been lying empty for years. Looking back, it was a great time but to be honest I just wanted to hoy the keys away. I worked there from 1966 to 2001. The years since then have passed very quickly.

After I sold Neat records I ran a Theatre group which went well until Covid destroyed the numbers involved so we are building it back up again. I kept a lot of the group together through ZOOM. I was also on the local club committee at Cullercoats on the North East coast here.

Now I’m writing short comedy scripts for a podcast. I’m trying to get them on local radio. Problem I have is some of its adult humour you might laugh your socks off but not sure you’ll hear it on the radio.

What else do I do? I’m also on a committee for wine tasting because I like my wine. That’s been going for 40 years. We also like our holidays, we have a few planned this year. We look after our Grandchildren and dogs and take them out to the country each weekend, yes you just get on with things don’t ya. I’ve also been involved with a few compilation CDs with the Cherry Red label, I’ll let you know all about that when we catch up next time.

Alikivi   February 2025.

COP ON THE TYNE – in conversation with ex police detective & writer Arthur McKenzie

/ Alikivi

Now 85, Arthur talks about joining the police force as a cadet in 1955…

‘Yes, I was a polis in Newcastle, the city was a lot different then I’ll tell ya, it was still getting over the war to be fair. My first beat was Sandyford Road where the Civic Centre is now. That was all houses then’.

‘It was quite a tough beat, a rough area with pubs like The Lamberts Leap and another called The Sink near the Haymarket. You had to earn your corn, there were no radios or panda cars – you were just pushed out onto the beat and that was it, you had to get on with it’.

‘There was a police pillar (similar to a post box but with a telephone inside) on the corner of Sandyford Road. If you arrested anyone you hoped you could get the person to the pillar. It was difficult cos sometimes you had a couple of guys fighting…you had to get them there, it wasn’t easy’.

‘There was generally more respect for the police then, you would get more help from the public once you established yourself on the beat, which you had to do cos you were tested out straight away’.

‘Once they knew you were fair and straight you got a lot of help from them. You were on that same beat for years, you weren’t just passing through you got to know every shop keeper, every doctor, every villain…you got to know the whole community. But then the T. Dan Smith regeneration project of slum housing clearance began and the place changed completely’.

‘I always liked paper work, always took pride in my reports. A crime file for shoplifting or murder has a beginning, middle and end and you had to go to court and defend what you had written. In the end someone could go to prison so you’re under pressure, under scrutiny. That reality far exceeds any drama’.

‘I moved from department to department, CID, drug, vice, crime squad, then around 1978 I worked for the anti- corruption team in the Government based in Hong Kong. For the year I was there I would see people living in cages on roofs, people swapping babies in hospitals, it was a weird place. I wrote an article for the Police Review national magazine on what I saw, they paid me £25 for it. It was read all over the country’.

‘I didn’t start writing until I was 40 you know. When I came back to the UK, I worked in Washington Police Station, a young cop called Jeff Rudd came to see me ‘I used to be a musician in a band, I’ve still got all these tunes going round my head but can’t put words to them. I read your article and seen your reports, I wonder if you’d be interested in putting some words to my tunes?’

Well, I give it a go and then thought nothing of it until a few months later I was pleasantly surprised when he handed me a tape with the songs on. I really enjoyed my time with Jeff, he was a very accomplished guitarist. We ended up writing around 50 songs, one of them ‘Big Bren’ was about the athlete Brendan Forster, that was played on radio’.

‘That led us to doing an interview and playing some of our music on the Frank Wappat BBC Newcastle radio show, then we done a couple of gigs in Washington. Next thing my wife Irene said why not contact Tom Hadaway? (writer When the Boat Comes In, Newcastle Live Theatre).’

‘I wasn’t sure at first because I didn’t know him but as he was from North Shields we met and he told me to write a play. ‘What do I write about Tom?’ I asked ‘Write about what you know. What fires you up.’

‘So, I went away and wrote about the bait room. Tom read the play and was laughing at it ‘Yeah, you know how to write dialogue son’.

‘There was a police section house near Exhibition Park, in it was a bait room, just a pokey little room with a table to play cards on. If you’re on night shift you’d take sandwiches and a flask of tea in. That’s where you gathered around 1am where the events of the night would unfold’.

‘You would get advice on how to deal with someone, it was a good place to sort things out like the older cops would tell you how to deal with a death, how to deliver a death message to the unfortunate family. It was a sort of meeting of minds over a game of cards. Aye the bait room was a good place to vent your spleen so to speak.’

Running parallel with his police work Arthur was training in athletics at the running track at Ouseburn, Newcastle.

‘I was on shift in the Bigg Market from 5pm till 1am, that was rough, there was fighting most nights. After finishing I would grab a few hours sleep then go to court, then onto shot put training. I was in the British athletics team from 1962-71 and competed in the 1970 Commonwealth games in Edinburgh. I was very fortunate and saw the world with athletics’.

Arthur talked some more when the conversation turned to the present day and the riots that are happening this summer around England. He recalled a quieter time for the police.

‘I remember we had a huge kettle for the bait room. It was always on the stove. One day a big fish wagon went past the section house and dropped a fish out of one of the boxes. I picked it up brought it back into the station put it in the kettle and boiled it up. All day everybody was complaining about the smell from this mackerel…and no, we didn’t eat it!’

‘Another story was one night when I was up beside the Hancock Museum going to the section house at Park Terrace. Can you remember the litter bins that used to hang on a lamppost? Well, this one was upside down on the lawn outside the Hancock and it was moving around. I lifted it up and there was a hedgehog underneath it!’

‘So, I put it in my coat and took it up to the section station. Inside are lockers to put your bait in so I put the hedgehog inside one of them and waited for the copper to open it. He just about had a heart attack when he opened the locker!’

Hearing these innocent stories was a world away from watching how the police were dealing with the riots around the country, but then Arthur’s tone changed.

‘I remember it was winter time, snow piled up on the ground. I went in for my bait around 12.45am and heard a muffling sound, I opened the door and there was an older police officer trying to commit suicide with a plastic bag on his head. There was a scuffle as I grabbed hold of him but couldn’t get the bag off. I looked around found a fork and split the bag but caught his face at the same time’.

‘He was playing hell with me for saving his life ‘What right did I have’ and all the rest of it. As we were having this argument I could hear the other officers coming in for their bait so everything was put back right, we straightened up the chairs and table as if nothing had happened’.

‘That policeman only had a couple of year service left, he was very bitter, he didn’t thank me. Turned out he had a hell of a life with his wife and thing was he had seen action in the second world war’.

After writing about his experiences in The Bait Room, Arthur kept in touch with Tom Hadaway and wrote another play.

Tom looked at it and gave me pointers, when I finished it landed on two desks. One was the BBC in Manchester where I met them, it ended up on the Saturday Night Theatre radio show, which was a big thing’.

‘The other was the script reader for David Puttnam (producer Chariots of Fire, Local Hero, Midnight Express) who hated it at first but won her round in the end. She said she couldn’t do anything with it but put me in touch with an agent who was looking for writers for a tv show called The Bill. That’s where the writing started’.

Arthur being interviewed on BBC Breakfast about writing ‘Harrigan’.

In 1988 Arthur retired from the police force giving him more time to devote to his writing where over the next decade he delivered TV episodes for Wycliffe, The Bill, Casualty, Spender and Harrigan. The Bait Room was finally made in 2009.

‘I used the same discipline for writing as I did sport. Getting a focus, deciding what you want and going for it.’

‘What am I doing now? I’ve had a lot of my writing shown around the North East. ‘Pickets & Pigs’ was a story set to the background of the 1984 Miners strike’.

‘Later this year I’ve got a play on stage which I started writing in 2003 with Dave Whitaker. ‘Blackbird in the Snow’ is one of those that you leave on a shelf for a while then go back to’.

‘I worked with Dave on a musical about the Jarrow March called ‘Cuddy’s Miles’. John Miles wrote the music for it, Cuddy was a cook on the march, he was John’s relation. That was well received when it played The Customs House in 2004’.

‘Sadly, Dave passed away in 2021. He’ll be sorely missed so the new play is produced as a salute to Dave’s beautiful lasting memory’.

‘Blackbird in the Snow’ has a four night run with the premier on 5th November 2024 at Laurels, Whitley Bay. For more info and extra dates contact the official website >

Blackbird in the Snow | Line-Up (lineupnow.com)

Alikivi   August 2024