Despite several years of critical attention, a decent-sized cult following and attracting production credits including John Porter (The Smiths) and Television's legendary Tom Verlaine, somehow fame and fortune evaded THE ROOM during their active lifetime of 1980 -1985.
The band released a fine debut album "Indoor Fireworks", the transitional mini-LP "Clear!", a string of excellent singles and the drop-dead classic album "In Evil Hour" during this time, but fell through the cracks due to the usual combination of unfortunate business deals, personality clashes and plain old bad luck.
It's just on 20 years since "In Evil Hour" was released on the Virgin-related imprint 10 Records and - after lying deleted and forgotten for far too long- has finally been picked up for CD release by James Nice's LTM Records: a label synonymous with quality if ever there was.
After waxing lyrical about the wonderful rediscovery of The Wild Swans' classic early material on the "Incandescent" double album last year, W&H were equally excited to welcome the long-overdue return of another long-lost Liverpool indie pop classic to the fold and were more than happy to call Room vocalist DAVE JACKSON to celebrate and discuss what really went on behind the scenes at the time.
W&H have got to know Dave over the years and also rate his work with his post-Room outfits BENNY PROFANE and DUST. He now fronts THE DEAD COWBOYS, with help from ex-Room/ Bennies bassist Becky Stringer and former Barbel guitarist Greg Milton. He's a great bloke and we can't think of a better way to spend an hour than filling in the historical gaps with the man whose rich croon always set him apart from the usual indie shouters.
Dave, you must have been well pleased LTM decided to release both the career retrospective "No Dream" and now the full re-issue of "In Evil Hour" coupled with the "Clear!" mini-LP. Did you ever feel The Room's music wouldn't make it to CD?
"Yeah, well "In Evil Hour" was deleted shortly after its' release in '84 and I suppose there were times when I thought it wouldn't see the light of day again," muses Dave.
"I think what helped set the ball rolling was Renascent re-releasing The Wild Swans early stuff again last year and then Viper (excellent Liverpool label) included our track "Naive" (from "In Evil Hour" - ed) on one of their "Unearthed Merseyside" compilations. At about that time Joe (McKechnie - ex-Benny Profane and The Passage) was having The Passage's back catalogue re-released by James at LTM and he put us in touch."
And James liked what he heard...
"Yeah, he was pleasantly surprised," says Dave. "He'll be putting out the next Dead Cowboys album as well. That's gonna be called "Twin Evil Stars.""
Certainly to these ears, The Room's music stands up really well 20 years on. Are you personally pleased with it as a body of work overall?
"Yeah, I really am," Dave replies.
"I mean, maybe it's because at the moment it seems the fashion in indie-related circles is for bands to sound a bit 80s-influenced, but - save for maybe the odd awful '80s explosive drum sound now and again - most of out stuff sounds good. I'm not embarrassed by it."
The Room's two line-ups (mark 1 from 1980 to the end of '82 and then mark 2 from 1983 to the band's demise in the summer of '85) seemed very different and very much separate entities. The first (Dave and Becky with guitarist Robyn Odlum and drummer Clive Thomas) was brittle and nervy and recorded the "Indoor Fireworks" album and the classic early single "Things Have Learnt To Walk That Ought To Crawl". The song still sounds taut and energised years on. Was that something of a breakthrough song for you?
"Yeah, it was, because prior to that we'd been playing songs that were very much based around Robyn's WEM Copycat echo box. It gave us a guitar sound reliant on swathes of echo, but with "Things...." it was more to do with notes, so we were consciously pushing for a poppier sound. Less doomy....though I always enjoyed doomy music (laughs)."
And of course the late John Peel loved "Things Have Learnt To Walk..." didn't he? I still can't get over his death....
"No, me neither," says Dave. "He did love that single and played it a lot. I'm really grateful he was so encouraging with us like so many bands. To me, it's affected me far more than hearing of any rock star dying or whatever. It's like a whole attitude has gone and how will it be replaced now? Because there was always a strong element within John that went against the prevailing musical trend or fashion and he really was the emobodiment of that."
He pauses for a moment.
"Lots of DJs try to be like John, but they don't come close. I can't get my head around it either....I always imagined he'd be there for ever. It's terrible."
I was pleased to see LTM included the songs from the "Clear!" mini-LP with the "In Evil Hour" package, although it's an odd record and stylistically all over the shop. Did the different approach arrive with Paul Cavanagh (guitars) and Alan Wills (drums) who came in when Robyn and Clive left?
"Yeah, it did make a difference," Dave agrees.
"When Robyn and Clive said they wanted to leave, they actually told us in about July '82, but they agreed to stay on until the end of that year. In the meantime Peter (Baker - organ, piano) joined and we did the "One Hundred Years" single, still with Robyn and Clive."
"During that spell, though, we were also rehearsing with Paul and at the time Paul wanted us to go in this cocktail jazz direction, while Peter wanted us to sound like DAF and I was listening to The Velvets and Frank Sinatra (laughs), and I went along with all of it. As you can imagine we ended up with this hotch-potch of ideas. Also, while Peter was playing on the early songs we limited him to swathes of noisy, repetitive stuff but when Alan and Paul came in he got a new synth and started to go crazy experimenting."
He takes another pause.
"The thing is, though" he continues, "is that record companies loved "Clear!" and so did loads of A&R men. Maybe they thought we'd be this squeaky clean pop band (laughs), and that was one reason Dave Kitson (head of The Room's early label Red Flame) managed to get us signed to Virgin's 10 imprint because of those songs."
OK, but once you'd done "Clear!" and played a number of gigs with the new line-up it all really clicked with "In Evil Hour." Can you remember having the songs ready and thinking: "we're sitting on something really good here"?
"Yeah, definitely," Dave confirms.
"Paul started playing a rockier style of guitar and that was significant. Writing "A Shirt Of Fire" (the album's superb opening track) was great in rehearsal and a turning point for the band. It felt like we'd pulled it out of the ether. Then we got "Naive" and "Jackpot Jack" as well and they sounded great too. They didn't sound contrived or sound like we were trying to fuse styles together like on "Clear!""
"A Shirt Of Fire"s arguably this writer's favourite Room song. Remember that brilliantly manic version you did live on "Whistle Test"?
"Yeah, it did sound manic and a bit odd," Dave recalls.
"The BBC made us do it four or five times. We'd play it and it sounded great and they'd decide the lights weren't right or something, so we'd do it again...and again. That made us feel tense and also it started to get faster(laughs). It wasn't deliberate, but it happens when the adrenalin starts to flow, and we always thought that was fine. Our ruling was "well, as long as it doesn't slow down". But The Room always sounded better live to me because of that intensity - to a degree anyway. Let's face it: it's hard to be spontaneous when you're recording."
Talking of which, the sessions for "In Evil Hour" were split between two producers: John Porter, famous for his work on The Smiths' debut album, and also Tom Verlaine from Television. In your notes on the new re-issue you say you wanted Porter because of the live sound of the first Smiths' album but then found out hardly any of it was actually live. Were the sessions with him a trial?
"To a degree, yeah," Dave responds.
"Though I should say now that listening back to what John did, he did a good job. It was a combination of factors really. One of the things was we knew we could play well and wanted to do it live in the studio and have live drums, whereas John brought in the dreaded drum machines. You must remember this was about the time they were getting much more sophisticated and could sample John Bonham or whatever, so John wanted it as precise as possible and while Alan was a great drummer he still wasn't as precise, so he got edged out a bit."
So does he not play live on the songs Porter produced?
"I think it's mostly triggered on the songs John produced. It was daft really, as Alan programmed the beats and it was the same as he'd play live himself, but everyone was obsessed with BPMs at the time. By comparison, Tom Verlaine was a dream because he was into us doing it live."
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Right. And of course you nailed great songs like "Crying Red" and "Jackpot Jack" with Tom. I was fascinated by your sleevenotes about his behaviour. Did he really eat a block of ice cream every day?
"Well, I don't know what he was recovering from, but he was staying at The Townhouse in London where we did the album," Dave reveals.
"Our ex-manager (John Reid) managed producers like Steve Lillywhite there and he ended up managing Tom for a while after we did our album with him. It's true about him eating the blocks of ice cream. He'd sleep until the afternoon and that would be his breakfast. He wasn't drinking either."
Did you get on well on a personal level?
"Yeah, we did. He was quite subdued, actually, but we enjoyed the experience of working with him. Alan (Wills) used to wind him up inadvertently, though. He'd come up to Tom and say something completely inappropriate like: "Tom, you gotta play in Liverpool - everyone's got "Marquee Moon" at the BACK of their collection up there!" and Tom's jaw would drop after Alan deflated him in one fell swoop."
Did Tom get annoyed about it?
"No, no, he didn't" Dave chuckles. "I think he thought it was just our...."
....Typical Scouse wit?
"Yeah, yeah," Dave laughs, "except that Alan's from Anglesey....it was his attempt at Scouse humour maybe."
OK, but when "In Evil Hour" came out, it received a lot of positive press and you ended 1984 having done high-profile support tours with The Red Guitars and Violent Femmes. Just as you must have been looking to the future, you got a call from Dave Kitson saying 10 had been dropped by Virgin. Was the entirely out of the blue?
"Yeah, it was pretty weird," Dave recalls.
"But I suppose in a way you could have seen it coming because Kitson used to really wind people up at 10. The Red Flame label got signed to 10 and thus Virgin because of "Clear!" but we hadn't even signed a contract. Kitson also had Ann Clark and Carmel. We never quite got to the bottom of what happened, but I think Kitson's efforts to throw his weight around at 10/Virgin didn't help, plus he had a big dispute over Ann Clark's publishing deal. The end result of all these shenanigans for us was that after spending all this time recording a great album and getting great reviews and touring we ended up without any product to promote with "In Evil Hour" effectively being deleted."
That must have been a mighty headfuck as you clearly had plenty more great tunes like "Here Comes The Floor", "Jeremiah" etc that could have made for another excellent record had the band continued?
"Yeah, we were in limbo and ultimately it got the better of us," says Dave.
"It's a shame because we had nearly another album's worth of new stuff that could have produced an album at least as good as "In Evil Hour" had we continued. But Kitson was pleading poverty and we felt our manager John Reid wasn't really into us. I got the impression he only went along with us because he felt we'd be pop sensations after "Clear!" He didn't like a lot of the songs - I remember he didn't like "A Shirt Of Fire" at all and he hated bands we liked. I remember him saying he hated REM and they'd get nowhere (laughs)."
"But other cracks were becoming apparent as well," continues Dave.
"Like Paul and Alan were starting to play with Lee Mavers in what I suppose was a kind of forerunner of The La's, and when Alan wanted to leave and Paul wanted to follow we called it a day in the summer of 1985. I don't blame them - we had no definite label interest and the situation with the management had created a bad atmosphere."
"It did leave a bad taste in that we felt we'd been pained into a corner by all of it. Then, Dave Kitson just disappeared. He was literally nowhere to be found. I know he did Australian band Severed Heads as well and they had problems with him. We got the impression he was pleading poverty, but he still had this big house in Acton and we all think that whatever deal he made with 10 that he got out OK."
Such, sadly, is the way of the dastardly music business. Though at least two of The Room have gone on to help shape the current crop of Merseyside bands who have been impinging on the UK's consciousness. Alan Wills now manages The Coral and Paul Cavanagh does likewise with The Basement.
"Yeah, Alan's doing extremely well," agrees Dave.
"I'm pleased for him. The Coral are really good and Liverpool is a good place to enjoy live music again these days. I bumped into Paul recently at Rufus Wainwright's Liverpool gig at The Philharmonic Hall. We were sitting a balcony away from each other, as fate would have it. But I think the whole live music thing has come back round again really. For a while it got edged out by dance music and it was cheaper for lots of clubs just to get a DJ in or whatever. Now, though, live music is something that's viewed as pleasurable and it's cool to go see bands again. Obviously that's great."
OK, so you mentiond you have a new album with your current band The Dead Cowboys ready to go soon?
"Yeah, we've recently been recording that at guitarist) Greg Milton's flat. It's just Becky, Greg and me with one of those dreaded drum machines, though we;ve just got a new drummer now. Peter (Baker) was involved as well. He's been living in Australia and he came back from Australia and put down all the keyboard parts in one session over eight cans of lager (laughs)."
Just like the old days?
"No, Peter's teetotal now ironically...he's stopped drinking entirely since then. I think we've all moved on."
Right. Well, we'll be looking forward to that one round W&H Central. But Dave - before we go - this is the one I've always wanted to ask you: you have a great voice for someone working broadly in indie guitar rock. In the "Evil Hour" sleevenotes, you refer to the likes of Mel Torme and Chet Baker as people you admire. Are these the kind of people you always admired?
"Yeah, well I think the first record I heard that really hit me was Frankie Laine singing "Ghost Riders In The Sky"" replies Dave.
"I remember singing that down the phone to me Mum as a surprise (laughs). Also I loved songs from cowboy films, crooners like Jimmy Rodgers (not Jimmie Rodgers - ed) and I used to love songs like "Red River Valley". Thankfully I got into decent stuff like T-Rex from there, but I've always liked crooners. Becky's Dad's a jazz clarinet player and he introduced me to Mel Torme. So I always had that side as well as Lou Reed and Mark.E.Smith. Maybe I was always trying to secretly fuse the two. Listening to it now, it's hard to tell, but I still like what we did with The Room."
And so should many more of us. If you weren't there at the time, this is an ideal time to make space in your collection for The Room's back catalogue. Theirs is a legacy that's deserved a positive makeover for far too long.
"In Evil Hour"/ "Clear!" and "No Dream - The Best Of The Room" are both available through LTM records. Go to:
www.ltmpub.freeserve.co.uk for more info.
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