Neon

Neon formed in early 1978 and were from County Durham and they really did sound like no other band at that time.  Originally coming from the remains of a band called The Hephalumps they weren’t going to be your bog standard 1234 merchants.  However as Tim Jones recalls “We were immediately labelled punk from our first gig so that’s what we thought we were although in retrospect there were so many other influences that eventually became known as New Wave.” He accurately describes their sound as “progressive punk…. Fast and furious guitar riffs.” I’ll add weird time signatures verging on jazz to that! Live their “playing jerks with danceable tension” opined Phil Sutcliffe in Sounds to complete the description of their sound. 

They supported fellow North East bands such as Penetration and Punishment Of Luxury and toured with The Pretenders. In their live set at the time were songs such as Wuh Wuh, I’m A Gents (at your convenience), Hunny Bunny and Life’s A Downer and other tracks heading towards Devo weird territory!  Lenny Love of Sensible Records (home initially of The Rezillos) liked the band and put out their first single.  A John Peel radio session on 22/3/79 featuring Confuse The News, Eying Up Diddies, Plum Plum Crazy and Exterminate helped get a deal with Radar. This produced one more single and that was it for this strange (and some say the worst-dressed ever) band.

I’ve probably not sold the band that well but check out the singles and YouTube stuff. Well worth a listen.

What sort of bands and music did you first get into?

For me it was Anthony Newley, Ken Dodd, Charlie Drake, Simon Dupree And The Big Sound, The Rattles, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, T Rex, Beethoven, Brahms, Small Faces and on and on and on. These are the very first records I heard from being a kid but you must remember that this was centuries ago and punk was nowhere near invented yet.

Any bands b4 Neon ? What were they and what sort of music?

Before Neon we were all in bands at school with names like Hephalumps And Woozles and after we left school there was quite a few. I left school and home at sixteen to join a band in Middlesborough called Eyes To The Sky which was formed by Paddi, the drummer from Neon. We played furious rock music in weird time signatures. We were very hard on ourselves musically and we played as if our lives depended on it. Later on Paddi left and joined a Scottish rock band called Dragon who won a battle of the bands competition and me and Mark Dunn, Neon’s bass player formed a band with the future Neon manager Paul Taylor on drums called Whippet. We played mainly in colleges and once in an old folks home which was enlightening to say the least. This was early seventies and punk still hadn’t arrived.

How did you come to form Neon?

Paddi came back from Scotland after Dragon folded and so we decided to form a band. This was early 1976. Mark and me used to go around to Paddi’s house and paddi had his drums set up in his bedroom. His dad was a great bloke who was a music teacher and his mother was very understanding because we used to make a hell of a lot of noise as you can imagine. We’re talking a 100 watt marshall combo for the guitar and 150 watt bass rig set up in a bedroom alongside a full drum kit. We would come up with loads of ideas and it all kind of naturally evolved into a punky sound with furious time signatures which we were always into before.

We got our first gig alongside a load of heavy metal and blues bands but we couldn’t decide what to wear, so we found a load of strange old clothes and put them in a big cardboard box and just took our pick as to what we would wear. This box stayed with us for two years and literally hundreds of gigs. Mark usually ended up wearing pajamas and a dressing gown onstage whilst Paddi would be found in a pair of red satin shorts and I would be stuck with a pair of curtains or whatever.

Needless to say, we were eventually voted “Worst dressed band of the year” in the Sounds music paper which was popular at that time. After our first single release, our favourite guitarist Martin Holder returned to the North East after playing in bands in London and he was immediately drafted in as second guitarist.

We were actually formed in County Durham in the North East of England. This is why our contemporaries were bands like Penetration, Punishment Of Luxury and The Carpettes.

Did you view yourselves as part of punk, or just influenced and running alongside it?

We were immediately labelled punk from our first gig so that’s what we thought we were although in retrospect there were so many other influences that eventually became known as New Wave.

What sort of music/punk scene was there where you were? What places / clubs did you play?

Where we were was the most vibrant live music scene you could imagine. Honestly, bands would give their front teeth for the kind of scene that was going on in the North East Of England at that time. There were loads of gigs to play and so many people were into the live music scene. It was wonderful. Punk kick started so much action for live music. If we weren’t playing gigs, we were going to see bands.

We had a lot of support from local radio, especially from BBC Radio Newcastle who had a great weekly programme on the local scene called Bedrock which was produced by a guy called Dick Godfrey alongside Phil Sutcliffe and Ian Penman, all now well known journalists in their own right. We also had loads of fanzines. We played all of the pub venues in the North East and up to Scotland in places like Edinburgh and Glasgow. Also as far south as leeds etc and eventually London.

On the local scene who were the other bands around that never made it?

Too many to mention. There was a band called Last Exit that featured a black haired bass player called Sting

What was the attitude to punk and like bands? Spitting? Violence?

There was a lot of violence to be sure. A lot of violence aimed at us because we were labelled a punk band. It was unreal. We had the van turned over at Sunderland Polytechnic and ended up barricading ourselves in the dressing room. One gig we did for May Day at The Guild Hall in Newcastle was voted “bum gig of the year” by one magazine as it was an absolute bloodbath. There was a clash between the Angelic Upstarts fans and ours & Punishment Of Luxury’s.

We don’t know exactly what happened but all of a sudden I’m watching chairs and bottles bouncing off people’s heads in the audience. Then the promoter runs up to us and says get off stage quick, then the PA does a tilt into the audience crushing a load of people and finally it’s all over. Where I’d been standing was just a pool of blood and I’m watching Mark dragging some poor girl out of the audience who had been kicked to fuck. The police arrive and there’s people standing screaming at them “Where the hell were you!”.

I’ve had full pints of beer thrown over me at gigs before I’d even played a note. Bottles flying through the air and trying to keep an eye on where they’re going to land. Nutcases following us from gig to gig in order to get a chance to beat the shit out of those degenerate Neon fuckers, kids being thrown down flights of stairs, thrown into drum kits, people cut up with knives, real evil stuff, like being in a nightmare etc etc. Yes, a lot of violence that I don’t like to remember.

What bands did you rate?

Punishment Of Luxury and Penetration were our favourites. We thought that Penetration were especially amazing after Fred Purser joined on guitar. We did quite a few gigs with them and Punilux. You listen to them now and they’re both still amazing to hear. They haven’t dated at all because they were real innovators. I used to work in a crap job for the council with Garry Chaplin, the original guitarist for Penetration and he invited me down to Saint Margaret’s church hall in Durham to watch them rehearse. Pauline Murray was always an electrifying live performer. 

The Rezillos

Although we weren’t from Scotland, we were signed to a Scottish record label called Sensible Records alongside The Rezillos. They were a great bunch of people. Eugene and Fay Fife helped us carry the gear on and off stage at a couple of gigs in Edinburgh. They were very supportive and a great live band.

How would you describe your sound ?? Punk? New Wave? What did you hope to achieve?

I would describe our sound now as progressive punk which is easy to do in hindsight. Fast and furious guitar riffs. We just wanted to get out and play, get drunk, meet interesting people and have a good time. If possible perform a miracle and earn a living from music.

Were you tempted to move down to London ??

All of the band did except me. I had too much going on up here at the time although at one point I did have an audition for The Vibrators but I didn’t turn up. I was too knackered after the demise of Neon but I always wonder what it would have been like if I’d gone. They would have probably shouted “Next Please!”

How did John Peel radio session come about?

John Peel heard our first single on Sensible Records and gave it a lot of airplay. A while later he asked us into the studio which was Maida Vale in London. There was one event at those sessions that was weird. One of the lines to one of the songs we were doing had “and she said” in the lyric but the BBC engineer with a bowler hat and a brolly thought that I sang “shithead”. I hear a voice with a posh accent coming over my headphones saying ” I’m terribly sorry but you can’t say that!”. I say “Can’t say what?” The voice answers “shithead, I distinctly heard you say shithead”. “No I didn’t” says I until the only way to please the guy was to say “and she said”  in a posh accent. Strange that.

Biggest moment in band? Who did you support?

The best moment for me was supporting Penetration & Punishment Of Luxury at Newcastle City Hall. We’d been going to see bands there since we were kids and it was great to actually be onstage there and feel what it was like. It was a gig to remember. Also, supporting Siouxsie And The Banshees at Durham University and sharing a dressing room with them. We gave their roadie a Neon sticker and he stuck it on his arse for the whole gig whilst Siouxsie was kicking unwanted fans off the stage and kids were passing out in the heat and being dragged out of the audience.

We also supported The Pretenders at The Nashville in London. They were brilliant at that time and it was very sad to see two of the band die a few years later through smack I think it was. We played with the excellent reggae band Steel Pulse in Edinbrough. They were very kind to us in the dressing room whilst they were all gambling around a table with a pack of cards. The bass sound was unbelievable and blew you through the wall. 

Another band at that time was The Roogalators who were also very kind to us. We played a great gig at The Greyhound in Fulham for The Damned appreciation society and they were wonderful people. We used to do benefits for The Greasy Lake bikers club and they all became good friends but they tended to bite you a lot which was a bit unexpected. We supported The Rich Kids at The Coatham Bowl in Redcar and I met Glenn Matlock, the original bass player from The Sex Pistols who was a very nice bloke. The only thing I can remember saying to him was “You wrote Pretty Vacant didn’t you?” and him saying “yeah” in a dismissive kind of way as if it was nothing. It being one of my favourite guitar riffs of all time!

There are loads of memorable gigs really. We did the pub circuit in London a few times and that was always interesting. Places like The Hope & Anchor, The Music Machine, The Nashville and places like that. In fact, now I come to think of it, one of my best memories around that time was after Neon, I played with Punishment Of Luxury for a while and got to play the old Marquee club. That was one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve played.

How did Neon end ?

Just to recap, here’s the story: In days of old, there was a band called Neon who got signed to Sensible Records in Edinburgh. The company was run by a guy called Lenny Love and he told us at the time that the reason his surname was Love was due to the fact that his family were refugees in the war and the guy on the desk at immigration was very hassled and couldn’t suss out Lenny’s father’s surname. So he looked at his ID and said “Mmm, looks like Love to me” and so it has been ever since, officially. Anyway, Sensible Records were a small independent who also as a matter of interest signed The Rezillos; the Neon contract was for one single only.

The Neon single did well, the band got some sessions on the John Peel show and we were due to be signed to United Artists along with another band we did a lot of gigs with and knew very well called Punishment Of Luxury (a band which I later joined and toured with). Then Martin Rushent who was the producer at UA and was dealing with Neon suggested that they would be better signing with his own new record label ‘Genetics’ because Neon would be treated with more concern on a smaller roster of artists. Martin Rushent had produced The Stranglers and later The Human League and had achieved much acclaim so doing, so Neon went with him.

It didn’t last long and after a single put out through Radar Records, we parted company. Martin thought that the band were moving in a too much jazz oriented direction which was just ridiculous. Neon disbanded.

The dreaded worst/ best experience question?

The worst, the aforementioned Guildhall gig which was like the Wild West. The best, the aforementioned City Hall gig.

Looking back what do you make of punk and the industry it appears to have become? Any Regrets? Did ’77 change anything?

In my opinion, 77 changed everything. Thank God it happened. It really shook up a complacent music industry and in many ways paved the way for new music and new ideas. My only regret is that I didn’t know then what I know now. We were very naive and were ripped off from start to finish really. We worked our arses off with no thanks at the end of it and certainly never made any money. All that we ended up with was the reality of enormous debts. The more successful you are, the more debts you incur or at least we did. All that the record companies will say to you in the end is “Don’t give me your problems my son”.

The major record companies never gave a damn about the ethic behind the punk movement. A  big mistake made by a lot of young musicians is that they think that the record companies actually care about them as people, as individuals but it’s all about money. They want to shift units. They want to sell you and your band as product for profit. It’s a business, just like any other business and that’s all it is. They may as well be selling Cornflakes. Many people from that time, prime movers and real believers in the movement are now dead or dead broke and well fucked up. Money is still being made out of them, as it always is. The punk movement was just eaten up and spat out like any other movement that threatens the established order of things.

We sincerely appreciate the coverage you have given us Paul and we wish you every success in your activities. Thanks for helping to keep our music alive!

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