History

Part One: 1983 - Fanzines, compilations and Crazies…

John, Len and Andrew met for the first time at a Leeds Venue Group meeting in March 1983. The LVG were trying to set up a venue and rehearsal room for bands in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Inspired by initiatives like the Leadmill in Sheffield and the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford, members of the LVG met weekly at First Base and then the Victoria Pub in the centre of Leeds. Most of the LVG were unemployed - there certainly wasn't any money around - but for a while there was a conviction that they should squat one of the empty warehouses in the city centre or convince the powers that be into giving the city a decent punter-run focus for live music.

At the time Len had just set up Lion Studios - an 8 track recording studio in the centre of Leeds. At the same time he was running Roar fanzine - a free ‘zine paid for by advertisers and distributed in shops, gigs and at the Corner Cafe Indian restaurant.

John was unemployed but was busy writing songs and rehearsing with his band The Chorus in the cellar of his house on Hartley Avenue in Leeds 6.

Andrew had just quit a band called Colenso Parade, who six months earlier had arrived in Leeds from Belfast - partly motivated by reading issue 1 of Len’s Roar fanzine.

The three got to know each other well through the weekly LVG meetings and whilst trudging the streets looking for likely derelict buildings for the venue.

John and Len found out they were both into certain bands from the '60s and started talking about working on some stuff together. Andrew meanwhile was busy writing songs using an archaic approach to multi-tracking using cassette recorders for over-dubbing, and was keen to muscle in on the opportunity to collaborate with other two.

The three met up in Len’s front room – all with a guitar in hand and some songs to sing. And that explains why the band, that was to become the Sinister Cleaners, ended up having too many 'front men'. Normally when you put a band together you look for people to do different things, but the Cleaners were all singer, song-writing, guitar-playing, lead vocalists - but also talented to such an extent that it never really occured to them that there was any problem! They resolved this imbalance quite simply by rotating lead vocals, guitar and bass playing. The whole basis of the Cleaners was about being democratic and flexible. Breaking conventions was desirable. Each had other interests and so there was no need for power struggles and fixed roles in this band!

Just as the band was starting up Len fell out with the other person at Lion studios, who had decided he could manage without Len. The whole episode was a real downer, but it helped to establish a sense of comradeship in the Cleaners.

ROAR continued and took delight in getting advertising from other recording studios! Andrew started to contribute to ROAR, helping out Len and his partner Rebecca with photographs and the odd review. ROAR was mainly concerned with fostering the local music scene in Leeds, though occasionally carried reviews of nationally known bands as their tours passed through and if record companies wanted to send free stuff.

Len had been working on another project for a while before the studio incident – to produce a compilation album of local/undiscovered talent with each contributor paying for their share of the cut. This co-operative approach was inspired by an album called Hicks from the Sticks that had been released in Yorkshire a few years earlier. The album was probably the catalyst that got the Cleaners really up and running - the band could easily have fizzled out if the demand for finished product hadn't been there. In the end the record was dominated by Len, John and Andrew, which apart from the two tracks by the Sinister Cleaners had solo tracks from Len and Andrew, a track by John's other band The Chorus and a track by the Marvellous Roofs - a duo made up of Len and Richard Wagner.

The album was called Giraffe in Flames (after a painting by Salvador Dali) and the Cleaner’s tracks were This Is Not A Drug Song and In Stella’s Garden. Other artists featured were Nick Toczek, Party Day, Two’s Company, Victims of Romance, and Clive Taylor. What was the significance of the title Giraffe in Flames? - it must have made one or more of those present laugh when it was mentioned. I think that was the basis for decision making generally at that time.

Both of the Cleaner’s tracks were written collaboratively and featured Len on vocals and guitar, John on guitar and Andrew on bass. They were recorded at Abbey Lane studios in Leeds.

500 copies were pressed and each contributor was given a share of the pressing. Economically it was a great idea - artistically there was no real vision to the venture!

Other songs being written together at this time included Colour Supplement Cultural Hero with the same line-up. John contributed a couple of his songs including Life with the Sexes, which featured him singing and playing acoustic guitar, Andrew playing a jazz/blues mellow lead guitar line and Len contributing a backing vocal that approximated to Cleo Laine! Crazies #1 was also written by John and was ready at that first rehearsal in Len’s living room. Crazies #1 was possibly the only song to be performed at every gig the Cleaners ever played. John was always ready to admit that it was heavily inspired by Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, as indeed was the long-lost video which showed John discarding cue cards into the rubble of Victorian Leeds terraces. Strangely it was always called “#1” – even though no other Crazies songs had been written at that time - another Dylan-ism. However a series of Crazies songs were to follow, with Crazies #4 appearing on the last recording the band made.

The band had no drummer at the start. This was never really an issue. Len had a (now classic) Roland 606 drum machine and that suited the social and musical mix at that time.

Everything the band did was coloured by a strange sense of the absurd and that certainly included the choice of name. It actually came from a line in a song that John had written for his other band, The Chorus. It was somehow fitting that that song was called Bad Song.

to be continued...