Tales from Behind the Fridge
A commentary on the 20 tracks on Shine from the band
CALLING HOME
John - One of my favourite Sinister Cleaners songs. One of Len’s ‘nearly too personal’ lyrics and top parts from everyone! There was a bit of a rockabilly thing going at the time and I’d be surprised if we thought we were influenced by it at all, but perhaps we were. Good thing too. The original porta-studio recording demonstrates how fast we played this live in 1986/87 My copying of a small piece of bass line from a song by fab 70’s punk band 999 was veto-ed in the studio but apart from that blemish, pretty good.
Andrew - I have a note that says "We should have recorded this properly!" - so we did! This was one of the songs we recorded recently. I changed my guitar part from what I used to play. I don't know why. I think it was because I wanted something that was a bit more at odds with the song. Len played acoustic - this seemed a bit of an obvious move in the studio, so perhaps a bit risky, but it paid off.
I'LL NEVER FORGET THIS
Andrew - I always think of this as our greatest hit, but that's a very biased viewpoint. The thing was it was quite long and got a few plays on Radio One. Each play got a lot of money compared to other tracks because it was about a minute and a half longer. Len and John would know how much per play, but all I remember is that it contributed to us recording and releasing the next one.
By the end of this song I was usually quite immersed in it when we did it live. Probably a bit hammy, but it was long enough to get totally lost in delivering it.
John - This is the song that Janice Long played lots of times on Radio One and we almost thought we might get somewhere. She offered us a session that never happened (veto-ed by her producer if I remember right) and gave me (or us) a cup of coffee in a BBC cup (cue Ronnie Corbett joke about BBC coffee) from a machine. Can't for the life of me remember what we were doing in the BBC.
We were also offered (sort of) a publishing deal about this time. We went to see some 14 year old youth in a cupboard in the attic of some biggish publishing company. The possible advance was £300 and a 60/40 deal back-dated to include all our Janice Long and other airplay (i.e. they were going to take a big slice of money we'd already effectively got in the bank - can't remember if it was 60% for them or us). Even then we knew when our time was being wasted though maybe we were wrong. I remember feeling very old and a bit put out being patronised by some kid. I have no idea how we afforded to get to London at this time.
EATING RAOULE
John - We found this one difficult to fit in live because Andrew played the bass on it, with an 80’s style flange! In the very early days Andrew was ‘the bass player’, later it became Len and me. After Simon joined we managed to restrict our changing about on stage at least to the extent that Andrew stayed on guitar. The title was indeed lifted from the film of very similar name which to this day I’ve never seen. The theme for the song was a sort of middle class dinner party taking place on the first Stranglers album cover. Played originally on my Fender Bullet – the budget Fender before they did ‘Squire’s I think. This guitar was stolen and recovered at least once.
Andrew - Yet another very different song. The Cleaners went through so many genres. I think that's what we liked about ourselves. We couldn't pidgeon-hole ourselves and neither could anyone else. I think we decided this worked against us in the end as we tried to get more focussed.
Eating Raoul was essentially written by John, but it sums up why joint crediting of our songs is the right thing to do often. The arrangement really takes the song into another realm.
MONKEY AND THE TYPEWRITER
Andrew - I really think this was the most successful recording we did. Unfortunately I don't know why it worked so well as a production. I'm not sure if anyone else ever thought this. Probably just me. I loved playing this live too. If I hadn't lost heart I think I would have liked to see have sets full of stuff like this.
John - Possibly the best original Cleaner’s recording, not least because of the effect on Andrew’s guitar – gated reverb by Neil Ferguson, as well as great guitar from Andrew and all the stops and twiddles and energy and Simon’s drumming - and the rest.
IMAGINARY FRIEND
Andrew - I always knew exactly what this song should sound like the minute it was written. That's the odd thing about being in a band like this where you're surrounded by people who have got plenty of ideas for themselves. Even if you came up with the thing in the first place you know it's going to have a life of its own by the time everyone else has moulded it their way a little. When we were rehearsing this we were musing with releasing it as an anti-Xmas single. Maybe next year.
John - We did this live a few times but never came up with an arrangement that anyone was happy with until the recent recording. Andrew originally saw it as the Velvet Underground I think and I saw it as Let It Be - and maybe it wasn’t manic enough for us live.
TICKERTAPE
John - Different to the other Cleaners songs and that’s probably one reason why it didn’t get recorded earlier. This is me singing Len’s lyrics, which makes it another one off.
Andrew - Occasionally there is a song that just happens and Tickertape is one of them. I think it may have started out as a piss-take of the Sisters of Mercy (who were big in Leeds and elsewhere at the time) but quickly moved into something Cleaneresque. This must have been one of the first songs we did with Simon on drums (?) though may have been started with a drum machine. One of the few Cleaners' songs that wasn't predominantly written by one person.
BLEED
Andrew - This was an experiment in writing a pure and simple song made up of three or four simple chords. I believe(d) the best songs are simply structured allowing the most room for decent melodies. Well that was the idea… Next song in the experiment I think was Imaginary Friend. I was the one in the band who was always committed to love songs - or in this case, hate songs.
John - I always remember us being worried because we noticed that on the recording we start a bit fast and slow down. Though not many people would notice it bugged me.
BASTARDS
John - In hindsight, Len's rockabilly style songs have aged the best so this, 1941 and The Monkey & The Typewriter are among my favourites. The lyrics work well too, though how we expected to be taken seriously I don't know. The German promoter liked this one. This was recorded before we started borrowing a slightly better bass from Colin the soundman so I was never really happy with the bass sound. If we hadn’t been in such a rush maybe I’d have noticed earlier and we could have fixed it – or maybe I’m just wrong.
Andrew - Len goes manic again - and quite right too. I used to go really hyper playing this. I still have the blood on my guitar shed playing this on stage in the Loft in Berlin. Or was it another venue in Berlin? Interesting what happens to blood after 20 years. Not much really, but maybe it's preserved in whatever alcohol didn't get drunk that night.
GOODBYE MS JONES
Andrew - This is like a Crazies song - but not a Crazies title! I think this was the title of our second EP, but the song didn't appear until our 3rd EP? What was that about? On the other hand I'm probably confused. Playing in the Sinister Cleaners was like being in 3 bands. In this band I loved being the lead guitarist on John's songs.
John - Currently being played by me at an acoustic night somewhere near you possibly.
LONGING FOR NEXT YEAR
Andrew - Lush. If I'm stuck for an idea I have a habit at the moment of writing songs that rip this off - though this was one of Len's. I mean, Len himself wrote 20 odd variations on this! But this really worked. I noticed that this made someone's top 5 single of 1987 on a website I saw recently. I didn't realise it was that good! As I say, there are few more in this vain that haven't been recorded yet, so perhaps it's time to book a bit more studio time?
John - A couple of lines of lyrics provided me in particular with a source of taking the piss out of Len that lasts to this day. Disagreeing with Len and / or winding him up was one of the great pleasures of the Sinister Cleaners though it was almost never 3 against 1 which was disappointing.
LIFE WITH THE SEXES
John - This is actually a pre-Simon recording when we were three and a machine, though there’s no machine on this one. I can still smell the Billiard Room studio when I hear this song. We recorded a version of ‘Crazies #1’ at the same session I think with Carl the engineer / producer on drums. I think he listened to it once before doing it but it worked.
Andrew shows he can play the guitar ‘properly’ on this and Len entertains us with his Cleo Lane impersonation.
Andrew - I think this was the first song that we ever played together in Len's living room at 47 Brudenell Mount. It is bizarre. We obviously hadn't had the conversation 'What sort of music do you like then' at that point in the proceedings! But it was clear John had a real talent for... well. A masterpiece. This proves John is an undiscovered genius of a song-writer. But wy did we select this for this CD? Just to amuse ourselves. I wonder if anyone else will dare to mention Len's inspiration at this point in our career.
WALLFLOWER
Andrew - I remember writing this. Most songs get written with a guitar in hand but this song was written whilst walking home from the Phonographique in the Merrion Centre, Leeds to Chapletown very late one icey night . Guitar riff and everything. And this is a classic example of a love song and what love can do! I hate dancing but I spent the night being totally enamoured by a girl with a smile who loved dancing. So I knew there was no chance but the feeling of elation was worth it. So the song came out of that feeling. Well, it might be a cheesy little tale, but that's life.
John - How did we decide to put that intro on this song? Nicely recorded though, one of our solid ‘mid period’ songs.
WHO IS ANGELA KING?
John - Angela King turned out to be called something slightly different. She was doing some sort of law qualification and came to a couple of gigs though why she got into the lyrics is anybody’s guess. One of my ‘what can that be about’ lyrics.
Len using his extensive collection of 60’s LPs to come up with the bass line, Andrew doing one of those guitar lines that never occurred to me as clever or complicated at the time but does now, just right. I remember there being a problem in that the bass (the one borrowed from Colin I think) despite being ‘active’ (which meant it had a battery in it – a fantastic new idea at the time it seemed) was a bit out of tune when played really high on the neck – or maybe it was Andrew’s old one, anybody bothered?
Andrew - I liked playing the fuzz lead on the intro and the riff was great. This was my favourite line up when it came to playing live. I liked playing real lead guitar and John's songs usually demanded something slightly over the top. Len's bass playing was so good and bassey as well - really doing what was needed, and I think John's songs for the Cleaners were on a real roll. Though actually John's song writing has never stopped being on a roll. The only reason he's not famous is that... well best leave that unsaid.
COMPLICATION DAY
Andrew - Another simple song. I could sing the high notes then. Can't get anywhere near them now! My voice must've dropped. I like the guitar intro with the high singing on it. It's odd the way other songs can inspire you to write songthing. There was a great track in a film by Lyndsay Anderson called 'If'. The track is something that the lead character plays. It's some choral music called Sanctus I think. So ethereal. Well, that's where this song started, but it was just a feeling thing.
John - I remember falling out with Len over the bass line to some of this (rehearsed in the deadest room imaginable at Hall Place - all treble and reverb were kind of sucked out of the air). I'd pretty much nicked a bit of 'Land Ho!' by the Doors and Len didn't like it at all. Come to think of it, most disputes were John / Len affairs. Once again, really good use of effects (Ok, just lots of reverb). A hint of Television’s Marquee Moon at the end on the guitar but sounds great for it. I was a bit suspicious at the time of the fact that the song didn’t have a middle 8 or something but my songs always had lots of bits in them.
CRAZIES #3
John - Definitely a 'slight' Dylan influence on this song (‘Tombstone Blues’ off Highway 61 I think; Crazies # 1 on the other hand was heavily influenced by Subterranean Homesick Blues). The lyrics were the thing I think. I remember the boss at the Community Programme Environmental Improvements Division being very unimpressed when I got excited because Janice Long had played this on the radio - a brief blip of government sponsored work creation in a sea of unemployment. We all felt very much under attack by the Thatcher government at the time but there were still anti-government views around then so we always got reviewed in Leeds Other Paper. They might as well have invented the phrase 'right on' but they generally did OK by us.
Most of the lyrics, if not all, can be traced to specific incidents in the news or in Leeds 6.
Andrew - We could've just been a band who played Crazies songs. This line up always produced exciting, live songs and John's lyrics to the Crazies songs were very descriptive of the mood in student-ville in the mid-80s. Now, if we'd had sets full of this Crazies stuff we'd have had a 'product'. We could've been well and truely pidgeon-holed and we could've had a good time in the process. There you go.
CRIMPELENE JEAN MAMA
Andrew - Forgetting the stuff we did at our first gig, this was the first song I sang for the Sinister Cleaners. I wrote it on a National Express coach between Northampton and Leeds. There was nothing that particularly inspired me on that journey other than the boredom of a trip that I was making regularly at the time. Who knows where it came from? There is an image of some tenemant flats that was stuck in my head and it was written during the Miners' Strike. The 'take it all' line came from that - a woman at the end of her whits with nothing left saying 'take it all.'
John - A good example of the Cleaner’s ‘spiky trebly speed period’ which happened when Simon joined. Maybe to some extent we influenced the Wedding Present’s guitar approach, though there was also some the other way I’d have to admit. We had an HH transistor amp which was partly the reason. I played the bass and can hear that it’s not really being played by a ‘proper’ bass player. It wasn’t that hard though. I found out later that this was partly because Simon was a really tight drummer (he also kept good time - Ed) which means the bass player can just play along without having to try to hard to keep everything in time.
1941
John - I think this was probably the last song that we recorded before Len put his guitar away to be taken out nearly 20 years later – with the same strings on! The lyrics betray the fact (to me at least) that Len was a bit older than the rest of us but I’m sure that view wouldn’t survive argument. We had to explain the title in Germany a couple of times.
Andrew - Lemon Meringue Bedsit era Sinister Cleaners epitomised for me. I think we knew Crazy-ness was central to a lot of what we were about. There was what was happening politically at the time that certainly ostracised us. But I think we knew then that we didn't really fit with too much else either. We were quite into conjuring up, brewing up, this self-image of us as people who didn't fit with the times. And that was honest and still is. I think we always thought more than most. Endless discussions.
ATLANTIC SATELLITE
Andrew - The main chord sequence, based around my favourite D chord, is something I'd had since I first picked up a guitar at the age of about 14. Though Reagan's history was recently rewritten ( as usually happens when dreadful people die) this song reminds me of the 'special relationship' as portrayed by him and Thatcher during the '80s. Some of us won't have history rewritten!
John - I think the key change at the end happened by accident and I take the credit for us keeping it. We all fell about laughing when we first heard it, sounds fine to me now though.
CRAZIES #1
John - It was clearly about this time that I bought ‘Bringin’ it all Back Home’ one of the best albums ever made. I think we even did (or started) a video of some kind based on the Dylan Subterranean Homesick Blues alley thing. Maybe that was the one we did in the drizzle on Betamax? Len said even he couldn’t eat three Betamax. This was because there was an advert around at the time…..for Shredded Wheat!
Andrew - John had just written this when the band first got together I think. I had a bottle-kneck guitar solo in it. I couldn't play the rest of the song with the bottle-kneck on my finger so at every gig we ever played I was always in danger of blinding someone as the bottle-kneck flew off my finger before I was due to play the next line of the song. Never lost it either.
WHEN I FEEL STRANGE
Andrew - This used to make us laugh when we first came up with it. And this was one of those that was really collaboratively written. It started out as a ZZ-Top piss take jam in John's cellar and was highly influenzed by the pink soup we conjured up daily at that time. I recently found out/remembered that it was released in the U.S. as a 7" single (with a dreadful cover that I had drawn/doodled) with Goodbye Ms Jones on the B-side. Did you know that John/Simon? Anyway, I loved playing this. It was very natural. It just fitted together. I don't remember any earnest debate about whether things fitted or not.
John - Bizarrely the ‘American Single’. Recorded very live I seem to remember – certainly three of us – playing along together – at the same time! Might not be allowed these days.