1982 – 1985
The Early Years 1982-85
Once Steve had joined, he quickly took over for a couple of gigs we had already booked, Jokers wine bar and the University Coffee Bar Club (where Steve did a Dave Lee Roth splits and ripped the arse out of his jeans – you guessed it – no pants – awesome laugh) and we quickly added more at the Prohibition Club and of course the Princess Charlotte.
We were writing loads of songs and rehearsing quite a bit but we were desperate to get rid of the ‘local band’ tag.
To this end Steve, Greeny and I headed down Oxford to see a band called Terraplane play (they later became Thunder) and badgered the shit out of them to get a support.
They did better than that and got us a headline at Oxford Pennyfarthing and we were on our way. Our first gig outside Leicester became legendary for being the night that Steve’s ex band turned up and decided to pick a fight with us resulting in a Western movie style brawl and a good friend of ours, Tony Shelley, ending up at the hospital with what can only be described as an egg sized bump on his head.
Unbelievably, we got a re booking at the ‘Pen’ and Tony, a budding journalist, got a review of us at the gig published in Kerrang – we were starting to get noticed.
More demos also followed, and we began to record with a chap called Ricky Wilson, who was Diesel Park West’s guitarist and a friend of John’s. Ricky had been in a Leicester AoR band called Brooklyn and schooled us in the art of the backing vocal – tracks recorded with Ricky included You Said which was a step forward in us forging our own sound.
We were staring to get more gigs out of town at rock clubs but it was clear that we needed a record out to get further. We also felt that we needed a manager and so we went to see a band called Wikked Vicar (can’t remember spelling – think glam) and they had a young female manager called Claire Bradely – she seemed really good and she agreed to manage us. (I believe that Claire won an Oscar a couple of years ago while working with Aardman, the Wallace and Gromit producers)
Claire set about managing us with much enthusiasm and we began to get more gigs in places as far apart as Stoke, Bradford (The Wheatsheaf, a Molly favourite) and back to Oxford. She then pulled off the chance to record a single for Bullet Records who were based in Stoke. This was the real deal for us as they had proper distribution and we could design a cover and everything.
We decided on You Said as the A side and When The Lights Go Down and One At A Time on the B side. We recorded the tracks in a proper studio (Q in Leicester) with a nice chap called Graham Bradshaw, who was doing some live sound for us, producing.
The single got released in 1983 and the results were astounding. We opened Kerrang to see a review from Mark Putterford giving us single of the week – talk about Cloud 9.
Even better, over the next couple of weeks, the single rose up the Heavy Metal chart, peaking at No 6 and nestling between tracks from all our heroes.
We also got a feature in Kerrang where Putterford got us drunk and we slagged of the whole industry – always a good move.
It was during this period that we became good friends with another local Leicester band called Alien – they were ahead of us on songwriting and musicianship and we aspired to play like them. So we nicked their lead guitarist, Chris O Shaughnessy (Chris went on to be a successful radio producer) and he added a flash new dimension to our sound.
We were into pulling stunts to get noticed, and I remember us rushing from an Ozzy gig at the De Montfort Hall back to the Holiday Inn in time to greet a bemused Ozzy at the door and thrust a tape into his hand – later when we supported him, his assistant Tony told us they used to listen to the tape on the tour bus (he didn’t say whether they liked it or not though!!)
There were more and more gigs including a support to Samson (Paul Samson was a true gent) and a recording session in London’s Easy Studios with an aggressive fellow called Dave King. He managed a splinter group from Samson called FM who were being touted as the next big thing and in true Molly style we stuck to them like glue – if they were going places we wanted to make sure we got noticed too.
Our next casualties were not far away though. First to go was Chris Green. It is difficult to know why bands fall out with each other – I think Chris liked to be different from us all and this eventually became more of an aggravation than merely adding a bit of light and shade.
It was decided after a gig at the Royal Standard in Walthamstow that Chris had to go (incidentally this was the same night that John’s daughter Robyn was born) and he was duly fired. This is July 1984.
We had our first gig at the Marquee, opening for Tredegar (two thirds of Budgie) four days later and so we rehearsed like crazy with Chris’ replacement, Mark Godfrey, until we were ready to open for them.
Mark had been in a band with both myself and a good friend of the Mollies, Charlie Best (he did the photos for Slaphead and the video for Gimme That Line Again) called Rough Justice and had latterly been in a Leicester glam band called China Rogue (hilarious pictures if you can find them).
Mark played about 1000 times louder that Chris and another dimension was added to our sound.
We did a few gigs in this 5 piece line up (there is a pic on the site) and then all hell broke loose. Golden rule in the world of bands – no one shags the manager (not a problem once Paul Loaseby joined us) and Chris O S broke the rule.
It was all a bit ‘Tap’ and so on the way to pick Claire and Chris up for a gig at Cardiff Bogeys (nice name) we sacked them both and then spent the entire journey down there trying to work out if we could survive as a four piece again.
John played out of his skin and the ‘classic’ line up of the band was born. We actually toured up to Christmas and it was after a gig supporting Phil Lynotts ill advised Grand Slam at the Royal Standard (this place was pivotal) that I got home to find that Tony Wilson from Radio One’s rock show had called and offered us a session. OH MY GOD
We went down to Maida Vale in January 85 and played four tracks (at the speed of light – excited) including Too Far Gone and Lose Again and they were broadcast in February. Steve had blagged us some good supports at the Marquee (Rogue Male and Tygers Of Pan Tang) and at one of these we were offered a deal by Powerstation Records – interesting footnote – it was after the TOPT gig that Lemmy, one of the greatest men in rock, tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘great gig man’ – I’m not sure it ever got much better.
