“Quit while you’re ahead” is the old adage and Edinburgh band TV21 took that to extremes – in 1982, 3 years after they’d formed, they came off the stage at the Edinburgh Playhouse and packed in a career which had seen them release various singles, a well-received album in ‘A Thin Red Line’ and that evening’s show, a support slot with the Rolling Stones.
Just as unexpectedly, they resurfaced, a full 23 years later, and since 2005 have been reworking old songs and writing new material, as well as gigging. Which takes the band to another grand old theatre, this time in Dunfermline.
Original members Norman Roger and Ally Palmer took up the story, starting with the reasons for reforming in the first place.
Norman: “A friend of our who runs the Citrus Club in Edinburgh was asked to arrange a gig to mark the 1st anniversary of John Peel’s death and his idea was to approach all the Edinburgh bands who’d done Peel sessions in the early 1980s. He asked me if we’d be interested in reforming for a one off and when I called both Ally and Neil (Baldwin) they were really for up it. As both Ali Paterson and Dave Hampton from the previous line up no longer lived in Scotland we brought in a new drummer, Simon McGlynn and after a couple of rehearsals we did the gig. It was such a blast we just kept going and I think are now at the point we’ve been around longer in this incarnation than we were first time round.”
It seemed such a strange time to split, on the crest of a wave with the Rolling Stones tour support – where did it all go wrong?
Norman: “Looking back we probably should have had a break, stepped back and taken stock but at the time we didn’t really feel we had much option. The band had fragmented both stylistically and personally and by the time we did those 3 gigs supporting the Rolling Stones we were without a recording deal and had pretty much lost sight of any way forward. We were still hoping for a new contract at that point and had been using those gigs as a carrot for A&R men to come and see us: none did so we just decided to draw a line under it and quit on some sort of high point.”
With a Stones support this time round unlikely, what are the band’s ambitions – just making music for yourselves, or do you feel that there could be more?
Norman: “Well, I guess when we started playing again there was no real plan, we just did the first few gigs for the buzz and the sheer fun of playing, it was just enough to be up there doing it. But as we’ve gone on we have started to think about things more seriously. We know we’ll never be big but I think we all felt that it would be nice to mark this version of the band with some sort of milestone, so we started to think about doing some recording again. We realised quite early on that there was only very limited mileage in playing the old stuff over and over, especially just gigging locally, as it would be case of diminishing returns, both in terms of people coming out to see us and equally for our own enjoyment. So our initial strategy was to try to get decent support gigs so that we would be playing to bigger crowds and hopefully pick up new fans along the way. That strategy didn’t really pay off though, as although we got good reactions whenever we played it wasn’t reflected in bigger crowds coming to our own shows. Also, we began to get a little frustrated at just playing short half hour sets on what was left of already small stages – the lot of the support band.”
Ally: “And of course the business has changed so much. The internet and social networking sites like Myspace means that it’s possible to make contact with people who are interested in your music. And getting your music to people is so different now.
When we formed back in 1979 our ambition then was just to get a single out. We manage to finance two singles on our own label and from that we got enough interest from major labels. These days of course, that’s all changed.”
So it looks like we can expect some new material in any of the gigs, as well as rather different versions of some of the songs from ‘back in the day’?
Norman: “From the outset we knew that trying to play the album material wasn’t really going to work. The current band is probably much closer to original four piece line up that did the original few singles rather than the band that recorded A Thin Red Line, so when we started back we drew on the strengths of that line up – guitar based and back to basics. Also, because Ally and I had been a bit out of the loop in terms of playing live, we weren’t really match fit and those early songs were easier to play! As we began to get more confident and started playing longer sets, we did try to revisit the album material but a lot of it didn’t really work, so the obvious way forward was to write new songs. We also went back to songs that we’d liked first time round but had never made the album, things like ‘It’s Me’ or ‘Swimming’, as these seemed to fit better with how we wanted to sound.”
It probably appeared that he band had gone into hibernation for 20 years, but in fact the various members were pretty busy, at least in the immediate aftermath of the split – Neil working withe Bluebells, Norman playing bass for the Waterboys (and indeed cropping up on their first Old Grey Whistle Test appearance).
Norman: “Ally, Neil and I had been in touch pretty much all the time over the years, both as friends and doing music. Immediately post the original split Ally and I, working as The Collector, recorded the song ‘Swimming’, on which Neil added bass – it was intended to be released as a single on Stiff but they scrapped it at the last minute. We worked under that name for a couple of years then changed it to Shame, as which we released an EP in 1986 in Canada and then began work on an album, eventually released in 1990, also in Canada only. Somewhere in that period, Ally dropped out and by the time I went over there to promote the album – entitled Symi – I needed a band so drafted in Neil on bass and he brought in Simon on drums – they were then working in a band called Big Guitar Yeah. We had a blast touring Canada and even got to play in New York but it all came to nothing and things fizzled out. Over the next few years the three of us worked intermittently to record what became an internet only release, ‘Waiting for Lazaros’, recorded under the name Sugarland – I think it sold 6 copies!”
One familiar name from the Scottish indie genrty is Ali Paterson, of course no longer with the band…
Norman: “As I said earlier, the lineup changes were largely down to logistics to begin with, as Ali Paterson now lives in Germany and what time he has is with The Rezillos, and Dave Hampton’s in Brighton. Once we started playing with Simon we realised that his was the drumming style we’d need all along anyway, so we stuck with it.”
Ally: “Simon and Neil have worked a lot together so they form a great backbone for the band. Also Simon’s natural enthusiasm has been really important for us. Also he brings down the average age a bit as he’s in his early 40s.”
Following Ally’s involvement in The Collector he departed the music industry, pretty much, until getting the ‘call’ in 2005. But he has kept himself busy.
Ally: “The only musical thing I’ve produced in the intervening years is my kids. My son Michael is in We Were Promised Jetpacks so I’m enjoying reliving that excitement as they pass various musical landmarks.”
Which brings us full circle in a sense. The sound of TV21, and the feel of that post-punk era in general is evident in many bands today, as Ally and Norman are well aware.
Norman: “I suppose the most obviously influenced band is Editors, somewhere between Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen – can’t say I’m a fan though. Best CD I’ve heard of late is the new Frightened Rabbit album, though also playing the new Elbow album quite a bit.”
Ally: “I’m really excited by Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad. I saw them both at the Carnegie Hall last month and they were wonderful. Very different bands but somehow coming from a similar place, though it’s hard to hear obvious influences. There’s no doubt a lot of the guitar bands that broke through a few years ago such as The Stokes were influenced by the same period of music that we came from but I’m not sure if today’s crop of bands are actually influenced by late 70s early 80s music. I’ve heard people compare my son’s band to the likes of Joy Division or The Cure but I know they’ve never heard them. But there’s no doubt you can hear bits of Talking Heads, XTC, The Gang of Four and other such guitar based, art school bands in today’s music.”
Putting TV21 into context is tricky as tey come from an era when Scottsh music was in some sort of flux, punk and pos-punk merging, with the arrival of NYC-accented soul-funkers such as Hipsway and Love & Money a couple of years down the line.
Ally: “Our contemporaries then were Another Pretty Face, The Rezillos, Joseph K, and, erm The Exploited.”
And like Fay Fife (ok, maybe not quite as much), the band were distinctly Scots-accented.
Norman: “To be honest, it wasn’t really something we thought about then other than to make sure we weren’t aping London accents as some bands did, although I would say we probably are more aware of it now.”
Sadly, the band’s globetrotting with Jagger & co 20-odd years ago didn’t quite take them to the Carnegie Hall in New York (or its local namesake). Neil Baldwin featured in Paul Haig’s backing band at their Tigerfest show in May, but as the band hit Fife, we have to ask the traditional question: when was your last time in Dunfermline?
Norman: “I had to check back on this – the last time we played Dunfermline was 29th March 1981 at the Bellville Hotel, and if I remember rightly, Stuart Adamson was in the audience that night.”
Ally: “Yes, he stood right in front of me which was a bit disconcerting as was a huge hero of mine. We ended up supporting the Skids in Ayr near our home town of Prestwick a few months later and that was a real highlight.”
TV21 play Dunfemline’s Carnegie Hall on Thurs May 26, with guests Swimmer One and Starwalkers.