So where were we in this story? The band had done a demo and our first gig. I'd had a chat with Lemmy about how to run a rock and roll band. It was January 1981. With the departure of Pete Conway, I realised that if the False Dots were ever going to do anything it was down to me. I'd taken on board what Lemmy had said "You know Rock and Roll isn't the captain of the football team and the best looking girl in the school, it's all the deadbeats, weirdos and misfits, who feel like outsiders, the hookers, the dealers and the drunks. If you give them a place to go, you'll get by in rock and roll"
But where did this leave the band? I was still at Orange Hill School with Craig. We'd be doing A Levels in May, to set us on the path to a proper career. If I had any sense at all, I'd have 'parked the band' for six months and knuckled down. But Lemmy had said "You know, if you wanna be a rock and roll band, you've got to live rock and roll. You can't work in an estate agent and wear a suit in the day, then dress up in a t shirt and jeans and become a band" I had pretty much taken this to heart. I decided that what we needed to do was ramp up the band, do more gigs and do better gigs. To do this, we needed a post Pete Conway demo.
So on the 20th January, we went back into Alan Warner's studio and recorded our second demo. For this Craig sang two songs and Paul Hircombe sang two. After we'd done the backing tracks, I replaced all of Craigs guitar on one track, Fog, with a synthesiser track. I'd borrowed Joe Malone's Korg monophonic synth and spent a week playing with it. Craig was not happy until he properly listened to the track - Fog. He then agreed that it was a masterstroke, although he wanted his guitar, not mine left on. The version of Not All She Seems was a masterpiece, to this day, Craig's solo is one of the best I've heard on anything anywhere. Both were songs I'd written with Pete Conway. To keep Craig happy, we recorded one of his songs called "I'm shy". It was great live, but when we heard the lyrics, we were horrified. It was the most un-rock and roll song ever. The chorus went "I mix up all my words, whenever I talk to birds, now I know just why, because I'm shy". I thought it was a total embarrassment and still find it hard to listen to. In truth, Craig was probably being brutally honest, something perhaps we should have used in our favour, but that really wasn't the ethos of The False Dots in 1981.
Craig then suggested we get his mate Mark Barnett on drums. Mark was nowhere near as good as Dav, but he was at Orange Hill School and was very keen to play. After long discussions with Craig, we decided that he'd improve if we did a lot of practice. Mark had been the drummer in Craig's previous band, The Heretics. He was OK, better than Paul Marvin by a mile and he had his own kit.
We finished the demo in February. We got some interest, specifically from Chiswick Records. They loved Fog and said if we recorded a few more synth songs in that vein, they'd consider giving us a deal. Foolishly (in hindsight), I ignored the advice. Not least because I didn't have a synth, and also because recording was expensive. My view, which was rather stupid, was that we needed to do more gigs and get Mark up to speed before we did any more demos. If you are in a young band, reading this, and such a thing happens, buy the synth, spend days and nights writing new songs and get back to them ASAP. If you hit upon something by accident, that works, then that really is the way you need to go.
I started to write with Paul more seriously. We started our first experiments with Reggae and Ska, writing a song called Falsedub. It had another title, until one of our Rasta mates sneeringly said, "Hey you've invented a new type of music called False Dub". Much to his irritation, we changed the songs title and always mentioned his influence.
The band did a gig at The School (the contact strip in the above picture was taken around the school), a gig at Hendon Rugby club, a gig at The Midland Arms (now the Claddagh Ring) supporting a signed band called Way of The West - They had a Radio 1 single of the week at the time, but never did anything else. They all went quite well, we got a decent reception.
At that time, I felt that the band was really on the road to success, getting a gig with a "name band" was a coup for us. Then Craig announced he was leaving the band to concentrate on his A levels. It was a real kick in the teeth. Mark Barnett, stayed and we recruited a local madman, called Pete T on guitar and vocals (He has an * on him in the pic below). Pete was the consummate bedroom guitarist. He also assured us he was a great singer. Boz Boorer, of the Polecats introduced us to Pete, as he was dealing high quality grass, via a Rasta who was going out with his sister. We had been drinking with Boz in the Railway and decided we wanted a smoke. Boz suggested going to see his mate Pete. We opened the door and this skinhead opened the door, to a cloud of smoke. We adjourned to my shed and spent several hours getting rather mashed. It was one of those classic, hilarious nights, that can only be had in a shed with drunken idiots smoking strong grass. It can never be repeated. Boz still recalls asking me why I had a poster of a US Saturn V rocket blasting off, hanging upside down. I replied "It's an Australian rocket". It seemed hilarious at the time.
Pete had a bedroom full of guitars, reel to reel recording devices etc. He played us his recordings which were absolutely amazing. He played us his own version of Hotel California and explained that the solo was the hardest solo in the world, with seven modal changes. We assumed he was a genius and the messiah for the band. Unlike Craig, who was a sober, sensible sort of chap, who's mum would bring him sandwiches to gigs, Pete was, to my mind, the sort of person Lemmy was referring to when I asked him how you get the right people "it just happens, you do the right things and it happens". It seemed to myself and Paul that Pete was just right.
At rehearsals, he just did his own thing, not even playing in the same key as the rest of us on occasion and they saying we were playing our own songs wrong. I booked us a gig The Harwood Hall, to get him up to speed. It was a disaster. I had arranged to borrow a PA system of the local hippy, a chap called Yogi, who dealt LSD and hashish to locals in Edgware. Who could possibly have thought he'd be a bit unreliable. So we had no PA system. Pete hadn't learned the songs and it was a shambolic mess.
At the end of the gig, Paul Hircombe asked me if he'd imagined the incident, as it happened in the blink of an eye and I just carried on playing. I said no, it happened. .I had a Peavey T60 guitar, which is perhaps the heaviest guitar ever made, which is ideal for bashing such people. The skinheads smashed up the toilet and let off a fire extinguisher as revenge before running away. We got banned from the venue. That was a blow, because we'd always made a tidy profit on the gigs.
After the gig, we piled all of the gear outside. My Dad had a Ford Cortina and was going to collect it at 11pm. He'd been boozing at The Mill Hill Services Club. In those days people routinely drank and drove. I was waiting on the pavement, outside the Harwood Hall, drinking a bottle of beer, when the skinheads reappeared, bent on revenge. I was on my own and there were five of them. All my gear was there. At that moment, the future of the band seemed in the balance. If our gear was nicked or smashed, it would round off a disastrous night. I considered my options. Stay and fight and get beaten up and my gear nicked/smashed or run away and see my gear nicked/smashed. I decided to stay and fight. I broke the beer bottle on the side of an amp and stood, bottle in hand screaming "Come on then" at them. Their confident demeanour looked a tad less confident. I decided I would take down as many as I could. I hadn't realised, but my Dad, a 6'1 Australian ex Army/RAF veteran, who was a fearsome man, had observed what was going on. He'd retrieved a crowbar from his car and snuck up behind the gang. He then bellowed "Who's first" at them.
They had been hesitating and with this, their bottle completely went. They ran off in all directions. We loaded the gear in the car and went home and drank Guinness and Whisky. Dad told me that he was impressed. He confessed that he'd always thought I lacked backbone and gumption and was delighted to be proven wrong. He then told me that I should keep a crowbar in the back of my amp, as bottles are a poor weapon for a whole number of reasons.
It was clear to the band that Pete had been a disaster. We approached Craig, who had done his A levels and he rejoined. I was cooking up a plan and told him that 1982 was going to be a very big year for The False Dots, but you'll have to wait for the next instalment in this sorry tale to find out what that was.
Just to round off the disaster, we'd done the gig as a benefit for CND. We'd got another local hippy to do the door. He'd buggered off with all the profits and went to Greece on holiday.
One interesting memento from the night was the support band made a video of their performance (wrongly titled 1979). The Vektors had done the previous gig and brought a huge crowd. I was savvy enough to ask them again, sadly all their efforts did was pay for a hippy to go to Greece! The video is quite entertaining though. I real slice of 1980's suburban London.
The debacle of Harwood Hall was actually one of the best things that happened to the False Dots. There were some harsh, but very important lessons to learn, one all Rock and Rollers should heed. The biggest was that it is a big mistake to get mates who are useless into the band. It is probably ruins more bands when they are getting off the ground than anything else. We thought that because Pete was a laugh, he'd add a lot, but he never learned the songs, never tried to contribute. All he really wanted to do was get stoned and enjoy himself. He thought the gig was great, and real punk rock.
The second big lesson is that you need to get your logistics sorted with people you trust. Borrowing a PA off the local acid casualty was always a stupid plan. From that day forward, I only dealt with people I could rely on and trust.
For Paul and myself though, the biggest lesson of all was that we needed to ensure that whoever was involved in future, at any level, they had to contribute and share the vision we were developing. You need a vision of what you want the band to be. As he was a great musician, we knew that Craig was a big part of this, but he didn't share our vision, which was a problem. His redeeming feature was that he bought into our ideas and made us realise them. Whatever he did or didn't do, he contributed.
Amazingly, The False Dots are still going. We celebrate our 45th Birthday on February 3rd at The Dublin Castle (tickets from here), please come down.
Sadly, I'm the only one left from back then. Mark left the band in 1982, Craig departed in 1983 and Paul Hircombe passed away from the big C in 2012. In our current line up, our drummer Gray Ramsey has been in the band since 1985 (on and off) and bass player Fil Ross joined in 2000. Our newest member Tom Hammond joined on trumpet in 2023.
You can see what we look like now here!
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