Thursday, 15 May 2025

Rock and Roll Stories #33 - Making the perfect band.....

Have you ever wondered what the perfect band would be? The answer is easy Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and Tommy. If you ever saw the Ramones in their first inception, you'd just know why. If I had to put together a band of people who were in different bands and set ups, I think I'd have Otis Redding on vocals, John McGeouch (Magazine, Souixsie) on Guitar, Gerald Johnson (Steve Miller Band) on bass, Ian MacLagan (Small Faces) on keyboards and Charlie Watts on drums. I'd also get the horn section from The Commitments for the numbers that needed it and I'd write the songs, a mash up of soul, Ska and Reggae vibes with a rythme and blues overtone. I may even play a bit of tambourine if I could pluck up the courage to embarrass myself with the musicians who's work I like most. 

Hang on a second though? I have a band. I've spent the last forty six years trying to put the perfect band together, here in Mill Hill. Last night we had a rehearsal. It was brilliant, well the second half of it was. We've had a bit of a break from rehearsing as we've been doing recordings, which is a very different thing. We were dead rusty at first. But by the time we finished, we were on fire. But how if I could have my pick of the best musicians on the planet in the band, ever? A difficult question.

I'd love to write songs for Otis Redding to sing (sadly as he passed away in 1968, that was always an impossibility), but apart from our forthcoming single Groovetown, it would be hard to know how he'd get on with our very North London sound. Having said that, when we had Soul singer Venessa Sagoe in the band, she absolutely blasted Action Shock! Genius will conquer all eventually, os I'd put my faith in Otis. I love John McGeouch's guitar style and I think he'd make the Dots songs sound amazing, I think his work with PIL bears this out. He may well have had enough of moody North Londoners with an Irish heritage though. As for bass, in many ways, Gerald Johnson comes as close to Fil Ross's styleand crazy performances as any bassplayer I know. I'd never get rid of Fil, but Gerald would be the most suitable dep I can think of. I would bite your arm off to get Ian MacLagan in the band. I love his Hammond organ sound. It would sound amazing. Charlie Watts, I love his style, I'd pay big bucks to see the band above, but actually I think Rambo is better suited to our style. And we have our secret weapon, Mr Tom Hammond on Trumpet and Vocals. I think he has elevated us to be one of the best bands on the London Grassroots circuit. With the brass section from The Commitments would be cracking!

But in reality, how would all of the personalities gel. That is where it all goes wrong. At the moment, we have a great and very positive vibe in rehearsals. A great band is always much more than the sum of its parts. Any band is only as good or as bad as it's material. 

For me what was for a long time the best ever False Dots line up was back in the early part of the 1980's.  It all went well, until we decided we needed a keyboard player and I made the mistake of recruiting not only a "musical officionado" but one who was a troubled genius! Once he joined, nothing was ever right again. He didn't want to perform live until every single note would be delivered in exactly the right order on every occasion. It became a pain in the bum being in a band. Whereas we'd put a set together in a very short time, that we'd performed live and which people loved, all of the new songs became completely bogged down in arguments about complex arrangements. Also having a keyboard meant there was a lot less space in the songs for everything else. There are certain sounds, chord sequences and tempo's that I like, but I'd be informed that these were wrong. I didn't have the musical knowledge to argue, but our new songs lost the slightly edgy rawness that to my punk inspired ears, made them sound amazing. 

As so often happens, cliques appeared in the band and I was in none of them. I am a spikey person, especially when I want the band to do something and I see people dragging us back. I am not one for cancelling rehearsals for a visit to the pub, I want a band to put the graft in. When people are doing a band for fun, this does not always go down to well. When the keyboard player joined, I was convinced we'd cracked it. The first few rehearsals and gigs with him were amazing. But the real problem is that in a band there are important personal dynamics. There were three things that I was too immature and inexperienced to understand at the time

1. Although the keyboard player was a fantastic musician, they lacked persnal confidence and found playing live to be very stressfull, especially when they were not comfortable with the material and the level of performance we could achieve. As we'd done a stack of gigs before he joined and he was talented, I just assumed he would take to it naturally. For him, a note out of place was a disaster. This wasn't true of the rest of us, until he arrived. He then made us all aware of our own shortcomings and we lost some of our confidence.

2. The band had always worked collaboratively on songs, throwing ideas around and organically finding what we thought sounded great. The new keyboard player had very rigid ideas of how things should work musically. He could fit in to the structure of existing songs, as these were set, but it became impossible to write songs as we had with him, once we started working on new material. He presented ideas and expected them to be delivered as he said, with no argument and his fallback position was that he was better than the rest of us as a musician. It took me a long time to realise that whilst this was true technically, his music was a bit soulless. But it did sound impressive in short doses.

3. Once you lose the dressing room, you are done! There was a moment when I realised that it was no longer 'my band'. What irked me was that as soon as everyone stopped listening to me, they all just downed tools. As band leaders go, I am sure I was impossible but we always got stuff done. Unless a band has someone to kick ass, then all you ever do is rehearse and dream. 

Of course a band with Otis Redding, John McGeoch, Gerald Johnson, Ian MacLagan and Charlie Watts would have proper managers, agents and crew, so it wouldn't rely on Otis dragging everyone out of the pub for rehearsals. In my head, they'd all get on and have a blast, like I did last night and not have stupid arguments as to why you can't play a Dmin after D7 in a reggae song as we did back in the day. 

The truth??? As a musician a perfect band is one you enjoy playing in. That generally means being able to get along with everyone or at least to be open to their ideas. I saw an old band member recenty who said "I never really appreciated the work you did for the band, until I played in other bands and we never did anything except rehearse". For me, that was a means to an end, get out, play your music and enjoy yourself.

In ten days time, on the 25th May, The False Dots perform our new single, Groovetown at The Dublin Castle. Why not come along and see what possibly the most perfect band ever to come out of Mill Hill sound like. We rather think you'll have fun!





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