Back home we still were looking for a drummer. Actually we were looking for two drummers. I’d always wanted two drummers like the Pink Fairies or The Glitter Band and remembered that brilliant beat back with Chimes and Cook. It was all in the notebook. Two drummers, the big beat. I had loved, revered even, the Fairies and Hawkwind so much when I was at school and everything that their underground counter culture scene represented.
Ray Mayhew was the first. He just walked past YaYa one Saturday afternoon looking like a drummer, looking like a star. Martin went out and grabbed him saying would you like to be in our band? He hadn’t played before and - of course - didn’t have a drum kit, but we could teach him. Topper Headon of the Clash lent us a drum kit and the kid got practicing. So Ray became the prime example of my oft quoted mantra - "Easy to teach someone to play drums... you can't teach someone charisma”. You know, Ray turned into a really solid drummer too, so you see it does work - sometimes...
Looking back I wonder what he thought when he got home that day. We changed the course of his life. What made him just say yes, instantly, to this bunch of freaks standing in a clothes shop in the basement of Kensington Market that Saturday afternoon?
Meanwhile back at the Mews we were extending the recordings. We came up with a track called "Hag in a black leather jacket". Even Degville thought it was tacky. We recorded a version of In the Ghetto one night, sort of PIL in dub and then an original track called Sicky Sarah. We were getting closer to the sound we were searching for but it didn’t have that driving energy yet.
