The whole band take to paint brushes. Everyone in the band lived there at one stage, living in Sputnik World. We put my grandfathers old billiard table in the center of the room where the clothes were now being designed and stitched together and I set to work with X to convert one room into a rehearsal room, complete with small P.A on the first floor and soundproofed with pink plastic walls. The soundproofing was made from dozens of old car tyre’s we found in a skip outside. It was a fire deathtrap and the best feature once we’d finished is the word ELVIS painted on the carpet in 6 foot letters so that when we rehearse we will walk in his name and He will bless us.
Attention to details like this were starting to possess me. It felt like I was creating some huge obsessive movie script for my perfect group. In my mind everything was important, everything had to be just so. I could not control the actual players, the musicians, nor did it occur to me to try, and that was a big mistake. They were all growing spontaneously into the roles I’d placed them in and developing strong individual “characters” and images by themselves, but I was so caught up in my own fanatical attention to detail that I neglected to keep an eye on them and nip in the bud any signs of those monster egos, the bad attitude and the bad habits that would almost inevitably form once a band has any success.
Was I Steve Jobs or Doctor Frankenstein?
Rehearsals started in ernest in the pink padded room (or the loony bin as we now fondly calling it) and we were certainly walking in Elvis’s name. By now the band were playing brilliantly, sounding great and we had developed a way of improvising, drums dropping out of the mix whenever they felt like it, echos flying everywhere.
There was a collective sense of excited anticipation in the air knowing that we sounded like nobody else. Or looked like anybody else.
The night before our first proper gig at a small club in Leatherhead (a fitting first town title I thought, very David Lynch!!) I made the band stay up until 3 a.m to paint all the flightcases red with the SSS logo in Japanese along the side.
All the equipment had to look just so before we even left the building, I wanted us to look like this invincible futuristic army arriving, to create a stir before we’d played a note.
The scene would already be set. We finally went to sleep that night in an intoxicating fug of cigarettes and spray can fumes, full of excitement at the thought of finally playing the first show.
