My Life As A Rosehip (Part 1)
By Mark 1
If I remember correctly it was a Saturday night, mid 1985 (I was sixteen at the time), when my Rosehips journey began…
I had known Glenn and Ant for a while, it was very difficult not to know people in our village, just outside Stoke, and with only one pub worth going to it became a regular meeting place for us young ‘uns. I had always been interested in music, I was listening to all sorts of stuff, and still am, but the extent of my playing stretched to the viola at school. However, I knew that I wanted to do something with music, just what though I wasn’t sure.
So there I was listening to my records & tapes at home and visiting the Duke of York most weekends, when I was asked if I wanted to watch Glenn’s band play at Simon’s house (Simon being their drummer at the time). The full line up was Mark Romans on vocals, Glenn and Ant on guitars, Clive on bass and Simon. Simon’s parents had gone away for the night and in true teenage style the lads had turned his living room into a venue, for one night only. There was never a great deal to do in our village so I ventured up with a couple of my mates to check this band out.
It only took half a song for me to realise that this was it, this is what I wanted to be doing, playing songs loud and fast, it was great (well it probably wasn’t but I was easily impressed at the time!). I was blown away, these guys were playing Fall songs, Doors songs, Echo songs and I knew I wanted a piece of it. Trouble was I could only play my viola and I sure as hell couldn’t sing!
Now that I was bitten by the bug I had to do something about it, something constructive. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be a guitar player, I wanted to jump round the stage like a mad axe wielding….well you get the picture. However, those six strings and all those frets looked a bit daunting so I figured that I would start on the bass, after all there were only four strings to negotiate and most players that I watched only used two of them most of the time. I found this pretty easy to learn and started a band at school with Adam, my top mate. We called ourselves Mutually Exclusive and we were shit.
We did play a couple of gigs here and there, I think that I invited Glenn and them to come and watch us one time, they stood and watched and nodded along but I don’t think they were particularly impressed - as I said, we were shit. Anyway I was progressing nicely as a bass player but knew that there wasn’t really a lot of mileage in our band when something else happened that shaped my musical life, I was invited along to watch Glenn’s band practice at his parents house.
They used to practice in Glenn’s parents bedroom at the time, with the instruments set up in a circle around the bed. They seemed to have good quality equipment, and lots of it, I was dead (and easily) impressed. I parked myself on the bed and listened to the latest batch of cover versions that the lads were working on (including Sonic Youth stuff, Three Johns stuff etc). Again I was almost in awe of these guys, I could have stayed there for weeks drinking brews eating biccies and listening to live music - magic!
After the practice had finished the band did the usual instrument swap about and I was invited to jam along on bass. Don’t ask me how it happened but I ended up sitting behind the drum kit, that was it, within minutes I was playing a 4/4 beat along to a jam and I had found my instrument (ooh er missus).
It soon became clear to me that, with a bit (actually make that a LOT) of practice, I could play these things, so I kept turning up to watch the practices with the devious plan of watching the band (which I really did enjoy it has to be said) but more importantly getting myself behind Simon’s kit at every opportunity to hone my drumming skills. This went on for a few weeks and I was pleased with my progression. Unfortunately for Simon, so were Glenn and Ant. The trouble was that they wanted me to drum for them, I wanted to drum for them but a) they already had a drummer who was a friend as well and b) I didn’t have a drum kit. I did have a bass though.
Don’t ask me how I did it but I managed to persuade Simon that being a drummer was really uncool, drummers sat at the back going deaf, they couldn’t be seen from the crowd and they never got the girls (that bit turned out to be true actually, much to my dismay) so I pulled off the coup of a lifetime by swapping my Kay bass, cheap shitty amp and a couple of leads for Simon’s full kit including cases! I couldn’t believe my luck, now we were ready to roll.
Simon then realised he was without a band as Clive was the bass player and a damned good one at that but he didn’t really seem that bothered, in fact it was a complete role-reversal as he became the guy sat on the bed watching us practice. We gave our new look band a name, The Dingbats, and started rehearsing for our debut gig at the prestigious and world-renowned, er, Barlaston Village Hall. It was there that we first came into contact with a young girl called Donna, who was into music big time, mainly the Cure, and had come to check out this local band.
The gig was a success, it has to be said. We ripped our way through our cover versions and went down really well. Simon joined us on stage for an eardrum-shatteringly loud rendition of “Splitting in Two”, in which Mark the singer played Clive’s spare bass to add some extra volume. Donna taped the gig, there is a copy knocking round in my loft somewhere, I must dig it out sometime.
The next few months became a bit of a blur and I can’t remember exactly what happened but basically the band split. Mark R and Clive joined forces with a local rock drummer called Rob who had this massive white double bass drum kit and who hit the drums harder than a mother fucker. They became a punk band called Flame On leaving Glenn, Ant and me (I think it was partly a plot by Glenn and Ant if the truth be known). Ant made the easy transition to bass from guitar rather than getting a new bass player.
It was obvious that we needed a singer (you couldn’t get a decent voice out of us three combined) and it was Glenn’s idea that we get a girl singer. Me and Ant agreed and the obvious choice, if she was up for it, was Donna. It was up to me to track her down and ask her so I did just that and she agreed, after a bit of persuasion and probably a couple of ciders, to give it a go. Glenn had already written a couple of songs so we were off again.
We switched practice rooms at Glenn’s house from the main rehearsal studio (Glenn’s parents bedroom) to rehearsal studio 2 (Glenn’s bedroom) which worked out better for everyone as we could keep our stuff set-up there and not get in anyone's way. We practiced and practiced there for what seemed like every night for months on end, all under the supervision of number 6 (Glenn had a huge poster of Patrick McGoohan hanging on his wall) then we decided we were ready to go and record some of this stuff. There was a recording studio in Stoke which was cheap so we booked in and set off to make our first demo.
Part 2 to follow soon……