Pete and The Rosehips

1985-86 time music, for me, was starting to get interesting again after the horrors of goth and the post punk come down. 1984 was particularly vile….Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones – need I say more? Unlike the other Rosehips I wasn’t going to see the Membranes, Girls At Our Best, Five Go Down To The Sea or Bogshed, but  I was thrashing away on guitar, playing along to my punk records. The Clash, the Pistols, the Buzzcocks, the Jam and the Ramones taught me everything I wanted to know. Then the Mary Chain came along and I got fired up again. Never Understand cleared the Maxims dancefloor one night apart from one spazz dancing lunatic and Psychocandy was the new bible. At the tail end of 85 I heard and saw the Shop Assistants and that was it. Music was suddenly vital again. Seeing them was a revelation – the songs, the sound, the simplicity, the look, the attitude, everything.

Around this time Hutch and Ade started putting on "indie/alternative" nights at Parkers No7 in Stone. I went with Petra and it was there that I met Ant, Glenn and Yo. We danced to the same non-goth records and struck up a friendship. I had no idea there were other people in Stoke who were into the Shoppies and the wave of bands who straddled the scene between Membranes type rock and what became known as the c86 bands. When they said they were in a group who were a bit like the Shop Assistants I said I’d go and see them. The gig was in Barlaston Village Hall and they were right! Too often you’d go to local gigs and it’d be stuff you weren’t into but their music and songs were right up my street.

Not long after, they got a gig with the Flatmates and I drove Glenn down to Bristol. The others had travelled earlier in the day but Glenn had been to work and couldn’t get away till later. It was an horrendous rainy night and Glenn was already soaked when I picked him up near his house. The rain didn’t let up all the way to Bristol and the car engine started producing funny smells, steam kept escaping and clouding the screen as we travelled down the motorway. We thought we mightn’t make it but we did and the way The Rosehips played and sounded was a world away from the village hall gig. Afterwards, milling around, Yo and Ant came up to me excited and beaming saying that as they’d come off stage Martin Whitehead had asked them if they wanted to do a record for Subway! We were all a bit shocked. That sort of thing just didn’t happen!

I went to as many Rosehips gigs as were within striking distance – sometimes driving them sometimes just turning up to watch, usually with Petra. The Lichfield one with the Flatmates was memorable because there seemed the feel of something happening and the trip to Norwich Arts Centre was a long jaunt but another good gig supporting the Flatmates. Back nearer home, when The Rosehips played Parkers No 7 in Stone, Spider blagged the Seers onto the bill as support. We saw the soundcheck and the Rosehips decided no way could they follow the Seers so the running order was changed. The band seemed to speed up over the course of 6 months or so – every song seemed to blur past and the gigs were over in record time.

A couple of records got released in pretty quick succession it seemed – Subway didn’t hang about. The Rosehips did lots of gigs. Out of the blue, I got a call one night from Ant saying Mark 1 was leaving, they were getting another drummer and would I be interested in joining as a second guitarist. I could hardly believe it. It was perfect for me - I loved the music, got on with them all and we shared the same sort of attitude to and taste in music. All I had to do was bash out the chords and add to the general racket. Punk rock and indie-pop -  like I say – perfect! The Flatmates loss was our gain when Rocker joined on drums. We were all staggered that he’d been booted out. The first gig I did as a Rosehip – the second gig I’d ever done - was at Birmingham with We've Got A Fuzzbox...., whose set consisted of a nativity play. I was shaking like crazy and just wanted to get it over with. I played twice in one night at Hudson’s in Newcastle – first with the support band Speedpuppies then did a Rosehips set. The Nottingham crowd came to that one and decorated our set with newspaper confetti! We rehearsed most weeks and it was obvious the band was changing from the kind of songs that Glenn was writing, the difference in sound that came from Rocker moving from drums to organ and Sainsburys drummer Mark 2 joining. Essentially though we were still a noisy punk rock indie-pop band – at least in my mind! I suppose the expanded band played three or four times a month for a year and a half or so. I did the driving of us from Stoke – Rocker lived in Bristol - missing out on all the beer but at least doing the obligatory curries! 

Moments that spring to mind? The Manchester Boardwalk mental gig after which we were banned; playing on the Thekla boat in Bristol; hearing Designer Greed on the John Peel show; the Wedding Present gig in Plymouth; some great gigs with the Groove Farm and with Mega City Four; playing a gig in York without Glenn who was ill - that felt very odd; the final gig when we all knew that was going to be the last time we’d play as the Rosehips. We finished the set in a torrent of noise, and as I turned to walk off I saw Glenn going smashing apeshit with his guitar. I was a few yards away from him when he gave it a smash on its base into the stage and the thing just split right in two, scattering strings and wood everywhere. He just went beserk. I walked past the debris thinking "that’s definitely it then." Beautifully symbolic.

Pete

       Home Page

 The Rosehips   I Was A Teenage Rosehip   Posters, Tickets, Flyers

Discography  Spider and the Rosehips  Final Gig Review

Secret Records Compilation review

Davy Chesterfield Obituary

Gigography

 Links