Red Guitars in Record Collector Magazine

Thanks to Tim Naylor for his excellent Red Guitars feature in June 2016 Record Collector Magazine,  including interviews with Red Guitars’ vocalist, Jeremy Kidd and bassist Lou Duffy-Howard. We were delighted with Tim’s interesting questions and intelligent commentary. You can read the full unedited article below…

Putting Africa into Indie

They had a string of alternative hits, toured with the Smiths and brought a taste of African music to the masses a good two years before Paul Simon released Graceland.  Their label nearly signed the Housemartins and their debut album owes a lot to Nellie the Elephant.  So why did Red Guitars disappear just as they seemed set to join the indie big hitters who were ripping up the Top 30 in the mid-1980s? Tim Naylor looks back at the legacy left by the band, whose intelligent left-field rock and political commentary should have guaranteed their place in the hearts and minds of the post-punk generation.

Mention Hull to any 80s indie music fan and those loveable cheeky chirpy Housemartins will be the first name on most people’s lips.  The older 70s generation will probably choose the Spiders from Mars – Mick Ronson went from Hull’s Beverley Road to being glam rock’s most venerated guitarist and sidekick to David Bowie, while drummer Woody Woodmansey and bassist Trevor Bolder both plied their trade in Hull.  Roland Gift meanwhile was a proper 80s pop star with real hits under his belt with the Fine Young Cannibals and also hailed from Hull.  But who remembers the Red Guitars?

The Red Guitars could have been massive.  At a time when indie was in the ascendance, surely an act like the Red Guitars was perfectly placed to go on to greater things? Formed in 1982, they delivered great tunes, had the right (as in left) political credentials to become NME-darlings and were defiantly independent, releasing material through their own Self Drive label.

While the band was guitar driven, there was an underlying swagger and groove to their sound that lifted them from the morass of wannabes.  Their collision of rock and dance was a broad musical template that later in the decade would serve the sound of Madchester so well, although the Red Guitars didn’t borrow from James Brown and Northern Soul – their compass was set for warmer climes. It was the sound of African Highlife that filtered into the Red Guitar sound, as typified by acts like King Sunny Ade (who had gained some exposure in the early 80s thanks to championing by various areas of the music press).  Incessant ear-worm riffs and swooshing bass lines, chanted lyric lines and scattering drums that make the feet want to move and the ass to follow as Talking Heads once said. And there’s more than a little of the ‘Heads groove in some of the Red Guitar’s tunes, particularly in the bass lines delivered by Lou Duffy-Howard.  Added into the mix was good old fashioned rock, blues, and even a hint of prog – as well as some speedy riffing to keep the post-punk crowd happy.  And now is a great time to collect their back catalogue.  Cheap as chips really doesn’t do it justice as their entire vinyl back catalogue on 7”, 12” and LP can be acquired for a few quid each. CD versions are significantly more expensive and even the Cherry Red reissue from 2002 is appreciating in value.

Founded by Jeremy Kidd (vocals) and Hallam Lewis (guitar) in the late 70s after they had met on a Community Arts project in Hull, the band dabbled with reggae as the ‘Czechs’ (for all your Eastern European reggae needs) before changing their name and focus.  The band built a solid following playing north-west venues and a number of benefit shows for left-wing causes.  A demo tape got a good review in Melody Maker, encouraging the band to make the leap to vinyl. Underlining their anti-corporate stance, founding their own record label was the next obvious step and Self Drive was duly formed in 1982 under the care and control of Jeremy Kidd.  The first single ‘Good Technology/Heartbeat Go! Love Dub’ was released the following year and, following some great reviews and Peel airplay, reached No.8 in the indie charts.

In many ways the band hit the mother lode with their first single.  Good Technology is a fantastic slice of indie pop, with great lyrics, screaming guitars and a ferocious bass rumble underpinning everything, borrowing elements from big hitters like the Bunnymen, U2 and Simple Minds without sounding derivative in the slightest.  The video from the single was played on Channel 4’s The Tube as part of a feature on Hull’s music scene, reaching a new fanbase (including this writer).  Johnny Marr invited the band to tour with the Smiths.  The single was re-released in both 7” and 12” formats in the first half of 1984, with a new flipside (Paris, France) and went on to shift an impressive 60,000 copies.

Having left a substantial calling card with the first single, follow-up ‘Fact/Dive’ (Self Drive SD002) really needed to cut the mustard and it didn’t disappoint.  Another mid-paced burner, the ‘A’ side carried a strong anti-war message that was perfectly timed in the immediate wake of the Falkland’s conflict (“take the profit out of doom…”) with the straight ahead rocker ‘Dive (Live)’ on the flip side.   Another indie hit, this reached No.7 in the charts.

However it was with hit ‘Steeltown/Within 4 Walls’ that Red Guitars arguably made their most significant musical statement.  Available in 7” and extended 12” formats, Steeltown nailed the band’s socialist colours very firmly to the mast and shot to number two in the indie charts. Over an edgy, shifting backdrop of drums, bass and guitars, singer Jeremy delivers bitter lyrics about entire generations of workers being sacrificed on the bonfire of vanities that represented the Conservative Party’s mid-80s trade and industry policy.  Sympathetically produced by the band and Hull-based engineer Roy Neave at Fairview Studio (check those explosive drum beats in the closing bars), Steeltown stands shoulder to shoulder with Robert Wyatt’s Ship Building or The Specials’ Ghost Town in its depiction of the quiet desperation within communities facing economic hardship.

“I hear the steeltown is closing down,
All the mills are rusting.
Everybody’s got a new car,
With the redundancy money they pay.”
© Red Guitars

After the searing social commentary of Steeltown, follow-up release ‘Marimba Jive/Heartbeat Go’ may have seemed lightweight, but musically it carried a significant punch.  The band finally and fully embraced the African high-life style that had coloured their earlier material for a riotous, pumped up dancehall tune that got the feet moving even as the lyrics denounced British imperialism and Apartheid.  Another indie chart buster, it rose to give the band their first indie number one (usurping Depeche Mode’s Master & Servant) and it’s worth noting its release pre-dated Paul Simon’s similarly influenced Graceland by a good two years.

Capping a busy year, the band released their debut album Slow to Fade in November 1984. The album was recorded at Fairview Studios in Willerby, the same studio used for the singles. The band had demoed a couple of tracks at Matrix in London with John Porter who produced the first Smiths album, but the recordings didn’t cut it so it was back to Hull and co-producer Roy Neave. Recorded between July and September 1984, with a welcome interruption for the recording of a second Peel session at Maida Vale, the band clocked up nearly 500 hours studio time at a cost of just over £6,000, which was paid for by distributor Red Rhino in York as an advance against sales.  The album was mixed at Music Works Studios in London, with Neave and in-house engineer Neil Drake, and mastered at Virgin’s Townhouse Studios. It was released at the beginning of November 1984 with the catalogue number SCAR LP1. Housed in a discrete grey gatefold sleeve with an image showing the British withdrawal from Heraclion, Crete, in July 1909, Slow to Fade reached number 3 in the indie album chart in November 1984 and stayed among the numbers for six months.

Featuring previous released tracks Dive and Marimba Jive, the album was accomplished and diverse, ranging from the shuffling beats of Remote Control to the bubbling rock of Astronomy and the downbeat, reflective title track.  In retrospect Slow to Fade almost feels like a concept album, charting the decline of ‘Great’ Britain and the working class in the Thatcher years. Good reviews followed in the music press, but the album marked an end of an era for the band as Jeremy Kidd left (taking his Self Drive label with him) a mere two months after it was released. Kidd released a statement saying “Technically we improved a lot during the last year but musically, from my point of view, we were standing still. New ideas and songs I had for the group no longer seemed to fit in. I still favour independence within the record industry and shall continue to look for success, both artistic and commercial, with releases on my own Self Drive Record label.’  Kidd went on to record a 12” single, Petals + Ashes (A Song For Emma Goldman) released on Self Drive in 1985, backed with a version of Crocodile Tears, a track previously appearing on Slow to Fade.

Meanwhile, Red Guitars quickly replaced Kidd with Robert Holmes, who played his first gig with the band at the University of London Union on 24 May 1985. Now bereft of a label, the band inked a deal with One Way Records, through Virgin Records.  Only one single appeared as a One Way release however, Be With Me/Things I Want on 7” and 12”, with subsequent releases appearing on Virgin. Produced by Ian Broudie and engineered by Gil Norton, Be With Me was a pretty and yearning love song, yet lacked the bite of earlier material.  Without the safety net of the indie chart to aim for, the single stiffed and passed into the wider world largely unnoticed.  The magic had gone. On their first major-label album, Tales of the Expected, the band seem hesitant, borrowing from a grab bag of influences such as Bowie, Lloyd Cole, Cockney Rebel and Aztec Camera, but the songs were simply not a patch on their earlier work.   The final shakes of the lamb’s tail saw a run of single releases (Blue Caravan, America and Me, and National Avenue) and a couple of promos before the band split. Robert Holmes went solo, releasing a pop album ‘Ages of Swing’ while bassist Lou Duffy-Howard and guitarist/vocalist Hallam formed the highly rated Planet Wilson releasing a brace of albums, ‘In the Best of All Possible Worlds’ (Virgin) , and ‘Not Drowning But Waving’ on indie label Records of Achievement.

In 2002, Cherry Red re-released Slow to Fade on CD with a good selection of single A and B sides, although the latter were mastered from the original vinyl, meaning a well-curated compilation is somewhat overdue.   There is also a harder-to-find CD compilation ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity’ (RPM Records, 1993) that covers off the band’s various BBC sessions for John Peel, Kid Jensen, Janice Long and Simon Mayo. Both of these CDs sell for around £20 each, while the original Self Drive version of Slow to Fade on CD (from 1986) will be nearer £30.

Record Collector caught up with bassist Lou Duffy Howard and singer Jeremy Kidd to reflect on the Red Guitars’ legacy.

RC: Let’s start with your record collections. Who brought the prog (an anathema in 1982 surely) to the party?  Who brought the African themes? Who brought the rock?Jeremy: Prog certainly was anathema in ’82 and none of us would have admitted to prog tendencies on pain of death, but the shocking truth is that I saw King Crimson twice in a week in 1971 at Guildford Civic Hall and the Weeley festival, I owned “Pictures at an Exhibition” by ELP and, to be honest, I reckon that at least a majority of the Red Guitars were fairly keen on Pink Floyd.

Lou:  Hallam was brought up in South Africa and was hugely inspired by the Township music there. He had a good collection of South African albums including a brilliant compilation album “Soweto” which we all loved and listened to over and over. The bass lines were incredible and it was the first time I had heard anything like it. It had a huge influence on our music.  The thing about Hal though is that he is also a Led Zeppelin fan and an amazing blues guitarist with an African lilt. A wicked combination!

What were you listening to at the time for such a cocktail of influences?

Jeremy: At gigs we often played the Only Ones “Another Girl Another Planet” over the P.A. before we went on to get us in the mood, that was one we all liked, and John and I were very taken with the first Cure album “Three Imaginary Boys”. Hal and I were both keen on the Beatles, he played the “White Album” all the time, and I just thought they were the bees knees. In 1963 aged nine I was so desperate get my hands on “Please Please Me” that, when I found a pound note in a jacket pocket at the back of my brother’s wardrobe, I persuaded myself it was treasure trove and went straight into Chertsey and bought the record for 19s 11d. It was wrong and I was banned from watching telly for a week, but that didn’t matter too much because I could listen to the fab four instead!

Lou: I was a Velvet Underground fan and bass-wise I loved Andy Fraser – but in the early days David Bowie was my hero.   The first gig I ever went to was to see him play at Leeds Rolarena on June 29th 1973. It turned out to be the last gig he did before the end of Ziggy and the Spiders at Hammersmith Odeon. Mick Ronson blew me away. He played the solo in “Moonage Daydream” and that was the moment I wanted to be in a band. After the gig my friend Julie and I decided to get a band together. We were called The Weirdies in the Wardrobe. Someone told us David Bowie’s address so we wrote to him, and couldn’t believe it when Angie Bowie wrote a hand written letter back and said “Good luck with the Weirdies in the Wardrobe, lovely name for a band”. The seal of approval from the Bowie family! It was the most exciting day of my life.

Red Guitars played a number of political benefits early on…How important was the political message at the time? Were you allied to Red Wedge for example…do pop and politics mix? 

Lou: Music and politics? Yes of course. We were all big fans of the protest song. Our first single, “Good Technology” had a great message, just as appropriate today. You can hear a doff of the hat to Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” in the run out at the end of the song. I have great memories of the unity behind Coal not Dole and Rock Against Racism gigs back then. Music can transcend language, class and culture and can empower people to feel stronger so that they can unite to express themselves and make a difference.

Jeremy: After the débâcle of Britpop meets New Labour I’m not at all sure that pop and politics do mix, but then the Red Guitars were never a pop group. We were an indie band and politics was one of the cornerstones of the independent music scene.  We weren’t involved with Red Wedge although we’d heard of Billy Bragg because, coincidentally, our demo tapes were both reviewed in the same issue of the Melody Maker and we seemed to share a political outlook but, as Lou said, we mostly did Rock Against Racism and CND benefits.

“Steeltown” came out of a visit I made to Consett in County Durham not long after Thatcher closed the steel works in 1980, and “Fact” takes its chorus from the anti-war journalism of the East Riding writer and feminist Winifred Holtby. Driving back to Hull from gigs in the early hours during the miners strike we saw dozens of police vans lining the hard shoulder of the M1 waiting to be despatched to wherever the flying pickets went that day. We sided with the miners and did a number of benefits for them. I remember one at the Hull Trades and Labour Club supported by the Three Johns and Swift Nick when they had to turn away four hundred people because it was sold out.

Were you surprised by the relatively swift success once you set up Self Drive?

Jeremy: Our ambition was to release a single and get it played on the John Peel show. We’d built up a bit of a following in Hull and we figured that people in other places might like us too if they could get to hear us. When “Good Technology” came out we’d only played a couple of out-of-town gigs. We were thrilled to bits when the single did well, but not exactly surprised. We knew it was a memorable song and we’d taken the trouble to record it properly and put a lot of effort into promoting it. We sent copies to everybody we could think of in the music biz and in the end it paid off. I was keen to set up our own label because I’d been interested in alternative, do-it-yourself culture for a long time. In the late Seventies, our former drummer Sean O’Brien and I self-published a poetry magazine called Stoneferry Review. It ran to three issues and included new work by Andrew Motion, a future poet laureate, and Seamus Heaney, a future Nobel prize winner to name but two!

What really got the ball rolling was going to see Echo and the Bunnymen in Nottingham in 1979. This was early on, before they had a drummer. I thought they were great so I bought “The Pictures on my Wall” when it came out, which was on Bill Drummond and Dave Balfe’s Zoo label. There was an address on the sleeve, so I jumped on a train to Liverpool to get the low down on starting an indie label straight from the horse’s mouth. I remember walking nervously around the block a couple of times before going up the stairs to Zoo’s first floor office. Les Pattinson, the Bunnymen’s bass player, was the only person there that day and he was very friendly. We had a cup of tea and a natter and I returned to Hull thoroughly inspired.

Touring with The Smiths must have opened some doors for the band?  (James, for example, moved on to greater things following in your footsteps). Any tales to tell from time on the road with Morrissey and co.?

Lou: We had great fun. The tour came about because we’d recorded a John Peel session with John Porter who loved Hallam’s African influenced guitar.  John had just recorded a session with The Smiths which included that almost African sounding intro to “This Charming Man”. He put us in touch with each other. Although we were very different bands we got on well, and both continued to record with John. When The Smiths went on their first major tour they asked us if we wanted to support them.  The great thing was that they didn’t do a buy-on – the usual deal where the support band pays to go on tour. We had some great gigs, and watched them play every night. We got on well and had a great time. I remember them playing a version of “Heartbeat Go!” at their sound check.

Jeremy: The Smiths were fantastic and it was a privilege to play with them, but it was the gigs they didn’t do that boosted our confidence as a live band. We toured Germany in the spring of ’84 and were due to support them at about half the shows.  But Morrissey didn’t fancy flying or something, so we headlined instead and went down really well.

Lou: You mention James – we didn’t play with them as a band, but I was good friends with Saul Davis and his family who lived round the corner. Saul used to babysit for my daughter when I was in the Red Guitars and he was still at school. He used to come round with his friend Adrian (Oxaal) and play my albums. He was cool and a great babysitter to boot. I missed him when he went to Manchester. But it was a good move and both Saul and Adrian joined James and are members of the band to this day.

Were you reluctant pop stars? Did fear of success scupper the band? You got some excellent press and plenty of support from broadcasters (BBC radio/CH4)…

Lou: Yes, I think we may have been. We wanted to be successful, but that means different things to different people. I just loved being in a band especially jamming and playing live – I still do.

Jeremy: We worked hard to get the attention of the media. We sent promos of “Good Technology” to loads of DJ’s and journalists and followed them up when we could. With Peel, for example, we knew an ex-GPO telephone engineer and he somehow – don’t ask me how – worked out the number for the direct line into Peel’s studio and one of us – can’t remember who – rang up when Peel was on air and had a chat and, yes, he’d got the record and he was intending to play it. They changed the number shortly afterwards.

Fiercely independent or major label push? Big fish in the indie pond, or well-funded minnow in major label ocean? And why?

Jeremy:  Fiercely independent! But indie success attracts the majors and that’s when things can start to go wrong.

What’s your favourite Red Guitars song? And why?

Lou: For playing live I really enjoyed playing the rockier tracks, so “Paris France”, and the end of “Cloak and Dagger” – Matt and I used to ham it up. But the songs I remember being most satisfied with are the singles “Steeltown” and “Fact”. Both powerful songs with fantastic lyrics and messages. I remember we played them both live on The Old Grey Whistle Test. A little tale from the album – the band was supposed to pick me up at Woodall services, but something went wrong and I had to hitch a lift. A hippy in a Morris Minor used the sun instead of an A-Z to get me to the BBC. We drove all round London. I got there just in the nick of time.

Jeremy: It has to be “Good Technology” for me because that was the one that kicked it all off.

The recording of “Slow to Fade” marked a watershed for the band. What are your memories of the process? Nearly 500 hours of studio time seems excessive for an indie album… did the magic die?

Lou: We had a fantastic time. We recorded it in Fairview, a brilliant studio, just round the corner from where I live now. It was home from home. We were really comfortable and loved it there. Fairview has a long history and has a great project in the pipeline to celebrate its 50^th birthday next year. Whenever I go back the studio atmosphere and smell still reminds me of recording with the Red Guitars.

Jeremy: We owe it all to “Nellie the Elephant”! We’d been approached by several majors and had almost signed for Arista when Red Rhino’s Tony K offered to put up the money for an album. He said we could have total artistic control and release it on our own label so we bit his hand off. But none of that would have been possible had Tony not just sold half a million copies of the Toy Dolls punk classic. And no, the magic didn’t die, making the album was brilliant. I think we all really enjoyed it. “Fact” had taken five days to record and, per track, the album took about the same. I spent a lot of time on the vocals. I’d record six or seven takes and then our engineer and co-producer Roy Neave and I would painstakingly stitch a composite together using the best bits from each.

How did the song writing process work with so many influences at play in the sound?

Lou: The usual way was that Hal had an idea for the music and Jerry added the lyrics then we jammed it out and shaped it up. John was really good at arranging. Just about the time I first joined the band pretty much the first thing we did was scrap the old set and write a completely new one. I knew all the old songs and really liked them, I remember being disappointed I’d not get to play the old set.

Jeremy: I met Hallam when we were both selected by the DHSS to join an outreach community-arts programme based in an old school on Northumberland Avenue. Myself, Hal and Hugh Whittaker, who went on to be the Housemartins drummer, formed a trio. One Christmas we went round the Old Folks Homes performing standards like “On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine”. Hal played guitar while Hugh and I stood behind a screen with holes in it for our faces. On the front was a painted backdrop and two short, puppet bodies with wooden “feet” that we tapped on a shelf. Hal and I also ran song writing workshops in Youth Clubs, so we just carried on doing that in our spare time.

(Jeremy) Leaving the band you founded must have been a difficult decision? Is it one you have regretted since?

Jeremy: It was a tough decision. I did my last gig with the band in mid-December 1984 and spent that Christmas in hospital with meningitis triggered by the stress. But that was half a lifetime ago and, looking back, I don’t regret anything that happened. I guess it would have been good to make another album with the band but to be honest, and as I said at the time, we weren’t really coming up with a lot of new material. We did one “new” song called “Jamaican Homecoming” on my final BBC session but even that was a re-working of “Almost”, which we’d done in a previous incarnation of the band called the Czechs. I’m proud of what we achieved together, as a band, and the fact that people continue to listen to the music thirty years later is testimony to a great collective effort.

Lou,  what are your memories of the band’s time with Virgin?

Well, we were courted by various record biz characters, and when Richard Branson took us out to dinner he seemed relatively normal. But it was the end of the Red Guitars. We were all unhappy and it was a relief when we split. I think Hallam decided to leave. My memory is that we had a band meeting, agreed that it was the end and then went out for a drink. We went to the – now legendary – New Adelphi Club in Hull. It was the first time I went there, the day the Red Guitars split up. It was just like old times, we had a good night out.

What are your current musical projects?

Lou: I’ve always had lots of music on the go, and still play the same basses, a fantastic fretless Music Man Stingray and fretted Music Man Cutlass. I recently got together a psychedelic electric band – Loudhailer Electric Company with my husband Rich.  Our lead guitarist is the amazing Jeff Parsons who played in seminal post punk band Dead Fingers Talk – their album “Storm the Reality Studios” was produced by my teenage guitar hero Mick Ronson – plus ace drummer and violinist. Our first album, also recorded at Fairview Studio is due for release in 2017.

I also play in east/west fusion band Celtarabia. We’re a great line up of hurdy-gurdy, hammer dulcimer, various percussion and some really heavy dub drum and bass. We play a crazy mix of Arabic, Andalusian, Celtic, Medieval music and contemporary beats and always get everyone dancing. Great festival fun.

Jeremy: I’m thinking of taking up the accordion.

What was the last product you purchased and what format? (January 2016)

Jeremy: Blackstar on CD.

Lou: Mine’s the same – I bought Blackstar on CD, the day before David Bowie died. I brought it home and chatted with two of my sons about him. We watched some videos, Starman on TOTP’s and then Lazarus where he walks back into the wardrobe in his Starman costume. What a brilliant album. Then the next day the news broke that he had died.

Visit Lou’s website https://loudhailer.net/

The Red Guitars back catalogue really represents value for money with only the CD versions requiring a little more of the folding stuff.

Singles

• Good Technology ⁄ Heartbeat Go! Love Dub
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SD006 – 7″ – June 1983         £3.00
• Fact ⁄ Dive (Live)
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SD007 – 7″ – November 1983  £2.00
• Good Technology ⁄ Fact ⁄ Paris France
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SD008 – 12″ – January 1984  £3.00
• Good Technology ⁄ Paris France
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SD009 – 7″ – May 1984  £3.00
• Steeltown ⁄ Within 4 Walls 
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SCAR010 – 7″ – 22^nd June 1984  £2.00
• Steeltown Extended Version ⁄ Within 4 Walls Extended Version 
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SCAR010T – 12″ – 22^nd June 1984  £3.00
• Marimba Jive ⁄ Heartbeat Go!
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SCAR014 – 7″ – September 1984  £2.00
• Marimba Jive Extended Survival Mix ⁄Heartbeat Go! Extended Mix 
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SCAR014T – 12″ – September 1984  £3.00
• Be With Me/Things I Want

One Way/Virgin.  OW1 1985.  7” £2.00  12” £4.00

• National Avenue (Sunday Afternoon)/King & Country/Things I Want

Virgin.  VS 832 1986.  7” £2.00  12” £4.00

• America & Me/Marianne

Virgin.  VS 858 1986.  7” £1.00  12” £3.00

• Blue Caravan/Suspicion and Fear

Virgin.  VS 899 1986.  7” £2.00  12” £4.00

Albums

• Slow To Fade
  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SCAR LP1 – October 1984.  £5.00Side 1: Remote Control ⁄ Dive ⁄ Astronomy ⁄ Cloak and Dagger ⁄ Crocodile Tears.
  Side 2: Shaken Not Stirred ⁄ Sting In The Tale ⁄ Marimba Jive ⁄ Slow To Fade.

• Slow To Fade  SELF DRIVE RECORDS SCAR CD1 1986 £20 – £30
  Remote Control ⁄ Dive ⁄ Astronomy ⁄ Cloak and Dagger ⁄ Crocodile Tears ⁄ Steeltown ⁄
  Shaken Not Stirred ⁄ Heartbeat Go! ⁄ Sting In The Tale ⁄ Marimba Jive ⁄ Within Four Walls ⁄ Slow To Fade.

• Slow To Fade  Cherry Red Re-issue CD 2002 £20 – £30 With extra tracks

• Seven Types of Ambiguity (RPM Records, 1993) 20 track BBC sessions for John Peel, Kid Jensen, Janice Long and Simon Mayo. £15 – £20

• Tales of the Expected  (LP) Virgin V 2373 1986 £5
  Sweetwater Ranch / National Avenue (Sunday Afternoon) /Be With Me/ Suspicion and Fear / Love & Understanding / Storyville/ House of Love /Train’s on Time/Marianne/Baby had a gu

• Tales of the Expected  (CD) Virgin CDV 2373 1986 £20 – £30

And if you’ve got this far down the page, one more thing, here’s a couple of funny stories from Lou reminiscing about Red Guitars recording Slow to Fade at Fairview Studio for the Fairview 50 Anniversary…

Big thanks to music journalist Tim Naylor for this excellent research and feature.

Lou Duffy-Howard – Visit our Home Page