The definitive history of Passion Spent – by Patrick (the parrot)
PART 5: ‘A rose by any other name’
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Rio became Passion Spent on Monday 6th February 1984. While the enthusiasm of new drummer Rick was evident for all to see, the arrival of the fastidious Ben Lourie on bass revealed deeper structural problems concerning the rhythmic timings and pacing of the most recent material included in the band’s set lists, and the band remained unsettled. Having played his first gig as drummer for Rio in July 1983, Rick Wilkinson played his final gig (as the drummer for Passion Spent) on 5 May 1984, and the band will always be grateful for his gregarious, good-humoured, and high-spirited contribution to Passion Spent folklore.
As it happened, the band’s new young bass player, Ben (18), knew a very young, extremely talented and tight drummer, Gavin Carey (17), who Ben had frequently jammed with to tighten up his own playing. Now, I’m not one to gossip (honestly!), but over the months and years following Ben and Gav joining the band, I witnessed enough, shall we say, ‘tomfoolery’, to at least form a ‘suspicion’ that they might – possibly – maybe – could have – engineered the pair of them becoming the best (by far) rhythm section in any band in the city at that time; and that Ben joining Passion Spent was—quite by chance—the first step in that ‘alleged’ aspiration. But who really knows? Certainly not me.
It’s a little gratuitously superfluous to dwell on the appearance of this brilliant new Passion Spent rhythm section, but neither Ben nor Gav would have looked out of place on a Duran Duran photo shoot. Despite still being a young teenager, Gav was the son of a much respected local drummer and had been playing at an advanced level for years; and because of his already remarkable familiarity with (and love of) the material Passion Spent were covering, he auditioned for the band on Monday 7th May and played his first gig as the official Passion Spent drummer just four days later, on Friday 11 May 1984 (at the Hull Supporters Club).
At that gig, for the first time, everything seemed to fall into place, with all colours aligning, just like Ernő Rubik’s not-exactly contemporaneous Magic Cube; and from that day forward, everyone started working towards the future by starting to write and perform their own original material. The songs that appeared on the band’s first four-track cassette, Pride or Ego?, were all written (and performed for the first time) before the end of that year. And the band regularly included two of their own songs in each 30-minute set they played at pubs and clubs across the city.
In the same sequential order that they appear on the cassette: ‘Someone To Talk To’, with words and music by Jim, was completed on 16th October and first performed at The Barham pub the following night, 17th October; ‘The Human Factor’, which started as Dave’s idea but had writing contributions from Ben and Jim, was completed on 17th September and first performed on 21st September, at the Ferryboat Inn; ‘Living in a Picture’, with words and music by Jim, was completed on 26 August and first performed at The Barham, on 13th September; and ‘Paper Moon’, which began as a lyric that Dave passed on to Ian to develop, which he did in collaboration with Jim, was completed on 3rd August and first performed on 13th September, again at The Barham. In all the above songs, each member of the band developed their own instrumental part.
Anyone who knows anything about the music industry, or the power dynamics within ‘pop’ groups or ‘rock’ bands, will know that – at least up to the advent of the Internet – a band would earn more money from songwriting royalties (performance and mechanical rights) than from actually playing the songs live (gig revenues). Consequently, a band’s songwriters, whether they were part of the band or professional songwriters who offered their songs to established bands or artists, would ultimately end up wealthier than those band members who chose not to involve themselves in writing their own original material. So it’s not surprising that, having initially agreed to split songwriting credits equally between all five members of the band, when it became clear that some members were not prepared to put in the work regarding writing new material, the inevitable tensions began to materialise.
Obviously, as a band of (mostly) young musicians – by this time, Jim (the oldest by seven years) was 27 – everyone would have loved to earn a living from their music. This was perhaps more keenly felt by Ben and Gav (with their indubitable musical proficiencies) who were still too young to have embarked on any kind of career outside the music industry; while Jim tells me that he would have been content to earn a living simply from songwriting, leaving it to others to record and perform the material!
It would be difficult to argue against the proposition that some members of Passion Spent were inclining more to preserving and projecting their own personal image as musicians in an upcoming modern pop band than to putting the work in to establish a sustainable career in the music industry.
Would there be individual casualties or would the band suffer irreconcilable fractures? Would the band’s young, ‘beautiful’, talented, and ambitious rhythm section become restless for wider recognition and greater earning capacity and consistency?
To discover how the desire for fame and fortune in individual members of a band is not always a positive imperative for the band as a whole; and how the Japanese knotweed seeds of insidious disintegration and destruction were sown in the Passion Spent garden, go to Part 6.!