The definitive history of Passion Spent – by Patrick (the parrot)
PART 6: ‘Pride or ego?’
Go to part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
With the solid, newly-forged, rhythmic foundation of the Lourie/Carey partnership, every member of Passion Spent could sense a marked change in mood and confidence.
This was also apparent in the responses of both venue owners and the audiences who frequented those venues. It was clear that Passion Spent were building a new and genuine, grass-roots following, and that music lovers were choosing to go out and spend their hard-earned legal tender (in the form of cash — notes and coins) on the nights that the band were playing at their local pub or club.
Picking off individual venues one at a time, gradually the band managed to increase their fees, with the intention of saving enough money to enable them to record their own material in a professional studio. The first Passion Spent recording session was an all-nighter, on (I believe) Thursday 1st November 1984, at Steve Larkman’s studio in Hedon, where ‘Paper Moon’ and ‘Someone To Talk To’ were recorded. ‘Living in a Picture’ and ‘The Human Factor’ were recorded the following night. The band considered the ‘Larkman sessions’ recordings as studio rehearsal demos, in preparation for making more professional recordings at Ken Giles’ studio in Bridlington. It was the beginning of an amazingly eventful and exciting period for Passion Spent.
The period of creativity that began with Gav joining the line-up in May 1984 and resulted – before the end of that year – in the writing of the four songs that appeared on the Pride or Ego? cassette, showed no sign of abating: in the first six weeks of 1985, the band wrote (and had given the first performance of three of) the four songs that would appear on their second four-track cassette, Selected Essays.
In the same sequential order that they appear on the cassette: ‘True Love’s Prize’, with music by Ian and words and melody by Jim, was first performed on 2 February, at the Tower nightclub, ‘The Key’, with lyrics by Dave, chords by Jim, and the melody by both Dave and Jim, was first performed on 26 January, at the Ferryboat Inn; ‘Lost in Love’, with Dave and Jim once again sharing the songwriting credits, was completed on 5 January (I’ve been unable to find any record of ‘Lost in Love’ ever being performed live); and ‘Drifting Apart’, with the chord progression by Ian, lyrics by Dave and Jim, and the melody by Jim, was completed on 11 February and first performed on 20 February, at The Barham.
The Barham was one of two venues in which Passion Spent considered themselves to be ‘at home’, the other being the Royal, on Newbridge Road. Both venues seemed perfectly suited to the sound the band produced, even though this was based on individual back-line amplifiers for guitar, keyboards, and bass, no amplification for drums, and just a vocal PA (which obviously picked up the ambient sound of the drums and the amps of the other instruments). The audiences at these two East Hull venues, though I’m sure there must have been some overlap, were the best, most receptive, the city had to offer; and the band always enjoyed mixing with them and catching up on previous conversations.
In February 1987, when Passion Spent released ‘Someone To Talk To’, it was a ‘toss of a coin’ decision as to which venue they would choose to have the launch night. But that was still some way off.
It’s a commonly promulgated maxim that ‘history is written by the victors’, though no-one seems to be able to pin down exactly where the phrase originated. But it might equally be argued. at least to some extent, that history is written by those interested enough to want to tell their own stories. Plainly, though their button-badge merchandise referred to the band as ‘The very famous Passion Spent‘, the band never fulfilled their ambitions of national, even global success; so they cannot be included among history’s ‘victors’.
The songsommelier.com website has a page called The City and the Scene, which includes a playlist upon which ‘Someone To Talk To’ features (at No. 24, between Sade’s ‘The Sweetest Taboo’ and Cosey Fanni Tutti’s ‘Tutti’). The author of the piece, who confesses to having been at school with, and was ‘mates with Mark Johnson, the drummer of Duran Duran wannabes Passion Spent‘, expresses his amazement that the band’s Tales From The Slaughterhouse album ‘was uploaded onto Spotify in 2015 by Paragon Records’. As Paragon was the name of the label the band created in order to release ‘Someone To Talk To’, it should come as no surprise that the band’s own label uploaded that album of songs to Spotify. In uploading that album, as with the creation of this website, we were telling our own story—writing our own history, if you like.
Passion Spent were (are) aware that there were other fine bands performing around the Hull pub and club circuit (and more widely) during the period they themselves were active. But, from my own recollection of names and extensive research, I’ve been unable to find all but the most basic information on bands whose names stand out in my memory. Very few seem to have been interested (or fortunate) enough to want to tell their own stories. One such band, China Garden were a contributing factor to the next part of the tale that I (being fortunate and interested enough) will relate.
In Part 7, I will try to explain how the musicians in the contemporaneous Hull band, China Garden, played a significant part in the history of Passion Spent.