The definitive history of Passion Spent – by Patrick (the parrot)
PART 7: ‘‘used to be’s don’t count anymore’
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Sometime in early 1985, Passion Spent were invited to take part in an outdoor gig at the Drum & Cymbals pub, off Anlaby Park Road in West Hull. I’ve been unable to identify the precise date of the gig, but the invitation was extended to the band by professional Hull outfit, China Garden, who had organised this outdoor event. As the tale was told to me, the members of China Garden included Chris Norfolk (vocals), Dave Wilkinson (guitars), Ralph Clucas (bass), and Paul Milner (keyboards). Their band had risen from the embers of a group called the Seedy Gees, which comprised Chris, Dave, and, I believe, Graham Stamp [hence the CDGs]—and later, for about a year, Paul Rogers (keyboards).
China Garden and Passion Spent knew each other from their regular appearances at the Ferry Boat Inn in Hessle, where they would often go to see each other’s gigs and catch up on each other’s news. China Garden were a fantastic vocal showband who covered much the same kind of music as Passion Spent. They had a full band PA, played all over the country, and (I believe) were full-time musicians. Indeed the notes I have from Jim, tell me that Mick Douthwaite (founder of RIO) took him to see China Garden at the Ferry Boat Inn on Tuesday 15 February 1983, just over a month after he had joined RIO. Anyway, enough of this selective, potted-history lesson.
I’ve never been party to the complete story—neither Gav (nor Ben, if he knew)—divulged the precise circumstances; but for some reason China Garden must have been looking for a drummer – shortly after the gig the China Garden boys asked Gav if he would be interested in joining them, and he said yes, he would. His final gig for Passion Spent must have been on 4 April 1985, at the Barham.
Gav must have given the band sufficient notice about his departure, because the advert for a new Passion Spent drummer to replace him appeared in the Entertainments section of the Hull Daily Mail of 1 April 1985 (yes, that’s correct, April Fools’ Day). If this registered with Mark, he never said, and the rest of the band never mentioned it, either. But I just thought I’d record that fact here, purely for entertainment purposes.
My favourite Passion Spent archivist pointed out to me that there was a possibility that Gav’s final gig could have been at Cottingham’s renowned Westfield Club on 7 April 1985—if it hadn’t been for a disagreement between Jim and the club’s owner, Frank Brown. The gig was arranged by Hull’s legendary radio presenter and promoter, Tim Jibson. Upon arrival at the club, the band began setting up their equipment on the tiny stage, but it was a tight squeeze. Jim stationed his PA monitors on chairs taken from the perimeter tables, which he placed on the small dancefloor in front of (and facing) the stage. Mr Brown was insistent that they couldn’t remain where Jim had put them, but Jim was adamant that the band wouldn’t play if the monitors had to be moved from where he’d placed them. The disagreement intensified, so Jim told the band to pack up. They were leaving.
By that time in the band’s evolution, there was an understanding among Passion Spent members that if any disputes arose, everyone would follow Jim’s lead, and if anyone disagreed with Jim’s decision, the matter would be addressed when they’d left the venue—in private. So the scheduled gig at the Westfield Club didn’t take place, and Gav’s final gig was in fact the prior gig at the Barham, on 4 April 1985. Tim Jibson arranged for the band to return to the venue just over a month later, on 26 May, after he’d persuaded Mr Brown to keep out of their way, but by that time Mark Johnson had replaced Gav as Passion Spent‘s drummer.
Now, I can understand why China Garden’s offer was tempting to Gav. Joining a full-time, working band that earned a living from playing gigs throughout the UK (and possibly, Europe) would be tempting to any ambitious young musician. And it’s obvious why China Garden wanted to poach Gav from Passion Spent: he was (and no doubt, ‘Down Under’, remains) one of the finest drummers anyone in Passion Spent ever came across.
In my admittedly foggy recollections of the band’s recording sessions for the Selected Essays four-track cassette (produced by Colin Richardson at Ken Giles’ studios in Bridlington), Gav knew the songs so well, he was able to lay down the drum tracks for every single song, essentially unaccompanied. Even at just 18 years old (when he left the band) he had a remarkable, Swiss-watch precision—with a finely-lubricated delicacy of touch in his hi-hat work—that was the envy of every band or bass player that saw him play. But, in his less-than-a-year stay as the drummer of Passion Spent (‘surely’, I hear you exclaim, ‘it was longer than that!’), due primarily to his partnership with Ben, the band had made dramatic improvements and progress. So it came as a surprise—not to say a ‘shock’—to the rest of the band, that Gav would abandon the real potential of his newly-forged and unique musical relationship with Ben (and Passion Spent), when even at that time, discussions were taking place within the band about setting up their own label to release ‘Someone To Talk To’.
I have no knowledge of how Gav looks back on his decision: neither China Garden nor Passion Spent (or any of the musicians in those two bands) ‘made it’; there’s no point in thinking (at least, not too much) about ‘might have beens’; and, as Neil Diamond once sang to Barbara Streisand: ‘used to be’s don’t count anymore/They just lay on the floor/Till we sweep them away’. So you may justifiably ask: ‘Why, then, are you telling us about all this?’
Perhaps the ambition to be a successful, even famous, musician is far more nuanced than I (as a mere parrot) had recognised. Perhaps there’s a large part of that ambition that has absolutely nothing to do with the music or the career; and has more to do with the aspiration to achieve a particular lifestyle. Perhaps, as we will no doubt explore in a later episode, commitment to the responsibilities involved in being a member of a band of friends with a particular goal in its sights, blinds an individual to the necessary incremental nature of making a success of working together to make a mark on the world; and compels some individuals to think with a part of their anatomy that’s not located in the human skull. The pitting of personal recreational ‘wants’ against well established group principles, also warrants (I can’t help feeling) further examination in a future episode of the Passion Spent history.
But in Part 8, we move towards examining how the rest of the band—at least in the short term—managed to remain focussed on the music and their continued development into the kind of band they would need to be, if they were to carve the name ‘Passion Spent‘ in the annals of musical success stories. Eight days after Gav left, the band had a new young drummer: Mark Johnson made his Passion Spent debut at the Barham on 12 April, 1984.
…and there’s more…Go to Part 8