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. 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 (CDGs), which comprised Chris, Dave, and (I believe) Graham Stamp—and later, for about a year, Paul Rogers (keyboards). China Garden and Passion Spent knew each other from their regular appearances at the Ferryboat 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.
Anyway, enough of this 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 new drummer – shortly after the gig they asked Gav if he would be interested in joining them, and he said yes.
Now, I can understand why China Garden’s offer was tempting to Gav. Joining a full-time, working band earning their living from playing music at 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’, still is) 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 4-track cassette (produced by Colin Richardson at The Slaughterhouse studios in Driffield), 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 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 the body that’s not located in the human skull. The pitting of personal recreational ‘wants’ against well established group principles, I’m sure, also warrants further examination in a future episode of the Passion Spent history.
But in Part 8, we examine how the rest of the band—at least in the short term—managed to remain focussed on the music, and continued trying to develop the original material that would be essential, if they were to carve the name Passion Spent in the annals of musical success stories .