I was in the Old Bull Inn one night with Graham standing at the bar when a friend came in and said there had been an announcement on Ann Nightingale’s BBC Radio 1 show that Fiction records wanted to urgently get in touch with a band called ‘And also the trees’.
This is what had happened:
Without giving it too much thought we had responded to an announcement by The Cure in one of the music papers for ‘local bands’ to send demo tapes if they were interested in opening for them at the relevant venues on their ‘Primary tour’ of the UK. And, it so happened that they liked the demo we sent them and wanted us to support them at Loughborough University.
We weren’t the types for exaggerated outbursts of enthusiasm but it’s fair to say we were excited about this news. We had both their albums, all their singles and had seen them twice live. Collectively as a band I’d say our favourite contemporary groups at that time were ‘The Banshees’, ‘The Bunnymen’, ‘Joy Division’ and The Cure.
So on November 12th we drove up to Loughborough University in Leicestershire. What I remember most about our performance was the crowd, which was around a thousand people, clapping and then cheering after the songs. We got a great reception after the last song which was called ‘War paint 11’ and I remember Nick throwing his drum sticks into the audience which was uncharacteristically rock n’ roll of him and I’m pretty sure he never did it again. As we walked off we saw The Cure sitting on the floor side stage clapping.
I remember feeling euphoric and being in the dressing room which was very bright. There was a mirror with lightbulbs around it and we were standing amongst the old colonial style chests we’d found to pack the drum kit in congratulating each other when a young guy in a leather biker jacket (who we later realised was Simon Gallup) came in and said “That was great!”…. not knowing how to react to praise we just looked at him in stunned silence.
After their show Robert Smith came and asked us if we wanted to go and find something to eat with them, so we went with him and Simon and Lol and their tour manger and ended up in a Chinese restaurant somewhere. For us, it was the first time we’d been in a restaurant without our parents.
We were fans of course, but they treated us as fellow musicians so we didn’t feel overawed. We talked about our music and their music and got along very easily and well together and had a good laugh. We were all very young, it was exciting and good fun.
By the time we got home it was 4 a.m., time for a couple of hours sleep before Graham and I had to get up for work and Nick and Justin had to get the bus to school.