SOHO ROSES
Third And Final Insult
1989, Trash Can Records
By Stu Gibson
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'Look So Sweet Cuttin' Up A Beat...'

As soon as the first bout of staggering, reeling drums kick in it jump-jet starts a reeking, creaking pirate ship of sloppy floors, ecstatic Hanoi can-can-kicking high jinks, clambering about cobbled streets in ker-nackered cuban heels (so sue me, Kerrang! c.1989, all you'll get is ma old boots, and boy they fucking stink) and then the guitars slide in more fearsome than a boiler-suited Pete Townshend but 13 lucky times as slippery...strings spleeurged with thousands of splegs of spittle, random slobs of various alcoholic concoctions and assorted specialties from the sewers...and this is just the first 30 seconds! An all hailing wassail of 'Bollllooorrrrcccks' heralds the real start, guitar strings are lubricated with slengs of

'Alone Cryin' In My Gin...'

One thing that sticks out on this record, as mentioned somewhere in the murky mire above, is the slightly idiosyncratic, (Pete) Shelley-esque take on the old girl got, girl lost, girl lusted after scenarios. Almost Jacobites-esque, only with the music not wanting to dwell on the downbeat. Thankfully, none of the ridiculous alpha-male-with-a-lion-mane chest beating super-stud sleaze god's gift to women (what women, yeurrrk) bullshit found in so many bands of this time, (please read Pepsi's rant at Roxx Gang for putting into words exactly what I mean, thanks man!) nor equally thankfully, the typical 80's indie-whinging...more like the eternal 'Dream Lover' of old, just set to some of the most thrilling helter-skelter whirlwind rock'n'roll not yet snapped up and re-issued by the Sanctuary label. Hell, the most Hanoi-like track here, the Nicky Turner possessed drumming of 'Coz Of You' could almost have been crooned by Dion and the Belmonts, or Mink DeVille, for sure.

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'If You Could Only See The Mess I'm In...'

Whilst this record will always remain a roughshod ramrod classic, I get the feeling that given a deal and real production it may have become a bit too glossy and sanitized, but surely that's the old rose tinteds talking, I guess. As it is it's a pristine artifact that I'm privileged to have a muffled cassette copy of...Here's to the CD that's in the pipeline!!

Flash Metalling isn't about some nostalgia trip. I didn't have much to do with whatever 'Glam' scene was going on in the discotheques of the day, tho I occasionally loved some of the music...and shoes. Hemm, heemm, and shirts. This is a record I've played for years and, what, in the last 10 years, precious little has dislodged this as a superb appetizer before you put on your new boots, or old boots, or hell, one of each, and get yourself out on the town. And when you're fucked up, faltering, and things ain't factoring in right, then there's few better.

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'What Happened...?'

Well, Mr. Blittz'll fill you in a little later on but a true tale from GoldBlade's Brother, Johnny Skullknuckles. He and his wife used to go see the Soho Roses when they lived down in London way back when. Johnny was telling me how they used to be pretty awful live, just like the Ray Zell quote, every time you saw them...whether through ineptness, inebriation or i-in-in-indolence, fuck it, that'll do...but you still always went to see them again, thinking 'Next time'. Kinda like in that book 'Route 666 - On The Road To Nirvana' where the author says she always went to see The Replacements thinking that this time they'd be perfect, or somewhere close, while knowing all the while deep down that they'd be crap, tho with them I guess that was sometimes purposeful too. Anyhow, apparently when the Roses played their farewell gig, and took their leave, they were absolutely awesome. I think that's called Sod's Law. (I hope I'm not making this up!) Johnny still says it was one of the best gigs he's ever seen. And he's seen a fair few in his time.

So sit ye back, have a spritzer and just wonder what could have happened to our nightclub jitterbug jivers and japers from this story.

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Here's a few words from Paul Blittz, to enlighten you all somewhat. Thanks to Paul for this tale, the pics and also the patience while my lazy arse put this piece together.

How did the Soho Roses come together....what bands were you (all) in before the 'Roses?

The band was originally called The V2s, and was put together by Pat and a bloke called Andy Riff. Riff had played guitar in The Dark – the band that Razzle was in before Hanoi Rocks. Not that he mentioned it much – just once every five minutes! Andy DeGray joined via an ad in the music press (he’d been in a band called The Gunrunners) and he had quite sharply defined views about the band’s sound and image. When ads were put out for a bassplayer and vocalist to complete the line-up they strongly reflected Andy’s ideals and consequently they ended up with Joolz, who moved all the way down from rural Buxton in Derbyshire to join the band, and me, who didn’t move at all, as I lived just up the road in suburban Stevenage - the first New Town, a brick monstrosity of uniform houses where outsiders can get lost for days; a sort of giant Legoland minus the fun.

Who were your favourite bands from the time...there were a fair few great bands knocking about for a short while back then it seems...

Well, there had been a great scene in London that I suppose Hanoi Rocks were responsible for kicking off. Frankly, they were the dog’s bollocks – one of the greatest bands of all time - and when they disintegrated it left a huge void for many people. Before I joined The Roses I used to go to the old Marquee in Wardour Street to see the likes of the Babysitters, who would play there every few weeks and always pack it. That was during the aftermath of  Hanoi’s split. Quite often I’d go just to check out who was playing, on the off-chance that I might discover something good. The great thing about that venue was that it had a separate bar, where it was possible to have a beer and actually hear yourself speak, but you could still see what was happening on stage through a big beer and sick-spattered perspex screen. If a band looked interesting, you could go in and check them out and, if they didn’t live up to your expectations, you could go back to the bar for another pint. It certainly had a kind of ‘club’ feel that was completely lost when the venue moved. It also had the stickiest floor in the world.

Apart from The Babysitters, for pure entertainment value, it was hard to top Marionette. Trying to describe them just wouldn’t do them justice. Let me just say that I’ve never seen a band like them, and probably never will. With a frontman like Ray Zell, no one gave a toss what they sounded like. It was his little bits between the ‘songs’ that were important.

Then, of course, there was Wrathchild. They were from Evesham but played London regularly. They weren’t allowed to play The Marquee for a while for some reason, so I used to see them doing their best to demolish various London pubs with their pyros. They were fantastic – like having Kiss turn up at your local boozer. To me, the tackiness of their home-made outfits and props held together by gaffa tape only added to their appeal. Rocky would put on a fake American accent and act more as if he was addressing a crowd at Shea Stadium than a run-down London shithole. Occasionally he’d forget where he was and lapse back into broad Brummie, which was hilarious and only added to their appeal as far as I was concerned. On one tour ,they even changed their hair colour for every gig. It would be green hair one night in Bradford, blue the next in Stoke - totally fucking mad! I never thought they were quite the same after they dumped the platform boots though.

The Dogs D’Amour were also banned from The Marquee for a while – Tyla had allegedly done something naughty in the dressing room – so I usually saw them at places like The 100 Club and Dingwalls. The quality of Tyla’s songs at that time was exceptional and I don’t think he ever quite hit those peaks again. ‘The Unauthorised Bootleg’, which features most of that early stuff, is still my favourite Dogs album.

There were loads of other bands around, like The Quireboys, or Queerboys, as they were back then; The Grip, who had some great pop/rock songs; and Torme, with Phil Lewis on vocals. It was quite varied.  By the time The Roses were playing though things were changing. By then the LA thing had exploded with Guns ‘N’ Roses, Poison etc. That started to be reflected not only by the British music press, who really jumped on the bandwagon, kissing the arses of any band who hailed from LA, but by a lot of the British bands too. The very English scene of a year or so before had suddenly been infected with LA fever. People started posing around The Marquee in cowboy boots and bandanas, which possibly looked perfectly okay on sun-drenched  Sunset Strip but, to me, always looked a little bit out of place in Wardour Street in the pissing rain. I personally felt that the scene that Hanoi had started in London a few years before had been nicked and then bastardized in LA by adding metal guitars, humourless sexist lyrics and slightly crapper clothes, and then sold back to us. We weren’t buying it though – but a hell of a lot of people were of course. Besides, we may have been a glam band but our musical roots were very much in British and New York punk - Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, The Damned, New York Dolls and Ramones. We had very little, if anything, in common musically with the majority of bands around at that time. The glam element was the only similarity, but with The Roses it derived mainly from the early seventies: Sweet, Bowie, New York Dolls plus, of course, Hanoi. A lot of people understood where we were coming from and loved us for it, but quite a few hated us with a vengeance. 
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Do you keep up with current glamsleazepunk bands of the moment....what's currently coming out the Blittz machine and upsetting the children?

The answer to that is probably no – as I’m not really aware of that many. I’m certainly not narrow-minded enough to limit my listening to bands of that type. I can’t for the life of me define what it is I like though – I suppose it mainly depends upon whether something is done well, with style and conviction. Let’s face it, throughout history a pretty high proportion so-called glam bands have been shit, but a few are legends of course: Sweet, The Dolls, Hanoi…Girl…In fact, these days I make a concerted effort not to like bands too much, as they invariably end up splitting up, dying, or both. Consequently I listen to a lot of old stuff these days. I’m currently listening to the Sweet remasters, which have finally been given the justice they deserve. I did see Turbonegro last year and they were great - the guitarist is a true star. To tell the truth, there aren’t that many bands I’ll make the effort to see these days. The Wildhearts are an exception and Cheap Trick always make the effort to play in the UK. I’ve always had a very soft spot for the excellent Danish band D-A-D as well.

Any Spinal Tap-esque scurrilous tales/fondly remembered debacles etc?

Enough for a book. One of my most vivid memories though was very early gig we played at the long-defunct Clarendon in Hammersmith. Ray Zell had persuaded the then editor of Kerrang! to let him review it, so it was to be our first shot at getting in the press. On the day of the gig I arrived at the venue to find Andy the worse for wear. He’d got there very early, found that no one else was around and, unfortunately, found the bar open! Joolz and I were always big fans of real ale and I think that Andy had heard us talking about it a lot and thought he’d give it a go. He then proceeded to down a few pints of Fuller’s ESB – a very strong ale. When I got there he was slurring and saying what a great beer it was, which didn’t bode well. When we finally hit the stage it was immediately apparent that he was too pissed to play properly. Then it got worse. On only the third song, the bridge on his guitar broke. I don’t know how it happened but the metal on the saddle of the bottom E string just sheared off and, for the first time ever, he hadn’t brought a spare guitar! He was forced to play the rest of the set with no bottom E. An impossible task – especially if you’re pissed out of your head! Anyway, we soldiered on for a couple of songs and it sounded absolutely awful. It was at about that time I think that Joolz gave up completely, threw down his bass and sat on the drumriser picking his nose. Then he just walked off. I was praying that Ray hadn’t made it to the gig. If he’d witnessed that shambles we’d be crucified. A few minutes later in the bar someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned round and was horrified to see Ray. He’d seen the whole gig - and he loved it! I hadn’t considered the fact that he has absolutely appalling taste! He gave us a rave review and coined the phrase ‘They’re so baaaad they’re good’ which we rather liked and started using on our flyers.

Another memorable night was a gig at The Marquee. It was the ‘St Valentines Day Mascara’ with Last Of The Teenage Idols, us and Brooklyn Dogs. Buttz was already a living legend and a major celebrity on the scene, due to The Babysitters, and this was his first gig with his new band. Our set started in typical Roses style with a fuck up: the bass amp didn’t appear to be working. While roadies were anxiously rushing around trying to fix it we started to get a fair amount of abuse thrown at us, which was probably partially fuelled by the fact that Joolz had decided to wear his girlfriend’s dress for the occasion. After about ten minutes of increasing tension, Joolz discovered that there wasn’t actually a problem at all – the radio pack he was using for the first time just hadn’t been switched on! So we commenced in an already hostile atmosphere, which then got worse when someone started throwing fireworks onto the stage. At one point Andy screamed at me to move just as one I was standing on went off. Then I turned to see smoke billowing from the back of the stage. Dave Who Can’t Behave from the Idols had a brand new drumkit – a huge twin-bass drum heavy metal affair that was his pride and joy, and one of the fireworks had landed inside one of the bass drums. Through the smoke I could see that the material that had been stuffed inside the drum for dampening had caught fire. My initial instinct was to extinguish it, but then I considered the expensive drum mic that was inside it and tried to signal to someone to sort it out. Joolz, however, wasn’t prepared to wait and threw his pint into the drum, totally fucking The Marquee’s mic, but unfortunately failing to put out the fire. With that, he pulled the whole thing out of the drum and threw it into the crowd. It was strange and quite unnerving to see this ball of fire being thrown around over people’s heads – especially with the huge quantity of hairspray on display! 
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What happened at the end of The 'Roses? - You were only around I think for maybe 2 years max I think. What did you all end up doing?

I’ve asked myself that question many times. To tell the truth though, there were the inevitable differences of opinion appearing within the band. Andy was moving more and more towards the indie scene and wanted us to be part of that. He’d always refused to be interviewed by what he regarded as the ‘heavy metal’ press, such as Kerrang! and Metal Hammer. I, on the other hand, took the view that any publicity was good and would’ve done interviews for Woman’s Own, Gay Times and Practical Fishkeeping if asked. A big problem though was that Andy had always been the main songwriter in the band and he’d started writing stuff that we didn’t think suited us. It all came to a head when he played some new songs to us at Joolz’s place one night and there was a fifty-fifty split on whether we should us them, with me and Joolz  on one side and Pat and Andy on the other. I went home early, as I was suffering from the after-effects of a dodgy curry. The next day I got a call from Andy to say that Joolz had left the band. Apparently after I’d gone home it had been two against one, so he’d just said ‘Fuck it’ and quit. I immediately phoned Joolz to persuade him to change his decision but it was immediately obvious that his mind was made up. I’ve only recently learnt that Joolz had already been approached by Ginger, who was poaching various musicians for what would become The Wildhearts. That explained all these years later why he was so sure about his decision at the time – he already had another job lined up.

Unfortunately we still owed the bank manager a lot of money, as we never had a deal and had done the records off our own backs. Our initial idea was to recoup some money by recording our final gig at The Marquee for a live album and releasing it with the cheapest packaging available. It wasn’t possible to use a mobile at The Marquee’s new venue in Charing Cross Road though, so we were forced to record a studio album instead. The whole thing was done in just two days. It’s virtually live, except for a few guitar and vocal overdubs. Even most of the lead vocals are first takes. Looking back though I think wed done pretty well for ourselves but didn’t realize how lucky we’d been. We were naïve enough to think that we could all do it again in our respective ventures. We’d been in all the major music press and had done it all off our own backs, without ever having a manager or record deal. I don’t know if it’s possible for a band to do that now. 

Immediately after The Roses, I joined up with Steve Cook, who I actually met on the night of the last Roses gig, and did Scarlet Tears. We gigged for a couple of years and, just as I felt things were taking off, I got the boot – but that’s another story. At the time I’d just got married and was moving home, and the hard slog of putting together another band had lost its appeal; so I decided to put the music on hold for a while. It’s been on hold most of the time ever since!

Joolz obviously went on to do The Wildhearts, then The Brotherland, Guns ‘N’ Wankers and ultimately his punk project Dogpiss. Pat also joined The Wildhearts for a while, was also in Guns ‘N’ Wankers, The Hormones and is currently in The Mau Maus. Andy’s done a lot, most of which I don’t know about because I’m crap at keeping in touch, but I do know he had a band called Bad Head. He has his own studio and has produced a lot of stuff for other bands.

Were / are you still involved in anything musically?

Since Scarlet Tears I haven’t done anything seriously. It’s just been occasional jamming with friends and stuff. Basically, to be in a band you have to be a selfish bastard. It just takes so much time and energy and, with two small children at home, I don’t have either at the moment. Don’t write me off completely yet though…!  

Somebody asked on the glitzine board the other day about a fight with Steevi from Tigertailz. What happened there?...Aside from them being shite.

I could give a detailed account of the incident but I suppose it’s probably best not to. All I’ll say is that it’s fairly common knowledge that Steevi was a bit handy with his fists back in those days, and I was rather unfortunate in that some shitstirrer had told him I’d been making derogatory remarks about him. The result, that I tried very hard to avoid, was a real fight with real blood in The Marquee bar – not one of those Vince vs Axl-style shams from LA. I bumped into Steevi at a gig few years later and we buried the hatchet, so I really don’t want to dig it up again. Life’s too short for that. Besides, I have to take my hat off to him, as by all accounts he’s still out there playing - and good luck to him, the stroppy little fucker.

Looking on google there's an official website under construction - are you reforming for definite, being hearing rumours for quite a while now? (obviously you only have to mention the situation with Joolz if you want to....but how is he?)

The website is actually the result of there still being such an amazing amount of interest in our album. It’s never been released on CD and, consequently, there are quite a few bootlegs doing the rounds, all of which must be a bit ropey, as they can only have been taken from vinyl. I thought it would be a good idea to get an official version released, taken from the original mastertapes. From that, the idea sprang up of having a website from which people will be able to get the thing when it’s finally released. Last April the four of us all got together for the first time in something like fourteen years to discuss it. It was a bit brief but absolutely fantastic to get together again. Joolz was on top form and had me literally crying with laughter. It was the best night I’d had in ages. After that we had a long but ultimately successful search for the tapes, got the domain name sorted and a title page set up, and were all ready to go. Then, in June, something totally devastating happened. Joolz suffered a brain hemorrhage and had to undergo emergency surgery. His family and girlfriend were told that he was unlikely to survive. Somehow, thankfully, he did though. He spent several weeks in a coma but very gradually came round. At first he couldn’t speak, had to be fed through a tube and couldn’t really do anything apart from squeeze a hand. Since then he’s made quite amazing progress. He’s regained his speech, although his short-term memory is still very poor; can eat unaided and has started to learn to walk with a frame. He still has a very long way to go but has shown incredible fighting spirit. And amazingly, despite all he’s been through, he’s still kept his sense of humour. Luckily he’s also been blessed by having a fantastically loving girlfriend and family and so many good friends who have visited him. There have been get well messages from people all over the world too, who have either met him or just been into his music. Anyone who’s ever met Joolz will know that he’s one of the loveliest, wittiest, most down to earth and genuine people in the world. Even though I’ve been to see him I still find it very hard to contemplate what’s happened to him. It really shows the fragility of life – it could’ve been any one of us. Obviously in comparison the website and CD have seemed somewhat trivial and irrelevant in recent months. I also became a father for the second time a few months ago, so I’ve had virtually no time to work on it. We’ll get it sorted though eventually, just don’t hold your breath…

 -FIN?-

- An obviously quite exhausted Stu Gibson

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*Paul: "That Metal Hammer interview was typical Joolz: 'We caught Andy practicing the other day so Pat broke two of his fingers'! Unfortunately the best interview we ever did was never published. It was probably Ray Zell's finest hour (Joolz & me sitting in a bath, Ray on the bog 'interviewing' us and the three of us basically taking the piss out of everyone - including ourselves) but the then editor of Kerrang had no sense of humour and axed it due to its 'homosexual overtones'. Joolz visited the Kerrang offices once and got them to dig it out of the files so that he could have a read. He reckoned it could've possibly been the funniest interview of all time. Shame really..."

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