Billy Sloan’s top 5 Glasgow albums: Rattlesnakes, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

National World - LocalTV

Billy Sloan tells us the story of meeting Lloyd Cole while DJing on Sauchiehall Street.

Transcript

00:00 We shall go on to Lloyd Cullinan Comotions, Rattlesnakes

00:02 Wait a minute, I'll get my note

00:04 No worries at all

00:05 See this, there you are

00:07 It's not just any chancer you're dealing with, it's taken my homework

00:11 So, 1984, another band appears on the scene, another debut album

00:18 We've picked Rattlesnakes by Lloyd Cullinan Comotions

00:21 Not farmed too far away from where we are just now up at Glasgow University

00:26 Why this album?

00:27 I've got a bit of a kind of long history with Lloyd Cullinan

00:30 Way back in 1983, I think it would be

00:34 I was on my show on Radio Clyde on a Thursday night from midnight until two

00:39 And as a kind of offshoot from that, I did a bit of DJing

00:41 in a club called Nightmoves on Suckey Hall Street

00:44 Right next door to where Lauder's Pub is

00:46 There was a fire in the building a few years ago

00:48 and the whole place got demolished so it doesn't exist any longer

00:51 But it was right next door to where Lauder's Pub is

00:55 You went in, there was Lumley's Sports Shop

00:58 If you wanted to go and buy a pair of football boots or a football shirt

01:00 Next to that there was a door

01:03 You went in and went up to the, I think it was the Lucky Star Chinese Restaurant

01:07 And then if you went up to the next floor, there was a place called Nightmoves

01:11 And I used to DJ in there

01:12 I did a Thursday night in there before I went to Radio Clyde

01:14 But significantly, I did the Friday night

01:17 And they did a kind of alternative music night in Nightmoves

01:21 So I was the DJ in Nightmoves

01:24 It was great, it was a great place

01:25 And all the musicians used to go to it and hang out

01:27 So you would look down and there would be

01:29 Strawberry Switchblade or

01:31 James King and the Lone Wolves or

01:33 You know, the guys from The Orange Juice or things like that

01:35 So that's where everybody went

01:36 And we did gigs there as well

01:38 We did Alex Harvey

01:39 We did Nico from The Velvet Underground

01:41 We did a very early gig by Big Country

01:44 Before they kind of settled into the line-up with Tony Butler and Mark Razzicchi

01:48 We did, who else did we do there?

01:50 We did Aztec Camera, Roddy Frame

01:52 We did a Postcard Night

01:53 So it was a great place to be

01:55 And I was in the club one night

01:56 And because I was on Radio Clyde, everywhere I went

01:59 Whether it was record shops or gigs or

02:03 You know, just even if I was walking down the street

02:06 Guys would come up and go "I'm in a band"

02:07 You know, "Here's my demo tape"

02:09 You know, "We're the best new band in Scotland"

02:12 Everybody always said that

02:13 Nobody ever said "We're the worst new band in Scotland"

02:15 They always said "We're the best new band in Scotland"

02:17 So I would come back with pockets full of

02:20 Cassette tapes and I would go home and listen to them

02:22 And if any of them were any good, I would play them in the show

02:26 And one night this guy came up to me and he had a sort of

02:28 Leather briefcase under his arm

02:30 And he had a helmet that you would have if you were riding a scooter

02:35 Or a little moped motorbike

02:37 And the other thing that made him stand out was that

02:40 He wasn't Scottish, he had an English accent

02:42 He came from a place called Buxton in Derbyshire

02:44 And he said, he was quite shy and he went

02:46 "Ah, my name's Lloyd and I've got this group"

02:49 "And we're the best new group in Scotland"

02:51 And I went "Right, okay"

02:52 And he went "We're called The Casuals"

02:55 "Can I give you my tape?"

02:56 I said "Sure, absolutely, thanks very much"

02:58 So he took the tape and I went back and put it on

03:02 And it blew me off the sofa

03:04 I was like "This is fantastic"

03:06 The band were called The Casuals

03:08 And the song was called "The Power of Love"

03:11 And it was this kind of thrashy, almost early

03:14 Primitively talking headsy quite thing

03:17 With him singing over the top of it

03:19 So there was this kind of unwritten rule in Radio Clyde

03:22 That you weren't supposed to play anything that was on a cassette

03:25 Because they didn't think the quality was good enough

03:28 But I just kind of took the attitude that

03:30 If you could hear the singer and hear the music

03:32 What else did you need to hear?

03:34 So what I used to do was I used to get in every Thursday night

03:37 And I would transfer the song from the cassette

03:40 Onto a cartridge so that when I was in the studio

03:42 I could go "Here's the brand new track from so-and-so"

03:45 And press a button

03:47 Because cassettes were too fiddly

03:49 And you couldn't queue them up

03:51 And I never heard a single complaint

03:53 "Oh, the band's loved hearing their..."

03:56 And I was the first guy that played

03:59 The Big Dish or the Trashcanston Absence

04:01 You start hearing cry

04:03 I was the first person that played their cassette

04:05 Ricky Ross or Deaton Glover

04:07 All that kind of stuff

04:08 And I started playing their cassette

04:12 "The Power of Love" by The Casuals

04:14 And at that time a lot of the A&R men in London

04:17 The artists and repertoire guys who signed the bands to labels

04:20 They were monitoring my playlists

04:23 Because it was the only show in Scotland that was playing new music

04:27 You had John Peel in London

04:28 David Jensen, Kid Jensen and all that

04:30 But in Scotland mine was the only programme

04:33 That played that kind of alternative music

04:35 From midnight to two on a Thursday night

04:37 And the record companies heard me playing The Casuals

04:43 And I got a hold of a number for Lloyd Cole

04:45 And started calling him up

04:47 "We want to come and see the band"

04:48 "When are you playing next?"

04:50 "Are there any more demos?"

04:51 And he got totally freaked out

04:53 Completely freaked out

04:55 And...

04:57 What do you call it?

04:58 He called a guy that was a friend of his at university

05:01 A guy called Derek MacKillop

05:02 Who'd gone on a gap year hitchhiking route in Europe

05:07 And he sent him a telex or something

05:09 And said "Look, all these record companies are phoning me up"

05:12 "I don't know what to do"

05:14 "I'm totally freaked out"

05:16 "I need a manager, you need to come back"

05:18 So he cut his gap year short and came back

05:20 And started representing them

05:22 So what they then did was

05:24 They brought out a single

05:28 They raised money for a single on their own

05:30 Called Down At The Mission

05:32 They changed their name to Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

05:34 They played a gig at the Mayfair on 1983 on the 10th of July

05:38 They opened for the Sweat Crocodiles

05:40 With Kevin McDermott as the singer of the band

05:42 And also a very early line up of Dell Ametri

05:45 And they were a seven piece band

05:47 And they had two female backing singers

05:49 A bit like the Staple Singers

05:51 And Lloyd was out front

05:53 But that was the first gig by the Commotions

05:55 At that time, Neil Clarke played guitar

05:57 And Blair Cowen played keyboards

05:59 So they brought out this self-financed single

06:01 Called Down At The Mission

06:03 Which was actually written by Lloyd and Neil Clarke

06:05 And they did it on their own label

06:07 Called Welcome To Las Vegas Records

06:10 I don't know where that comes from

06:12 And I think they only pressed up about 500 or something like that

06:15 And this was one of them

06:17 As you can see being an Ayrite, how good condition it is

06:19 And I started playing that on the radio as well

06:23 So things really started hotting up

06:25 And Polydor Records, there was a guy called Malcolm Dunbar

06:27 At Polydor Records who loved their single

06:29 And loved what he'd heard

06:31 And he made them an offer and wanted to sign them

06:33 But with one stipulation

06:35 And the stipulation was that

06:37 They withdraw Down At The Mission

06:40 Because he wanted a clean slate

06:42 He didn't want anything muddying the waters

06:45 He says, "Withdraw this single"

06:47 So I think there was only about 500 to start with

06:49 And then when they withdrew them

06:51 They became even more sought after

06:53 So if you're going to buy one on Discogs now

06:55 I think you're talking about a couple of hundred quid or so

06:57 If you can find one that is

06:59 So things happened very quickly

07:01 They went into a recording studio

07:03 One of the first songs they recorded was Perfect Skin

07:06 And literally within a matter of months

07:08 He switched on Top Reports

07:10 And there were Lloyd Cole and The Commotions

07:12 With their first single, Perfect Skin

07:16 And it was a big hit

07:18 And they never looked back after that

07:20 They released the album

07:22 Things on it like Forest Fire

07:25 Down At Mission Street

07:29 Which was a new version of Down At The Mission

07:32 Forest Fire

07:34 Four Flights Up Patience

07:36 Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken

07:38 Which of course was famously covered by Sandy Shaw

07:41 And then of course Camera Obscure

07:44 Wrote a song, I reply to it called Yes Lloyd

07:47 I Am Ready To Be Heartbroken

07:49 Or something like that

07:51 And again, Highland Hard Rain

07:54 One of the greatest debut albums from a Scottish band of all time

07:58 And the thing that made it great was

08:00 Lloyd, he was a bit of a, and he still is, a bit of a bookworm

08:04 He's a good reader

08:07 And his lyrics were of a kind of real high calibre

08:11 It wasn't a, I'm going to see my baby

08:13 And all that kind of stuff

08:15 It was the easy route to go

08:17 He was very kind of literate

08:20 And wordy for want of a better term

08:23 And from time to time he did things where he

08:28 On his website he sends handwritten lyrics

08:32 So you can phone him up and say

08:34 My favourite Lloyd Coleman commotion song is Lost Weekend

08:37 And he'll write the handwritten lyrics and send them to you

08:40 And you can get them framed

08:42 So a few Christmases ago he sent me

08:44 My favourite song from that is Rattlesnakes Itself

08:47 And it's got the fantastic line

08:49 She looks like Yves Marie song

08:51 And on the waterfront she reads Simone de Beauvoir

08:54 And her American Circumstances

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