Disgraceful, the beginnings

The original artwork for the Dubstar album ‘Disgraceful’

“The most exciting moment for me was discovering that Food Records wanted a Dubstar album, not just singles.

I’d heard stories of how acts would be signed for a couple of releases… then record an album if their singles had done well. They’d only be taken seriously or invested in properly once they’d proven themselves in the market. I’d seen in my days at Pinnacle Records that this absence of money was the kiss of death for most new acts.

Even worse would be if an act was put into a ‘development’ phase. This meant the record company thought the act was promising, but not promising enough to actually release any music. So they’d sign them, hold on to them for years, release nothing, drop them…and through this process the artists couldn’t sign with anyone else. Another kiss of death. And I won’t even mention ‘production deals’ <shudder>.

But that wasn’t the situation with Food Records. Andy Ross wanted an album. That meant a proper advance, a proper publishing deal with a bit of luck, proper time in a recording studio with a real producer (for a change). This was the real thing.

And when the news broke on Tyneside, there was a tangible reaction of ‘what the fuck?’ among the bands we hung out with. Although we’d been familiar faces on the Newcastle scene, especially through my club nights, Dubstar had transformed from The Joans in secret. We had all this great material but had stopped playing live, no one outside of the three of us, our management and Food Records knew about it. That ‘The Joans’ would be signed out of all the hopefuls on Tyneside was…a surprise. To put it mildly.“

”I realised we were a ‘priority act’ when EMI was ferrying us to meetings around London in Black Cabs. I’d grown up in South London, regularly visited Camden Town and the West End as a teenager with nothing but a fiver in my pocket… the idea of jumping into taxis was alien to me. Why spend all that money to sit in traffic when you could use your Red Bus Rover or a Capitalcard to get around for free? Seemed like incredible profligacy.

Yet this was how the music industry worked in 1990s, cash was thrown around in a way that I would observe but not understand for years. There was money, it had to be spent…and in the 1990s it was being spent on us.

Being based in Newcastle was a stroke of financial good luck for Dubstar. It meant that the record company would pay for our meals, drinks and accommodation every time we came down South for a marketing meeting. If we’d had made the classic mistake of moving to London, like so many bands in the 90s, that wouldn’t have happened. We would have been expected to pay our own rent, transport, to feed and water ourselves at huge personal expense. And be broke as a consequence.

EMI must have paid well over £100,000 just putting us up in superb hotels across the land. A priority indeed, and a luxury too. To say I’m grateful for the experience is an understatement.”

”The recording studios were superb too. Disgraceful had begun its life in my humble Tyneside flat in Jesmond. Most of my programming was completed there almost a year before finishing the work in London. I’d already completed the writing**, programmed the drums, keys and bass to all of the songs in the early days of 1994: the next step was making demos with our new manager Graeme Robinson. He’d run a studio in Darlington, but this had closed for some reason, so he’d setup equipment in his back room.

We spent a month or so down there making the recordings that enabled us to be signed. They also formed the basis of the Disgraceful sessions.

Then in 1994 we met Stephen Hague at RAK studios and saw how proper records were made: slowly, carefully, diligently, with a budget and a lot of money spent on food and, yes, accommodation. Chris, Sarah and I lived in the house next door to the studio for the best part of a month in the winter of 1995 in platonic wedded bliss, broken only by the regular appearance of our management. The RAK studio house had the biggest TV I’d ever seen, a bath the size of a small swimming pool (which took nearly an hour to fill) and a sauna on the top floor, ideal for hangover days.

And what did we do in this house? I’d like to say we partied, but we weren’t really sure how to. RAK is in St John’s Wood next to Regents Park..it’s not a party kind of place. So we spent the first few nights commuting to Camden Town in the rain trying to find the party over there. Funnily enough, even at the height of Britpop there wasn’t that much going at the Good Mixer on a Sunday night.

So inevitably we spent a lot of nights in the house, entertaining visitors and basically having a hell of a time in between long bouts of hanging around, waiting to be called in to record our parts next door. We became regulars at the Duke of York, we never did find out what went on beyond the closed doors of the Lyndhurst Club…

The three completed songs were Stars, Anywhere and Disgraceful. I was stunned hearing Anywhere for the first time. It was our song, but… it felt like I was hearing a hit record pouring out of the radio. That was a new feeling. Wow!”

**except Day I See You Again, which was written as Disgraceful was being recorded

Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

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