The Crew: The Sound Guys

One of the many things I've noticed over the years is that in the sub-world of touring there are a lot of “Dave's”.  It must be the most popular roadie name there is.  Of course, we had Bianchi, our manager, commonly known to many as Corby Dave, we had Little Dave who was our “drum tech” for a while, I add the inverted commas since very little drum teching was done, he just used to hang out with Gordon, get pissed a lot and chat up girls.  He was commonly referred to by Gordon as Bitch Dave because although a lot of teching wasn't seen to Gordon would make him carry out countless other chores and generally treat him like his butler.  Bitch Dave would later go on to play bass with us after Darren left.

For a while there we did actually get to the size where we could justify taking a big crew on tour with us.  Well, I'm not sure we could justify it, or maybe we could, but in truth we probably wasted a lot of money paying people to help us carry gear just because they were our mates and we wanted to party.  But fuck it, why not?  It was a long time ago and the money is long gone and it's nothing worth regretting now.  I'll never be in that position again so fuck it.

Although we did piss a lot of money away in our time, when we could afford it, paying a sound engineer was always money well spent, if they were good at their job of course.  We went a long time without one, we held the belief that the in-house person at the club most likely knew the PA better than anyone else and not only that, if we happened to be touring with another band that did have an engineer then the “in-houser” would always want to do a better job than the “professional”.  This proved to be true a lot of the time (although you always encounter the odd wanker) as long as we were playing smaller clubs but when we started getting shows at places like the Astoria, and then later on the big festivals, it became apparent that we needed someone working our sound.  We had a few over the years and a couple of those just happened to be called, Dave...

Long before the days of hiring a full time engineer, our first try out was actually a guy called Lee, or Fat Lee, ingeniously christened so because he was a big old boy.  He came out with us for a few shows in the early days for what must have been very little money.  Roddy had picked him up after a show in Northampton where he'd impressed whilst doing the in-house sound.  Roddy seemed to suddenly insist we needed a Sound Guy, although it was nothing the rest of us seemed particularly bothered about.  That said, we didn't really bother about anything in those days and with Roddy doing all the sorting out we were happy to go along with his suggestion, we really weren't arsed either way as long as we didn't have to take care of paying him.  We left Roddy to deal with that.  We left Roddy to deal with pretty much everything in those days.  It was funny looking back on it, there was the six of us in the band and Roddy, who did everything for us then, and then for a while there was Fat Lee, who as far as we were concerned, was Roddy's own little employee.  Roddy seemed to be chuffed.

Lee was actually a really nice guy, although nothing like the rest of us.  He was polite and quiet, a really mild bloke who wouldn't harm anyone.  He did used to sweat a lot though and wasn't all that keen on changing his clothes from day to day.  Don't get me wrong, our personal hygiene back then was nothing to be applauded but Lee was on a slightly worse level.  Again, we weren't really that arsed but this soon began to be an issue for Roddy and before long he was lobbying to have him fired.  I think the truth of the matter is though that Roddy had grown disillusioned with Lee soon after taking him on, not only had they been arguing a lot about the sound but it was pretty obvious Lee just wasn't like us.  He was a good sound engineer I'm sure but he just didn't really get us.  The fact he sat in the back of the van stinking and eating like a horse was just a minor detail.

I'll never forget one occasion when we were driving along the M11 on a gloriously sunny day, heading somewhere south, and the back tire of the van, right underneath Lee's arse, exploded!  Fucking bits of rubber all over the motorway behind us.  We fucking shat ourselves as Roddy swerved into the hard shoulder.  Of course, Roddy got it into his head this was somehow Lee's fault.  He'd only been out with us about a week and it had already reached that point.. Roddy finally decided that Lee was for the chop and when we turned up a few days later at a gig in Colchester, Roddy dropped him off at the train station and bought him a ticket.  And that was that.  Never did see Lee again.  I hope he's doing ok.  It would be a few years until we employed another Sound Guy.  

We were rapidly assembling a crew from the old Nottingham scene, through the contacts Bianchi and Roddy had.  We had Tall Paul out for a while, drum teching, and Doug was living in Nottingham at the time and a big part of the scene there, and then we had Dave Stokes.  Stokesy as he was known to all.  Stokesy was the first real sound guy we employed and the longest serving too.    

Stokesy was a quiet guy really, although you had the feeling there was some darker, more mischievous side bubbling under the surface there somewhere.  He was part of the old goth/punk scene in Notts, I think he used to crew for the cult band Every New Dead Ghost.  That was how he knew Bianchi.  He had a skinhead although looked friendly with it.  He was a bit of an enigma really.  He just got on with his job quietly and professionally, would never refuse a beer after his job was done and would always be close to hand if the scent of a fight arose, which it inevitably did.  I liked the fact that he blended in with the gang mentality we had, which was always us against the rest of the world.  The thing I liked most about Stokesy was that he almost always wore a smile upon his face, just a pretty content kind of guy.  But like I say, if there was a confrontation he would be there, somewhere thereabouts anyway.

My favourite memory of Stokesy was when we were playing the Tattoo the Planet travelling festival, which was something like five shows in the UK.  It was one of those festivals that never really seemed like it was going to last.  It started off the first year with crap like Pantera and Soulfly headlining and about another fifteen or sixteen similarly rubbish bands in support, and by the time we played it a couple of years later it was basically a Slayer gig.  Besides us there was Biohazard and Cradle of Filth, there were maybe a couple of others at the London show, but this particular night it was just the four of us, playing the NIA in Birmingham.

It was a big show, maybe four or five thousand in attendance.  My mum and dad had come up to see us.  I think it was the only big indoor show my mum ever came too.  I remember looking over at the two of them, sat in the dark beside the stage on a flight case as we played, nobody else around, just really chilled out watching us.  It was weird how playing shows of this size had come to feel completely normal, that they had lost all sense of awe, and my mum and dad being there watching as if it was just any other gig seemed to sum it up really.  I guess when I look back now I realise that it had all began to feel like just another job.  I digress... The thing is, for being a big show and all, there was no sense of party, everything was pretty relaxed.  We had the tour bus outside which was were we'd be sleeping for the night and we'd be waking up in London the next day.  Just another week at work.      

After the show my mum and dad left for the short drive home, not really arsed about seeing Slayer.  Neither was I to be fair, I'd seen them a few times already by that point and as much as I love the early records, if you've seen them live once you've seen them a hundred times.  And let's face it, Kerry King looks like a right tosser these days and there's only so much you can stomach.  As is always the case at these events, the backstage area is completely over the top, with each band having their own Porta Cabin dressing room, a full on canteen for band and crew catering etc. etc.  All very luxurious and at the same time completely soulless.  We of course received our food tickets earlier in the day which were duly exchanged for a plate of grub but come the end of the night, after a couple of beers, we were hungry again.  Stokesy told us that some runners had just taken a load of pizza into Slayer's cabin, which would be their after-show grub.  “Why the fuck weren't we getting after-show grub?” Stokesy wanted to know, a half pissed frown/smirk on his coupon.  Of course we weren't getting any pizza, we weren't the guys on stage right now that six thousand people had come to see, we were simply the first band of the night.  Still, with some gentle encouragement from Stokesy we were soon robbing Slayer of their pizza, pissing ourselves laughing while we were at it.  Fuck em.  We weren't even drunk, just bored, if anything.  Stokesy seemed to be on one though.  He had that look in his eye.  The Biohazard boys had witnessed the whole thing and found it hilarious.  “What I love about you guys is that in ten years time, when it's you that are up on that stage headlining, you fuckers will still be stealing pizza!” laughed Danny.  I guess he'd prove to be half way right.

We headed back to the tour bus, satisfied on pizza and ready to chill out on the bus with a film and a couple of beers.  Billy Biohazard and Stokesy had other ideas though.  Billy is a trouble maker of the highest order, one of the reasons we got on so well with him, and Stokesy, as Doug would often comment, was a “dark horse”.  Billy had found his way on to our bus and seemed determined to get a party going, whether we wanted one or not.  “What the fuck's going on with you guys?” he enquired, seeming genuinely shocked by the sight of us lazing around the top lounge of the bus watching a film whilst John sat at the back, rolling a joint.  I'm not really sure how it happened but within five minutes chaos had broken out.  Somehow Billy and Stokesy had gotten into a “toy fight” that, as is usually the case, soon escalated into something a little more serious, not really a full on fight but neither would back down.  We sat there, pretty amused at the sight of Stokesy wrestling with Billy, and before we fucking knew it, something, I guess it was a bottle of some sort, had been launched and gone straight through the back window!  The window just shattered into a million pieces and a good section of it rained down on John.  I looked over at him and he was sat there, with little pyramids of shattered glass on his head and shoulders, still rolling his joint, “Argh for fuck sake..” he moaned.

I can't really remember how the situation resolved itself although Bianchi was far from amused.  Billy was though.  Or at least, he made out he was, not really wanting to admit to feeling any guilt.  He'd committed worse crimes through the years I'm sure.  Stokesy got pretty quiet afterwards though as our bus driver read us the riot act.  John carried on with his joint.

I still don't know exactly who threw the bottle though...

Stokesy actually left our service a little while later.  No big break up or anything like that, he just had a more regular gig with another band he was doing sound for, InMe.  A rubbish grunge/metal/indie band that I couldn't understand for the fucking life of me.  The last time I remember seeing Stokesy was at show in London where we happened to be on the same bill as InMe.  I remember thinking to myself, “What the fuck are you doing with these guys?” but I guess Stokesy had his reasons.  Maybe they were less trouble than we were.  They probably paid better anyway.

After Stokesy we had another Dave, Dave Lamb.  Now I liked Dave, he was a happy guy, kind of posh, very enthusiastic and a decent soundman.  But, as was often the problem, he was nothing like us.  He came from a more indie background, which was by no way a problem for me, in fact he'd worked with one of my favourite bands of that era in Swervedriver, something I was really impressed with and I would gladly listen to some of the stories he had to tell from his time with them.  I could tell the rest of the guys weren't really feeling the same connect though.  And I had the feeling he got on Doug's tits, being that he was a bit of a whittler.

As friendly as Dave was he too gave the impression that there was a darker side in there somewhere and one thing I did notice is that as soon as there was a whiff of the white stuff around he'd be off.  And to make matters worse he seemed to be rapidly racking up debts with everyone.  It wasn't long before the tension started to tell and some of the guys were wanting rid of him.  It's a really hard situation when you have to sack someone, especially if as in the case here, it was someone I liked personally.  As it happens Gordon took care of the situation with typical Morison efficiency.  He threw a stink bomb into his bunk one night and in the morning Dave was gone.  Gordon said he'd lobbed it in and then jumped into his bunk and hid whilst Lamb came crawling out in shock, cursing and ready to vomit, shouting at the rest of the bus.  I'd slept through the whole thing.  The next time I met Dave he was doing sound with the band Oceansize and we were sharing the bill at an awful gig in Redhill.  We spoke a little but it was bit awkward, to say the least.

The last soundguy we had of note was Mole.  Mole was a lot older than the rest of us, very experienced and again, a good engineer.  He'd been doing in house sound at Nottingham Rock City for a few years and was a fixture of the scene there.  He had long grey hair and looked like Killer Bob from Twin Peaks, although a slicker version.  I remember one time my friend Erik was hanging out on tour with us and the first time he met Mole he was pretty pissed up and when he set eyes on him he got really freaked out and hid, screaming, “It's Bob!”.  Mole thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Mole was a real gentleman and had a calmer head on his shoulders than everyone else.  He liked to party and hang out, have a drink and all, but his main interest seemed to be the girls.  He was a right slick talking fucker when it came to that.  As calm and collected as he was though, like everyone else I've ever met, there was another side to him.  It's a good thing that Mole had quit the band before Kev joined us because there was a bit of history between them.   A long time before when they were all living in Notts, Kev had had his jaw broken by the bouncers at Rock City.  The reason being that he'd walked up to one of them and called him a cunt.  The reason he did such a ridiculous thing is because he was steaming and Bianchi and the lads had egged him on to do so.  Of course, Kev can be a danger to himself when he's drunk but still, this was stupid, even for him.  The thing is, after calling said bouncer a cunt and then getting into a scuffle with him, he was taken a hold of by a few of them and none other than Mole held him from behind in a Full Nelson headlock while the insulted bouncer lined up and took a shot at him.  Bianchi and the lads went to visit Kev the next day in hospital and found him with his jaw wired together.  “Er, sorry mate” they said, trying not to giggle.  Kev doesn't hold a grudge to be fair and admits he got what he deserved.  I doubt whether Mole would even remember, that kind of thing went on at Rock City all the time.

Mole took his job very seriously and was good for us for a while.  Of course, it started to erk him a little that we didn't take our band as seriously as he seemed to.  I remember one night after a gig at the Astoria, a euphoric Mole came into the backstage, praising the gig and was gushing about the sound he'd worked for us.  He had been on at me and Tony about adjusting our guitar sounds and backing off the bass a little, something we were not entirely on board with.  But we'd tried it this night and after the show Mole was buzzing about it to me and Darren, “You guys sounded brilliant tonight!  It was so much better, you could hear everything, but it was still as heavy as fuck.  But you know, everything sat so much better, and the guitar sound, awesome!  You could hear notes, you could hear tone...” at which point Daz cut him off and turned to me, “You must be Notes!”  The pair of us pissed ourselves laughing, kind of missing Mole's point and pissing on his onions a little.  Still, I thought it was one of the funniest things Daz had said.

What I admired most about Mole though was his love for Metallica.  He adored them so much that he had his own tribute band (he was the drummer) called Moletallica.  Fucking genius name!  They were kind of a big deal in Nottingham, playing to big crowds at Rock City now and then.  I remember probing him one night about the band and about the setlist, enthusiastically going through the old classics and wondering which ones they played.  We all started to crack up though when we saw a pattern emerging.  “Battery?”  No... “Hit The Lights?” No, not that one.  “Fight Fire With Fire?” No, too fast, the boys can't keep up.  It seemed that the only songs the old boys played was the slower paced ones.  The thing is Mole is one of those Metallica fanatics, just like our old mate from Corby Metallica Bob, who stands by everything Metallica have ever released.  Such is their devotion to the band that they will look you in the eye and tell you Reload is a great record.  I just don't get it.  But they are not alone.

As was often the case with the guys we had crewing for us, our relationship with Mole started to fray a little after a while.  To be fair, it was mostly our doing.  OK, Mole was probably way too serious for us but we did nothing but moan, about everything, all the time, and after a while it started getting on Mole's nerves.  Can't say I blame him, looking back.  It was becoming apparent this was the case when Mole's frustration started to manifest itself in petty little arguments.  As in one night when we were on the bus and Gordon was moaning about wanting some food.  I don't remember exactly what happened, just that at one point Mole and Gordon were in a bit of a stand off and Mole was rabidly clenching an egg sandwich, “You fucking lot don't know how lucky you are!  Do you know how fucking long most bands have to work for this?  Most bands never get to this level!”  To be fair, I think Mole was referring to the tour bus.  “Fuck me!  An egg sandwich?  If you think that's luxury mate then you've had a harder life than I have!”

I thought it was great but the whole thing boiled over and the two of them very nearly got into it.  Doug stepped in of course and took Mole to the side for a quiet word.  Before long he was apologising to us and the thing was done.  Except for Gordon.  Gordon had decided Mole was a prick and was now on a mission to wind him up... It escalated a few nights later.  The air conditioning on the tour bus was fucked and it was insanely warm at night.  You'd be lying in your coffin-like bunk with sweat pissing out of you.  I think I slept naked most of the time.  It was fucking horrible, waking up in the middle of the night, drunk and dehydrated, gagging for water.  Well of course, Gordon thought it would be funny to empty Mole's water bottle while he slept and replace it with vodka.  Mole got quite a fucking shock I can tell you.  I'll never forget him crawling out of his bunk in agony, sweat pissing out of him, having just downed a shit load of Smirnoff.  Mole wasn't around much longer.  From what I can tell, he seems to be doing better without us.

Apart from the odd one off occasion when we'd play a big show, we didn't really have any other sound engineers.  As I've documented, things tailed off a bit and we couldn't really afford them any longer.  And who in their right mind would want to work for us anyway?  When we got things up and running again, after Frank had quit and left us in the shit, things were on a different level.  It started well enough, with a show to a huge crowd in the tent at Donnington, but apart from a couple of big Euro festivals, the crowds slowly started to erode and we were back to playing small clubs and gig spaces.  We couldn't afford anyone to crew for us any more.  Except for Wee Lee, and he was like a seventh member of the band.  We didn't deserve him...He certainly deserved better than us...

The Crew: Bianchi

“If you name your band Raging Speedhorn, I swear, I'll manage it!”

And history was made...

This was maybe the second or third time I'd met David Bianchi.  We were sat around a camp fire at Reading Festival, must have been ´98 I guess, and he'd just been recounting the story of an acquaintance who had had a rather rough night on speed.  The guy had taken a shit load of the stuff, come home as randy as a dog on heat, only to recoil in horror at the realisation his wife was away from home.  With no other alternative available, he climbs into bed and starts rabidly beating off.  Of course, speed may well make you horny but it can also turn you anorgasmic, the guy, whoever he was, was not to be beaten, or actually he was, and he went at it all night until he chaffed his bobby ruby red.  “He had a right raging speed horn!” laughed Bianchi at the climax of this non-climaxing story.  I knew right then what I'd be calling the band, I knew the guys back home would love it.  And so it was.

Bianchi was Roddy's best mate from back in the day when they both attended Lodge Park School together, the very same hell hole I went to.  I hear it's a lot better these days.  The first time I'd seen him he was playing bass in Roddy's band Krust, at the annual Battle of the Bands that took place at The Welfare in Corby.  I say “playing bass”, he was actually just jumping around the stage like a tit playing very little from what I could hear.  Still, you couldn't take your eyes off him.

The first time I met him officially was at a show my old band Soul Cellar were playing, at the old Mean Fiddler in London, sharing a bill with Cathedral and Acrimony.  Bianchi had come down to meet us, via Roddy, to talk about the possibility of managing us, or at least helping us out.  At the time he was working on the tv show TFI Friday, working with the music side of it I think.  This was around about the time Napalm Death had appeared on the show and it was a huge thing, given that the usual fare appearing at the time were the likes of Paul Weller and Ocean Colour Scene.

Bianchi had left Corby with Roddy and moved to the punk scene in Nottingham, where he was known as Corby Dave, and still is to most of that crowd, before moving down to London to make his way in the music business.  Roddy and Dave were always top value entertainment, always bickering about what was better, metal or goth, sometimes the bickering cranked up a notch, but they were as thick as thieves and always will be I reckon.

Bianchi always cut an impressive figure.  The man can fucking talk for England, confidence oozing from his every word, bullshit or not, it doesn't matter, the man can make you listen and what's more, he can make you believe.  When I met him the first time I was really unsure.  I mean, I liked him, you couldn't doubt he was funny and he commanded respect, but being the little hardcore kid who was shit scared of the music industry, I didn't quite trust the guy.  This was nothing personal, I just had an ingrained mistrust of anyone in the “business”.  But trust him or not, you couldn't help being drawn to him.  I didn't know if he was going to manage Soul Cellar and I really didn't know if he could do anything for us, but certain members of the band were convinced we were going to be huge with this loud talking southerner (he was originally from Kent) taking care of us.

It didn't work out.  Bianchi sorted us out with a gig at the old George Robey Club, an opening slot on the Terrorizer Magazine Christmas Bash, incidentally the night I first saw Iron Monkey and my life changed forever, but the band soon disintegrated thereafter, for one reason or another.  We were never going to cut it if the truth is told, we were ok, we could play, but we didn't have that spark.  What we were in fact, was a perfect band to be in and learn from, the band before the band that does something.  And besides, after seeing Iron Monkey my head was already turned.  I knew I no longer wanted to be in a “metal” band, I wanted to do what they were doing.

As it happens, Dave's head had also been turned that night and shortly afterwards he was indeed managing Iron Monkey.  This was the state of play when Roddy brought him over to that camp fire at Reading 98´.  Being that we were sat around a camp fire drinking beer as opposed to sat around a table in a club having a semi-formal meeting, me and Dave hit it off a lot better in this relaxed atmosphere.  Well, I liked him a lot more I guess you can say.  He still had all that big shot thing going on, and his tongue could still tie you in knots, but I realised he was also funny as fuck.  Unsure before, I was now desperate for him to manage my band.

Roddy, well aware of what was going on, kept Dave up to date on events and told him that we were calling the band Raging Speedhorn and recording a demo pronto.  Would he keep his vow I wonder?  Roddy assured me if the demo was up to scratch then he would because Corby held a huge place in his heart and he would love nothing more that to manage a gang of twats from his beloved home town, providing there was something to work with..

We recorded four songs at Premier Studios with our old friend Iain Wetherell and the rest is history.  We sent it off to Dave via Roddy and within a couple of days Bianchi was our manager.  It just happened to be that he'd started working for a Jamaican R&B guy, not actual rhythm and blues I must stress but the piss that stole it's name in the Nineties, i.e. cack like Mark Morrison, Destiny's Child et al.  Anyway, this Jamaican, a charming gangster by the name of Johnny Laws, was Bianchi's boss at this management label called Green Island.  Somehow Bianchi managed to talk Johnny into funding a subsidiary label called Black Island that he would run with the help of his mate Andrew Carter.  Black Island of course would be more geared towards rock and metal.. I have to admit, once again I was pretty fucking freaked out by meeting these other industry people and Laws scared the piss out of me when I first met him, but I now fully trusted Bianchi, and Carter, and knew they'd look after us.

The plan was simple.  Get out and play.  Here, there, every fucking where.  Don't matter who with, just get out and tour your arse off.  They'd provide a van and money for petrol out on the road and little else.  We didn't need much else, it was a dream deal for us.  All we wanted to do was escape Corby, play our ten songs every night and get pissed.  I didn't think it would last forever, I didn't care.  I didn't care that we had no money for food and that we played to around ten to twenty people a night.  It all beat the shit out of working in a warehouse in Corby and it was all part of a bigger plan hatched by Bianchi and co.

And for a few years it worked.  Brilliantly.  Like us or hate us, you couldn't go anywhere in the metal scene in the UK and not hear our name.  And we played so fucking much that we became a tight unit live.  We also began to hate each other but that's another story.

Funnily enough, during all the groundwork days of the band, when we were touring the infamous “toilet scene” in the UK, Bianchi rarely came out on the road with us.  It was mainly just the band and Roddy, and then later Big Doug.  Sometimes Carter would show up but he soon got pretty sick of us demanding his money for beer and then not allowing him to sleep in the van with us.  Bianchi would show up to the bigger stuff, which at the time usually meant support slots in London, but he kept away from the van.  And then when we hit the road in Europe, travelling on a night-liner for the first time, he decided it was appropriate for him to come out on the road with us, stating that now things were getting bigger he needed to come and help Doug out with the tour managing since he was still learning his trade.  It was a pretty see-through move to be fair, but we were all chuffed nonetheless.  Bianchi was always good for a laugh and everything always felt that little bit safer with him around, or should I say, we felt like we could get away with anything because no matter what situation we got ourselves into, he would be able to talk us out of it.

Bianchi travelled with us around Europe, Japan and the States for the next couple of years and they were some of the best years of my life, without any doubt.  Bianchi was a huge part of that.
As much as he was a business man, determinedly making his way up the industry ladder and hungry for success, he absolutely loved coming out on tour with us.  He loved a piss up as much as we did, in fact, he could drink us all under the table, which he did on many an occasion, although Roddy has always stated that he must cheat somehow, and as much as his manager head came on whenever needed, he was as usually in the middle of the nonsense right along with the rest of us.  More than anything though, you really felt he was a genuine fan of the band, it was like the songs were as much his as ours.  It's a wonderful thing to have that kind of support.

During that first European tour, supporting Biohazard, we had a bit of an icy relationship with their tour manager, Bob Bulldog.  It was the general consensus that he was Evan's man, and he treated him like a fucking God.  He treated us with an ever so subtle air of condescension and you could tell that he didn't really trust us one hundred percent.  Fair enough I suppose.  But Bianchi and Doug were determined to out tour manage him, which they did it's fair to say.  Bob was very loud and very American, Dave was very gabby and assured, but in a more charming, southern lad way.  I remember a night in particular when we played in the Bavarian town of Lindau and Bulldog had some beef with the promoter over money.  I don't know the exact crack, but I'm guessing he wasn't being paid the full amount.  The situation got heated for a while but eventually it was sorted.  The thing is, Bianchi was calm the whole time.  He spoke to the promoter with respect and at the same time authority and needless to say we were paid what we were owed.  Whilst Bulldog was stomping around shouting his mouth off but not really getting much achieved, Bianchi was getting us our money.  Not only that he was somehow charming the promoter into giving us a load more booze and by the end of the affair the promoter was telling him we'd be welcome back any time.  I remember being sat on the bus with Doug and Bianchi afterwards, Bianchi smug a fuck, explaining to Doug the cruciality of knowing when the need for talking over fighting comes into play.  An hour or so later we're having an after party in one of the backstage rooms with all the newly acquired booze and Bianchi is off his fucking nut!  He goes on the rampage with a broom, sweeping a table full of booze and glass onto the floor, laying waste to the place, and a couple of hours after that he's brought a skinhead onto the bus to ride with us after we've just had a full on riot with some Nazi's.  Weird situation.  But that's another story that will be explained later... In fact almost all of those major stories involve Bianchi, such as the jail incident in Spain and the hash cake affair in Holland, and they deserve their own dedicated time to be told in full.  They will be at some point.

The thing I loved about Bianchi though, is no matter how business like and serious he needed to be, the Corby boy in him was never far from the surface and never needed much convincing to come out and play.  I remember one time on the bus, one of those decadent nights where we'd all drank a ridiculous amount of booze, after watching Daz down a third of a bottle of Grouse, not completely willingly if I'm honest, Bianchi went one better and drank a huge gulp of aftershave.  I remember him choking on his own poisonous saliva and shouting he's gone blind.  Fucking nonsense.

As with all the guys involved with the band in those days, Bianchi didn't just work with us, he also became a good friend, and for a while we were pretty close.  His wife Alison was a huge Liverpool fan and that alone was enough for me.  And as with all good friends, they can tell you when you're being a prick.  Bianchi never had a problem telling you how it was, which is exactly what a gang of idiots like us needed a lot of the time.  Like the second time we went to the Kerrang Awards... The year before had been an absolute disgrace, the year of Eklandgate, and I was determined not to let the same thing happen again.  In fact, I was wholly against going at all.  I'd gotten it into my head that I despised such events and all the people who went to them.  I couldn't stand c-list arseholes in their shit indie bands telling me that they loved my band when clearly they didn't.  I determined that this time if I was forced to go then I would be in no way forced to drink or indeed enjoy myself.  I stood there in the lobby beside Bianchi, explaining this to him, over and over, sniggering at different cretins in amongst the crowd, “Look at that fucking wanker!  Fuck this place!” and so on, sipping at my martyrical glass of water.  Another five minutes or so of this and I was actually beginning to bore myself, and is if reading me like a book, Bianchi cut me off, “Oh for fuck sake Gaz, shut up and have a fucking drink!” as he whipped a pair of champagne flutes from a passing waiter.  Two hours later I was lying in a bush outside the venue.  Bubbly gets me every time... Thanks boss.

Another classic Bianchi tale, yet another that is actually part of a bigger story was the day after a very bad night in Vienna.  We'd met at breakfast in a café just down the road from the hotel, all of us in sombre mood.  A bad crack had gone down the night before... Bianchi was very serious.  He told us in no uncertain terms that if we didn't start reigning things in immediately then he would no longer want to manage us.  It was a bit of a bombshell at the time.  We're all hungover to fuck and one by one assure him that we'll sort things out.  With that we finish breakfast and with a whole day to kill, head to the Tivoli for a day of roller coasters and fun.  We convince a boastful Roddy to go on that daft fucking ride that shoots you up into the air at stomach emptying speed, like the Freefall, but opposite.  Roddy agrees to take the ride on for a collection of our money, which we agree to.  The thing is, the whole time we've been watching the ride, it's only been going up the once.  Whilst Roddy is awaiting his turn in the queue, just as he's about to go on, the ride suddenly goes up and down twice.  “What the fuck?!  It's only supposed to go once!” shouts Roddy, failing to hide his concern.  We all convince him to proceed, wafting what amounts to about a tenner in the air as bait.  Roddy alights the ride, by which time we're all pissing ourselves laughing at his pale face.  The ride does indeed shoot up and down twice.  When Roddy comes sinking down to the ground after the second time, looking a little sad, he catches sight of Bianchi stood at the cabin that houses the guy controlling the ride with a wod of money in his hand...”No... No Dave!  Dave!!  Daaaaavvvvvve!!!” screams a terrified Roddy as he flies back up into the air, Bianchi peeling off the notes and placing them in the Controller's hand.  I almost threw up laughing!  Poor Rods didn't find it so funny and when he was finally able to disembark, a couple of rides later, he told us he had to go off and be on his own for a while.  We later found him in a crowded area, sat eating a cheeseburger looking gutted.  Only a few hours earlier Bianchi had been threatening us with quitting.. but how could he?

Well, eventually he did.  In a way.  In fact, things just fizzled out between us, just like they did with the first era of the band really.  We actually parted ways with Johnny Laws and Black/Green Island after our relationship became unfixable and we were left in a bitter mess with our record label.  It was a horrible affair in truth, for six months I did nothing but speak to our lawyer, we didn't even set foot in our practice room, I just lay low in Sweden, constantly on the phone.  How the breaks had been stepped on.. The sad thing is, amongst all this chaos we were forced to cut ties with Bianchi and Carter, which really did hurt at the time.  They were bound to Johnny and we couldn't be any longer.    Of course a short while later Dave and Andrew were off as well as things went rapidly pear shaped for Laws, but by then we had a new manager, which turned out to be another disastrous episode.  But that's another story...

A couple of years after parting with Green Island, Dave came back.  I'd bumped into him at a record release party we were having in London and he told us he missed us.  Fuck me did we miss him!  We booted our manager, a nice enough woman called Lisa who just couldn't handle us, in spectacular fashion in Japan, again another story, and Dave was back!  Carter had left for the States by this point which was too bad.  The truth is though, things weren't the same the second time around.  They rarely are...  We'd gone missing from the touring circuit for too long and a large part of the fan base had turned their attention elsewhere.  And we were becoming increasingly hard to manage, with Frank finally quitting having threatened to do so for a long time.  The timing was shit though, right before a UK tour for our new album.  I kind of took over the manager's role in the band, with Dave there to help me when needed, but we became more and more distant.  He did manage to sort us out a full scale tour of the United States, which was amazing in many ways, not all good/amazing but something I'll never forget, or regret.  The thing is as Doug before him, Bianchi was on to bigger and better paying things and we were heading in a more DIY direction, which is all I'd ever wanted anyway.  Don't get me wrong though, I'm thankful we got to do what we did for those few years, and we're in debt to Dave and Andrew for that.  Changed my life forever.

I don't think Bianchi ever really officially stopped managing the band, just one day he didn't any more.  I was disappointed at the time but in hindsight I know it was fair enough.  We'd been a ridiculously thankless band to manage and we got far more out of it than he ever did I'm sure.  We don't see each other much any more, although there is always the odd catch up.  On the rare occasions I have hooked up with him I've ended up fucking steamboats, he still has that nack of getting you.  One time he was in Stockholm on business, it was a Tuesday night and I went out to meet him for a few drinks.  I promised Jen I'd get a cab home since she was worried I'd end up sleeping on the suburb train travelling back and forth all night, and she knew how things normally went when Bianchi is in town.  Needless to say I was awoken by Jen calling me at six am, very confused finding myself lying next to Bianchi in his hotel bed.  We were both fully clothed, I might add.  And I did  get a cab home..

The last time we actually saw each other was at a Victims show in London a year or so later but we had to leave early for a ferry back to the mainland and although he managed to get one shot of Tequila down me I resisted any more.  My lasting memory of Dave though always makes me smile, whenever I think of it.  Just a silly little memory, but I like it.  We're sat on the tour bus driving somewhere through the night across Europe, we're all in good spirits and the booze is flowing.  I remember how happy I felt at that time.  We're singing old kids tv theme tunes and at one point somebody starts up Button Moon.  We all softly sing along to that song's strangely melancholic tones, all of us together.  When we come to the end of the verse we fade out as one, all except Bianchi, who blasts into the next verse, eyes closed, with all the enthusiasm of an opera singer.

Funny how all the things you go through together and it's little memories like that you hold most dear.