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In the late 70’s early 80’s I was house producer at Impulse Studios (Neat Records) in Wallsend. Around this time Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs came in to record a couple of tracks. He needed a band so I booked my mate Paul Smith on drums and I played bass. I got to be a Groundhog for a day! We cut two tracks, ìBorn To Be With Youî and ìToo Badî. I have no idea what happened with the tracks and whether they got released or not. You can check them out for yourself below:-
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The Groundhogs Mk2
Steve Thompson
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Steve Thompson
Paris By Air
Recorded by the Tygers Of Pan Tang
Top 40 single in the UK and featured on the album “The Cage” which reached 13 in the Album Charts.
The demo was sung by Toni Haliday Click here to hear it
WMDJ Voices
Some 8 years after the last time I amalgamated my music with Tom Kelly’s poetry I’m working on this new project. This time the “band” has a new member in photographer Peter Dixon and the project will work towards gallery multi media exhibitions. We have some interest for venues. The picture to the right is one of Peter’s that I’ve heavily cropped to place here. You can see more HERE
I had just returned from Jarrow where I had commissioned the building of a new powerful audio computer. (They used to build ships in Jarrow) I asked Tom if he perhaps had a new poetry collection that could get the WMDJ treatment and he had. I wanted to see if the how this would work out now that technology had moved on. In many ways it was now too easy to make soundscapes, and the creaky old equipment I used on Urban Grit was now retired ( example )
There is a WMDJ website at www.wmdj.org.uk and work in progress on this project can be followed HERE
Over the years I have recorded many voices in oral remeniscence sessions, many of them relatives of mine. I started to add these to the work to supplement Toms poetry readings and it really worked and so the project was named Voices.
TECHNICAL NOTES I’m working with Cubase SL and Propellerheads Reason and now that my Akai sampler is retired I am using soft sampling mostly in Reason. Tom and I collaborate via email and I set up a scenario whereby Peter can email his pictures to Flickr which then get drawn into the WMDJ website.
The Story So Far
 Well, Aksana has joined a Monastery in Russia. That’s the closest translation Graeme could put on it. Where does that leave the project – who knows? This girl lives the life of a Hollywood tragedy as has been commented on before. Apparently she’s trying to find herself. Let’s hope she does as I aint going there to find her myself and I’m not recording her vocals in a monastery!
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Breaking Out
Anyway, the only way we knew how to break out of that Steel Town was with music so, with all the strength we could muster we set to it. We built ourselves a large following, supported many big acts and got a record deal. Our first producer was Roger Bain who had produced Black Sabbath. We were not major fans of Sabbath but they were from our period and we did Paranoid and Iron Man in our early sets. Roger Bain also shows up later in this story. Sadly for my band, rock stardom eluded us and it all came to nothing. After nearly 30 years the drummer from the band found me on the web and I helped him build a web tribute to the band in sounds words and pictures, which can be found at www.thebullfrogstory.co.uk
When the band folded there was no way I was going back to the Steel Works so I took odd jobs to keep me afloat and set about fulfilling my dream number two which was to be a songwriter. Actually this was what had interested me all along. I figured that you had to be in a band to get somewhere but now I was going to try it all alone. I figured I’d need to become a producer along the way so I bought an Akai tape deck (right) and started to make demos and send them out. I still have the tape deck but it ceased to function long ago .
The Beginning
I started out in the real home of heavy metal, the Steel Works! Like all the kids in my town, I went straight from school into Consett Steel Works. I had other plans, and with another steelworker from my school formed a band and together with two other guys, we served two apprenticeships. One of them by day in the Steel Works. The other by night in the pubs and clubs of the North East of England with our band, Bullfrog. I played bass guitar. Our contemporaries and influences were Cream, Deep Purple, Led Zep, Black Sabath, Free, The Groundhogs etc. This was late sixties/early seventies. I recall the very first song I ever played on a public stage was Cream’s ìSunshine Of Your Loveî.
A couple of years ago I took my musical ìSteel Townî back to my home town and passed by the pub where I drank in all these musical influences and saw a sign outside; ìspecialising in 70’s juke boxî ñ jeez, they hadn’t changed the records in over 30 years. That’s me in the picture from the time I speak of with the blast furnace I worked on in the background. The Gibson EB3 I am playing shows up later in this story in association with Venom, a drill, and a crucifix.
Intro – or “I’ve Forgotten Most Of It”
People say of most decades, ìif you remember it, you weren’t thereî. I remember it all right but much of it is blurred by the passage of time, the speed at which things were happening, and of course the other ìstuffî that renders your brain cells a little less active. I’m afraid I have forgotten some of the songs I cut during my time as a heavy metal producer. I still get business execs in suits coming up and telling me that they were once in a band that I produced and how this happened and that happened during the sessions. I can’t remember it all but I always tried to make things happen, mostly laughter.
Now my credentials: The webmaster of this site asked how I went from Venom to Celine Dion, I say, ìit’s all the same stuffî. Years ago I was doing a radio interview with Jon Deverill (Tygers of Pan Tang) when the DJ said something about me writing songs for Sheena Easton. Jon saw where the guy was coming from and said ìhey, Steve’s more of a rocker than any of us!î
Remembering the 80’s
The webmaster of Metal Gods Website asked me to write this article eons ago. My memory must be faulty because I seem incapable of finishing it. I’ve just come across my notes so I thought I would serialise it here.
Steve T’s 365
In 2003 I decided to keep a picture diary and chart a whole year by taking one picture per day. I’m going to republish them here but hopefully it will not take a full year to upload. The pictures tell a story within a story but only those who were there will know this. Howard Rheingold very kindly wrote a foreward to this story which you can read below or click here to go directly to the story.
FOREWORD
| Steve Thompson’s 365 is much more than a collection of photographs — it’s a testament to the kinds of warm human relationships that can develop online between people who may seldom or never meet each other face to face. I’ve never met Steve in person, but I communicate with him online every day. In 2001, he invited me to give a speech in England. I was on my way to the airport on September 11 when the terrorist attacks shut down air travel. Steve was determined to make the connection, despite the obstacles, and managed to facilitate a video tele-conference at the scheduled time. Steve’s story is conveyed by technology, but the connection is a human one.
“What it is —-> is —-> up to us.” |
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The Aksana Project
I am working with this Russian Vocalist and her Record Company. I’m redeveloping some existing material as well as writing news songs. This material represents some of my best work in years. You can chart the progress in the Project Blog
My Space
A friend recently extolled the virtues of MySpace a social networking kind of thingy so I set one up. Well I set up two actually, the first one was a mistake and I seemed to be in a space looking to “date” other MySpacers or at best engage in spotty teenager stuff. I realised my mistake and set up another as a band whereby you can add some MP3’s and video’s. It seemed a bit of a faff at first but then it got interesting. The idea is that you promote your band by networking and making “friends”. I’ve actually found a few people I know or have some association with and I’ve linked to them. Click here for MySpace
Songs For Characters
About 12 years ago the BBC ran a cartoon series called “Little Monsters”. I wrote songs for five of the characters (see below)
Recently I came across some DVD’s in the pound (£1) shop so I bought a couple for my granddaughter who was not born at the time of the original shows. Whilst refurbing my studio I’ve come across the DAT master so I’ll cut her a CD as well as putting the tracks up here in MP3 format.
The songs are kind of a pastiche of things from The Beach Boys to Bon Jovi but I recall having a lot of fun writing and recording them even if the production company had a rather strange way of releasing product.
The tracks were produced partly in my project studio and then finished off with vocals, guitars and mixing in one of my favourite studios, Fred Purser’s “Trinity Heights” in Newcastle.
Vocals are handled by , Phil Caffrey, Mick Whitaker, Tanya Rowlands, Paul Caffrey and the massed voices of St Albans Primary School, Walker. I handled all the instrumentation and I can spot myself on some of the voice characterisations.
You can hear the tracks by clicking on the character or their name. Two of the tracks are not the mixes actually released. “Tell Tale Tallulah” is an extended mix featuring Mick’s scat vocals which are beyond the fade on the released track. “Dangerous Dave” features the “heavy mix” rather than the tamer one for release. Actually, Fred Purser, a former member of the Tygers of Pan Tang (for whom I’d written songs) remarked that “Dave” could have been Tygers Mk2 – scary huh?
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 Friendly Franco |
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 Tell Tale Tallulah |
 Dangerous Dave |
Characters (c) Splash Productions |
