The Steve Thompson Band

Or My Connection To The Beatles and Frank Zappa

I’ve just done a deal with Cherry Red Records on a wide range of product. Expect to see my album “The Long Fade” re-released on the Cherry Red label soon. There will also be some new recordings coming along soon (more of which later) The first piece of product announced is a number by my 70’s band Bullfrog. Our track Dozy Dora can be found on this 3 CD boxed set alongside the likes of The Kinks, The Electric Light Orchestra, Hawkwind, Lou Reed, Thin Lizzie and many more. The bumph from Cherry Red.

The Bumph From Cherry Red

Big hits, inexplicable misses, seminal glam texts, cult classics, key album tracks, alternative versions and even a clutch of previously unreleased but essential recordings: Oh! You Pretty Things – housed in a clamshell box that contains a 40-page booklet of amazing photos and incredible stories – assembles all these and more to act as the definitive primer of a relatively short-lived but glorious musical and pop-cultural phenomenon.

It’s released on Feb 26th @ £19.99 but you can pre-order by clicking here

I have given many interviews about my time as a heavy metal producer. I’ve always been pretty nice about Conrad Lant.

Here’s an excerpt from one:

And finally, my last production for Neat. We had a young tape operator called Conrad Lant. Lovely lad. He was in a band and he was forever telling us about it. They would do a gig somewhere and virtually demolish a village hall having saved up for months for pyro stuff. Conrad wanted to make a record. He banged on and on about it until I finally relented and gave him 3 hours downtime. The band were Venom and we cut three tracks. One of them was ‘In League With Satan’. I loaned Conrad my bass from the Bullfrog days. Conrad put it through a fuzz box and plugged it into his Marshall amp. He made a hellish racket. This has gone down in NWOBHM history as the moment ‘Black Metal’ was born.

 

‘In League With Satan’ came out as a single and Venom’s career went stratospheric. However, I played no further part in it. I quit Neat to pursue my own dreams. I had enough of kick starting other people’s careers. It was time to kick start mine!

You can read the full thing here 

I shall have to change my approach in future and report that he was a nice chap but is now a nasty, demented and deluded loon. A website has come to my attention where as usual, Conrad claims to have invented every genre of heavy metal. He also claims to have been “assistant engineer” at Impulse Studios. Was he fuck! He was the tea boy. He was 16 and on a youth employment scheme. He got his dole (unemployment benefit) plus £10 ($13) a week. I’m happy to let Conrad have his delusions, but further down the page, he gets pretty nasty about me by name. Normally, I leave this stuff alone, but in this case, I’m going to address all his malicious assertions.

CONRAD: I had to really work hard in the studio to get us enough time to cut that single.

THE TRUTH: I’ve said many times in print and in audio that Conrad regaled us with tales of his band. How great they were and we humoured him. One day there was some available studio time and I said they could come in and cut some tracks. I think it was just one afternoon. Conrad had just recently taken on the roll as bassist and singer so I loaned him my own bass: a Gibson EB3.

CONRAD: We were asked by Neat to work with a guy called Steve Thompson as pop producer

THE TRUTH: Conrad was a 16 year old tape-op, a gofer, a tea boy. He had no lofty communications with Neat Records. In fact Neat Records and Impulse studios were one and the same. 4 of us worked there: Dave Wood the Boss,  Susan the receptionist, Micky Sweeney the engineer and Myself. I was the house producer, A&R for Neat Records and I ran Neat Music, the publishing arm. Yes, I produced “pop” music. I also produced Rock, folk and even a bit of music hall. I also produced heavy metal.

CONRAD – and we hated him with a vengeance.

THE TRUTH:  I recall we had a great time on that session. I got no impression that they hated me. I had just given them a big break, and they seemed pretty happy about it. I’m still in touch with Tony Bray, who shows no sign of hating me. I’ve also touched base with Jeff Dunn from time to time and I detected no hate from him either.

CONRAD: He didn’t get what we were about at all,

THE TRUTH: I got them entirely. They were a raw, energetic, enthusiastic band with an unusual approach and a lot of ambition.

CONRAD: he was just some old ‘know-it-all’ fat guy who hung out in the building doing sessions for crap club singers [never been’s and never will be’s] and the like,

I did not “hang around the building”, I was employed in the roles I’ve described above. I was not old and I was not fat. I was 26 and skinny as a rake. I’ll admit I’m old now and have put on a few pounds. One wonders what version of me Conrad is thinking about?

CONRAD: he knew nothing about rock or metal or anything really,

I knew a lot about rock and metal.  I was there the first time around. My band, Bullfrog supported the likes of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Steppenwolf, East Of Eden, The Pretty Things, The Edgar Broughton Band, Stone The Crows and many others. The first producer I was ever in the studio with was Rodger Bain (Google Him)

CONRAD: we were gonna tie him up and lock him a flight case, but we knew he had no sense of humor and wouldn’t find it funny and he’d cry like a baby.

THE TRUTH: Absolutely nobody I have been in the studio with has accused me of not having a sense of humour. In fact quite the opposite. But “tie me up and lock me in a flight case”? That’s a pretty nasty thought. Who would find that funny?

CONRAD: The original mix of the single was awful; it sounded nothing like us.

THE TRUTH: Absolute bollocks! It sounded exactly like them.

CONRAD: So I did something that nearly got me fired from the studio as well as blowing the chance of getting the single released.

THE TRUTH Nah, Conrad, my deluded friend: The flight case prank would have got you fired and removed any chance of getting the single released.

CONRAD: When nobody was book to record one day, I put the 16 track master tape back on the machine and completely re-mixed it, just went for it without permission. I then swapped the newly mixed tape that I’d done with the other tape the other guy had mixed.

THE TRUTH: Absolute rubbish. Conrad neither had the skills nor the opportunity to do such a thing. As a 16 year old work experience kid Conrad was under my supervision. I mentored him. This did not happen. I recall he and the rest of the guys were very pleased with the recording

CONRAD: So it was my mix that got pressed up into the singles, and it was only when the label was playing the first batch of discs that arrived at the office that the producer said, ‘Hang on, that’s not my mix’. I just came clean straight away and admitted, ‘No, it’s not, it’s mine! Honestly, I nearly lost my job over that…

THE TRUTH: This did not happen. Shortly after I produced the Venom tracks I quit the studio and the label. I was not there to hear the disc and utter those words. Mickey Sweeney was never there other than in an engineering capacity. The only person likely to hear the disc would be Dave Wood. That is supposing he bothered listening. He could not give a fuck. It was heavy metal and heavy metal was selling.

CONRAD: the label people were livid. But I stand by what I did. The single sounded raw, hard and very much the way it should have been. I’ve still got the original tape at home – it’s nothing like us, I should probably just destroy it so it never gets out.”

More fantasy. It’s such a shame that Conrad makes up all these stories but it’s unforgivable that he tells lies about me to do me down and big himself up. I gave him a lot of help and gave him his first break. Luckily most people I helped back in those days are not so dismissive about it.

I have tickets to sell for a couple of talk shows in March [[2020]] so in a mercenary manner, I’m going to tell a story full of name-dropping and revealing a 35-year-old secret. In a risky strategy, the secret will reveal that I am a bit of a twat but I hope people will forgive that and still come to one of the shows.

This story dates back to 1985 and the recording of the 5th Tygers of Pan Tang album “The Wreckage”.

[[ UPDATE: May 2024 – I still have show tickets to sell https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/stanley/the-white-room-music-cafe/the-steve-thompson-band-live-at-the-white-room/e-dqqoqk ]]

The Wreckage was recorded in Johns Sykes’ studio in Blackpool (John had quit the Tygers and was now with Whitesnake). Phil Harding was in the production chair. Phil had been the engineer on the previous album “The Cage”. I wrote or co-written most of the songs and I played keyboards and bass on The Wreckage. Oddly the Tygers had folded after the huge success of their fourth album, The Cage (on which I had 3 songs including the hit single “Paris By Air”)  So this was a new line-up. There were originals Jon Deverill and Brian Dick plus two new boys: Steve Lamb and Neil Shepherd both on guitar. The new bass player had the embarrassing situation of being sacked mid-album which is how I came to play bass on The Wreckage. 

Phil commented on the poor quality of the bass playing and said a session player would be needed. I volunteered. Oddly the sacked bass player was very keen that I use his bass, a white Fender. He seemed keen that his bass would be on the album even if he wasn’t the guy playing it. I said “this will take me a couple of hours” but Phil was having none of that and declared that he wanted it all to be “Fingerstyle”, (some of the songs were fast riffy stuff). And Phil was after solid bass playing. So he put me through my paces and so it took two long days to replace all the bass parts. The process was made all that much harder by the fact I had sliced off the top of a finger opening a carton of orange juice with a studio single-edged razor blade. On the second day of bass overdubs, we were taking a break between songs when John Sykes wandered into the studio. He took one look at the bass dripping blood, said “fuck me” and

Steve Lamb revealed to me only a few years ago that I was affectionately known as “the cantankerous old bastard” on those sessions. Old? I was 38 at the time. I recall when we retired to our Blackpool digs in the evenings the boys would lay down a bottle of whisky and say “go on Steve, tell us about the old days”. 

One day we were preparing to record my song “Desert Of No Love” which I always refer to as one of my “L.A. Songs”. MCA Music, my publishers of the time had sent me to Los Angeles to work with some of their American writers. I worked particularly with Glen Ballard ( Alanis Morissette, Michael Jackson) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Ballard and Brok Walsh (Quincey Jones, Andrew Gold) https://www.discogs.com/artist/201533-Brock-Walsh – I took their influences in writing and studio techniques and wove them into a new song “Desert of No Love”. I must have had “desert” on my mind because one day (as a non-driver) I took a walk from my hotel and pretty soon the sidewalk ran out and I had a sense I was on the edge of town and going off into the desert. We domo’d the song in MCA’s studio situated in the basement of the Universal Pictures building. One evening we had to wait whilst they shot a scene for Night Rider in the basement parking lot which was the access to the studio.

So there we were in Backpool and the song was slated for inclusion on The Wreckage album. As we routined the song prior to laying down some takes we got into a discussion about the chorus. I said it’s just two chords Em to C. Neil Shepherd said no, it’s C to Em. We disagreed. We batted this back and forth. Then I snapped. There’s no excuse for what I did but I have to say in my defense that Neil was a bit of a cocky young bastard. I raised my voice to full volume, puffed out my chest and raised my aggression level to 11, and berated him in front of the whole band. I treated him to a full on rant about how I was better placed to know the chord progressions to my own songs. I probably said loads of other stuff but the red mist washed over me and I have no idea what I said.

An hour or so later I realised he was right. It was just as he’d said and I was wrong about the chord progression. To my discredit I didn’t apologise or own up. I just stayed shtum. Even though, as we recorded it Steve and Neil were playing C and Em as Neil had said and I was doing the same on keyboard. Later when I overdubbed the bass parts I was reminded how monumentally and loudly wrong I had been. I stayed silent. Later we did Desert Of No Love live on a TV show I played Keyboards (Heavily disguised) and played the chords the way Neil had observed and not as I had mistakenly said. I said nothing. I fooled myself that nobody had noticed my outburst. But they had. A few years ago Steve Lamb confided to me that Neil had said to him “Cantankerous old bastard doesn’t even know the chords to his own songs”. 

I’ve felt a little guilty about it all these years but maybe now that I’ve owned up atonement can be mine.

Now The Wreckage was not particularly NWOBHM and Desert Of No Love certainly wasn’t but you can hear more NWOBHM stuff at my talks in March 17th Trillians,Newcastle – 25th The Fish, Hartlepool – www.bit.ly/storyneat

P.S. Covid hit and neither of these shows took place

L to R: Gus Dudgeon, Steve Thompson, Peter Collins

Everyone knows Gus Dudgeon as a terrific record producer of artists like David Bowie, Elton John, Elkie Brooks, Chris Rea, Lindisfarne and many more. Nobody thinks of him as a songwriter but I know he wrote at least one song. I know this because we wrote it together. He was producing Elkie Brooks at the time and I thought it would be a great bit of politics to write a song for her with her producer. Gus saw it as a creative adventure never before having written a song. As with most things Gus it became a BIG production. Having spent the previous day at a grand piano in my publishers (MCA) offices Gus decreed that we book into the massive rehearsal studio, Nomis where I played acoustic guitar through a huge PA accompanied by a drum machine.

The full story of this episode is told in my forthcoming book but I also touch on it in my Songwriters Masterclass because Elkie although didn’t record the Dudgeon/Thompson song it was a precursor to a song of mine Elkie did record – “The Last Teardrop” and I’ll be exploring the construction of Teardrop.

Anyway, the writing session at Nomis had concluded and I was driving around London with Gus in his Aston Martin (a gift from Elton John). I think we worked late at Nomis and perhaps we’d been to dinner as it was now midnight. I suddenly remembered that I had not returned the guitar and drum machine I had borrowed from Peter Collins. Peter was also a producer who was tearing the UK charts apart with acts like Tracey Ullman, Alvin Stardust and Nik Kershaw. Peter had also produced a number of my songs including Paris By Air (Tygers of Pan Tang). We headed over to Peter’s flat and Gus called Peter up: flash git, he was probably one of the few people to own a car phone in 1984. Peter answered. We’d obviously woken him up. He responded with “ok, where are you coming from?” To which Gus replied, “we’re outside your gaff now old boy”. This clearly must have freaked Peter out as we were at his door and he was obliged to answer in his dressing gown. The two producers had never met so I made the introductions and Peter made coffee. He fucked up the coffee, I later realized he was very nervous.

So Gus asked Peter if he minded if he roll a joint. Peter had no objections but didn’t participate. So began a great storytelling session. There I was between two of the UK’s top record producers listening to tales of daring-do. As usual, I was amazed at Gus’s  ability to go off on several tangents and still arrive back at his original point of departure and all the while partaking of the weed. Gus regaled us with the full tale of making Space Oddity with Bowie, how he came to be doing it, the processes and the players. Then Peter told us how he had recorded “Wouldn’t It Be Good” with Nik Kershaw and how he took the tapes to L.A. to record the brass parts. Maybe not quite the gravitas as the Bowie story but it had the benefit of being a current hit. At one point one or the other of them asked me about my Heavy Metal productions and I probably said something like “stick the mic in front of the cabinet, crank up the vol and hope for the best”. This all went on a good while and Gus and I eventually left around 2 am. It’s a lovely memory to have of him. Of course, there is a good deal more to this story, some of it will be told in my Songwriters Masterclass and some in my book (eventually)