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