Magic Dan: A Tale from 1980s One Hit Wonderland

By Mick Kelly

December 1985 and New Romancer’s first single had peaked at number 40. Keyboard player Jonnie Cole’s dreams of girls, money, girls, travel, girls, drugs, girls and music seemed to have stalled. But with new hit producer ‘Magic’ Dan McCloud on board, 1986 looked like being their year.

Join them on their first tour of Europe as they discover themselves, each other and the dangerous cargo they have unwittingly stowed on the tour bus.

CAUTION: This tale of sex, drugs and synthesisers contains all three, plus a lot of swearing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mick Kelly
• Release date: Mar 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370018758

Mick Kelly

After many years work, I quit my freelance IT role to become a full-time author. I now have two books published with two more in the pipeline. I was born in Liverpool and now live in New Brighton – just across the river Mersey from my home town. Between those two places I have lived in London and worked in many locations in the UK, Europe and the U.S.A. during my days in IT. Indeed the writing habit was developed during the many nights spent in hotels. Alledgedly as a method for keeping out of the bar. Currently I divide my time between writing, music (I have played the guitar since my teenage years and am now learning the fiddle) and attempting to master Spanish. I live with my wonderful wife and an elderly cat.

Book preview

December 1985

Thursday 12th

You think being in a band is all late night parties, unlimited sex, top quality drugs and being interviewed by 'journalists'. You don't imagine early-morning meetings with what we laughingly called 'management'. However you live and learn. So at 10:30 on a grey Thursday morning we were sitting in Degsie's office. Derek Daniels, our manager. Fat, forties and foul-mouthed, he was the granite-faced bouncer who we hoped would let us in to the wonderful night club of girls, money, girls, drugs, girls, travel and girls - oh, and music too.

Our first single charted at number 40. Despite a week of radio appearances the second week saw it drop to 73. Hell, it was better than not charting at all. Howie said we were more of an album band. That's the kind of thing Howie says. Maybe it's the kind of thing all bass players say. Anyway, with Christmas three weeks away, it looked like 1985 wasn't going to be our year. But 1986 was still there for the taking.

Degsie was talking – it was difficult for him, which is why he had to throw in a 'fuck' every third or fourth word. He had been talking for quite a while. He would probably carry on for quite a while longer. Meanwhile I turned my mind to the more urgent matter of sex. You see, I was the keyboard player. Any of the few nice girls that turned up at our gigs or appearances tended to go for Graham even though our sexually ambivalent singer was more interested in boys. So failing any interest from him the girls went for Jake our axe-hero guitarist and even Howie. I only scored over The Hulk, our drummer, on the grounds that he wasn't human.

As a keyboard player, girls thought I was an intellectual, more intelligent than the others. That was certainly true. But they seemed to think me less interested in matters of the body. When I got any girls at all, I got the ones who wanted to talk about philosophy for hours. Frustrating. Degsie was still going on....

'Don't get me wrong lads, I'm not sayin' it's shite – just needs a bit of – you know – tweaking – and he's the fucker to tweak it.'

'Who is?' I said.

'Are you fuckin' back with us?' I do love a scouse accent, so sweet and lyrical, especially from the mouth of an Adonis like Degsie. He had been in our position nearly twenty years ago, in one of the last groups to be counted as part of the Liverpool Sound. No doubt he had done his share of sitting in the offices of various ex-crooners or whatever they had in the fifties. No doubt he was insulted and patronised by those has-beens. Now it was our turn.

'I'm fuckin' talking about Magic Dan McCloud. We're gonna hire the fucker for your second single'.

'To do what?' I said, living dangerously. Degsie got a little redder in the face.

'Look mate, what comes out of this end' he gestured with a trotter at his mouth, 'them's werds. You're supposed to fuckin' listen. If it comes out the other end' - he farted – which he could do at will – 'you can probably ignore it – if you can.' He laughed at his own joke – well it was one of his better ones.

'Magic Dan is gonna do you a twelve inch'.

Me and Graham had mixed the last one. That is, I had played the tape, added the loops, segued them in, balanced the mix, panned the stereo and so on. Graham had snorted a lot, coughed a lot, sneezed a bit before going out to score some more coke. I didn't see him for three days. He liked being a star but I don't think he was that keen on being a musician. I opened my mouth to object to the appropriation of my job.

Degsie's face went redder still and I closed my mouth to reconsider. Degsie relaxed a little. I'd got us to number 40. Magic Dan would probably give us our money back if he couldn't do better than that.

'When?'

'We're sending the masters over now.'

'Which track are we releasing?'

Degsie smiled at me. He doesn't often do that. With teeth like his, neither would I.

'We' – he paused to emphasise the inclusiveness – 'will release whatever fuckin' track Magic fuckin' Dan thinks he can fuckin' whip into fuckin' shape.'

Sometimes the poetry in Degsie's soul just shines through. It was probably time to go 'home' to the London flat I was sharing with Howie and the others, but I had to have the last word.

'Well we are supposed to be touring so we might not be available to do any re-recording.'

'I don't think you'll be required. Magic Dan knows some fuckin' musicians, the kind that can fuckin' play.'

On the way out I stopped to chat to Sandie – she was – well I don't know what she was – P.A? secretary? accountant? – she was lovely though, and definitely female. I could tell she had the hots for me by the way she only ever talked about Graham.

'We're having a party at the weekend' – well I could arrange one if I had too.

'Is Graham coming?' - I would have said something crude but she looked at me with her big tawny brown eyes and I pictured – well, I'll keep that to myself.

'Yes sure, Graham will be there.'

'Where?' Graham walked up to the desk. 'You having a party tonight Sandie? Sounds divine, but I don't want to make Gideon jealous.'

Gideon was his latest boyfriend – not that it seemed to stop Graham when it came to flirting with girls but these days, he left it at the flirting stage.

'Anyway, love, we can't, we're all going over to Magic Dan's, apparently.'

'Since when?' I said.

'Derek's right, you do live in a dream world, Jonnie, dear boy.'

It's true, I'm afraid, the real one is too brutal, too cruel, too lacking in the one thing that keeps a man up in the bedroom practicing scales and chords when he could be out clubbing – the promise of mindless, unfulfilling, instinctive, animal sex. It turned out that we had been summoned by the great man. We were to be there at nine that night in his studio in St Johns Wood.

We shared two taxis back to our dive in Camden. Well, it wasn't really a dive when we moved in, but it was now. The cleaner had quit two weeks ago and there were smells from the kitchen that suggested new life forms.

Graham and Gideon had the top flat (he liked to call it a Penthouse), Jake the axman and The Hulk on the first floor, while me and Howie had the ground floor flat. We all shared the front door and stairs, so it was pretty nominal. There was also a basement that had been half-heartedly soundproofed and we used it for rehearsals. Once in, I dumped my coat, grabbed a little bag of grass and headed downstairs with Howie.

The basement had two sets of equipment. One set was the stage stuff - all synthesisers, steel and shiny plastic. The other set was our old gear from our heavy metal days. Old, scuffed, frayed and loud. Off-duty, it was the old stuff we went for. I suppose I was the exception. I had junked all my old keyboards in favour of newer models. I was in my element with my DX7s and Emulator. I still wasn't allowed to buy a Synclavier - too expensive. Though Degsie had promised I could have one if we got a number one.

Howie plugged his real bass – a Fender Jazz – into the Marshal stack and started to grind out a slow funk. On stage 'Image' dictated that he had to use a Roland electronic bass and synth.  Playing his real bass, Howie almost smiled – his mouth forming a straight line across his round face, rather than the usual downturned U. He didn't bother with hair-lacquer when off-stage, so his streaked mousey hair hung over his ears. He was small – we all were – and his Coventry City shirt did no favours in hiding his little pot-belly. The huge Fender Jazz did a better job of disguising his love of lager and curries.

I left Howie to the funk and rolled up a long relaxing smoke. I'd barely filled my lungs for the second time, when the smell brought Jake down from upstairs. He had his old black Les Paul guitar in one hand, his box of effects in the other, and a fag in his mouth. On-stage  he pranced about with a Roland GR700 - a mirror to the synth-bass that Howie played but off-stage the Les Paul was rarely out of his hand.

He was wearing his usual torn jeans and a black Judas Priest tee shirt. He plugged into his stack, taking the joint from me and pulling deeply on it a couple of times before sticking it in Howie's mouth, and going back to his fag. Jake's usual expression hovered between a sneer and a smile and I was never sure if it was because of his attitude or the fact that he always had a cigarette in his mouth.

He hit some clean, high chords and they jammed, evolving into 'Superstition' with Jake playing the Clavinet part that I should have been hammering out, if I wasn't having a little John Travolta moment, dancing towards them and grabbing the joint. And so we passed the afternoon, jamming and smoking, smoking and jamming on a grey December day in north London.

It was nearly ten when we arrived outside the tall white house in St Johns Wood. Degsie's Jaguar was already there when we tumbled out of the taxis and stood on the gravel drive looking at the few glimmers of light that escaped the curtains.

Graham advanced on the doorbell and played it masterfully. Inside the house a dog barked, and was joined by another. A deep bark joined by a deeper one. A muffled swearing brought the picture to my mind of Igor pulling back the wolf-hounds by their ancient chains. I was rather disappointed when the door was opened by a woman in her middle thirties, with two rather roly-poly Labradors.

'Ah, the band – Daniel is really looking forward to this. I'm Dotty – my name, not a description. Do come in, and don't mind the boys.' A torrent of words came from her rather lovely mouth, delivered in an impossibly posh accent.

We had all acquired a 'nice' accent – Image again – despite coming from Leicester, but her cut-glass delivery was the real thing. She wore a chunky 'ethnic' waistcoat over her ancient Hendrix tee shirt and faded jeans. She was slim and tall – five or six inches higher than my five foot four inches (on a good day). Following her down the wide hall, I felt like a tradesman summoned by a duchess.

Graham attempted to interject a camp quip or two, but he was trying to swim upstream against the tide of her relentless chatter. He soldiered on, admiring the wallpaper, the book-lined walls, the paintings, while studiously avoiding any contact with the dogs.

'Have you eaten – I'm afraid cook's gone home for the night, but I can rustle up something if you fancy anything.' We muttered variations on 'no thanks' as she guided us down the corridor to where we could hear the muffled thump of a bass.

I was third in line behind Graham and Jake and could only see the back of her blonde head – Graham and axe-hero Jake were the same height as me, while Howie was the big man of the group at five foot six, and he was behind me. The Hulk 'stood' at fifteen hands from floor to forehead and he was bringing up the rear.

Oh yes – and Gideon came after him. He only thought he was in the band. He had written a couple of songs with Graham, but never appeared on stage though I think it was his ambition to replace me as the keyboard player. Graham seemed to be rather enjoying playing us off against each other.

We went down a short staircase and Dotty opened a wide heavy door, letting out a blast of a bass-heavy dance groove, and we wandered into the studio control room.

Degsie was standing there, chewing an unlit cigar – it was so big, I doubt if he could reach the end to light it. Sitting at the mixing desk was a hippie. You get a lot of them in the music business. Even sitting down, he looked tall and thin. Long lank brown hair descended from a bald spot to almost hide his thin grey face. His eyes were brown, with yellowish whites, a little bloodshot. A couple of day's growth of stubble further hid the long creases in the cheeks that framed his permanent frown.

In all the subsequent time I knew him, I never saw him clean-shaven and I never saw him with a proper beard. I just don't know how he did it. He cut the tape and the music died. Degsie prodded his cigar in the hippie's direction.

'This is Dan, lads –he's going to give you a number one.'

Magic Dan grunted something I couldn't catch. Degsie was waving his cigar around...

'He's listened to the whole album and he's picked the top one.'

Now, we are a band – all for one, one for all, and all that sort of thing. Except when it comes to girls, money, equipment, billing, clothes, cars and writing credits. Here it's every man for himself. Graham and I wrote seven of the eleven tracks on the album, while he and Gideon had another two. Howie and I had one more and The Hulk had the last track on side one.

Our first single, 'Hard Landing' had been a Hutchings / Cole composition – Graham and me - so it was natural that the second be another, but I felt a frisson of tension as we all looked at Magic Dan.

'I reckon on 'Take Me Home, Trudie' – just right for the post-Christmas market, it's got a lovely after-the-party feeling. Nice.'

Nice! I must admit that I laughed. Graham spluttered while The Hulk displayed what might have been a smile, and grunted.

When it came to including The Hulk's track on the album it was only threats of physical violence that swayed our judgement. A three-chord song with an inverted middle eight, it might have come straight out of the sixties. We had a bugger of a job cutting it on synths. I wanted to put a more interesting chord in here and there – a ninth, maybe a suspended – but The Hulk wouldn't have any of it.

Two major chords and a seventh. My piano teacher would have sneered at me – mind you, he always did.

Degsie loved it, of course. I think he even called it a 'toe-tapper', while I did my best to compress my lips into a thin line to express my contempt – wasted on Degsie, he'd been held in contempt by better men than me.

'This is going to put New Romancer at the top of the charts.'

I don't know if I have ever explained the name to anyone – we weren't supposed to talk about it. Sounds a bit dated now, but 'New Romancer' we were.

Originally, me, Howie, Jake and The Hulk had been in a heavy metal band called 'Neuromancer' – after the William Gibson book. Our singer at the time, Case, lived for sci-fi, and even took the name of the book's (anti) hero. We played a few gigs and at one of those Graham saw us. He was taking a risk in a heavy metal bar wearing his ruffles and frock coat, but headbangers don't really deserve their reputation – well, most of the time.

He collared our Guitar God, Jake, after the gig and asked the name of the band. In the din of the low-ceilinged pub he mis-heard it.

'But you don't look like New Romantics', he said, 'I'll have to change your clothes – well, change them a bit – I do like the leather.'

And that was basically that. Case was sacked, Graham was in, and Jake, Howie and I were wearing lace with our leather trousers while The Hulk wore leather shorts and fingerless leather gloves. Even in the Midlands the New Romantic thing was a bit dated - but not with Graham.

It wasn't that we wanted to dress like monkeys and play cod soul with pretentious lyrics, it was more that Graham would not be denied. He was two years older than us, and that counted for a lot. He also knew 'people' – so he said, though we never really found out what people.

He could also have won a gold medal for needling, whingeing and generally banging on about how The World needed to let Graham do what Graham wanted to do. I'm not saying he was spoilt, but I think his mum and dad still have a collection of golden thrones of various sizes as a memento of his childhood.

He was at it now with Magic Dan.

'I do know what you mean – it's a sweet song, and he is such a dear – but really, I think I know our market, and I really think that they would be best pleased with 'Why Now?' or 'Love is So Last Year.'

Magic Dan looked at him as if sizing up an opponent in a poker game.

'Take Me Home, Trudie' is the one I've picked.'

I won't bore you with the next half an hour. Magic Dan never spoke another word. He left it to Degsie. We got to the point of Degsie threatening to pull out a copy of our contract to point out the clause that gave the management total freedom to choose release dates and content.

Graham left – trying to slam the sound-proofed door, but not succeeding as it weighed a ton. He still managed an impressive flounce.

Gideon patted The Hulk on the arm in a conciliatory gesture and followed Graham.

As Graham's main writing partner I should have followed him, but – well, I could learn a lot from Magic Dan.

Jake and Howie stayed as well, though they looked a bit shame-faced.

'O.K. Let's get started.' Magic Dan came back to life.

I pulled out some grass and a packet of cigarettes.

'Magic Dan doesn't allow no smoking in the studio', said Degsie, waving the unlit cigar.

'Really', I said – prepared to flounce out myself. I don't like being ordered around, and once a night is enough.

Magic Dan reached under the mixing desk and pulled out a bag of white powder, and threw it to me.

'Go easy – it's top stuff.'

Well, I'm not a man to refuse another man's hospitality, and it looked like being a long night.

Friday 13th

I was wrecked.

Jake and Howie had left the studio not long after midnight – mixing didn't interest them and the allure of the nightclubs was too great. Besides, it has been over three hours since Jake had had his last cigarette – a record, in my book. Degsie went at about one – I think it was time for a quick half bottle of whisky and bed. That left me with Magic Dan and The Hulk.

Magic Dan was right about the cocaine – it was top stuff. Magic Dan did not indulge while working. The Hulk had a bit but I had the majority.

I was practically running around the studio. I felt completely in control of the recording session – The other two assisted as best they could while trying to keep up with the torrent of my ideas.

Well, that's what it felt like. In reality (whatever that is) Magic Dan got on with his job, and kept me occupied with the Bolivian Marching Powder.

The Hulk did what The Hulk did best – nothing much. All I really contributed was a sampled guitar solo, played on Magic Dan's Fairlight.

We (we?) had it all done by about five, and ended up in the kitchen with Dotty, eating cheese on toast, eyed hungrily by the dogs. Dotty had kept up an endless stream of words as she cut the bread, rattled the grill pan, sliced the cheese, fed the dogs some biscuits, poured the tea, asked me about my plans for Christmas, explained that they would be in Germany and finally lapsed into silence as she ate – being too well brought up to talk with her mouth full, I guess.

Magic Dan didn't talk much. He finished half his cheese on toast, pushed the plate away and said...

'That sampled guitar isn't right – good tune, Jonnie, but I think we need a real guitar.'

'Well, it's not really Jake's style', I said – it had a 24-note triple-time arpeggio from low G over four octaves – I couldn't see many guitarists doing it –  maybe some obscure jazzer or maybe Jimi Hendrix, the man on Dotty's chest.

'Not a problem', Magic Dan said 'I've got someone – I'll get him over for this afternoon.'

Well, I didn't want to lose control of 'my' session, so I hung around while Magic Dan arranged everything for five in the afternoon. We managed to get a taxi and head back to the flat, in the rain.

When we arrived, the place was almost in darkness. Jake and Howie were still out, Graham and Gideon were in bed, so me and The Hulk shared a quick spliff and turned in. Needless to say I couldn't sleep, thanks to the coke.

I tossed and turned, analysing – yet again – my relationship with Graham. When he first took over the band he was eager for anyone who could write a tune. Case having been dumped, Jake was the only songwriter in the band at that time.

All his stuff was metal, though – he thought Iron Maiden a bit high-brow, and preferred AC/DC or Motörhead, and his own music reflected it.

Graham started trying out little bits with me. I had been classically trained (sort of – I'd got to grade six before losing interest) and I knew how to construct a chord sequence. We seemed to hit it off, and the songs started to flow. Graham had a good ear – he didn't read music and had to rely on memory. Above all, he knew what suited his delivery, and what he could do with the numbers on stage. I looked up to him and saw our partnership as our route to stardom and riches.

We played around Leicester and out to Birmingham and Nottingham, getting a bit of a reputation, and finding out what worked and what didn't. What really set us apart, though, was Graham's stage presence. People would come just to see what he was wearing. While we guarded our flight cases and amps, he would have laid down his life for his make-up case and suit-carrier.

Though as small as the rest of us, he was thin and rangy – he looked tall and acted taller still. His long face was sinewy and seemed to hold a real inner strength. His hair had been dyed so often he had forgotten its original colour, but his skin was fair and might have been freckled, if it ever saw the light of day.

Degsie turned up to one of our gigs, in response to a demo tape we had sent him. Graham had dyed his hair bright red to match the shirt he was half-wearing. He had tight white trousers, and boots with a three inch heel. He had painted a red lightning flash on the boots, Bowie style, and was camping it up to the hilt.

We