I have a few good Rock and Roll excess stories from the Ligotage days, like when the band flooded the gent’s toilet at the very expensive recording studio Sarm West and the time we spilt wine all over the SSL mixing desk at the equally pricey Maison Rouge. Our debut gig at the Marquee saw us play to a sold-out house with various rock stars in attendance but ended in a big punch-up where our A&R man Hugh Stanley-Clark got a black eye. He went on and on about it for weeks and got even more pissed off with us when the band started booking cabs all over London in his name and sticking the fares on EMI’s bill. We also spent a week at a residential recording studio in Chipping Norton, where we recorded half a single but spent most of our time in the pub and playing pranks on each other.
We rehearsed at Nomis in west London, and Motörhead were rehearsing across the hall from us. Ligotage’s guitarist Mo wanted to meet Brian Robertson, who was playing guitar for Motorhead at the time, so we went in to see him, and he was lying on the floor virtually comatose with a bottle of whisky next to him and smoke and flames coming from his amp. We all ended up in the pub together, and Lemmy sat on the bar stool next to me and attempted to seduce me with one of the worst chat-up lines I have ever heard, namely, ‘I was the first one in my band to have anal warts.’ Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work, in spite of him insisting that my eventual conquest was ‘inevitable’ (which, just for the record, it wasn’t) and him raiding the ladies loo trying to find me.
The ‘Crime and Passion’ EP Ligotage did was pretty good; it was produced by Dale Griffin and Pete Overend Watts of Mott The Hoople, but overall, Ligotage was an example of how not to run a band. It ended very badly for me because I was left with the band’s debt; I was jointly and severally liable with Igor, Ligotage’s manager, and he did a runner and left me to the mercies of the VAT man, the Inland Revenue, and the bank manager. I ended up ill and broke in a basement flat in Bayswater that was deemed unfit for human habitation, trying to sell off the flight cases to pay some of the debt. It was a very hard lesson about human nature; nearly all my ‘friends’ disappeared when I lost my deal, and I was forced to grow up very quickly. Most people would have gone back to their parents with their tails between their legs, but I decided to carry on.