HELLO THERE!
I hope your summer is the best ever.
The live shows have been magnificent.
Southampton, Dublin, Brentwood, Rock n’ Bike, Stockport , Rewind Scotland and beautiful, beautiful Holt! And it’s not over yet Rewind North, Rewind South, Belgium, Morecombe are all to come before the autumn tour starts.
When I got to Dublin, there where problems with getting transport to Palmerstown House so Paul Masterson and his partner picked me up from the airport in the wee early hours of the morning. Paul and I wrote Fallen together and they stayed with me for the day, it was so lovely to have his company and we ended up sunbathing in a field with some of the Big Country guys. It turned into a glorious day out. I managed to stay and see Marc Almond’s amazing set then back to a very late Ryanair flight to Birmingham. One blessing on landing the stewards didn’t play that horrible “we are on time” music.
It’s been a month of Quad40 . Sky Arts have filmed a script read at Shepard’s Bush Empire. It was very interesting to have us round a table talking about how the scenes where shot, how we approached our characters, because we are all so radically different as people to the characters we played.
Phil Daniels was magnificent, he doesn’t like being asked questions at the best of times, which results in great throw away “I don’t care comments”, he is so punk. In make-up a very helpful runner asked if he would like a sandwich, if so what filling and his reply is one I am going to steal from now on when people are too helpful on film sets “what are you a detective?”
Phil Davis has no idea that he is one of the worlds best actors ever, it isn’t that he is modest, he seriously seems to have no idea how bloody talented he is. Trevor Laird is the best human being ever, Gary Shail has the best recall of all of us. Mark Wingett and Garry Cooper are soooooo Mod and Leslie Ash is deceptively strong…as in tough.
Sky Arts turned the theatre into a TV studio for the day.
The majority of the audience where Mods who influenced the re-emergence of the movement on 1980. It was rammed and noisy and you could feel the love.
I remember when WOGAN was recorded in this theatre in the 1980’s with the huge rolling cameras on stage, this time state of the art cameras on cranes floated above our heads, screens behind us relayed messages from those who couldn’t be there.
There must be a Drama series made about the characters now, in present day, the characters would have had such varied and troubled lives, this film has fans around the world, especially in LA where the films following is surprisingly large. A TV series about the social group today would be the cherry on the cake.
Lauren Laverne presented the script read, I never realised she was a huge Quad fan…..she new every moment in the film with a passion.
In the afternoon, before the recording, back stage none of us stayed in our dressing rooms, instead we piled into the green room, crammed on two sofas …Phil Daniels listening to sports results and the other boys, Trevor Laird, Phil Davis, Gary Shail, Mark Wingett, Garry Cooper all glued to the cricket…or was it football? Or was it tennis? Or was it golf? Leslie and myself giggling at the fierce concentration when someone was about to score.
At the end of the day the head of Sky Arts said “you guys really love each other don’t you?” Yep, that is correct, we are still as solid as a rock.
Photo courtesy Richard Goldspink