Early song writing attempts were poor (i.e. Lover Next Door poor), but nobody seemed to mind that much.

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Blakdale

When I asked Roy more recently why he wanted to join a band his response was unequivocal.

“Well because I suppose Coulson (Steve) told me we were going to start a band. It was almost as simple as that. It was like ‘you can play a bit of guitar, you can sing’, so let’s go round my house and work on some songs.  I met Steve at work, at Blakedales (sic).”

Roy

Audition Them While They Audition You

A week or two later, we agreed to meet at Roy’s sister’s house since they would be out for the day.  Clive agreed to come along too. He brought his drumsticks to do paradiddles¹ on the furniture and I brought my EKO acoustic. 

We knocked about the two songs Roy had serenaded me with and I asked him about all the other songs he had.

“There’s no others.  That’s all I have,” he replied.

“But you were going on about your songs like you had loads of them,” I said incredulously. 

“I don’t think so,” he laughed.  “You decided that.”

I shook my head.  He was probably right.  “So,” he said, turning to me.  “What have you got?”

“Well, I’ve got this one I’ve been messing about with recently.  It’s called “Lover Next Door.””

Lover Next Door?

Quite why nobody told me Lover Next Door was the shittiest song title anyone has ever dreamt up, I have no idea.²

Play It

All they said was, “Well come on then.  Play it.”

I was less enthusiastic now I was in the spotlight, so I shrugged shyly and said (just as any true artiste would) “But it’s not finished.  The song’s not ready yet.” I’d come up with it while Clive and me had been practicing in my dad’s garage but didn’t finish it until January ’79, so this was very early take on it. Lyrics always took me a long time to write, so it was probably that which delayed its completion.

Agg

“Well play us what you have got then,” said Roy.  “Come on Aggis,” said Clive. Aggis, or Agg, I should point out was a nickname I’d picked up in primary school and it had stuck. A friend, Vincent Croft, used to pronounce my surname “Aggums”, which eventually became “Aggis”.

Pressure Pivot

Anyway, I was here now and all the years of trying to start a band, play guitar and sing my own songs had all come to rest on this point. On this very moment.  This was pivotal, my whole performing career hinged on what happened next. But now the moment I had so fervently been waiting for, for so long, had finally arrived I didn’t relish it one bit.

No one had heard my songs before, except my younger sister Sarah, and she didn’t count.  I was about to bare my soul to complete strangers (well strange at least) and I discovered I wasn’t so enamoured or confident about my a.) guitar b.) singing or c.) my song-writing ability.  I took a moment to calm myself and started to play a choppy chord progression in D.  It was 4/4 time with two beats on each chord:- D, A, G, A then it repeated for the verse, and the chorus was a turnaround on the chords with four beats on each:- G, A, D, D.  I started singing the chorus, “Ooh, ooh she a lover next door, ooh, ooh you know what that’s for.” Good grief.

Hardcore 70’s Rap

I stopped and said,  “Then it stops dead at the end of the chorus and Clive comes in on drums with the bass and snare to kick it into the verse.  There’s a talking bit too, like a bridge (MCing or rapping didn’t exist in Essex, or perhaps anywhere, then), where I play a G and A like this with a palm muting thing, Steve would talk over it and the drums start low and build up until we go back into the chorus.” 

I started to play and sing the next verse, stopped, explained the next section and, because the nerves had kicked in, I began to talk for England.  “So, the drum pattern is like this, the bass goes like that, the vocals shift up on the second chorus and the guitar drops down to a chunky rhythm and it builds to the ending, like this…” 

I stopped talking and playing, and looked up.  Everyone was sitting and staring at me.

“What?” I asked, grinning at them nervously.

Silence

Silence ensued, and they continued staring.

“That’s a fucking excellent pop song,” Roy said punctuating the atmosphere.  The others agreed.  I’d passed the audition to my own band!  “Play it again,” they said.

So I did, and they joined in on the ‘ooh oohs’ in the chorus.  “That’s an inspired chord progression Agg,” said Roy.  “What’s it called again?” he asked. “Lover Next Door,” I replied. He nodded silently and the moment was gone. What was inspiring was the positive response I got to my first attempt at writing a song. 

Well, it wasn’t my very first, because that was the equally dreadfully titled, “Smoking Can Damage Your Health.” It was a story of a girl who goes to a nightclub and meets a man who later kills her, because he didn’t like her smoking.  A bit of an extreme response to lighting up a Benson & Hedges I’d say. Thankfully, the song was never completed.

Sarah

My younger sister Sarah liked it though, she used to sing it to her friends when they came to the house and they’d all bop along like they’d heard it on Top of the Pops.

“Your lyrics and songs were so much better than mine.  You clearly put a lot more into it than I ever did.  All of it, the song writing and everything else.”

Roy

This is where I disagree with Roy. My lyrics were simplistic nonsense with little or no originality. One of my favourite lyrics of ours was this, which I’d forgotten about until I recently:-

“My wife has left me, he was a yob,

But I’m still happy ’cause I got my job.”

People On The side

And that was one of Roy’s.

Fully Formed Rubbish

“So, you’ve arranged the song then?” asked Steve.  “Yeah, sort of,” I replied.  “Well, I’ve got the drum beat and the bass line and I’ve put it together with the chords and the melody for the verses, chorus, Middle 8 and an Intro and that.  So pretty much.”

I did all of that naturally with songs because I could hear it all in my head.  It was just there, waiting to be used.  I sort of assumed everyone did that but later discovered that wasn’t the case.  I mean the song was rubbish, let’s not pretend otherwise, but it came as fully formed rubbish. 

Later though, Roy would tire of me explaining how the bassline should be played and suddenly he wasn’t so much of a kindred spirit anymore, but more of a pain in the backside (but I still love him to bits).  But that’s one of the untold joys of being in a band and one of the many things that stops you from getting a bit too full of yourself.

Late For The Train

Not that any of this would’ve stopped me. Because I was on a one way ticket to stardom. I didn’t actually possess the ticket, or know how long it would take to get there. But I didn’t let that deter me. I’d worry about the detail as and when it was necessary.

But, to get to your destination, it’s imperative everyone on the journey is pulling in the same direction, and as I soon discovered, that didn’t automatically happen by right. And Roy was correct, it was about finding the right people, but I didn’t know that. And 45 years later, I’m still looking.

NEXT – PART 7 – ANOTHER GIRL, ANOTHER PLANET

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1. A quick succession of drumbeats slower than a roll
2. In truth, somebody had warned me about my choice of song title. Dermot Donovan, the drummer with Howard Like. I used to see him at Harlow Station fairly often and he warned me against it. “You can’t write songs like Lover Next Door, you need to look at something a bit more original. A bit more authentic. You can’t be in a punk band writing stuff like that!” He had a point, and I respected his opinion. Eventually I took the message on board. That was how Crash Wanderer got its moniker. Because I was desperately searching for a song title that didn’t exist anywhere else and didn’t sound like a 5-year-old with special needs had come up with it. I probably went a little overboard with that one, since nobody had any idea what it meant. People would say, “Crash Wanderer? What does that mean?” And I’d sigh inwardly and think, ‘Fuck me, you can’t win can you.’
3. For some odd reason Lover Next Door isn’t mentioned in any history of Rap Music. Rapping – Wikipedia