Depending who you asked, The Pressure Stops were a 70’s “Punk/Post Punk/New Wave/Indie” band, from Harlow, Essex.

That’s what they were. But do we know who they were? Over the next few blogs we should start to find out.

Forming in 1978, the Pressure Stops recorded two singles on Airplay Records, which were played on BBC’s Radio 1 by John Peel¹.  There is also apocryphal “evidence” to suggest they may have once scraped into the Rough Trade chart for one week at No. 49. They disbanded in 1981.

Who Were The Pressure Stops?

The Pressure Stops members were as follows:-

This then, is a history of The Pressure Stops as I remember it. This summary includes additional notes from other Stops members (where stated).

I think it’s fair to say, the Pressure Stops 1st single wasn’t to everyone’s taste. But Radio 1’s John Peel liked it. My wife Vikki didn’t think much of it though. Below is a “Crimewatch Reconstruction” of what happened the first time she heard it (video needs sound for full effect).

Choose Your Weapon

For my 11th birthday, the guitar I received was both the best and worst present ever. And anyone who’s struggled to play it, will understand the disparate dilemma it can cause.  It was a ¾ size six-string acoustic which came with a Lazy Susan Guitar Method book for beginners and the first thing I had to do was learn how to restring the guitar for a left-handed player; a move I have regretted to this day. 

Left Hookers

Since the age of 5 I’d been ‘playing’ the tennis racket guitar and had come to be fairly adroit at strumming with my left hand and working the “neck” with my right.  So, it appeared difficult to swap over, even if I had understood the complications being a lefty would later cause. 

Still, Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix had both done ok so why should I have worried?²

“I bought a guitar from my mate James Doherty’s brother Tony, and that was the first guitar I ever had. I paid about £30 for it and I still have it.  Anyway, I took it home but didn’t have a clue what to do with it, so my stepbrother taught me how to do a blues riff thing. And that was the first time I had a guitar, picked up a guitar, learnt something.  I was fifteen and the guitar always seemed an accessible instrument.”

Roy Phillips

Pressure Play

My Dad always maintained that the look of horror, confusion and disbelief on my face, when I first strummed the guitar and this horrifically discordant and bizarre noise emanated from the sound hole, was the funniest thing he’d seen in years.  But it didn’t deter me.  Because, those blokes on the telly, effortlessly rattling through a twelve-bar improvised solo with ease and dexterity, were my inspiration.  And it looked so simple.  I had no idea I’d still be wrestling with it over forty-five years later.

“I tried learning guitar. A guy my dad used to work with, Pete Sherwin, who was quite a good guitarist, he played in bands in the East End, and his band supported the likes of Freddie and the Dreamers and Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, not sure if it was them specifically, but those types of bands. So he tried to teach me but I could never get the guitar to tune up! When it came to singing, I just wanted to show off a bit.”

Steve Coulson

“Then I bought, or was given, Bert Weedon’s “Play In A Day” guitar book and taught myself some chords.  Loads of famous guitarists used that book to learn how to play.”

Roy

Bertie

In deference to Bert Weedon, who’s book I didn’t have, Roy was correct.  John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Brian May, Pete Townshend, Sting and Mike Oldfield are just some of the musicians who started on guitar with Bert Weedon’s book.  So, Roy trod the same early footsteps of many other, more famous contemporaries.

You can read more about Bert here…Bert Weedon – Wikipedia

“In my late teens, I got caught up in some stuff called Punk, and no one seemed to have a drum kit. And, despite music being a very important part of my life by now, my own seeming lack of any musically proficient bent seemed no obstacle to buying a kit and being able to make a reasonably coherent racket. Plus, I would be in demand.”

Clive Richardson

EKO

One day in 1975, I visited Muzart, a musical instrument shop in Bishop’s Stortford. There I bought a second-hand EKO Ranger 6 Dreadnought acoustic which cost £45.  The guy knocked a fiver off because I’d come all the way from Harlow on the train (all of three stops). 

I had the EKO for about 40 years before it met an untimely and messy end.  I maintain it was due to diminished responsibility, after some psychological issues came to visit (and on that occasion they stayed for about a year). One day they decided I should recreate a 60’s Who gig, and I smashed the guitar into a brick chimney breast.   But before I’d magically transformed the guitar back into its component parts, it provided me with a stepping-stone into the world of music, bands, song-writing, and gigs.

Early Music

“From a very young age (5-8 maybe) we had an old Bush transistor radio in the kitchen at home. I remember hearing a lot of Fire Brigade by The Move on that radio. For a 7-year-old boy it was pretty cool hearing fire bells on the radio, and grown-ups going wee-ooh, wee-ooh (Roy Wood). ”

Clive

“My earliest memory of music is “Yeah Yeah” by Georgie Fame. I loved that song.”

Roy

There were plenty of songs a lot worse than that one. Oh look, here’s one now…

“The first song I really remember getting into was Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by Middle of the Road.”

Steve C

“I also remember ‘Ruby – don’t take your love to town’ by Kenny Rogers, and even at that tender age it seemed obvious to me that he’d had his dick blown off in ‘Nam and he could no longer satisfy his wife.“

Clive

Freddie

My earliest favourite was Freddie and the Dreamers, You Were Made For Me. But it was Freddie’s dance moves that had me hooked. Did grown men do this type of thing? Apparently yes, and they made a career out of it.

I Belong To The ____ Generation

However, listening to, buying and attempting to play music was one thing, what we needed was a reason to start a band, a vehicle which would propel us forward into the limelight of superstardom, or whatever the hell it was we were looking for.

Although we didn’t know it, the vehicle in question was parked up in a lay-by just around the corner, waiting to pick us up and take us on a joyride to nowhere. The vehicle was called Punk and like many others, we didn’t look it over to ensure it was safe or roadworthy, we just jumped right on in.

NEXT – PART 2 – PEACHES

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1. One certainly was
2. The only connection McCartney, Hendrix and I have ever had is we are all left-handed guitarists.  As for ability, there is no correlation whatsoever.