The Ballad Of Vanilla Beserk (originally 'The Ballad Of The Sasparilla Juggernauts' - 26/01/13)

The problem with being in a band is that there tend to be other people there as well.

And these other people invariably have their own opinions because the one incontrovertible truth in any band is that each individual member believes that it is THEIR band.

We were called Vanilla Beserk and for a while there we were pretty damn good.

The while was mid 1985 to mid 1986 and in terms of music these were my glory days, the days when a wannabe can convince themselves that they were a nearly-were.

We had been a four piece, lost a drummer and become a five piece; replacing said drummer and adding a keyboard player for the 'bigger' sound that we were looking for. And it did give us a bigger sound, an edge, extra melody. I'd never been a great lead guitarist, I'm a good rhythm player and quite frankly a hell of a songwriter but not a soloist; keyboards gave us more.

And we were building a bit of a following; regular gigs at Bootle's 'Fire Station' (a club named for the fact that the building's previous existence had been as a....well you know where I'm going with that don't you?) saw our audiences grow. And the name helped, nobody knew what to expect, it pointed to no genre. It was Liverpool in the 80s and it was compulsory to have a vaguely arty, nonsensical name.

I had been inspired by a chance encounter with a set by the wonderfully titled 'Marshmallow Overcoat' at the Cavern one lunchtime and insisted that I wanted to call the band 'The Sasparilla Juggernauts'. Strangely nobody would let me. One night on the edge of sleep I realised that I had in my grasp the greatest band name in the history of music, unfortunately on waking it was but a dim memory and all that was left was Vanilla Beserk.

So we grew, we knew we had something, knew we were worth more than any other band playing locally, playing the same venues as the nascent Happy Mondays and Pogues. We were on the edge of greatness, everybody may have been talking about a band with a residency in the centre of town at the Pen and Wig pub but we knew we were the ones. We had the tunes, we had a presence on stage and a much more fabulous name. Their name was quite frankly rubbish. Who would call a band The La's?

So obviously there was a tipping point, a point that we couldn't recover from and it came on a night when we were about to really break big. "They're there for you" the club owner kept telling us, pointing to a venue that held 250, honestly a genuine buzz in the air "keep them waiting a bit longer" as he saw the chance to put a bit more money behind the bar, as the 10.30 headline slot became 11, became 11.30 became quarter to twelve. We had been ready, we had been psyched, we were going to be incredible. We were awful.

And then the factions set in, the singer and I wanted to sound one way, the bassist and keyboard player another. Theirs was more polished, ours raw. Theirs was electric, keyboard heavy,  ours guitars, acoustic and jangling. We decided it was our band (despite the fact that the bassist and I had formed it) and that they had to go, our musical difference insurmountable. The drummer was, as drummers are liable to be in these situations, collateral damage. We kept the name, we kept the songs, we kept any goodwill. We obviously kept the arrogance and ego. The other truth about bands is that you not only forget the other members have opinions, you also forget they have emotions and may well have some attachment to this thing you've been doing. You're in your early twenties, you know what you're doing is right, no matter how wrong you are.

When, within a year the singer decided that the band now belonged to him and his brother (who we had brought in to replace the bassist) I was a bit too gutted to realise that this was karma rising up to bite me in the ass. Hypocritically, after seeing the first gig they played without me I insisted that they change their name and stop using any songs that I'd been involved in writing; notably something that neither bassist nor keyboard player required. That this band went on to record an album with their new line up (Jack Kennedy's Outlaws, if you want to hunt it down. It was on Probe Plus) didn't make me at all bitter. Honest.

So I didn't become a pop star but there was this one night. For every band there's alway 'this one night', this was ours. There's a tape of it somewhere and it was a night when everything went right (well, nearly everything, if you were in the band you could tell that the drummer had gooned the ending of one of the two new songs). We were all on form, every song was the best the band ever played it, every song had the best response it had ever had. And you can hear the audience reaction getting stronger at the end of each song. We got an encore. And that may not sound much but, trust me, bands don't get encores at that level, they certainly didn't at the Fire Station, the audience were way too cool to enjoy themselves that publicly. We had no songs left so we played the set opener again but better, with the confidence that the future was starting.

And halfway through this second performance of the first song, with the band locked, tight, absolutely imperial, the 45 minute cassette runs out.

Somewhere out there that song is still playing.