Complicated Shadows (7 page)

Smith first caught up with Declan at Southlands College in Wimbledon, playing a repertoire covering everything
from Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Can I Have My Money
Back?’ to Hank Williams classics like ‘You Win Again’. He kicked off the set solo, before being joined by Mich Kent and Malcolm Dennis.

As with many fledgling bands, the music was secondary: finding a name was the most pressing problem. The first gig at Southlands was billed as The Bizzario Brothers. Another mooted name –
the even less inspired Mother Truckers, mercifully never used – was soon jettisoned in favour of Flip City. The inspiration came from Joni Mitchell’s version of the Annie Ross song
‘Twisted’, where in the background the listener can hear Cheech & Chong babbling inanely about ‘Flip City’. It was Mary Burgoyne who suggested using it and it stuck. She
had good ears. ‘Mary knew what she was talking about as far as music was concerned,’ says Ken Smith. ‘And she was way into the country [music] thing.’

Although it was one of the few musical forms that he hadn’t had immediate access to as a boy, country music was becoming more and more important to Declan. ‘[It] had never really got
into our household,’ he says. ‘So I discovered it for myself.’
²

Allan Mayes has no recollection of Declan having a passionate interest in country in Liverpool; he certainly never saw any George Jones or Hank Williams records in the house. But through his
love of The Band, the Grateful Dead and The Byrds, Declan had discovered what could loosely be called Americana, and was gradually tracing a rich seam of musical history back towards its source.
Thus, Gram Parson’s involvement on The Byrds’
Sweetheart Of The Rodeo
album lead him to the Flying Burrito Brothers’
Gilded Palace Of Sin,
and later the first
two Parsons solo records:
GP
and
Grevious
Angel
, released in 1973 and 1974 respectively. These in turn led him back to the even more elemental, traditional music of
legends like George Jones, Hank Williams and Merle Haggard. ‘I was curious to find out who these country singers were that these people were covering,’ he later said.
³

What he discovered was not the glitzy, rhinestone-clad kitsch of Kenny Rogers or the faux-authenticity of Boxcar
Willie, but raw, powerful music steeped in simple,
emotional phrasing. The central tenets of country music – the romanticising of the mundane realities of domesticity; the elevation of the simple man and woman to mythical status; the way that
heartfelt and often painful emotions were laid out plainly and unashamedly; the unique mixture of bar-room machismo and bedroom self-deprecation – all appealed to Declan and would slowly
start to inform his songwriting. Mary, hailing from a family steeped in the showband culture of Ireland in which country music is revered, knew her Hank Williams from her Hank Snow and would have
been something of a kindred spirit along the way. And with Declan and Mary embarking on a relationship which sometimes seemed to echo that of George Jones and Tammy Wynette in terms of its
emotional volatility, the music must have made just that little bit more sense.

* * *

Flip City continued to progress. By 1974, the band and the friendships within it had developed sufficiently for Declan to leave Ross and Sara’s home in Twickenham and move
in with the rest of the group, who were living together at a shared cost of £32 a month in a semi-detached house at 3 Stag Lane, Roehampton, on the fringes of Wimbledon Common in south-west
London.

By now, Declan was working at the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics company on Wales Farm Road, north Acton,
¹⁴
operating an IBM 360 computer in a small office
next to the factory. He was generally left to his own devices, trying to stave off the more dispiriting bouts of boredom the job brought on.

Although he had slowly become a competent guitar player, especially adept at working out particular parts and
sticking to them, Declan was not confident when it came to
improvising; the band decided they needed another guitarist to fill out the sound and began holding auditions.

Steve Hazelhurst had moved to London from Cumbria in 1971, seeking the gold-paved road to rock ’n’ roll glory. He failed to find it, to the extent that he was even passed over in the
first Flip City audition. However, when the guitarist initially chosen didn’t work out, the band called Hazelhurst back to see if he was still interested. He was, and with Mich’s
workmate Dickie Faulkner also joining on harmony vocals and percussion in early 1974, the five-piece band started to click.

The vibe Flip City were searching for was a uniquely American alchemy, a laid-back, seamless groove which bands like Little Feat, Clover and The Band could produce with deceptive ease, and of
which Brinsley Schwarz were the leading British practitioners. This particular collection of young, pale Englishmen, however, found it somewhat less easy to replicate. They were just one of
hundreds of pub-rock bands in London at that time, and their setlist reflected their lack of originality. ‘We totally copied the blueprint of the Brinsleys,’ said Declan. ‘You had
to have one R&B song, one country song, a few songs you had written yourself, a Dylan song. It was totally nicked from that.’
⁴

Under Ken Smith’s guidance, Flip City began finding gigs around London: the North Pole pub in North Pole Road, W10; Southland College in Wimbledon; a street festival in Fitrozvia; even a
residency at the highly sought-after Kensington Tavern in Russell Gardens. A true landmark, the Kensington was where future Attraction Pete Thomas first laid eyes on Declan, when he came to see
Flip City play at the behest of his friend Ken Smith. The drummer of London pub-rock stalwarts Chilli Willi and The Red Hot Peppers, Thomas walked out after about thirty seconds. ‘I think he
came to see our worst-ever gig,’ said Declan.
⁵

They would often open with ‘Pontiac Blues’ from The Youngbloods
Good ‘N’ Dusty
LP. ‘Loverman’ by Redwing was also a regular, alongside Clover’s
‘Sound Of Thunder’.
More conventionally, there were usually a couple of Sam Cooke songs – often ‘Bring It On Home To Me’ and ‘Another
Saturday Night’ – sitting cheek by jowl alongside Dylan’s ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry.’ The songbooks of Smokey Robinson, Mose Allison, Chuck
Berry and Jesse Winchester were all plundered; the only overtly country song – played in tongue-in-cheek, bluesy call-and-response style – was Hank Williams’ ‘You Win
Again’. There was no image. In keeping with the ethos of the day, it was simply five scruffy working boys in jeans and shirts who wanted to let the music do the talking.

As well as continuing to immerse himself in the deep well of classic American music, throughout 1974 Declan continued to improve his writing. Very few of the songs that he had played with Rusty
had survived the transition; now he was writing with a band in mind, simpler songs driven by smart words, kiss-off sentiments and a tougher rhythmic dynamic. The first MacManus original most of the
band recall hearing was an older song called ‘Exile’s Road’, a sparky travelling narrative with a sweet uptempo tune and swift chord changes. Lyrically, it was inspired by his
grandfather’s travels and touched on the émigré themes that Declan would later return to in ‘The Deportees Club’, ‘American Without Tears’ and
‘Last Boat Leaving’: ‘My best friend he took a trip/ While playing for his money on a cruising ship/He sailed across the ocean on a big ol’ liner/ All the way to Rio and
across to China.’

While ‘Exile’s Road’ had its distinctive moments – the pay-off line concludes, ‘You gotta sell the saddle when the horse is dying’ – it didn’t
amount to much, glued together by a clunking introductory guitar riff which kept returning to the fray with all the subtlety of a day time game-show theme tune. Nonetheless, it was suitably
accomplished in both construction and execution to impress his peers.

Like Allan Mayes before them, his new band members were immediately aware that Declan’s songwriting talent had already developed far beyond the conventional case of the aspiring
singer-songwriter whose ambition heavily outweighed his ability. And indeed, heard next to Flip City’s
other original material, such as Steve Hazelhurst’s lumpen,
derivative ‘On The Road’, ‘Exile’s Road’ started to shine just a little brighter.

It was jauntier than the majority of Declan’s more recent material. The hit-and-miss poetic images of the year before were almost entirely gone, and the beginning of a more caustic world
view was beginning to creep in. The Springsteen-fronts-The-Drifters groove of ‘Please Mister, Don’t Stop The Band’ was crammed with screeds of words, some of which he managed to
assemble into clever lines: ‘They took away all of your paper money/Better learn to laugh if you wanna be funny,’ he snaps, and nearer the end he chides again: ‘Better take your
chances ’cos you don’t get many/ Better take your turn or you don’t get any.’ But despite the welcome fuck-you tenor of the lyrics and the tone, the overall result was
directionless.

‘Sweet Revival’ was better, based around the slick funk riff of Van Morrison’s ‘I’ve Been Working’ and featuring Declan urging the object of his attentions to
seize the day: ‘Better do some of your living before you get old and grey.’ The tone is bullying here, rather than cajoling. And later, ‘The only time that you got is the time
that you got now.’ There was even a memorably uplifting chorus.

Other songs written around this period included the rambling ‘Wreck On The Slide’ (containing the line ‘I feel like a juggler running out of hands,’ later to surface on
‘Welcome To The Working Week’), ‘Flatfoot Hotel’, ‘Baseball Heroes’ and ‘Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver)’. Furthermore, Declan was already
writing the material that would end up on his first two records: ‘Pay It Back’, ‘Miracle Man’, ‘Living In Paradise’ and ‘Radio, Radio’ were all
taking shape in one form or another.

‘Miracle Man’, which appeared as the second track on
My Aim Is True
, was originally called ‘Baseball Heroes’, a fast-paced, humourous tale recounting the
escapades of a struggling baseball team who are ‘Sitting on the edge of a hometown ledge/Always waiting for that final run.’ ‘Baseball Heroes’ had been suggested as a title
by Ken Smith; Declan took it and ran all the way to home base. With wisecracking, Chandler-esque lines like: ‘He pulled a
Lucy from a Lucky Strike pack,’ he was
happily indulging his love affair with Americana and American English, and the song is a short slice of fun.

Later, he changed the words completely and announced to the band that ‘Baseball Heroes’ was now ‘Miracle Man’. The opening stanzas are virtually the same, but this time
around the mood is darker. Now the tongue-in-cheek scenario of a struggling baseball team has been transposed to signify a struggling relationship (‘I put my best foot forward and fell on my
face’). Only the chorus refrain and the line ‘I never knew that so much trouble was resting upon reply’ would survive the final transition to the
My Aim Is True
version.
Alongside the change of words, the song had now been turned into a criminally slow shuffle, a fairly straight imitation of The Band in ‘Up On Cripple Creek’-mode.

‘Radio, Radio’, meanwhile, started life as ‘Radio Soul’, a title which again came from Ken Smith, along with a few scrappy lyrics which Declan worked into something
‘singable and meaningful’. ‘Radio Soul’ was as close as Flip City had to a signature tune; people who came to see the band would often identify it as the one song that stood
out. It also sums up the basic differences between Declan MacManus and Elvis Costello, and between Flip City and The Attractions.

Although melodically virtually identical to the ’78 version of ‘Radio, Radio’, the ’74 incarnation of ‘Radio Soul’ is lyrically very different and moves at a
gentler pace, with a Spanish-style sway and a rhythmic acoustic guitar underpinning it. More crucially, the early version is a straightforwardly affectionate nod to the wireless, rather than the
withering attack it later became: Here, the celebration of ‘the sound salvation’ is distinctly non-ironic. ‘One thing we’ve got too much of/Is trouble, guess you know
that’s true/ What we need is a little music/So we’re here to entertain you.’ The music tries to match the sentiments by contriving to conjure up a laid-back, good-time, west-coast
feel. All very mellow,
very
mid-’70s.

In contrast, the ’78 version is a snarling riot of guitars and organ underpinning Costello’s vehement anti-establishment jibes. This time the band is fighting tooth-and-nail to cut
Costello sufficient slack to contain his
outpouring of disgust at the fools ‘trying to anaesthetise the way that you feel’. The stuttering, characteristically new
wave intro bookends the whole thing for added drama. It is effectively the same song as it was in 1974, only this time very conciously manipulated and choreographed – contrived, even –
to tie in with a new public persona and the prevailing mood of the times. And with an absolutely white-hot band behind him.

It would be an exaggeration to claim chameleon-like qualities on his behalf, but Declan MacManus became very aware of the best way to present his material for maximum impact at each stage in his
career. He would later claim to have written songs such as ‘Different Finger’, ‘Watch Your Step’ and ‘New Lace Sleeves’ – all three appeared on
Trust
in 1981 – in the mid-’70s, although no Flip City member recalls hearing them. It could be that Declan was already consciously compartmentalising his musical life,
stockpiling his more sophisticated or genre-specific material and only handing over songs he felt would suit the band’s more straightforward style. If this was the case, it certainly
wouldn’t be the last time he kept his choicest cards close to his chest.

The songs were strong, but still derivative. He was listening to Randy Newman’s
Sail Away
and
Good Ol’ Boy
, Van Dyke Parks’s
Discover America
, Little
Feat’s
Sailing Shoes
and
Feats Don’t Fail Me Now
, Joni Mitchells’
Blue
and
Court And Spark
, Lee Dorsey’s
Yes We Can
, Steely
Dan’s
Countdown To Ecstasy
; Allan Touissant, Gram Parsons, John Prine’s epnoymous 1972 album, The Band, Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen, among many others. Vocally, he had
developed a characteristic and highly stylised American drawl, which contained trace elements of Van Morrison and The Band’s Rick Danko
¹⁵
in
particular, both singers who placed the emphasis on soul-baring emotional resonance rather than
technique or a detached stand-offishness. ‘“We gotta sound
desperate!”,’ Ken Smith recalls Declan saying. ‘He really loved that desperate sort of sound. If he heard it on a record, he’d really pick up on it. I remember one afternoon
down at the house, me and him sat and played a load of albums, and we dissed about everybody apart from Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison.’