The Bridge House E16

This was a Chris Thompson production and he really worked his socks off, having to not only deal with his own band Filthy McNasty, but the other five bands as well. No, I haven't made a mistake, there were only five bands on the album but we also recorded a sixth band, The Sprinklers, who got cold feet so we took them off the album. I have still got their recordings which have never been released.

The release of this album was the highlight of the Bridge House's success. We formed a record and publishing company and at that time we was the only pub in the world with it's own record label. I checked this out with th Guinness Book of Records and they agreed we were the first, but it's not a record until another pub forms a label and at the time we were the only one so we didn't get a mention.

We have still got the record label and new releases may be due soon. Chris Thompson has got a live set he recorded in 1980 and he recently said to me that I can release it on the Bridge House label. Watch this space...

Filthy McNasty - Chris Thompson (Vocals, Guitar), Stevie Lange (Vocals, Percussion), Billy Kristian (Bass, Vocals), Mike Walker (Keyboards), Geoff Whitehorn (Guitar), Clive Edwards (Drums).

Jackie Lynton's Happy Days - Jackie 'Lash' Lynton (Vocals), Kirk 'Loader' Riddle (Bass), Graham 'Cupcake' Cooper (Guitar), Alan 'Clint' Watkins (Drums), Greg Squeak (Sax, Harp).

SALT - Stevie Smith (Vocals, Harp), Mick Clarke (Guitar), Stewart McDonald (Bass), Malcome Hine (Slide Guitar), Colin Nash (Drums).

Gerry McAvoy Jam - Steve Whiteman Waller (Vocals, Guitar), Gerry McAvoy (Bass, Vocals, Lou Martin (Piano), Rod De'Ath (Drums), Mick Eves (Sax), Ron Carthy (Trumpet).

Roll Ups - Lea Hart Jnr (Guitar, Vocals), Jeff Peters (Bass, Vocals), Rick Andreos (Drums), Paul Airey (Piano. Vocals).

Remus Down Boulevard - Dave Edwards (Guitar, Vocals), Dennis Stratton (Guitar, Vocals), Ron Berg (Drums), Gerry Cunningham (Bass, Vocals).

This band always pulled a good crowd, they really worked hard at it. Being an unusual band making there own type of music, it was harder for them. You have to give them give them credit, they were a successful gigging band.

They approached me about recording a live album, at first i was reluctant. I thought about it and what the hell, it might help the band. It was going to cost me around the £2,000, in 1979 it was a lot of money, around the £25,000 mark with today prices. So i had to sell around 1000 albums to get my money back, which I never did. We never even sold 500, but as the old saying goes, luck favours the brave.

We made it and I played it to my publishers, Martin,and Coulter and Bill Martin offered me £5,000 for the rights to it. He said he had a deal with Sony and needed a new album. So I had to take his money, we paid all the bills and me and the band spilt the rest, £1,500 each. So with the cash from the albums we had sold we made a nice profit.

If you want to hear the flugelhorn and guphonium played for you by John Trelawney, find this album; Penfriends by Dogwatch.

Roy Weard (Vocals), Roger Glynn (Guitars), Nick Sack (Drums), Tony Morley (Bass, Vocals), Lind Kelsey (Keyboards, John Trelawney (Violin, Trumpet, Vocals, flugelhorn, guphonium).

Also Featured on studio tracks, Dave Lear (Guitar), John Mortimer (Drums), Pete Murdoch (Bass), Linda Sheperd (Keyboards).

Mods Mayday 1979, our most successful album. I take full credit for this album and the re-appearance of the mod movement in this new era, which still survives today. This was the first revival of the mods after the original 50's & 60's movement when I was around to witness it, many times when the mods and rockers clashed I was there in my blue shadow-weave 3 piece suit and white or yellow socks. We used to say 'a fight a day keeps the rockers at bay'. Before the rockers it was the teddie boys who were the trouble, so when the teddie boys grew up they became rockers. And the mods fought on.

Secret Affair came in to see me and asked for a gig, I asked them what sort of music they played, as soon as they said soul and R&B, I knew. They were dressed in nice suits you see. I gave them a gig and then a residency and advertised it as Mods Monday. Within four weeks we were packed, mostly with mods, but a lot of skins and punks were turning up. This made the gig something to worry about, so I put it around that we were starting a new wave night, on the Tuesdays and if they wanted to keep that night they best make sure they was a good well behaved crowd. This sorted the nights out and we got on with Mods Monday with no trouble.

We recorded the album in one day, from 11 in the morning until 11 at night. Then we spent a week mixing it at Shepperton Studios. Arista records signed the album from Bridge House records with a nice advance and a decent royalty, they also signed Secret Affair and Squire to their label and released new versions of the tracks from the live album as singles and they both charted. Arista never promoted the album once they signed the two bands but we still managed to get it in the main Music Week charts, it went in the first week at number 75 and stayed there for a few weeks.

This was our 4th album and in fact our first non-live album, although there are some live tracks on it. This band were really great live. They were first know as Slowbone and were a more heavy music band, they decided to change their style because although they were getting as many gigs as they wanted, they were looking to sign to a major label. So they changed some of their line-up and changed their name to the Roll Ups. Barry Hart became Lee Hart, they had all new songs and wardrobe and off they went.

They came to see me one afternoon asking if I could help them get an album out. They had recorded some tracks and they played them to me, and they were good. I asked them how they had recorded them and they told me they had them down an on 16 track. I said okay, we can use some of these already recorded tracks. So i booked John Loders studio to record and remix these songs. This was done successfully, Lee and Geoff were seasoned musicians and made a great album. It's a pity they did not stick to music and let us non-musicians get on with the business affairs. We were offered £20,000 for the album rights with a good royalty if it broke the advance. With a major company distributing it and all the experts predicting a hit album, the band turned down the offer. Their new manager told them he could get a bigger advance and a better deal. He got neither and the album was never released on a major label.

We sold a few to their fans and some in the indie shops, but we never managed to recoup our outlay. But it was and still is a good album.

Gerry McAvoy, bass player extraordinary. A founder member of the Rory Gallagher Band, he joined Rory after he moved on from Taste, a great bass player. He was living at the time local to the Bridge House, just one mile away. So when we started the live music at the pub, this became his regular haunt. He started jamming with the guys and then formed his own group to play when he was off the road with Rory.

The Gerry McAvoy Jams became notorious, Blues at its very best, attracting some top musicians who would hang about in the audience waiting for a nod from the bass man to come up and blow their piece. The bass player became a vocalist and started writing his own songs and approached Bridge House Records to make a album. Yes sir, said Mr Murphy.

What Gerry did was record his live gig and then went into the studio with all our favourite players, Steve Waller, Stevie Smith, Dave Edwards, Graham Foster.Brendon O'Neill, Ted McKenna, Davey Smythe (who owned the studio he used),Lou Martin, Ron Cartney and Mick Eve.

He decided to make one side live and the other side studio based. There are a load of good pictures on the inner sleeve. And being a bass player what a great name for your first album.. Bassics.

After tremendous success with their single releases, we wanted Wasted in the studios as quick as possible., but they were so busy gigging. This was what they wanted to do and when they was not gigging, we could not find them anywhere. So I cleared a week from gigs and booked them into a studio in Cambridge. John Holliday was producing the album so he went with them.

Unbelievably they were back on the Thursday and had recorded all the tracks in just three days. The reason for this is that they were bored to tears, as we never gave them any money and we arranged for the hotel to feed them. They couldn't go out on the town, so they stayed in the studio working day and night, just so they could get home. For us it worked out perfect. What they had done in just three days, I had hoped they would finish in four weeks.

This was the bands first and only complete studio album, it sold 5,000 in the first 2 weeks and another 5,000 in the following month. If it had been in the main chart shops it would have been a big hit, but we never had major distribution. Full credit to the band, it was a great first try. The bass playing on the album is sensational, I wonder what his name is?

Record Collector (Aug.2005) - Written out of the revised history of post-punk for looking backwards to the likes of Lou Reed and Jim Morrison for inspiration, Wasted Youth were a popular and pivotal band. Image and fanbase-wise they are the missing link between fetish Antmusic and the reptilian gothic of Sisters of Mercy.

The title says it all 'Beginning of the End', aptly named by me. I was the manager, record company boss, publisher, financier, director of music and anything and everything. The band had come to full stop, they were not rehearsing, not writing new material and the only time they came alive was on stage. They were still fantastic and I have seen a lot of bands in my time. Wasted Youth are right up there when it comes to live gigs, they really had it all.. Except dedication and thats why they only lasted three years.

On the back of this album it says, 'this album consists of rare and previously unreleased material covering the life span of wasted youth. From the summer of 1979 until december 1982… the end.'

After we released their last album 'Beginning of the End' we thought wrongly, that would be it, Wasted no more. How wrong we were, their second album almost outsold the first. It was unbelievable, the distributors just kept coming back for more.

So back we go with all the tapes to see what we had. There were literally hundreds of tapes. We found the tape Chris Thompson had produced with the band when they first started, it was so clear and bright we used 3 of the 5 tracks. That was the start, then we put Rebeccas Room on. This was Martin Hannets mix of the original single mixed by Johnny Holliday. Really different, we also remixed their first single Jealousy, and so we had another wasted youth album of unreleased material. And guess what, another great seller.

My son Darren produced this album and he did a great job, he even got Ken Scott back in the studio to record a new song called 'This World'.

While we were at the bridge house we wanted to record a live gig of Wasted Youth. I told the sound engineers to sort it out and get it done. this they did and it wasn't until we got in the studio did we get to listen to it. I could not believe it, instead of recording it through the mixer he had just miked up the PA speakers. So after I calmed down a bit I thought it sounded alright, but we could not clean it up or repair any mistakes they had made during their live performance. We were going to overdub anything that needed it. So we released it as a bootleg copy of the band and it sold quite well.

If you ever hear this it's how the band really sounded, except for the muffled sound of the speakers of course. The sleeve is an old wartime paper with a picture of Wasted Youth and underneath is a write up we got in the Evening Standard. We told the paper that a girl got up on stage and did a strip tease while the band were playing, this did happen but we made out while she was doing the strip someone stole the tapes of the recordings. A bit of free publicity always helps to sell records.

There has been a surprising demand for the Wasted Youth singles since we started this site. And people have asked for a CD release because they have worn out their vinyl or no longer have record decks, we have also sold out of the vinyl copies of the singles.

So we had a good long search for all the master tapes and one by one they resurfaced. Unfortunately time had not been kind to the tapes and most of them had oxidised and degraded considerably. A lot of care and time has been put into this project to digitally transfer the tapes and bring them back to full quality. We think that they are even sounding better than when they were first released. We hope you agree.

The album features all the singles and flip sides that were released plus bonus material such as the Caveman single that was never released and Martin Hannetts original version of Rebecca's Room. The CD comes with a 16 page booklet that tells behind the scenes stories of each release.

Dave Edward a legend of the Bridge House.
Going through my collection of Tapes I was pleased to discover a live tape of Dave Edwards the Remus Down Boulevard front man. Dave played for me for the whole 7 years I was at the Bridge House, indeed the only one from all the bands to stay the whole course. The first tape features Dave as front man on guitar and vocals, Gerry McAvoy on bass, Lou Martin on piano, Ted McKenna on drums (The Rory Gallagher band) and also Graham Foster on guitar.

It is a great tape, but being an old tape some definition is missing and as with all of us the tape has slightly eroded with age. This is obvious mainly on the first but rather than edit if out we have included it so the whole live gig is as it was recorded some 30 years ago.

As we prepare to release a live gem from the Bridge, once again we all know how lucky we were to hear this music and guess what, it sounds better now than when we first heard it way back in 1979. This previously unreleased recording has been hidden in storage for over 30 years and only recently surfaced to be lovingly remastered for your pleasure.

Gerry McAvoy never ever had a bad night, he would gather the cream of British rock and blues stars who would come on down for one of his nights, queuing to get on stage and have a blow. These included Rory Gallagher, Paul Jones, Chris Thompson, Huey Lewis and Dave Edwards, all great vocalists and musicians. There were many other artists who also arrived to jam, too many to mention.

In this instance the musicians that turned up were; Steve Waller, no question one of the great British Blues artists, that also made so many unusual new sounds with his talkbox. He was playing regularly at the Bridge and was also chosen by Manfred Mann to join his band to tour and record. Little Stevie Smith on Harmonica and Vocals formed his own Blues Band called SALT that packed every gig they played. Ted McKenna and Lou Martin were with Gerry in the Rory Gallagher band, Brendon O'Neill became Rory Gallagher's drummer, Ron Carthy and Mick Eves on Trumpet and Sax, add the cream to the top and it overflows. Brenden and Gerry are still playing together today in the great Nine Below Zero.

And do not forget to join in the chorus of 'Walking the Dog'. The deep Baritone you hear in the middle is me, can you outdo me? Give it a try.

Regards and happy listening. Terry M

Gerry McAvoy (Bass), Steve Waller (Vocals & Guitar), Stevie Smith (Vocals, Harmonica), Ted McKenna (Drums), Brendan O'Neill (Percussion), Ron Carthy (Trumpet), Mick Eaves (Sax).