Complicated Shadows (6 page)

The two hit it off, talking exclusively about music. ‘I seem to remember at that time, Jesse Winchester we were keen on, and Bobby Charles & The Amazing Rhythm Aces. When you meet
someone and you shove a couple of names out and they react to it, you think, “Oh, this is a pretty decent guy”.’
²⁹
Declan
frequently looked Nick up at Brinsleys’ gigs thereafter. It was to become a key friendship.

* * *

Wherever Rusty performed they would play several of Declan’s own compositions: ‘Warm House’; ‘Sleeper At The Wheel’; ‘Sunflower
Lancers’; ‘Two Day Rain’; ‘Dull Echoes’; ‘Are You Afraid Of Your Children’; ‘Sweet Deceiver’ and many more
¹⁰
poured out around this time.

Although he was really only cutting his teeth as a writer, it was quickly apparent to Allan Mayes that this was somebody with an unusual amount of talent. ‘It was staggering, really. Every
time he played a new song I knew that the songs I were writing were just a joke. He’d sit down and go into this intense shit, shut everything else off, play the damn song and immediately I
loved it. But I have no memory of anybody ever saying, “God! His songs are stunning, aren’t they?”. I was the only one who ever thought that.’

Lyrically, the tracks were staunchly impenetrable, and read today the words tend to sit awkwardly on the page: ‘Sunflower lancers, where do you go/Out in the morning, out in the cold/Rings
of silver, rings of gold/ These I will bring to save me,’ is the creaking opening salvo to ‘Sunflower Lancers’. It doesn’t get much better. Later, he muses: ‘Old
night-time story’s endless refrain/“Lady, have you come to save me?”.’

‘Dull Echoes’ – not perhaps the most tempting of song titles – evokes similarly pastoral images, again with a
distinctive, early ’70s hippy
flavour: ‘My mandolin picks out of time/And out of tune as well/A simple song I learnt a while ago/ While you were sleeping.’ And later: ‘Go down to the water/And lay down at the
water’s edge/My waterfall is endless/But I also have a fountain.’

‘Two Day Rain’ is at least a little more promising. ‘Do you fit your situation to someone else’s song?’ he asks in the middle, and it’s tempting to hear a
soon-to-be characteristic sneer in the voice; while the concluding bitter-sweet flourish is genuinely affecting in a way that the future, invented Elvis Costello persona would no doubt have scoffed
at: ‘Look at what you had to sell/Because you said goodbye/ No sweeter than you said farewell.’

Allan Mayes admits to having absolutely no idea what Declan was trying to say, with one exception. ‘Warm House’ was one of the best things we ever did,’ he says. ‘It was
about thinking he was going to get beaten up while walking the streets on the way to a gig. This was back in the skinhead days, when it was not unknown in Liverpool to get jumped for no reason. I
remember him saying, “God, I was so glad when I got to the club, because I was sure these guys were going to beat me up and steal my guitar”.’ Declan himself has long been
dismissive and characteristically unrevealing of his earliest attempts at songwriting. ‘Like anybody’s first steps at doing anything, you wouldn’t want to put them under the
microscope,’ he has reflected. ‘They were probably pretty awful.’
³⁰

* * *

No longer tied to school, Declan began seeking out employment. He wasn’t looking for any long-term career outside of music, but with the work ethic and the idea of earning
his keep already firmly instilled in him, he went for anything that was going in the newspaper. With his A-level in English, he was thought unsuited for the role of tea boy. He was briefly
considered for the arcane job of Admiralty Chart Corrector in a ‘Dickensian office’, but his handwriting wasn’t up to scratch. Eventually he
got a job
working with computers in a large centre run by the Midland Bank.

When he finally broke through in 1977, Declan’s work with computers – along with the glasses – would be one of the major incriminating factors adding fuel to the flames of his
carefully cultivated geek persona, but the truth was far more prosaic. It was not the hi-tech, highly-attuned vocation that it is today, and required little skill. ‘I knew nothing about
computers,’ he said in the ’80s, back in what was still the dark ages of that particular type of technology. ‘But really all that’s irrelevant. It’s just
button-pushing and dealing with tapes and printers. It’s manual work, really, but it has a sort of status attached to it because it’s modern technology.’
³¹

His new job also revealed a problem with his eyes. Until the age of sixteen his sight had been fine, but working every day with computers made him realise it had deteriorated. He started wearing
glasses to correct astigmatism, although at first it was only to read or watch television. ‘He’d wear glasses occasionally,’ says Allan Mayes. ‘These trendy,
Easy
Rider
-types.’ The famous horn rims wouldn’t come until much later on.

Employment made little impact on Rusty’s rounds of folk clubs, schools and
ad hoc
poetry meetings. There were occasional appearances at a concert hall as part of a oneoff event,
but they were few and far between. Nevertheless, the duo got to tread the boards at such notable venues as Liverpool University and St George’s Hall. A poster advertising the entertainments
on offer at a charity folk concert at the College Hall, Widnes on Friday, 15 December, 1972 lists Rusty as fifth – or if you prefer, bottom – of the bill, beneath such luminaries as
Bullock Smithy Folk Group and Cyder Pye. Admission was 40p.

Declan’s parents continued to encourage the young singer in his musical ambitions, with the clear proviso that he did most of the legwork himself. But Ross wasn’t averse to using his
connections in the music business to give Declan a nudge in the right direction. One night, as Rusty were setting up to play in the Yankee Clipper club in Liverpool, Declan mentioned to Allan that
Ross had got
them a job accompanying him in the studio to record a song for a lemonade commercial.

‘I remember almost doing a lap of honour around that club, thinking “Oh, studio!”,’ says Mayes. ‘As far I was concerned, it was the most glorious moment of my
life.’ As the months went by, Allan kept pestering his partner about the advert, until one day Declan simply turned around and said: ‘I did it last weekend.’

‘I’ve never been so dejected in my life and I have never forgotten it,’ Mayes recalls. The song that Ross and Declan recorded for the R. Whites lemonade advert became somewhat
legendary, running on British television between 1973 and 1984. The ridiculously catchy jingle – ‘I’m a, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a secret lemonade drinker’
– marked Declan’s studio debut, adding his already distinctive backing vocals behind Ross’s voice of the drinker.
¹¹
He would have made
only a little pocket money from the recording session, but it was another invaluable experience, and one he clearly had little inclination to share.

Soon afterwards, in early 1973, Declan decided to move back to London. ‘I came back to London after two years because I realised there wasn’t any scene in Liverpool to get
into,’ he later remembered. ‘It was completely dead.’
³²

The dreary combination of traditional folk music and serious rock based on a love of Yes, Caravan or Led Zeppelin were the twin alternatives in Liverpool, and held little appeal. Meeting Nick
Lowe had made a profound impact on the way he perceived his own music. While Allan Mayes’ later claim that Declan ‘went chasing Nick Lowe’ to London is perhaps rather overstating
the case, the rapport with a like-minded soul and the possibilities of the kind of music he could play in London was highly significant in his move back south.

Declan rather half-heartedly sounded out Allan as to
whether he was also willing to make the move, but Mayes was reluctant. ‘I was going on twenty, but still way too
scared to take that kind of chance,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t prepared to starve for my art.’ Rusty’s unlamented last stand was two shows supporting Steve Harley and Cockney
Rebel on 24 June, 1973 at Warwick University in Coventry, booked months previously. Declan travelled north from London and Allan travelled south, before they finally went their separate ways. They
would keep in touch – with increasing infrequency – up until the early 1980s.

So Declan went to London alone: to his dad; to the heart of the music business; to a burgeoning pub-rock scene. He was ready for something new. There were probably a hundred good reasons for
going back home.

M
ARY
B
URGOYNE WAS JUST EIGHTEEN
at the time she became Declan’s first serious girlfriend. Although the exact circumstances
of their initial introduction are unclear, the couple met in 1973 and were very much an item by the end of the year. Mary lived on the Redwood Estate, Cranford Lane in Heston, just off the M4
motorway and a few miles from Heathrow airport, where she worked.

They had much in common. Her Irish roots were stronger than Declan’s: although she may have had an English accent, she had been born in the Republic of Ireland, but had moved to Britain as
a child. Mary was also an avid music fan, a factor which would have played a significant part in the attraction. Although her father – Patrick Victor Burgoyne, known as Vic – was a
salesman by trade, he had been a veteran of the thriving Irish dance band culture back home.

Allan Mayes recalls meeting Mary briefly when she accompanied Declan on one of his family forays back to Liverpool and being impressed. ‘I clearly remember thinking, didn’t you
overachieve!’ he says. Mary was very pretty, with a passing resemblance to the actress Jenny Agutter, a favourite of Declan’s. She was also bright, loquacious, funny, temperemental,
with a bouyant sense of humour, and by all accounts could give as good as she got in the intense battles which tended to characterise her time with Declan.

‘The two of them were that classic thing: couldn’t live with each other, couldn’t live without each other,’ recalls Steve Hazelhurst, who began
playing with Declan in 1974. ‘When they were together they were always scrapping.’ The relationship quickly became serious.

Declan had returned to London in the early spring of 1973, having arranged a transfer to Midland Bank’s computer centre in Putney. He moved in with Ross and Sara, with whom he had
apparently established an amiable relationship, at 16 Beaulieu Close in Twickenham Park.

His first gig back on home turf took place on 18 April, a mixed set of covers and originals in the Barmy Army pub in Twickenham. Although he was still going out solo, he was already beginning to
forge the friendships that would help him establish Flip City, the first significant band of his career. Ken Smith – who now runs the Elsubsta record label in south London – became
their
de facto
manager by virtue of booking gigs, having a few budding contacts in the record industry, organising occasional recordings and being singularly unable to play any musical
instrument.

Smith first bumped into Declan in the late spring or early summer of 1973, at The Royal Charter in Kingston upon Thames, a music pub better known to its regulars as The Three Fishes. Declan had
some new friends in tow: the first was Michael Kent – known to all as Mich
¹²
– whom Declan had met at a Brinsley Schwarz gig in St Pancras Town
Hall not long before. The other was Malcolm Dennis, who knew Mich from school. A bass player and drummer respectively, they were slightly older than Declan, but soon came together, united by their
similar tastes.

The DJ at The Three Fishes played a lot of San Franciscan music: everyone was into the Grateful Dead, while Clover – who eventually backed Declan on his first album – were also
popular. Bruce Springsteen had just recently appeared, and Declan took to his first two records –
Greetings From Astbury Park, NJ
and
The Wild, The Innocent & The E
Street Shuffle –
with relish, probably because they were wordy, musically rich and clearly influenced by Van Morrison. He also still loved The
Band,
¹³
and indeed all the future members of Flip City bonded over their mysterious, timeless sound and the superlative songwriting of Robbie Robertson. On
the British side of the Atlantic, pub-rock was burgeoning in the capital. ‘I was totally into the pub-rock scene at the time,’ recalls Ken Smith. ‘Going off to see Kilburn &
The High Roads, Ducks Deluxe and all those bands. Brinsley Schwarz were my favourites and Dec had seen the Brinsleys in Liverpool and London, so there was kind of common ground.’

Declan went to see the Brinsleys on so many occasions, that by 1974 he was regarded by the band as ‘a part-time’ roadie. Maybe he was ‘chasing’ Lowe after all. Certainly,
following the band at close quarters made him take a long, hard look at his own songwriting. If Liverpool had been a time of melancholy and meandering poetic musings, London brought him back down
to earth with a satisfying bump.

He was trying to write cleaner, crisper songs with a snappier musical accompaniment, moving away from the gentler acoustic sound of Rusty. Following long nights listening to Declan talk a good
game in The Three Fishes, Ken Smith was eager to check out his mettle as a musician. He knew little about Rusty. Much as he would remain staunchly guarded about his past when he finally became
successful in 1977, Declan was typically cagey with his London friends in 1973. ‘We didn’t really know anything about [Liverpool],’ remembers Ken Smith. ‘We knew he lived
there but I never quite got the whole story.’