Complicated Shadows (9 page)

They breezed through the original songs: ‘Exile’s Road’, ‘Sweet Revival’, a messy ‘Please Mister, Don’t Stop The Band’ and ‘Wreck On The
Slide’, before adding an energetic, call-and-response cover version of Chris Kenner’s ‘Packin’ Up’ and a jokey canter through the hardy Hank perennial ‘You Win
Again’. The two songs of note, however, were Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ and Jesse Winchester’s
¹⁸
‘Third Rate Romance’. The Dylan song had been released on the
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid
soundtrack album in 1973, and was a recent addition to the Flip City live set,
first aired at a disco party in Charing Cross where the band had supported a miming Desmond Dekker. It was slightly out of the ordinary for the band’s style, but if the song’s
rudimentary, circular chord sequence never quite suited their tempo and the lyrics sat oddly with Declan’s sardonic vocal, then ‘Third Rate Romance’ was much more successful.

A recent US pop hit, ‘Third Rate Romance’ (‘low rent rendezvous’) was a sly tale of two strangers meeting in a restaurant, cutting their losses and having a one-night
stand. A grown-up, unsentimental slice of sexual reality, it had at its heart a subject matter that Declan would go on to explore in minute and lacerating detail in later years. Even in 1975 he
does not disappoint, singing it beautifully with the kind of wry smile which indicates he is revelling in unravelling this slightly seedy sexual encounter. ‘She said, “You don’t
look like my type, but I guess you’ll do”,’
he sings, adding, ‘And he said, “I’ll tell you I love you if you want me to”.’

For Dave Robinson, it was a turning point. ‘Him doing a cover of “Third Rate Romance”, that’s what attracted me to him. I thought, “Fuck me, this guy is good. Why
don’t you find a real band?”. But he stuck with them.’ For the time being at least. While Steve Hazelhurst recalls that Robinson was slightly more ambivalent about Declan –
‘He liked him, but he wasn’t 100 per cent. He did use the phrase “verbal diarrhoea” at one point,’ – Robinson was keen enough on ‘Third Rate Romance’
to agree to put it out as a single on his fledgling Street Records. It was a break.

While contemplating their luck, Flip City continued gigging around London and sometimes beyond through the summer of 1975. Gigs at The Lord Nelson on Holloway Road, The Brecknock in Camden Road,
The Greyhound in Fulham, The Hope and Anchor, and a late-night residency at the Howff in Primrose Hill, were slotted in alongside higher profile appointments: an open-air festival in Stepney; two
gigs at the famous Marquee in central London supporting Dr Feelgood and National Flag respectively; an out-of-town engagement in Dudley, near Birmingham; and two memorable performances at
Wandsworth Prison.

The prison shows were held in the chapel on Sunday afternoons, where the band was requested not to smoke on stage or bring their girlfriends in case it should incite the inmates. The audience
were also threatened with solitary confinement should they not display sufficient enthusiasm. The ruse worked. As Flip City soundchecked with Commander Cody’s ‘Looking At The World
Through A Windshield’, one prisoner was particularly impressed with Declan’s guitar-playing talents: ‘He can really tickle them strings, can’t he?’

But despite the approval of the cons at Wandsworth, Flip City were treading water. The most they ever earned collectively was £25. They had no fans as such, and most of the time they
barely even registered. There had been one professional photo shoot for the gig guide in London’s
Time Out
magazine, but no reviews, and certainly nobody
was
misguided enough to be touting them as the next big thing in the music papers. The same prominent UK music journalists that created such a ballyhoo when Elvis Costello eventually got his first
record on the shelves had encountered Declan MacManus and Flip City and gone away unimpressed.

‘Noboby wanted to know back then!’ he complained only a couple of years later. ‘I remember the time [Nick Kent] came down to the Marquee when we were supporting Dr Feelgood.
[He] didn’t even bother to check us out. And I really resented that, you know.’
⁷

With a man as determined and musically ambitious as Declan at the helm, such a sidelined role was never going to be satisfactory. Aged twenty-one, he was getting restless at the many
possibilities of musical achievement that he believed were passing him by, and increasingly eaten up by the gnawing sensation that he was being ignored or unappreciated. There was a lot at stake.
Self-belief and sheer determination can only take a person so far, and even somebody as sure in his heart of his talents as Declan couldn’t help but ponder whether he was destined to a life
of mundanity. ‘I did sometimes wonder whether I was going mad,’ he said later. ‘That maybe it wasn’t any good. But I kept on thinking it was they who were wrong and not me.
It turned out to be the best way to think about it.’
⁸

Or perhaps the only way. He could hardly contemplate the idea of not being successful; having invested so much energy and commitment into his music, in the certainty that he was somehow ahead of
the pack, much of his self-esteem was hanging in the balance. He desperately wanted out of the nine-to-five suburban routine before it got him by the lapels and wouldn’t let go – before
it
defined
him.

This transparent and unashamed hunger for success led to charges of greed by some of his fellow band members. ‘[One] thing that annoyed me about Declan: he wanted money,’ recalls
Steve Hazelhurst. ‘Vast amounts of it.’ Although one of his few comments about his Flip City days acknowledged that ‘we never had any money, we
played for
peanuts’,
⁹
there is scant evidence that it was the quest for cash which spurred Declan’s ambition.
¹⁹

What he wanted most was the freedom to concentrate on his music rather than his unfulfilling job as a computer operator. But with a wife and young child, he couldn’t take the kind of
calculated career risks that many of his peers were able to take. Little wonder then that money simply provided the most tangible means of escape from the constrictions of life in the suburbs. As
he agonised in a new song written around this time: ‘How much longer?’

As it transpired, not too long.

* * *

Largely without rancour, Flip City broke apart. After some deliberation, Dave Robinson had decided not to pursue the idea of releasing ‘Third Rate Romance’ as a
one-off single, a decision that battered the morale of the band. The gigs were failing to make any waves, and the dynamic of the band had changed. Declan was now living with Mary and Matthew in
Twickenham, and the remaining members had been evicted from Stag Lane. They were all growing up, and into other things.

A sense of futility finally overwhelmed the group and in the autumn of 1975 Declan told the other band members he was leaving. It had run the gamut as far as he was concerned. They had been
together for over two years, and it was abundantly clear that Flip City were not a band who were going to make it. It was equally clear that a nice bunch of guys who had fun playing in a bar band
was never going to be enough for him.

It was an amicable enough parting of the ways. With an afternoon and evening residency at the Red Cow in Hammersmith and a final gig booked at Ewell College, the
band
agreed to fulfil their remaining engagements. The penultimate gig at the Red Cow took place on 30 November, 1975, preserved for posterity on bootleg. It is clear from listening to the recording
that Declan is in charge. He changes the setlist at one point to throw Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring It On Home To Me’ into the mix – to the mild irritation of some of the band –
and introduces Steve Hazelhurst’s ‘On The Road’ with the only slightly patronising aside, ‘Finally, the world is ready for Steven Hazelhurst – the reluctant
hero!’

There is muted audience response, and only on ‘Radio Soul’ and a reworked version of the Smokey Robinson classic ‘One More Heartache’ do they finally show their mettle.
Through the smoke and stale beer, it’s possible to catch a tantalising glimpse of what Declan would later go on to achieve. But as quickly as it appears, it’s gone.

The end came soon after, supporting an incarnation of the Climax Blues Band, on this occasion called Climax Chicago, at Ewell College. Flip City limped to the finishing post on something of a
sour note. They had opted to end their set and bring down the curtain on the band with ‘Third Rate Romance’, but Declan decided to ignore both the setlist and the wishes of the rest of
the band by launching into an impromptu version of the R&B classic ‘Money’ instead.

‘He just walked up to the mic and [sang]: “The best things in life are free” and went straight into it,’ says Steve Hazelhurst. ‘There was no real nastiness
afterwards, but it was like: “We didn’t want you to do that. Why did you do it?” It was a bit sad.’

Declan wasn’t overly concerned, either by the slightly bitter ending or the demise of the band. Indeed, he later dismissed Flip City virtually out of hand. ‘[We were] just a regular
bar band, on the periphary of the dying embers of the pub-rock scene. There was no focus to it; it was aimless. With no offence to the guys, we weren’t very good.’
¹¹

Harsh, perhaps, but true. Within a matter of months Declan would have a record deal. Within twelve months he would be recording his debut album as a solo artist
with one of
his favourite bands backing him and one of his heroes at the mixing desk. He knew it was time to move on.

BY EARLY
1976,
THE YOUNG MACMANUS
family had left Twickenham Park and moved to Palgrave House, a modern block of Housing
Association flats on the corner of Cypress Avenue in Whitton.
²⁰
Their new home was situated in the sole block of flats in a neat, well-maintained road of
two-up-two-downs, literally just around the corner from Declan’s old primary school in Nelson Road. Whitton would not have been his area of choice. ‘It’s a very boring
area,’ he later admitted. ‘It’s a terrible place. Awful. Nowhere. Nothing happens.’
¹
Its very blankness and sense of creeping
claustrophobia became in itself a kind of negative inspiration for many of the early songs: his music would always be particularly effective when imagining the sinister and sometimes nightmarish
underbelly of the most outwardly unremarkable places – and faces. Of the early songs, ‘Blame It On Cain’, ‘Waiting For The End Of The World’, and ‘I’m Not
Angry’ in particular are driven by the motor of suburban paranoia.

Flip City may have flopped to a fittingly lacklustre end, but the break- up in no way signalled defeat or lowered expectations. On the contrary, with a band who couldn’t meet his
escalating requirements, Declan regarded his
departure as a necessary step towards a bona fide career. Now, he felt that the best way to present the songs he was writing was
by singing them loud and direct to the audience, without any fancy guitar embellishment. ‘I’d really got the volume up by then,’ he recalled later. ‘I was so fucking loud.
I’d abandoned all attempts at playing subtle guitar. The style came from having to cover myself in noisy clubs.’
²

He played whenever he could, at The White Lion in Putney, The Swan in Mill Street, Kingston upon Thames, even at a charity fete in Chiswick in early 1976, where he supported his father by
playing Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ on piano, before Ross rounded off an eccentric evening of entertainment with a version of Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’.
The appearances at The Swan were more conventional. It was a rocker’s pub, with a backroom where Ken Smith and his friend Scott Giles ran The Amarillo Club on a Saturday night. Declan played
there on ‘numerous’ occasions in 1976, usually a forty-minute acoustic set supporting the headlining act.

‘It was a pretty rowdy place,’ says Smith. ‘I remember introducing him as “The man Randy Newman should take his hat off to!” before he belted some of his songs out.
[By then] he was a very forceful performer.’

As evidenced by his performances at Smith’s Amarillo Club, Declan was still in contact with some of his old friends from Flip City, and there remained a degree of solidarity. Following the
demise of the band, Steve Hazelhurst had recorded a demo of his own songs which he had sent to several record companies, with little luck. One rejection letter he received in reply was particularly
scathing in its assessment of his musical talents. Despondent, Steve showed the letter to Declan. ‘He actually wrote me a letter back saying, “Don’t take any notice of this, keep
on, you’ve got to keep doing it”,’ recalls Hazelhurst. ‘Furthermore, he did one of my songs [the sadly non-prophetic ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’] at one
of his solo gigs. He suddenly said “This is for my mate Steve,” and played it, which was a nice little touch. I’ve always appreciated it.’

Declan’s most regular haunt was the Half Moon in
Putney, where he played at least a couple of times a month through to April 1976, usually for 50p and a plate of
sandwiches. Charlie Dore, a singer with the group Hula Valley who befriended Declan at the time, recalls first seeing him perform at the Half Moon in late 1975 or early in 1976. ‘Ralph McTell
told me to come and check this guy out. I was expecting this folkie type thing and was very much surprised. He looked normal, there was nothing particularly distinctive about him, but I was just
impressed by his range, the whole [musical] package.’