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As a full-time member of the 5 O'Clock Shadows and an auxiliary member of the Notting Hillbillies, MARCUS CLIFFE worked with Brendan Croker for many years. He has been very gracious to share his memories of that time.
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Q: Do you remember when you joined the 5 O'clock Shadows - and did you have to audition?
I'm not sure of the exact year I joined but 1986 sounds about right. The band had been going a couple of years and I was already friends with Nigel Brooke, the original bass player, and Mark Creswell, as they'd both been to Leeds College of Music a few years before me. Nigel decided that the music business wasn't for him and he retrained as an osteopath, then when qualified moved to New Zealand.
The Leeds music scene was quite small; I was the obvious choice to replace Nigel as I'd made a bit of a name for myself as a bass player while at LCM. Brendan and Mark asked me over to have a play together in Mark's basement and we went through some of the material they were already doing. I suppose it was a kind of audition to see how we all fit together personally and musically. It all went really well and I was offered the job.
Q: It's interesting how many members of the band studied jazz at Leeds College of Music. You wouldn't call the Shadows a jazz band though, would you...?
It was the 1980s, and jazz at the time had come through the fusion of the 70s, so Mark, Nigel and I had all studied in an environment that supported all kinds of music. We took what we learned from Leeds into our own styles of playing, and we also developed very much as players in the years we spent playing live with Brendan. There were no boundaries, we just had 'songs' we needed to put our stamp on without losing the essence of the song and the vocal.
Q: The "sound" of the band - the quasi-African guitars, the fretless basslines, the decision to sing these old blues and country songs - was that all Brendan's idea, or was it a team effort?
We were a very democratic band. Brendan chose a lot of the songs he wanted to sing, and of course wrote a lot of his own, but as a lot of the songs were very old 'traditional' songs we had free choice in how we were going to arrange them. There was never any telling someone what to play and despite our very eclectic mix it sort of worked in a way that we created our own sound. It's a shame it wasn't as popular as we'd have liked.
Q: Who was most responsible for the African/ Caribbean/ Cajun influence in the band's sound? Was it Andy Kershaw?
Andy Kershaw was a great supporter of the band, even letting us sleep on his sofa back in the day. But it was Mark Creswell - he was a big fan of Ry Cooder, David Lindley and also the African/ Cajun sound so he was a big influence there. It's funny, I remember getting a call from a friend saying they'd heard us on Radio 1, then again another friend said the same... I tuned in to listen and I realised they'd heard the first single from Paul Simon's Graceland! It sounded just like us: fretless bass, high life guitars etc. I was quite shocked as it almost seemed like he'd been listening to us, but he hadn't, of course... I met Paul Simon years later in NY, nice guy.
Q: Do you remember what gear the band used in studio and on stage?
Brendan used a Fender Twin reverb amp with various electro-acoustic guitars mainly, although he did have a Telecaster, which he left me in his will. Mark Creswell's amp was a Vox AC30; he mainly used a Telecaster that had been modified by our friend and guitar maker/repairer Steve Evans, who later set up Beltona Guitars. It had an extra 'strat' middle pickup. He actually had two Teles, a red one and a green one.
I had quite a rig back then. 2x15 Peavey cab for bass end, 2x12 Peavey cab for mids and HF horn for high frequencies, powered by a bi-amped 500w trace Elliot power amp and eventually a trace Elliot GP 11 pre amp. It's now normal practice to have a 'horn' or HF driver on a bass cabinet. I was ahead of the time and used a PA system Horn to get a full range rig. I had two or three basses, customised by Steve Evans to match Mark's guitars - a 1961 fretted red P bass with EMG PJ pickups (the same bass I used in the Notting Hillbillies) and a green 1960 P bass fretless with an added extra Jazz pickup, both had Badass bridges. I also had a custom made Jazz bass made by a local guy who I think called himself 'Dragon Guitars'. Jerry was his name, 'Jerry the Hippie'...
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Q: What do you remember about producing the band's 1987 album Boat Trips In The Bay?
I'd always had a love of the technical side of the music production process, and I'd worked with Neil Ferguson (the album's co-producer) before at his Woodlands studio, so I was familiar with him and the desk. It was a very natural thing for me to take the helm really. I think the album definitely has a strong sound - perhaps a bit dated now, which I suppose is something that happens to all definable, period production. I seem to remember a lot of alcohol was consumed near the end of mixing, and drummer Davy Curry fell out of the car on the way home as he hadn't shut the passenger door properly and it flew open on a corner...
That album was released on Red Rhino Records. They went bust because they hadn't been paying the mechanical loyalties on pressing and eventually got caught.
Q: The Shadows regularly performed around 200 shows a year. What was such a hectic touring schedule like?
We were a very busy band as we'd made the choice in about 1987 to actually "go" for it - I was working in a music shop (I'd also taken Nigel's job there), and Mark and Brendan were doing casual work as well to support themselves. We were well known on the local scene and had built up a good following, but we needed to strike further afield. So we made the decision to give up our day jobs, and were lucky to get a good agency behind us (ASGARD) so we could gig all over the county. We had a regular gig at the Mean Fiddler in London; it paid very well and it was a great place to get noticed.
Touring was hard as we were driving ourselves in the beginning in a van, loading the gear in and out ourselves. Brendan hadn't learned to drive yet so it was split between myself, Mark and Davy. We all got on well and we were young... Brendan smoked self-roll up cigarettes with liquorice papers, Mark also smoked roll ups. We all liked to drink so there was plenty of that off-(and on-)stage. Eventually as the gigs got better we employed a roadie and driver. We had 'Gary the Goth', who also worked with the Sisters of Mercy (another Leeds band), then eventually we had a guy call Pete Mackay, or 'Grande Pierre' as we called him. it was one of his first tour manager/ driver gigs. He later went on to become tour manager for some big stars like Jeff Beck and is currently Andrea Boccelli's tour manager.
Q: Who were some of the big celebrity names you can remember working with back then?
We were the favourite band to open for all the great American acts that ASGARD brought over. We opened for Robert Cray, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, and we did the Mandela Concert warmup gigs at Hammersmith Odeon for Dire Straits. We opened for John Hiatt on the 'Bring The Family' tour - this also took us around Europe and got us noticed, especially in Holland and Belgium.
Then there was Stevie Ray Vaughan... we did his first tour back when he'd been through rehab, and that was amazing. I remember the first gig we did was Newcastle City Hall and we'd turned up while he was warming up and it was the loudest thing I'd ever heard! I got to jam with him in sound check once when I arrived early at the Manchester Apollo gig. I used to be a keen bike racer at the time and travelled with my bike in the van; I'd ride from gig to gig to keep my training up. I'd cycled across the Pennines that day and arrived early to try Tommy Shannon's (Stevie's bass player) new Hartke bass rig. I plugged in and Chris Layton (SRV's drummer) joined in... then I heard the bang of a guitar being plugged in; it was SRV and the three of us had a jam. I didn't realise at the time how that would be such a great thing as he was killed a few years later in a helicopter crash.
Q: What do you remember about signing to Silvertone Records?
It was the moment we'd all been working towards, a great time for celebration. We had started to do festivals in Europe; we did some big ones like Park Pop and Pink Pop where we played to hundreds of thousands of people - at that time the Europeans were a lot more open to new bands if they were good, compared to the UK which was still very 'pop and fashion' oriented. We had some great gigs on those big stages, but after a few years of touring at this level, we realised we were being seen as an opening act, and needed to try and move away from this and get a record deal with a major label.
Paul Crockford came on board a few years after we'd signed to ASGARD and it was on his suggestion that we only took prestigious gigs to try raise our profile more on the path to getting a record deal. It worked: we got signed to the new label Andrew Lauder was running called Silvertone Records. The first signings were us and the Stone Roses - they went on to massive success and offset all the money they lost on us!
Q: And what was it like making the 1989 self-titled album?
We made the album in London, which gave us the opportunity to get Mark Knopfler in and Eric Clapton, and the sound was expanded with the top session brass and backing vocalists of the day. Tessa Niles and Katie Kissoon were Eric's backing vocalists so they were an obvious choice.
The actual making of the record was interesting but I could see how we were no longer driving the ship, and that caused some issues. We did the initial track laying in a northern studio that had a lovely Neve desk, KGM (Ken Giles Music). Davy had left the band by that time and we used a Leeds drummer called Steve Goulding, who I think played with John Langford and the Mekons. Our producer was John Porter, who'd made his name with the Smiths, with his right hand man engineer Kenny Jones, who I remember drove a MotoGuzzi motorbike.
We spent about a month recording up north and then moved to London, to Matrix Studios, to finish the album. Unfortunately though, and I'm not sure why, all the backing tracks we did started to get replaced by machines... the ATARI 1040 ST and Cubase III had just come available and John Porter started to program the drums and replace the live performances for more control. Looking back, this may have been to give it the 80s sound, but I think it was a mistake personally and I know Mark thought the same. At the end of the day, the producer and the label were happy. I was happy we had an album; it wasn't the one I thought we'd be making but at least we had support from the label so we could promote and tour it.
Q: Why did the Shadows split up?
The band experience was fantastic, however the end was handled very badly and Mark and Brendan didn't speak for many years. The reason the band split was mainly because Brendan decided he wanted to be a lone troubadour singer-songwriter like Woody Guthrie or Dylan and not be in a band. That was fair enough, but basically the record company picked up the option of Brendan alone and we hadn't been told - Mark and I only found out through the accountants who were writing to let us know our 'legal partnership' was being dissolved.
It was a hard time - it took me a while to get over it, but Brendan and I stayed friends. It was tough and a big lesson in forgiveness. We all go through things like this in life and the music business is hard and cutthroat, so it was a good lesson to learn at an early(ish) age.
Q: What about some of the other groups you've been in post-Shadows, like the Notting Hillbillies and the Manfreds?
I'd already been working with Brendan, Mark Knopfler, Guy Fletcher and Steve Phillips on other projects so I was the obvious choice really to play bass in the Notting Hillbillies. I can't remember who it was who asked me to join. The big difference between them and the Shadows was I was a paid sideman in the NHB, whereas with the Shadows I was a "proper" member of the band and had an equal say in all things. With a lot of artists I've worked with, being a session musician is a very different role to being a band member. However, in the Manfreds I am part of the band, so in some respects it's very similar to those old days with the Shadows.
Another big difference is touring. What sets one tour apart from another is really just the budget, which is usually dictated by venue size and ticket prices. A big tour will have all the creature comforts of 5 star hotels, private planes, chefs on tour cooking for you etc. - but a budget tour might mean driving yourself to a gig and staying in a Travelodge and having a garage sandwich backstage.
Q: Finally, your memories of Brendan as a person rather than a performer...
Brendan was exactly the same onstage and offstage - what you saw is what you got. I admired Brendan for his single-minded drive to follow his path, and also to be 100% himself at all times. Even when the band split it was because he wanted to pursue his path; the problem was due to the people around, management, accountants, lawyers etc. Brendan stuck to his guns and always did everything with 100% authenticity, and in my books that's the sign of a true 'Artist'.
I loved the times with the Shadows. They really were my formative years as a musician and despite the pain of it ending, I wouldn't change anything.
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In addition to working with Brendan, the Hillbillies and the Manfreds, Marcus runs his own production studio, Norbury Brook, where he has produced albums for Miracle Mile and Tom McGuinness, as well as his own albums Heard (2018) and Find Your Own Ground with Lucinda Drayton (2024). Check him out at https://www.marcuscliffe.com/
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