They made a film about us. It started at the end, in that big house in Holland Park. Then it went back to the beginning: Yorkshire in the sixties.
I was into football when I was growing up, but from the age of twelve, I became music mad. I never bothered with football again. On a Saturday, I’d go into the market building in town. Down in the basement they had a record store in the round. They had listening booths, so if you’d read about an album, you could hear it properly.
Then hurry home clutching a twelve-inch paper bag. Get home, put the kettle on, make a cuppa, peel off the sticker very, very, carefully, sit down with your tea and biscuit and listen to it properly for the first time. Sit there reading the sleeve notes.
In truth I’d always be slightly disappointed on the first listen, but by the time I got to the third, those albums got me good and proper. They’d crawl in through my ears and live in my brain. I’d be walking to school and they’d be going round and round and round in my head. They’re still there now to tell the truth.
When I was fifteen Dad drove me to Leeds and bought me an acoustic guitar. That was it, I was off trying to write songs. I’d known Bugs from school. He met David at technical college, and we advertised in the market building for a drummer. That’s how we met Mole. We ended up rehearsing in the basement of my girlfriend’s house. We were in the shadow of the 1950’s really – everything was a reaction against it or an echo of it.
Nigel was one of the few who’d engage with us right from the start. He’d always come up and say “Hello” after gigs. He kind of became our manager and he’s the one who got us a showcase gig in London.
That first time we drove down to London, it was such a shock, like hopping onto a moving walkway. Everything was so much ‘more’ than we were used to. We were lucky – somebody quite famous was at the gig and championed us. It all happened quickly. Suddenly three record companies were competing to sign us. We went with the one with the best international connections. International meant the States. We were over-joyed: they said we reminded them of Pink Floyd.
We signed the deal in the record company office, a big mansion in Holland Park. We stayed in a pokey hotel in walking distance of Notting Hill, Ladbroke Grove, Latimer Road. We couldn’t believe all the different cultures, the different sounds, different rhythms, different voices speaking different languages. We had to step up, stay awake, keep our wits about us. We loved it.
Don’t notice me
I’m hiding in the city
Please don’t notice me
If you look at me
I might just run away
I don’t know where
So don’t notice me

Don’t notice me
I’m hiding in the city
Please don’t notice me
I’m so overwhelmed
I can’t tell what is real or anxiety
So please don’t notice me

I feel alien
Everybody else seems to know
The speed to walk and what to say
What to do and where to go

Don’t notice me
I’m hiding in the city
Please don’t notice me
If you look at me
I might just turn too stone or disappear
So don’t notice me…

The record company folk were funny. It was all or nothing – one minute it was folk rock, then glam rock, then prog rock. They’d just drop the last thing and move on. It did cross my mind what would happen to us when a new thing came along.
Making our first album felt like a dream. I remember we drove down from Yorkshire to the manufacturing plant in Hayes to pick up the finished album. We were so excited. We got a box and drove off, then stopped as soon as possible and got it out of the boot and opened it up. We couldn’t really believe that they’d have managed to get it right – to get the right music on the right side with the right labels. But they had. We pulled open the box and took out an album. I remember holding the record between my palms in the sunlight: black vinyl – the most beautiful thing I ever saw.
The first trip to America blew our minds – we had to hold on for dear life. New York in the 70s: a frothing broth of humanity. Everything brighter, everything louder. Again, we were hearing sounds we’d never heard before, trying to keep up.
We went to see what they called a midnight movie back then: Ted Kotcheff’s Australian film with dear old Gary Bond trapped in the Yabba. A few years later Bowie took Bond’s whole look for the ‘Let’s Dance’ album. I reckon they even made the video in the town they used for the Yabba. I loved it so much I started writing songs about it. They would have eventually been on our third album, but as it turned out, that never came to be.
We did five long tours of the States in three years – completely exhausting. We started off as innocents, determined to stay true to what we believed in. But by the third trip, we barely knew what we were doing or who we were.

Wake up
You’re going to miss it,
If you don’t live it at all.

Wake up
Don’t sleepwalk through it,
It’s only a short time after all.

My relationship at home lasted that long, and then it just fell apart. It was impossible. I defy anyone to hang onto themselves under those conditions. And we spent so long trying to break the States that we neglected things back home. The band not only ended up hating what we were doing but hating each other. We lost Nigel along the way too.
A lot of things I regret… we weren’t really in control, and it’s only as you get older that you realise you were wrong when you were younger.
I certainly never thought it would end as suddenly as it did. It literally stopped overnight. Punk came along and just blew the whole thing away. The world was suddenly a different place.
We found ourselves being called back to the mansion in Holland Park to be told we were dropped. We were destroyed - they said we sounded too much like Pink Floyd.
If I’d known it would end so soon, I’d have appreciated it more while it was happening. And the labels went on to saturate the planet with Disco, until everyone had had enough of it and they dropped that like a stone… but Disco didn’t suck, there was some really great music in there.
I know lots of bands got stuck in ongoing legal battles, but it was easy for us: it just ended. They said that the songs we’d starting recording for the third album were lost in a fire, but I’m not sure that’s true.
They made a film about us. In a big house in Holland Park, mosaic all over the walls. They used in in ‘Secret Ceremony’ and I think they filmed ‘Peeping Tom’ round the corner, so I was happy.
They got my son to play me – his name’s Shirley. Well, that did seem like a good idea at the time. He’s in a band too, not my cup of tea, you understand… funny music… he’s well into it though, just as obsessed as I was. His band plays our band: silly wigs and 70s clothes – all slightly off.
It always seems to me that it’s obvious what’s going to happen in a film when you’re watching it. If it’s so obvious to me, then why can’t the people in the film tell? But I lived it and I didn’t see what was coming. It was like being dropped back to earth from a great height. Back to Yorkshire, no money, no band, no dream, no relationship, nothing.
I went to see my mum and she said I should be grateful, “You’ve had this wonderful experience Billy, and you can always keep playing music as a hobby… but now, you’re going to have to find a proper job. I mean, what would you have done if rock’n’roll never was?”
I ended up coming back to London. We got the band back together a couple of years ago. It was just the same… but it just wasn’t the same. We talked about making that third album, but it didn’t happen, with one thing and another... and now, now that Mole decided to check out, I don’t see it ever happening.
Becoming a postman was the best thing I ever did. I get my space and the music’s in my head as I walk round Harlesden. The idea of music being reduced to a hobby is all wrong. What did Cocteau say? “Don’t think of it as a distraction, but as a religion.” That’s how I feel even now. I still write the songs, it’s just that now I don’t play them to anyone else. That was never the bit that mattered anyway.
In the end it was such a small space in time – six years in all, such a small part of my life. My generation were inspiring and eloquent, utopean and optimistic… quixotic really, meaning idealistic but unrealistic…. ultimately naïve and hedonistic, foolish and disappointing. Well, the past may be ours, but the future is yours now.