Brian, Ealing, and Understand
The second of two posts documenting the profound effects of music on my life.
Last month I explained how seeing Galaxie 500 in London in 1990 changed the course of my career:
In this week’s post I talk some more on a subject that I touched on in that post - how Ken Sweeney started work at the BBC and the thrilling series of events that followed… and are still causing ripples! Without Ken’s arrival at the Film & VT Library I possibly wouldn’t even have been at that life-changing show.
Part Two - You Don’t Want a Boyfriend
I joined the BBC Film and Videotape Library in November 1984, working in the film stores. The library was on an industrial estate in Brentford and contained hundreds of thousands of items of film and videotape and the job of the stores staff was to retrieve and replace hundreds of items a day. It was not a great job, but if you played it right it was tolerable and paid pretty well, and we had a great team of people working there.
When Ken arrived at the BBC in 1990 from Dublin, he did so with a past. Once it had become clear that we were going to be friends he handed me a copy of that past - it came as a 7” single by a band called Brian who, at the time was him, and his friend Niall. It also came with a newspaper clipping that declared that the single - A Million Miles - was Hot Press magazine’s fourth best single of 1989 (and to be honest it was better than the three above it).
He also arrived with plans.
In 1990 Ken, Niall, and myself spent a lot of time in a bedroom in a house share, just off the Hanger Lane Gyratory in west London recording demos of the songs that would eventually become Brian’s first album Understand. Ken and Niall were the musicians, and I was the one figuring out the borrowed and rented equipment, that we were using to record with, from well-thumbed manuals, or photocopies of manuals. Sadly Googling the instructions was still eight years away.
At one point over a meal at nearby L.A. Pizza I was asked to be the band’s bassist, I accepted but never really had the skill or dedication to be that, so soon we decided that my skills better served the band as driver, technician, money-lender, and anything else that I was asked to do for it. I loved it!
The first physical manifestation of all of this was a seven inch single that was put out on our own record label - Ken likes to say it was my label but that always felt a bit generous - I was just the front - the label was called “Detzi Records” and was named after Detzi Kruszyński who was a football player who played for Wimbledon at the time. I think we chose the name less in tribute but more for the mysterious obscurity of it. The address on the label was that of my parents house in Cobham - and the only people who noticed, and made use of, the address were Matt and Claire of Sarah Records who sent Ken a letter there.
The photo on the front cover of the single was taken outside Ealing Town Hall by another BBC film library employee Martin Sapsed - seven years later Hazel and I were photographed coming out of the same building by the same photographer/friend after we were married. The story on the back was written by Graham Linehan. I did take some video of the photo shoot but sadly that has gone astray (although I think Ken has it somewhere).
The single was Hot Press’s 18th best single of the year (and to be honest it was better that the seventeen above it).
Ken signed to Setanta Records and Boyfriend, and the rest of the recordings, became Brian’s first album Understand an absolute masterpiece that I am so proud to have had a small part in (and my name on the back of). A short time later the album was followed up with the equally splendid Planes EP.
Both Understand and Planes are being reissued on Friday by boutique label Needle Mythology renamed as Understood and with the previously unreleased track If You Knew that mysteriously never made it onto the album.
Ken went on to record a second album as Brian. Bring Trouble was recorded at September Sound studios, which was then being leased by The Cocteau Twins, had a much more professional set up and the second album is also excellent (and never had a vinyl release so… fingers crossed that this too gets a deluxe reissue some time).
I used to regularly cycle past September Sound when I worked at The National Archives, it was on the river next to Richmond Lock. By then The Cocteau Twins had moved out and it was in a state of limbo… it may still be? Ken asked me to photograph it in 2015.
By then, the Internet was becoming important so my job had moved from being all those other things (although I still did the driving) to running the Brian website, and an email newsletter.
And that was it… Ken returned to Dublin, and became an entertainment journalist… and my brief and exciting adventure on the fringes of the music industry came quietly to an end.
Postscript
The AHFoW connection, despite not being explicit in this post, is very strong. Ken gave me the tape on which I first heard Galaxie 500, he was with me at both the Galaxie 500 shows I was at in 1990, and the first Luna show at the Underworld in 1992. He also got me Dean Wareham’s autograph, on some ear-drop instructions when he bumped into him in a hotel bar after a gig (that he hadn’t been at but I was!)
Post-postscript
Obviously there were other things that had profound effects on my life and career - the two most significant are the two folk in this picture who aren’t Dean, Britta, or me - but I’ll spare you a wordy post about them… for now!
