Amplifier

14.08.09

Part three of Simon Grigg's fascinating personal account of the Screaming MeeMees and his involvement with the band. You can read part one here and part two here.

In late 1982 they entered the studio again, this time Mandrill, and with a couple of new songs from the large batch of unrecorded songs Tony in particular had been working up, Stars in My Eyes, a fast, brass and percussion driven funk track, and Can't Sleep Today, slow, almost grinding. Both were recorded for single release, produced by Tony, Mandrill's Glyn Tucker Jr., and soundman Tom Sampson, who'd become integral to the sound they'd been trying to achieve live. Stars was chosen as the next single and a couple of extended takes of it were mixed for another 12". Can't Sleep Tonight was kept for the next single, and the tapes sadly have gone AWOL.

After the initial track laying for the single, Michael left the Meemees following an argument with Tony over the split with his girlfriend, who just happened to be Mike's sister. He took no further part in the sessions, and for some long forgotten reason (sympathy for Mike I guess) Peter too was mostly absent after he'd recorded his keyboards and bass.

Thus it became mostly Tony's baby and was a quantum leap not only for the band, but NZ rock music in general. Nothing like it had been recorded in NZ, and it sounded like nothing that had come before. Festival Records, forced to sell it, hated it and asked if I could slow it down. Once again, no.

The video for Stars in My Eyes was a budget affair as we had, after the sessions, simply no money at all left, and there were no such things as video grants. We needed to make this one ourselves, feeling that we'd been pretty badly served by those TVNZ videos to date, and the record was too important. My neighbour, Willie Kiddell, was a filmmaker and agreed to do it for love of the song, so after splashing out $129 for some old TVNZ film stock, he and Tony put together the clip, and, as low budget as it very clearly looked, it had it's moments, most especially the lovely shots of Tony in profile. Mike and Peter were not present for this either, with roadie Terry Towelling, and now Universal NZ Managing Director, Adam Holt, standing in as shadowy profiles.

A reconciliation of sorts was affected at a long, fairly heated, meeting in my office high above Queen Street. There were all sorts of other pressures too, like the standard third parties wondering why they weren't stinking rich after being on TV and playing to so many over so many years, but that's what third parties always throw into the mix, and the reality of running an organisation like that for that period usually needs to be inserted into the mix too, as it was.

And so a few more gigs were played including the Brown Trout Festival in Dannevirke, a chaotic (in that crowds went down the street) weekend in Mt Maunganui and the aforementioned Sweetwaters.

After Sweetwaters, with another top twenty single the band sat down and decided that they'd either make the jump overseas, to the UK, which meant years more hard work, or they'd call it a day. In the end it was Mike who decided that was it, and a final series of gigs at Mainstreet were planned and announced as their farewell.

The two nights were mostly to pay off a few bills, and say a farewell to those who'd loyally followed the band since the beginnings, but the queues stretched down Queen Street to the corner of what is now Mayoral Drive. Tony turned up an hour late on the final night but it mattered not.

And it was over, almost. They played twice more...once at the This Is Serious gigs in August, to help cover the still outstanding album bills, and once at Michael's first wedding.

And it was over, completely.

For me, the three years were an often stressful but never less than electrifying huge roller coaster that I'd never swap any part of. As manager of a band who were mostly either just out of school or still in school (we used to have to smuggle Peter out of his room at night for gigs, often with his then girlfriend, Charlotte Dawson, waiting with us in the van ...girlfriends went everywhere with the Meemees, they were just a part of the ongoing, and often extensive entourage) I had to act as manager, guardian, peacemaker, parental figure and confidant and it was an endless juggle of emotions, tantrums and demands. But a bloody joyful juggle nevertheless.

What I remember most was the huge adventure of it all.

We travelled up and down New Zealand countless times, sitting in one horse towns trying to find gas at 3am; leaning against river walls in Otago with yet another cheap steak pie and less than two hours sleep on our way to a three nighter in Christchurch; battling to keep the road crew from spending all the night's profits in the house bar without me knowing; being told to leave Te Puke because we were too punk rock; picking Mike up off the floor of the Uni café in Hamilton because some girl, in love with him but angry because she'd been spurned, threw a drink over him and electrocuted him; watching the Waitara boys brawling with the skinheads from Wainuiomata at the Bellblock in New Plymouth, as we hid like Auckland poofters behind the PA stacks; getting taken to some party in Taranaki where a local Maori girl, all 20 odd stone of her, decided that she was having Mike and having to run to the van as fast as legs would carry; the band finding out that the trip to Ruapehu also meant they had to play for 4 hours to drunken ski bunnies; IG4330, the red Bedford Jumbo which seemed to have knack of sucking that very last dollar out of the bank account or petty cash just when it was most needed, and seemed to lose a muffler every week; sending later to be EMI MD, Chris Caddick out on the road as road manager and getting calls from the band asking for him to be fired because he was doing his job too well and not taking shit; but mostly just sitting with Tony, Mike, Peter, Yoh, Tom, Terry, Karen, Jack, Adam or whoever else happened to be on the road with us and laughing endlessly about nothing very much in particular. 

See me go, indeed.

Simon Grigg has a long history of releasing and supporting our local musicians. He owned/operated the label that released the Screaming Meemee's as well as managing the band.

If This Is Paradise, I'll Take The Bag (Remastered And Extended) by the Screaming MeeMees was released digitally this week.

Find out more about Simon's contribution to NZ music on his site.

Screaming Meemees on Amplifier

Screaming Meemees on Simon Grigg's personal site

Screaming Meemees on wikipedia